SENATE.]

consent.

Admission of Michigan.

grounds which, entirely independent of that preamble, were such as satisfied his mind. The only effect of the preamble was to try to bind the State of Michigan by her own consent; but, for himself, he believed that Congress having settled the boundary line, it was vain to attempt to compel the new State to receive it against her He believed that a majority of the people, if free from duresse, would never consent to that boundary; he hoped, however, that the State being once admitted, the dispute would end. If, however, she should unhappily renew the contest, it seemed a hopeless case. Yet it appeared to him unjust to bind a State, in the act of its admission, to consent to that to which, if left free, the State would never agree. Having thus explained the reasons of his vote, he should give it in favor of the bill. The question being thereupon taken, the bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading: Yeas 27, nays 4-as follows:

YEAS--Messrs. Benton, Brown, Buchanan, Dana, Fulton, Grundy, Hendricks, Hubbard, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Knight, Linn, Nicholas, Niles, Page, Parker, Rives, Robinson, Ruggles, Sevier, Strange, Tallmadge, Tipton, Walker, Wall, White, Wright--27. NAYS--Messrs. Bayard, Calhoun, Davis, Prentiss--4. The Senate then adjourned.

I have (said Mr. C.) been connected with this Government more than half its existence, in various capacities, and during that long period I have looked on its action with attention, and have endeavored to make myself acquainted with the principles and character of our political institutions, and I can truly say that within that time no measure has received the sanction of Congress which has appeared to me more unconstitutional and dangerous than the present. It assails our political system in its weakest point, and where, at this time, it most requires defence.

The great and leading objections to the bill rest mainly on the ground that Michigan is a State. They have been felt by its friends to have so much weight, that its advocates have been compelled to deny the fact, as the only way of meeting the objections. Here, then, is the main point at issue between the friends and the opponents of the bill. It turns on a fact, and that fact presents the question-is Michigan a State?

[JAN. 5, 1837.

versy, I shall recall to memory the history of the last session, as connected with the admission of Michigan. The facts need but to be referred to, in order to revive their recollection.

There were two points proposed to be effected by the friends of the bill at the last session. The first was to settle the controversy, as to boundary, between Michigan and Ohio, and it was that object alone which imposed the condition that Michigan should assent to the boundary prescribed by the act, as the condition of her admission. But there was another object to be accomplished. Two respectable gentlemen, who had been elected by the State as Senators, were then waiting to take their seats on this floor; and the other object of the bill was to provide for their taking their seats as Senators on the admission of the State; and for this purpose it was necessary to make the positive and unconditional declaration that Michigan was a State, as a State only could choose Senators, by an express provision of the constitution; and hence the admission was made conditional, and the declaration that she was a State was made absolute, in order to effect both objects. To show that I am correct, I will ask the Secretary to read the third section of the bill.

[The section was read accordingly, as follows:

"SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That as a compliance with the fundamental condition of admission contained in the last preceding section of this act, the boundaries of the said State of Michigan, as in that section described, declared, and established, shall receive the assent of a convention of delegates elected by the people of said State, for the sole purpose of giving the assent herein required; and as soon as the assent herein required shall be given, the President of the United States shall announce the same by proclamation; and thereupon, and without any further proceeding on the part of Congress, the admission of the said State into the Union, as one of the United States of America, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, shall be considered as complete, and the Senators and Representative who have been elected by the said State, as its representatives in the Congress of the United States, shall be entitled to take their seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, without further delay."]

Mr. CALHOUN then asked, Does not every Senator see the two objects-the one to settle the boundary, and the other to admit her Senators to a seat in this body; and that the section is so worded as to effect both, in the manner I have stated? If this needed confirmation, it would find it in the debate on the passage of the bill, when the ground was openly taken by the present majority, that Michigan had a right to form her constitution, under the ordinance of 1787, without our consent; and that she was, of right, and in fact, a State, beyond our control.

