58 The Winning of the West 



ning to the Mississippi. As a matter of fact the 

 royal grant, under which alone she could claim the 

 land in question, extended to the Pacific; and the 

 only difference between her rights to the regions 

 east and west of the river was that her people 

 were settling in one, and could not settle in the 

 other. The same was true of Kentucky, and of the 

 West generally; if the States could rightfully claim 

 to run to the Mississippi, they could also rightfully 

 claim to run to the Pacific. The colonial charters 

 were all very well as furnishing color of title; but 

 at bottom the American claim rested on the peculiar 

 kind of colonizing conquest so successfully carried 

 on by the backwoodsmen. When the English took 

 New Amsterdam they claimed it under old charters ; 

 but they very well knew that their real right was 

 only that of the strong hand. It was precisely so 

 with the Americans and the Ohio Valley. They 

 produced old charters to support their title; but in 

 reality it rested on Clark's conquests and above all 

 on the advance of the backwoods settlements. 8 



8 Mr. R. A. Hinsdale, in his excellent work on the "Old 

 Northwest" (New York, 1888), seems to me to lay too much 

 stress on the weight which our charter-claims gave us, and 

 too little on the right we had acquired by actual possession. 

 The charter-claims were elaborated with the most wearisome 

 prolixity at the time ; but so were the English claims to New 

 Amsterdam a century earlier. -Conquest gave the true title 

 in each case; the importance of a claim is often in inverse 

 order to the length at which it is set forth in a diplomatic 

 document. The West was gained by: (i) the westward 

 movement of the backwoodsmen during the Revolution; 

 (2) the final success of the Continental armies in the East; 



