Representatives. The former consisted of nine members, five
making a quorum, appointed for five years by the President of
the United States from a list of eighteen persons made by the
territorial House of Representatives. Provision was made for
filling vacancies by the President appointing one of two persons
nominated by the lower house. Their qualifications were: that
they should have resided in the territory for at least one year
preceding appointment; that they should be at least twenty-
five years of age; that they should have property of at least
two hundred acres in the territory. They were disqualified
from holding any other office of profit under the territorial
government except that of justice of the peace. It was in the
house of Representatives that the greatest innovation was
made. This body was composed of representatives elected
for two years by the people of the territory. The appointment
was on the basis of one member to every five hundred free,
white, male inhabitants until the number of representatives
reached twenty-five, when the ratio was left under the regula-
tion of the General Assembly. The qualifications for repre-
sentatives were lower in nearly every respect than for mcMiibcrs
of the Council: the age qualification was twenty-one years;
the residence qualification was the same as in the case of mem-
bers of the Council; and the property qualification required one
to be a freeholder in the county from which ho was elected.
Vacancies were filled by a new county election on writ of the
Governor. Annual meetings of the General Assembly were
provided for. The place of meeting was at St. Louis, and the
time the first Monday in December unless the (leneral Assembly
set a different date. The Governor was empowered to lay off
Constitutional History During Territorial Period. 33
the territory into convenient counties for the election of thirteen
representatives.
The electors of representatives consisted of all the free,
white, male citizens of the United States who were twenty-one
years of age, had resided in the territory twelve months before
the election, and had paid a territorial or county tax assessment
made at least six months before the election. It w^as provided
in the act of 1812 that all free, white, male persons who were
inhabitants of Louisiana on December 20, 1803, and all free,
white, male citizens of the United States who had immigrated
to Louisiana since December 20, 1803, or who might hereafter
do so, if otherwise qualified, could hold any office of honor, trust
or profit in the territory under the United States or the Territory,
and vote for members of the General Assembly and a Delegate
to Congress during the temporary government provided for by
that act.
The powers of the General Assembly were large, comprising
the power to make laws, civil and criminal; to establish inferior
courts and prescribe their jurisdiction; to define the powers and
duties of the justices of the peace and other civil officers of the
territory; to regulate and fix fees, etc. There were certain
express limitations placed on their power, however, that are
important to notice. All bills had to be passed by a majority
of each house and receive the approbation (signature) of the
governor. They were by implication prohibited from passing
any acts which would be inconsistent with the large number of
privileges and rights reserved to the people and enumerated at
some length in section fourteen of the law. This section four-
teen is a very interesting paragraph, as it is the first bill of rights
that Missourians ever had excepting those guarantees in the
United States Constitution and is an epitome of the one included
in the constitution of 1820. The General x^ssembly w^as also
prohibited by express provision from interfering with the pri-
mary disposal of the soil of the United States, etc., and from
levying any tax or impost on the navigable waters in or touching
the territory.
The judiciary was composed of a Superior Court, inferior
courts and courts of justices of the peace. The Superior Court
M S— 3
34 Missouri Struggle for Statehood.
alone was set forth in detail, the others being left under the
regulation of the General Assembly and Governor. This court
was the same in composition and in term and tenure of members
as that provided for in the act of 1805. Certain regulations were
provided as regards its jurisdiction, and power was granted it
and the inferior courts to appoint their clerks.
Some miscellaneous provisions were also set forth that are
important. All officials were required to take an oath to sup-
port the Constitution of the United States and discharge faith-
fully the duties of their office. The citizens of the territory
were given the right to elect one Delegate to Congress. Schools
and education were urged, and encouragement and aid promised
from the United States lands in the Territory. It was provided
that the acts of 1804 and 1805 when inconsistent with this act
were repealed.
Pursuant to the power granted him in the seventh section
of the act of 1812, Benjamin Howard, Governor of the Territory
of Louisiana, by proclamation issued October 1, 1812, divided
the new Territory of Missouri into the five counties of St.
Charles, St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, and New
Madrid, and gave them their boundaries.'*^ Provision was made
for the election from these counties of territorial representatives
to the General Assembly and also a Delegate to Congress.
