WEBVTT NOTE 44. The Drive for Confederation 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Part 6, The Political History of the United States, 1776-1778 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:13.000 Volume 4, Chapter 44, The Drive for Confederation 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:24.000 The most important political fact of the years after independence was the movement toward a formal confederation by the revolutionary states of America. 4 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:30.480 The radicals were scarcely enthusiastic about creating any sort of permanent central government, 5 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:36.320 but their innate distrust of all government, especially large central government, 6 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:44.000 necessarily removed from checks by the people, was partially neutralized by their overriding desire 7 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:50.960 to win the Revolutionary War. The myth abounded that formal confederation was necessary to win 8 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:56.720 in the war, although the war would be virtually won by the time confederation was finally 9 00:00:56.720 --> 00:00:58.240 achieved. 10 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:07.160 The war was fought and won by the states informally, but effectively united in a continental congress. 11 00:01:07.160 --> 00:01:12.680 Fundamental decisions, such as independence, had to be ratified by every state. 12 00:01:12.680 --> 00:01:18.680 There was no particular need for the formal trappings and permanent investing of a centralized 13 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:25.920 government, even for victory in war. Ironically, the radicals were reluctantly pulled into 14 00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:32.180 an arrangement which they believed would wither away at the end of the war, and thereby helped 15 00:01:32.180 --> 00:01:38.920 to forge an instrument which would be riveted upon the people only in time of peace, an 16 00:01:38.920 --> 00:01:45.440 instrument that proved to be a halfway house to that arch enemy of the radical cause, the 17 00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:48.440 and the Constitution of the United States. 18 00:01:48.440 --> 00:01:50.440 The conservatives, on the other hand, 19 00:01:50.440 --> 00:01:53.240 suffered from no such hesitation. 20 00:01:53.240 --> 00:01:56.720 Those flexible conservatives who went along reluctantly 21 00:01:56.720 --> 00:02:00.520 with independence rather than becoming outright Tories 22 00:02:00.520 --> 00:02:03.440 saw in a strong new central government 23 00:02:03.440 --> 00:02:06.600 the reconstitution of a powerful state, 24 00:02:06.600 --> 00:02:09.520 a British Imperium without Britain. 25 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:13.100 Here they hoped would be a strong central state 26 00:02:13.100 --> 00:02:19.580 which they could expect to control, a state which could bring back mercantilism and monopoly 27 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:24.260 privilege with even greater benefits to themselves. 28 00:02:24.260 --> 00:02:30.060 As Merrill Jensen puts it, the conservatives who had opposed the revolution and who went 29 00:02:30.060 --> 00:02:37.420 along with it only when they saw no alternatives as well as many who were not opposed to independence 30 00:02:37.420 --> 00:02:43.460 wanted supreme political authority placed in a central government which could exercise 31 00:02:43.460 --> 00:02:48.420 a coercive power over the states and their citizens. 32 00:02:48.420 --> 00:02:54.260 They valued the British connection for the very definite advantages it gave the ruling 33 00:02:54.260 --> 00:02:56.680 classes of the colonies. 34 00:02:56.680 --> 00:03:01.780 When faced with the fact of independence, they demanded the creation of a government 35 00:03:01.780 --> 00:03:08.660 which would in some way function as a bulwark of conservative interest, in other words, 36 00:03:08.660 --> 00:03:12.180 as a substitute for the British government. 37 00:03:12.180 --> 00:03:17.620 The radicals, of course, were engaged in fighting a war against centralized government, its 38 00:03:17.620 --> 00:03:23.880 taxation, restrictions and privileges, and were not about to favor establishing an equivalent 39 00:03:23.880 --> 00:03:29.340 at home to what they were fighting to eject from American shores. 40 00:03:29.340 --> 00:03:35.740 And what of the revolutionary radical principle of locating sovereignty in the people themselves 41 00:03:35.740 --> 00:03:38.720 rather than in the legitimate government? 