SENATE.]

Admission of Michigan.

[JAN. 3, 1837

tionary mobs had been lavished upon the convention both of Arkansas and Michigan, because, being Terri-, tories, they had held conventions, and framed constitu tions, without the authority of Congress. Our answers to these de unciations 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

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 Gov-add, that the result would be the same now; and that, afernment, 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 proposi tion 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

ter 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 decision, 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 scat,

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.

But the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania asks, how does it lie in our mouths to say that this organism of the people is interposed between us and the Legislature of Michigan, when we refused in January last to recognise that body as a Legislature at all, and declined receiving a memorial from it as a Legislature? I will tell the Senator. When we refused to recognise the exist ence of that Legislature, we had not recognised the constitution of Michigan; and it was not till then that we sanctioned the use of the words States and Legislature. Where, then, is the monstrous inconsistency so triumphantly urged? Let gentlemen compare the dates, and they will see there is no inconsistency. When Michigan first asked to be admitted, there were important difficulties in the way, and we could consider her only as a Territorial 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

[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 performing 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 guarantee 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 I 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 people! How does he know that they are delegates? Here are we wielding the destinies and casting the deepest foundations of a State, without knowing the meaning of the word convention. The word is technical! It has a constant and well-defined meaning in the constitution of the United States and of the States. Am I to be told

that any loose gathering of the population is a convention, within the legal meaning of that word? Why, sir, was the late Baltimore convention a convention of the people of the United States? Was that assemblage capable of giving laws to us? A convention of the people of the United States can upturn these seats and banish us all from these halls; can destroy the Senate, can abolish Congress. And was the Baltimore convention, a motley collection of postmasters, steam doctors, and God knows 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 assemblage 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 convent ons 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

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[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 stood, 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 Dis trict 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 Michigan-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

JAN. 3, 1837.]

Admission of Michigan.

[SENATE.

stitution, attempting to circumscribe their own Legisla- The honorable Senator over the way [Mr. BUCHANAN] ture. I call them to the rescue. Much has been said in this comes from the great State of Pennsylvania, and I from debate about the will of the people, and we have been re- the little State of South Carolina. He comes from a minded that their wish is paramount to all enactments. non-slaveholding State; I from a slaveholding. Will he God forbid that I should subscribe to that doctrine in the claim to go behind the act of my Legislature, and call sense here advanced. What? Do I hold my rights by upon the people of South Carolina? Intimations were the mere popular breath? Shall I trust the liberties of once made, and from high quarters, that this General us the people to such a Government? No, sir. I look to Government would look behind the constituted authe recorded will of the people-to the will of the people thorities of South Carolina for the will of the people; as they have imbodied it in their political institutions. I and what people will the gentleman from Pennsylvania look for the will of the people of Michigan in the consti- select? The free white citizens, or black and white tution of Michigan. And they offend the rights of the people, of the State of South Carolina? Will the gen people who look over that instrument to the voice of a tleman consider the human beings or the white men of mere popular assembly. The constitution, that is the South Carolina her people? South Carolina alone can people's will-their solemn, defined, recorded will. decide that for herself, and Michigan for herself; and Tell me not that that is the will of the people which can this Government ought not, and cannot, for either. The be expressed by a mere transient party caucus move- gentleman perceives that I am deeply interested in this ment. The people's will, I repeat it again, is the peo- matter. There is a deep and a fearful reason why I ple's constitution, and I will not live in a society that rec- shall not let him look behind the constitution and Legisognises any other. Sooner turn me loose to the savage lature of a State. Sir, we talked much of conventions state, let me be armed to the teeth, and prepared to during the period of our late excitement in South Caromake war on every neighbor, rather than be under the lina. We had then the convention of a party, large and government of mobs and caucuses. No convention, numerous, which sat from day to day, adjourned from therefore, can be entitled by that name, unless it was time to time, appealed from the Legislature to the peoheld according to the constitution of the State of Michi-ple, held, it was rumored, communications with this gan; and if you recognise any other, you subvert the con

stitution.