Appended to this proclamation was a statement setting forth
the qualifications of representatives and electors — which was
taken from the act of Congress of June 4, 1812. Thus was set
in working the new government of the Territory of Missouri.
An attempt was made to amend the law of 1812, and on
January 7, 1813, on motion of Mr. Hempstead (of Missouri) a
committee was appointed by the House of Representatives "to
inquire if any, and if any what, amendments are necessary to be
made" to that act.''^ On January 29, 1813, this committee
reported and recommended no alterations.'*'' The problem sug-
gested to the committee was to settle the doubts that some
entertained as to whether Missouri's Territoricil Delegate to
*' Am. state Papers. Misc.. II. 202f; Scharf. op. cil.. I. r.nTf.
" Annals o) Congress, p. G18.
** Ibid., pp. «29f; Am. State Papers, Misc., II. 2()lf.
Constitutional History During Territorial Period. 35
Congress, who had been elected on November 2, 1812, in pur-
suance of the act of Congress of that year, could hold his seat
after March 3, 1813. The committee decided that as he was
elected for two years, he could hold his seat for that time, and
that no alteration in the law of 1812 was necessary, as it appeared
perfectly clear on this point.
Population kept increasing rapidly in Missouri. Lawrence
county was established by the Territorial Legislature January
15, 1815,^*^ and just a little over a year later Howard county, the
"mother of counties" and one of the empire counties of Missouri,
was erected by act of January 23, 1816.''^ On January 21, 1816,
on motion of Mr. Easton in the House of Representatives, the
Committee on the Judiciary was instructed to inquire if any,
and what, alterations were necessary to be made in the act
entitled "An act providing for the government of the Territory
of Missouri" approved June 4, 1812." "^^ This committee on
March 6, 1816, reported a bill to alter certain parts of the act
of 1812, which without any amendment finally became the
organic act of Congress of April 29, 1816, by which Missouri
became a territory of the highest grade.^^ By this law, the
elective tenure was also applied to the Legislative Council, one
member being elected from each county. The term was reduced
to two years and qualifications remained the same as in the act
of 1812. A majority of the members constituted a quorum.
The regular sessions of the General Assembly were changed
from annual to biennial sessions. Everything else of the act
of 1812 remained unchanged except the provisions relating to
the judiciary. It was the provisions in this act of 1816 relating
to the judiciary that was its most objectionable feature to Mis-
sourians, as is expressly set forth in the very earliest petitions
for statehood in 1817."^^ The General Assembly was authorized
to require the judges of the superior court to hold superior and
circuit courts; to appoint the times and places for the same;
and to make rules and regulations regarding these courts. The
" Mo. Ter. Laws, pp. 354fif.
" Ibid., pp. 460ff.
" Annals oj Congress, pp. 1047, 1049, 1358, 1362.
<' Stat, at Large, II. 328; Mo. Ter. Laws, p. 14.
<« This will receive further consideration in the chapter following.
36 Missouri Struggle for Statehood.
circuit court was to be composed of one of the said judges and
to have jurisdiction in all criminal cases, exclusive original
jurisdiction in capital cases, and original jurisdiction in all civil
cases of $100.00 value or over. The superior and circuit courts
were to possess chancery powers as well as common law juris-
diction in all civil cases, provided that in matters of law and
equity, in all cases, appeal lay from the circuit courts to the
superior court of the territory.
The year following this law of Congress of 1816, which
made Missouri a territory of the highest rank, saw the inhabit-
ants here petitioning Congress for that greatest of all boons —
the privilege of statehood. It will be our purpose in the next
chapter to give, in the first place, a short history of these efforts
on the part of Missouri's pioneers to obtain permission of the
National Legislature to frame a state constitution; and, in the
second, to sketch the struggle in Congress itself over this ques-
tion from 1818 to 1820. It is hardly an exaggeration to say
that seldom in the history of this nation since the adoption of
the Constitution has there been a purely domestic question,
except of course the Civil War of 1861-65, that has so stirred the
country from border to border; has been so ominous in so many
of its phases; that for so many months literally shook the foun-
dations of the United States and brought forth declarations
and prophecies of the most calamitous character from the
mouths and pens of men who even today rank foremost in the
galaxy of American Statesmen and authors, as the famous
Missouri Question. It will not, however, be our purpose in
this book to do more than merely give a summary of that ques-
tion as it was acted upon by Congress.
