SENATE.]

Admission of Michigan.

tional qualifications, all proved that the convention judged for themselves, in their high capacity of representatives of the sovereign people, and independently of the laws and constitution of Virginia. The words used with respect to the returns of delegates are, not that they are found duly elected, or legally elected, but that they are "satisfactory;" the evidence received where certificates of election were not produced, were statements of citizens who said they were at the election, and heard the sheriff proclaim such and such candidates elected; and, in the case of qualification, where a petition was presented to vacate the seat of a delegate because he was not a freeholder within the Commonwealth of Virginia, the report was that the petition be rejected. All these reports of the committee on privileges and elections, Mr. B. said, were confirmed by the convention, and the tenor of their whole proceedings shows that they were acting in the high capacity of representing the sovereignty of the people, and did what was satisfactory to themselves, and not what might be conformable to the laws and constitution of Virginia. In fact, said Mr. B., the mere composition of every convention proves that they are independent of the laws and constitution of the State, for judges, Governors, and all officers of the State or Federal Government, may be members.

Mr. B. having shown, from the opinions of the most eminent men, and from examples of the highest character, that conventions were independent of State legislation, demanded how it was that State Legislatures assumed to have power to grant or withhold them? He wished to see their grant for the exercise of this authority? He wished to see how it was that they who were servants, and dressed up in a little brief authority, undertook to govern and direct the people in the exercise of an inherent and unalienable right? They could not get this authority from the people, for it assumed a supremacy over the people. There was but one way to deduce their title, and that was through divine right! and by the grace of God! Any thing short of this acknowledges the sovereignty of the people, and puts an end to the pretension; so that a Legislature which should now assume to authorize the people to hold a convention, if put to a derivation of their own authority, would have to adopt the style of those Kings of Europe who hold that God has put the people into their care, and endowed them with all authority for their protection and preservation. A legislative advice, counsel, or recommendation to the people to hold a convention, and an appropriation of money to defray its expenses, is certainly a convenience, but it is not a prerequisite; and conventions to change the form of government may be held by the people when they please; taking care to submit their work to a direct vote of the people themselves, or to a new convention elected for the express purpose of approval or rejection, as was done in the case of the constitution of the United States; and thus making sure of the approbation of a majority of the people before the new constitution is put in force.

Mr. B. had now finished his view of this question, and would make a brief application of the whole to the case of Michigan. The people there had held a convention, by their own power, to accept a fundamental condition of their admission into the Union. They have accepted the condition; and the objection is, that the convention was a lawless and revolutionary mob, and that law ought to be made to suppress and punish such assemblages in future. Mr. B. would hold a proposition for such a law to be the quintessence not of European, but of Asiatic despotism; and sure he was, it would receive no countenance by the vote of this chamber. In saying this, he spoke upon a recollection of the past, as well as upon a view of the present. At the last session of Congress all this denunciation of lawless and revolu

[JAN. 3, 1837

tionary mobs had been lavished upon the convention both of Arkansas and Michigan, because, being Territories, they had held conventions, and framed constitutions, without the authority of Congress. Our answers to these denunciations were the same that we give now, namely: 1. That they had a right to do so without our authority, and all that we could require was, that they should send us their constitutions, that we might see they were republican; and, 2. That these Territories had several times applied to Congress for an act to regulate the holding of their conventions, which were always refused by the political party which then held the supremacy in this chamber; and that to refuse them an act to regulate the holding of a convention, when they asked for it, and then to denounce them for holding a convention without law, was unreasonable and contradictory, and subjected ourselves to the reproach both of injustice and inconsistency. These were our answers then; and we added, that those who denounced the Arkansas and Michigan conventions for lawless and revolutionary mobs, would find themselves unsupported by the vote of the Senate; which turned out to be the fact, for the negative vote was exceedingly small; and Mr. B. would add, that the result would be the same now; and that, after all this denunciation of the convention in Michigan, the convention party in Maryland, and the disorganizing party in Pennsylvania, the vote would be about as it was at the last session, exceedingly small, and entirely too inconsiderable to give any countenance to their denun ciations.

