ention 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.

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