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Show 56 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT of Maine where the ungranted lands amounted to millions of acres. It was conceded ownership of 6 million acres in western New York beyond the Preemption Line, and also ownership of the Boston Ten Townships, 230,400 acres in present Tioga County. The public domain of Connecticut in the Western Reserve was, like the public domain of Massachusetts, considerably larger than the area within the state's borders. New Hampshire had lost to New York its claim to the region beyond the Connecticut River by a royal decree of 1764 but the inhabitants refused to accept New York's control and existed virtually as a free state until the area was admitted into the Federal Union in 1791 as the first new State-Vermont. New York received from Vermont a token payment for the land. The public lands in the new state were retained by it. Despite New York's loss of the lands beyond the Preemption Line, the Boston Ten Townships and the Vermont land, it still possessed a large area of public land. Pennsylvania, having taken over the property of the Penn family, was granting land long after the other states had made their cessions. The state with the largest amount of ungranted land after its cession was Georgia. By a rough estimate, little more than a third of Georgia had been cleared of Indian titles in 1802, leaving at least 24 million acres that were subsequently to become public lands of the state. Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware felt most keenly their small-state character and their lack of a supply of public lands to attract new settlers, to satisfy the land bounties promised their soldiers, and to provide a source of income for their treasuries. Over and over, Maryland delegates expressed their concern about the weak position of their state in comparison with that of powerful Virginia; this concern should not be attributed solely to the fact that prominent Maryland men were speculating in western lands. Neither was Maryland solely motivated by jealousy of the landed states. Its position that the Ohio country had been won by the soldiers of and at the expense of the United States was logical. The land must therefore belong to the United States and its benefits should be shared by all the states of the Union. The Public Domain-Asset and Liability By the cession of the western land claims the United States acquired ownership of a supply of land that was to be of paramount importance in the growth of national power, in attracting millions of Europeans to settle in new communities of the American West, in creating transportation ties binding these new communities to the older ones, and in making possible the foundation of a common school system, state universities, colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts. The transfer of these territories probably did more than anything else at the time to give prestige to the government. Long before Congress could bring itself to vote funds in aid of internal improvements, such as roads, turnpikes, canals, and railroads, or to subsidize education, or to assist the states to build their capitals, drain wet areas, irrigate dry areas and promote forestation, it could do all these things by granting public land under the guise of adding to the value of the remaining public lands. This use of the public lands enabled the United States to break through the rigidities of constitutional thought as expounded by Calhoun and the strict constructionists and to develop a flexibility in the exercise of Federal power. There developed another side of the picture that could scarcely have been foreseen. It has already been suggested that Georgia's act of cession dumped upon the Federal government all responsibility for the action of its legislature in repudiating the sale of 1795. Virginia's cession also left to the Federal government responsibility for satisfying the demands of its veterans who could not find land in the Military Tract. This involved congressional committees and officials of the General Land Office in many tedious |