42 00:03:38.720 --> 00:03:44.420 Would not this be an insuperable barrier to the aims of the right? 43 00:03:44.420 --> 00:03:48.780 But here the able conservatives proved shrewd indeed. 44 00:03:48.780 --> 00:03:54.780 They managed to drop quickly the belief in the sovereignty of the crown and demagogically 45 00:03:54.780 --> 00:04:00.780 to incorporate the radical doctrine of popular sovereignty for their own ends. 46 00:04:00.780 --> 00:04:05.780 Indeed, they cynically appeared to be more democratic than the radicals, 47 00:04:05.780 --> 00:04:11.780 for they argued that only a strong national government could really represent all the people. 48 00:04:11.780 --> 00:04:15.780 This contrasted to the radicals' distrust of central power 49 00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:22.780 and their doctrine that the central government should only be a limited federation of sovereign states. 50 00:04:22.780 --> 00:04:32.780 In the name of the people, the conservatives called for the crushing of the powers of the separate states and the aggrandizement of national governmental power. 51 00:04:32.780 --> 00:04:38.780 Thus, for the first time on the American scene, but by no means the last time, 52 00:04:38.780 --> 00:04:45.780 the right found the ability to use the language of popular democracy to befuddle the masses, 53 00:04:45.780 --> 00:04:54.780 to win their allegiance to strong central government, mercantilism and monopoly and away from individual freedom. 54 00:04:54.780 --> 00:05:01.780 The drive for a national state came primarily from the financial oligarchs of the middle states 55 00:05:01.780 --> 00:05:08.780 and especially from Robert Morris and his Pennsylvania satellites and the allied oligarchs of New York. 56 00:05:08.780 --> 00:05:17.780 There were two major reasons for the greater zeal for national aggrandizement by these men than among the conservatives of the South. 57 00:05:17.780 --> 00:05:24.780 First was the former's far shakier rule at home, especially in New York and Pennsylvania. 58 00:05:24.780 --> 00:05:32.780 And second was the greater economic and financial stake in the central government than that among the planters of the South. 59 00:05:32.780 --> 00:05:40.780 For example, Morris and his cohorts had already made millions from the centralized war effort alone. 60 00:05:40.780 --> 00:05:54.780 Until a formal governmental structure should be achieved, the conservatives tried their best to aggrandize the power of the existing Continental Congress at the expense of the citizens of the several states. 61 00:05:54.780 --> 00:06:02.780 Leading in this attempt was James Wilson of Pennsylvania, Robert Morris's ally and chief theoretician. 62 00:06:02.780 --> 00:06:15.780 Scorning the history of Congress, Wilson boldly declared as early as August 1776 that Congress really represented all the American people and was thus superior to the states. 63 00:06:15.780 --> 00:06:22.780 Indeed, the states, declared Wilson, had really been dissolved into one large state. 64 00:06:22.780 --> 00:06:39.780 But though Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a centrist shifting steadily rightward, and the now conservative John Adams argued similarly, their repeated efforts at centralization were all unsuccessful. 65 00:06:39.780 --> 00:06:51.780 Thus, in early 1777, Wilson argued that Congress had to oppose a convention of New England states that had met the previous December to discuss plans to prosecute the war. 66 00:06:51.780 --> 00:06:59.780 Adams, Rush and he asserted that an unauthorized meeting would virtually usurp the alleged powers of Congress. 67 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:02.780 But the radicals fought back powerfully. 68 00:07:02.780 --> 00:07:08.780 Sam Adams acidly pointed out that only tyrants opposed the right of the people to assemble. 69 00:07:08.780 --> 00:07:17.780 And Richard Henry Lee insisted that there was no confederation and therefore there could be no infringement of law. 70 00:07:17.780 --> 00:07:23.780 Congress finally agreed that it had no power to prohibit or punish such regional meetings. 71 00:07:23.780 --> 00:07:30.780 Another fierce struggle about enhancing Congressional power over people came in early 1777. 72 00:07:30.780 --> 00:07:41.780 It was waged over a measure authorizing Congress to empower local officials to arrest deserters without participation by the state governments. 73 00:07:41.780 --> 00:07:48.820 and Governments. Led by James Wilson, Congress at first passed this law, but it was later 74 00:07:48.820 --> 00:07:51.680 forced to rescind. 