would be contrary to what is called the Baltimore platform. (Laughter.) I have heard various attempts made to draw some indicative line by which gentlemen could be reconciled to one appropriation and opposed to another. Some say that if we have a river running through three states it assumes such a dignity that it may very well be brought within the cognizance of federal legislation.

Mr. Cass: Your former colleague (Calhoun) said that.

Mr. Butler: Did you take advantage of it?

Mr. Cass: Charge it to South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun maintained that doctrine.

Mr. Butler: Well, if Mr. Calhoun maintained that, I didn't. You go for one state, but not for another.

Mr. Cass: I go for all.

Mr. Butler: Then you quit the platform. (Laughter.)

Mr. Cass: No, I stick to the platform. (Laughter.)

Mr. Butler: I cannot see how that platform can stand and this appropriation for St. Mary's river stand also. Does the St. Mary's river run through more than one state?

Mr. Cass: It runs through Canada.1 (Laughter.)

Mr. Butler: Well, that may be called foreign relations. (Laughter.) If you say this is a war measure, I will be reconciled to it. I can be reconciled to it on the broad ground it is a measure providing for war.

Mr. Cass: That is one of its uses.

-Mr. Butler: Very well, that may distinguish it." (Laughter.)
The bill was thereupon passed.2

Representative George W. Peck, of Michigan, had charge of the bill in the House, and said that it made an appropriation for work that was provided for by the last Congress in the St. Clair Flats bill, which had not, for some reason or other unknown to him, received the sanction of the President.

The bill passed the House May 12, 1856.

President Pierce, on May 19th, vetoed the bill for removal of obstructions to navigation at the Southwest Pass and the St. Clair Flats bill, and exactly ten days after the passage of the bill by the House to deepen the channel over the Flats of St. Mary's river President Pierce returned it with his veto, which was short and explicit.

"The appropriation proposed by this bill is not, in my judgment, a necessary means for the execution of any of the expressly granted powers of the Federal Government. The work contemplated belongs to a general

'Note: Just below the East Neebish, which are the rapids at the foot of Lake George, one channel of the river passes to the northward of St. Joseph's Island into the north channel and thence into Georgian Bay, Canada.

'Cong. Globe, 1st Sess., 34th Cong., p. 665. Richardson's Messages, Vol. V, p. 386.

class of improvements embracing roads, rivers, and canals, designed to afford additional facilities for intercourse and for the transit of commerce, and no reason has been suggested to my mind for excepting it from the objections which apply to appropriations by the General Government for deepening the channels of rivers wherever shoals or other obstacles impede their navigation, and thus obstruct communication and impose restraints. upon commerce within the states or between the states or territories of the Union. I therefore submit it to the reconsideration of Congress on account of the same objections which have been presented in my previous communications on the subject of internal improvements.”1

The veto message of President Pierce concerning the Southwest Pass was sent to the Senate on May 19th, 1856.2 Able men combatted the views of the President. Senator Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, afterwards Attorney-General in the first Confederate cabinet, and later prominent at the English bar, on May 21, 1856, made a vigorous and brilliant attack on the message of the President.3 Senator Mason, of Virginia, Senator Toombs, of Georgia; Senator Butler, of South Carolina, and a few other Senators came to the support of the President. Senator John Slidell, of Louisiana, spoke in favor of the bill, and argued that it was constitutional. The question which he argued was not as serious as the question of procedure under international law of which he was the cause while on the Trent in Bahama channel on November 8, 1861.5 The "twin" bills for the Mississippi and St. Mary's river involved the same constitutional questions, and had been marked about the same time by similar executive disapprobation.

The venerable Cass was nearly seventy-four years of age when, on July 7, 1856, he delivered in the Senate an argument showing no signs of impaired mental vigor. He was familiar with the two rivers. He had traveled the waters of each, and had descended the Mississippi in a birch bark canoe two thousand miles when there was hardly a white man above St. Louis. He spoke upon the Mississippi river bill, but arguments upon one bill, as he remarked, were equally applicable to the other, excepting local differences. In a speech occupying several pages of the Congressional Globe he gave a luminous exposition of the power of Congress under the Constitution to make the desired appropriation. Closing his argument, he spoke of the canal: "It is just one year since it was opened. I was among those who had the good fortune to be on board the first steamer

'Richardson's Messages, Vol. V, pp. 386-387.

Richardson's Messages, Vol. V, p. 386.

Globe, 1st Sess., 34th Cong., Pt. 2, p. 1270.

'Globe, 1st Sess., 34th Cong., Pt. 2, p. 1542.

"The Civil War and the Constitution, Burgess, Vol. I, Globe, Appendix, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 740-749.

