64 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



whose gigantic size precluded the rigorous execution of law by single 

 territorial establishments. In the first session of the Thirty-fifth Congress, 

 185 7-1858, it was finally proposed to divide two of these territories, 

 creating Arizona in the western end of New Mexico and Nevada in the 

 western end of Utah,' while the next session brought a bill to erect 

 Dakota in the northern end of Nebraska.^ The division was required 

 by various facts of population and migration. The location of the great 

 Pacific trails, the discovery of silver-mines, the willingness to restrict 

 the territory of the Mormons, all appear as inspiring a further subdivision 

 of the scantily populated West. 



The Congress of 1857-1858 passed no laws for the erection of new 

 territories in the areas marked out in the debates. There is some internal 

 evidence throughout these and later debates that the young sponsors of 

 the new Republican party were interested in territorial development as a 

 means of continuing the antislavery argument which all parties had 

 agreed in 1854 to forget. But whatever may have been the motives 

 underlying the agitation, the arguments make entirely clear the facts 

 that the boundaries of 1854 were only temporary and that the great, 

 shapeless territories must some day be divided. The session of 1857- 

 1858 contented itself with the suggestion of two new territories of Nevada 

 and Arizona; when the same Congress met for its second session in 

 1858-1859, two more new territorial projects, those of Dakota and Jeffer- 

 son, had been added to its fist. 



In the migrations to the far West, beginning to be heavy in the forties, 

 the two principal routes had branched from the Missouri River near its 

 northern bend on the western boundary of the state of Missouri. From 

 this point the northern or Oregon route had run westwardly along the 

 Platte, the southern or Santa Fe route along the Arkansas. And at the 

 one hundred and second meridian the two trails were already two hundred 

 and fifty miles apart, and were deviating still further to the northwest 

 and southwest respectively.^ The angle between the trails covered the 



' Congressional Globe, 35 Cong., i Sess., pp. 62, 2090. 



'Congressional Globe, December 21, 1858, p. 159. 



3 An act of Congress of May ig. 1846, pro\ided for the erection of forts along the Oregon route. Fort 

 Kearney was established on the Platte 310 miles west of Fort Leavenworth, and Fort Laramie 337 miles 

 beyond Fort Kearney, in 184S. Ex. Doc. 5, 31 Cong., 1 Sess., Serial 569, pp. 94. 22S- Fort Kearney 

 became the most important post in the northern route and was not abandoned until 1871. House Ex. 



