As Virginia admitted, the British Government had always assumed that the
Atlantic coast-plain was the seat of its thirteen American colonies, and
had refused to acknowledge openly their claims much beyond the crest of
the Alleghanies. The ownership of the vacant lands between the mountains
and the Mississippi River was vested in the King under the name of "Crown
lands." But no sooner had the struggle for independence begun than the
colonies determined in case of success to claim the entire British
possessions in those parts; that is, to the Mississippi. As early as 1776,
Silas Deane, the commercial agent of the United States in Paris, suggested
to Congress the sale of the vacant lands to French colonists as a means of
paying the expenses of the war. The rich valley, when fully regarded as a
possible spoil of war, became a golden apple of discord. It had been won,
small States argued, "by the blood and treasure of all, and ought,
therefore, to be a common estate."
Led more by the necessity for some kind of a national government to
replace the rule of Britain thrown off in 1776 than by such appeals, the
Legislature of New York in 1781 authorised her delegates in Congress to
quitclaim all lands lying outside her present boundaries to the General
Government for the benefit of present and future States of the Union.
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