( 364 ) 
submission. But Congress, after long vacillation, on August 
20, 1781, adopted resolutions looking to the admission of Ver- 
mont into the Union, on terms which (after being at first re- 
fused) Vermont a few months afterwards accepted, while New 
York protested.* Thenceforward the land claims were the 
principal bone of contention; and with Congress no longer 
supporting her, New York continuously lost ground. For 
while Vermont maintained her independence of New York, 
and was not admitted into the Union, there was no tribunal to 
which New York could appeal. Civil war was the only re- 
source. But Congress would not sanction civil war; and New 
York was not in a condition to resort to it, through the gen- 
eral financial distress and the difficulty of raising troops; nor 
would her people or the country have sustained it. f 
The validity of most of the New York patents, issued con- 
trary to the King’s order, was at least doubtful; it was denied 
by Vermont; and if valid, the patents had now become in- 
capable of enforcement.} 
" * Slade’s State —o oe H. Hall’s Vt., 296, 355, 382-388, 424, 434. 
N. H. State Paper 225. 
t See at se a. of February 11, 1783; Spark’s Washington, 8: 
382; H. Hall’s Vt., 424: Mag. Am. Hist., 23: 149; Hamilton’s Speech be- 
low cited, p. 4 
the Colonial Governors of the royal ee was in the excessive grants to 
and limited the amount of the aaa at first to 2,000 acres, canes 
wards 1,000, to each such person. But most of the land covered by th 
New York grants was in tracts of from 10,000 ae 40,000 acres for ne 
who arranged for inserting in the patents the names of dummies to the requi- 
site number, who, nine the patent was issued, assigned their interests to the 
eae grante of whom ever purposed settlement. 
All the ae (after Governor Moore) understood this practice, 
nee it, and practiced it for their individual benefit. Lord Hillsborough 
severely censured it as evasive and fraudulent, as it clearly was. (Col. Doc., 
5: 10, 11; 8: 286, 293, 373, 410; H. Hall. Vt., 100-104, 107.) Columbia’s 
10,000 acres were derived from one of these fraudulent grants to Tryon, 
through a patent granted by him as Governor to 32 dummies, April 14, 1772, 
and by them ee to him personally two days chews (Albany Patents, 
Vol. 16, p. ; Deeds, Vol. 19, p.97. Gov. Wentworth’s grants involved 
similar Ge ea to a less extent. 
