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Legislature there that was recognised by Congress. The history of the act of Congress conclusively shows that such was the sense of Congress when the act passed. By a reference to the journals of the Senate of last session, it would be found that the bill, as originally reported to the Senate, provided that this condition "should be submitted to the Legislature of Michigan, and to their Senators in Congress, and the member elected to this House." An amendment was moved, to strike out this provision, and refer the subject directly to the people, on the ground that the Legislature of Michigan, as a sovereign State, was a body that Congress would not recognise before her admission into the Union was consummated. The Territorial Governor had resigned, or disappeared, the Legislature of the Territory, which had for so many years convened in a Territorial character, was no longer in existence, and there was, therefore, no intermediate body with whom Congress could or would treat in so important a matter as this. Hence Congress, by the act of June, 1835, dealt not with the Legislature, but with the people of Michigan; and the true question, therefore, was, whether the last convention, elected in the manner and under the circumstances which characterized the election of its delegates, sufficiently proved the sense of a majority of the people of Michigan.

This, said Mr. V., was altogether a question of fact; and, to dispose of it satisfactorily, a moment's recurrence to the evidence in the case was necessary. And upon this branch of the case there was one circumstance which appeared to him entirely conclusive. The second convention was held on the 15th day of December, the election of the delegates which composed it was fair and openly held in all the counties of the State except two. The proceedings of the second convention were notorious to every citizen of the State; it was well known that a messenger had been despatched to Washington (a personage no less than the president of the convention) with the proceedings of the convention, for the purpose of procuring an immediate admission of Michigan into the Union, on the ground that she had complied with the terms proposed by the act of Congress of June last; the subject had been openly and earnestly discussed in the other branch of the Legislature weeks ago, and yet not a whisper of remonstrance had been heard from any quarter. Should not this circumstance irresistibly lead us to the conclusion that there is good ground for the statement of the honorable Senators and Representative elect from Michigan, when they tell us they are satisfied that three fourths of the people of Michigan anxiously desire admission into the Union, even on the hard condition of admission prescribed by Congress? Who can, who dare, doubt as to the real sense of a majority of the people upon this subject, with this circumstance staring him in the face? But there were other items of evidence, tending to show that the last convention or last election formed a good criterion of the popular will. It would be recollected that at the last convention more than two thousand more votes were given for the assenting delegates alone, than were given at the former election for both assenting and dissenting delegates together. Nor was this all; he (Mr. V.) had already stated, that after the first convention had rejected the terms prescribed by the act of Congress, and in the month of November last, an election was held for members of the Legislature of Michigan. The question whether she should come into the Union on the terms prescribed by the act of Congress was a test question at this election, and it resulted in the election of about three fourths of the candidates who were in favor of asBenting to the condition of admission to the two branches of the Legislature. To these circumstances might be superadded the very material fact, that this county of Washtenaw, which had originally returned the seven dis.

[H. OF R.

senting delegates who constituted the majority at the first convention, elected, for the second convention, delegates favorable to the terms of admission prescribed by the act of Congress, and that too by a vote so decisive as to leave no room to doubt the then state of feeling on this subject in that large and very important county.

It is said, however, that a very inconsiderable number of the persons who were qualified to vote actually voted at the second election. We are told that in December last the Territory of Michigan contained about two hundred thousand souls, and that only nine thousand votes were given for the delegates chosen at this second convention. It must be recollected, in regard to this point, that a residence of six months in the State is one of the qualifications of an elector in Michigan; and that it appears, from the documents before us, that about fifty thousand of the non-residents of Michigan moved into the State between the 1st day of June and the 1st day of December last, none of whom were qualified to vote. This argument, founded upon the inconsiderable number of voters, amounts to nothing, so long as it appears that about two thousand more votes were given for the assenting delegates at the last convention than were given at the former convention for the assenting and dissenting delegates together; and the same gentlemen, who contend that it was competent for delegates chosen by much less than seven thousand voters at the first convention to give a valid negative to the terms prescribed by Congress, tell us that it was not competent for delegates chosen by at least nine thousand electors for the second convention to give a valid affirmative. This was, in his (Mr. V's) estimation, very strange argument. But, more than this, he was not altogether prepared to admit that nine thousand voters were so inconsiderable a number of the qualified electors of Michigan, especially in these piping times of peace. Those who remained home, and did not vote, must certainly be deemed to have assented to the terms held out by Congress. There were many congressional districts in the State which he had the honor, in part, to represent, that contained nine thousand voters. On occasions when there was not much public excitement, some of these districts would not probably give more than five thousand votes, and the prevailing candidate might be, and no doubt frequently was, elected by three thousand votes. Still, no one would doubt the validity of his election on this ground. Could not these nine thousand voters have elected a Governor and Representative to Congress? Why, then, hold them so entirely impotent in regard to this subject?