Mr. B. concluded by expressing the hope that the Senate would not adjourn until it finished this question. It was due to Pennsylvania and Maryland that we should stop a debate in which their concerns were improperly introduced; and it was due to Michigan herself that she should be relieved from this attendance at our doors. She has been debarred of her rights for years; she is a State, if not a State of the confederacy; she has a right to be admitted; and the admission of a State is a question of that dignity to be entitled, not only to a speedy deci sion, but to a preference over all other questions until it was decided. He repeated, what he had said some days before, that he had come with his cloak to camp on this floor until the vote was taken; and, that being his idea of what all ought to do, he would not consume time by speaking.

When Mr. BENTON had taken his seat,

Mr. PRESTON, of South Carolina, addressed the Senate, and observed that he was as anxious as any other Senator could be that Michigan should be admitted, without delay, into the Union. She is a sovereign State, recognised as such by Congress, (said Mr. P.,) and her present position is extremely awkward; and as it seems, by the declaration of her Senators, that Ohio has no longer any interest in the enforcing of the condition required in the bill passed at the last session, I am disposed to waive that condition altogether. It was merely with a view to prevent difficulties between conterminous States that I voted for its insertion; but as the Senators from Ohio no longer consider it necessary as a security to that State on the question of boundary, I am ready to admit Michigan at once. Yet, while these are my feelings, I cannot bring my mind to vote for the whole bill, because I consider it as containing matter which is wrong both in fact and in principle. As the bill stands, it states a fact which the Senate does not know, and proceeds on principles which the Senate ought to repudiate.

[Mr. P. here gave way for a motion to adjourn; but the yeas and nays were demanded, and the motion was negatived: Yeas 16, nays 22.]

Mr. PRESTON resumed. I have said that the bill tates a fact which the Senate does not know. And,

pray, what knowledge has this body that the solemn condition imposed by the law of Congress has been assented to and complied with by a convention of the people of the State of Michigan' We have no authentication of the fact; none-none whatever. Yet the bill states it as a thing certain, and rests entirely on that assumption. When you turn your eyes towards our Northwestern territory, what is the spectacle which meets your view? What is it you see amidst the great lakes north of the State of Ohio? What do you see there? The State of Michigan. Can we look behind, or below, or above, that State sovereignty? Is there any thing which we dare to recognise except that State? No, sir. The State alone can be recognised, or hold relations with us; and if we break though its organized forms, to hold intercourse and make contracts with the people directly, it is a revolutionary proceeding. The State stands between us and the people of that peninsula. How can the citizens of that State make themselves known to us? How can you know them, but through their State organization? What do you know of this Mr. Williams, whose name is appended to a paper which has been submitted to us by the Executive of the United States? What assurance have you that he is not a mere man of straw? What testimony do you possess to prove his existence and authenticate his signature? None whatever. All that is presented is loose parol testimony, conjecture, hearsay, and scraps of a newspaper. And are you to bind a sovereign and independent State, and that in the highest exercise of sovereignty, viz: the cession of territory, on such testimony as this-testimony that would not be received in any court on the globe? Is such a deed as this to be put on record, and remain on your archives? How do you know that Michigan has assented to the condition of her admission? Does the State appear before you? Have you her great seal? Have you the authenticated signatures of her functionaries? Without these, I cannot take my seat in this chamber. Without these, the Senators from Michigan themselves cannot be admitted here. I therefore set out by affirming that the fact recited in the preamble of this bill is not within the knowledge of the Senate. How dare you look into the interior operations of the State of Michigan? What authority have you to go there? Who entitled you to pass by, to pass over, to supersede, the entire legislative authority of that State, to create an imperium in imperio, to the utter subversion of the Government of that State, and the overthrow of its constitution? Sir, it is perfectly monstrous.

[SENATE.

a certain condition. But mark you, sir, that condition applied solely to her admission, not to her recognition as a State. What are the words of the proviso?

