XIV THE CONSTITUTION OF 1844 REJECTED A SECOND TIME

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."