68 UNIVERSITY or COLORADO STUDIES 



The migration of 1859 multiplied the population of Denver many 

 times and increased the need for orderly government as well by the 

 character as by the number of its inhabitants. A knowledge that no aid 

 from Congress could be had for at least a year revived the local move- 

 ment until it induced a group of pioneers to hold a caucus.^ with WilHam 

 Larimer in the chair, on April 11, to consider the local situation.^ As a 

 result of this caucus a call issued for a convention of representatives of 

 the neighboring mining-camps to meet in the same place four days later. 

 And on April 15, 1859, the camps of Fountain City, El Dorado and El 

 Paso, Arapahoe, Auraria, and Denver met through their delegates, 

 "being fully impressed with the belief, from early and recent precedents, 

 of the power and benefits and duty of self-government," and feeling an 

 imperative necessity "for an immediate and adequate government, 

 for the large population now here and soon to be among us ... . and 

 also beheving that a territorial government is not such as our large and 

 pecuUarly situated population demands."^ 



The deliberations thus informally started ended in a formal call for 

 a constitutional convention to meet in Denver on the first Monday in 

 June for the purpose, as an address to the people stated, of framing a 

 constitution for a new "State of Jefferson." "Shall it be," the address 

 demanded, "the government of the knife and the revolver, or shall we 

 unite in forming here in our golden country, among the ravines and 

 gulches of the Rocky Mountains, and the fertile valleys of the Arkansas 

 and the Platte, a new and independent State?"-' With a generosity 

 characteristic of the frontier the convention determined the boundaries 

 of the prospective state as the one hundred and second and one hundred 

 and tenth meridians of longitude, and the thirty-seventh and forty-third 

 parallels of latitude — an area including, in addition to the present state 

 of Colorado, large portions of Utah and Nebraska and nearly half of 

 Wyoming. The arrival in Denver, a week after this convention, of 



' Hall, I. 184; Smiley, 306; Bancroft, 403. 



' The first issue of the Rocky Mountain News, April 23, 1859, contains an account of these meetings 

 and texts of the resolutions and addresses. The newspaper at once becomes an invaluable source. Smiley, 

 306-309. 



3 The address was drawn by a committee of five, and was printed in the Rocky Mountain News, 

 May 7, 1859. Smiley, 309. 