CHAPTER II.
MISSOURI PETITIONS FOR STATEHOOD AND THE
STRUGGLE IN CONGRESS
The earliest agitation for the admission of Missouri as a
State began in the latter part of 1817.^ After the war of 1812
the population of Missouri grew rapidly, and corresponding
with this growth the desire of the people for an independent
State government became strong.^ In the fall of 1817 this
desire for statehood found expression in a number of memorials
addressed to Congress and signed by the Missouri inhabitants,
acting purely in their capacity as citizens. It is certain that
there were a number of these petitions; even today there are
two in existence.^
1 Scharf, op. cit., I. 561. In note one on this page appears the following
extract from the Missouri Gazette (St. Louis) dated October 11, 1817: "We
have seen in the last Emigrant the copy of a petition stated to be 'The Memorial
of the Citizens of Missouri Territory,' praying to be admitted into the Union of
States within certain limits." (Note: The Western Emigrant was a newspaper
published in St. Louis in 1817, succeeding the Western Journal, which began
publication in 1815. Later it clianged its name again and became known as the
St. Louis Enquirer.)
There is no mention of a petition earlier than 1817 by any of the writers of
Missouri or of St. Loms history, such as Switzler, Davis and Durie. Houck. Carr,
Rader, Billon, and Scharf. Some of these failed to notice the memorials of 1817,
but even Mr. Houck, who made a special study of this period, gives the date of
the earliest petition as 1817.
Copies of Resolutions of the Missouri Territorial General Assembly to Con-
gress, dated December 1815 and January 1816, are still in existence in the Bureau
of RoUs and Library, Department of State, Washington, D. C, but Mr. Tonner,
Chief of the Bureau, informs us that he has examined these resolutions and that
they do not refer to statehood, but to entirely different subjects. (Letter of Mr.
J. A. Tonner, January 29, 1914, in The State Historical Society of Missouri.)
Cf. also Parker, op. cit., p. 239.
* Houck, Hist. Mo., III. 243. As our references to Houck will hereafter be
entirely to his History of Missouri, we will refer to that work thus: Houck. op. cit.
Diu-ing the war the tide of immigration into Missom-i decreased in volume,
but after peace was proclaimed, the rush of settlers from Kentucky, Tennessee,
Virginia, and the Carolinas to that territory was greater than ever. (See Mis-
souri Gazette, October 26, 1816.)
' We are certain that a number of these memorials were identical, and were
circulated over the entire territory. Internal criticism of these documents pro-
duces several reasons which incline us to come to this conclusion: first, the two
existing memorials of 1817 are so worded as to have allowed any citizen of Mis-
souri to sign them, and consist of a comparatively brief printed petition with a
(37)
38 Missouri Struggle for Statehood.
It is known that on January 8, 1818, the Speaker of the
House of Representatives of Congress presented "petitions"
from sundry inhabitants of Missouri Territory, praying that
the said Territory might be erected into a State and admitted
into the Union on an equal footing with the original States;''
that on February 2, 1818, John Scott, Missouri's Delegate to
Congress, presented a similar petition from the inhabitants of
Missouri Territory;^ and on March 16, 1818, Scott again pre-
sented "petitions" of sundry inhabitants of Missouri Territory,
praying for admission, which, together with the "petitions" of
a similar nature, "heretofore presented at the present session,"
were referred to a select committee composed of seven men,
Scott being chairman.^ This committee, on April 3, 1818, re-
ported to the House a bill to authorize the people of the Missouri
Territory to form a Constitution and State government, and for
the admission of such State into the union, etc. This bill was
read twice and committed to a Committee of the Whole, where it
lodged during that session of the Fifteenth Congress.'^
The two memorials of 1817 still in existence are valuable
and interesting documents. The subject matter of the one in
the Library of Congress is identical with the one in the library
of The State Historical Society of Missouri, and is signed by
sixty-eight persons, most of whom lived in Washington county,
Missouri.^ Two of these sixty-eight names appear among the
sixty-nine names attached to the other memorial. Among the
former, appears the signature of John Rice Jones; on the other,
small blank below for signatures (an additional slieet of paper covered with sij^-
natures is attached to the one in The Stale Historical Society of Missouri); second.
