estimated at about three millions at the close of the war. By 1790 they numbered four millions-probably twice as many as the colonies contained in the days of the Stamp Act. Activity of speculation in western lands and the broadening current of migration westward showed confidence in the future. At the close of the Revolution, settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee were the only ones in the Ohio Valley. North of the river the native tribes enjoyed almost undisturbed possession. From the missions established, on the eve of the Revolution, by the Moravians at Gnadenhütten and Schoenbrunn in eastern Ohio to the French villages on the Wabash and the Kaskaskia, only an occasional trading post foreshadowed the coming of the white man. A sprinkling of Americans was to be found among the French at the old posts, followers of Clark who had remained and friends who had joined them. On the north bank of the Ohio as far as the mouth of the Muskingum, and along the east bank of that stream, squatters were making "tomahawk claims" in defiance both of the natives and the government of the United States. South of the Ohio the first stages of pioneer life were already past. Cultivated farms and well-built houses were replacing the cabins in the clearings, and a steady tide of immigration was pouring in. Many of the newcomers hailed from Virginia and the Carolinas, coming by way of the headwaters of the Tennessee, Cumberland Gap, and Boone's "Wilderness Road." An easier route, save for the danger of Indian attacks, was the river. Virginians sometimes followed the Kanawha through the mountains to its mouth, but many of them preferred the longer but easier way down the Monongahela to the "forks of the Ohio." This was the favorite path also for the Marylanders who ascended the Potomac and then crossed to "Redstone" where Brownsville now stands, most of the way following the old trail of Washington and Braddock. Across Pennsylvania from Philadelphia the trails of the furtraders became the paths of the pioneers. The one chiefly used ran through Lancaster and Bedford to the village of Pittsburgh at the "forks." Upon this point all routes converged as all roads led to Rome in ancient days. Here or at Redstone the pioneer embarked on a flatboat and floated with the current to Limestone (Maysville) or the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville). Settlers bound for the Nashville district in Tennessee crossed overland from the North Carolina settlements, or by boat followed the circuitous course of the Tennessee River to its mouth and thence ascended the Cumberland. The Kentucky settlements contained from thirty to forty thousand people by the close of the eighties. Kentucky and Tennessee, being parts of Virginia and North Carolina respectively, were already open to settlement under the laws of those states when the Revolution ended. Very different was the situation in the Northwest. Interest in this region was growing, but authorized settlement had to await the completion of the cessions to Congress and the action of that body. Maryland's refusal to ratify the Articles of Confederation started the movement for cession of the western lands to Congress. Seven of the thirteen states were numbered among the claimants of these lands. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia based their claims on charter grants made by the Crown. New York, the seventh, rested its pretensions on its suzerainty over the Iroquois, who had maintained a shadowy superiority over the western tribes as far as the Mississippi and Ohio. The validity of all these claims was open to question. The British government had repudiated them, in effect, by consenting to the Vandalia grant and by the Quebec Act. During the Revolution France as well as Spain had considered them extinguished by these acts of the British, and even Congress would have been less tenacious of the Mississippi boundary if it had meant only the territorial satisfaction of the claimant states. Clark's campaign under the authority of Virginia strengthened the contention of that state, but Maryland insisted that Clark's conquest was made possible only by the common military efforts in the East, and that therefore the winning of the region resulted from the common sacrifice. In solicitude for the adoption of the Articles, Congress finally appealed to the claimant states to yield. New York, whose title was least defensible, responded first, and the others slowly followed. Maryland accepted the Articles in 1781, as soon as it became evident that she had won her fight, but the cessions were not completed until 1802. Georgia was the last to act. The Carolinas also made their transfers tardily, South Carolina in 1787 and North Carolina in 1790. The cessions of the land north of the Ohio River were completed by 1786, through the action of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Kentucky remained a part of Virginia, but that state yielded all claims to the Northwest with the exception of certain tracts to be distributed as bounty lands to her veterans of the Revolution. The largest of these lay between the Scioto and Big Miami rivers in the present State of Ohio. Connecticut also reserved an extensive tract lying south of Lake Erie, retaining for a time not only the title to the lands but jurisdiction. In this way she hoped to provide an outlet for her surplus population, and to compensate her citizens who had suffered from British raids during the war. In appealing to the states for cessions Congress made promises which formed the basis of important legislation a few years later. One of these was that the lands ceded should be disposed of for the common benefit. At the time this pledge was understood to mean that the lands should be sold and the proceeds applied to the payment of the war debt. The other promise was that the West when settled should be formed into distinct republican states, which should become members of the Federal Union, with the same rights as the original states. In these pledges are found the germs both of the federal land system and of the principle on which the union of thirteen states has expanded into a sisterhood of forty-eight members. After Virginia had made her cession and the movement seemed to be fairly under way, Congress took up the problem of providing a suitable government for the West. Thomas Jefferson was chairman of the committee appointed to draft an ordinance for this purpose. His report was adopted, after some changes, as the "Ordinance of 1784." It divided the whole region between the mountains and the Mississippi into tracts each of which was to enter the Union when its population equaled that of the smallest of the original states. There were eighteen of these divisions. Previous to statehood the inhabitants were to have restricted rights of self-government under the supervision of Congress. Jefferson's draft provided for the exclusion of slavery from the entire West after the year |