Custer Weekly Chronicle

The talk of organizing the northern sections of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan into the commonwealth of Superior will probably end in talk. There are numerous obstacles in the way, the chief of them all being the fact that it is necessary to deal with the legislatures. The constitution of the United States provides that congress shall admit new states into the union but no state shall be formed or created within the jurisdiction of any other state, nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states or parts of states without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned, as well as of congress. This is where the rub comes. The first step will be the hard one: after the consent of the legislatures of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan has been obtained the rest will be easy. There are some precedents for this action, but not many. Kentucky was created out of Virginia and West Virginia. The legislature, in the case of Kentucky, gave its consent, but the admission of West Virginia was brought about during the late war in a somewhat irregular manner, the forty western counties organizing a state government and electing United States senators who were admitted to seats as senators from the state of Kanawha. Later the name was changed to West Virginia by a constitutional convention. These proceedings had a flavor of irregularity and there is even now trouble between the "Old Dominion" and West Virginia over the proper proportion each should bear of the state debt.