Excerpt from Inaugural Message and First Message to the Legislature of Elisha P. Ferry, First Governor of Washington: November, 1889 It is the accomplishment of a result for which they have waited with anxious solicitude, and which they now welcome with joy and satisfaction. The inauguration of the State Government, which occurs to-day, is also a most important event in the history of the commonwealth. It marks the end of one form of Government, and the beginning of another. So plain is the significance of the present hour, and so evident is its import, that those present, young and old alike, feel the weight of the great event and will, in future years, proudly refer to the fact that they saw the wheels of Government of the State of Washington put in motion for the first time, and that they marked the moment when the last act was performed by which the Territory of Washington entered upon its active Governmental career. The Territory of Washington was established March 2, 1853. Its boundaries then were the British Possessions on the north, the summit of the Rocky mountains on the east, the Columbia river and the forty-sixth parallel of north latitude on the south, and the Pacific ocean on the west. It was then almost an empire in extent. Those boundaries remained until the formation of the Territory of Idaho, on March 3, 1863, when our eastern boundary was changed to the one hundred and seventeenth meridian, where it now remains. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.