75 00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:57.660 Just arrived in Congress, one Dr. Thomas Burke of North Carolina, an Irish-born physician, 76 00:07:57.660 --> 00:08:03.820 quickly assumed the leadership of the radical libertarian forces. He charged that this assumption 77 00:08:03.820 --> 00:08:10.020 of power by Congress would thereby endanger the personal liberty of every man in America. 78 00:08:10.020 --> 00:08:15.940 He pointed out that such measures would give Congress a power to act coercively against 79 00:08:15.940 --> 00:08:21.260 the subject of every state and dissolve state institutions. 80 00:08:21.260 --> 00:08:26.980 It would have power unlimited over the lives and liberties of all men in America. 81 00:08:26.980 --> 00:08:32.520 At the same time, Burke and Lee also managed to block an attempt by Wilson and John Adams 82 00:08:32.520 --> 00:08:39.660 to vote on a return of Congress to Philadelphia by vote of individual congressmen rather than 83 00:08:39.660 --> 00:08:46.560 and by States. Another attempt to fuse the states into one common mass, as Adams had 84 00:08:46.560 --> 00:08:52.420 revealingly phrased it. If Congress were thus allowed to change its own rules of voting 85 00:08:52.420 --> 00:08:58.500 by states, Burke declared it would then be bound by no rule at all and only governed 86 00:08:58.500 --> 00:09:05.500 by an arbitrary tyrannical discretion. Burke's threat to withdraw should Congress thus change 87 00:09:05.500 --> 00:09:12.500 The more experience I acquire, the stronger is my conviction that unlimited power cannot be safely trusted to any man or set of men on earth. 88 00:09:35.500 --> 00:09:42.420 No men have undertaken to exercise authority with intentions more generous and disinterested 89 00:09:42.420 --> 00:09:43.940 than the Congress. 90 00:09:43.940 --> 00:09:49.200 How could individuals blessed with peaceable domestic affluence endeavor at increasing 91 00:09:49.200 --> 00:09:55.140 the power with which they are invested when their tenure of it must be exceedingly dangerous 92 00:09:55.140 --> 00:09:57.380 and precarious? 93 00:09:57.380 --> 00:10:01.940 This is a question I believe cannot be answered but by a plain declaration. 94 00:10:01.940 --> 00:10:09.440 The power of all kinds has an irresistible propensity to increase desire for itself. 95 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:15.960 It gives the passion of ambition, a velocity which increases in its progress, and this 96 00:10:15.960 --> 00:10:22.940 is a passion which grows in proportion as it is gratified. 97 00:10:22.940 --> 00:10:28.700 These and many other considerations make me earnestly wish that the power of Congress 98 00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:37.900 was accurately defined and that there were adequate check provided to prevent any excess. 99 00:10:37.900 --> 00:10:43.940 Even thus, early men so eminent as members of Congress are willing to explain away any 100 00:10:43.940 --> 00:10:49.300 power that stands in the way of their particular purposes. 101 00:10:49.300 --> 00:10:55.380 What may we not expect sometime hence when the seat of power shall become firm by habit 102 00:10:55.380 --> 00:11:03.380 and men will be accustomed to obedience and perhaps forgetful of the original principles which gave rise thereto. 103 00:11:03.380 --> 00:11:09.380 I believe, sir, the root of the evil is deep in human nature. 104 00:11:09.380 --> 00:11:15.380 Its growth may be kept down, but it cannot be entirely extirpated. 105 00:11:15.380 --> 00:11:21.380 Power will sometime or other be abused unless men are well watched 106 00:11:21.380 --> 00:11:27.260 and checked by something they cannot remove when they please. 107 00:11:27.260 --> 00:11:32.620 The main thrust of the conservatives for greater power was not to be through the existing Congress 108 00:11:32.620 --> 00:11:37.620 but through the formal creation of a far stronger one. 109 00:11:37.620 --> 00:11:42.460 In a kind of two-pronged attack, efforts were made in this regard at the same time as the 110 00:11:42.460 --> 00:11:46.380 push was on to centralize power in Congress. 111 00:11:46.380 --> 00:12:06.380 Thus, when Richard Henry Lee in June 1776 introduced a resolution for confederation as a corollary to his resolve for independence, the conservatives were able to obtain overwhelming superiority in the Congressional Committee of 13 to draw up a plan for confederation. 112 00:12:06.380 --> 00:12:18.380 Chairman of the committee was the Arch-Conservative, John Dickinson, who submitted a draft of Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union on July 12. 