Aleae Iaciens

Marratt's first act toward this goal was, unsurprisingly, to authorize the colonization of Duligne, the Separatist town south of Dodge City. To that end he also authorized the construction of a railroad between Dodge City and Duligne, and convinced the council to agree to sell parcels of the land around Duligne to anyone willing to move to the area and farm the land.  Marratt's aim was to get colonists to move to the area being settled, and so the sale was actually slightly more complicated than that; it was actually a lease for four years' tenancy of the land, paid in advance, with the requirement that the lessee reside primarily on the leased property for the duration of the lease. If the lessee satisfied this condition for the full four years, the land was transferred into his or her name with no further fees paid, and the colonist assumed full ownership.  (Property in Duligne itself, by contrast, was sold outright.)

By the middle of FY614, Duligne had a population of about 3,000 people, with another 1,500 in the surrounding land, and Marratt began turning his eye to further colonization.  He continued to push bills through the council to encourage emigration, and by the end of his term, at the end of FY617, two new cities had been incorporated west of Dodge City, and the capital's population had dwindled to half of the population it had possessed at the end of James Dodge's life.  Although Marratt wanted to continue his expansionist policies, this was enough for the people of FFC1079, and in FY617 Peter Marratt failed in his re-election bid and was replaced by Langford Keats.  The presidency of Keats was remarkably uneventfull; the four major cities of FFC1079 prospered under his administration, and another - a fishing town on the southwestern coast - was established by Peter Marratt and some of his followers, but for the most part there was no notable growth or activity of any sort during Keats' tenure.  In FY621 he was re-elected by a complacent populace, and followed roughly the same pattern.  His primary contribution to the history of the colony was to sign the bill, passed in FY625, that changed the council president's term from four Federal years to four local years.  (It was, in the grand scheme of things, incidental that this extended his term by nearly three months; the last day of FY625 came around in the beginning of the tenth month of Local Year 35, but Keats did nothing with his extra time but prepare to leave office.)

The first day of LY36 saw the inauguration of the first council president born on FFC1079: Jonathan James Underwood.  Underwood was the 32-year-old son of colonists who had purchased land around Duligne during Peter Marratt's administration, and followed in Marratt's expansionist footsteps.  Underwood was more moderate about his goals than Marratt had been; he intended to establish only one city in his time in office.  He also maintained an aim of reforming the government of FFC1079.  He was distinguished from his predecessors also by being the first council president to have not been a councillor before his presidency; he had been a dark horse in the election race, but his platform of reforms and expansion caught the attention of the public, who were beginning to feel crowded and under-represented.

Underwood met significant resistance to his ideas about restructuring the government from the more conservative councillors, but he had support from the general populace of FFC1079, particularly those from the smaller cities.  The people felt that the council had become too entrenched, and that Dodge City should not be the only city to have a council - or, at least, that the council members should not all come from Dodge City.  They viewed Underwood's election as a good first step, but by and large, they wanted more.

While Underwood hadn't anticipated the council's resistance, he knew that he could exercise influence in other ways.  For the time being he abandoned his goal of founding another northern city, and spent much of his first term as council president traveling to the various cities of FFC1079, giving speeches, and talking with representatives of the people.  In LY39, the council was just about ready to get rid of Underwood, but he was beloved by the people, and was overwhelmingly re-elected to the presidency.  This election was notable not only in that Underwood garnered such a vast majority of the vote - over 85% of the votes cast - but for the political aftermath of the scandal that accompanied it.  The Federal Police revealed, shortly after the election, that two of the council-members had tried to fix the vote against Underwood.  The councillors were summarily removed from their positions, and before the people whom the two councillors had represented convened to vote in new representatives, Underwood spoke to them and managed to convince them to elect one councillor each from Duligne and Madera.  This infuriated most of the rest of the council, who accused Underwood of having bribed the populace to get the result that he wanted.  These charges were never proven, although it was the first time since Spader that a council president had come under such scrutiny.

With councillors from outside Dodge City in place, Underwood's position was suddenly much more tenable, and within months he and the councillors from Madera and Duligne, along with three other councillors sympathetic to their cause, had written the first draft of a new colonial constitution.  Instead of visiting the cities individually, Underwood called representatives of the outlying cities - and of the Federal Police - to Seaside, Peter Marratt's fishing town, and asked them to look at the document; after several drafts, the convention had what they felt was a working and valid constitution.  With the support of the Federal Police, Underwood called for a colony-wide vote to ratify the new constitution after a two-week examination period; when the constitution went up for ratification, more than two thirds of the voters weighed in favorably.