DEATH OF WAYNE.

119

The occupying detach

Michigan settlements. ment was from Wayne's command, but Wayne in person did not reach the town until the following month. He then took command of the post until November, when he started for the East, but at Presque Isle succumbed to a disease which terminated his brilliant and useful career.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF A FREE STATE ARE LAID IN THE NORTHWEST.

AT the opening of their struggle for Independence, the American States had no common bond of union except such as existed in a common cause and common danger. They were not yet a nation; they were only a loose confederacy; and no compact or articles of agreement determined the duties of the several members to each other, or to the Confederacy as an aggregate of all. The attempt to agree upon articles of union, which should determine rights and prescribe duties, encountered difficulties which for a long time renIdered it abortive. One of the chief of these concerned the vast territory lying between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, not yet settled or occupied by people of European race, but which the people of the states were determined not to abandon to the king.

The Confederacy as such could of course make no claim to this territory except as an acquisition resulting from the war; but it was claimed by individual states, and to much of it the claims

CONFLICT OF CLAIMS TO WESTERN TERRITORY. 121

were conflicting. This was particularly the case with all that part of it lying north of the Ohio and west of the present boundary of Pennsylvania. New York claimed it under the Six Nations, who, by their martial prowess, had established a certain undefined and only partially admitted supremacy over the tribes of the region, and who had themselves acknowledged subordination to the jurisdiction of New York. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut claimed all or parts of it, under the vague and uncertain terms of their charters, and Virginia claimed also by virtue of the conquest made by Clark under the authority of the State and at its expense; a conquest which the State had made complete and effectual by the organization of counties and the establishment of civil government. The other states did not concede the justice of these claims. Whatever were the rights of the respective colonies before the war, none of them had made its claim effective by taking possession; and if the territory was now wrested from Great Britain, it must be done by common effort and common sacrifices, and if retained after peace, it could only be as the result of a treaty made by the common authority. The obvious use to be made of the territory after acquisition was to put the land upon the market for settlement; and it seemed entirely just and reasonable under the circumstances that instead of being sold for the benefit of one or more of the states,

it should be considered a common fund to be managed and disposed of for the advantage of all. Nor did this seem any less politic than it was just. To permit one or a few of the states to appropriate this vast domain to the exclusion of the rest would give to it or them such an advantage over the others in point of territorial extension and of material wealth as would make their preponderance in the Confederacy dangerous to the rights of the others, and might threaten its very existence.

Impressed with these views Delaware, in giving assent on February 1, 1779, to the Articles of Confederation, accompanied the act with the declaration "That this State think it necessary that a moderate extent of limits should be assigned for such of those States as claim to the Mississippi or the South Sea," and further "That this State consider themselves justly entitled to a right in common with the members of the Union to that extensive tract of country which lies to the westward of the frontiers of the United States, the property of which was not vested in or granted to individuals at the commencement of the present war: that the same hath been or may be gained from the king of Great Britain or the native Indians by the blood and treasure of all, and ought therefore to be a common estate to be granted out on terms beneficial to the United States." In this Delaware expressed the common opinion of all the states which made no separate

SURRENDER OF CLAIMS TO THE STATES. 123

claims; but Maryland emphasized the opinion by refusing to ratify the Articles of Confederation until the western lands were ceded to the Union. This refusal made action on the part of the claimant states imperative, and New York in February, 1780, recognized the necessity by giving to its delegates in Congress authority to make on its part the required cession. Connecticut followed in October of the same year by offering to cede its claim to the unsettled territory west of Pennsylvania, but with considerable reservation of lands bounded on the north by Lake Erie and on the east by Pennsylvania; a tract since known as the Connecticut Western Reserve. For this reservation the State could advance a claim of very plausible equity, based upon the fact that a considerable tract, which had been claimed under its charter with much apparent reason within the existing boundaries of Pennsylvania, had been taken away by the decision of a federal tribunal after much of it had been settled by purchasers under Connecticut grants. Virginia, in the December following, offered a cession of its claims to the territory north of the Ohio, but coupled it with a condition that its claims south of that river, which were then the subject of much controversy, should be guarantied. The New York delegates, in March, 1781, exercised the authority which had been vested in them to give a deed of cession, but reserved a right to rescind unless the