The population of the United States was like a body of water that was being steadily enlarged by internal springs and external tributaries. It was augmented both from within and from without, from natural increase and from immigration. It had spread over the whole coast from Maine to Georgia and slowly back into the interior, at first along the lines of river communication and then gradually filling up the spaces between until the larger part of the available land east of the Alleghany Mountains was settled. There the stream was checked as if dammed by the mountain barrier, but the population was trickling through wherever it could find an opening, slowly wearing channels, until finally, when the obstacles were overcome, it broke through with a rush.
Twenty years before the Revolution the expanding population had reached the mountains and was ready to go beyond. The difficulty of crossing the mountains was not insuperable, but the French and Indian War, followed by Pontiac's Conspiracy, made outlying frontier settlement dangerous if not impossible. The arbitrary restriction of western settlement by the Proclamation of 1763 did not stop the more adventurous but did hold back the mass of the population until near the time of the Revolution, when a few bands of settlers moved into Kentucky and Tennessee and rendered important but inconspicuous service in the fighting. But so long as the title to that territory was in doubt no considerable body of people would move into it, and it was not until the Treaty of Peace in 1783 determined that the western country as far as the Mississippi River was to belong to the United States that the dammed-up population broke over the mountains in a veritable flood.
The western country and its people presented no easy problem to the United States: how to hold those people when the pull was strong to draw them from the Union; how to govern citizens so widely separated from the older communities; and, of most immediate importance, how to hold the land itself. It was, indeed, the question of the ownership of the land beyond the mountains which delayed the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Some of the States, by right of their colonial charter grants "from sea to sea," were claiming large parts of the western region. Other States, 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.