"Provided, always, and this admission is upon the express condition, that the said State shall consist of and have jurisdiction over all the territory included within the following boundaries, and over none other, to wit: Beginning at the point where the above-described northern boundary of the State of Ohio intersects the eastern boundary of the State of Indiana,” &c.

This proviso, as you perceive, applies, with cautious precision of language, only to the last clause of the preceding sentence. But, independent of the proviso, the law constitutes Michigan a free, sovereign, and independent State, capable of admission into the Union, and of per forming every act of sovereignty. We constituted the State, and by a contemporaneous act we required the State thus constituted to perform certain conditions before becoming a member of the confederacy. Where, then, is the mighty inconsistency about which we have heard so much? Before he charged inconsistency upon us, why did not the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN] turn to the journal? Michigan, it is true, was not a State in January, but she was a State in June-a State self-existing, and under the guar antee of the United States; and it is because this change was made, that we are incapable of holding any communication with her citizens in their individual capacity. The honorable Senator and myself have in this matter exactly changed sides. He was for recognising her before she was a State, and I was opposed to it; and now that she is a State, it is he that refuses to recognise her, and I who contend for it. I cannot consent to dissolve her State existence. You cannot do it. It is out of your power. She exists, independently of you. These, as [ understand them, are the great and true principles of the State rights party, and but for this I should not have asked the attention of the Senate for one moment. This bill, in its present form, involves a gross violation of State rights; it goes to the utter prostration of all State Government, and involves the doctrine that the General Government has power to go below the State Government, and look beyond it. The gentleman talks of a convention of the people of a State. These are all complex terms; and in what sense does he use them? The Senator from North Carolina [Mr. STRANGE] said that the word "convention" had no technical meaning; that it applied to any assembly of the delegates of the people, no matter how they came together. Delegates of the But the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania asks, people! How does he know that they are delegates? how does it lie in our mouths to say that this organism of Here are we wielding the destinies and casting the deepthe people is interposed between us and the Legislature est foundations of a State, without knowing the meaning of Michigan, when we refused in January last to recogof the word convention. The word is technical! It has nise that body as a Legislature at all, and declined re- a constant and well-defined meaning in the constitution ceiving a memorial from it as a Legislature? I will tell of the United States and of the States. Am I to be told the Senator. When we refused to recognise the exist. that any loose gathering of the population is a convention, ence of that Legislature, we had not recognised the within the legal meaning of that word? Why, sir, was constitution of Michigan; and it was not till then that we the late Baltimore convention & convention of the people sanctioned the use of the words States and Legislature. of the United States? Was that assemblage capable of Where, then, is the monstrous inconsistency so triumph-giving laws to us? A convention of the people of the antly urged? Let gentlemen compare the dates, and United States can upturn these seats and banish us all they will see there is no inconsistency. When Michigan from these halls; can destroy the Senate, can abolish first asked to be admitted, there were important difficul- Congress. And was the Baltimore convention, a motley ties in the way, and we could consider her only as a Ter-collection of postmasters, steam doctors, and God knows ritorial Government, or a mere mass of individuals inhabiting a peninsula. But a change came over the mode of her existence; her State constitution was adopted in April, and a committee of this body reported that they had examined that instrument, and brought in a bill proposing the mode in which she should be admitted into the Union. On the 15th of June this bill became a law, acknowledging the Territory of Michigan to be erected into a State, and to be received into the confederacy on VOL. XIII.-17

who, a convention of the people of the United States? Sir, I would not give this pinch of snuff for the tenure of my rights under this Government, if any such assem blage is to be so recognised. And do you know that the convention in Michigan was any thing more than that which met in Baltimore? The documents do not show that it was any thing more. They do not show that it

was as much.

What is a convention? The constitution of the United

SENATE.]

Admission of Michigan.

