(3 Stat. at L. 769, chap. 36), provided that all citizens of the United States having the qualifications prescribed by the act of February 16, 1819, should be entitled to vote and be eligible to office. By an act of the territorial legislature of January 26, 1835, the free white male inhabitants of the territory, of full age, who had resided therein three months preceding "the 4th day of April next in the year 1835," were authorized to choose delegates to form a constitution and state government. Mich. Laws 1835, pp. 72, 75. Delegates were elected accordingly, and a constitution completed January 29, 1835, and ratified by a vote of the people November 2, 1835, which provided that every white male citizen above the age of twenty-one years, who had resided in the state six months next preceding any election, should be entitled to vote at any election, "and every white male inhabitant of the age aforesaid, who may be a resident of the state at the time of the signing of this Constitution, shall have the right of voting as aforesaid." 1 Charters and Constitutions, 983, 984. This Constitution was laid before Congress by President Jackson in a special message December 9, 1835, and a bill was introduced for the admission of Michigan into the Union. While this was under consideration an amendment to the provision that on the assent being given by a convention of the people of Michigan to certain boundaries defined in the bill, the state should be admitted, to strike out the words, "people of the said state," and insert, "by the free male white citizens of the United States over the age of twenty-one years, residing within the limits of the proposed state," was voted down; as was also another amendment proposing to insert after that part of the bill which declared the Constitution of the new state ratified and confirmed by Congress the words, "except that provision of said Constitution by which aliens are permitted to enjoy the right of suffrage." The act was passed June 15, 1836 (5 Stat. at L.

49, chap. 99), and, the conditions imposed having been first rejected and then finally accepted, the state was admitted into the Union by the act of January 26, 1837 (5 Stat. at L. 144, chap. 6).

In all these instances citizenship of the United States in virtue of the recognition by Congress of the qualified electors of the state as citizens thereof was apparently conceded, and it was the effect in that regard that furnished a chief argument to those who opposed the admission of Michigan. As to that state, the state Constitution of 1850, as amended in 1870, preserved the rights as an elector of "every male inhabitant, residing in the state on the 24th day of June, 1835." And in Atty. Gen. ex rel. Conely v. Detroit, 78 Mich. 545, 563, 7 L. R. A. 99, 18 Am. St. Rep. 458, 44 N. W. 338, the supreme court of Michigan assigned, as one of the reasons for holding the registry law under consideration invalid, that no provision was therein made for this class of voters, nor for the inhabitants who had resided in Michigan in 1850, and declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, who had the right to vote under the Constitution of 1850.

83. Florida. The 6th article of the treaty of 1819 with Spain (8 Stat. at L. 256) contained a provision to the same effect as that in the treaty of Paris (8 Stat. at L. 200), and Mr. Chief Justice Marshall said (American Ins. Co. v. 356 Bales of Cotton, 1 Pet. 511, 542, 7 L. ed. 242, 255): "This treaty is the law of the land, and admits the inhabitants of Florida to the enjoyment of the privileges, rights, and immunities of the citizens of the United States. It is unnecessary to inquire whether this is not their condition, independent of stipulation. They do not, however, participate in political power; they do not share in the government, till Florida shall become a state. In the meantime, Florida continues to be a territory of the United States;

governed by virtue of that clause in the Constitution which empowers Congress 'to make all needful rules and regulations, respecting the territory, or other property belonging to the United States." "

At the second session of the 27th Congress, in the case of David Levy, who had been elected a delegate from the territory of Florida, where it was alleged that he was not a citizen of the United States, it was held by the House Committee of Elections that "it matters nothing whether the naturalization be effected by act of Congress, by treaty, or by the admission of new states; the provision is alike applicable."

The question turned on whether Mr. Levy's father was an inhabitant of Florida at the time of its transfer to the United States, as the son admitted that he was not a native-born citizen of the United States, but claimed citizenship through that of his father effected by the treaty while he was a minor. The argument of the report in support of the position that "no principle has been more repeatedly announced by the judicial tribunals of the country, and more constantly acted upon, than that the leaning, in questions of citizenship, should always be in favor of the claimant of it," and that liberality of interpretation should be applied to such a treaty, is well worthy of perusal. Contested elections 1834, 1835, 2d Session, 38th Congress, 41.

