Union territory

“ As by treaty stipulations between the governments of the United States and Great Britain this territory has become a kind of neutral ground, in the occupancy of which the citizens of the United States and the subjects of Great Britain have equal rights, and, as your memorialists humbly conceive, ought to have equal protection: such being the facts, the population of the territory, though promiscuously interspersed, is composed of the subjects of a crown and the citizens of a republic, between whom no common bond of union exists. ”

“ We demand only to go into those Territories upon terms of equality with you, as equals in this great Confederacy, to enjoy the common property of the whole Union, and receive the protection of the common government, until the Territory is capable of coming into the Union as a sovereign State, when it may fix its own institutions to suit itself. ”

“ On the other hand, it was strongly urged that the Western territory had been secured through a war undertaken by all the colonies for the whole country, and that the lands ought to be reserved to reward the continental soldiers, and to secure the debt of the United States. For the sake of union, two of the three dissatisfied commonwealths agreed to the Articles of Confederation. ”

“ The Federalists maintained that the central government, representing the States in union, might, if it pleased, as a consequence of its inherent sovereignty, hold the rest of America in its possession and govern it as England governed Jamaica or as Spain was governing Louisiana, but without the consent of the States could not admit such new territory into the Union. ”

“ Rhode-Island, Delaware, New-Jersey, and Maryland insisted upon some provision for establishing the western boundaries of the states; and for the recognition of the unsettled western territory, as the property of the Union. ”

“ If, for the whole or part of the territory, the League of Nations decides in favour of union with France, Germany hereby agrees to cede to France in accordance with the decision of the League of Nations all rights and title over the territory specified by the League ”

“ The whole military and civil force of the Union is to retain its guardianship over the South, during the transition, and to remain pledged to the maintenance of the status of freedom united with loyalty, until, by the growth and stability of the new order of things, the conquered territory shall dispense with its continued intervention. ”

“ The augmentation of our population with the expansion of our Union and increased number of States have produced effects in certain branches of our system which merit the attention of Congress. Some of our arrangements, and particularly the judiciary establishment, were made with a view to the original thirteen States only. Since then the United States have acquired a vast extent of territory; eleven new States have been admitted into the Union, and Territories have been laid off for three others, which will likewise be admitted at no distant day. ”

“ But this proposition was successfully resisted by the representatives from the Northern States, who, regardless of the statute line, insisted upon applying restriction to the new territory generally, whether lying north or south of it, thereby repealing it as a legislative compromise, and, on the part of the North, persistently violating the compact, if compact there was. ”

“ Owing to the federative character of our government, the great geographical extent of our territory, and the diversity of the pursuits of our citizens in different parts of the union, it has so happened that two great interests have sprung up, standing directly opposed to each other. ”

“ It constitutes the peculiar strength of American institutions. These differences of interest are implanted by nature and must exist whether the several sections are organized into separate nations, or united under one government. Wide extent of territory involves the union of these several sections under better safeguards for the protection of their conflicting interests than could be obtained under separate governments. ”

“ Is not a general and strong government necessary for their interest? If ever nations had inducements to peace, the Eastern States now have. New York and Pennsylvania anxiously look forward for the fur trade. How can they obtain it but by union? Can the western posts be got or retained without union? How are the little states inclined? They are not likely to disunite. Their weakness will prevent them from quarrelling. Little men are seldom fond of quarrelling among giants. Is there not a strong inducement to union, while the British are on one side and the Spaniards on the other? ”

“ Such an union would at once decisively settle the question of races; it would enable all the Provinces to co-operate for all common purposes; and, above all, it would form a great and powerful people, possessing the means of securing good and responsible government for itself, and which, under the protection of the British Empire, might in some measure counterbalance the preponderant and increasing influence of the United States on the American continent. ”

“ The old charters of Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of territory extending from the Atlantic westward to the Pacific. ”

“ And if in the course of events our northern neighbors, a people like our own and practiced in self-government, should express a wish to join this Union—a consummation which our present policy of imperialistic adventure is apt rather to put off than to bring on—we all would welcome them with heart and hand. ”

“ Assuming that at some period, near or distant, the British North American Provinces, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, unite in a federal or legislative union, and thus become too great and too strong for attack, that next best alternative would point to such arrangements, as respects the North-west, as would lead on to and promote this union, and not stand in its way. ”

“ I suppose the Union can be left to take care of itself. As much real union as there is, the [206] statutes will be sure to express; as much disunion as there is, no statute can long conceal. Under the Union I suppose the fact to be that there are really two nations, the North and the South. It is not slavery that severs them, it is climate and temperament. The South does not like the North, slavery or no slavery, and never did. The North likes the South well enough, for it knows its own advantages. ”