States speaks of a convention of the States; and what is meant by the word in that place? I will tell you what it means. It means a regularly delegated body, coming from a known constituency, with a political organization, and endowed with sovereign powers over the matters intrusted to it. That is a convention in a technical sense. I know, indeed, that there is a popular impression that a convention is a sort of undefined or undefinable thing, which rises up like a mist from the people, without any known law, but with exceeding power. But this is not a convention in the sense of any statute or of the constitution. A convention is a political body proceeding from a known constituency, and regularly convened for a known and defined political purpose. Now, do you know what was the constituency in this case of Michigan? Have you any authentic evidence that it was not a mere vague accidental assembly of gentlemen, who got together and arrogated to themselves the highest rights of the people? What are the powers of a convention? If it is a convention of the elementary kind referred to by the gentleman from North Carolina, who shall restrain its powers or give bounds to its authority? When you have conjured up this all-powerful spirit, how dare you undertake to restrain it? If the gentleman once assembles the majesty of Michigan, can he put manacles upon its hands? No, sir, it is the great power of the State, and it mocks at all attempts to restrain it. Who is to limit its doings? The instructions of the people? I put it to the Senator from Pennsylvania. I ask him to tell me who are the constituency of this self-styled convention in Michigan? Will he tell me, the people? Let us, then, examine the word people-a name often invoked, about which great clamor is made by some gentlemen, and with whom we have been repeatedly threatened. Who are the people? It may be difficult exactly to define; but this I know, that I am one of them, and I do not look upon this thing, the people, as some great monster which must have garbage thrown to it to keep it quiet. God forbid that I should consider or speak of my fellow-citizens as a mob, having a will and purposes not to be ascertained through their constitutional organs-which some gentlemen appear to understand by the word people. No, sir, I am one of the people, What is good for them is good for me. What is right, and just, and proper for them, is proper, and just, and right for me, for you, sir, and for all of us. Ay, sir, the proudest Senator upon this floor is but one of the people; and when gentlemen appeal, in whatever candied phrase, from the organized will of the people, to what they may, for the occasion, choose to consider their will, it is done in an equally exaggerated conception of their cunning and the ignorance of their fellow-citizens. Let us, however, look a little more closely to the mat. ter in hand. Who are the people of Michigan, of whom the gentleman speaks? The men, women, and children? white and black? foreigners and all? Who make up the people? Who are they? Gentlemen cannot answer. I will tell you who they ought to be. They are that political body which is recognised by the constitution of a State; and there may be a dozen conventions held by the tag-rag and bob-tail within the peninsula, and yet not one convention of the people of Michigan. It must be the political people of Michigan who are represented in convention. Who is it that shall regulate this matter? Who is to declare who are the people and who not?

Sir, on this point I took, at the last session, high ground for Michigan. I held then, and I hold now, that it is her right, and hers alone, to say who the people of Michigan are, and Congress has no right to touch the question; till she has told you, you cannot know. And if the gentleman from Pennsylvania shall say that our admission bill, in requiring the assent of the people of Michigan assembled in convention, meant a gathering of

[JAN. 3, 1837.

all the men, women, and children, residing within the limits of that State, he advances a doctrine utterly subversive of the State. No, sir, the question of assent was referred by our act to a political body; the political people of Michigan, in regular convention assembled. And what proof have we that the recent assemblage was such a convention? None in the world. A newspaper paragraph! private letters! parol testimony! Is this evidence? Who voted? Did the women and children? We are told that there were more members than in the first convention, and a larger constituency. But how is this? Did not the matter concerning which the first convention assembled involve the very highest topic that can engross and agitate a community? Was it any thing short of war with Ohio, and nullification of the acts of Congress? Under this excitement, a certain number of voters turned out, and now gentlemen show us that the number has been nearly doubled. How is this to be accounted for? Has the excitement been increased? It has been diminished. How will these things look fifty years hence? That Congress received the acts of such an assemblage, in direct contradiction of those of their political constituents.

