American continent. The other colonies were less fortunate. Either their western boundary was specified in their charter (Pennsylvania, Maryland) or they were backed against another colony to the west (Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware). After the middle of the eighteenth century the British government sought to silence these claims of the "sea to sea" charters of the Stuart period. The Board of Trade prompted the delegates to the Albany Congress of 1754 to propose that "the bounds of those colonies which extend to the South Sea be contracted and limited by the Alleghany or Appalachian mountains"; and Benjamin Franklin admitted that those colonies ought to be reduced "to dimensions more convenient for the common purposes of government." Immediately on the close of the French wars, King George by royal proclamation forbade the colonists to extend their settlements beyond the ridge of the Alleghenies (October 7, 1763). The proclamation was not obeyed, for the adventurous frontiersmen of the back country of Virginia and the Carolinas were little minded to abandon the fine hunting-grounds of the West to the Indians. Before a decade had elapsed Daniel Boone and James Robertson were piloting their bands through the rich lands south of the Ohio. All the Western territory north of the Ohio, in which Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut had claims, was incorporated into the province of Quebec by an act of Parliament (1774) which was denounced by the first Continental Congress as "impolitic, unjust, and cruel, as well as unconstitutional and most dangerous and destructive of American rights."

The Revolutionary War wiped out the Proclamation Line of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774, but left the vexing question of who inherited the extinguished British sovereignty between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi. Did that authority revert to the states by their old "sea to sea" charters? If so, Virginia would become half a continent, with lands and wealth ample to pay her war debts, whereas the states without westward extension would have to resort to heavy taxation. It seemed unfair, when the cause for which they had fought the

war was a common cause. Yet Congress had to insist on the charter claims when dealing with England, because to relinquish them would be to acknowledge England's right to dispose of the back lands in the peace negotiations. On the other hand, to say, after the peace was made, that the authority of England in the West devolved upon the Congress would give to that body a power that very few men in America were ready to accord at that time.

The debates in Congress on this dilemma were lively. Chase of Maryland said: "No colony has a right to go to the South Sea: . . . It would not be safe for the rest." But the Virginia delegates replied: "What security have we that Congress will not curtail the present settlements of the States?

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ginia owns to the South Sea; you shall not pare away the colony [sic] of Virginia. A right does not cease to be a right because it is large." A motion in Congress in October, 1777, giving that body the right to fix the western boundaries of the states and to form new states from time to time out of the land beyond—an act important as the first suggestion of the control of Congress over the territories—got the affirmative vote of Maryland alone. In December, 1778, the Maryland delegates in Congress were instructed not to ratify the Articles of Confederation until the obnoxious clause in Article IX, "No state shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States," should be repealed.

There was but one way to break the deadlock between the landed and the landless states, and that was for the former voluntarily to surrender their Western claims. New York, whose claims were based not on charter rights but on numerous treaties with the Iroquois Indians concluded between 1684 and 1752, led the way by an act of her legislature in February, 1780. Within the next decade all the states with Western claims had followed except Georgia, whose final action was delayed (on account of Indian dangers) until 1802. On the day of the execution of New York's deed of cession in Congress (March 1, 1781) Maryland signed the Articles of Confederation.

Though Maryland deserves gratitude for insisting on this great principle of equity among the states, the chief credit for the transaction must be given to Virginia. Her claim alone was well founded. If the Stuart charters were to be pleaded, hers was the oldest, and in its form of 1609 was inclusive of the territory claimed by all the states north of her. If the charters were to be disregarded, Virginia could point to her splendid conquest of the Northwest during the Revolution. Moreover, the attitude of the authorities of Virginia was reasonable and conciliatory. No language could be nobler than Jefferson's in his proposal to the convention of Pennsylvania for the adjustment of a disputed boundary west of Fort Pitt (July, 1776): "We can assure you that the colony of Virginia does not entertain a wish that one inch should be added to theirs from the territory of a sister colony, and we have perfect confidence that the same just sentiment prevails in your House. . . . The decision, whatever it be, will not annihilate the lands. They will remain to be occupied by Americans, and whether these be counted in the number of this or that of the United States will be thought a matter of little moment." And in transmitting to Congress the resolution of January 2, 1781, by which Virginia agreed to cede its lands in the Northwest on condition that all the states accept the Articles, Jefferson, then governor of the state, wrote, "I shall be rendered very happy if the other states of the Union, equally impressed with the necessity of that important Convention [the Articles], shall be willing to sacrifice equally to its completion." After language and example of this sort the other states could hardly with decency refuse to surrender their shadowy claims.

March 1, 1781, deserves to rank with April 19, 1775, July 4, 1776, and April 30, 1789, among the birthdays of the American nation. The first blow struck in arms for liberty, the declaration of our independence, the inauguration of our first president, are events which have received their full measure of attention from historians. But none of these events was fraught with more importance than the signature of the Maryland delegates to the Articles of Confederation and the acceptance by