Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/141

124 regimen of a directly opposite hue." In contradiction to the language of the treaty and the principles of his party, he went on to say that the people of Louisiana had no rights:  "I consider them as standing in nearly the same relation to us as if they were a conquered country."  Other speakers supported him.  The Louisianians, it was said, had shed tears when they saw the American flag hoisted in place of the French; they were not prepared for self-government.  When the treaty was under discussion, the speakers assumed that the people of Louisiana were so eager for annexation as to make an appeal to them useless; when they were annexed, they were so degraded as not to be worth consulting.

The House refused to tolerate such violation of principle, and by the majority of seventy-four to twenty-three struck out the section which vested legislative powers in the President's nominees. John Randolph did not vote; but his freind Nicholson and the President's son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, were in the minority. By fifty-eight to forty-two the House then adopted an amendment which vested legislative powers, after the first year, in an elective council; by forty-four to thirty-seven the restriction on jury trials was rejected; the Act was then limited to two years; and so altered it passed the House March 17, 1804, several Republicans recording their votes against it to the end.

When the Bill, thus amended, came back to the Senate, that body, March 20, summarily disagreed