USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 18
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Washington, scanning the future, saw the necessity of forc- ing decisive results beyond the mountains in the next cam- paign, and for this object General William Irvine was sent to take command at Fort Pitt. One of the earliest reports which Irvine made to Washington was that Lochry's neighbors of Westmoreland County, in Virginia, were disheartened at the havoc which that officer's defeat had made among the flower of their young men. They were accordingly seriously thinking of abandoning their county in the spring. On the other hand, the fact that the indecisive campaign of the last season in that region had not deprived the Americans of any territory had already, as Irvine reported (December 3), instigated " people of different places to concoet plans to emigrate into the Indian country, there to establish a government for themselves." This impulse was in large measure owing to the continued uncer- tainty of the limits of the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania and Virginia. An agreement had been reached in the preceding April by which the five degrees from the Delaware should be determined on the southern boundary line of Pennsylvania. There had, however, been delays in running the bounds, so that the weary settlers were threatening to migrate beyond the dis- puted territory, and Irvine was reporting to Washington, in De- cember, that until the lines were drawn the militia were useless. There was also, doubtless, an adventurous spirit and some am- bitious projects interwoven with these restless motives. It was
197
PENNSYLVANIA BOUNDS.
owing, perhaps, to the stringent acts which Pennsylvania passed against such an exodus that the Virginians in greater numbers than the Pennsylvanians were joining in the removals. The line which was expected to set at rest these disturbances was not in fact actually run in a provisional way till November of the next year (1782), and it was not confirmed till three years later (1785).
Irvine felt that while the present time demanded, first of 'all, military success, it was not wise to inaugurate such remote
-42º-N-LAT
F
PENNSYLVANIA
FORT PITT
-40° N. L.
MARYLAND
-39º N. L.
DELAWARE
PENNSYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA BOUNDARY DISPUTE.
NOTE. - This cut is from N. B. Craig's Olden Time, Pittsburg, 1846, vol. i. p. 449.
Key : - is the finally established Pennsylvania line. ... (curved and straight) is the line claimed by Pennsylvania. -- is the line proposed by Dunmore. - 0 - 0 - o is the line proposed by Virginia to be continued north by the curved line.
autonomies. He was doubtful if even the established Kentucky settlements, or such posts as Fort MeIntosh, could be sustained till more peaceful times came. His purpose was to prepare the immediate frontiers against savage raids, and then to devote all available resources to following up the Indians to their destrue- tion, and to waste no time in merely burning their towns. He planned in the end to make, if he could, a sudden attack upon
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EAST AND WEST.
Detroit. He had no purpose to hold the straits, if he got pos- session of them, for the distance to Detroit was too great to transport supplies, and the British would still command the lakes. He expected only to make a dash and do as much damage as he could, and then retire, hoping in this way to impress the Indians and acquire a temporary respite till the final influence of Yorktown towards a peace was made clear. Washington, in his correspondenee with Irvine, recognized the necessity and expedieney of the movement, but nothing could well come of the project during the winter.
The tenacity with which, under all his disappointments, Clark had maintained his grasp on the northwest during 1781, made that year such a turning-point in the struggle with the mother country beyond the mountains as Yorktown had proved to be on the Atlantic slope. Not less important was the firm step forward which the States had made in the same interval in determining their political relations to this western country. Just one year from the time when New York had indicated a scheme of compromise, Virginia had retreated from her first pretensions so far as to offer (January 2, 1781) a cession of jurisdiction over the country north of the Ohio, if Congress would agree to certain conditions. To one of these, that the region should ultimately be partitioned into States, there could be no objection. Nor was it unreasonable to require Congress ' to reimburse her for defending this same region from the as- saults from Detroit, for there was then unsettled on her hands the just claim of Oliver Pollock for a very large sum which he had advanced to Clark in his necessities. Congress knew well enough its own indebtedness to the same ardent patriot, who had beggared himself in the cause, and had parted with all his property in New Orleans at a sacrifice, in his efforts to repay the money which he had borrowed from the chest of the Spanish king. Congress, as well as Virginia, had cansed Pollock's embarrassment, and it might well meet the obligations of both. It was furthermore no unexpected stipulation that the French Canadians inhabiting this region, and who had so readily changed their allegiance, should be protected in their landed rights ; that all bounty lands which had been promised to the soldiers should be respected. It was no hardship for
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THE CONFEDERATION FORMED.
