Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 1 (of 16)

by United States. Congress

Mr. Blount said, there was an absolute necessity for the clause which the gentleman last up objected to. Persons were daily coming to that Territory in great numbers. If the census had been required to be taken in one day all the people who had come into the Territory, with the intention to reside permanently there, could by no means have been numbered. It was not intended to give the officers power to take persons in more places than one, nor did he believe it had been done. He undertook to explain yesterday the reason why so long a time was given, but he seemed not to have been understood, which was, the difficulties attending the passage of the wilderness.

The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Smith) had said, that his arguments of yesterday had been to-day admitted. If the gentleman had supposed that he had admitted them, he was mistaken. That he might not continue under the mistake, he would inform him, that what he had called arguments, were, in his opinion, mere quibbles, such as could only have been expected from a County Court lawyer, at the bar of a County Court.

Mr. Coit said, that as he had not heard it suggested from any quarter that it would be expedient to divide the Territory into two States, he did not think it important to inquire into the powers of Congress in that respect. It is declared by the ordinance for the government of the Territory, that when there should be sixty thousand inhabitants in any one of the States there they should be admitted into the Union. If, then, it is not in contemplation to divide the Territory into two States, he considered that the right to be admitted was complete as soon as there was the requisite number within the whole Territory. But it appeared to him, that on examining the census and the law under which it was taken, they could not be considered as furnishing proof that there was that number there. He did not pretend to say that any fraud had been committed in the execution of the law, but the law itself was wholly defective. The same man might have been counted in several counties, nay, in every county in the Territory, and that without any fraud, but in strict compliance with the law; two months having been allowed for taking the enumeration, and it being enjoined on the sheriffs of the several counties to include in their enumeration all persons within their respective districts within that period.

The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Blount) seemed to imagine that it would have been impracticable to have followed a mode similar to the one pointed out in the enumeration law of the United States, but he could not see the reason. [He read the law.]

Mr. Sitgreaves said, he felt every disposition favorable to meet the wishes of the people of the South-western Territory, and for a reason which had been given, viz: that, as they were our fellow-citizens, it was desirable they should equally participate with us in all the advantages of the General Government, and suffer no longer than was necessary the comparative humiliation of a Colonial or Territorial administration; but, from obvious considerations, he thought it highly important that they should be admitted to the enjoyment of these advantages only in conformity with the promise made to them, and on the terms of the compact entered into jointly by the United States and by them. Two constructions of this compact had been contended for; one, that so soon as sixty thousand free inhabitants should be collected within the Territory, they should be entitled to a place in the Union, as an independent State; the other, that Congress should first lay off the Territory into one or more States, according to a just discretion, defining the same by bounds and limits; and that the admission of such States thus defined, should take place as their population respectively amounted to the number of free inhabitants mentioned; that is, that the sixty thousand inhabitants could not claim admission into the Union, unless their number was comprised within a State whose Territorial limits had been previously ascertained by an act of the United States. He inclined to this latter construction, because it was conformable to the letter, and, as he understood it, to the spirit of the instrument. By the act of cession of the State of North Carolina, accepted by Congress, it is provided that the ceded territory should be laid off into one or more States, and that the people of the Territory should be entitled to all the privileges secured to the inhabitants of the Territory north-west of the Ohio, by the ordinance of 1787. The extent of their privileges, therefore, is to be determined by this ordinance, which may be called their charter. They have no other or greater privileges than the inhabitants of the North-western Territory; and it cannot be pretended that these would be entitled to admission into the Union as one State, so soon as their whole number shall amount to sixty thousand, because the ordinance itself divides that country into three separate and distinct States, each of which must contain sixty thousand free inhabitants before it can claim to be received. The actual circumstances and situation of the South-western Territory evinced the reasonableness and propriety of the construction; it is composed of two settlements, the Hoston and the Mero districts, separated from each other by the Cumberland Mountains and a wilderness of two hundred miles in width, which has always been inhabited by the Indians, and the soil and jurisdiction of which have been actually ceded to them by the United States, by late Treaties; and by an examination of the documents on the table it would appear, that when, agreeably to the act of the Territorial Legislature, the officers who took the census put to the people of the Territory the question whether they were desirous of admission into the Union; the inhabitants of the Western or Mero district almost universally answered in the negative. He would not undertake positively to pronounce on the inexpediency of forming the whole country into one State; but under the circumstances which he had stated, and until they should be satisfactorily explained to his mind, it did appear to him that the interest and the wishes of that people required a division of the Territory. It looked somewhat absurd to connect under one permanent Government, people separated from each other by natural barriers, by a distance of two hundred miles, and by a foreign jurisdiction. They had been told, by gentlemen who knew the fact, that during the period of Indian hostility, the people emigrating to the Mero district were obliged to stop five or six weeks at the eastern boundary of the wilderness, until they could collect in companies or caravans of sufficient number and force to pass in safety; the time of hostility may again return, and even a state of peace with Indians is not a state of such tranquillity or security as to preclude the necessity of caution and vigilance on the frontiers. The people of the Western district seem sensible of the inconvenience of an arrangement so unnatural as the one proposed, and so far as their wishes can be collected from the documents before the committee, they desire as yet to preserve their connection with us in its present mode, and to remain under the Territorial Government.

Mr. Macon said, he should be as unwilling to agree to the doctrine of the gentleman from New Jersey, (Mr. Dayton,) as he was unwilling to agree to his. As to the people of this Territory attaching themselves to any other nation, he should not have thought it could have been suggested. There was no more likelihood of their going over to any other government than there was of any other State doing the same thing.

Mr. Gallatin said, how the resolution on the table, or the doctrine he had asserted, supported the idea that that Territory would have a right to separate from the Union, he could not see, and he should be glad to be informed. So far from it, his opinion was that if they were a State, they were at the same time a member of the Union; that they could not exist as a State without being one of the United States. The only difference of opinion was whether an act of Congress was necessary previous to their being recognized as such; and if any doctrine could lead to the conclusion of the Speaker, it was that of those gentlemen who thought that Congress must form them into a State, several months before they were admitted into the Union. In that intermediary situation, whilst declared a State and not one of the United States, they might, perhaps, claim, as an independent State, a right to reject an admission in the Union. But those consequences could only flow from the doctrine he was combating; the principle he was supporting was that no previous act was necessary, that there could not be two acts upon the subject; but that one and the same act must recognize them as a State and admit them in the Union.

Mr. Blount hoped the original resolution would not be rejected for the sake of the gentleman from New Jersey. He did not wish to give up the right to which these people were entitled; though perhaps the law might not pass the Senate.

Mr. Harper objected to the mention of the Senate, as to what was likely to be done there. He hoped they should adopt the resolution of the gentleman from New Jersey.