were afterwards incorporated in the constitutions and laws of the States subsequently erected in this territory, the Ordinance did much to determine the character of the people who settled in the Northwest, and was an effectual influence in committing those States to freedom and free institutions.

The later organizing acts, as a rule, attracted very little attention in our history, though they are of the utmost importance both from the point of view of their subject-matter and from the interests of the people for whom they provided their first and original civil govern

ment.

In organizing the Territories, Congress has always had in view the admission of the Territories as States of

The Territory the Union. This was the original purpose in the Looks Forward first acquisition of territory, even before the to Statehood. adoption of the Constitution. In the Treaty of 1782, by which our independence was recognized, in addition to the original thirteen States the territory west of the Alleghany Mountains, east of the Mississippi, south of the Great Lakes, and north of the thirty-first degree of north latitude, was recognized as belonging to the Confederated States. But this territory belonged to certain States, not to the United States. Maryland refused to ratify the old Articles of Confederation until guarantees were given that this territory would be ceded to the General Government. In the famous Resolution of 1780, by which the old Continental Congress sought to induce the claimant States (Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, Connecticut), to cede to the General Government the territory which they claimed in the West, Congress said:

I

"The lands which may be ceded to the United States by

Except in connection with the slavery controversy, as in the struggles over the Wilmot Proviso, the Oregon bill (1848), and the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854).

any particular State shall be disposed of for the common benefit of the United States and be settled and formed into distinct republican States, which shall become members of the Federal Union and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence as the other States."

In all the territory since acquired by treaty, save that of Alaska and the islands lately acquired from Spain, it was agreed that the territory so acquired should be incorporated into the Union as soon as possible, and that in the meantime the civil rights of the inhabitants should be guaranteed. This was the case with Louisiana in 1803, with Florida in 1819, and with the Mexican cessions in 1848, and the Alaskan Treaty guaranteed the rights of citizenship to the inhabitants of the transferred territory.

In 1898 a new departure was made. In the peace treaty with Spain of that year we acquired the island possessions, the Philippines, and Porto Rico, without guaranteeing the privileges and immunities of American citizenship to their inhabitants who were transferred to our sovereignty and control. This brought them under the absolute government of Congress without the restraint imposed by the restrictions of the Constitution. It is this fact that has led to the change being regarded as imperialism and many of the American people have opposed the holding of these island possessions under our absolute sway as anti-republican and as contrary to the standards. and precedents of our republican fathers. This chapter will consider briefly the law of the Constitution and the political principles and habits by which Alaska and the Island Possessions are held and governed.

In the first place, we may ask, could these outlying territories and possessions be admitted to Statehood? There is nothing in the way. It is merely a matter of expediency and it is not unlikely that Alaska will soon be admitted. It may be well to recall here the historic process by which

States were made out of Territories. The Constitution says:

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor shall any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress."

How is a Territory made into a State? The usual way was, when we dealt with continental Territories, that the Territorial delegate in Congress presented a memorial, or petition, from the Territorial legislature, praying Congress to pass an "enabling act" authorizing the people of the Territory to elect a convention for the purpose of drawing up a State Constitution. The enabling act would either provide for a Territorial Constitutional convention or authorize the Territorial legislature to provide for one. It would also prescribe conditions to be fulfilled by the new Constitution. The Constitution formed by the convention would be submitted to the voters of the Territory. If adopted by the voters, it was then submitted for the approval of Congress and if the Constitution were accepted by that body, if the new State Constitution were provided with a republican form of government and the conditions suggested by Congress were complied with, the State was declared a member of the Union by a formal resolution and Representatives were apportioned to the new State. The Territory had then entered fully into the enjoyment of self-government on an equal footing with all the other States and the National Government had no further power to interfere in its "domestic concerns."

It was formerly contended that a new incoming State should be left free to make its own constitution in its own way; that, while Congress could admit or refuse to admit,

1 Art. IV., Sec. 3, Clause 1.

Imposing

a New State.

yet if it chose to admit it must admit into a union of equal States, and to impose conditions on an incoming State was unconstitutional. This was the constitutional question involved in the discussion Conditions on over the admission of Missouri. Conditions not imposed on the original States could not be imposed on new States. As between the States and the Central Government all powers were distributed by the Constitution. For Congress to assume to redistribute these powers, to say that a new State should be limited in a way that the Constitution did not say, was to assume a sovereignty that did not belong to it, that would turn our Federal into a centralized system. But the later Enabling Acts required the Territorial conventions to make "by ordinance irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of the United States, provisions for perfect religious toleration and for the maintenance of public schools free from sectarian control; and that polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited." No such conditions were imposed on the original States.

2

I

May a State
Violate the

Admission?

Whether such conditions are inviolable, and whether a new State, when it is once safely in the Union, may repeal these ordinances which it has been required to pass, and disregard the conditions of its admission, are academic questions which Terms of its have been considerably discussed, but they have not yet had practical application in experience. While Congress has never attempted to interfere with the States in making whatever alterations of their constitutions the States see fit, such an act on the part of a new State would be a serious breach of faith. The people of

I See Pinkney's speech on admission of Missouri, Von Holst's Constitutional History of the United States, vol. i.; Burgess's Middle Period, pp. 86-87.

'Enabling Act for Utah.

the United States would have it in their power to punish such a disregard of obligations by shutting the doors of the Senate and House of Representatives against the Representatives elected by the people of the offending State, and by denying them "a voice in the councils of the nation because they had acted in bad faith and violated their solemn agreement by which they succeeded in getting themselves into the condition of a State."

The Terri

ation without

Representation.

Our political theory regards all citizens as equal, and as equally entitled to a voice in their government, and in the days of 1776 we asserted that there must be no taxation without representation." But the peotories and Tax- ple of a Territory were taxed by national laws in the making of which they have no voice. They may be governed entirely without their consent. While in a Territorial condition the people of a Territory could have no voice in determining their own fundamental law. The only way in which they could have any voice in their government was through the organization and usages of the national political parties. The Territorial people were under the governing control of Congress, subject to the Constitution. The only way in which they could come into self-government, so that American principles could be applied to them, was by the process of statehood, or by a liberal Organizing Act, by which Congress consented to leave to them a large measure of self-government. It was by this means and by the fact that it had always been our policy and intention to admit the Territories to statehood as soon as practicable and safe, that we "save our face" in our profession of adherence to "taxation by representation and "government by consent."

Hawaii and Alaska have local legislatures whose powers are prescribed by Congress. These legislatures exercise Brief of Judge Jeremiah M. Wilson, in advocating the admission of Utah, 1887.