THE LAND POLITICS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 A PAPER 
 
 READ BEFORE THE 
 
 NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 TUESDAY, MAY i, 1888, 
 
 JAMES C. WELLING, LL.D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY. 
 
 1888.
 
 X- 
 
 THE LAND POLITICS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 A PAPER 
 
 READ BEFORE THK 
 
 NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 TUESDAY, MAY i, 1888, 
 
 JAMES C. WELLING, LL.D., 
 
 (PRESIDENT OF THE COLOMBIAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. c. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY. 
 1888.
 
 AT a stated meeting of the New York Historical Society, held in its 
 Hall, on Tuesday Evening, May 1st, 1888 : 
 
 JAMES C. WELLING, LL.D.. President of the Columbian University, 
 Washington, D. C., read the paper of the evening entitled " The Land 
 Politics of the United States." 
 
 On its conclusion the Hon. CHARLES A. PEABODY submitted the 
 following resolution, which was adopted unanimously : 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be presented to DR. WELL- 
 ING, for his able and highly interesting paper, read this evening, and 
 that a copy be requested for the Archives of the Society. 
 Extract from the Minutes, 
 
 ANDREW WARNER, 
 
 Recording Secretary.
 
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 THE LAND POLITICS OF THE UNITED 
 
 STATES. 
 
 WE are all familiar with the large part which was played 
 in the history of Rome by her public lands. They were the 
 seed-plot of periodical public dissensions, and bore almost 
 annually a larger crop of political agitations than of economic 
 products. Every school-boy knows the successive phases of 
 this agrarian struggle. In the whole of Italy, as in Rome, 
 two contending parties stood perpetually in presence of 
 each other. On the one side was an aristocratic party con- 
 tending for class privileges and proprietary dominion ; on 
 the other was a democratic party contending for larger meas- 
 ures of popular power and for larger shares of beneficiary 
 right in the administration of the public domain. 
 
 Questions of land dominion and of land distribution have 
 formed the ultimate ground of political division and debate 
 among men ever since the human race, in the evolution of 
 society, passed from political organization on the basis of 
 common blood, to political organization on the basis of com- 
 mon territory. In this western world of ours, from its dis- 
 covery by Columbus down to the epoch of the memorable 
 " Monroe Doctrine," the partition of the North and South 
 American continents among the nations of Europe, under 
 alleged rights of discovery, of settlement, or of conquest, 
 formed the great animating motive of maritime adventure 
 and colonial enterprise for more than three centuries, and 
 gave rise to that tremendous activity which was then dis- 
 played by the commercial States of Europe in the fields of
 
 6 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 diplomacy, of war, and of international politics. What is 
 true of Europe as a whole, so long as the appropriation and 
 distribution of the New World were the procuring causes of 
 political dispute, is equally true of the nations established on 
 these continents, with their large tracts of unoccupied land, 
 offering a perpetual bait to immigration, and laying the 
 foundations of their internal policy and public economy 
 in questions relating to the management of the public do- 
 main. It remains to add that what is true of all the Ameri- 
 can nations is especially true of these United States. The 
 great leading factor in the formation of our governmental 
 polity, and in the subsequent divisions of party among us, 
 has always been, in the last analysis, a question relating 
 more or less directly to the distribution of the national do- 
 main considered as the source and seat of political power. 
 The salient features of this perennial controversy will engage 
 our attention in the present paper. 
 
 The early cartography of North America was wild and 
 fantastic. Supposititious "ways trendin to Cathaia" sup- 
 plied the places of real bays or straits even on Frobisher's 
 maps of the continent, as elephants supplied the place of 
 towns on maps of Africa in the days of Dean Swift. The 
 colonization of America began at a time when so little was 
 known about the geography of the continent that the Lon- 
 don Company, organized for the settlement of Virginia, sent 
 forth Captain Newport, in 1608, with instructions to sail up 
 the James River till he came to the Pacific Ocean, as John 
 Smith, of Pocahontas fame, was urged by the Council to seek 
 a new route to China by ascending the Chickahominy.* The 
 dimensions and the geographical configurations of the sev- 
 eral colonies were not only involved in much obscurity, but, 
 owing to the ambiguities of speech necessarily employed in 
 the attempt to describe their respective, limits, the metes and 
 bounds of the several colonies were often found to conflict, 
 insomuch that large areas, owing to the overlap of conflict- 
 ing jurisdictions, were sometimes claimed by two or three, or 
 even more, colonies at the same time. At the beginning of 
 
 * John Smith : Discourses, etc., chap. vii.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 7 
 
 the Revolutionary War, for instance, Virginia asserted a 
 claitn, by charter and by military occupation, to the whole 
 northwestern territory, and had actually annexed a large 
 part of that territory to her dominion, under the names of 
 Kentucky and of Illinois. Massachusetts disputed this claim 
 as to what is now the southern part of Michigan and Wis- 
 consin. Connecticut disputed it as to other portions of what 
 is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. New York 
 disputed it in part by virtue of claims based on treaty stipu- 
 lations with the Six Nations, and so arrayed herself equally 
 against the claims of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecti- 
 cut.* 
 
 The British crown was the ultimate arbiter of all dissen- 
 sions arising from these interfering claims so long as the col- 
 onies were in a state of political vassalage ; but when the 
 Declaration of Independence came to break the bands which 
 tied this litigation to the royal throne, the Continental Con- 
 gress was charged with that high umpirage. It had been 
 charged with this duty by common consent, even before the 
 duty was formulated by the Articles of Confederation. In 
 the Ninth of these Articles it was declared that " the United 
 States, in Congress assembled, shall be the last resort on ap- 
 peal in all disputes and differences now subsisting, or that 
 hereafter may arise, between two or more States concerning 
 boundary, jurisdiction, or any other cause whatever." In ad- 
 dition to this jurisdiction over the public territorial rights of 
 the States, it was further provided that " all controversies 
 concerning the private right of soil claimed under different 
 grants of two or more States " should be determined by a 
 like method of procedure. 
 
 This provision of the Articles of Confederation deserves 
 to be lifted into prominence, because it was the germ of that 
 grander and more comprehensive umpirage which afterward 
 came to be lodged in the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, under the Constitution. A High Court of Admiralty, 
 and this High Court of Commissioners created from time to 
 time for the settlement of inter-State controversies about 
 
 * The Public Domain, p. 161.
 
 8 , The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 matters of territorial jurisdiction, were the only Federal ju- 
 dicatures known under the Articles of Confederation. 
 
 Again and again was the Continental Congress invoked 
 for the pacification of public and private strifes about land 
 claims. Even before the Declaration of Independence it 
 was called to bear this heavy burden. In January, 1776, the 
 hardy people who had settled on what was popularly called 
 " the New Hampshire Grants " petitioned Congress to rec- 
 ognise their independence of New York, which, from 1749, 
 had asserted a historic claim against New Hampshire to the 
 political jurisdiction of the region covered by those grants. 
 When the Declaration of Independence came, without any 
 previous ascertainment of the status of Vermont, her people 
 felt that they had been left outside of the Union, and in 
 1777 they formally declared themselves to be "a free and in- 
 dependent State." In the unsettled state of the contermi- 
 nous limits of New York, New Hampshire, and Western 
 Massachusetts, so far as they bordered on this Green Moun- 
 tain country, there was, at one time, a conflict among all 
 these States as to the jurisdiction of parts of the territory 
 now comprised in the State of Vermont. In June, 1779, 
 the Continental Congress formally intervened to adjust this 
 conflict by appointing a committee to advise and consult 
 with the litigant parties. This committee failed to execute 
 the business entrusted to it, but the Congress, on the 24th of 
 September following, recommended that all the parties at 
 variance should " forbear vexing each other " for the time 
 being. The Vermont people, however, refused to have their 
 rights placed in such indefinite abeyance, and boldly announc- 
 ed that " as they were not included in the thirteen United 
 States, if necessitated to it, they were at liberty to offer or to 
 accept terms of cessation of hostilities with Great Britain 
 without the approbation of any other man or set of men," and, 
 furthermore, that " in the absence of protection from Con- 
 gress they had not the most distant motive to continue hos- 
 tilities with Great Britain and maintain an 'important frontier 
 for the benefit of the United States, with the promise of no 
 other reward than the ungrateful one of being enslaved by
 
 The Land Politics of the United States, 9 
 
 them." * British generals and emissaries from Canada sought 
 for a season to profit by this grave dissension, and to detach the 
 people of Vermont from the Continental alliance, while certain 
 partisan leaders of the Vermont pioneers kept up, on their 
 part, a shrewd parleying, now with the British authorities for 
 the purpose of conjuring the storm of war from their borders, 
 and now with the Continental Congress for the purpose of 
 coercing that hesitating body into a compliance with their 
 wishes, and a recognition of their territorial independence. 
 This dalliance alternately with Congress and with the enemy 
 was adroitly pursued by the Vermont chieftains till the close 
 of the war, not without much current aspersion on their loy- 
 alty, because of the ambiguous voices scattered in their dip- 
 lomatic correspondence, though, as we may well believe, 
 without just disparagement to their patriotism. f Alexander 
 Hamilton tells us that even the States which brought for- 
 ward claims in opposition to those of New York seemed 
 more solicitous to dismember her than to establish their own 
 pretensions, while small States like New Jersey, Rhode Isl- 
 and, and Maryland betrayed a partiality for Vermont in 
 the Continental Congress, until the alleged connection be- 
 tween the Vermont leaders and the British authorities in 
 Canada led to a reaction in the case of the last-named 
 State. | 
 
 The disaffection of the Vermontese spread, in 1781, to 
 the adjoining counties of New York, and created a revolt in 
 certain regiments enlisted by that State on the east bank of 
 the Hudson. The Vermont government seized upon this 
 territory on the Hudson for a time, but speedily renounced 
 its pretension on a calm remonstrance made by Washington 
 to Governor Chittenden. Governor Clinton was moved more 
 than once to repel these aggressions by force of arms, and 
 Vermont, on her part, bated not a jot of her contumacy. 
 
