§ 1282. As an incidental power, the constitutional right of the United States to acquire territory would seem so naturally to (low from the sovereignty confided to it, as not to admit of very serious question. The constitution confers on the government of the Union the power of making war, and of making treaties; and it seems consequently to possess the power of acquiring territory either by conquest or treaty.[1] If the cession be by treaty, the terms of that treaty must be obligatory; for it is the law of the land. And if it stipulates for the enjoyment by the inhabitants of the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens of the United States, and for the admission of the territory into the Union, as a state, these stipulations must be equally obligatory. They are within the scope of the constitutional authority of the government, which has the right to acquire territory, to make treaties, and to admit new states into the Union.[2]
§ 1283. The mere recent acquisition of Florida, which has been universally approved, or acquiesced in by all the states, can be maintained only on the same- ↑ Amer. Insur. Co. v. Canter, 1 Peters's Sup. R. 511, 542; id. 517, note, Mr. Justice Johnson's Opinion.
- ↑ Ibid.—In the celebrated Hertford Convention, in January, 1815, a proposition was made to amend the constitution so, as to prohibit the admission of new states into the Union without the consent of two-thirds of both houses of congress. In the accompanying report there is a strong though indirect denial of the power to admit new states without the original limits of the United States.
leaped, and a broad construction adopted for favourite measures, and resistance is to he made to such a construction only, when it shall produce ill effects! His letter to Dr. Sibley (in June, 1803) recently published is decisive, that he thought an amendment of the constitution necessary. Yet he did not hesitate without such amendment to give effect to every measure to carry the treaty into effect during his administration. See 4 Jefferson's Corresp. p. 1, 2, 3, Letter to Dr. Sibley, and Mr. J. Q. Adams's Letter to Mr. Speaker Stevenson, July 11, 1832.
