Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/104

1803. long, elaborate, and almost a new Constitution in itself; the August draft was comparatively brief. "Louisiana as ceded by France to the United States is made a part of the United States. Its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States in analogous situations." The whole country north of the Arkansas River was reserved for Indians until another amendment should be made; and as an afterthought Florida was to be admitted as a part of the United States "whenever it may be rightfully obtained."

These persistent attempts to preserve his own consistency and that of his party were coldly received. Jefferson found himself alone. Wilson Cary Nicholas, a prominent supporter of the Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and a senator of the United States in 1803, had a long conversation with the President, and in the early days of September wrote him a letter which might have come from Theodore Sedgwick or Roger Griswold in the days of Jay's treaty, when Federalist notions of prerogative ran highest.


 * "Upon an examination of the Constitution," wrote Nicholas, "I find the power as broad as it could well be made (Sect. 3, Art. IV.), except that new States cannot be formed out of the old ones without the consent of the State to be dismembered; and the exception is a proof to my mind that it was not intended to confine the Congress in the admission of new States to what was then the territory