Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/69

The Territory of Colorado 59 height of the gold boom was over by June, and the return migra- tion made it somewhat doubtful whether any permanent population would be left in the country to need a state. So the convention met on June 6, appointed some eight drafting committees, and ad- journed, to await developments, until August i.^ But by the first of August a line had been drawn between the confident and the discouraged elements in the population, and for six days the con- vention worked upon the question of statehood. As to permanency, there was by this time no doubt ; but the body divided into two nearly equal groups, one advocating immediate statehood, the other shrink- ing from the heavy taxation incident to a state establishment and so preferring a territorial government with a federal treasury to meet the bills. The body, too badly split to reach a conclusion itself, compromised by preparing the way for either development and leaving the choice to public vote. A state constitution was drawn up on one hand ;- while on the other was prepared a memorial to Congress praying for a territorial government ;' and both docu- ments were submitted to a vote on September 5, 1859, when the memorial was chosen instead of the constitution.* Upon October 3 another election was held, pursuant to the memorial, and a dele- gate to Congress was chosen in the person of Beverly D. Williams, who was local agent of a new Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company which had run its first coach into Denver in May," and whose zeal for mail contracts may have inspired some of his earnest- ness for Congressional countenance. The adoption of the territorial memorial failed to meet the need for immediate government or to prevent the advocates of such government from working out a provisional arrangement pending the action of Congress. These advocates held a mass- meeting in Denver on September 24,'"' while on the day that Wil- liams was elected to Congress, October 3, they also elected dele- gates for a preliminary territorial constitutiqnal convention, and upon ' Smiley. 2^7 ; Hall, I. 20S ; Bancroft, 404, gives lists of officers ; Rocky Moun- tain A'c'U'S, June 11, 1859. - Byers, in an editorial, ibid., July 23, had supported the statehood argument by reference to the admission clause in the Louisiana treaty of 1803. ^ The Rocky Mountain News printed on August 6 the journal of the conven- tion; on .ugust 13 the constitution; and on August 20 the memorial. 'Smiley, 311 ; Rocky Mountain Ne-Ji'S, September 17, reports the vote. 6 Smiley, 251 ; Alice Polk Hill, Tales of the Colorado Pioneers (Denver, 1884), 41 ; Alexander Majors, Seventy Years on the Frontier (Chicago and New York, 1893), 165, 228; Majors was a member of the great freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, which was ultimately wrecked when the " Pony Express" which had been started in April, i860, collapsed. ^Rocky Mountain Nc'U's, September 29; Smiley, 312.