90 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



sion of Texas to the union on December 29, 1845, T the territory between 

 this line and that new line of the Rio Grande and the meridian of its 

 source, which Texas claimed as her western boundary, was added to 

 Colorado, while by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 2 February 2, 1848, 

 the remaining portion of the territory embraced in Colorado was acquired 

 by the United States. 



The division of the territory conquered during the Mexican war and 

 ceded to the United States at its close led to bitter controversy in Congress, 

 between the representatives of the slave-holding and the anti-slavery 

 interests. And the dispute was ended only by the comprehensive meas- 

 ure of Henry Clay, that has come to be known as the Compromise of 

 1850. By this settlement, the territory gained from Mexico, including 

 certain territory lying east of the Rio Grande and claimed by Texas, was 

 cut into the two new territories of Utah and New Mexico. And between 

 these territories so much of Colorado as lay south of the treaty line of 

 1 81 9 was divided. 3 



The act creating the territory of Utah is dated September 9, 1850. 

 The boundaries of this territory, which alone of the new lands had any 

 considerable amount of white population, were the thirty-seventh and 

 forty-second parallels, the eastern boundary of California, and the 

 summit of the Rocky Mountains. 4 All of Colorado west of the Rocky 

 Mountains lay within the territory of Utah. 



The New Mexico act was a part of the general compromise scheme 

 and was passed on December 13, 1850. 5 The greater portion of the 



« H. H. Bancroft, Works, XVI, 383; Gannett, 24, m. This Texan boundary was based on the secret 

 treaties of Santa Anna and various resolutions of the Texan congress. Although the title of Texas to this 

 land was not valid as against Mexico, it has always been considered good as against the United States. — 

 Bancroft, XVI, 270, 309; XVII, 454. 



' Treaties and Conventions, p. 681. 



3 This statement is not literally accurate. That portion of Colorado east of the one hundred and third 

 meridian and north of the thirty-eighth parallel was left without a government. In 1854 a portion of this 

 became a part of Kansas territory. 



* Poore, II, 1236; Bancroft, XVII, 458; XXVI, 453, 454; Gannett, 131. 



s Gannett, 131. Utah extended to the summit of the Rocky Mountains on the east, and the western 

 boundary of the New Mexico "panhandle" was the summit of the Sierra Madre mountains. If we are to 

 understand by "Rocky Mountains," as we must in this case, the Continental Divide, and by "Sierra Madre'' 

 the Front Range, it is evident that between Utah and New Mexico lay a strip of territory bounded on its other 

 sides by the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth parallels. This piece of land was too far west to be in the old 

 Missouri territory, and hence never came under territorial government until the passage of the Colorado Act in 

 1861. But in 1850 the territory had not been accurately surveyed, and it is not likely that Congress realized 

 that it was leaving this fragment of uninhabited waste without a government. The name Sierra Madre is no 

 longer applied to the Front Range. For a good case of the old usage see William Gilpin, Mission of the North 

 American People (second edition, Philadelphia, 1874), p. 16. 