It might be considered incumbent on me to prove that Michigan is a State, for the honorable Senator from North Carolina [Mr. STRANGE] has denied it. On this subject I belong to what has been deemed an extreme sect. But not in the very wildest of our excitement have I, for one moment, pushed the doctrine of State rights beyond the old Jeffersonian principles. Standing, where I have ever stoud, on those principles, and upon them alone, I am here called to vindicate the State existence of Michigan. If the idea of the Senator from North Carolina is correct, then there is no existence for a State but in this confederacy. I will put a question to that honorable Senator. What was North Carolina before she came into the confederacy, and after the confederacy was formed? And yet he holds that Michigan is not a State, because she has not been admitted into it. If she is not a State, pray, what is she? She must either be a Territory, or else be in an elementary state, like the District of Columbia. When gentlemen once set out with these arrogations, there is no knowing where they are to end. No, sir, Michigan is a State. I vindicate her State sovereignty, and I am anxious, exceedingly anxious, that that sovereignty should not be tarnished in its very first act.

Then I say that there has not been a convention at Ann Arbor, that the people of Michigan have not been there represented. But here we are met by a reductio ad absurdum. We are asked, if the people of Michigan were not to meet so, how could they meet? Sir, if there is any one thing more dangerous than another, it is first to create a difficulty, and then to create a power in Government to meet it. It is dangerous in the extreme, with no other warrant than a phantom conjured up by ourselves, to call for weapons to destroy it, which are powerful enough to destroy liberty. What! are gentlemen to make powers? Are they to say a certain power is needed, and therefore we will create it? No; let them go to their masters. Let them go to the States and ask for it. But here there is no such necessity. You have the power already created.

A convention is provided for in the constitution of the United States and in the constitution of the State of Mich

igan-instruments which are obligatory on us and on that State. We have recognised her constitution, and it declares that a convention shall be called only in a certain way. Have you a right to subvert that constitution? Will you virtually repeal it in the very act of confirming it? I invoke the Senators who have been elected from Michigan to aid me in defending the rights of their State. Here is Congress proposing to repeal a part of their con

SENATE.]

Admission of Michigan.

[JAN. 3, 1837.

lature? Would the gentleman from Pennsylvania say other day made by the honorable Senator from South to the people of Michigan, we will not listen to your Carolina [Mr. PRESTON] so large a portion of the text of Legislature; you shall be in the Union, and you shall be the very fervid and eloquent address he had just deliver. in it under the condition we prescribed? I think he ed. He had been so agreeably entertained as to be unwould not. The Legislature might repeal the act of willing to interrupt him, even for the purpose of rescuing that convention to-morrow; and if the question came to himself from misapprehension; but he now rose mainly a judicial investigation, how would that gentleman plead for that purpose. The Senator from South Carolina the powers of that convention? Suppose the territory [Mr. PRESTON] has represented me as saying that a conshould be disputed, and the courts of Michigan under-vention was an undefined something, rising, like a mist, take to try an officer of the State of Ohio. He justifies from the popular mass, scarcely perceptible, but very under this convention, and we take ground that it had powerful. What I meant to say, sir, and what I think I no power to act. How, I ask, would a court of justice did say, was that there was no modle pointed out, either decide? Will any gentleman say that the court in Michi- by the common law or by statute, by which a convention gan would consider itself as bound by such an act? I was to be assembled; and I distinctly stated that a conam greatly mistaken if there is any judge in the land vention was an assemblage of the people of any commuwho would not hoot at it. The State, to be sure, may nity, either in person or by their agents or representaacquiesce in it. That is possible; but we have no guar- tives; and when so assembled its powers were vast, and, antee of it. And if not, your act will be laughed to scorn. in a state of nature, unlimited. The Senator has asked, Sir, it does strike me that this wholesale violation of when Congress has called together a convention, who is charters-this wholesale nullification-goes infinitely be- to control it? and, in so doing, has plainly misapprehendyond what we in the South ever thought of. We never ed me in another particular. I have never said that applied the doctrine of nullification to the act of any Congress has the power to convoke a convention in Legislature within its own bounds; but the sweeping Michigan, or in any other State, or any where else, exnullification of the chairman of the Judiciary Commit-cept in the cases specially provided for in the fifth article tee goes to the breaking down of all State powers and of the constitution; and am, therefore, not called upon to constitutions. This is nullification by Congress; it is answer the Senator's question. I do not conceive the nullification with a vengeance, under the patronage of convention held in Michigan to have been in obedience the Congress of the United States. It is very dangerous. to an act of Congress, or that it was called by Congress. We in the South went on the ground that the General In this matter I accord fully with the Senator from PennGovernment had transcended its powers, and that, so sylvania, [Mr. BUCHANAN,] that the act of last session far, its acts were not binding; and our position was vin- was a mere offer on the part of Congress to the people dicated here, upon this floor, in 1832, with unanswered of Michigan, which they might either accede to or reand unanswerable reasoning; and those who remember ject, at their pleasure. Congress, in effect, says to the that affair may take occasion to sneer, but will never people of Michigan, we will create you a State of the venture upon the argument again. Whatever was our Union upon certain conditions, which conditions are, doctrine or purposes, we came boldly out, and risked that you shall meet in convention, and assent to certain our property and life on the issue. We did not palter territorial limits, which we have prescribed as those with public faith, upon flimsy subtleties, or stifle the within which we are willing to create a State. The peovoice of honesty by a pettifogging technicality. ple of Michigan may either meet in convention, or decline it, at their pleasure; and being so met, they may