113 00:12:18.380 --> 00:12:27.380 Dickinson's draft was heavily influenced by a plan of confederation that Franklin had prematurely circulated in the previous year. 114 00:12:27.380 --> 00:12:35.860 A veteran pioneer of the idea of a strong central government over the American colonies, Franklin 115 00:12:35.860 --> 00:12:40.780 now outlined a similar plan with the British Imperium left out. 116 00:12:40.780 --> 00:12:48.020 The crucial consideration was the locating of sovereign power in the National Congress. 117 00:12:48.020 --> 00:12:53.580 Delegates would vote individually and be chosen by population, and Congress would have unchecked 118 00:12:53.580 --> 00:13:00.940 power over war, peace and foreign affairs, and would seize control over the untapped 119 00:13:00.940 --> 00:13:04.700 and promising lands west of the Appalachians. 120 00:13:04.700 --> 00:13:13.380 Moreover, Congress would have all law-making powers necessary to the general welfare. 121 00:13:13.380 --> 00:13:19.660 And that indefinable phrase gave carte blanche to legislative whim. 122 00:13:19.660 --> 00:13:28.660 Franklin provided for permanent executive council, chosen by Congress, but its powers were not to be violable by that body. 123 00:13:28.660 --> 00:13:39.660 Only one vitally important power essential to sovereignty was omitted, the taxing power, against which, after all, the Americans were in direct revolt. 124 00:13:39.660 --> 00:13:45.660 During 1775, the colonies had not yet been ready for independence or for federation, 125 00:13:45.660 --> 00:13:50.660 but now Dickinson drew heavily on Franklin's draft for federation. 126 00:13:50.660 --> 00:13:54.660 Dickinson too provided for the national sovereignty in Congress, 127 00:13:54.660 --> 00:13:59.660 its powers to be sweeping, and for permanent executive council. 128 00:13:59.660 --> 00:14:03.660 But his draft was a bit less permissive than Franklin's. 129 00:14:03.660 --> 00:14:08.660 He set forth specifically the powers that could be wielded by Congress, 130 00:14:08.660 --> 00:14:11.060 not leaving them limitless. 131 00:14:11.060 --> 00:14:16.460 He also provided that each state, as in the existing Congress, have one vote, 132 00:14:16.460 --> 00:14:20.660 thus granting an important concession to the states. 133 00:14:20.660 --> 00:14:26.060 Furthermore, whereas Franklin would have had all matters decided by simple majority vote, 134 00:14:26.060 --> 00:14:32.360 Dickinson conceded that certain fundamental issues, including war, coinage, 135 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:38.460 and apportionment of revenue, would require the vote of nine states. 136 00:14:38.460 --> 00:14:46.460 Although a concession to radicalism, it was still a far cry from the unanimity that had been needed for independence. 137 00:14:46.460 --> 00:14:51.460 The powers left to the states in the Dickinson draft were negligible. 138 00:14:51.460 --> 00:15:00.460 Treaties specifically overrode state tariffs and the Articles of Confederation overrode state internal police power. 139 00:15:00.460 --> 00:15:11.460 Furthermore, the draft strongly implied that all powers but the overrideable internal police power were granted to Congress, rather than to the states. 140 00:15:11.460 --> 00:15:16.460 Congress would also have the power to settle disputes between states. 141 00:15:16.460 --> 00:15:23.460 The one vital restriction remaining upon Congressional power was that it would not be allowed to levy taxes. 142 00:15:23.460 --> 00:15:30.460 These would be levied by the states, and the revenues supplied by them to Congress. 143 00:15:30.460 --> 00:15:38.460 Three specific clauses of the Dickinson Draft proved to be the focal points of raging controversy within the Congress. 144 00:15:38.460 --> 00:15:47.460 All involved the central problem of the conservative drive for a unitary national state and strong central government. 145 00:15:47.460 --> 00:16:00.460 One struggle was an attack from the right, from those who wanted to restore the Franklin idea of voting by individuals elected proportionately to population rather than by states. 146 00:16:00.460 --> 00:16:14.460 The conservatives were bolstered by the delegates from the large states who, of course, tended to back an amalgam by population in which they would exert far more influence than in equal voting by states. 147 00:16:14.460 --> 00:16:20.260 The attack from the right was led by Franklin, aided by John Adams and Benjamin Rush. 148 00:16:20.260 --> 00:16:27.060 Leading the small state radicals was the Reverend John Witherspoon, president of Princeton College, 149 00:16:27.060 --> 00:16:36.260 who insisted that the confederation should not be a national state, but a federal union of sovereign states. 150 00:16:36.260 --> 00:16:42.060 Finally, after a furious battle, equal voting by states prevailed over the stubborn objection 151 00:16:42.060 --> 00:16:49.460 of the Majority of the Virginia Delegation, John Adams and Arthur Middleton of South Carolina. 