THE BOUNDARIES OF COLORADO 93 



Mineola, 1 the boundaries claimed for the State of Kansas were those of 

 the territory, extending westward to the mountains and New Mexico. 

 But the Wyandotte constitution 2 substituted for this the twenty-fifth 

 meridian of longitude, west from Washington, and the Kansas act 

 accepted this statement of the case. 3 Colorado was for the second time 

 deprived of even the form of a territorial government. 



When Kansas was admitted, the flimsy government of the "terri- 

 tory" of Jefferson had nearly run its course. For two sessions that 

 government had conducted a legislature, and its governor had used 

 every effort to make his administration effective. But the men in the 

 mining camps had evaded the jurisdiction of the "territory," and the 

 support of the Denver inhabitants had never been enthusiastic. When 

 the Kansas act cut off Colorado, there was already before Congress 

 and near to completion a bill that was to bring peace and termination 

 to the "territorial" government. 



A bill to erect a new territory west of Kansas and Nebraska, out of 

 lands taken from those territories and New Mexico and Utah, had 

 appeared in Congress in the session of 1859-60. But other and stronger 

 interests had prevented the passage of the act at this time and had deliv- 

 ered the work over to the next session. In 1860-61 the act was taken up 

 again and passed. 



The Colorado territorial act became a law on February 28, 1861. 4 

 It accepted as the southern boundary of the territory the thirty-seventh 

 parallel, which had already been drawn between Utah and New Mexico 

 as far east as the Sierra Madre mountains. For the eastern boundary it 

 made use of the western boundary of Kansas, the twenty-fifth meridian 

 from Washington, and continued it north to the forty-first parallel 

 which became the northern boundary of Colorado. On the west Utah 

 was pushed back from the Rockies to the thirty-second meridian to make 

 way for the western half of the new territory. The extravagant claims 



1 Poore, I, 614. ■ Poore, I, 630. 3 Gannett, 125. 



< Poore, I, 212; Gannett, 130; Bancroft, XXV, 413; Hall, I, 262; Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, 

 I, 270. It should be noticed that no portion of Kansas was given to Colorado, as the western end of the 

 former territory was cut off before Colorado was created. And the Wyandotte constitution under which Kansas 

 was admitted, and which first fixed the twenty-fifth meridian as its western boundary, was framed in the summer 

 of 1859 before the idea of a new territory for Colorado had developed in Congress. Cj. Gannett, 125. 



