122 The Winning of the West 



when some of her bravest leaders spoke gloomily 

 of the possibility of the Americans being driven 

 from the land. But these were merely words such 

 as even strong men utter when sore from fresh 

 disaster. After the spring of 1779, there was never 

 any real danger that the whites would be forced to 

 abandon Kentucky. 



The land laws which the Virginia Legislature en- 

 acted about this time 1 were partly a cause, partly a 

 consequence, of the increased emigration to Ken- 

 tucky, and of the consequent rise in the value of its 

 wild lands. Long before the Revolution, shrewd 

 and far-seeing speculators had organized land com- 

 panies to acquire grants of vast stretches of West- 

 ern territory; but the land only acquired an actual 

 value for private individuals after the incoming of 

 settlers. In addition to the companies, many pri- 

 vate individuals had acquired rights to tracts of 

 land; some, under the royal proclamation, giving 

 bounties to the officers and soldiers in the French 

 war ; others by actual payment into the public treas- 

 ury. 2 The Virginia Legislature now ratified all 

 titles to regularly surveyed ground claimed under 

 charter, military bounty, and old treasury rights, to 



1 May, 1779; they did not take effect nor was a land court 

 established until the following fall, when the land office was 

 opened at St. Asaphs, Oct. isth. Isaac Shelby's claim was the 

 first one considered and granted. He had raised a crop of 

 corn in the country in 1776. 



2 The Ohio Company was the greatest of the companies. 

 There were "also, among private rights, the ancient impor- 

 tation rights, the Henderson Company rights," etc. See 

 Marshall, I, 82. 