 * Williams History: of Vermont, vol. i., p. 195. Cf. Vermont State Papers, 
 p. 120. 
 
 f Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. - 10. Cf. Vermont State Papers, p. 142 et seq. 
 
 \ The Federalist, No. 7. 
 
 William L. Stone : Life of Joseph Brant, vol. ii., pp. 179-208.
 
 io The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 While the controversy lasted, no quarrel between Highland 
 and Lowland clans in Scotland could have been more bitter 
 and inveterate. The echo of the feud still reaches us in the 
 border minstrelsy of the time, full of taunt and delight of bat- 
 tle.* 
 
 The Continental Congress could not intervene with au- 
 thority in a controversy like this until it had been clothed 
 with plenary power under the Articles of Confederation ; 
 and before these Articles could be concerted and ratified 
 among all the thirteen States a much larger question of ter- 
 ritorial politics had to be settled. 
 
 It has been already intimated that many of the States, 
 under the terms of their respective charters, held vast unap- 
 
 * Here are a few snatches from one of these Tyrtaean lyrics : 
 
 Ho ! all to the borders, Vermonters, come down, 
 
 With your breeches of deerskin and jackets of brown ; 
 
 With your red woollen caps and your moccasins, come 
 To the gathering summons of trumpet and drum. 
 
 Come down with your rifles ! Let gray wolf and fox 
 Howl on in the shade of their primitive rocks; 
 
 Let the bear feed securely in pigpen and stall, 
 
 Here's a two-legged game for your powder and ball. 
 
 On our South come the Dutchmen, enveloped in grease, 
 And arming for battle while canting of peace ; 
 
 On our east crafty Meshech has gathered his band, 
 To hang up our leaders and eat out our land. 
 
 Does the old Bay State threaten ? Does Congress complain ? 
 
 Swarms Hampshire in arms on our borders again ? 
 Bark the war-dogs of Britain aloud on the Lake ? 
 
 Let 'em come ! What they can, they are welcome to take. 
 
 Come York, or come Hampshire, come traitors, come knaves, 
 
 If ye rule o'r our land, ye shall rule o'er our graves ! 
 Our vow is recorded, our banner is unfurled, 
 
 In the name of VERMONT -we defy all the -world! 
 
 -HENRY W. DE Puv: Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Heroes of '76, 
 p. 405. "Crafty Meshech" in the third stanza refers to Meshech Weare, 
 President of the Council of New Hampshire.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 1 1 
 
 propriated tracts of land in the unexplored Western country, 
 extending in some cases from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
 Oceans. By some of these States it was at first claimed 
 that, on the dissolution of the tie which had formerly bound 
 them to the Mother Country, each separate State succeeded 
 to the right of eminent domain previously vested in the 
 Crown. The States so situated were quick to see, in the 
 prospective sales of their boundless landed possessions, avast 
 capital from which they could indemnify themselves for all 
 the losses and expenditures which fell to their share in the 
 prosecution of the Revolutionary War. But the States whose 
 metes and bounds were not of this expansible character were 
 just as quick to protest against the rank injustice of such a 
 pretension. They held that as each State could hope to suc- 
 ceed to the usufruct of its unoccupied lands only after the 
 achievement of independence by the expenditure of the 
 blood and treasure of all the States, it was no less just than 
 logical that all such lands should be held and considered as 
 the common possession of the United States, to be admin- 
 istered by Congress, and to be sold for the common benefit 
 of the Union. 
 
 The landed States were slow to relax their grasp on their 
 territorial possessions as the price of the Union. The land- 
 less States were slow to pay the price of Union at the ex- 
 pense of their rightful share in these lands. Even when New 
 Jersey and Delaware acceded to the Confederation without 
 having first obtained a cession of these lands, they did so 
 in the avowed hope and expectation that the landed States 
 would ultimately respond to the call of patriotism in this 
 matter. But Maryland, as we all know, was more persistent 
 in refusing to ratify the Articles of Confederation, and from 
 1776, down to 1781, kept reiterating her demand in the ears 
 of the Continental Congress, that this vast unoccupied terri- 
 tory should be ceded to the United States as a common 
 property, "subject to be parcelled out by Congress into free, 
 convenient, and independent governments in such manner 
 and at such times as the wisdom of that assembly should 
 direct."
 
 12 The Land Politics of tJie United States. 
 
 At first the Continental Congress, under the predominance 
 of the powerful landed States, had treated this claim with a 
 very gingerly reserve, and had agreed to file the represen- 
 tation made by little Delaware in this matter only on condi- 
 tion that by so doing no presumption was to be raised in fa- 
 vor of the claim " set up or intended to be set up." But the 
 discontent of the landless States was so outspoken, and the 
 refusal of Maryland to ratify the Articles of Confederation 
 was so stubborn, that the Congress was compelled, in the 
 end, to implore the landed States to heed these clamors of 
 their less richly endowed sisters, and especially the importu- 
 nate demand of Maryland. This it did by a formal resolu- 
 tion under date of September 6, 1780. 
 
 It is known that New York took the lead in this work of 
 patriotic self-renunciation, and on the ist of March, 1781, 
 ceded her lands, with certain reservations, to the General 
 Government for the benefit of all the States then in the Un- 
 ion, or destined thereafter to become members of the Union. 
 On that same day the delegates of Maryland signed the Ar- 
 ticles of Confederation, and made the organic Union of the 
 thirteen colonies complete. But this consummation was not 
 reached until after the Revolutionary War had been raging 
 for five years, and until the revolted colonies were almost in 
 sight of that Treaty of Peace which was signed about two 
 years later. It will thus be seen that it was an agrarian 
 question which wellnigh prevented the Union from ever be- 
 ing formed, even under the stress of the great struggle which 
 invited the States to confederate. 
 
 And no sooner had the Articles been ratified by all the 
 States than an occasion arose to tax the resources of our 
 young Continental jurisprudence. Not only was Vermont 
 the theatre of an agrarian civil strife, but also in the Valley 
 of Wyoming there was a territorial controversy between the 
 States of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, which dated from 
 the year 1754, and which had four times rolled the tide of 
 battle over its fields and hill-sides. In 1782 a High Court of 
 Commissioners was appointed by Congress to sit in Trenton, 
 N. J., for the arbitration of a dispute which had not only
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 1 3 
 
 drenched this valley with fraternal blood, but which had more 
 than once disconcerted the military plans of Washington. 
 And even after the feud had been superficially appeased by 
 the adjudication of the Court at Trenton, which decided in 
 favor of Pennsylvania,* it broke out afresh at a later day in 
 the shape of an armed crusade proclaimed by the Susque- 
 hanna Company, which claimed to hold the Wyoming Valley 
 under authority from Connecticut, and which, at a later stage 
 of its operations, proceeded to recruit armed emigrants for 
 the forcible occupation of the disputed territory. This armed 
 emigration had its point d'appui in Hartford, and was hon- 
 ored with the countenance and support of men like Oliver 
 Wolcott and Ethan Allen. 
 
 After the treaty of peace with Great Britain had been signed, 
 a new order of territorial complications arose to embarrass the 
 public councils. The people of Vermont, it is true, relaxed, 
 for a time, their pressure to be admitted into the Union, and 
 consoled themselves with the thought that the Continental 
 Congress, by denying to them the right of representation, 
 had at least forfeited the right of levying taxes on their sub- 
 stance. The troubles in the Wyoming Valley proceeded, in 
 the meantime, from bad to worse, while in the southwestern 
 part of the country a new territorial disturbance came to per- 
 plex the inter-State relations of that section. I refer to the 
 agitation which now broke out for the formation of a new 
 and independent State west of North Carolina. 
 
 As early as 1776 North Carolina had provided, in her Bill 
 of Rights, " for the establishment of one or more governments 
 westward of that State, "t The movement had gathered such 
 head in 1783 that the foreseen creation of the western part of 
 North Carolina into a separate State led, in that year, to a 
 motion in Congress that, whenever a fourteenth State should 
 be added to the Union, the Articles of Confederation should 
 be so amended as to require the concurrence of ten States in 
 cases before requiring the concurrence of nine.\. The people 
 
 * For findings of the Court, see Journal of Congress, vol. viii., p. 44 et seq. 
 f- Ramsay : Annals of Tennessee, p. 284, cf. p. 439. 
 \ Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 92.
 