“ The Union has driven out or indemnified the Indians. The Union has built fortifications, constructed shipyards, light-houses, and harbors. It is the Union that has made all this wilderness valuable and rendered its settlement possible. It is the men of the North as well as those of the South who have cleared and planted these lands, and transformed them from barren solitudes to a flourishing condition. Show us, if you can, in old Europe, where unity is entirely the result of conquest, a title to property so sacred, a country which is more the common work of one people! ”

“ We declared ourselves a nation by a joint, not by several acts; and when the terms of our confederation were reduced to form, it was in that of a solemn league of several states, by which they agreed that they would, collectively, form one nation, for the purpose of conducting some certain domestic concerns, and all foreign relations. In the instrument forming that Union, is found an article which declares that "every state shall abide by the determinations of Congress on all questions which, by that Confederation, should be submitted to them." ”

“ Year after year they had memorialized Congress, asking the Government to take pity on them, and give the necessary notice to Great Britain that the convention of mutual occupancy was at an end. After repeated disappointments from promises long deferred in fulfillment, in 1846 the desired notice was given, and a few months after the boundary question was settled: the United States retaining the whole of the territory south of the forty-ninth parallel, and giving up their claim to the coast lying north of that and south of the fifty-fourth parallel—thus, no doubt, averting bloodshed. ”

“ If the principle of this decision be applicable as between different portions of one and the same empire, with how much more force does it apply as between nations or Governments entirely separate, and absolutely independent of each other? For in this precise attitude the States of this Union stand with reference to this subject, and with reference to the tenure of every description of property vested under their laws and held within their territorial jurisdiction. ”

“ The justification of all such forms of relationship must, it would seem, be found in the fundamental right which every independent state, whether a justiciar state or not, has to the preservation of its existence and its leadership or judgeship—that is, in the right of self-preservation, which, when necessary to be invoked, overrules all other rights. On this theory must, it would seem, be explained the relations between the American Union and its Territories between Germany and Alsace-Lorraine, and between England and Ireland. ”

“ Neither has any Northern state so much as inquired of the people of any Southern state, either as to the cause of their offense or as to the terms and conditions upon which they would be willing to remain in the Union. ”

“ The North believes in the Government and in the Federal system, and the North believes that when a State is admitted into the Union it becomes a part—an integral part—of the Nation; that there was a welding, that the State, so far as sovereignty is concerned, is lost in the Union, and that the people of that State become citizens of the whole country. ”

“ But he saw clearly the resources as well as the rights of the Colonies, and was satisfied that, if power were not consolidated under the constitutional auspices of England, it would be transferred to the other side of the Atlantic. Here his words are prophetic:—
"The whole train of events, the whole course of business, must perpetually bring forward into practice, and necessarily in the end into establishment, either an American or a British union. There is no other alternative." ”

“ While the people of the Southern States confine their attention to their own affairs, not presuming officiously to intermeddle with the social institutions of the Northern States, too many of the inhabitants of the latter are permanently organized in associations to inflict injury on the former by wrongful acts, which would be cause of war as between foreign powers and only fail to be such in our system because perpetrated under cover of the Union. ”

“ The Union existed before the Constitution, which was ordained and established among other things to form 'a more perfect Union.' Prior to that event, it is clear that the Union, declared by the Articles of Confederation to be 'perpetual,' was the sole possessor of external sovereignty, and in the Union it remained without change save in so far as the Constitution in express terms qualified its exercise. ”

“ The North cannot but perceive, that it has yielded to the South a superiority of representatives, already amounting to twenty-five, beyond its due proportion; and the South imagines, that, with all this preponderance in representation, the other parts of the Union enjoy a more perfect protection of their interests, than her own. The West feels her growing power and weight in the Union ”

“ The best interests and present and future prosperity of British North America will be promoted by a Federal Union under the Crown of Great Britain, provided such Union can be effected on principles just to the several provinces. ”

“ The only sort of union that is quite likely to come about is the joining by the Americans of the United Empire, or Confederation of all English-speaking nations, with which we have been connected for some years. ”

“ Moreover, if in what has been said we are correct, the relationship at present existing between the American Union and the Insular regions, is that of de facto Justiciary Union, and the American Congress, under the lead of President McKinley and President Roosevelt, has acted, with reference to these regions, according to the principles of the American system. ”

“ Though the colonies had a common origin, and owed a common allegiance, and the inhabitants of each were British subjects, they had no direct political connexion with each other. Each was independent of all the others; each, in a limited sense, was sovereign within its own territory. There was neither alliance nor confederacy between them. The assembly of one province could not make laws for another; nor confer privileges, which were to be enjoyed or exercised in another, farther than they could be in any independent foreign state. ”

“ Every colony has thus as full power over its own affairs as it could have if it were a member of even the loosest federation, and much fuller than would belong to it under the Constitution of the United States, being free even to tax at its pleasure the commodities imported from the mother country. Their union with Great Britain is the slightest kind of federal union; but not a strictly equal federation, the mother country retaining to itself the powers of a federal government, though reduced in practice to their very narrowest limits. ”