II. It has been strenuously contended that this act of acceptance of the second convention works an alteration of the constitution of Michigan; and it is urged, in the same breath, that the latter convention had no right, in this form, to make such alteration.

This objection, were it a sound one, would be as ap plicable to the doings of the first as those of the second convention. The first convention was called by the Legislature of Michigan; and if, as had been contended, the people of Michigan had no right to call a convention with power in any manner to alter, amend, or modify their constitution, in any other mode than that prescribed by the constitution of Michigan itself, he would ask what authority the Legislature of Michigan had to call a convention for such purpose? If the Legislature had a right to disregard the mode pointed out by the constitution, had not the sovereign people of Michigan an equal right? The constitution of Michigan prescribes the mode, and the only mode, in which it may be amended. According to the eleventh article of the constitution of Michigan, "any amendment or amendments to the constitution may be proposed in the Senate or House of Representatives; and if the same shall be agreed to by a majority of the members elected to each of the two

H. OF R.]

Admission of Michigan.

Houses, such proposed amendment or amendments shall be entered on their journals, with the yeas and nays taken thereon, and referred to the Legislature then next to be chosen, and shall be published for three months previous to the making such choice. And if, in the Legislature next to be chosen, such proposed amendment or amendments shall be agreed to by two thirds of all the members elected to each House, then it shall be the duty of the Legislature to submit such proposed amendment or amendments to the people, in such manner and at such time as the Legislature shall prescribe; and if the people shall approve and ratify such amendment or amendments by a majority of the electors qualified to vote for members of the Legislature voting thereon, such amendment or amendments shall become part of the constitution."

Here, said Mr. V., we have the mode of amending the constitution of Michigan clearly pointed out to us. What stronger right had the Legislature than the people to call a convention to amend the constitution? (if there were indeed any amendment of the constitution in the matter.) It was certainly too late to make this objection now. If it ever was sound, (which he very much doubted,) it ought to have been urged against the passage of the act of Congress of last session. Congress, when that act was passed, had the constitution of Michigan lying before it. It knew that the Legislature of Michigan (a body which Congress had never yet absolutely recognised) would have no right to give a binding assent, if it were true, as some gentlemen contended, that such assent involved an amendment of the constitution; and Congress, therefore, instead of referring it to any intermediate agency, whose powers were defined and limited, at once referred the matter to the sovereign power, the people of Michigan. Where were the vigilant guardians of the constitution of Michigan when the act of Congress passed, recognising the right of the sovereign people, through a convention, to accept of the terms contained in the act? They were not then at their posts, for this act passed very quietly through Congress, and no gentleman, to his (Mr. V's) knowledge, then imagined that, by referring the subject to the arbitrament of the people, we were authorizing measures that were anarchical and revolutionary. But if the act of acceptance by the last convention did alter the constitution of Michigan, if it were true that that Territory has so much of the essence of the constitution of a State as that a small portion of disputed territory could not be added or subtracted without working an alteration of the constitution of such State, he would, in such event, contend that it was competent for the people, through the medium of the convention chosen by them for such purpose, to make such alteration. When the people of Michigan made their constitution, prescribing the mode of amending it, as above quoted, with whom did they contract? They contracted with themselves; and have they not a right to revoke what they themselves have ordained? They contracted with themselves, and have a perfect right to exonerate themselves from the binding force of the contract. The Legislature is the creature of the constitution, and is therefore under it. It has no life and capacity other than what it draws from the latter. The constitution, on the other hand, is the creature of the people. It is their potential will alone that gave it all its efficacy and binding force. As had well been observed by one of the commentators cited by his friend from Maryland, [Mr. THOMAS,] the constitution was, in relation to the people, like clay in the hands of the potter. They could mould and fashion it as their sense of patriotism, or their views of public good, might dic

tate.