on the back of the one in The State Historical Society of Missouri is written in
script, "No. .5," and a little to the right of this is written, "C»'.>." The "No. i>"
would perhaps have little significance if it wore not for the "()•.)." This memorial
was signed by sixty-nine persons, and it is not imi)robabIt' (hat tills petition was
the fifth in circulation.
* Annals of Congress, I. 591. These were laid on the tahlf.
' Ilrid., p. 840. This also was laid on the table.
^ Ibid., II. \'Ml. Mr. Scott also presented a ptUition of sundry inliabitants
of the southern part of the Territory of Missouri, praying for a ilivision of the
said territory, whi(;h was referred to the same committee. Ihid., p. 1392.
' Ibid., p. 1072.
• Uouck, op. cit.. III. 245. Mr. Farnum, Secretary to the Librarian of (Con-
gress, in a letter to the author dated January 23, 1014, stated that the one in that
I^ibrary has sixty-eiglit manuscrli)t signatures; Uouck, idem, says sixty-sovcn.
Petitions for Statehood and Struggle in Congress. 39
appears that of John Hutchings. Both of these men were later
delegates from Washington county to the first constitutional
convention of 1820. The first eighteen signatures of the sixty-
nine are included in an ink brace, and written on the margin
of the page and within the brace are these words : "All the Grand
]\xry of the Circuit Court of Washington county October term,
1817." The entire document contains about seven hundred
and fifty words, and might naturally be divided into two parts. ^
First are set forth Missouri's reasons for statehood, in-
cluding the following: (a) the population of Missouri had
reached 40,000; Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi had each been
admitted with a smaller population; (b) the treaty of cession
guaranteed statehood as soon as it could be "granted under the
principles of the Federal Constitution;" (c) Missouri's training
as a territory of the first and second class had covered a period
of thirteen years ;^*^ (d) Missouri's loyalty to the Union had
been evinced during the War of 1812; (e) the evils of the terri-
torial government were many, including (1) the denial of a vote
in Congress, although subject to the indirect taxation of that
body, (2) the absolute veto of the governor on the acts of the
territorial legislature, (3) the power of the superior court in
having primary and final jurisdiction in most civil and criminal
cases, and (4) the restricted powers of the territorial legislature
which were confined to the passage of local laws, "owing to the
paramount authority of Congress to legislate on the same sub-
ject."
Second are advanced arguments for the boundaries of Mis-
souri, being the latitudes forty degrees and thirty-six degrees
thirty minutes on the north and south, and the Mississippi
River and the Osage boundary line on the east and west.^^
Two-thirds of the memorial is taken up with this subject of
boundaries and includes the following arguments: (a) the north-
• For a copy of the memorial in The State Historical Society of Missouri see
Appendix I.
i« ]SIissouri had really passed through the three grades of territorial organi-
zation, besides having been under a military government and also under the gov-
ernment of Indiana Territory.
" Houck, op. cit., I. 3. "The Osage boundary on the west was a line extending
from Fort Osage north and south about twenty-four miles east of the mouth of
the Kansas river."
40 Missouri Struggle for Statehood.
ern boundary would then correspond with that of Illinois terri-
tory and "w^ith the Indian boundary line near the mouth of the
River Des Moines;^- (b) the southern boundary would "be an
extension of the line that divides Virginia and North Carolina,
Tennessee and Kentucky;" (c) it would leave Arkansas territory
a frontage of three and a half degrees on the Mississippi river,
give Missouri a like frontage and a medium depth of two hun-
dred miles, and leave the same front "embracing the great
River St. Pierre" for a future State to the north of Missouri;
(d) these boundaries would "include all the country to the
north and west to which the Indian title" had been extinguished,
and also include "the body of the population;" (e) they would
"make the Missouri river the centre, and not the boundary of
the State" and thus unite in one whole the district to the north
and the south of that stream — a condition greatly desired by
choice and made doubly expedient by natural location and the
complementary resources of these tw^o parts.
