82 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



together they were a sovereign power. It was as a continental 

 force that the people won their independence, and the Nation is 

 in reality older than the States. 



All this was felt even at the moment, and on the day the 

 committee for drafting the Declaration of Independence was 

 appointed another committee was directed to prepare the form 

 of a confederation. The- power which declared independence 

 and thereby created new sovereignties knew'itself to be a mere 

 illusion, except as its acts were ratified by the force of the united 

 nation. 



But when the Declaration had in effect brought into being 

 thirteen sovereigns in place of one, new problems burst into view. 

 Each of these new states claimed all the rights granted by its 

 own fundamental laws, and in addition its share of the power 

 hitherto accorded to the Crown. What, then, was to be the dis- 

 position of those " Crown lands '' which were not within the 

 actual bounds of any colony, although originally included in 

 their charters — that vast territory lying between the Alleghany 

 mountains and the Mississippi, which had been won in battle 

 from the rule of France ? 8 



Six states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, 

 North Carolina, and Georgia — by reason of their original char- 

 ters or subsequent treaties, claimed the ownership of all the 

 lands west of their actual boundaries as far as the Mississippi 

 river. It is true that a royal proclamation had been issued in 

 1763 prohibiting colonial governors from granting patents of 

 land beyond the sources of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic, 

 and that in 1774 the " Crown lands," as they were called, north- 

 west of the Ohio were annexed to the royal province of Quebec ; 

 but these were considered by the colonies unjust encroachments, 

 for had they not freely sacrificed lives and money to conquer 

 this same country from New France? The other colonies, however, 

 hemmed in by inelastic boundaries, protested against these 

 large pretensions, maintaining that possessions which had been 

 acquired by the force and sacrifice of all should not be appro- 

 priated for the aggrandizement of a part. New Hampshire, 

 Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Mary- 

 land, denied a share of this great territory, saw in the claims of 

 the " land states " not only an evident injustice in refusing them 

 a part in the fruits of a common victory, but a menace to the 

 equilibrium of the states by the arrested development of some 



8 See map of Land Claims of the Thirteen Original States. 



