[78] Miss. Constitutional Convention, 1868, pp. 215-220. This Convention dropped that provision, found in the Constitution of 1832, restricting the origination of money bills to the lower house. The Constitution of 1890 expressly declares that all bills may originate in either house and be amended and rejected in the other.
[79] Lowry and McCardle: Hist. Miss., p. 230, Cf. also Barksdale: Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 339 (In Noted Men of the Solid South.)
[80] Miss. Laws, 1875, p. 46.
TERRITORIAL GROWTH OF MISSISSIPPI
J.M. WHITE, M. S.
In 1783 the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in America was recognized. Fifteen years later on April 7, 1798, Congress passed an act a part of which was as follows: "All that country bounded on the west by the Mississippi river; on the north by a line to be drawn due east from the mouth of the Yazoo river to the Chattahoochee river; on the east by the river Chattahoochee; and on the south by the thirty-first degree of north latitude, shall be, and hereby is constituted one district, to be called the Mississippi Territory." More than half of this territory is now embraced in the state of Alabama, and the portion that remains to Mississippi constitutes something like one-third of the area of the state. Very little of the boundary of the original territory remains intact, and in so far as Mississippi is concerned all that remains of this original boundary is that around its south west corner, extending from Pearl river along the thirty-first degree of north latitude to the Mississippi river and up that stream to the mouth of the Yazoo river.
The lands that have been added to the original territory lie to the north and to the south of it—that added on the north comprises the South Carolina and Georgia cessions, and that on the south a portion of the Louisiana Purchase, or Spanish cession.
Before going farther into this subject it is necessary that we examine briefly some of the old grants made by Great Britain for the purpose of stimulating the formation of Colonies in the New World. By such an examination we hope to get a clearer idea of the subject, and how it is that some of the boundaries of our state are where they are. The first of these grants to embrace the territory now in Mississippi was that made by Charles I. to his Attorney General, Sir Robert Heath, in 1629. This grant known as Carolina was possibly the largest ever made to any one individual, covering as it did almost all that part of the United States south of the present southern boundary of Virginia and of Missouri. Mississippi was completely swallowed up in this princely domain. Thirty years later (1659) soon after the death of Oliver Cromwell and about the time of the restoration of the Stuart kings to power in England, this charter for non-user was voided, and in 1663 Charles II. gave to eight of his royal favorites, the Lords Proprietors, a charter to Carolina, and by a supplemental charter two years later (June 30, 1665) granted on the petition of the Lords Proprietors, he extended the territory of Carolina so that its northern boundary was 36 degrees thirty minutes north latitude and its southern 29 degrees north latitude.[81] All of Mississippi was in like manner embraced in this grant. This charter was surrendered to the King by seven of the proprietors, act of Parliament July 25, 1729.[82] It had been one hundred years since the grant to Robert Heath. (The eighth proprietor gave up his claim Sept. 17, 1744.) It was at this time that Carolina was divided, South Carolina having remained a part of it until this date. The western portion of the line separating the Carolinas, now forms the northern boundary of Mississippi.[83]
Three years later June 9, 1732, George II., King of Great Britain, granted a charter for the establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America. The lands embraced by the provisions of this charter lay within the royal province of South Carolina, between the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers and the zone lying between parallels passing through the head waters of these streams and extending to the Pacific Ocean.[84]
Now the line passing through the head waters of the Savannah left a zone twelve or fourteen miles wide belonging to South Carolina, and lying between said line and the southern boundary of North Carolina. This strip east of the Mississippi embraced 4900 square miles and was generously ceded by South Carolina to the United States in 1787, and today forms the northern part of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. South Carolina's right to this zone was not questioned nor was Georgia's right to her western zone lying between the parallels passing through the head waters of the Savannah and Altamaha rivers. This zone became, as did the South Carolina zone, a part of the Mississippi Territory, and together they constituted the lands added to the original Mississippi territory on the north as above indicated. But as to the original territory, viz., the zone lying between the thirty-first and the thirty-second and one-half degrees of north latitude, a number of disputes at different times arose. South Carolina claimed it, Georgia claimed it, Spain claimed it, and the United States claimed it. The contentions that arose in consequence of these conflicting claims were protracted over a quarter of a century.