Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/295

 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 235 member of the great republic. They forbear to dilate upon the evils of the territorial gov- ernment but will barely name among the grievances of this condition: " ] . That the.y have no vote in your honor- able body and yet are subject to the indirect taxation imposed by you. "2. That the veto of the territorial execu- tive is ab.solute upon the acts of the territorial legislature. ' ' 3. That the Superior Court is constructed on principles unheard of in any other system of jui'isprudenee, having primary cognizance of almost every controversy, civil and crim- inal, and subject to correction by no other tribunal. "4. That the powers of the territorial leg- islature are limited to the passage of laws of a local nature owing to the paramount au- thority of Congress to legislate upon the same subject. ' ' And after describing the boundaries of the proposed new state the memorialists say that the boundaries, as solicited, will include the country to the north and west to which the Indian title has been extinguished, also the body of the population ; that the Missouri river will rim through the center of the state; that the boundaries are adapted to the coim- try ; that ' ' the woodland districts are f oimd towards the great rivers ; the interior is com- posed of vast ridges and naked and sterile plains stretching to the Shining mountains;" and that the country north and south of the Missouri is necessary to each other, the former possessing a rich soil destitute of minerals, the latter abounding in mines of lead and iron and thinly sprinkled with spots of ground fit for cultivation. In conclusion the memorial- ists say that they "hope that their voice may have some weight in the division of their eountrv and in the formation of their state boundaries; and that statesmen ignorant of its localities may not undertake to cut out their territory with fanciful divisions which may look handsome on paper, but must be ruinous in effect." This petition was signed by Jacob Petit, Isaac W. Jameson, Sam S. Williams and others, nearly all of whom were at the time citizens of Washington coimty. The memorial was presented to Congress in January, 1818, but no action seems to have been taken upon it, nor upon other similar or perhaps identical petitions presented at the same time. In December of the same year, however, the terri- torial assembly of Missouri drew up a memo- rial on the same subject, which was presented to Congress by John Scott of Ste. Genevieve, the territorial delegate. This memorial was thereupon presented to a committee for con- sideration and report. This committee re- ported in favor of the organization of a state government in Missouri, and a bill was dra'mi and presented to the house for that purpose. The consideration of this bill precipitated a great discussion and brought to the front for the first time, in an acute way, the slavery question. To imderstand the history of this bill and the great controversy that raged over the ad- mission of the state, we must recall the situa- tion that existed in the Union. The slavery question was alread.y exciting jjeople. It had not yet come to be regarded with such pas- sionate earnestness as a moral question as it was later destined to be considered, but as a political question it was already before the people. A fierce contest raged between the north and south for the control of Congress. Power in political affairs had for some years vacillated between slave and free .states. A few years prior to the introduction of this