But it had been urged, that although the people are sovereign, they can only act through a legal organization |

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[JAN. 24, 1837.

when they undertake to change their organic law; that is to say, through the medium of forms and regulations, as to time and manner, prescribed by their Legislature. This doctrine, said Mr. V., is contrary to the whole theory and sprit of our institutions. It puts the servant above his master, the creature above his creator. According to this doctrine, if the people are suffering grievances, be they ever so intolerable, and their lawmakers do not take the incipient steps towards remedy. ing them, the people in their sovereign capacity are entirely impotent. The idea that every peaceable movement of the people to change their organic law is a factious or rebellious movement is indeed monstrous. But it was more particularly unsound, when applied to the subject-matter now under consideration; for be it remembered, that in the conditional compact which we made here, in the overture which we held out by the act of last session, we knew nothing about the Legislature of Michigan. We recognised no authority but the sovereign people of a particular Territory, over which, until they accepted of our condition of admission into the family of States, we had a right to execute jurisdiction. The Territory of Michigan was ours; he meant so far as sovereignty and jurisdiction were concerned. When called upon to surrender this sovereignty and this jurisdiction, we had a right to prescribe our own conditions, so long as they were reasonable and consistent with the constitution of the United States; and if we were satisfied that those conditions had been substantially, not technically, complied with, it was not only our right, but our duty, to make the promised surrender. We were dealing, as it were, with our own; not with a community whose sovereignty and State independence we had already absolutely recognised. We would not recognise Michigan as a sovereign confederate State until she complied with a certain condition; and whether that condition had or had not been substantially complied with was a question of fact, easy to be determined.

While upon this branch of the subject, said Mr. V., he would say a word or two as to the nature and weight of the evidence upon which the friends of the bill rely, for the purpose of proving the sense of the people of Michigan. It had been remarked by the honorable gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. HARDIN,] that the evidence was not altogether satisfactory, and that it was not the character and degree of evidence upon which we could safely rely as the basis of our legislation. He entirely differed from the honorable gentleman upon this point. The evidence was not only full and overflowing, but emanated from sources that we could not but respect. it came to us, too, fortified with the strong circumstance that no effort had been made to impeach or falsify it in any particular. Indeed, it would almost seem that the disagreeing members of the first convention had themselves been converted to the faith of those from whom, at first, they had dissented; for not a syllable, by way of protest, had been heard from them. There was the official communication of General Williams, the president of the convention, informing us of the doings of the convention. There was the assent of the members of the convention, duly signed by them, to the condition required by the act of Congress; there was the letter of the Senators in Congress, and the Representative cho. sen to this House, from Michigan, containing answers to interrogatories propounded to them by the committee of this House to whom the bill on your table had been referred; there was an extract from a letter of the Governor of Michigan, and letters from various other gentlemen, well known to most of the members of this House, all going to prove the facts which he (Mr. V.) had detailed in the introduction of his argument. And was not this evidence abundant, especially when viewed in connexion with the fact that not a word of dissent

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or remonstrance had been heard from any quarter? What evidence do you require as a legitimate basis for legislative action? Do you want seals, and bonds, and records, and subscribing witnesses, when you have no reasonable room to doubt as to the fact which is to form the ground of your legislation? Legislative bodies are not so trammelled with form and technicality as all this would seem to indicate. They pass very important laws upon mere newspaper accounts or representations. Does a tremendous fire lay waste a valuable portion of your great commercial emporium? You extend relief to some of the sufferers, without first sending forth a commission to take testimony, and report whether the devouring element has indeed committed the ravages told of by public journals and private letters. Do the public journals tell you that vessels are wrecked and hundreds of lives lost upon your coast, in consequence of a want of energy, vigilance, and efficiency, in the pilots whose duty it is to point out the safe passages to your harbors? You at once recollect that the constitution has committed to your hands the great trust of regulating commerce, and you forthwith set about inquiring the ways and means you had best put in requisition to prevent a recurrence of such shocking catastrophes; and that, too, without first appointing a committee to inquire how many ill-fated mortals had fallen victims to your past remissness. He who will not believe the testimony accumulated upon the points-firs', that the election for delegates to the second convention were fairly conducted; second, that the votes for the assenting delegates for the last convention exceeded, by a large majority, that for both assenting and disagreeing delegates for the first convention; and, thirdly, that at least four fifths of the sovereign people of Michigan would rather come into the Union upon what they deemed the hard terms proposed by the act of last session of Congress, rather than be longer postponed-those who are yet unbelievers in these several propositions must be sceptical in the ex

treme.

