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Show 50 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT land claims in present Alabama and Mississippi made it the second largest state, with an area in excess of 94 million acres. This was 19 times the size of New Jersey or 15 times that of Maryland. North Carolina, whose western lands extended to the Mississippi and constituted present Tennessee, held 57,872,000 acres, or an area nearly equal to today's New York and Pennsylvania combined. South Carolina's claim to western lands was much smaller, being 3,136,000 acres. The two western land claims of Massachusetts and Connecticut together contained 25,600,000 acres, nearly three times the size of those states today. New York claimed a tract of 202,000 acres-the Erie Triangle-which, when ceded to the United States, was to be sold to Pennsylvania. It also had a vague claim beyond in the Ohio country. It was feared that these western lands, when settled, would give to the states owning them greater political influence in the affairs of the Nation than states lacking any such supply of vacant land could hope to have. The states owning the lands would also have a major source of income in which the small states-Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire -would have no share. Western Lands-Common Property? Maryland, the most populous of the states with no western land claims, was naturally disturbed at the contrast between its small area and that of neighboring Virginia. At the time, the two states were bickering over whether the boundary of Virginia extended to the north bank of the Potomac or to the center of the main channel. As early as 1776, Maryland tried to prod Virginia and other states into ceding their western lands, arguing that the "Back lands" should be held as "common property" and the income from them used to provide funds for the support of the Revolutionary War. In an instruction to its delegates in the Continental Congress, the Maryland Legislature in 1778 spoke of states that were "ambitiously grasping at territories to which . . . they have not the least shadow of exclusive right," and characterized their claim as "so extravagant, so repugnant to every principle of justice, so incompatible with the general welfare of all the states" that it may "urge them on to add oppression to injustice." Maryland argued that the territory could only be "wrested from the common enemy by the blood and treasure of the thirteen states" and therefore "should be considered as a common property. . . ."3 Maryland also was anxious to have the lands made available to the Union of the States so that it could fulfill its bounty obligations to soldiers and officers; she feared that otherwise she would be bankrupted by having to buy land to satisfy warrants the Congress could not satisfy. So strong was the feeling of the Maryland men that the western lands should be ceded to the United States that the state refused to ratify the Articles of Confederation until steps were taken towards cession. New Jersey contended that the Ohio country had been lost to Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut by the Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774 and had been recovered by George Rogers Clark acting for the United States. The New Jersey Legislature declared, "It was the confident expectation of this state that the benefits derived from a successful contest, were to be general and proportionate, and that the property of the common enemy, falling in consequence of a prosperous issue of the war, would belong to the United States, and be appropriated for their use."4 In reply to attacks by Maryland and New Jersey, the Virginia Legislature in a remonstrance declared that the United States had no right to western lands save through the claim of the individual states, and it denied 3 Worthington C. Ford, el al. (eds.), Journals of the Continental Congress (34 vols., Washington, 1904-1937), V, 505n; XIV, 619-22. Note the emphasis upon the lands as common property of all the states. * Ford, Journals, June 25, 1778, XI, 648-51. |