Congress to agree that all royal grants in that country should be held to be void. But when, by implication, Virginia asked that the claims of New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and that all claimants under native grants, both those of indi- viduals and of the Indiana Company, should be disregarded, and that the Kentucky country should be guaranteed to her, she arrogantly asked more than Congress could possibly concede. To take these and all other propositions, from whatever source, into consideration, Congress on January 31, 1781, instituted a committee, who proceeded to call upon all the claimant States and grantees to make a showing of their rights.
New York moved promptly, and directed her delegates to execute a deed to Congress of the territory west of a self-im- posed boundary following the meridian of the western end of Lake Ontario, but requiring a guarantee of her territory east of that line if Virginia secured such a pledge. This deed was executed on March 1, and Maryland, having authorized her delegates in anticipation, on the same day signed the articles of confederation, in the belief that the crisis was passed. The next day Congress began to head its bills, "The United States in Congress assembled."
Matters rested till October, when, just as the toils were tight- ened about Cornwallis, and a committee of Congress stood ready to hear Virginia and her rivals formulate their respective claims, that State stood aloof (October 16) and contended that any presentation of her position was not consistent with her dignity, and ten days later she vainly tried to embarrass the committee and limit its powers.
On November 3, the committee made its report. They rep- resented that they had not obtained from Virginia the same assistance which had been furnished them by the rival claim- ants. The committee, as was expected, made the most of the opportunity to aggrandize the Iroquois claim of New York, both north and south of the Ohio, and to belittle that of Vir- ginia. They attempted to show this depreciation by setting the rights of the Iroquois, the grants which the traders of the Indi- ana Company had received, and the limits fixed by the procla- mation of 1763, against the charter rights of 1609. It was farther claimed that the crown lands as George the Third had defined them had fallen naturally to the revolting colonies as
200
EAST AND WEST.
a whole. The grant to the Vandalia Company, though legally instituted, was held to be too large for public policy, while it might be expedient to make some compensation to the propri- etors in the final settlement ; but that the assumed holding of the Illinois and Wabash Company had no warrant in law what-
ever. The committee closed with urging Virginia to make an unrestricted cession. Madison, who was fearful that Virginia would take deep umbrage at the report, still hoped that the seven States necessary to act on the committee's report would save Virginia from such humiliation, and indeed the report as a whole was never acted upon, since it was seen that the cession movement could get on better without such friction. And here the matter rested at the close of 1781.
We have seen that, beneath the lowering skies of the open- ing of the year (1781), Congress had taken the initiative and Virginia, notwithstanding her recent reproach to New Eng- land, had abandoned her demand for the free navigation of the Mississippi in order better to gain the adherence of Spain. Jefferson sent instructions to that effect to the Virginia dele- gates on January 18. Some weeks later, Virginia moved in Congress that the river below 31° be yielded to Spain, if she would guarantee the free navigation to the United States above that point. On February 15, Congress, supine and in despair, instructed Jay to yield, if it was found necessary to the securing of a Spanish alliance. As the weeks went on, there was a prac- tical abandonment of all beyond the mountains, except so far as France might dictate the retention. Congress was even ready, pending an acknowledgment of independence, to agree to a truce with England, if France and Spain would deny that gov- ernment the occupation of all it had claimed. The degradation was complete when, on June 11, to Luzerne's delight, nine States, which were mainly those occupied by the enemy, forced through Congress a vote, leaving absolutely to France the definitions of the American bounds. Luzerne felt so sure of his victory that he informed his government that Congress would be content with the Ohio, if not with the Alleghanies, as a frontier. The surrender to France once made, all sorts of notions prevailed as to what could be saved of the western country. It was hoped, by yielding the Fort Stanwix grant of 1769 beyond the Kana-
201
JAY IN MADRID.
