Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/19

Rh, in sheer desperation, were compelled practically to take the law into their own hands when a serious crime had been committed.

The movement for an independent state or territory first sprung up late in the summer of 1859. Many level headed men among the settlers full well realized that any attempt on the part of the settlers to create a territory was without warrant of law, and that such a government never would be recognized by Congress or any other state, but their warnings remained unheeded. Leaders in the movement insisted that the act creating Kansas territory provided that all lands to which the Indian title had not been extinguished, should not be considered within the Kansas jurisdiction. They pointed out that the title to the land in the Pike's Peak region was still held by the Indians, and consequently, they argued, Kansas had no jurisdiction over the region.

The warnings of the opponents of an independent government remained unheeded and the "Territory of Jefferson" became an accomplished fact at an election held on October 24, 1859. A few weeks prior to this election a constitution had been adopted which, besides a full complement of officers from governor down, provided for a chief justice of the Supreme Court, two associate justices and an attorney general. A. J. Allison was elected chief justice, J. N. Odell and E. Fitzgerald associate justices, and R. J. Frazier attorney general.

The legislature of the Territory of Jefferson went to work with a will. Its members were very much in earnest and actuated with a desire to give the territory a government and laws enjoyed by the states in the east. Criminal and civil codes, copied wholesale from eastern states, were adopted and approved by the "governor," R. W. Steele, an able lawyer who had come to Colorado early in 1859.

Courts and court procedure enjoyed the special attention of this first Jeffersonian legislature. In less than two months its members enacted, besides many other laws of a general