 14 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 inhabiting this western region proceeded, in 1785, to consti- 
 tute themselves into a State, without waiting for permission 
 either from North Carolina or from Congress.* Erecting an 
 independent State of their own mere motion, they at the 
 same time created an independent currency of their own in- 
 vention, consisting chiefly of beaver-skins, deer-skins, rac- 
 coon-skins, and such like peltries, together with " good dis- 
 tilled whiskey and apple or peach brandy " at a fixed valua- 
 tion per gallon, while, with genuine frontiersman pleasantry, 
 it was further enacted that the salaries of all officials in the 
 rising commonwealth should be paid in mink-skins ! The 
 State thus improvised, with John Sevier for its titular Gov- 
 ernor, took to itself the name of Franklin, though in the pop- 
 ular parlance of the day it was commonly called by the name 
 of Frankland the land of the Franks. The Governor of 
 North Carolina soon proclaimed the seceding Franks in a 
 state of revolt, and this ban of incivism was straightway 
 met by a doughty counterblast from Governor Sevier. The 
 agrarian secession spread even to the adjoining counties of 
 Southwestern Virginia, and drew an indignant remonstrance 
 from Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia, whose Leg- 
 islature had just passed an act making it treason to erect a 
 new State in any part of her territory without first obtaining 
 permission from the General Assembly. In 1785 the new 
 State of Franklin began to treat with its Indian neighbors on 
 an independent footing, as also with the Spanish authorities 
 of the Mississippi Valley, in open contempt of the constitu- 
 tional prerogatives of the Continental Congress. 
 
 It was in view of such proceedings, and of similar mutter- 
 ings in Kentucky, that, on the 7th of October, 1785, a mo- 
 tion was made in Congress by Massachusetts, and seconded 
 by Virginia, that a committee be appointed to prepare a re- 
 port expressing " the highest disapprobation of Congress " in 
 view of a disposition on the part of the people in several dis- 
 tricts of country within the United States to be separated 
 from the States which have exercised constitutional jurisdic- 
 tion over them, and, further, signifying the intention of Con- 
 * Ramsay, p. 293.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 1 5 
 
 gress to support any State in its opposition to " such uncon- 
 stitutional attempts to destroy the fundamental principle of 
 the Union."* Mr. Howell, of Rhode Island, proposed, on 
 the same day, to make constitutional provision for the erec- 
 tion of new States within the territory of the Union by so 
 amending the Articles of Confederation that two-thirds of the 
 existing States might authorize the creation and admission 
 of new States carved out of any part of the territory of the 
 United States, with the consent of the State interested. t Nei- 
 ther of these resolutions was adopted, but they serve to attest 
 the spirit of agrarian secession, or of "squatter sovereignty," 
 which was then prevalent in different parts of the country. 
 
 In the year 1786 the seceders of Franklin opened negotia- 
 tions with North Carolina for a formal act of separation. In- 
 vited, in turn, by the Governor of North Carolina to return 
 to their allegiance, they replied, through Governor Sevier, 
 that they " would rather suffer death, in all its various and 
 frightful shapes, than conform to anything disgraceful."! 
 
 Meanwhile, John Sullivan, a soldier of fortune, armed 
 with the copious dialect of a swashbuckler, was stirring up 
 the Franks with his free lance, in the effort to enlist their co- 
 operation in a filibustering expedition against the Spanish 
 authorities. Bringing his insolence under the very nose of 
 the Continental Congress, he addressed a rollicking and in- 
 sulting letter to Gardoqui, the Spanish minister in New York 
 City, and actually proceeded to recruit soldiers in South 
 Carolina and Georgia for his " war of liberation/' Writing 
 to the Governor of South Carolina he truculently said that 
 the period was close at hand " when the intrepid Tartars of 
 the West the inexpugnable Kentuckians and the Franks 
 will dare to proclaim that the Natchez shall be restored, 
 either by negotiation or by arms, and that the right of free 
 navigation of the Mississippi should no longer be withheld 
 by an indolent, jealous, and impolitic nation," to cite the 
 " nice derangement of epithets " with which he characterized 
 the Spanish court and people. 
 
 * Journals of Congress, vol. x., p. 245. f Ibid. 
 
 \ Ramsay, p. 362. American Museum, vol. iii., p. 438.
 
 1 6 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 It is proper to remark that at this epoch the whole south- 
 western part of the United States was thrown into a state of 
 ferment by the well-understood disposition of a majority of 
 the States in Congress to surrender the right of navigation 
 of the Mississippi River for the next twenty, or twenty-five 
 or thirty years. Seven States all of them Northern States 
 had voted an act of tolerance for this untoward measure ; 
 not willingly, but under the conceived necessities of the po- 
 litical situation as reported to the Congress by Mr. John Jay, 
 the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The very sugges- 
 tion of such a policy startled the whole Southwest from its 
 propriety. The Legislature of Virginia lifted up its voice in 
 indignant protest, and declared, November 29, 1786, that 
 such a surrender would not only be violative of the natural 
 rights of the Western States, but would tend to destroy, 
 " that confidence in the wisdom, justice, and liberality of 
 the Federal Councils," which it was so necessary to preserve 
 at a time when men were working for an enlargement of the 
 Federal authority. From that time forth Patrick Henry 
 walked no more with the friends of a stronger Federal 
 Union. Writing from the city of Richmond (Va.) under date 
 of December 7, 1786, Mr. Madison said, "I am entirely con- 
 vinced, from what I observe here, that unless the project of 
 Congress [for surrendering the navigation of the Mississippi 
 for twenty-five years] can be reversed, the hopes of carrying 
 this State into a proper Federal system will be demol- 
 ished." * 
 
 When the echo of the proposed surrender reached Mr. 
 Jefferson, at Paris, he characterized the measure as an " act 
 of separation between the Eastern and Western country ; as 
 a relinquishment of five parts out of eight of the territory of 
 the United States," and as " a clear sacrifice of the Western 
 to the Maritime States." f The mind of Patrick Henry was 
 so "soured " by the project the phrase is Mr. Madison's 
 that he would not even attend the Philadelphia Convention 
 for forming the Constitution, in order that he might be en- 
 
 * Madison's Works, vol. i., p. 264. 
 
 f Jefferson's Works, vol. ii., pp. 105 and 153.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 1 7 
 
 tirely free to oppose the instrument which should there be 
 formed.* This project for " bartering away" the navigation 
 of the Mississippi wellnigh imperilled the ratification of the 
 Constitution by Virginia and North Carolina. The measure 
 had been supported in Congress by the vote of the seven 
 Northern States against the earnest opposition of the South- 
 ern States. It was discussed in secret session. In vain did 
 the Southern delegates implore permission to advise their 
 Legislatures of what was meditated. In vain did Grayson, 
 of Virginia, and his colleagues protest that such a surrender 
 was a breach of the covenant made with Virginia when she 
 ceded her " back lands," because it would lower their mar- 
 ket value, and postpone indefinitely their formation into new 
 States ; that it would deprive the Western and Southern 
 States of a natural right ; that it would permanently fix the 
 weight of population on the northern side of the continent, 
 and operate a virtual dismemberment of the Union by oc- 
 cluding the Southern States from spreading westward on the 
 territory allotted to them by the physical geography of the 
 country, t 
 
 The Spanish minister, Gardoqui, emboldened on his part 
 by the concessions made to the admitted strength of the 
 Spanish position in the Mississippi Valley, was privately 
 hinting to members of Congress, with a jocoseness exceeded 
 only by its effrontery, that " the people of Kentucky would 
 make good Spanish subjects, and would become such for the 
 sake of the privilege annexed to that character."! He 
 openly argued with Mr. Jay (playing upon a well-known sen- 
 sibility in New England) that the rapid settlement of the 
 West would be injurious to the old States. 
 
 We can now understand why it was that William Gray- 
 son, when he came to be a member of the Virginia Conven- 
 tion which sat, two years later, in judgment on the Constitu- 
 tion, opposed its ratification with a vehemence second only 
 
 * Madison's Works, vol. i. , p. 264 and 283. 
 
 f Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., pp. 44-130. 
 
 \ Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 97. 
 
 Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., p. 52. 
 
 2
 
 1 8 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 to that of Patrick Henry. Referring to this very issue, Gray- 
 son exclaimed, in the Virginia Convention : " I look upon 
 this as a contest for empire. . . . This contest of the Mis- 
 sissippi involves this great national contest that is, whether 
 one part of the continent shall govern the other. The 
 Northern States have the majority, and will endeavor to retain 
 it. This is, therefore, a contest for dominion, for empire." * 
 Patrick Henry cited this same sectional spectre, in order to 
 frighten the Virginia Convention from the ratification of the 
 Constitution. He said : " To preserve the balance of Amer- 
 ican power, it is essentially necessary that the right of the 
 Mississippi should be secured. . . . But the settlement 
 of the country will not be warranted by the new Constitution, 
 if it will not be forbidden by it." f Colonel Bloodvvorth con- 
 jured up the same spectre in the North Carolina Convention, 
 for he, too, had been a member of the Continental Congress 
 of 1786, when the seven Northern States were willing to ac- 
 cept this provisional surrender. " When I was in Congress," 
 he said, " the Southern and the Northern interests divided 
 at the Susquehanna." \ 
 
 North Carolina, we know, declined, on the 1st of August, 
 1788, to ratify the Constitution, and largely because of mis- 
 givings on this subject. Hence it was that, with the view of 
 quieting these misgivings, the Continental Congress, on a 
 motion made by her delegates, solemnly resolved, on the 
 i6th of September, 1788, that the rumored disposition of 
 Congress to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi was 
 [then] unfounded ; that the free navigation of that river was 
 a clear and essential right of the United States ; and that no 
 further proceedings should be had in pursuance of the nego- 
 tiations authorized to be undertaken by Mr. Jay in 1786.^ 
 In the meantime eleven States had ratified the Constitution, 
 and so the whole subject of the navigation of the Mississippi 
 was handed over to the new Government. But Charles 
 Pinckney, of South Carolina, who had been the file-leader of 
 
 * Elliot's Debates, vol. Hi., p. 365. f Ibid., pp. 352, 353. 
 