P. 273.

that passed through it, and a most interesting event it was for me to enter Lake Superior by means of this triumph of human skill and industry and to sail over its broad expanse by means of another. I had traversed its mighty waters years gone by in that most fragile of all vehicles, an Indian birch canoe, exposed to its alternations of storm and of calm. Everything reposed in the solitary magnificence of nature, not a keel plowed its surface, not a civilized man had fixed his residence upon its borders; a few Indians and a few animals supplying their wants were all the signs of life the traveler encountered. But all this is changed, a new chapter has opened in the history of that country. The white man is there with his energy, his industry and his ceaseless activity, and he is opening farms and building towns and villages, converting the wilderness into the abode of civilization and Christianity with churches and school houses, and whatever else is necessary to human improvement, and penetrating the bowels of the earth and laying bare its hidden treasures. The country upon Lake Superior is one of the richest mineral regions in the world. Its prodigious resources. of copper and of iron of the most superior quality are only beginning to be known, but they are already assuming a national importance. And yet it seems but the other day since an insulated mass of copper upon the Ontonagon, which I sought in vain to find, but which had become known through the reports of Indians, to whom it was a Manitou, and which is now in the open space between the buildings of the War and Naval Departments, was the principal evidence we had of the treasures hidden in the earth. Every day they are more and more developed, and the most sanguine expectation seems destined to be overcome by the result."

The 7th day of July, 1856, on motion of Senator Cass, the Senate proceeded to the reconsideration of the bill making improvements for deepening the channel over the flats of the St. Mary's river, which had been returned by the President with his objections, and the question being submitted, "Shall the bill pass, the President's objections to the contrary notwithstanding?" was answered by yeas 28, and nays 10.1

The bill was at once sent to the House, and on the next day, July 8, 1856, it agreed to the passage of the bill by a vote of 136 yeas and 54 nays,2 and as more than two-thirds of the Senate and House voted in favor thereof, the appropriation was made.

'Cong. Globe, 1st Sess., 34th Cong., p. 1550.

'Cong. Globe, 1st Sess., 34th Cong., Pt. 2, p. 1565.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WEITZEL LOCK OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY

ONE.

HE net registered tonnage passing through the canal had increased from 106,296 tons in 1855 to 571,438 tons in 1864, and Superintendent G. W. Brown in that year recommended the construction of another lock, and in 1867 and 1868 Superintendent Guy H. Carleton reported that it was necessary to deepen and enlarge the canal. The tonnage had in 1870 increased to 690,826 tons. March 11, 1870, Gen. A. A. Humphreys, Chief of Engineers, submitted a report to the Secretary of War calling attention to the reports of Brevet Major-General Cram of 1867 and 1869, in which he had recommended an additional lock and the deepening of the canal.

General O. M. Poe, on May 13, 1870, relieved the officer in charge of the works of improvement of the River St. Marys, and after the appropriation by Congress in July, 1870, of the sum of $150,000, he submitted a project in August which, as amended, embraced a new lock, entrances thereto and the widening and deepening of the canal. The lower entrance was to be formed by excavating out to deep water and revetting the channel with pier work. For this purpose there was required the water front of certain private land claims owned by individuals. The price asked therefor was higher than General Poe was willing the Government should pay, and in January, 1871, he suggested to Governor Baldwin the law of the State for the condemnation of property for Government Light Houses, as a precedent for a law for the condemnation of property for uses of the canal. The suggestion was probably due to his experience when he was Secretary of the Light House Board and interested in obtaining a tract of land in the State of California known as "Lime Point" as a site for a light house. A law of the State of California said to have been drawn by Gen. Poe was passed in 1859 for the taking of lands for those purposes and authorized the United States to proceed in a Court of the State to condemn land for the United States, and this law had been held constitutional.2

The Legislature of Michigan, by the law of April 12, 1871, provided for

Sketch by Alfred Noble, Assistant Engineer. Report of Chief of Engineers of 1877. Gilmer vs. Lime Point, 18 Cal., 229, A. D. 1861.

the appointment of commissioners to procure lands for the enlargement of the canal, who were given power to fix the value and to condemn the same to the use of the State. This law soon became ineffectual by reason of the decision of the Supreme Court of the State1 holding unconstitutional the Light House Act upon which the act of April, 1871, was based, an opinion which differed from the California case, of which Gen. Poe had knowledge.

Said Justice Cooley:

"Under the division of powers between the United States and the individual states, each has its sphere of sovereigntv. within which it moves.

and operates without let or hindrance from the other, and within that sphere it employs the eminent domain wherever needful to the complete and effectual exercise of its powers, and with as little occasion or necessity for the permission or assistance of the other as if the two governments were wholly foreign to each other, instead of being constructed as parts of one harmonious system. For the one to enter the sphere of the other and employ its officers and machinery in the exercise of its eminent domain for the benefit of the other would not only be as much without warrant, but

'Trombley vs. Humphrey, 23 Mich., 471 (Oct., 1871).