of said State for the sole purpose of giving the assent” therein required; that as soon as such assent should be given the President of the United States should announce the same by proclamation, and that thereupon, and without any further proceeding on the part of Congress, the admission of the State into the Union as one of the United States of America should be considered as complete, and the Senators and Representatives in the Congress of the United States entitled to take their seats without further delay.

In the month of November last I received a communication inclosing the official proceedings of a convention assembled at Ann Arbor, in Michigan, on the 26th of September, 1836, all which (marked A) are herewith laid before you.  It will be seen by these papers that the convention therein referred to was elected by the people of Michigan pursuant to an act of the State legislature passed on the 25th of July last in consequence of the above-mentioned act of Congress, and that it declined giving its assent to the fundamental condition prescribed by Congress, and rejected the same.

On the 24th instant the accompanying paper (marked B), with its inclosure, containing the proceedings of a convention of delegates subsequently elected and held in the State of Michigan, was presented to me.  By these papers, which are also herewith submitted for your consideration, it appears that elections were held in all the counties of the State, except two, on the 5th and 6th days of December instant, for the purpose of electing a convention of delegates to give the assent required by Congress; that the delegates then elected assembled in convention on the 14th day of December instant, and that on the following day the assent of the body to the fundamental condition above stated was formally given.

This latter convention was not held or elected by virtue of any act of the Territorial or State legislature; it originated from the people themselves, and was chosen by them in pursuance of resolutions adopted in primary assemblies held in the respective counties.  The act of Congress, however, does not prescribe by what authority the convention shall be ordered, or the time when or the manner in which it shall be chosen.  Had these latter proceedings come to me during the recess of Congress, I should therefore have felt it my duty, on being satisfied that they emanated from a convention of delegates elected in point of fact by the people of the State for the purpose required, to have issued my proclamation thereon as provided by law; but as the authority conferred on the President was evidently given to him under the expectation that the assent of the convention might be laid before him during the recess of Congress and to avoid the delay of a postponement until the meeting of that body, and as the circumstances which now attend the case are in other respects peculiar and such as could not have been foreseen when the act of June 15, 1836, was passed, I deem it most agreeable to the intent of that law, and proper for other reasons, that the whole subject should be submitted to the decision of Congress.  The importance of your early action upon it is too obvious to need remark.