I will (said Mr. C.) explain my own views on this point, in order that the consistency of my course at the last and present session may be clearly seen.

If (said Mr. C.) there ever was a party committed on a fact, if there ever was one estopped from denying it, that party is the present majority in the Senate, and that fact, that Michigan is a State. It is the very party who urged through this body, at the last session, a bill for the admission of the State of Michigan, which accepted her constitution, and declared in the most explicit and My opinion was, and still is, that the movement of the strongest terms that she was a State. I will not take up people of Michigan, in forming for themselves a State the time of the Senate by reading this solemn declaration. constitution, without waiting for the assent of Congress, It has frequently been read during this debate, and is was revolutionary, as it threw off the authority of the familiar to all who hear me, and has not been questioned United States over the Territory; and that we were left or denied. But it has been said there is a condition an- at liberty to treat the proceedings as revolutionary, and nexed to the declaration, with which she must comply, to remand her to her territorial condition, or to waive before she can become a State. There is, indeed, a con- the irregularity, and to recognise what was done as dition, but it has been shown by my colleague and oth-rightfully done, as our authority alone was concerned. ers, from the plain wording of the act, that the condition is not attached to the acceptance of the constitution, nor the declaration that she is a State, but simply to her admission into the Union. I will not repeat the argu ment, but, in order to place the subject beyond contro

My impression was, that the former was the proper course; but I also thought that the act remanding her back should contain our assent in the usual manner for her to form a constitution, and thus to leave her free to become a State. This, however, was overruled. The

JAN. 5, 1837.]

Admission of Michigan.

opposite opinion prevailed, that she had a perfect right to do what she had done, and that she was, as I have stated, a State, both in fact and right, and that we had no control over her; and our act accordingly recognised her as a State, from the time she had adopted her constitution, and admitted her into the Union on the condition of her assenting to the prescribed boundaries. Having thus solemnly recognised her as a State, we cannot now undo what was then done. There were, in fact, many irreg ularities in the proceedings, all of which were urged in vain against its passage; but the presidential election was then pending, and the vote of Michigan was considered of sufficient weight to overrule all objections, and correct all irregularities. They were all accordingly overruled, and we cannot now go back.

Such was the course and such the acts of the majority at the last sesion. A few short months have since passed. Other objects are now to be effected, and all is forgotten as completely as if they had never existed. The very Senators who then forced the act through, on the ground that Michigan was a State, have wheeled completely round, to serve the present purpose, and taken directly the opposite ground! We live in strange and inconsistent times. Opinions are taken up and laid down, as suits the occasion, without hesitation, or the slightest regard to principles or consistency. It indicates an unsound state of the public mind, pregnant with future disasters.

I turn to the position now assumed by the majority, to suit the present occasion; and, if I mistake not, it will be found as false in fact, and as erroneous in principle, as it is inconsistent with that maintained at the last session. They now take the ground that Michigan is not a State, and cannot, in fact, be a State, till she is admitted into the Union; and this on the broad principle that a Territory cannot become a State till admitted. Such is the position distinctly taken by several of the friends of this bill, and implied in the arguments of nearly all who have spoken in its favor. In fact, its advocates had no choice. Ás untenable as it is, they were forced on this desperate position. They had no other which they could occupy.

I have shown that it is directly in the face of the law of the last session, and that it denies the recorded acts of those who now maintain the position. I now go further, and assert that it is in direct opposition to plain and unquestionable matter of fact. There is no fact more certain than that Michigan is a State. She is in the full exercise of sovereign authority, with a Legislature and a Chief Magistrate. She passes laws; she executes them; she regulates titles; and even takes away life-all on her own authority. Ours has entirely ceased over her; and yet there are those who can deny, with all these facts before them, that she is a State. They might as well deny the existence of this hall! We have long since assumed unlimited control over the constitution, to twist, and turn, and deny it, as it suited our purpose. And it would seem that we are presumptuously attempting to assume like supremacy over facts themselves, as if their existence or non-existence depended on our volition. I speak freely. The occasion demands that the truth should be boldly uttered.