The honorable gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. HARers] bas asked me, in a tone of triumph, and challenged me to answer him, whether there could be in Michigan a constitutional Government and a revolutionary Government in operation at one and at the same time. Bir, said Mr. V., the gentleman begs the question when he assumes that it is necessary for our purpose to show that a constitutional Government and a revolutionary Government can legitimately coexist in a State. He contended, as will be remembered, that there was no constitutional Government in Michigan, which Congress had absolutely recognised, up to the time of the second convention. Congress had, be it always remembered, made no absolute recognition of any power in Michigan but that which was lodged in the people of the Territory. The gentleman, in one part of his speech, admitted that Michigan had been somewhat irregular in her first movement; that, strictly speaking, she could not change her Territorial relation, and form a State constitution, without first obtaining the assent of Congress; but that Congress, if it saw fit, could waive the irregularity of the proceedings of the people of Michigan, and ratify and affirm their doings. The gentleman had further contended that the first convention was the fruit of the constitutional Government, and that the last convention was an emanation of the revolutionary Governmeat. Sir, said Mr. V., both were equally revolutionry in their character, if an amendment of the constituSon was effected by the acceptance of the terms propoed by Congress. It had already too often been said that there was but one mode of amending the constitution of Michigan, according to the organic law which the peo. ple of that State had adopted; and that the first convention was no more the child of that constitution than was VOL. XIII.-91

[H. OF R.

the second. Under and according to that constitution, the first convention had no right to amend it.

We have, said Mr. V., heard a great deal said about revolutions, and some portions of the elaborate argument of his friend from Maryland, as to the right of the people to revolutionize their Government, able as it was, was, (he spoke with great deference to the superior ability and experience of that gentleman,) he humbly apprehended, somewhat calculated to mislead those who had not attended very strictly to the facts and to the true points in this case. It was calculated to induce the suspicion or fear that some terrible revolution may have been wrought there. Sir, there has been no revolution in the Government of Michigan. Though a little terri tory may have been taken from her at one end, and a little more may have been added at another, all the guarantees thrown around the rights of person and prop. erty, by the constitution of Michigan, were still there, unchanged and unmodified in any particular. Was the Government provided by the constitution of Michigan republican? It is still so. Did it secure the freedom of conscience and religion, and the freedom of the press? It still does. Did it prescribe and define the duties of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Government? It still does. Did it prescribe the qualifications of electors? It still does. Did it secure the citizen against unwarrantable searches and seizures, and guaranty the right of trial by jury? It still does. All these fundamental provisions-the life and soul and essence of the constitution-are still there, notwithstanding the terrible revolution we have heard so much of What, then, is this monstrous revolution, this radical change of the constitution, about which we have heard such doleful jeremiads? Why, sir, a little piece of territory has been taken from one end of the State, and a little more than an equivalent has been added to the other, and all with the consent and direction of the Congress of the United States, before Michigan had absolutely passed from under her tutelage, and with the consent, too, of a large majority of the people of Michigan.