 J Ibid, vol. iv., pp. 167, 186. 
 
 Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., p. 453.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 19 
 
 the Southern opposition in 1786, was careful to acquaint 
 President Washington with the grounds of that opposition, 
 for his information and guidance in the conduct of future 
 negotiations with Spain.* A great peril, as well as a great 
 panic, had now been safely overpast, but we can see that it 
 was a question of territory, with political dominion annexed, 
 which wellnigh defeated the adoption of the Constitution, as 
 at an earlier epoch in our annals it was a question of terri- 
 tory, with political dominion annexed, which had long balked 
 the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. 
 
 In justice to Mr. Jay, it should here be added that, with 
 the candor which was an integral part of his nature, he 
 openly confessed, in 1788, that subsequent developments in 
 the shape of political "circumstances" and popular " dis- 
 contents " had interposed to render "questionable" the 
 views and opinions which in 1786 had seemed to him " ad- 
 visable." t In the game of applied politics often a calculus 
 of probabilities among contingent events and imponderable 
 forces a statesman may sometimes show more wisdom in 
 being fortuitously wrong as the event turns out, than in be- 
 ing fortuitously right according to a drift and posture of 
 events which could not be foreseen. The considerations which 
 had reconciled the Foreign Secretary to tolerate a temporary 
 waiver of our claim to the navigation of the Mississippi, as a 
 choice of evils, in 1786, were national and not sectional from 
 his point of view. Southern men like Henry Lee, of Vir- 
 ginia, felt and acknowledged their full force in view of the 
 commercial distress which then prevailed in the New Eng- 
 land States, and for which a commercial convention with 
 Spain was held to be the only remedy.f The extremity of 
 that distress stirred the compassion of the friends of the 
 Union even in South Carolina. 
 
 No wonder that Jay deplored " the private rage for prop- 
 erty " which at that time was suppressing public considera- 
 
 * Correspondence of the Revolution, vol. iv., p. 300. 
 f Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., p. 452. 
 J Correspondence of the Revolution, vol. iv., p. 141. 
 Elliot's Debates, vol. iv., p. 284.
 
 2O The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 tions and national interests. Few people at the present day 
 have any adequate conception of the wild agrarianism which, 
 alike in its private and public manifestations, was prevalent 
 in the United States from the conclusion of the Treaty of 
 Peace, in 1783, to the ratification of the Constitution, in 1788. 
 It was not only in Vermont and Pennsylvania, in North Car- 
 olina and Virginia, that this spirit was rife. On the soil of 
 Massachusetts it came to the surface in the hideous shape of 
 Shays's Rebellion a sort of social and agrarian Jaquerie. 
 Suppressed in Massachusetts as a rebellion, it lingered as a 
 discontent in her politics, and spread a leaven of unrest in 
 the neighboring provinces of Vermont and Maine.* Among 
 the members of the Massachusetts Convention which sat in 
 judgment on the Constitution in 1788 were eighteen or 
 twenty men who had been in Shays's army, while many of 
 the delegates sitting in it from the province of Maine were 
 " squatters on other people's lands." t In Connecticut this 
 popular agitation took the form of a real, or affected, fear 
 that the Continental Congress would seize and appropriate 
 the ceded and unceded lands of the West for the benefit 
 of the Southern States.f Convention after convention of 
 alarmists was called to emphasize this anti-Federal clamor.^ 
 In New Jersey it took the form of a land-company enter- 
 prise, offering special inducements to encourage immigration 
 into that State, for the avowed reason that the other States 
 had not sufficiently considered her landed rights in the Con- 
 federation, but had some of them, at least reserved to 
 themselves vast tracts of unlocated land, by the sale of which 
 to avoid their comparative share in meeting the burdens of 
 Federal taxation. || New Jersey had, moreover, a special 
 ground of offence, because the Continental Congress, after 
 having affirmed, in 1782, the right of her citizens to " a tract 
 
 * Life of Timothy Pickering, vol. ii. , p. 374 ; Works of Madison, vol. i. , p. 
 278. 
 
 f Correspondence of the Revolution, vol. iv. , p. 207. 
 \ Stuart : Life of Jonathan Trumbull, p. 640. 
 Connecticut Courant, passim, in 1784. 
 || See Connecticut Courant, April 20, 1784.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 2 1 
 
 of land called Indiana," on the Ohio, had refused, in 1784,3! 
 the instance of Virginia, to enforce that right, or even to en- 
 tertain it.* While the people of Vermont were weighing the 
 advantages of an exemption from Federal taxation against 
 the disadvantages of political isolation, the friends of the 
 Union in recusant Rhode Island were mourning the loss of 
 their share in the proceeds from the sales of the ceded lands. 
 In New York a powerful land-company, with John Living- 
 ston at its head, was bargaining with the Iroquois Indians 
 for a nine hundred and ninety-nine years' lease of a large 
 tract now embraced within the limits of the Empire State 
 a proceeding which was solemnly annulled by the Legislature 
 of New York in i/88.t Kentucky was knocking at the door 
 of Congress for admission into the Union, and, at the same 
 moment, in 1788, was holding, in the Virginia Convention, 
 the balance of power on the ratification of the Constitution 
 by that State, and so was in a position to decide whether 
 there would be any Union worth the entering.:}: In Penn- 
 sylvania the insurgent leader of the Susquehanna Land Com- 
 pany, John Franklin, had .been arrested, and in the latter 
 part of the year 1787 had been deported to Philadelphia, that 
 he might there be put on trial for high treason against the 
 State. In retaliation for this arrest, Timothy Pickering, the 
 Quartermaster-General of the Revolutionary Army, and after- 
 ward Secretary of State of the United States, was kidnapped, 
 carried into captivity, and held as a hostage for the safety 
 of the Connecticut land-robber. In the would-be State of 
 Franklin, John Sevier had been arrested, imprisoned, held 
 for trial, violently rescued by his adherents, declared civilly 
 dead by the authorities of North Carolina, and then had 
 gone into voluntary exile. South Carolina and Georgia were 
 at loggerheads on a question of their respective boundaries. 
 At the Muscle Shoals, in a bend of the Tennessee River, a 
 band of land-pirates, composed of Spaniards, runaway ne- 
 groes, Cherokee Indians, Creek Indians, refugee Canadians, 
 
 * Journals of Congress, vol. vii., p. 278 ; vol. ix., p. 45. 
 f American Museum, vol. iii., p. 448. 
 \ Madison's Works, vol. i. , p. 399.
 
 22 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 and Tories, had long terrorized the country far and wide in 
 their vicinage.* The impotence of the Federal Union lent 
 itself to all forms of agrarian disorder, even within the 
 bounds of the oldest and best-settled States ; for something 
 of the frontiersman spirit still lingered at that day even in 
 our Atlantic States, with their tales of the border rehearsed 
 at the fireside, not as 
 
 " Old unhappy, far-off things, 
 And battles long ago," 
 
 but as a vivid reminiscence of recent history in Indian wars. 
 The whole country seemed to be agonizing in the last throes 
 of political dissolution. Washington wrote to John Jay, in 
 1786, that more of wickedness than of ignorance was mixed 
 with our councils. t Jefferson wrote to Madison, in 1787, 
 that a separation of the Western part of the country from the 
 Eastern States must be supposed possible at every moment.! 
 Even a patriot so true as Richard Henry Lee, sunk up to 
 his eyes in a Slough of -Despondency, could see in the whole 
 United States only " two very unprincipled parties," in 
 the year 1787 " one composed of little insurgents, men in 
 debt who wanted no law, and who wanted a share in the prop- 
 erty of others, Levellers, Shaysites, etc. ; " the other com- 
 posed of men who were " avariciously grasping at power and 
 property, Aristocrats, Morrisites, etc.," as he denominated 
 
 While these local troubles were becoming more and 
 more endemic in our body politic, the Continental Congress 
 had provided for itself a vast theatre on which to exhibit the 
 storm and pressure of a territorial struggle for political 
 power. Virginia, following the example of New York, had 
 completed her cession to Congress in 1784. After the pre- 
 liminary articles of peace had been signed in 1782, many 
 delegates in Congress had urged that the Continental Con- 
 
