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114

AFFAIRS IN NEVADA.

was serving, saved the constitution.1 The returns were disputed, and the whole cast was carried to the Court of Appeals. It sustained the vote and on the twenty-ninth of October, Governor Bradford proclaimed that the constitution was adopted, and that it would supersede the constitution of 1851 on the first day of November, 1864.2

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While this interesting discussion was going on in Maryland, a similar one might have been heard in the territory of Nevada. Two days before the close of Buchanan's administration, the territory had been organized,3 and by the decision in the Dred Scott case, was slave soil. It then contained about seven thousand people. As first organized it was about two-thirds as large as the present State. In 1863, the people, without an enabling act from Congress, elected a convention, which submitted a constitution for popular ratification. It was rejected, because the people felt unable to bear the burden of a State government, but the discovery of precious metals at once

1 The vote, outside of the soldiers' vote, stood 27,541 for the constitution, and 29,536 against it. The soldiers' vote was 263 against it, and 2,633 for it.

2 For an account of the appeal, and the Proclamation of the Governor, see the Appendix to the Debates, 1903, 1926.

* March 2, 1861. Statutes at Large, XIII, 209.

* See Vol. II, pp. 536-544.

By census of 1860, 6,857; all, except one hundred and fortyfive of whom were living in Carson County, which has disappeared from the map, and there are no records to account for its disappearance. See Compendium of the Eleventh Census, Part I; "Population," page 30.

• The additions made July 4, 1862, and May 5, 1866, are shown on a map given in Hough's American Constitution. Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1872, Vol. II.

7 The election on September 2, 1863, and 1,502 against calling a convention. 11, but the constitution it proposed was jority.

showed 6,660 votes for, It adjourned December rejected by a large ma

stimulated immigration, and in 1864, public sentiment led Congress to pass an enabling act on the twenty-first of March. It provided for an election of delegates in June, to meet in convention on the fourth of July, for the purpose of framing a constitution.1

The convention which assembled at Carson City presented many interesting features. Not one of its members was born on the Pacific coast; twenty-nine were natives of free States;2 one came from Kentucky. Nearly one-third of the delegates were born in New York. The lawyers and miners among them were nearly equal in number. There were two editors, five business men, a physician and a banker. All save two had come to Nevada from California, and the longest residence any had in the territory was seven years. The delegate from Kentucky recorded himself as a Democrat, and all his colleagues called themselves Union men. In the election of 1860, fourteen had voted for Lincoln; thirteen for Douglas, and seven for Bell. Most of them had been delegates to the convention of 1863.

1 For the enabling Act see Statutes at Large, XIII, 30. It is also given in Debates and Proceedings of the Convention, San Francisco, 1866, pp. v-ix. For Bill introduced by Senator Doolittle for the admission of Nevada, see Congressional Globe, First Session, 38th Congress, 1863-1864, Part I, p. 529; report by Senator Wade, 693; Debates, p. 787; Report in Senate as passed by the House, Part II, p. 1162, passed March 21, 1864, p. 1209; Signed by the President, p. 1228; Supplemental Bill, May 21, 1864, Part III, p. 2405, and Statutes at Large, Vol. XIII, p. 85. Population of Nevada in 1864 was 42,491. Its population in 1864 is unknown, but on the basis of the vote on the constitution, remembering the ratio of adult males, was greater than the older States, it may be estimated at 34,000.

2 New York 11, Pennsylvania 4, Vermont and Maine three each, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio and Indiana two each, New Hampshire, Illinois, Kentucky, England, Ireland and Canada one each; four delegates did not attend.

116

THE NATION CAN COERCE A STATE.

