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Show GRANTS TO STATES ON ADMISSION TO UNION 301 vision into the Organic Act for Oregon passed that year.46 California California had the misfortune to ask for admission when there was no slave territory to accompany it, thereby threatening for the first time the balance between the free and slave states. The South seemed to have four choices: it could try to create another slave state-Jacinto-out of Texas with its consent; it might try to divide California, as some residents of that state wished, at a point north of the Tehachapi Mountains and provide for a second state; it might make New Mexico a slave territory and state when it had sufficient population; or it could deny California admission, as many members of Congress advocated. The argument for denial rested on the ground that a military government had improperly authorized the election of delegates to a constitutional convention without waiting for an enabling act which would establish the boundaries of the state, regulate the time, place and manner of holding elections, and determine the qualifications of voters, and that the military government had paid the cost of the convention out of customs duties without any authorization to do so.47 Still another objection against the admis- 46 H. Ex. Doc, 29th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. II, No. 9 (Serial No. 498), p. 6; Matthias Nordberg Orfield, Federal Land Grants to the States with Special Reference to Minnesota ("University of Minnesota Studies in the Social Sciences," No. 2, [Minneapolis, 1915]), p. 44; Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., 1st sess., May 10, 1848, pp. 752 ff.; 9 Stat. 56, 178, 233. Also useful is Milo M. Quaife, The Attainment of Statehood, "Wisconsin Historical Collections," Vol. 29. 47 Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., Feb. 20, 1850, p. 397. It was this action taken by the military governor and the election of delegates, the meeting of the convention, the drafting of the constitution, that southerners argued was all illegal and revolutionary, whereas the advocates of admission were not troubled by the cry of illegality. Those who regarded the calling of the convention and its activiites as sion of California under the plan drafted at its convention was raised by Pierre Soule, Senator from Louisiana. It may seem farfetched today but was seriously debated at the time. He maintained that if California were admitted without having first been authorized to hold a convention by Congress, the public lands would escheat to the state. Actually, it was the fear that the admission of California would put the anti-slavery states in a majority that induced such bitter southern opposition. The Constitutional Convention, which met in Monterey in September and October 1849, gave some attention to the public lands and to the expected share California might have in them. The most extreme statement was made by M. M. McCarver, a 42-year-old Kentuckian who had come to California by way of Oregon. He proposed a resolution that "the public domain within the limits of this State, in right and justice, belongs to the people of California, and the undisturbed enjoyment thereof ought to be secured to them." This resolution received little support and was rejected without a division. Stephen A. Douglas later tried to explain it away in the Congress, denying that it represented the thought of any body of opinion in California or anywhere in the West.4" We have never acted upon the principle that ownership of soil is an essential ingredient of sovereignty. . . . The United States Government . . . has never held one foot of land by virtue of its sovereignty. Sovereignty was not the title by which we have claimed or held one acre of our public lands. We hold the lands by virtue of the same title that an individual possesses his own estate. The Government holds its lands by deeds of conveyance. illegal had the satisfaction of writing into a law to sanction the payment of all the expenses of the convention a clause stating: "which expenses may appear to have been proper and necessary, but not authorized by any law of the United States. . . ." Act of Feb. 5, 1853, 10 Stat. 155. iSApp., Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., June 26, 1850, p. 848. |