On Monday the fifth day of May, 1845, the Legislative Assembly of the
Territory met in regular session. Three days later a message from
Governor Chambers was presented and read to the members, whereby they
were informed that the vote in April had certainly resulted in the
rejection of the Constitution. "And," continued the Governor, "there
is reason to believe that the boundary offered us by Congress had much
influence in producing that result."
Believing that the rejection of the Constitution by the people called
for some action on the part of the Assembly, Governor Chambers
proposed and recommended "that the question be again submitted to the
people, whether or not they will at this time have a Convention." But
a majority of the Assembly were in favor of re-submitting the
Constitution of 1844 as it had come from the hands of the Convention.
A bill to re-submit was accordingly introduced and hurried through to
its final passage.
A formal and solemn protest from the minority, signed by nine members
and entered on the journal of the House of Representatives, set forth
the leading objections to re-submission. 1. The Assembly had no
delegated power to pass such a measure. 2. The act was designed to
control rather than ascertain public sentiment. 3. The Constitution of
1844 had been _deliberately_ rejected by the people. 4. No memorial
indicating a change of opinion had been sent up by the people since
the election. 5. In the April election the people had not been misled;
they voted intelligently; and their ballots were cast against the
Constitution itself. The conditions imposed by Congress "doubtless had
influence in different sections of the Territory, both for and against
it. What was lost on the North and South by the change, was
practically made up by the vote of the center where the Congressional
boundaries are more acceptable than those defined in the
Constitution." 6. The question of territory being a "minor
consideration," the Constitution was rejected principally on account
of its inherent defects. 7. Under no consideration should the
Constitution of 1844 be again submitted to the people since it
embodied so many objectionable provisions.
Although the bill for re-submission had passed both branches of the
Assembly by a safe majority, Governor Chambers did not hesitate to
withhold his assent. On June 6 he returned it to the Council. But it
is difficult to ascertain the precise grounds upon which the Governor
withheld his approval, since his message deals with conditions rather
than objections. In the first place he reviewed the conditions under
which the Constitution of 1844 had at the same time been submitted to
Congress and to the people of the Territory. Then he pointed out that,
whereas a poll was taken on the Constitution according to law,
no provision had been made for a separate poll on the conditions
imposed by Congress. This, he thought, produced such confusion in the
public mind as to cause the defeat of the Constitution. To be sure, he
had proposed and was still in favor of submitting the question of a
Convention to the people. But he would not now insist on such a
policy. He freely admitted that the Legislative Assembly had the power
to pass the measure before him. At the same time it seemed to him
that, should the Constitution of 1844 be re-submitted to the people,
it would simply give rise to confusion in attempts to reconcile and
harmonize the various provisions of the statutes of the Territory, the
act of Congress, and the Constitution.
In the face of the Governor's veto the bill to re-submit the
Constitution passed both branches of the Assembly by the requisite
two-thirds majority, and on June 10, 1845, was declared by the
Secretary of the Territory to be a law. It provided "that the
Constitution as it came from the hands of the late Convention" be once
more submitted to the people for their ratification or rejection. It
directed that a poll be opened for that purpose at the general
election to be held on the first Monday of August, 1845. The votes of
the electors were to be given _viva voce_. Furthermore, it was
expressly provided that the ratification of the Constitution "shall
not be construed as an acceptance of the boundaries fixed by Congress
in the late act of admission, and the admission shall not be deemed
complete until whatever condition may be imposed by Congress,
shall be ratified by the people."
Thus the people were again asked to pass upon the Constitution of
1844. The campaign of the summer of 1845 was very much like the
campaign of the spring. All of the leading arguments both for and
against the Constitution were repeated in the press and on the stump.
The parties divided on the same lines as before, except that the Whigs
in their opposition had the assistance of a much larger Democratic
contingent.
One is surprised to find, in connection with the boundary question,
little or no mention of "slavery," the "balance of power," or the
"small State policy." Indeed the people of Iowa seemed wholly
indifferent to these larger problems of National Politics. It is
perhaps the most remarkable fact in the fascinating history of the
Constitution of 1844 that, in the dispute over boundaries, the parties
did not join issue on common grounds. Congress, on the one hand,
desired to curtail the boundaries of Iowa for the purpose of creating
a greater number of Northern States to balance the slave States of the
South; whereas the people of Iowa protested against such curtailment
not because of any balance-of-power considerations, but simply because
they wanted a large State which would embrace the fertile regions of
the Missouri on the West and of the St. Peters on the North.
Augustus C. Dodge naturally received a good deal of criticism and
abuse about this time on account of his March letter advising
the acceptance of the boundaries proposed by Congress. By the Whigs he
was set down as "a deserter of the people's cause." Even the
Legislative Assembly, which was Democratic, resolved "that the
Delegate in Congress be instructed to insist unconditionally on the
Convention boundaries, and in no case to accept anything short of the
St. Peters on the North, and the Missouri on the West, as the Northern
and Western limits of the future State of Iowa." Mr. Dodge was not the
man to oppose the known wishes of his constituents; and so, after June
10, 1845, he was found earnestly advocating the larger boundaries.
One of the most interesting phases of the campaign was a surprising
revelation in regard to the attitude and ambitions of the people
living in the Northern part of the Territory--particularly the
inhabitants of the city and county of Dubuque. In 1844 the people of
this region had been in favor of extending the boundary as far North
as the St. Peters; and in the Constitutional Convention of that year
Mr. Langworthy, of Dubuque, had gone so far as to advocate the
forty-fifth parallel of latitude as a line of division. But on April
26, 1845, the _Bloomington Herald_ declared that a proposition had
gone out from Dubuque to divide the Territory on the North by a line
running due West from the Mississippi between the counties of Jackson
and Clinton and townships eighty-three and eighty-four. Later it was
said that the _Dubuque Transcript_ was altogether serious in reference
to this proposed division.
These charges were not without foundation; for the records of Congress
show that in May, 1846, the Speaker of the House of Representatives
"presented a memorial of the citizens of the Territory of Iowa north
of the forty-second degree of north latitude, praying for the
establishment of a new territorial government, extending from the
Mississippi river between the parallel of forty-two degrees and the
northern boundary line of the United States. Also a memorial of Thomas
McKnight and others, citizens of Dubuque county, in said Territory of
like import."
The official returns of the August election showed that the
Constitution of 1844 had been rejected a second time. But the majority
against its ratification had been cut down by at least one half. Angry
with disappointment the editor of the _Iowa Capital Reporter_
declared that its defeat was due to "the pertinacious and wilful
misrepresentation of the Whig press relative to the boundaries."