We must now go back to another phase of the nation’s development, which was altogether human, and which is with us today. This was the element of hope for riches and private profit. In those days it was specifically called “land hunger.”
All of the earliest westward colonization schemes for America were what we might call “land grabbing schemes” of various merits. To discourage this tendency many plans were evolved for the development of the West. From about 1750 one plan followed another in rapid succession. Each was an improvement over the one preceding it. One is particularly significant—that of Peletiah Webster who proposed the surveying into townships of the lands adjoining the colonies—now states—on the west, and their sale in small lots only, and one range at a time to the westward. This would have established a strong and well-settled frontier, without large speculative holdings, and would have conserved for orderly growth the great untold areas of the West.
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK WADING SWAMPS WITH TROOPS
Drawn by Merle June Dehls, Vincennes, Ind.
After the Revolutionary War was over, the United States had only in effect a quitclaim deed from England to the lands north and west of the Ohio.
But the colonies now asserted their individual claims more vociferously than ever. There were now 13 states, in effect different and independent nations, each with a desire for expansion westward. Virginia had, of her own volition, sent George Rogers Clark into the West during the Revolution to drive the British from what were ostensibly her lands in the Illinois country. Clark had done a superb job—and claims are made that he not only acquired these lands by conquest for Virginia, but destroyed the budding Indian conspiracy that the British under Henry Hamilton were fomenting, and which, by attack from the rear, would have destroyed the entire American cause.
Connecticut and Massachusetts refurbished their charter claims and New York, through its treaty with the Iroquois Indians, made indeterminate but extensive demands to the territory.
And, lastly, there were the undeniable rights of the Indians to be acquired by purchase or by conquest.
Under pressure of states whose colonial charter boundaries had been more restricted, principally Maryland, the states with wide-flung claims were urged to cede all their western lands to the nation at large. The contention was that these lands had been won from the British by common effort and should therefore be common property. Here, at last, was a definite indication that development was to be toward one nation, rather than an alliance of 13 smaller independent governments. How strong this point really was is not certain, however, for one of the great objectives was to lessen the common debt, and thus relieve each of the states of its obligations.