For the first time there is set forth in this petition any
intimation that the Missouri River had ever been thought of as
the northern boundary line of Missouri. That this had already
been rumoured, perhaps even advocated, is probable, judging
from the serious effort of this memorial to state the objections
of the inhabitants of Missouri to this plan. It is evident that
the memorialists feared Congress might select the Missouri river
as a natural boundary for the State, so they added that they de-
precated "the idea of making the divisions of the States to cor-
respond with the natural divisions of the country" and said,
"such divisions will tend to promote that tendency to separate,
which it is the policy of the union to counteract." It is also
interesting to notice the desire of the memorialists to provide
for Missouri a large frontage on the Mississippi River, and their
implied fear of having a large tract of desert land attached to
the new State, whereby a long State running east and west, but
narrow from north to south, would be formed.
»* Tho memorial is unc(!rtain in its statomont of the northorn boundary,
since paralh^l forty dcKrecs docs not correspond to the Indian boundary lino as
surveyed i)y .Jolm C Sullivan in IMKl. and as later decided in tho United States
Supreme Court in 1S49. Ibid., I. 14f.
Petitions for Statehood and Struggle in Congress. 41
We have already stated that Httle was accompHshed re-
garding a Missouri bill during the first session of the Fifteenth
Congress. However, it was really a matter for congratulation
that a Missouri statehood bill had been reported by a committee
of Congress so shortly after Missouri had become a territory of
the highest rank. This showed that the friends of Missouri
who were in Congress would not allow this subject to be kept
under cover.
The year 1818 brought forth the only memorial to Congress
praying for statehood that was ever adopted by the Territorial
Legislature of Missouri. Although in 1817 there w^ere a number
of individual statehood petitions in circulation among the in-
habitants in Missouri, there is no record of any in 1818, except the
memorial passed by the last Territorial Legislature of Missouri,
which adjourned in December of that year. During 1819 and
1820, however, there were a very large number of these peti-
tions and remonstrances to Congress drawn by grand juries,
public meetings of citizens, and religious bodies in Missouri on
the question of statehood, and especially showing the sentiment
in Missouri at this time on the question of slavery and the
action being taken by Congress. ^^
On November 13, 1818, the Territorial Legislature of Mis-
souri adopted a memorial to Congress praying for statehood,
and during the same month they adopted a resolution on the
question of United States * 'donations and appropriations"
advantageous to the inhabitants of this State. ^^
The memorial set forth two main arguments for statehood :
(1) that the population of the territory was nearly one hundred
thousand; and (2) that the limits of the territory were too
extensive for the efficient administration of government. Owing
" These petitions of 1819 and 1820 being largely of the nature of protests
form part of the subject matter of the two following chapters.
»< "Memorial and Resolutions of The Legislature of The Missouri Territory
and A Copy Of The Census of the Fall of 1817: Amount to 19,218 Males —
December 8, 1819. Referred to a Select Committee." One of the copies of
these documents as printed in Washington, 1819, a six page pamphlet for the use
of Congress, is in The State Historical Society of Missouri, and another copy of
the memorial may be found in the Am. State Papers, Misc., II. 557f. Another copy
of the memorial is in Abridg. of Debates of Cong., VI. 381. Houck. op. cit.. III.
245, gives the date of the adoption of the memorial as December, 1818; but
there is no doubt that this is not correct. See Appendix II for copy.
42 Missouri Struggle for Statehood.
to both of these reasons, but especially the latter, it proposed a
division of the territory. Before taking up the consideration of
Missouri's population and the boundaries of the proposed
state — a short but rather involved study of itself — the rest of
the memorial will be analyzed. The memorialists stated that
although there were many grievances of which they might
complain, yet most of them were inseparable from a territorial
government and were not enumerated. They closed this docu-
ment by again referring to the question of population which, in
the counties of New Madrid, Lawrence, Ste. Genevieve, Cape
Girardeau, Washington, St. Louis, St. Charles, and Howard
they stated was more than sufficient for admission as heretofore
required of other states admitted. The guarantee of admission,