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nd Vice-President?... The President of the United States shall govern this territory as he sees fit till Congress makes further provision.... We have never had a territory governed as the United States is governed.... I do not say that while we sit here to make laws for these territories, we are not bound by every one of those great principles which are intended as general securities for public liberty. But they do not exist in territories till introduced by the authority of Congress.... Our history is uniform in its course. It began with the acquisition of Louisiana. It went on after Florida became a part of the Union. In all cases, under all circumstances, by every proceeding of Congress on the subject and by all judicature on the subject, it has been held that territories belonging to the United States were to be governed by a constitution of their own,... and in approving that constitution the legislation of Congress was not necessarily confined to those principles that bind it when it is exercised in passing laws for the United States itself." Mr. Calhoun, in the course of this debate, asked Mr. Webster for judicial opinion sustaining these views, and Mr. Webster said that "the same thing has been decided by the United States courts over and over again for the last thirty years." I may add that it has been so held over and over again during the subsequent fifty. Mr. Chief Justice Waite, giving the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States (in National Bank _v._ County of Yankton, 101 U.S. 129-132), said: "It is certainly now too late to doubt the power of Congress to govern the Territories. Congress is supreme, and, for all the purposes of this department, has all the powers of the people of the United States, except such as have been expressly or by implication reserved in the prohibitions of the Constitution." Mr. Justice Stanley Matthews of the United States Supreme Court stated the same view with even greater clearness in one of the Utah polygamy cases (Murphy _v._ Ramsey, 114 U.S. 44, 45): "It rests with Congress to say whether in a given case any of the people resident in the Territory shall participate in the election of its officers or the making of its laws. It may take from them any right of suffrage it may previously have conferred, or at any time modify or abridge it, as it may deem expedient.... Their political rights are franchises which they hold as privileges, in the legislative discretio
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