government until the 7th of the ensuing October, and even then failed
to make the first step in its legal organization, that of ordering the
census or enumeration of its inhabitants, until so late a day that the
election of the members of the legislative assembly did not take place
until the 30th of March, 1855, nor its meeting until the 2d of July,
1855. So that for a year after the Territory was constituted by the act
of Congress and the officers to be appointed by the Federal Executive
had been commissioned it was without a complete government, without any
legislative authority, without local law, and, of course, without the
ordinary guaranties of peace and public order.

In other respects the governor, instead of exercising constant vigilance
and putting forth all his energies to prevent or counteract the
tendencies to illegality which are prone to exist in all imperfectly
organized and newly associated communities, allowed his attention to be
diverted from official obligations by other objects, and himself set
an example of the violation of law in the performance of acts which
rendered it my duty in the sequel to remove him from the office of chief
executive magistrate of the Territory.

Before the requisite preparation was accomplished for election of a
Territorial legislature, an election of Delegate to Congress had been
held in the Territory on the 29th day of November, 1854, and the
Delegate took his seat in the House of Representatives without
challenge. If arrangements had been perfected by the governor so that
the election for members of the legislative assembly might be held in
the several precincts at the same time as for Delegate to Congress, any
question appertaining to the qualification of the persons voting as
people of the Territory would have passed necessarily and at once under
the supervision of Congress, as the judge of the validity of the return
of the Delegate, and would have been determined before conflicting
passions had become inflamed by time, and before opportunity could have
been afforded for systematic interference of the people of individual
States.

This interference, in so far as concerns its primary causes and its
immediate commencement, was one of the incidents of that pernicious
agitation on the subject of the condition of the colored persons held
to service in some of the States which has so long disturbed the repose
of our country and excited individuals, otherwise patriotic and