wha, -- requiring at the same time the destruction of all neigh- boring fortified posts, -to satisfy France ; but if more was demanded, they hoped to appease the Franco-Spanish avidity by yielding, " for the use of the Indians," Niagara and western New York, and all the western slope of the Alleghanies, except so far as the charter of Pennsylvania covered the territory about the forks of the Ohio. These alternative schemes are outlined in a paper by Gouverneur Morris, preserved in the Sparks man- uscripts. Virginia at one time (June 8) tried in vain to get a vote in which the western bounds were defined as leaving the St. Lawrence where the 45th parallel struck that river, and then proceeding by the lake to the Miami (Manmee), and so to the sources of the Illinois, and down that river to the Mississippi, but not another State had the courage to insist upon it and save the conquest of Clark.
While everything was fluttering to the death in Philadelphia, the soul of Jay in Madrid was rasped almost beyond endur- ance. He knew the ministry to be " insineere and mysterious," and it is pretty well proved, as he then feared, that his letters were opened in the Spanish post-office. He was conseious that those to whom he was granting diplomatie courtesies knew more of what Congress had done than was permitted him to know. He got intimations from Gouverneur Morris that led him to conjecture the truth.
Finally, however, he obtained his luckless instructions, and on July 13 delivered them formally to Florida Blanca. He could now, at least, talk with him for the future upon terms more equal.
By August, Congress had received Jay's response. Joseph Jones gives us his version of Jay's chagrin : " The Dons are playing a game wholly for themselves."
When Congress awoke to this, with a spurt of valor, it voted August 10, unanimously, to yield nothing to Spain. Before this determination could have reached Jay, he sought to force a decision out of the laggard and tortuous Spanish ministers. On September 22, he made a formal proposition to relinquish the navigation of the Mississippi below 31°, intimating the great- ness of the concession, inasmuch as it must retard the settle- ment of the country. He told the minister that the concession must be accepted immediately, for it could not be held to if
202
EAST AND WEST.
deferred to the general peace. He assumed this bold front with the same spirit with which he had tried to impress on Congress that their wavering was a mistake, and that any spirit was better than one " of humility and compliance." The bluster failed, and Jay was obliged to confess to Congress, when he next wrote (October 3), that Spain insisted on the entire con- trol of the Gulf of Mexico, and the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi. " The cession of the navigation of the Mississippi will, in my opinion," he added, "render a future war with Spain unavoidable."
Before the president of Congress had received this, Oliver Pollock at New Orleans, with ample knowledge, was writing to the same official that the United States must insist on a port of deposit near the Houmas village, twenty-two leagues above New Orleans, where there was high land, and that they must claim a pilot stand at the Balize.
Four days after Pollock wrote this, Cornwallis surrendered, and there was clearing weather.
1
CHAPTER XII.
PEACE, 1782.
THE surrender of Cornwallis ; the disposition of Parliament to peace; Conway's successful motion (February 22) to dis- continue the war, which led North to exclaim, "We are beat completely ;" Burke's triumphant hopes, - all were recogniza- ble signs of the coming end of the dragging conflict. The British held a few ports on the seaboard, but by July they had evacuated Savannah. Such Atlantic footholds were not likely to interfere with America's securing an unbroken coast from Maine to Florida, though there was to be an attempt to make the country east of the Penobscot the price of the final surren- der of such ports.
While there was little opportunity for French machinations along the eastern slope of the Appalachians, it was otherwise beyond the mountains, and the progress of events in the great western valleys might in the coming months (1782) be of cardinal importance in settling the ultimate bounds of the Republic.
Possessions in the northwest, as they stood, favored the per- manence of the American occupation, if there should be no great disaster during the coming season (1782). Haldimand, as commanding along the northern frontier, showed no disposi- tion to be active. Guy Johnson was eager to make a dash on Fort Pitt, and Rocheblave, now restored to the Canadian ser- vice, thought that a show of force on the Ohio might swerve the Kentuckians from their allegiance to the confederated States ; but Haldimand gave little encouragement to any move- ments beyond a projected one of De Peyster to dislodge the American settlers about Chicago.
