How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [116]
The mining men responded by simply declaring themselves a territory and holding their first election. Governor Steele deftly navigated the legal white water. To avert conflict with Kansas or Congress, should they seek to act upon their jurisdictions, his administration always included the word “provisional” in its territorial documents. Although its provisional laws specified the taxes it would levy and the salaries it would pay, Steele received no compensation nor authorized payments to anyone. Likewise, his administration collected no taxes, since Steele knew that any revenue they received could be challenged—probably successfully—in federal court.4 When elections for the legislature were held again the following year (after Congress again failed to act), Steele cautioned the candidates, “All persons who expect to be elected to any of the above offices should bear in mind that there will be no salaries or per diem allowed from this territory.”5
Steele and his colleagues also averted conflict regarding the ad hoc miners’ courts that had previously sprung up in various camps. While the provisional laws of the Jefferson Territory established county courts, district courts, and a supreme court, they also included the miners’ courts. This provision limited the miners’ courts to disputes regarding “mining claims and miners’ interests.” But no effort was ever made to assert the jurisdiction of a county court over a miners’ court—though litigants often disputed which of the two illegally created venues was the appropriate venue.6
On January 30, 1861, Congress again took up a motion to create the Jefferson Territory. This time, rather than being relegated to a committee, the motion was subjected to debate, with ensuing arguments over whether to name the territory Jefferson or Idaho or Colorado. Colorado won out, and three weeks later President Buchanan’s signature turned the less-than-legal Jefferson Territory into the fully official Colorado Territory.
Why was it suddenly so easy? Earlier that month, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana had seceded from the Union and were no longer participants in the issue. South Carolina, too, was gone, having left in the previous month.
Steele had achieved his goal, but it cost him his job. The national crisis caused by secession, which enabled Congress to create Colorado, also caused outgoing President Buchanan, a Democrat, to put country above politics and leave the appointment of a territorial governor to his Republican successor, Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln appointed William Gilpin, a Republican, to replace Steele, a Democrat. Party affiliation, however, was only one element in the decision. Though Steele had legal and governmental expertise, that contribution was now in place. Gilpin had a military background and a wide-ranging knowledge of the western territories. If war commenced, his military skills would be of more value.
Steele, for his part, recognized this. He issued a proclamation dissolving the Jefferson Territory and urging the citizens of the Colorado Territory to remain “loyal and true” to the U.S. government.
Robert W. Steele’s days in the limelight were over. He returned to his work in the mining industry and, four years later, moved with his family to Iowa to secure better educational opportunities for his children. But he had been a father of Colorado as well, and he later returned to his out-of-wedlock territory, living to see it become the nation’s thirty-eighth state. He passed away in Colorado Springs in 1901 at the age of eighty-one, surrounded by his family.
WEST VIRGINIA, VIRGINIA
FRANCIS H. PIERPONT
The Battle Line That Became a State Line
The consent of the legislature of Virginia is constitutionally necessary to a bill for the admission of West Virginia becoming a law. A body claiming to be such legislature has given its consent. We cannot well deny that it is such, unless … [it] was chosen at elections in which a majority