... by the acquiring power, except where there are reservations in the treaty. . . . Florida was to be governed by Congress as it thought proper. What has Congress done? It might have done anything. It might have refused a trial by jury, and refused a Legislature." Coming on to a still later date, Stanley Matthews, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, in an opinion upon a polygamy case in Utah, also declared that "the people of the United States, as sovereign owners of the national territories, have supreme power over them and their inhabitants. In the exercise of this sovereign dominion they are represented by the Government of the United States, to whom all the powers of government over that subject have been delegated. . . . 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." The same principle was expressed by Justice Morrow, of the United States Circuit Court, in a decision on an Alaskan case, as recently as 1898. He spoke of "the well-established doctrine that the Territories of the United States are entirely subject to the legislative authority of Congress," and added: "They are not organized under the Constitution, nor subject to its complex distribution of the powers of government as the organic law, but are the creation, exclusively, of the Legislative department and subject to its supervision and control. The United States, having rightfully acquired the Territories, and being the only government which can impose laws upon them, has the entire dominion and sovereignty, national and municipal, federal and state." Thus this important principle has been consistently maintained for a full century. It began with Louisiana in 1803, and is maintained in Porto Rico, Alaska, and the Philippines in 1903. It is exactly true, as Daniel Webster said in February, 1849, in the course of a great senatorial debate with Calhoun: "We have never had a territory governed as the United States is governed. . . . Our history is uniform in its course. It began with the acquisition of Louisiana. It went on after Florida became a part of the Union. In all cases, under all circumstances, by every proceeding of Congress on the subject, and by all judicature on the subject, it has been held that territories belonging to the United States were to be governed by a constitution of their own . . . and in approving that constitution the legislation of Congress was not necessarily confined to those principles that bind it when it is exercised in passing laws for the United States itself." Innumerable other authorities might be cited to precisely the same effect. It is not necessary. The fact is indisputable. The United States is a sovereign nation, and as such it possesses all the powers and attributes of perfect sovereignty, in cluding that of holding and governing territories - provinces, colonies, dependencies, or whatever they may be called. That is the fact of the Constitution. That is the fact concerning the purpose and intent of the makers of the Constitution. That is the fact concerning the exposition, construction, and application of the Constitution for more than a century. Whether the principle is theoretically right or wrong is not the point of present issue. The essential consideration is that it is the fact, and that in the maintenance of that fact and that principle to-day no new departure is involved. Rather are they the revolutionists, seeking new and untried paths, who demand the adoption of a contrary course of action. CHAPTER VI AGGRESSION AND CONCESSION TEXAS and Oregon, though widely separated in geography, are inseparably connected in history. The direct interest of the United States began in one of them and was reasserted in the other at the same time. It was Jefferson's acquisition of Louisiana that brought us into immediate contact with Texas, and, indeed, with a disputed boundary between us and it, and it was the Lewis and Clark expedition, despatched at the same time by Jefferson, that strengthened the title of the United States to Oregon which had been founded upon the discoveries and explorations of Robert Gray. Moreover, as already suggested, it was the acquisition of Louisiana that made the annexation of Oregon practicable. The Louisiana Purchase included the western part of Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming, thus causing our boundaries to abut directly upon the Oregon territory. Without the Louisiana Purchase, Oregon would have remained geographically detached and isolated from the United States. Again, the Texas and Oregon questions were further brought to notice and were further con |