 * American Museum, vol. ii., p. 3 of the Chronicle. 
 f Life of John Jay, vol. i., p. 243. 
 \ Jefferson's Works, vol. ii., p. 153. 
 Observations, etc., p. 37.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 23 
 
 gress should proceed at once to define the Western bounda- 
 ries of the landed States, and assume control over all West- 
 ern territory of the Confederacy falling outside of the limits 
 of the States as thus defined, without waiting for cessions from 
 these States. In this opinion the delegates from New Jer- 
 sey and Maryland were supported by the great authority of 
 James Wilson, of Pennsylvania ; but the prevalent sentiment 
 of Congress was in favor of waiting for a formal cession of 
 the Western territory before concerting measures for its sale 
 and settlement.* 
 
 As regards the proper relations of the " back lands " 
 to the Federal Union, three divergent opinions were in 
 presence of each other at different periods under the gov- 
 ernment of the Continental Congress : First, That the lands 
 should be ceded to the Union for fiscal purposes alone, and 
 that each State should retain the political jurisdiction of the 
 territory which it ceded ; Second (a phase of opinion which 
 gathered strength after the preliminaries of the Treaty of 
 Peace had been signed), That the . Continental Congress 
 should take possession of the "back lands," and assume 
 paramount jurisdiction over them as of natural right, with- 
 out deferring to the claims of the landed States ; and, Third, 
 That the Congress should adhere to its declared policy of 
 waiting for a formal cession of these lands, with the political 
 jurisdiction annexed, before proceeding to establish regu- 
 lations for their government, t 
 
 That the last-named view prevailed, and neither of the 
 other two, is a fact of tremendous import in our political his- 
 tory. If the land-ceding States had retained their political 
 jurisdiction over the territory as ceded by them for fiscal 
 purposes alone, then new States would have been carved out 
 of this territory at their instance, and not at the initiative of 
 Congress ; the Federal Government would have lacked a 
 great object of common political concern ; and yet would not 
 have escaped the bone of contention offered by the partially 
 
 * Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 83. 
 
 flbid., pp. 59, 83, 87, 93. Cf. The Thomson Papers (N. Y. Hist. Col- 
 lections for 1878), pp. 145-151.
 
 24 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 conceded territory, for the contention would have been sure to 
 arise on the proposed admission of each new State that should 
 have been formed under the auspices of the mother State. 
 
 If the second view had prevailed, a strong flavor of nation- 
 ality would have been infiltrated into the Government, even 
 under the Articles of Confederation. For this view gave a 
 large extension to the doctrine of construction and of national 
 prerogative right as against the assumptions of the landed 
 States.* 
 
 So soon as Virginia had completed her cession in 1784, 
 Jefferson brought in a bill for the government of the Western 
 territory, with a proviso against slavery after the year 1800 
 in all the States, ten in number, that should be formed out 
 of it. This slavery restriction failed to be adopted, but, with 
 this exception, and with the omission of certain fantastic 
 names for the proposed new States, the Jefferson ordinance 
 was passed, April 23d, 1784. 
 
 The next step in this territorial legislation was taken by 
 Rufus King, the distinguished grandfather of the worthy gen- 
 tleman who still adorns a historic name at the head of this So- 
 ciety. On the i6th of March, 1785, Mr. King submitted the 
 following resolution : " Resolved, That there shall be neither 
 slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the States de- 
 scribed in the resolve of Congress of the 23d day of April, 
 A.D. 1784, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof 
 the party shall have been personally guilty. And that this 
 regulation shall be an article of compact and remain a funda- 
 mental principle of the Constitution between the thirteen 
 original States and each of the States described in the said 
 resolve of the 23d day of April, 1784." t 
 
 * This difference of opinion as to the rights of the United States, and of cer- 
 tain particular States, in the "back lands," crops out in the debates of the 
 Federal Convention. It was at the heel of a long discussion turning on this dif- 
 ference that that body finally decided to leave the whole matter in abeyance under 
 the Constitution, by simply providing that Congress should be empowered to make 
 "all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory" of the Union, with- 
 out prejudice to "any claims either of the United States or of any particular 
 State." (Elliot's Debates, vol. v., pp. 494-497.) 
 
 f Papers of Old Congress, vol. xxxi., p. 327.
 
 The Land Politics of tlie United States. 25 
 
 This resolution was referred to Messrs. King, Howell, and 
 Ellery. On the 6th of April following, King reported the 
 following modification of his motion : " Resolved, That after 
 the year i8oo of the Christian era there shall be neither sla- 
 very nor involuntary servitude in any of the States described 
 in the resolve of Congress of the 23d day of April, 1/84, other- 
 wise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall 
 have been personally guilty. And that this regulation shall 
 be an article of compact and remain a fundamental principle 
 of the Constitution between the thirteen original States, and 
 each of the States described in the said resolve of the 23d day 
 of April, 1784, any implication or construction of the said re- 
 solve to the contrary notwithstanding ; Provided always, That 
 upon the escape of any person into any of the States described 
 in the said resolve of Congress of the 23d day of April, 1784, 
 from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of 
 the thirteen original States, such fugitive may be lawfully re- 
 claimed and carried back to the person claiming his labor or 
 service as aforesaid, this resolve notwithstanding."* 
 
 This resolution was appointed for consideration on April 
 I4th, but it was never called up for final action. t 
 
 Meanwhile the bonds of the Confederation were grow- 
 ing weaker and weaker, and the disposition of this public 
 domain, enlarged by the cession of Massachusetts in 1785 
 and of Connecticut in 1786, was seen to be "an obvious 
 and fruitful source of contest," whether in the Union or out- 
 side of the Union, if it were to be dissolved. In the Union, 
 it would lead to a contest for political preponderance between 
 the Northern and the Southern States. Outside of the Union, 
 it would lead, as Alexander Hamilton forewarned, to a huge 
 game of physical power between the land-ceding and the 
 non-land-ceding States the former trying to regain their 
 cessions, and the latter trying to retain their hold on what 
 
 'Papers of Old Congress, vol. xxxi., p. 329. 
 
 \ Though the resolution is preserved in the handwriting of Rufus King, his 
 well-known views on the subject of slavery make it probable that lie was over- 
 borne in the Committee by his two colleagues, and that for this reason he was 
 little inclined to press for the adoption of the regulation in its altered shape.
 
 26 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 each might regard as its proportionate share in a property 
 which had once been declared common.* After two abor- 
 tive attempts had been made by the seventh and eighth 
 Congresses to digest a new plan of government for the 
 ceded territory of the Union, it was in July, 1787, when the 
 spirit of giddinesss and revolt among the people and the 
 States was at its height, that the whole subject of the gov- 
 ernment of the Northwest Territory was reopened, and this 
 renewed discussion it was which led to the adoption of the 
 " Memorable Ordinance of 1787," as it is popularly and prop- 
 erly called. 
 
 This ordinance put an immediate interdict on slavery, but 
 the interdict was accompanied with the proviso, suggested 
 more than two years before, for the rendition of fugitive 
 slaves. In this shape it was passed unanimously. t What, 
 now, were the grounds of such a surprising unanimity among 
 States which had previously shown so much jealousy of each 
 other in this matter of the common territory ? The reason is 
 not far to seek. The ordinance of Jefferson was comprehen- 
 sive in its scope, and, applying as it did to territory to be 
 ceded as well as to territory already ceded, it would have 
 been applicable to new States formed south of the Ohio as 
 well as north of the Ohio. The States of South Carolina, 
 North Carolina, and Georgia had not yet made their cessions, 
 and the Southern States, for economic as well as political 
 reasons, may have shrunk in 1784 from committing them- 
 selves to all the length and breadth of Jefferson's anti-slavery 
 policy. But in 1787 they may have seen, in the lateral spread 
 of the Northern States towards the west, the earnest and 
 pledge of a similar lateral spread of the Southern States in 
 the same direction, so soon as the opportunity should present 
 itself. It is certain that Southern members of Congress were 
 quick to avail themselves of this territorial precedent, so soon 
 as the opportunity did present itself in the cession made by 
 North Carolina three years afterwards. ^ 
 
 *The Federalist, No. 7. 
 
 f That is, by the unanimous vote of the States. Only one member of Congress 
 voted against the measure. 
 
 \ Mr. Madison hints that the primary motive of Congress in restricting the
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 27 
 
 To these special considerations it should perhaps be 
 added that in 1787 Southern statesmen seem to have looked 
 with more complacency on the westward growth of the Union 
 than Northern statesmen. The one solitary vote recorded 
 against the Ordinance of Freedom came from Abraham Yates, 
 of New York. George Clymer, of Pennsylvania, with the or- 
 dinance before his eyes, did not hesitate to proclaim, on the 
 floor of the Federal Convention, that the encouragement of 
 the Western country to form new States " was suicide on 
 the part of the old States."* " Of what use will the western 
 country be to the United States," queried Fisher Ames, of 
 Massachusetts, in 1790.+ " An ineradicable dread of the 
 coming power of the Southwest lurked in New England, 
 especially in Massachusetts," says Bancroft. :{: Many of the 
 Eastern and Northern States had " back lands" of their own 
 to sell, and why should they be eager to impoverish their own 
 fisc, deplete their population, and lower their political pres- 
 tige for the benefit of the West ? Gorham, of Massachu- 
 
 spread of slavery in 1787 may have been not so much to prevent the interior dis- 
 persion of slaves already in the United States as to discourage the importation of 
 slaves from abroad, by narrowing the space open to occupation by that unfortunate 
 class of beings. [Madison's Works, vol. iii., p. 165.] 
 
 * Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 487. 
 
 f Life, Journal, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL. D., vol. i., 
 
 P- 135- 
 
 \ History of the United States, vol. vi. , p. 263. 
 
 It was to these States that Grayson referred when, in writing to Washington 
 from his seat in the Continental Congress in May, 1785, he held the following 
 language: " Several of the States are averse to new votes from that part of the 
 Continent [the Western], and some of them are now disposing of their own vacant 
 lands and of course wish to have their particular debts paid, and their own coun- 
 tries settled in the first instance, before there is any interference from any other 
 quarter." [Correspondence of the Revolution, vol. iv., p. 103.] Nathan Dane, 
 it is true, appeared before the Massachusetts Legislature in November, 1786, and 
 made an argument for the proper disposition of the Western lands, but he consid- 
 ered them mainly as a source of revenue to the Federal Treasury. [See full report 
 of speech : Pennsylvania Herald (Phil.), Nov. 29, 1786.] 
 
 The ordinance of 1787 was gratefully accepted in New England, not only be- 
 cause it opened a path to freedom and enterprise, but also because it opened for 
 the States of the East a way of escape from the impending peril of being stifled 
 by a spawn of small-fry States at the West. Under the Jefferson ordinance each 
 of the ten States for which it provided was entitled to enter the Union so soon as
 
 28 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 setts, openly avowed in 1787 that he wished to see the Mis- 
 sissippi shut, for the advantage of the Atlantic States.* 
 
 At the South, on the contrary, the friends of the Union, 
 even in reluctant North Carolina, were exulting in the pros- 
 pect that, because of their " large quantities of uncultivated 
 lands " the Southern States would soon have greater weight 
 in the Union than the Northern. t " The people and strength 
 of America," said Butler, of South Carolina, in the Federal 
 Convention, "are evidently bearing Southwardly and South- 
 westerly."}: 
 
 But, apart from such prospective advantages, there was 
 another reason, based on grounds of private economics, why 
 the Southern statesmen of 1787 easily reconciled themselves 
 to the passage of the ordinance in the shape it finally took, 
 with a proviso for the rendition of fugitive slaves. In 1785, 
 a committee composed exclusively of Northern men had of- 
 fered this compromise to the Southern States in return for 
 the inhibition of slavery after the year 1800. But the South- 
 ern delegates were not ready at that date for such a transac- 
 tion. The transaction involved a political concession on the 
 part of the North a concession made in the well-understood 
 hope at that time that slavery would be of only temporary 
 duration in the Union. The far-reaching consequences of the 
 arrangement could not then be foreseen, though it must have 
 
 the number of its inhabitants was equal to that of the smallest State already in the 
 Union, to wit, Delaware, with a population of only thirty-five thousand. Just a week 
 before the Ordinance of 1887 was passed, Rufus King referred in the Federal Con- 
 vention to the urgent necessity of altering an impolitic arrangement which made it 
 possible for ten new States to be added to the Union without a greater addition 
 to the population of the West than the number of people represented by a single 
 one of the original States, to wit, Pennsylvania. This consideration doubtless 
 helps to explain the unanimity of Congress in passing the measure, as also the de- 
 spatch with which it was passed, for at the time he spoke Mr. King expressed a 
 fear that the evil was "irrevocable" as to one of these embryo States. Elliot's 
 Debates, vol. v., p. 280. 
 
 * Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 103. 
 
 f Ibid., vol. vi., p. 1 86. \ Ibid., vol. v., p. 309. 
 
 Such was the opinion of Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut. Even as to the 
 slave trade he said : " Let us not intermeddle. As population increases, poor 
 laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves usejess. Slavery, in time, will not 
 be a speck in our country." (Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 458.)
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 29 
 
 been seen that the regulation added a new hardship to the lot 
 of the slave. If the slave, to use the language of feudal law, 
 was already a villein in gross, tied to the person of his mas- 
 ter by the municipal law of the slave State, he now became, 
 pro hac vice, and in the eye of national law, a species of vil- 
 lein regardant, tied to the soil of the slave State by Federal 
 law. This latter feature was, however, so secondary, as com- 
 pared with the former, that many determined haters of sla- 
 very in 1787 seem to have conquered their repugnance to it; 
 perhaps it was because the incident, being political in its nat- 
 ure, and resting back on the -law of a slave State, may have 
 seemed to involve no element of personal responsibility for 
 the status of the slave. Even Washington, with all his re- 
 pulsion to slavery, was, says Bancroft, " severe " to the run- 
 away slave.* The best men of the South in that day were 
 not unwilling to regard slavery as a transitional and decidu- 
 ous institution ; yet, while it lasted, they wished to enjoy the 
 full usufruct of their slave labor. Hence the unanimous 
 compact made, in the Ordinance of 1787, for the recapture of 
 fugitive slaves. By this compact the Southern States se- 
 cured in the Northwestern Territory a privilege they did not 
 possess in the States, for the States, at that time, were " un- 
 charitable " to each other (as Mr. Madison phrased it) in the 
 matter of returning fugitive slaves. 
 
 But this proviso in our Ordinance of Freedom led the way 
 to a portentous after-birth in the labor-pangs of that for- 
 mative epoch in our annals. It was the precursor of the fugi- 
 tive-slave clause which came soon afterwards to imbed itself 
 in the Constitution of the United States. Between the Con- 
 tinental Congress sitting in New York, and the Federal Con- 
 vention sitting in Philadelphia, in 1787, there was a constant 
 interchange, not only of ideas and proceedings, but also of 
 members ; for a few members of the one body were members 
 as well of the other body, and so the fugitive-slave clause of 
 the Ordinance trickled from that instrument into the Consti- 
 tution, and the rendition of fugitive slaves, after being an 
 " article of compact " among the States as to the common do- 
 
 * History of the United Stales, vol. vi., p. 179.
 
 30 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 main, became, nemine contradicente, an article of constitutional 
 agreement among the States as to their common Union.* In 
 like manner, the clause of the Constitution which forbids the 
 States to pass any law "impairing the obligation of con- 
 tracts " took its norm from the ordinance, the text of which 
 was expressly cited by Rufus King, on the floor of the Fed- 
 eral Convention, as the justifying precedent for such a regula- 
 tion, t That the ordinance fell before the eyes of the Phila- 
 delphia Convention is proved by the fact that it was pub- 
 lished in full in a Philadelphia newspaper, The Pennsylva- 
 nia Herald, on the 2 5th of July, 1787. It is a remarkable fact 
 that, in the original documents connected with the passage 
 of the ordinance, as still preserved in the Library of Congress 
 at Washington, the clause providing for the slavery interdict, 
 accompanied with a proviso for the rendition of fugitive slaves, 
 is entirely in the handwriting of Nathan Dane, while certain 
 other amendments, in the body of the instrument, looking 
 to more liberal rules for the descent of property, are in 
 the handwriting of William Grayson, of Virginia. 
 
 While Southern statesmen, assembled in their State con- 
 ventions in 1788 to pass on the Constitution, were recounting 
 the advantages of the South under that instrument, to wit : 
 The permission to import slaves till 1808, and to recover 
 their fugitive slaves in all parts of America under Federal 
 jurisdiction, Northern statesmen, assembled in similar con- 
 vention, in their respective States, were recounting the ad- 
 
 * Elliot's Debates, voL iv., p. 286; vol. v., p. 492. In the unanimity with 
 which this clause was adopted Judge Story finds " a proof at once of its intrinsic 
 and practical necessity," as conceived by the framers of the Constitution in 1787. 
 " Without it," he says, "the Union could not have been formed." (Prigg case, 
 16 Peters, 611.) Judge McLean, on information and belief purporting to be de- 
 rived from Chief Justice Marshall, avers that without it "no Constitution could 
 have been adopted." (McQuerry case, 5 McLean, 478.) Such negatives do not 
 admit of strict proof, however great may be the probability in their favor. 
 
 The statement contained in the "Declaration of Independence" with which 
 South Carolina accompanied her Ordinance of Secession in 1860, to the effect that 
 a provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves was made by Virginia "the condi- 
 tion of cession of the territory which now composes the States north of the Ohio 
 River," is entirely unhistorical, so far as I can discover. 
 
 f Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 487.
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 3 1 
 
 vantages of the North under that same instrument, to wit, as 
 Mr. Wilson expressed it in Pennsylvania : That the prohibi- 
 tion of the importation of slaves after 1808 would lay a foun- 
 dation for ultimately banishing slavery from the country, 
 while " the new States which were to be formed would be 
 under the control of Congress " [in their condition of terri- 
 torial pupilage], and, therefore, " slavery would never be in- 
 troduced amongst them." This optimistic forecast of Mr. 
 Wilson was justified by the facts before him in 1788, for the 
 two Southern States which insisted, at the epoch of the for- 
 mation of the Constitution, on reserving the right to import 
 slaves till 1808, had insisted on that right for the benefit of 
 existing' States alone,* and not for the benefit of any new 
 States which might be subsequently admitted into the Union, 
 while South Carolina, less than a month after the passage of 
 the Ordinance of 1787, had ceded her Western lands to Con- 
 gress, without making any reservation against the prohibition 
 of slavery in the territory so ceded. 
 
