58 F. L. Pax son also believing that a territorial government is not such as our large and peculiarly situated population demands "} The deliberations thus informally started ended in a formal call for a constitutional convention to meet in Denver on the first Mon- day 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 con- vention 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 lati- tude — 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 William N. Byers was important in that it brought an active advocate of state- hood into the field, and produced on April 23 the first number of the Rocky Mountain Neivs} When the statehood convention, called on April 15, met in Den- ver in June 6, the time was inopportune for concluding the move- ment, for large numbers of the pioneers who had rushed out over the plains for " Pike's Peak or Bust " were already on their dis- consolate way back, "busted ". The first reputation of the diggings was based upon light and exaggerated discoveries of placer gold ; when productive lodes came into view they called for more capital and experience than most of the early prospectors possessed."* The ^ The first issue of the Rocky Mountain AV'irj, April 23, 1859, contains ai. account of these meetings and texts of the resolutions and addresses. The news- paper at once becomes an invaluable source. Smiley, 306-309. ' The address was drawn by a committee of five, and was printed in the Rocky Mountain News, May 7, 1859. Smiley, 309. 3 The State Historical and Natural History Society of Colorado has in its collection a file of the Rocky Mountain Nezvs which is substantially complete, and which has been used in the preparation of this paper. Byers reached Denver April 21 with his printing outfit. He had prepared for prompt issue by printing in Omaha two pages of his first four-page sheet. But even thus the honor of the first issue in Colorado is contested by John L. Merrick's Cherry Creek Pioneer. Both papers appeared first on April 23, 1859, Merrick's first being also his last, for Byers at once bought him out and gained control of the field for himself. Smiley, 247-248; Hall, I. 184; Bancroft, 527, has a useful note upon Colorado journalism.
- Horace Greeley visited Denver, arriving June 6, 1859. Horace Greeley, An
Overland Journey, from New York to San Francisco, in the Summer of iSsg (New York, i860), 137.
