The Fathers of the Constitution [17]
whose boundaries were fixed, could put forward no such claims; and, as they were therefore limited in their area of expansion, they were fearful lest in the future they should be overbalanced by those States which might obtain extensive property in the West. It was maintained that the Proclamation of 1763 had changed this western territory into "Crown lands," and as, by the Treaty of Peace, the title had passed to the United States, the non-claimant States had demanded in self-defense that the western land should belong to the country as a whole and not to the individual States. Rhode Island, Maryland, and Delaware were most seriously affected, and they were insistent upon this point. Rhode Island and at length Delaware gave in, so that by February, 1779, Maryland alone held out. In May of that year the instructions of Maryland to her delegates were read in Congress, positively forbidding them to ratify the plan of union unless they should receive definite assurances that the western country would become the common property of the United States. As the consent of all of the Thirteen States was necessary to the establishment of the Confederation, this refusal of Maryland brought matters to a crisis. The question was eagerly discussed, and early in 1780 the deadlock was broken by the action of New York in authorizing her representatives to cede her entire claim in western lands to the United States. It matters little that the claim of New York was not as good as that of some of the other States, especially that of Virginia. The whole situation was changed. It was no longer necessary for Maryland to defend her position; but the claimant States were compelled to justify themselves before the country for not following New York's example. Congress wisely refrained from any assertion of jurisdiction, and only urgently recommended that States having claims to western lands should cede them in order that the one obstacle to the final ratification of the Articles of Confederation might be removed. Without much question Virginia's claim was the strongest; but the pressure was too great even for her, and she finally yielded, ceding to the United States, upon certain conditions, all her lands northwest of the Ohio River. Then the Maryland delegates were empowered to ratify the Articles of Confederation. This was early in 1781, and in a very short time the other States had followed the example of New York and Virginia. Certain of the conditions imposed by Virginia were not acceptable to Congress, and three years later, upon specific request, that State withdrew the objectionable conditions and made the cession absolute. The territory thus ceded, north and west of the Ohio River, constituted the public domain. Its boundaries were somewhat indefinite, but subsequent surveys confirmed the rough estimate that it contained from one to two hundred millions of acres. It was supposed to be worth, on the average, about a dollar an acre, which would make this property an asset sufficient to meet the debts of the war and to leave a balance for the running expenses of the Government. It thereby became one of the strong bonds holding the Union together. "Land!" was the first cry of the storm-tossed mariners of Columbus. For three centuries the leading fact of American history has been that soon after 1600 a body of Europeans, mostly Englishmen, settled on the edge of the greatest piece of unoccupied agricultural land in the temperate zone, and proceeded to subdue it to the uses of man. For three centuries the chief task of American mankind has been to go up westward against the land and to possess it. Our wars, our independence, our state building, our political democracy, our plasticity with respect to immigration, our mobility of thought, our ardor of initiative, our mildness and our prosperity, all are but incidents or products of this prime historical fact.* * Lecture by J. Franklin Jameson before the Trustees of the Carnegie Institution, at Washington, in 1912, printed in the "History Teacher's Magazine," vol. IV, 1913, p. 5.
It is seldom
It is seldom