 But North Carolina, by her deed of cession in 1790 the 
 first concluded under the present Constitution was careful 
 to make reservation against the right of Congress to establish 
 any regulation tending to emancipate slaves in the territory 
 so granted. Here was the entering wedge of that great dis- 
 sidence between the Northern and the Southern States 
 which, in the matter of the territories, was destined at a later 
 day to rive the Union in twain for a time. It was the first 
 beginning, under the Constitution, of that long politico- 
 agrarian struggle which finally culminated in the outbreak of 
 our late Civil War. 
 
 In the year 1798, the Congress, in accepting a cession of 
 land from Georgia, volunteered to exempt it from the anti- 
 slavery clause of the Ordinance of 1787. The issue between 
 the Northern and the Southern States was here distinctly 
 joined as to territory every inch of which fell outside of the 
 
 limits embraced in the so-called "compacts" of 1784 and 
 
 
 
 * The exact language of the Constitution is : "The importation of such per- 
 sons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be 
 prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808."
 
 32 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 1787. The Congress was here dealing with a virgin soil, and 
 could wed it either to freedom or to slavery according to 
 its own will and pleasure. Mr. Thatcher, of Massachusetts, 
 moved, in the House of Representatives, to put an interdict 
 on slavery in this territory. The motion received only twelve 
 votes. In the presence of such a vote, we see at once that 
 the idea of an equitable division of territory between the 
 Northern and the Southern States had already imbedded 
 itself in the political consciousness of the country. This idea 
 was, indeed, openly avowed, in the course of the debate on 
 Thatcher's motion, by Robert Goodloe Harper, of South 
 Carolina.* 
 
 We now come, in the order of time, to a new stadium in 
 the portentous progress of territorial politics in the United 
 States the acquisition of Louisiana by purchase from 
 France. That that purchase was abundantly justified by in- 
 dispensable considerations of national safety, unity, and expe- 
 diency will now be denied by no American citizen ; but at the 
 time when Jefferson effected the purchase it was complicated 
 not only with grave questions of constitutional right but 
 with still more burning questions of sectional politics, arising 
 from the antagonism between the slave-holding and the non- 
 slave-holding States. At first, the Southern friends of the 
 acquisition sought to appease the discontents of its Northern 
 opponents by representing that the terms of the treaty made 
 with France did not bind the United States to admit any 
 new States carved out of this territory. It was so represented 
 by John Taylor, of Caroline, in the Senate, and by John 
 Randolph, of Roanoke, in the House of Representatives. It 
 was a flimsy pretence which deceived nobody. In due time, 
 Louisiana was admitted as a State, but not until Josiah 
 Quincy, of Massachusetts, had proclaimed, on the floor of the 
 House of Representatives, that by that act " the bonds of the 
 Union were virtually dissolved ; that the States which then 
 compose'd it were free from their moral obligations, and that 
 as it was the right of all, so it would be the duty of some, to 
 
 * Annals of Fifth Congress, vol. ii., p. 1306.
 
 TJic Land Politics of the United States. 33 
 
 prepare definitely for a separation amicably if they can, 
 violently if they must." It was the voice of the eloquent 
 Northern Gracchus protesting that the tabernacle of the Con- 
 stitution, beneath which Massachusetts sat, could not be 
 stretched " to form a covering for the inhabitants of the Mis- 
 souri and the Red River country." * 
 
 The controversy which arose on the admission of Missouri 
 was but the normal projection and culmination of the feud 
 opened by the Louisiana purchase ; and the compromise by 
 which that controversy was temporarily composed did but 
 give formal expression to a geographical line of partition be- 
 tween the two sections. The idea which had before been 
 implicit in our politics now became explicit. It was this fact 
 which gave to the Missouri Compromise line its tremendous 
 significance in the* eyes of Mr. Jefferson. He said that the 
 question awoke him " like a fire-bell in the night." He pre- 
 dicted that such a line of demarcation between the two sec- 
 tions, when once conceived and held up to the angry passions 
 of men, would never be obliterated, but would be marked 
 deeper and deeper by every new irritation. 
 
 In studying our history by its epoch-making events, we 
 have to note that, with the advent of the Missouri question, 
 the slavery polemic in our country passed from the forum of 
 economical discussion and ethical debate into the arena of 
 politics. The epoch of this transition has, therefore, I repeat, 
 a tremendous significance in our annals. Forty years later, 
 the polemic passed from the arena of politics into the field of 
 battle and shock of arms. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the first lull of the political storm excited 
 by the Missouri question, the southeastern limits of the 
 United States had been rounded off by the purchase of 
 Florida from Spain, which was concluded in 1821. The ac- 
 quisition was so obviously required by considerations of 
 national advantage and territorial symmetry that it evoked 
 no opposition, except from those who saw in the limited 
 terms of the treaty a renunciation of certain territorial pre- 
 tensions based on the supposed extent of the Louisiana pur- 
 
 * Speeches of Josiah Quincy, pp. 196, 214. 
 3
 
 34 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 chase. Yet President Monroe acknowledged that he took, 
 by the Florida treaty, less territory than Spain was willing to 
 grant, because of the repugnance with which the Eastern 
 part of the Union had long viewed the aggrandizement of 
 the country towards the South and West. So even here the 
 spectre of sectional discord loomed above the horizon of our 
 national diplomacy.* 
 
 Moreover, the State of Maine was admitted into the Un- 
 ion, about this time, as a counterpoise to Missouri, just as 
 Kentucky and Vermont had been almost simultaneously ad- 
 mitted as counteracting make-weights at the beginning of 
 the Government under the present Constitution. The idea 
 of a balance of power between the trading and the planting 
 States had formed the basis of a compromise reached be- 
 tween these States in the formation of the'Constitution. In 
 the progress of events, this balance had been transferred from 
 economics to politics, and, therefore, from States pitted 
 against each other by a difference in their industries to 
 States pitted against each other by a difference in their 
 social systems and political ideas. That is, the sectional 
 equilibrium of the States comprised in the Union, from be- 
 ing avowedly economical and latently political, had now 
 become avowedly political and latently economical. It is 
 true that, in the closing years of his service as a Senator 
 from New York, Rufus King had offered an olive-branch 
 for the pacification of the standing feud between the sections. 
 He proposed that the proceeds of the sales of the public 
 lands should be applied to the emancipation of slaves and to 
 their colonization outside of the United States. His plan of 
 " compensated emancipation" awoke no echo at the time 
 it came too soon for men whose ears were tingling with the 
 strife of tongues and when the echo did come, in the days 
 of Abraham Lincoln it came too late for men whose ears 
 were stunned by the clash of arms. The Gulf Stream of 
 American politics will henceforth be found in the trend of 
 our national debates on the subject of slavery, considered in 
 its relation to the sectional equilibrium between the North 
 * Benton : Thirty Years' View, vol. L, p. 15.
 
 Tlie Land Politics of tlic United States. 35 
 
 and the South, and this sectional equilibrium will henceforth 
 be dressed and redressed within the Territories as the favor- 
 ite seat of its oscillations. 
 
 It was this consideration which gave to the annexation of 
 Texas its chief significance. Party lines as to this measure 
 were not, it is true, distinctly drawn on geographical prem- 
 ises, but nobody doubts that it was the bearing of the ques- 
 tion on the sectional equilibrium which procured for the 
 project its warm support at the South, and its warm opposi- 
 tion at the North. When the question of annexation was 
 first mooted, in 1837, John Quincy Adams avowed the " sol- 
 emn belief" that its consummation " would be, ipso facto, a 
 dissolution of the Union ; " and on the eve of its consumma- 
 tion, in 1844, the Legislature of Massachusetts declared that 
 such an act of admission would have " no binding force 
 whatever " on the people of that State a passionate threat 
 which soon gave way before the sober second thought of her 
 people as expressed by the patriotic toast of her honored 
 son, Robert C. Winthrop : " Our country, hozvever bounded, 
 still our country." The extension of slave territory as an 
 element of political power was at this time justified by 
 Southern statesmen, not only in our domestic politics but 
 even in our international diplomacy. Interpreting the an- 
 nexation of Texas to Mr. Pakenham, the British minister at 
 Washington, Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of State, wrote as 
 follows, under date of April 18, 1844 : " That which is called 
 slavery is really a political institution, essential to the peace, 
 safety, and prosperity of those States of the Union in which 
 it exists." * 
 
 Then came the war with Mexico, a natural though not an 
 inevitable sequel of the annexation of Texas. The war, in 
 its latter stages, was prosecuted with an avowed sectional 
 purpose the aggrandizement of the Southern States by the 
 acquisition of new territory from which to carve out new 
 States to redress the wavering balance of power in favor of pro- 
 slavery politics. The Representatives and Senators of a major- 
 ity of the Northern States threw the " Wilmot proviso" in 
 * Twenty-eighth Congress, First Session ; Senate Document 341, p. 53.
 
