Page:Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction.djvu/330

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316
ARE THE STATES EQUAL

part of said state to Congress, shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law that shall conflict, in short, with the inter-state rights of citizens as provided for by the constitu- tion of the United States.^ And the assent of the legislature of the state to this condition was demanded and was duly given. Arkansas organized a state government without waiting for an enabling act. Congress admitted her, upon the express condition that the people of the state should not interfere with the primary dis- posal of the public lands, nor tax them while United States property. This proceeding, however, was evidently unsatisfactory ; for a supplementary act was passed in which these same conditions were made, with others, the equivalents for the custom- ary land grants for education and other public pur- poses, and were put in the form of an irrevocable ordinance.^ The difficulty between Ohio and Michigan about their dividing boundary ^ accounts for the express condition in the act admitting the latter that her boundaries shall be as described in the act. Iowa was admitted on the fundamental condition that the assent of the township electors should be given to the act of admission. From this time (1846) to the admission of Nevada, in 1864,

3 Statutes at Large, 645. 
Poore, Constitutions, I, 118. 
  • Michigan, by Judge Cooley, in American Commonwealths

series, p. 214 <•/ seq.