He

This, said Mr. V., brought him to another point, upon which he proposed to dwell for only a moment. was not prepared to admit that territory was so much of the essence of even a regularly organized State (not to mention a mere Territory) as that a little addition to, or subtraction from, the territory which the jurisdiction of the State originally covered, could not be made without altering or amending its constitution. The constitution of the United States, when it was framed and adopted, did not contemplate the addition of Louisiana or Florida. It did not originally cover either; and yet this immense territory was purchased, and your federal jurisdiction was extended over it, without amending your federal constitution. Constitutions, after all, seemed to be a little more elastic, or a little more capable of contraction, than many gentlemen seemed to imagine. There have been various controversies between States, respecting disputed boundary lines; and they have all been settled without feeling it necessary to amend their constitutions, and without dreaming that their constitutions were in effect amended thereby. New York, long after the adoption of her constitution, claimed a considerable portion of what is now Vermont. She relinquished all claim of jurisdiction over it, without ever supposing that her constitution was amended by the operation. But, sir, let us come down to a later period. For many years, and until very lately, there has been a controversy between New York and New Jersey, respecting the true boundary line between those two contiguous States. The gallant Jerseymen were very pugnacious when they fancied that the Empire State was disposed to trespass upon their oyster beds. The matter was once brought

H. OF R.]

Admission of Michigan.

before the Supreme Court of the United States, and had, as he believed, been finally adjusted, without any amendment of constitutions on either side. The States, through their Legislatures, were constantly ceding jurisdiction to the United States, for military or naval purposes; and all this, too, without amending their constitutions. Constitutions, said Mr. V., are organic laws, that guard the cardinal rights of States and communities; and if, in the progress of events, a small portion of territory, or a few menibers of the community, once shielded by this law, be severed from it, it is idle to say that it is not operative and binding upon the main body that remain, without resorting to the process of amendment.

[JAN. 24, 1837.

adopt and ratify the act, you make him your agent from the beginning. Mr. V. said there were too many law. yers, and, if not lawyers, too many gentlemen of sound discrimination and strong common sense, now in his hearing, to require him longer to dilate upon this topic. Sir, said Mr. V., I have now said, upon the points involved in this case, all that I demeed myself called upon to say, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, to which this whole subject was referred. I have attempt ed, as is ever my study, so to discuss this subject as to give offence to no gentleman, and have endeavored to exclude from my discourse, feeble as it has been, all extraneous topics. I will not so far degrade the proud A change in the constitution of a State, a revolution in place to which my constituents have here elevated me as Government, is something more than the loss of a few to pervert it on every occasion into the means of pouring miles of disputed territory over which the Government forth party tirades against political adversaries. There was originally extended. It is not quite so insignificant are duties and topics that belong to the stump and the an affair. It is not a gentle breeze, that merely tears electioneering rostrum, and there are duties and topics that off a branch or a leaf, but a tornado, that sweeps away appropriately belong to your halls of legislation. There the main pillars and the very corner stones of the edi- is a style, a tone, and a temper, that may well become fice, and levels the old order of things to the ground. the harangue occasions of political gladiators elsewhere, It shakes whole nations, and marks its career with deso- and which illy accords with the dignity and amenity that lation and blood. To call the orderly proceedings of should always be observed in your halls of legislation. the free people of Michigan, in this instance, a revolu- I wish not, sir, to assume the odious office of censor of tion, is indeed contradicting all our former notions of the habits and practices of this House. I claim no exrevolutions of Government." It is disparaging and libel-emption from those that are exceptionable. Standing, ling that great and glorious struggle which secured to us the right of sitting here, and legislating for a great, a free, and a happy people.

At the same time that he deemed it unnecessary for the purposes of the question immediately before the House to have gone into all the profound and elementary learning extant, as to the right of the people to resort to this extreme remedy, he did not wish to be considered as entirely repudiating the doctrines of the gentle man from Maryland, [Mг. THOMAS.] Deny to the people the right of changing their Government, when it becomes either oppressive or inadequate to the purposes for which it was instituted, and you deny the very cause which gave existence to us as a nation. sources of sovereignty other than those which your fathers taught you, and array yourselves against the principles which were promulgated to the world in that immortal instrument which declared your independence as a nation. But, sir, neither the time nor the occasion will justify my going into an elaborate disquisition on the inherent rights of man and the origin of government.