Clarke still held his post at the falls, and was anxious to make it the rallying-place of patrol boats on the Ohio, but with a treasury of four shillings and "no means of getting more,"
204
PEACE, 1782.
he could do little. The place, however, was already beginning to bustle with a transit trade. One Jacob Yoder, an adventur- ous traffieker, had brought in the spring some merehandise from the seaboard to the Monongahela, and from Old Redstone on that stream he had floated it down the river to the falls, in search of an ultimate market in New Orleans.
There was a belief that by faithless acts, some Moravian Indians, who had returned to the Muskingum, had threatened the quiet of the river. So, with little hesitation, a party of Pennsylvanians, under David Williamson, had ruthlessly fallen upon them. It was a natural retribution when, in June, Colonel Crawford, under Irvine's orders, led a party against the Dela- wares on the Sandusky, and this unfortunate leader was captured and burnt at the stake. In August, a still harder blow was dealt by Captain Caldwell, with a party of British rangers and Indians, dispatched by De Peyster, when an attack was made on Bryant's Station, resulting, a day or two later, in a counter struggle of some mounted Kentnekians at the Blue Licks. This confliet proved to be one of the severest defeats which the frontiersmen ever sustained. A few weeks later, a foree of British and Indians made an assault on Fort Henry (Wheeling). Colonel Zane and a feeble garrison happily sustained themselves till succor arrived. Before the season elosed, Major Craig, sent from Fort Pitt, made a useless reconnoissance (November) towards Sandusky, while at the same time Clark, animated by revenge for the season's disasters, starting from the falls, led a thousand men against the Miamis, and devastated their towns. It was the last brilliant dash of a man who, amid the whirls of disappointment, was soon to surrender himself to evil habits, and drop out of memorable history. He had now made the final rude onset against British power in the northwest, as he had made the first four years before.
Though Haldimand, on the British side, had, in the main, throughout the season counseled defensive measures, it had not been easy for him to prevent retaliatory strokes. Brant had hoped, while the year was closing, to give a finishing blow. Before the progress of the negotiations in Paris were known to presage peace, this savage chieftain had planned an attack on Fort Pitt, but learning of the excellent condition in which Irvine had put that post, he desisted.
205
NEW YORK AND VERMONT.
Thus it happened that negotiations for peace were going on in Paris while the fortunes of a desultory conflict were swaying hither and thither beyond the mountains. There was in the west, as in the east, no marked change in the position of the combatants as the season closed.
It was, consequently, as we shall see, mainly the attitude of France and Spain touching this very western country, rather than the demands of England, which caused perplexity in the settlement of the boundaries of the new nation. Indeed, the good results of the final treaty we mainly owe to England, for by playing into the hands of our more bitter enemies, France and Spain, she could have seriously hampered the young Re- public at its birth.
While the surgings of the war had not affected the relative possessions of the belligerents in the west, the relations of the States to that territory had, pending the negotiations for peace, been carried to an effective stage. Congress was brought in January (1782) squarely to affirm that the confederated States had succeeded to all the charter rights of the sea-to-sea colonies, as abridged by the Treaty of 1763. Thus the ground was con- veniently cleared when, on May 1, 1782, Congress set itself to consider the committee's report of the preceding November 3.
The main thing to be dealt with was the acceptance or refusal of the deed which had been offered by New York. There were reasons why Virginia kept a jealous and watchful eye upon her Northern rival. The Southern State saw danger in the press- ing Vermont question, for if that district was admitted to the Union, it meant, as New York claimed, that Congress could decide between a State and a portion of the same State seeking autonomy. Such a result might prove a precedent, as Virginia saw, for Congress to partition that State's domain in. accepting Kentucky. The success of Vermont would bode further ill to Virginia, in that the admission of that Northern State to the confederation would swell the vote of the non-claimant States, in considering the proposition of the committee to despoil Vir- ginia of her rights, by accepting the conflicting claims of her rival, New York. It was clear to Virginia that if Congress decided for New York, it threw the whole force of the confed- eration against her.
206
PEACE, 1782.
The country was in something like a death struggle, and was impressed with a belief (however futile it proved to be) that a public domain at the west was going to furnish means to pay the expenses of the war. Under these eireumstances, there was little chance that the rival claims of Virginia and New York would be dispassionately weighed, sinee measures in legislative bodies are not always, under the stress of war, pushed to just conclusions.