But those who may not regard their own recorded acts, nor the plain facts of the case, may possibly feel the awkward condition in which coming events may shortly place them. The admission of Michigan is not the only point involved in the passage of this bill. A question will follow, which may be presented to the Senate in a very few days, as to the right of Mr. Norvell and Mr. Lyon, the two respectable gentlemen who have been elected Senators by Michigan, to take their seats in this ball.

The decision of this question will require a more sudden facing about than has been yet witnessed. It required seven or eight months for the majority to wheel

[SENATE.

about from the position maintained at the last session, to that taken at this, but there may not be allowed them now as many days to wheel back to the old position. These gentlemen cannot be refused their seats after the admission of the State, by those gentlemen who passed the act of the last session. It provides for the case. I now put it to the friends of this bill, and I ask them to weigh the question deliberately-to bring it home to their bosom and conscience before they answer-can a Territory elect Senators to Congress? The constitution is express. States only can choose Senators. Were not these gentlemen chosen long before the admission of Michigan, before the Ann Arbor meeting, and while Michigan was, according to the doctrines of the friends of this bill, a Territory? Will they, in the face of the constitution, which they are sworn to support, admit as Senators on this floor those who, by their own statement, were elected by a Territory? These questions may soon be presented for decision. The majority, who are forcing this bill through, are already committed by the act of the last session, and I leave them to reconcile, as they can, the ground they now take with the vote they must give when the question of their right to take their seats is presented for decision.

A total disregard of all principle and consistency has so entangled this subject, that there is but one mode left of extricating ourselves without trampling the constitution in the dust; and that is, to return back to where we stood when the question was first presented; to acquiesce in the right of Michigan to form a constitution, and erect herself into a State, under the ordinance of 1787; and to repeal so much of the act of the last session as prescribed the condition on which she was to be admitted. This was the object of the amendment that I offered last evening, in order to relieve the Senate from its present dilemma. The amendment involved the merits of the whole case. It was too late in the day for discussion, and I asked for indulgence till to-day, that I might have an opportunity of presenting my views. Under the iron rule of the present majority, the indulgence was refused, and the bill ordered to its third reading; and I have been thus compelled to address the Senate when it is too late to amend the bill, and after a majority have committed themselves both as to its principles and details. New as such proceedings are in this body, I complain not. I, as one of the minority, ask no favors. All I ask is, that the constitution be not violated. Hold it sacred, and I shall be the last to complain.

I now return to the assumption that a Territory cannot become a State till admitted into the Union, which is now relied on with so much confidence to prove that Michigan is not a State. I reverse the position. I assert the opposite, that a Territory cannot be admitted till she becomes a State; and in this I stand on the authority of the constitution itself, which expressly limits the power of Congress to admitting new States into the Union. But if the constitution had been silent, he would indeed be ignorant of the character of our political system who did not see that States, sovereign and independent communities, and not Territories, can only be admitted. Ours is a Union of States, a federal republic. States, and not Territories, form its component parts, bound together by a solemn league, in the form of a constitutional compact. In coming into the Union, the State pledges its faith to this sacred compact; an act which none but a sovereign and independent community is competent to perform; and, of course, a Territory must first be raised to that condition before she can take her stand among the confederated States of our Union. How can a Territory pledge its faith to the constitution? It has no will of its own. You give it all its powers, and you can at pleasure overrule all her actions. If she enters as a Territory, the act is yours, not hers. Her

SENATE.]

Admission of Michigan.

consent is nothing without your authority and sanction. Can you, can Congress, become a party to the constitutional compact? How absurd.

