the very time when Congress was engaged in enacting the bill now
under consideration the legislature passed an act excluding negroes and
mulattoes from the right to sit as jurors. This bill was vetoed by the
governor of the Territory, who held that by the laws of the United
States negroes and mulattoes are citizens, and subject to the duties, as
well as entitled to the rights, of citizenship. The bill, however, was
passed, the objections of the governor to the contrary notwithstanding,
and is now a law of the Territory. Yet in the bill now before me, by
which it is proposed to admit the Territory as a State, it is provided
that "there shall be no denial of the elective franchise or any other
rights to any person by reason of race or color, excepting Indians not
taxed."

The incongruity thus exhibited between the legislation of Congress and
that of the Territory, taken in connection with the protest against the
admission of the State hereinafter referred to, would seem clearly to
indicate the impolicy and injustice of the proposed enactment.

It might, indeed, be a subject of grave inquiry, and doubtless will
result in such inquiry if this bill becomes a law, whether it does not
attempt to exercise a power not conferred upon Congress by the Federal
Constitution. That instrument simply declares that Congress may admit
new States into the Union. It nowhere says that Congress may make new
States for the purpose of admitting them into the Union or for any other
purpose; and yet this bill is as clear an attempt to make the
institutions as any in which the people themselves could engage.

In view of this action of Congress, the house of representatives of the
Territory have earnestly protested against being forced into the Union
without first having the question submitted to the people. Nothing could
be more reasonable than the position which they thus assume; and it
certainly can not be the purpose of Congress to force upon a community
against their will a government which they do not believe themselves
capable of sustaining.

The following is a copy of the protest alluded to as officially
transmitted to me:

Whereas it is announced in the public prints that it is the intention
of Congress to admit Colorado as a State into the Union: Therefore,

_Resolved by the house of representatives of the Territory_, That,
representing, as we do, the last and only legal expression of public
opinion on this question, we e