The question of the relative value of these rival claims has not indeed proved easy of solution in later times. Baneroft holds all elaims but Virginia's to be invalid. The Supreme Court of the United States, in Johnson v. MeIntosh, while pro- nouneing against Indian titles as opposed to European pre- emption, may seem so far to have sustained the position of Virginia. But the historical question is complicated by the royal annulment of her charter in 1624, though the Virginia publicists have contended that further action in 1625 showed that the consequent possession by the crown of the original territorial limits did not deprive the colony of its rights of juris- dietion ; nor was this again affected, as they further elaimed, by the proclamation of 1763. In Congress, at least, at this time and later, the native grant was sustained, and pointedly, for the Indiana title, being a native one, was upheld, and the Vandalia title, being a royal preemption, was voided.
We have seen that Thomas Paine had raised a new issue in giving a construction to the terms of the charter of 1609 which was opposed to that maintained by Virginia. The charter, it will be remembered, makes one of the lines running back from the coast proceed due west, while the other turns northwest, and both by a vague implication were supposed to strike the western ocean. Virginia's due west line was the North Caro- lina boundary, and the northwest one that which eut off the western parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania and extended indefinitely towards Alaska, abridging thereby also the west- ern extension of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Paine's due west line struek baek from the coast at the Maryland line, while his northwest line struek inland at the south till it joined the west line or entered the western sea. This water was held at that time (1609), as Paine contends, to be so near the Alleghanies and beyond their western slope that the two lines,
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NEW YORK CESSION.
as he understood them, would probably touch the sea before they collided, and so warrant the expression of the charter, that they extended to that sea. Paine contended that this construction gave a more reasonable limit to the colony than the extent claimed by Virginia, which was large enough to embrace fifty colonies. It will be seen that this view disposed at once of the controversy so long and bitterly waged by Vir- ginia with Maryland and Pennsylvania, and affected the juris- diction of the upper Shenandoah.
Congress, however, was clearly determined not to decide be- tween disputed interpretations, if a settlement could be reached by the voluntary quitclaims of the rival States. The mani- festations of the hour were easily colored by predilections. Madison fancied the Middle States, which had been opposed to Virginia by reason of the numbers of their citizens who were interested in land companies, were now drawing to the Virginia side. The Northern people said that Virginia was, on the contrary, losing ground, and even Madison, rather than con- tinue the contest, at last felt disposed to yield everything that would not benefit the arrogant land companies. The purpose of these he thought might be thwarted by setting Kentucky up as a new government. Indeed, if Irvine's observations were correct, there had grown during the summer, beyond the moun- tains, a strong disposition for more than one such separate government.
The question of the acceptance of the New York deed camc up in Congress a month before the peace commissioners in Paris had closed their labors, and Virginia stood alone in casting her vote against it. After a struggle of six years, the policy to which the constancy of Maryland had contributed, but which Congress had more wisely shaped, was now established. The New York deed, based on the various treaties with the Iroquois in 1684, 1701, 1726, 1744, and 1754, as the committee's report of August 16, 1782, enumerated them, conceded to Congress the fee in the territory between the lakes and the Cumberland Mountains, with a stretch westward, and all under a title which Madison styled " flimsy." He charged New York with urging her jurisdiction, not so much to maintain it, as to secure some credit for her cession of it. The true Virginian plea was that the Iroquois, while they could confer the right of occupancy,
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PEACE, 1782.
could give no title against the prior discovery of other Chris- tian people. If the New York title had validity, it really left to Virginia but a remnant of her supposed jurisdiction to be surrendered as indisputably hers. Congress had decided that to accept this New York claim was sufficient for the occasion, as setting an example to be followed by the other claimant States, and its action practically banded the confederation in that ob- ject. Unless Virginia was bound to stand for her rights, - and the event proved she was not, - and unless Connecticut and Massachusetts and the States south of Virginia were to assume a position equally perverse, - and the event proved they were not, - the question of a great public domain was thus oppor- tunely settled, a month before the provisional treaty of peace was signed at Paris, when Congress, on October 29, voted to accept in due form the deed offered by New York.
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