84. Texas. By the annexation of Texas, under a joint resolution of Congress of March 1, 1845, and its admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, December 29, 1845, all the citizens of the former republic* became, without

*The citizens of Texas thus adopted into the citizenship of the United States were of three classes.

"1. Persons who came within the following description in § 10 of the general provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas [viz.]: 'All persons (Africans, the descendants of Africans, and Indians excepted) who were residing in Texas on the day of the Declaration of Independence

any express declaration, citizens of the United States. 5 Stat. at L. 798; 9 Stat. at L. 108; McKinney v. Saviego, 18 How. 235, 15 L. ed. 365; Cryer v. Andrews, 11 Tex. 170; Barrett v. Kelly, 31 Tex. 476; Carler v. Territory, 1 N. M. 317; 13 Ops. Atty. Gen. 397.

Chief Justice Fuller, in delivering the opinion in Boyd v. Nebraska, 143 U. S. 168, 36 L. ed. 112, 12 Sup. Ct. Rep. 375, freely quoted above, said: "It is too late at this day to question the plenary power of Congress over the territories. As observed by Mr. Justice Matthews, delivering the opinion of the court in Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U. S. 15, 44, 29 L. ed. 47, 57, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 747: 'It rests with Congress to say whether, in a given case, any of the people, resident in the territory, shall participate in the election of its officers, or the making of its laws; and it may, therefore, take from them any right of suffrage it may previously have conferred, or at any time modify or abridge it as it may deem expedient. The right of local selfgovernment, as known to our system as a constitutional fran

[March 2, 1836] shall be considered citizens of the Republic, and entitled to all the privileges as such;' and who did not forfeit their citizenship by the acts defined in the 8th section of said provisions, which is in the words following: 'All persons who shall leave the country for the purpose of evading a participation in the present struggle [the war between Texas and Mexico for Texan independence], or who shall refuse to participate in it, or shall give aid or assistance to the present enemy, shall forfeit all rights of citizenship and such lands as they may hold in the Republic. . . .' "2. Persons born in that Republic during its independence,—that is, between the dates of March 2, 1836, and December 29, 1845.

"3. Persons naturalized in the Republic of Texas.

"The provision for naturalization in that Republic was § 6 of the general provisions of the Constitution [of Texas], and in the words following: 'All free white persons who shall emigrate to this Republic, and who shall, after a residence of six months, make onth before some competent authority that they intend to reside permanently in the same, and shall swear to support this Constitution, and that they will bear true allegiance to the Republic of Texas, shall be entitled to all the privileges of citizenship." 13 Ops. Atty-Gen. 397.

chise, belongs, under the Constitution, to the states and to the people thereof, by whom that Constitution was ordained, and to whom by its terms all power not conferred by it upon the government of the United States was expressly reserved. The personal and civil rights of the inhabitants of the territories are secured to them, as to other citizens, by the principles of constitutional liberty which restrain all the agencies of government, state and national; their political rights are franchises which they hold as privileges in the legislative discretion of the Congress of the United States. If we concede that this discretion in Congress is limited by the obvious purposes for which it was conferred, and that those purposes are satisfied by measures which prepare the people of the territories to become states in the Union, still the conclusion cannot be avoided, that the act of Congress here in question is clearly within that justification.'

"Congress having the power to deal with the people of the territories in view of the future states to be formed from them, there can be no doubt that, in the admission of a state, a collective naturalization may be effected in accordance with the intention of Congress and the people applying for admission.

"Admission on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatever, involves equality of constitutional right and power, which cannot thereafterwards be controlled; and it also involves the adoption, as citizens of the United States, of those whom Congress makes members of the political community, and who are recognized as such in the formation of the new state with the consent of Congress."

When a state is admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the original states, all residents thereof who are endowed by Congress with political rights and privileges, or who, with the consent of Congress, are permitted to participate in the