[JAN. 5, 1837.

within her limits. This is the old, the established form, instituted by our ancestors of the Revolution, who so well understood the great principles of liberty and self-government. How simple; how sublime! What a contrast to the doctrines of the present day, and the precedent which, I fear, we are about to establish! And shall we fear, so long as these sound principles are observed, that a State will reject this high privilege--will refuse to enter this Union? No; she will rush into your embrace, so long as your institutions are worth preserving. When the advantages of the Union shall have become a matter of calculation and doubt, when new States shall pause to determine whether the Union is a curse or blessing, the question which now agitates us will cease to have any importance.

But I am told, if this be so, if a Territory must become a State before it can be admitted, it would follow that she might refuse to enter the Unior after she had acquired the right of acting for herself. Certainly she may. A State cannot be forced into the Union. She must come in by her own free assent, given in her highest sovereign capacity, through a convention of the people of the State. Such is the constitutional provision; and those who make the objection must overlook both the constitution and the elementary principles of our Government, of which the right of self-government is the first; the right of every people to form their own Governmen', and to determine their political condition. This is the Having now, I trust, established, beyond all controver doctrine on which our fathers acted in our glorious Rev-sy, that Michigan is a State, I come to the great point at olution, which has done more for the cause of liberty issue to the decision of which all that has been said is throughout the world than any event within the record but preparatory-had the self-created assembly which of history, and on which the Government has acted from met at Ann Arbor the authority to speak in the name of the first, as regards all that portion of our extensive ter- the people of Michigan, to assent to the conditions conritory that lies beyond the limits of the original States. tained in the act of the last session, to supersede a porRead the ordinance of 1787, and the various acts for the tion of the constitution of the State, and to overrule the admission of new States, and you will find the principle dissent of the convention of the people, regularly called invariably recognised and acted on, to the present un- by the constituted authorities of the State, to the condihappy instance, without any departure from it, except tion of admission? I shall not repeat what I said when I in the case of Missouri. The admission of Michigan is first addressed the Senate on this bill. We all, by this destined, I fear, to mark a great change in the history time, know the character of that assemblage; that it met of the admission of new States, a total departure from without the sanction of the authorities of the State, fand the old usage, and the noble principle of self-government that it did not pretend to represent one third of the peoon which that usage was founded. Every thing, thus ple. We all know that the State had regularly convened far, has been irregular and monstrous connected with a convention of the people, expressly to take into considher admission. I trust it is not ominous. Surrounded eration the condition on which it was proposed to admit by lakes within her natural limits, (which ought not to her into the Union, and that the convention, after full have been departed from,) possessed of fertile soil and deliberation, had declined to give its assent by a congenial climate, with every prospect of wealth, power, siderable majority. With a knowledge of all these facts, and influence, who but must regret that she should be I put the question-had the assembly a right to act for ushered into the Union in a manner so irregular and the State? Was it a convention of the people of Michiunworthy of her future destiny. gan, in the true, legal, and constitutional sense of that term? Is there one, within the limits of my voice, that can lay his hand on his breast, and honestly say it was? Is there one that does not feel that it was neither more nor less than a mere caucus-nothing but a party caucus-of which we have the strongest evidence in the perfect unanimity of those who assembled? Not a vote was given against admission. Can there be stronger proof that it was a meeting got up by party machinery, for party purpose?

But I will waive these objections, constitutional and all. I will suppose, with the advocates of the bill, that a Territory cannot become a State till admitted into the Union. Assuming all this, I ask them to explain to me how the mere act of admission can transmute a Territory into a State? By whose authority would she be made a State? By ours? How can we make a State? We can form a Territory; we can admit States into the Union; but, I repeat the question, how can we make a State? had supposed this Government was the creature of the States-formed by their authority, and dependent on their will for their existence. Can the creature form the creator? If not by our authority, then by whose? Not by her own: that would be absurd. The very act of admission makes her a member of the confederacy, with no other or greater power than is possessed by all the others; all of whom, united, cannot create a State. By what process, then, by what authority, can a Territory become a State, if not one before admitted? Who can explain? How full of difficulties, compared to the longestablished, simple, and noble process which has prevailed to the present instant. According to old usage, the General Government first withdraws its authority over a certain portion of its territory, as soon as it has a sufficient population to constitute a State. They are thus left to themselves freely to form a constitution, and to exercise the noble right of self-government. They then present their constitution to Congress, and ask the privilege (for one it is of the highest character) to be. come a member of this glorious confederacy of States. The constitution is examined, and, if republican, as required by the federal constitution, she is admitted, with no other condition except such as may be necessary to secure the authority of Congress over the public domain