You open

It has been asked, and will doubtless again be asked, if Michigan was not, to all intents and purposes, a sovereign State when you passed the law of the last session admitting her into the Union, after she should have executed certain conditions on her part, how could she choose Senators in Congress, and a Representative to this House, before the act of Congress had passed? The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. HARDIN] had himself given the answer to this. He had told us that although the proceedings of Michigan, in forming a State constitution and organizing a State Government, were premature and irregular, yet it was competent for Congress to waive this irregularity, and to ratify and confirm what Michigan had thus done. There is a difference between adopting and ratifying an unauthorized thing after it is done, and authorizing the doing of it before it is done. You are constantly passing laws confirming titles that are either void or voidable, yet it does not follow from this that the title which you are thus called upon to perfect was good before your act of confirmation passed. The adoption and ratification of an act, originally irregular, by a party competent to adopt or ratify, legalizes the act from its inception. If, as between individuals, a party, professing to be your agent, usurps authority which he had strictly no right to exercise, and does an act which he had no right to do, and you afterwards

then, in the relation of particeps criminis, I will take occasion to say, that while I have had the honor of a seat in this House, there has been generally too great an inclination in gentlemen here to wander from the true point under debate, too great a propensity to deal in common-place party denunciation, rather than illustrate great questions of principle with fair, with terse and statesmanlike logic. Amid the thousand speeches that are constantly thrown off here about matters and things in general, compact, well-digested, and instructive argu ments are indeed "like angels' visits, few and far between." It was not so, sir, in the early days of the republic, when your Madisons, your Hamiltons, your Marshalls, and your Ellsworths, illustrated the an nals of your legislation. We now, at this late day, con stantly consult their speeches, as if they were the gifts of oracles. It is, sir, because, when they entered the sacred halls of legislation, they disdained the miserable trashy ephemeral party topics of the day, and dwelt only on questions of interest. Yes, their giant intellects grappled only with great subjects of principle, that concerned the public weal, not only for a day or a year but for ages to come. It is high time, sir, that wo should begin to emulate their example. It is high time that we begin to realize that the people did not send u here as schoolmasters, to teach them what candidate: they had better honor with their confidence, and to tel them of the foibles or the virtues of the ins or the ou's but as agents to originate measures and enact laws tha may conduce to their permanent happiness and pros perity.

When Mr. VANDERPOEL had taken his seat,

Mr. TOUCEY addressed the House as follows: N one, Mr. Speaker, rejoices more than I do that th time has arrived when the just rights of the people o Michigan, as a State of this Union, are to be acknow edged and regarded. After every obstacle seemed t have been removed, and every difficulty overcome, nev difficulties and new obstacles have sprung up, and th ground is contested to the very last moment. With th right secured to her, by the fundamental compact of th ordinance of 1787, to form a constitution and State Gov ernment, and to be admitted into the Union as an inde pendent State, upon an equal footing with the othe States, whenever ber population should be sixty thou sand in number, she applied to Congress to provide b law for that event, and was told there was no

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then to attend to her demand. She applied again and again, and the message was still borne to her, that Congress was not yet ready. Having a population far exceeding sixty thousand, no longer waiting for a preliminary law of Congress, she proceeded, under the ordinance of 1787, which is of higher obligation than any law, as unchangeable and more so than the constitution itself, formed a constitution and State Government, and presented herself at the doors of Congress for admission. She was again told that we were not yet ready, that her boundary was not settled, that her claims confflicted with those of another State, that we had unbounded authority to settle that controversy, (now of more than thirty years' duration,) and to prescribe her limits by law, and that she must wait until we could find time to exercise that authority. She again waited during an almost interminable session, her Senators and Representative standing at our doors for more than half a year, and we finally exercised that authority, settled the contested boundary, prescribed her limits on all sides, ratified, accepted, and confirmed, her constitution and State Government, and declared her to be a sovereign and independent State. By the same act, we declared her to be thereby admitted into the Union, upon the express condition that her boundaries should be those which we then assumed and exercised the authority to prescribe.

A mind of ordinary intelligence would have supposed that, having gone thus far, the next step was inevitable, and that her Senators and her Representative would have been admitted to their seats; that the right of participating in framing the laws which she was to obey would have been practically allowed; that taxation and representation would no longer have been forced asunder; and that her people, already become a powerful State, would no longer be denied the rights, privileges, and immunities, of American citizens, secured to them by the plighted faith of the nation, by the unalterable compact of the ordinance, and by the constitution of the Union. But their just rights and their just expectations were not regarded. The jealousy of controversy and the jealousy of questioned power were not so easily appeased.