Government, and it was also rumored that officers of this Government threatened to consider it as South Carolina, and to obey its orders in wielding the sword at that moment held drawn against the State. The same dangerous and disorganizing principles are avowed in this bill. Sir, when once we get behind the Legislature, and get into conventions, who speaks the voice of the people? Who has got it? Each man says that he speaks it; but who is right? The party in power will always say that the voice which disapproves their acts is not the voice of the people. It is in this way they satis fy their conscience. And shall it be that on the will of the majority here repose all the powers of the constitu tion, and all the rights of the people of the United States? I trust such a state of things will never occur. Supposing that this was the State of Pennsylvania instead of Michigan, and there were two conventions, one at Philadelphia, and one at Harrisburg, expressing opinions directly the reverse of each other, which, in the opinion of the honorable Senator, would express the voice of the people? I can tell you, sir; it would be that which expressed his own sentiments. What I desire is, that we should not proceed on these resolutions passed at Ann Arbor as an act of the State of Michigan, but shall wait until we have the act of that State in a regular, organized form. What is a State? It is a political organization within a certain territory, and its political organization is the imbodying of its rights in a constitution. If you look beyond this, there is no State; there may be a population, but there is no State.

Now, I ask, how was the first convention formed? It assembled under the recommendation of the Legislature of Michigan, under an act which recognised the binding authority of the constitution. The acts were duly au thenticated, and sent here with all the formulas of authen. tication upon them. It was the deliberate judgment of the people of Michigan, regularly expressed. But this will virtually goes to appeal from the entire authority of the people of Michigan, to the honorable chairman of our Judiciary Committee. He decides in the very teeth of the Legislature of Michigan, who must be supposed to understand their own rights and duties, and who passed a law for a convention--which convention did act, and duly certified its action. There was great point in the question put by the Senator from Ohio, [Mr. EwING.] If the first convention had acceded to the terms, and then this new-fangled and self-created convention had met and rescinded the act of assent, how would the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN] have then decided between the two conventions? Would he for one moment have held up the latter against the former? No, sir. No, no. The Senator would have exclaimed, “Tell me not of the lawless proceedings of a disorganizing assemblage. Here is the act of a regular, a legitimate convention, held according to law; and what is the language of Michigan, if this is not?" In what terms of indignation would the Senator have rebuked us for paltering with terms, and casting the mantle of a convention over the unauthorized resolves of a lawless assembly? But cir-Sir, this bill has been characterized as revolutionary, cumstances alter cases. A convention regularly sanc tioned by the Legislature has refused to accede to your terms. And how will you get out of the difficulty? By calling together a uameless body to controvert the will of the people, expressed through their own devised and constituted organs, to repeal official acts sealed and certified by their own functionaries? Shall we declare the act of their Legislature to be unconstitutional? Who gave us any such right? None dare do it.

But the gentleman from Mississ ppi [Mr. WALKER] reminded us that the first convention itself declared its want of power to alter the constitution. Well, sir, if that convention had not the power, what right have we to give superior power to another body? If the Governor and Legislature of a State could not invest a convention with power to change the constitution of a State, can we? It is preposterous.

and it is so. It is an appeal from the Government to the people, from written constitutions to unwritten, from organized systems of Government to disorganized. The very act of this Ann Arbor convention is itself an act of disorganization. It grants away the territory of Michigan, yet it is itself not known to State authority. Supposing that some of these Ann Arbor gentlemen should be arrested on criminal process, and tried for their proceedings, how would they fare before a judicial tribunal? Sir, they are guilty of treason. Could they plead the act of Congress? It would not avail them; Congress is not their Legislature. If asked, what brought you here? if called upon to show an act of the Legislature calling them there, what could they answer? To bring the question home, suppose the Legislature should disavow their powers, what can we say? Can we say that that assembly was paramount to the Legis