THE TERRITORY OF COLORADO^ 



By Frederic L. Paxson 



It is commonly taken for granted that the Kansas-Nebraska legis- 

 lation of 1854 settled the territorial question in the United States, and 

 that the territorial question itself was only a single phase of the larger 

 question of slavery. The tyranny of the slavery problem over the his- 

 torical mind has completely subordinated the problem of the expansion 

 of the agricultural West, the settlement of new areas, and the providing 

 of adequate institutions of government for the citizens of the frontier. 

 The erection of the territory of Colorado in 1861 is itself proof that slavery 

 was not in its own day destructive of interest in all other topics, however 

 it may have impeded their consideration, and is an illuminative precedent 

 in showing the manner in which territorial problems have been forced 

 upon Congress and ultimately adjusted. 



The acquisition of the southwest at the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo 

 in 1848 extended the legal frontier of the United States far beyond the 

 frontier of actual settlement and compelled Congress to give serious 

 thought to the subdivision of large and relatively uninhabited areas of 

 pubhc lands. The act of May 30, 1854, which has commonly been 

 misunderstood as saying the last important word upon the territorial 

 question, merely marked the end of the earliest period of prehminary 

 adjustment. The residuum of the Louisiana purchase and the lands 

 acquired through the Mexican War were at last distributed among two 

 states, California and Texas, and four territories. The two territorial 

 organizations of New Mexico and Utah covered the whole area between 

 California and the Rocky Mountains, while the fortieth parallel divided 

 most of the unorganized area east of the mountains into Kansas and 

 Nebraska territories. 



The distribution in effect at the end of the session of 1854 was only 

 prehminary, and within three years Congress had begun to consider the 

 division of three of these territories, Nebraska, Utah, and New Mexico, 



' Reprinted from The American Historical Review, Vol. XII, No. i, Oct., 1906, pp. 53-65. 



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