The constitution of 1863 was the basis of this of 1864.1 Two important provisions distinguished the earlier constitution from any before proposed to the people of a State or territory. These two, and a third, equally important, were incorporated in the new instrument. Slavery was prohibited.2 The precedent was already set by California and Oregon. But the Nevada delegates, though nearly all hailing from California, brought with them more than a disposition to forbid slavery. They favored the new doctrine that "paramount allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government," a doctrine discussed at great length, and at last adopted, as we have seen, in the Maryland convention. The Nevada delegates went further; they declared, in their bill of rights, that "the Constitution of the United States confers full power on the Federal Government to maintain and perpetuate its existence, and that whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof, attempt to secede from the federal Union, or forcibly resist the execution of its laws, the federal government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its authority."4

1 The text of the constitution, of 1863, is given in the Debates and Proceedings, pp. 24-33.

2 Constitution of 1863, Article I, Section 18; of 1864, Article I. (Declaration of Rights) Section 17.

3 Constitution of California, 1848, Article I, Section 18; of Oregon, 1857, the question of slavery being especially submitted; Article XVIII, Section 2. The vote for the constitution was 4,093; against slavery, 5,079; against free negroes, 7,559. See Portland Oregonian, December 19, 1857.

4 The Constitution of 1863, Article I, Section 2. The thought was more guarded; see the language of the Constitution of 1864, which declares that paramount allegiance is due the federal government "in the exercise of all of its constitutional powers, as the same have been or may be defined by the Supreme Court of the United States;" but the right of coercion was maintained. Constitution of 1864, Article I, Section 2.

The proposed constitution of 1863 was made at the time of the President's proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction, which, it not only reflected, but incorporated.1 No person convicted of treason or felony, unless restored to civil rights, nor one who, after arriving at the age of eighteen years, had voluntarily borne arms against the United States, or held civil or military office in any of the so-called Confederate States, unless an amnesty had been granted by the Federal Government, nor any disloyal person could exercise the privilege of an elector. This was repeated from the constitution proposed

in 1863.2

It will be noticed that the Nevada convention adopted the doctrine of paramount allegiance to the national government fully six months before it was promulgated, as a party principle, by the Baltimore Convention, and that Nevada introduced it into her constitution a year before it was adopted by Maryland. The debates in the first Nevada convention are not preserved, but the sentiments of the delegates in 1864 were the same as the later record shows. Like the people of the territory itself the delegates had light and loose political associations; had no

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1 The President's Proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction, December 8, 1863, was not known to the Nevada convention, which adjourned three days later, as the news did not reach the Pacific coast. The amnesty to political or State prisoners, which the President through the Secretary of State offered on the 14th of February, 1862 (Lincoln's Works, II, 125), was the precedent for the amnesty clause in the Constitution.

2 Article II, Section 2.

3 The Debates and Proceedings of 1864 are among the most instructive of the records left by constitutional conventions. They were edited and published in a better style than any of their predecessors in other States. They fail, however, to show the individual vote on the various resolutions. The delegates so frequently referred to the opinions of the first convention that its sentiments are quite well known.

118

PARAMOUNT ALLEGIANCE.

common traditions, and had only the beginnings of State pride. Like the pioneers of California in 1849, they were a composite people, and therefore easily amalgamated. The doctrine of paramount allegiance was easy for them to adopt. Nevada was the creation of Congress. The people of Maryland could look back over more than two centuries of colonial and State history. They could therefore the more easily believe that the Federal Government was the creation of Maryland, and its twelve sister States. Nevada, seeking admission, like West Virginia, in the midst of a civil war, naturally intensified the allegiance due from every citizen of the territories to the general government. It might perhaps be expected that debate, on so critical a question, would be long and exciting. On the contrary, it was calm and brief. The Nevada delegates, looking eastward, saw the Union struggling for life. They came from eleven of the older States, and, as from their new home in the far West, amidst "the great American Desert," they watched the progress of contending armies, they forgot their native States, as they thought of the Union; they forgot the great battle of 1860, and, ignoring old party associations for Lincoln, for Douglas, or for Bell, they acted as Union men. The result was, the almost unanimous adoption into the constitution of the doctrine of paramount allegiance.1

Did not all believe that the Constitution of the United States was the supreme law of the land? Granting the Constitution to be a compact, it was "a bargain that nobody has a right to secede from."2 Even if a State undertook to withdraw its allegiance, the allegiance of its citizens was still due to the United States. Granting the premise of paramount allegiance, there followed the na

1 July 6, the third day of the convention; Debates, p. 53. 2 Debates, 44.

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