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Show Chapter V Acquisition of the Public Domain Cessions of the western lands by the seven states claiming them brought the United States into possession of 233,415,680 acres, exclusive of the reservations of Connecticut and Virginia in Ohio, and inclusive of numerous claims for land granted by the French, Spanish, and British prior to American control.1 This was slightly more than the area of the Original Thirteen States (omitting Massachusetts' lands in Maine). Since it had taken the population of the Thirteen Colonies more than 170 years to spread lightly over the area east of the Alleghenies, leaving great areas still untouched, and to begin to break through into Kentucky and Tennessee, one might have expected that this huge area of public land would satisfy American needs for many years. Post-Revolutionary Growth But the country grew rapidly after the Revolution, especially after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the enactment of a tariff, the refunding of the national debt, and the opening of the new lands in the West to settlement. George Washington as President and Alexander Hamilton as Secre- 11 have taken the figure from Public Land Statistics, 1964, p. 4, prepared by the Bureau of Land Management. It differs somewhat from the total I arrived at in Chapter III. It doubtless excludes the 3,800,000 acres of the Connecticut Western Reserve, the 4,204,-000 acres of the Virginia Military Tract, and includes the portion of Minnesota east of the Mississippi River, the portion of South Carolina's cession that was added to Mississippi and Alabama but excludes the portion added to Georgia. tary of the Treasury brought about stability and sound credit, and as a result the economy experienced a high growth rate and the country a large population increase (356^ in the 1790's). Everywhere on the frontier, emigrants from the older states were seeking new lands and establishing new settlements. Before the century had passed three new states had been admitted into the Union and by 1803 Ohio was ready for admission. In this new West beyond the Alleghenies, the natural flow of goods to market was via the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico or by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. The routes to market were thus through alien territory, lightly developed and, in the case of New Orleans, Mobile, and other southern ports, lightly held. Many Americans had been disappointed at the failure to acquire the "fourteenth colony" during the Revolution and continued to anticipate that Canada might fall into the lap of the United States at some future time. Others dreamed of acquiring New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi, as well as Mobile, the Gulf territory of Spain, and Florida, thereby rounding out the region east of the Mississippi. Restrictions on trade and deposit (transfer of goods from river to ocean vessels) and petty annoyances by officials who had to be bribed caused ill feeling. Also, these border areas provided refuges for runaway slaves and other fugitives, and for Indians who could make raids across the line and return to comparative security and exemption from punishment. Such issues caused Americans living on the border or west of the Alleghenies to 75 |