It has the power to
establish a Federal judiciary. To that Federal judiciary, from these
local courts, may come up to be decided questions with regard to the
laws of the United States and the Constitution of the United States.
These, combined, give power to establish a temporary government,
sufficient, perhaps, for the simple wants of the inhabitants of a
Territory, until they shall acquire the population, until they shall
have the resources and the interests which justify them in becoming a
State. I am sustained in this view of the case by an opinion of the
Supreme Court of the United States in 1845, in the case of Pollard's
Lessee _vs_. P. Hagan (3 Howard, 222, 223), in which the Court say:
"Taking the legislative acts of the United States, and the States of
Virginia and Georgia, and their deeds of cession to the United States,
and giving to each separately, and to all jointly, a fair
interpretation, we must come to the conclusion that it was the intention
of the parties to invest the United States with the eminent domain of
the country ceded, both national and municipal, for the purposes of
temporary government; and to hold it in trust for the performance of the
stipulations and conditions expressed in the deeds of cession and the
legislative acts connected with them."
This was a question of land. It was land lying between high and low
water, over which the United States claimed to have and to exercise
authority, because of the terms on which Alabama had been admitted into
the Union.
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