Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/73

The Territory of Colorado In his proclamation calling the second election Governor Steele announced that "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, but that the General Government will be memorialized to aid us in our adversity" Upon this question of revenue it was that the territory of Jefferson was wrecked. Taxes could not be collected, since citizens had only to plead grave doubts as to legality to evade payment. "We have tried a Provisional Government, and how has it worked? " asked William Larimer in announcing his candidacy for the office of territorial delegate. " It did well enough until an attempt was made to tax the people to support it." More than this, the real need for the government became less apparent as 1860 advanced, for the scattered communities learned how to obtain a reasonable peace without it. American mining-camps are peculiarly free from the need for superimposed government. The new camp at once organizes itself on a democratic basis, and in mass-meeting registers claims, hears and decides suits, and administers summary justice. Since the Pike's Peak country was only a group of mining-camps, there proved to be little immediate need for central government, for in the local mining-district organizations all of the immediate needs of the communities could be satisfied. So loyalty to the territory of Jefferson, in the districts outside Denver, waned during 1860, and by the summer of that year its moral influence had virtually disappeared. Its administration held together, however. Governor Steele made efforts to rehabilitate its authority, holding an election on October 22, 1860, to choose a second legislature. On November 12 he met his second assembly, he himself having been re-elected by a trifling vote, to continue the tradition of the territory. From November 12 to November 27 it sat at Denver; then until December 7 it continued its sessions at Golden. And upon this last day it dissolved itself forever.

When the thirty-sixth Congress met for its second session in December, 1860, the Jefferson organization was in the second year of its life, yet in Congress there was no more immediate prospect of territorial action than there had been since 1857. Indeed, the election of Lincoln brought out the eloquence of the slavery question with a renewed vigor that monopolized the time and strength of


 * r4 Hollister, 123.