I trust there are interests in South Carolina which will always save her from the necessity of resorting to soph-either agree to the boundaries proposed, or refuse them; isms and subterfuges to vindicate an equivocal honesty, or to hide herself in misty generalities while she violates her charter.

and the only consequences are, that in the one case they accept the terms offered them by Congress, and become a State, and in the other reject them, and remain a The honorable Senator tells us that the principles re- Territory, as they were before. The only question, cently avowed by leading men of his party in Pennsylva- therefore, which we have now to decide is, has Michigan nia have been misunderstood. I am glad to hear it; accepted the terms proposed, or not? Objections are for, as I and the public have understood those principles, raised to the authority of Congress to enter into bargains they are utterly revolting and abhorrent to my nature. I or contracts with any State in this Union; but that ob. do not desire for one moment to live under a Government jection proceeds upon the assumption of the fact that where such doctrines prevail-doctrines which go to dis-Michigan is now a State-the very point upon which the solve the bond of society. I know, indeed, that extreme glosses are sometimes put on the language of men in party times, but, as I understand, that celebrated letter is a call upon pauperism to enlist against property, to violate contracts, to strike first at bank charters and then at land charters, until nothing safe is left in the community. It is said that the will of the people, as that will is ascertained by the great high priests who minister continually in the presence of power, is to supersede every thing: corporations, bank charters, acts of a State Legislature, State constitutions--all, all are to go by the board. Sir, I start back in horror from such doctrine and its abetters. But I will not longer detain the Senate. I have stated my objections to the preamble of this bill;ary last she was not a State, but became so by the action let these be taken out of the way, and I am ready to admit Michigan to-morrow. I shall be glad to see her take her place amongst the confederate States, and it will be a personal gratification to me to be officially associated with the worthy gentlemen who are waiting to take their

seats as her Senators.

Mr. STRANGE said he was greatly flattered in having the few hasty and desultory remarks he had let fall the

Senator from South Carolina and myself are at issue. I have denied, and do still deny, that Michigan is a State; and insist upon it that the very process is now going on to make her so, or rather to ascertain whether she is so or not. In my remarks the other day, I did not speak of any claim for Michigan to be a State by reason of the ordinance of 1784, declaring that the portions of country situated in the Northwestern territory should become States upon attaining a certain amount of population; nor is it necessary for me to remark upon that ordinance now, for I perceive that the Senator from South Carolina does not base his argument that she is a State upon that ordinance. On the contrary, he distinctly admits that in Januof Congress in June.

Now, sir, I deny that any thing took place in June to give to Michigan a different character from that which she bore in January, except that the act passed in June placed it in the power of the people of Michigan, by their own action, (to wit: according to the terms of the act of June,) to change their own character, and pass from territorial existence to that of a State. But it is