The admission of the State of Michigan into the Union Was not to be complete, and her Senators and Representatives were not to take their seats, until the boundaries prescribed by act of Congress had received the assent of a convention of delegates, elected by the people of Michigan for the sole purpose of giving that assent. And now, when that assent has been given, as I shall attempt to show, in the only possible mode, and the voice of remonstrance from that injured people is not heard, opposition is raised here, her convention is denounced a revolutionary, its authority denied, and the time for ber admission into the Union, properly and constitutionally, it is said, has not yet come.

I ask the attention of the House to a plain view of this question. I apprehend the die is cast, the subject bas gone from our hands, the only power we have is to acknowledge the truth, to recognise the existence of an independent State of this Union, and to admit the just thaims of her delegates in both Houses of Congress.

Look to the peninsula of Michigan. What do we behold there? A State, in fact, with a population of two Bundred thousand; with definite boundaries, now at all events fixed beyond the control of Congress; with a constitution and State Government; legislative, judicial, and executive departments; with laws enacted, administered, and executed by its own authority; all its officers performing their respective functions, without interruption and without question-Michigan is a State de facto.

She is rightfully a State. By the fundamental compact of the ordinance of 1787, she was entitled, when her

her own.

[H. OF R.

boundaries were fixed, and her population amounted to sixty thousand, to form a constitution and State Government for herself. Her boundaries are fixed beyond the reach of any authority known in this country, except Her population is sixty thousand three times told. She has formed her own constitution and State Government, in pursuance of the right secured to her by the compact; a right inherent in her people, which cannot be taken from them except by brute force, by a flagrant violation of the public faith, of the articles of compact, and of the constitution of the United States, which guaranties the perpetual obligation of that com pact, and by violating the rights of every American citizen within her limits. The Congress of the United States, by the act of June last, has accepted, ratified, and confirmed, her constitution and State Government, without restriction or qualification, save that they are declared to be of force only within the boundaries, prescribed. Within those boundaries that constitution and State Government are of binding force, by authority of the people of Michigan, and by the sanction of an act of Congress. The Territorial Government is abolished; the Territorial jurisdiction is withdrawn; not a vestige of it remains. It has receded before the State jurisdiction, which has sprung up in its place. Michigan is a State de jure as well as a State de facto.

She is a State not out of the Union. She was a Territory under the authority of the Union. The transition was, from a Territory under the authority of the Union, to a State under the authority of the Union. The one necessarily succeeds to the other, unless a change is wrought by conquest; unless, by conquest, the new State goes out of the Union. The power of Congress can only be exerted by maintaining the Territorial authority; when that is withdrawn, and the State authority is recognised, the result in constitutional law is a State under the authority of the Union. The people of Michigan are citizens of the United States, subject to the federal authority, subject, like the citizens of other States, to the laws of Congress, and owe an allegiance to this Government, which may be violated by acts of treason against it. They are each and all of them not out of the Union. The State of Michigan can neither negotiate foreign alliances, declare war nor make peace, maintain armies nor navies, coin money nor issue bills of credit, regulate her own commerce, nor do any one act which is prohibited to any other State. All this, and more, she might do, were she out of the Union. she cannot do it, for the plain and obvious reason that she is bound by the constitution. That a State and the people of a State should be under the constitution, and bound by it, and yet be out of the Union, and without the pale of the constitution, is a contradiction in terms. What must be the condition of a State, which has every essential quality and circumstance which define every other State in this confederacy, it is unnecessary for me to say.

But

Michigan is then a State de facto, a State de jure, a State not out of the Union, a State acknowledged by Congress, her constitution accepted by Congress, her State Government, revolutionary perhaps in its origin, ratified and confirmed by Congress.

What, then, will you do? Will you put her out of the Union? You cannot do it. Your decree would be impotent. Two hundred thousand American citizens cannot be put out of the Union by act of Congress. A sovereign State, whose constitution you have accepted, whose State Government you have ratified and confirmed, which is bound by the constitution and laws of the Union, cannot be put out of the Union by act of Congress, nor can she be put out of existence. Verbum irrevocabile. It has gone forth. It is too late. What, then, will you do? Have you the power to exclude her delegates

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