there was great provocation in the gross neglect shown by the East toward pressing needs in the West. The older States had just rebelled against the colonial policy of Great Britain; but they showed a strong inclination to retain a selfish policy toward their own "colonies" in the West. Even in the matter of protection against Indians, they hampered the frontier without giving aid. The Westerners made many petitions (1) to control directly their own militia; (2) to be divided into smaller counties with courts more accessible; and (3) to have a "court of appeal" established on their side of the mountains. Many a poor man found legal redress for wrong impossible because a richer opponent could appeal to a seaboard supreme court. These reasonable requests were refused contemptuously by North Carolina, and granted only grudgingly by Virginia. More distant Eastern communities, too, notably New England, manifested a harsh jealousy of the West (§ 349). 305. In particular the East long neglected to secure for the new West the right to use the lower Mississippi. For nearly all its course, one bank of the Mississippi was American; but, by the treaties of 1783, toward the mouth both banks were Spain's. According to the policy of past ages, Spain could close against us this outlet for our commerce. But the surplus farm produce of the West could not be carried to the East over bridle paths. Without some route to the outside world, it was valueless; and the only possible route in that day was the huge arterial system of natural waterways to the Gulf. So, from the first, the backwoodsmen floated their grain and stock in flatboats down the smaller streams to the Ohio, and so on down the great central river to New Orleans. They encountered shifting shoals, hidden snags, treacherous currents, savage ambuscades, and the hardships and dangers of wearisome return on foot through the Indian-haunted forests. These natural perils the frontiersman accepted light-heartedly; but he was moved to bitter wrath, when - his journey accomplished fatal harm befell him at his port. He had to have $ 306] JEALOUSY AND NEGLECT 255 "right of deposit" at New Orleans, in order to reship to ocean vessels. Spanish governors granted or withheld that privilege at pleasure- until 1795, when a treaty secured it, nominally, for a brief and uncertain period (§ 407). Even then, ruinous bribes were still necessary to prevent confiscation by Spanish officials on some pretense. Our government showed little eagerness in this life-or-death matter; but the West seethed with furious demands for possession of the mouth of the Mississippi. How to get it mattered little. The Westerners would help Congress win it from Spain; or they were ready to try to win it by themselves, setting up, if need be, as a separate nation; or some of them were ready even to buy the essential privilege by putting their settlements under the Spanish flag. 306. The last measure was never discussed publicly; but Sevier, Robertson, and Clark were all at some time concerned secretly in such dubious negotiations with Spanish agents. American nationality was just in the making. It was natural for even good men to look almost exclusively to the welfare of their own section, and the action of these great leaders does not expose them to charges of lack of patriotism in any shameful sense,1 as would be the case in a later day. Still we should see that they struggled in this matter on the wrong Note the log house in the AN OLD OHIO MILL, built soon after 1790. side. It was well that, about 1790, they were pushed aside by a new generation of immigrants, who were able to "think continentally." Virginia and North Carolina, too, were finally persuaded to give up their claims. In 1792, Kentucky became a State of the Union, and, four years later, Tennessee was admitted. The remaining lands south of the Ohio that had been ceded by that time to the United States (§ 311), were then organized as the Mississippi Territory. 1 Cf. Roosevelt's Winning of the West, III. These men must not be confounded with a fellow like General Wilkinson, who, while an American officer, took a pension from Spain for assisting her interests in the West. CHAPTER XXVII THE NORTHWEST: A NATIONAL DOMAIN 307. The Southwest, we have seen, was a self-developed section. Except for Henderson's futile project, there was no paternalism. No statesman planned its settlements; no general directed the conquest of territory; no older government, State or Federal, fostered development. The land was won from savage man and savage nature by little bands of self-associated backwoodsmen, piece by piece, from the Watauga to the Rio Grande, in countless bloody but isolated skirmishes, generation after generation. Settlement preceded governmental organization. In the Northwest, government preceded settlement. The first colonists found (1) territorial divisions marked off, and the form of government largely determined; (2) land surveys ready for the farmer; and (3) some military protection. All this was arranged in advance by the national government. This child of the nation, therefore, never showed the tendencies to separatism which we have noted in the Southwest. I. OWNERSHIP BY THE NATION 308. Six States could make no claim to any part of the West, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island; and the title of South Carolina applied only to a strip of land some twenty miles wide. But, as soon as the Revolution began, the other six States reasserted loudly old colonial claims to all the vast region between the mountains and the Mississippi.1 They planned to use these lands, too, in paying their soldiers and other war expenses, while the small States taxed themselves in hard cash for the war which was to win the territory from England. Kentucky and Tennessee, it has been noted, were claimed by Virginia and North Carolina, and Georgia long insisted upon a flimsy title to a wide reach of land extending to the Mississippi. So far, there were at 1 The map facing page 259 should be studied as part of the text, for this topic. Cf. also Source Book, No. 146. least no conflicts of title between the States. But north of the Ohio, there were many conflicting claims. Virginia claimed all the Northwest, under her old charter (§ 32), and she had done much to give real life to this weak title by taking steps toward actual possession-in Dunmore's War and in Clark's conquest of Illinois, and, from 1779 to 1784, by governing the district from Vincennes to Kaskaskia as the County of Illinois. New York also claimed all the Northwest, but by the slightest of all titles.1 The middle third of the Northwest was claimed also by both Massachusetts and Connecticut on the basis of their ancient charters. 309. While opposing these "large State" claims, Maryland invented a new and glorious colonial policy for America, and, standing alone through a stubborn four-year struggle, she forced the Union to adopt it. As early as November, 1776, a Maryland Convention set forth this resolution: "That the back lands, claimed by the British crown, if secured by the blood and treasure of all, ought, in reason, justice, and policy, to be considered a common stock, to be parcelled out by Congress into free, convenient, and independent Governments, as the wisdom of that body shall hereafter direct." A year later, since Congress had failed to adopt this policy, Maryland made it a condition without which she would not ratify the Articles of Confederation. By February, 1779, every other State had ratified. Further delay was in many ways perilous to the new Union; and other States charged Maryland bitterly with lack of patriotism. Virginia, in particular, insinuated repeatedly that the western lands were only an "ostensible cause" for her delay. With clear-eyed purpose, however, the little State held out, throwing the blame for delay where it belonged, on Virginia and the other States claiming the West. 310. Public opinion gradually shifted to the support of the view so gallantly championed by Maryland; and October 10, 1780, the Continental Congress formally pledged the Union to the 1 The Iroquois, who had no ownership, had ceded it to England, in the person of the Commander of the English forces in America - who happened also to be just then governor of New York. 2 By the terms of the Articles, that constitution could not become binding until ratified by each one of the thirteen States. |