%166. Origin of the Public Domain%.—In 1784 Massachusetts ceded her strip of land in the west, following the example set by New York (1780), and Virginia (1781).
As three states claiming western territory had thus by 1784 given their land to Congress, that body came into possession of the greater part of the vast domain stretching from the Lakes to the Ohio and from the Mississippi to Pennsylvania.[1] Now this public domain, as it was called, was given on certain conditions:
1. That it should be cut up into states.
2. That these states should be admitted into the Union (when they had a certain population) on the same footing as the thirteen original states.
3. That the land should be sold and the money used to pay the debts of the United States.
[Footnote 1: The strip owned by Connecticut had been offered to Congress in October, 1789, but not accepted. It still belonged to Connecticut in 1785. In 1786 it was again ceded, with certain reservations, and accepted.]
Congress, therefore, as soon as it had received the deeds to the tracts ceded, trusting that the other land-owning states would cede their western territory in time, passed a law (in 1785) to prepare the land for sale by surveying it and marking it out into sections, townships, and ranges, and fixed the price per acre.
%167. Virginia and Connecticut Reserves.%—When Virginia made her cession in 1781, she expressly reserved two tracts of land north of the Ohio. One, called the Military Lands, lay between the Scioto and Miami rivers, and was held to pay bounties promised to the Virginia Revolutionary soldiers. The other (in the present state of Indiana) was given to General George Rogers Clark and his soldiers. A third piece was reserved by Connecticut when she ceded her strip in 1786. This, called the Western Reserve of Connecticut, stretched along the shore of Lake Erie (map, p. 175). In 1800 Connecticut gave up her jurisdiction, or right of government, over this reserve in return for the confirmation of land titles she had granted.
[Illustration: TERRITORY OF THE %UNITED STATES% NORTHWEST OF THE OHIO
RIVER %1787%]
%168. Ordinance of 1787; Origin of the Territories.%—Hardly had Congress provided for the sale of the land, when a number of Revolutionary soldiers formed the Ohio Land Company, and sent an agent to New York, where Congress was in session, and offered to buy 5,000,000 acres on the Ohio River: 1,500,000 acres were for themselves, and 3,500,000 for another company called the Scioto Company. The land was gladly sold, and as the purchasers were really going to send out settlers, it became necessary to establish some kind of government for them. On the 13th of July, 1787, therefore, Congress passed another very famous law, called the Ordinance of 1787, which ordered: