"
He said, "I regret this apparent decline of population in Colorado,
but it is manifest that it is due to emigration which is going out
from that Territory into other regions of the United States, which
either are in fact, or are believed to be by the citizens of Colorado,
richer in mineral wealth and agricultural resources." The President
commented upon the injustice of creating from so small a population a
State with senatorial strength equal to that of the largest State in
the Union. He thought Colorado did not have a population of more than
twenty thousand persons "whereas one hundred and twenty-seven thousand
are required in other States for a single representative in Congress."
The President did not neglect his one constant theme--the unrepresented
condition of the Southern States. He insisted that "so long as eleven
of the old States remain unrepresented in Congress, no new State should
be prematurely and unnecessarily admitted to a participation in the
political power which the Federal Government wields." The strong
minority which had opposed the Colorado bill gave no hope of overriding
the President's veto, which was simply laid on the table and ordered to
be printed.

The bill for the admission of Nebraska came later in the session, not
being introduced for consideration until the 23d of July. It passed
very promptly by a vote of twenty-four to eighteen in the Senate, and
by sixty-two to fifty-two in the House. As in the case of Colorado the
constitution excluded the negro from the right of suffrage, and for
that reason a very considerable proportion of the Republicans of each
branch voted against the bill. The vote was so close in the House that
but for a frank and persuasive statement made by Mr. Rice of Maine,
from the Committee on Territories, it would have been defeated. He
pictured the many evils that would come to the people of Nebraska, now
more than sixty thousand in number, if they could not do for
themselves, as a State, many things which the National Government would
not do for them as a Territory. Under the influence of his speech a
majority of ten was found for the bill, but Congress adjourned the day
after it was finally passed by both branches, and the President quietly
"pocketed" the bill; and thus the earnest and prolonged effort to
create two new States came to naught for the time.

Nothing daunted by the President's veto of the bill admitting Colorado,
and his pocketing the bil