But I go further. It was not only a party caucus, for party purpose, but a criminal meeting-a meeting to subvert the authority of the State, and to assume its sovereignty. I know not whether Michigan has yet passed laws to guard her sovereignty. It may be that she has not had time to enact laws for this purpose, which no community is long without; but I do aver, if there be such an act, or if the common law be in force in the State, the actors in that meeting might be indicted, tried, and punished, for the very act on which it is now proposed to admit the State into the Union. If such a meeting as this were to undertake to speak in the name of South Carolina, we would speedily teach its authors what they owed to the authority and dignity of the State. The act was not only in contempt of the authority of the State of Michigan, but a direct insult on this Government. Here is a self-created meeting, convened for a criminal object, which has dared to present to this Government an act of theirs, and to expect that we are to receive this irregular and criminal act as a fulfilment of the condition which we had prescribed for the admission of the State! Yet, fear, forgetting our own dignity and the rights of Michigan, that we are about to recognise the validity of the act, and quietly to submit to the insult.

These occurrences, which have distinguished the past year, mark the commencement of no ordinary change in our political system. They announce the ascendency of the caucus system over the regularly constituted authori-tain meaning, and difficult to be defined; but that their ties of the country. I have long anticipated this event. In early life my attention was attracted to the working of the caucus system. It was my fortune to spend five or six years of my youth in the Northern portion of the Union, where, unfortunately, the system has so long pre-all that do not; but there is always, in the most complex, vailed. Though young, I was old enough to take inter

SENATE.]

Admission of Michigan.

[JAN. 5, 1837.

term, and in relation to which there is usually no disa- of the people, in the true sense of the term, and not that greement. Thus, according to the old meaning, (and of the mere majority, or the dominant interests. which I had still supposed was its legal and constitution- I am not familiar with the constitution of Maryland, to al meaning,) a convention of the people invariably im- which the Senator alluded, and cannot, therefore, speak plied a meeting of the people, either by themselves, or of its structure with confidence; but I believe it to be by delegates expressly chosen for the purpose, in their somewhat similar in its character to our own. That it is high sovereign authority, in express contradistinction to a Government not without its excellence, we need no such assemblies of individuals in their private character, better proof than the fact, that though within the shadow or having only derivative authority. It is, in a word, a of executive influence, it has nobly and successfully remeeting of the people in the majesty of their power-insisted all the seductions by which a corrupt and artful that in which they may rightfully make or abolish consti- administration, with almost boundless patronage, has tutions, and put up or put down Governments at their tempted to seduce her into its ranks. pleasure. Such was the august conception which formerly entered the mind of every American when the terms "convention of the people" were used. But now, according to the ideas of the dominant party, as we are told on the authority of the Senator from North Carolina, it means any meeting of individuals for political purposes, and, of course, applies to the meeting at Ann Arbor, or any other party caucus for party purposes, which the leaders choose to designate as a convention of the people. It it thus the highest authority known to our laws and constitution is gradually sinking to the level of those meetings which regulate the operation of political parties, and through which the edicts of their leaders are announced, and their authority enforced; or, rather, to speak more correctly, the latter are gradually rising to the authority of the former. When they come to be completely confounded, when the distinction between a caucus and the convention of the people shall be completely obliterated, which the definition of the Senator, and the acts of this body on this bill, would lead us to believe is not far distant, this fair political fabric of ours, erected by the wisdom and patriotism of our ancestors, and once the gaze and admiration of the world, will topple to the ground in ruins.