 36 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 the opposite scale of the political balance. From this time 
 forth the bitter waters of our political strife were a Marah 
 which never grew sweet, and a Meribah which knew no calm. 
 In vain was it proposed by the South that the Missouri 
 Compromise line should be extended to the Pacific. In vain 
 was it proposed by the North that an absolute interdict 
 should be formally put on the spread of slavery in any and 
 every direction. In vain was it hoped that the sectional 
 feud had been composed by the compromise measures of 
 1850 a series of measures in which we meet precisely the 
 same attempted reconciliation of irreconcilable elements 
 which has already met us in the formation of the Ordinance 
 of 1787 for, as in 1787 the Southern States accepted an in- 
 hibition on the spread of slavery into the Northwestern Ter- 
 ritory if they could be favored with a compact for the ren- 
 dition of slaves, so now, in 1850, they accepted the admission 
 of California as a free State, and even the prohibition of the 
 slave traffic in the District of Columbia, if they could be 
 favored with a more stringent law for the recaption of their 
 fugitive slaves. 
 
 Four years later came the formal repeal of the Missouri 
 Compromise, with a fatuous effort to effect a new solution of 
 the slavery problem by changing the field of its discussion 
 from Congress to the Territories. The people of each Ter- 
 ritory were to be free to prohibit or to establish slavery, 
 "subject only to the Constitution of the United States," as 
 expounded by the Supreme Court. This latter clause was 
 the skulking Guy Fawkes, secreted, with powder and dark 
 lantern, in the Kansas and Nebraska bill, for the explosion of 
 the stately edifice reared on the basis of " Squatter Sover- 
 eignty." Under the lead of this essentially agrarian insti- 
 tute, the question of slavery passed from Congress to the 
 Territorial Legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska ; from these 
 courts of political pie poudre it passed to the Supreme Court 
 of the United States ; from the Supreme Court it passed to 
 the Dred Scott decision ; from the Dred Scott decision it 
 passed to a sectional scramble of immigrants from the North 
 and from the South for the first occupation of the disputed
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 37 
 
 territory ; from the scramble of angry and hostile immigrants 
 it passed to armed politics in Kansas ; from the tussle of 
 armed politics in Kansas it passed to the formation of a 
 powerful political party, organized in every Northern State, 
 for a determined resistance to the further spread of slavery 
 on the North American continent. As to the rest of this 
 eventful history, is it not written in the election of Abraham 
 Lincoln ; in the attempted secession of eleven slave-holding 
 States ; in the Titanic War for the Union ; in the abolition 
 of slavery by Constitutional Amendment ; and in the social 
 and economic unification, for the first time, of the whole 
 American people within the bounds of their common Union? 
 Henceforth we may labor for social and economic progress 
 without disturbance from the jar and jostle of the old sec- 
 tional equilibrium. 
 
 From this abstract and brief chronicle of our history, 
 it will be seen that the public lands, as complicated with 
 two distinct classes of States differently endowed under this 
 head ; or as complicated with two distinct political economies; 
 or as complicated with two distinct social systems comprised 
 in the same Union, have been the great controlling factor in 
 our Federal politics. At each stage of our national progress, 
 we mark the presence of an unstable political equilibrium, 
 produced by an antagonism of sectional interests, and this 
 oscillation has always reached its highest ascension and 
 widest sweep in what Grayson, of Virginia, called, in 1788, 
 " a contest for empire " through the possession of territory as 
 the seat and source of political power in the Union. At the 
 very threshold of our national life, in the formation of the 
 Articles of Confederation, it was a question between the 
 landed and the landless States. At the opening of the Phila- 
 delphia Convention in 1787, it was at first a question between 
 the large and the small States, and when this ground of dis- 
 crimination was lost from sight in the equality of suffrage, 
 conceded alike to small and to large States, in the Senate, it 
 became a question of comparative political power between 
 the planting and the trading States. This economic distinc- 
 tion between these two classes of States was really produced
 
 38 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 by the presence of slavery in the one section, and by its ab- 
 sence from the other. As this fact became more and more 
 obtrusive, the lines of party formation in the United States 
 tended more and more to coincide with the geographical 
 boundaries which separated these two divergent social sys- 
 tems from each other, and this schism in our body politic 
 always came to its clearest line of cleavage in questions about 
 territory, as the earnest and pledge of political power. It 
 was nominally a struggle for the territories on the borders of 
 the Union. It was really a struggle for empire in the Gov- 
 ernment at Washington. From the beginning to the end 
 of our annals, it is questions of land which have always 
 created the great friction points and burning points of 
 American politics. The " irrepressible conflict," in its form, 
 was an agrarian struggle. It was agrarian ambition which, 
 for a season, made Virginia unwilling to cede her public 
 lands. It was an agrarian clamor for equal rights in the com- 
 mon lands which made New Jersey and Delaware loath to 
 sign the Articles of Confederation, and which caused Mary- 
 land to hold out in stubborn resistance for the term of five 
 long and weary years. It was a feeling of agrarian inequal- 
 ity which pitted the small States against the large, in the 
 opening discussions of the Philadelphia Convention. And, 
 finally, it was a question of territorial politics, growing more 
 and more clearly defined between the slave-holding and non- 
 slave-holding States, which at last brought " these two great 
 repulsive masses " into the collision and-shock of our Civil War. 
 It is a far cry from the Valley of Wyoming, before the 
 Constitution was formed, to the plains of Kansas, where our 
 Civil War found its first prelusive skirmish ; but the contro- 
 versy in Wyoming was a small battle in which territorial poli- 
 tics were accentuated with flint-locks, while the controversy 
 in Kansas was a large battle in which territorial politics were 
 accentuated with Sharpe's rifles. In Wyoming, it was a con- 
 troversy between the Susquehanna Land Company of Con- 
 necticut and the henchmen of the Penn proprietary and his 
 assigns. In Kansas, it was a controversy between the New 
 England Emigrant Company and the " Border Ruffians " of
 
 The Land Politics of the United States. 39 
 
 Missouri. In Wyoming, the controversy ultimated in an 
 abortive attempt to carve a new free State the so-called 
 State of Westmoreland out of the flanks of Pennsylvania. 
 In Kansas, the controversy ultimated in an abortive attempt 
 to carve a new slave State out of soil which had been dedi- 
 cated to freedom. In Wyoming, the hotbed of territorial 
 politics produced a partisan leader obscurely known to his- 
 tory by the name of John Franklin. In Kansas, the hotbed 
 of territorial politics produced a partisan leader conspicuously 
 known to history by the name of John Brown. From Wyo- 
 ming to Kansas, and from Kansas to " States dissevered, dis- 
 cordant, belligerent," the combat was constantly deepening 
 in its elements and in its issues, but it is always a combat 
 about land. 
 
 As it was, in its form, a territorial struggle which precipi- 
 tated the great political land-slide attempted by the seceding 
 States in 1861, so it was a modification of that same struggle, 
 placed now on a military footing, which helped to close our 
 " bloody chasm." If considerations of Federal politics had 
 conspired with the physical geography of the country, and 
 with its economic necessities, to dictate the acquisition of 
 Louisiana in 1803, this same physical geography, and these 
 same economic necessities, conspired with our Federal poli- 
 tics, in 1861, to decree that there should be no scission in the 
 political geography of the country, and that no rival nation 
 should be in a position to debar " the great West " from its 
 natural right to the free navigation of the Mississippi River. 
 The secession of Louisiana and of her sister States in the 
 South and Southwest opened, it is true, a dreadful chasm 
 in the forum of our national politics, but into that dreadful 
 chasm the armed chivalry of the land continued to run for 
 four long years, after the manner of Curtius in the old Roman 
 myth, until at last the chasm was closed. The very acquisi- 
 tion of foreign territory, and its incorporation into our body 
 politic, which seemed to Josiah Ouincy, in 1811, a sufficient 
 cause for dissolving the Union, became, in 1861, our coigne 
 of vantage in battling for " an indestructible Union of inde- 
 structible States."
 
 40 The Land Politics of the United States. 
 
 When that steadfast Abdiel of the Union in South Car- 
 olina, the late James L. Petigru, was first informed on the 
 streets of Charleston, in 1861, that Louisiana had passed an 
 ordinance of secession, he exclaimed : " Well, well, that is 
 too bad ! Perhaps some show of argument may be made 
 for the pretended right of secession in one of the old thirteen 
 States which made the Union and the Constitution, but 
 Louisiana? By the infernal gods! we bought that State, 
 and she certainly has no right to take herself out of the 
 Union ! " The grim pleasantry of the saying was meant to 
 point a deeper moral the moral that the political geography 
 of the country is inextricably blended with the physical 
 geography of the country, and that what God has joined 
 together no man can put asunder. Just one hundred years 
 ago William Grayson, of Virginia, saw, as in prophetic vi- 
 sion, that the Mississippi Valley was to be the vallev of de- 
 cision for the swarming multitudes of the South and West in 
 their " contest for empire " with the North and East. The 
 real tug of the contest came in a way which he foresaw as 
 little as Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, foresaw its destined 
 outcome ; for when the smoke of battle was lifted from the 
 bloody lists, at the close of our Civil War, it was seen that the 
 Mississippi Valley had put its determining weight in the scale 
 of freedom, and not, as some men wished and as other men 
 feared, in the scale of slavery. The agrarian politics of the 
 North were sometimes as short-sighted as the agrarian politics 
 of the South, but in all this strife, whether of tongues or of 
 swords, the stars in their courses were fighting for, " Liberty 
 and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."
 
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