Problems of Expansion: As Considered in Papers and AddressesReid, Whitelaw
History
Problems of Expansion: As Considered in Papers and Addresses
Reid, Whitelaw
United States -- Colonial question
Is it said that, at any rate, our practice under this clause of the
Constitution has been against the view of the man that wrote it, and in
favor of that quoted from Mr. Chief Justice Marshall? Does anybody
seriously think, then, that though we have held New Mexico, Arizona,
and Oklahoma as territory organized or unorganized, part of it nearly a
century and all of it half a century, our representatives believed all
the while they had no constitutional right to do so? Who imagines that
when the third of a century during which we have already held Alaska is
rounded out to a full century, that unorganized Territory will even
then have any greater prospect than at present of admission as a State?
or who believes our grandchildren will be violating the Constitution in
keeping it out? Who imagines that under the Constitution ordained on
this continent specifically "for the United States of _America_," we
will ever permit the Kanakas, Chinese, and Japanese, who make up a
majority of the population in the Sandwich Islands, to set up a
government of their own and claim admission as an independent and
sovereign State of our American Union? Finally, let me add that
conclusive proof relating not only to practice under the Constitution,
but to the precise construction of the constitutional language as to
the Territories by the highest authority, in the light of long previous
practice, is to be found in another part of the instrument itself,
deliberately added three quarters of a century later. Article XIII
provides that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist
within the United States, _or any place subject to their jurisdiction_."
If the term "the United States," as used in the Constitution, really
includes the Territories as an integral part, as Mr. Chief Justice
Marshall said, what, then, does the Constitution mean by the additional
words, "or any place subject to their jurisdiction"? Is it not too
plain for argument that the Constitution here refers to territory not a
part of the United States, but subject to its jurisdiction--territory,
for example, like the Sandwich Islands or the Philippines?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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