Looking, then, to the approaching struggle, I take my stand immoveably. I am a conservative in its broadest and fullest sense, and such I shall ever remain, unless, indeed, the Government shall become so corrupt and disordered that nothing short of revolution can reform it. I solemnly believe that our political system is in its purity not only the best that ever was formed, but the best possible that can be devised for us. It is the only one by which free States, so populous and wealthy, and occupying so vast an extent of territory, can preserve their liberty. Thus thinking, I cannot hope for a better. Having no hope of a better, I am a conservative; and because I am a conservative, I am a States rights man. I believe that in the rights of the States are to be found the only effectual means of checking the over-action of this Government; to resist its tendency to concentrate all power here, and to prevent a departure from the constitution; or, in case of one, to restore the Government to its original simplicity and purity. State interposition, or, to express it more fully, the right of a State to interpose her sovereign voice, as one of the parties to our constitutional compact, against the encroachments of this Government, is the only means of sufficient potency to effect all this; and I am, therefore, its advocate. I rejoiced to hear the Senators from North Carolina [Mr. BROWN] and from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN] do us the justice to distinguish between nullification and the anarchical and revolutionary movements in Maryland and Pennsylvania. I know they did not intend it as a compliment; but I regard it as the highest. They are right. Day and night are not more different-more unlike in every thing. They are unlike in their principles, their objects, and their consequences.

I shall not stop to make good this assertion, as I might easily do. The occasion does not call for it. As a con

It has, perhaps, been too much my habit to look more to the future, and less to the present, than is wise; but such is the constitution of mind, that when I see before me the indications of causes calculated to effect important changes in our political condition, I am led irresistibly to trace them to their sources, and follow them out in their consequences. Language has been held in this discussion which is clearly revolutionary in its character and tendency, and which warns us of the approach of the period when the struggle will be between the conservatives and the destructives. I understood the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN] as holding lan-servative, and a States rights man, or, if you will have guage countenancing the principle that the will of a mere numerical majority is paramount to the authority of law and constitution. He did not indeed announce distinctly this principle, but it might fairly be inferred from what he said; for he told us the people of a State, where the constitution gives the same weight to a small er as to a greater number, might take the remedy into their own hand; meaning, as I understood him, that a mere majority might at their pleasure subvert the constitution and Government of a State, which he seemed to think was the essence of democracy. Our little State has a constitution that could not stand a day against such doctrines, and yet we glory in it as the best in the Union. It is a constitution which respects all the great inter. ests of the State, giving to each a separate and distinct voice in the management of its political affairs, by means of which the feebler interests are protected against the preponderance of the greater. We call our State a republic, a commonwealth, not a democracy; and let me tell the Senator it is a far more popular Government than if it had been based on the simple principle of the numerical majority. It takes more voices to put the machine of Government in motion, than in those that the Senator would consider more popular. It represents all the interests of the State, and is in fact the Government

it, a nullifier, I have and shall resist all encroachments on the constitution, whether it be the encroachment of this Government on the States, or the opposite; the Executive on Congress, or Congress on the Executive. My creed is to hold both Governments, and all the departments of each, to their proper sphere, and to maintain the authority of the laws and the constitution against all revolutionary movements. I believe the means which our system furnishes to preserve itself are ample, if fairly understood and applied; and I shall resort to them, however corrupt and disordered the times, so long as there is hope of reforming the Government. The result is in the hands of the Disposer of events. It is my part to do my duty. Yet, while I thus openly avow myself a conservative, God forbid I should ever deny the glorious right of rebellion and revolution. Should corruption and oppression become intolerable, and cannot otherwise be thrown off; if liberty must perish, or the Government be overthrown, I would not hesitate, at the hazard of life, to resort to revolution, and to tear down a corrupt Government that could neither be reformed nor borne by freemen; but I trust in God things will never come to that pass. I trust never to see such fearful times; for fearful, indeed, they would be, if they should ever befal us. It is the last experiment, and not