152 00:16:49.460 --> 00:16:54.860 If voting in Congress were to be equal by states, how would the expenses of the central 153 00:16:54.860 --> 00:17:00.980 government be apportioned among the states, which would undertake to supply the revenue? 154 00:17:00.980 --> 00:17:06.220 The sensible solution of the Dickinson Draft was to requisition funds according to the 155 00:17:06.220 --> 00:17:08.540 population of each state. 156 00:17:08.540 --> 00:17:12.780 Here again the attack was from the right, specifically from the slave states of the 157 00:17:12.780 --> 00:17:16.780 South wishing to keep their slaves untaxed. 158 00:17:16.780 --> 00:17:22.980 They proposed requisition on the basis of the property value of lands and improvements. 159 00:17:22.980 --> 00:17:28.020 This was a cunning attempt to foist the burden of revenue upon the liberal and relatively 160 00:17:28.020 --> 00:17:35.260 slaveless New England states where land was intensively cultivated and improved and therefore 161 00:17:35.260 --> 00:17:39.520 of a relatively higher value than in the other states. 162 00:17:39.520 --> 00:17:47.280 While the original draft prevailed during 1776, the final vote in late 1777 was a victory 163 00:17:47.280 --> 00:17:49.200 for the southern view. 164 00:17:49.200 --> 00:17:55.320 The unanimous vote against lands and improvements as the basis for calculating revenue, cast 165 00:17:55.320 --> 00:18:01.840 by the four New England states, was overcome by a solid phalanx of five votes from Maryland, 166 00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:24.840 The most bitter of the three controversies around the Dickinson Draft was over its proposal to nationalize all the Western lands, to vest all the lands beyond the boundaries of the thirteen states in the ownership of Congress. 167 00:18:24.840 --> 00:18:28.680 The alternative was to allow them to remain in the hands of Virginia, 168 00:18:28.680 --> 00:18:34.600 which had vague charter claims to all land westward to the Mississippi. 169 00:18:34.600 --> 00:18:40.760 The radicals opposed the Dickinson draft in reaction to the imposed jurisdiction 170 00:18:40.760 --> 00:18:45.480 of a remote central government in which the public had no direct participation. 171 00:18:46.280 --> 00:18:51.400 More important, they realized that the drive for nationalization of the western lands 172 00:18:51.400 --> 00:18:57.400 came from long-associated groups of highly influential land speculators, 173 00:18:57.400 --> 00:19:03.400 whose grandiose claims to western territory had already been spurned by Virginia, 174 00:19:03.400 --> 00:19:07.400 and who counted on the national government to grant them their demands. 175 00:19:07.400 --> 00:19:12.400 If Congress ultimately would not do so, they had nothing to lose. 176 00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:20.400 Many historians have treated this conflict as being between the landless states favoring nationalization 177 00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:32.400 against the landed in favor of keeping their claims, yet two of the six landless, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, showed no interest whatever in nationalization. 178 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:44.400 It was from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, home of the key groups of speculators in Western land, from which all the pressure came. 179 00:19:44.400 --> 00:19:51.400 Before the revolution, the land speculators had looked to the British government to establish their monopolistic claims. 180 00:19:51.400 --> 00:19:56.400 Now they turned equally naturally to the Continental Congress. 181 00:19:56.400 --> 00:20:01.400 It is not at all coincidental that John Dickinson hailed from Pennsylvania, 182 00:20:01.400 --> 00:20:10.400 that Franklin, whose plan had envisioned congressional control of the Western lands, was both a Pennsylvanian and a land speculator, 183 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:28.400 and that the chief defenders of the Land Nationalization Clause in Congress were Samuel Chase of Maryland, a member of the Illinois Wabash Company of Western Land Speculators and James Wilson of Philadelphia, the president of the same company. 184 00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:35.400 The speculators were driven to the Dickinson Draft by Virginia's actions during late June 1776. 185 00:20:35.400 --> 00:20:43.400 The Virginia Convention had formally asserted her jurisdiction to all her grandiose charter claims to Western land. 186 00:20:43.400 --> 00:20:51.400 It had condemned all unauthorized purchases of land from the Indians, and finally, upon petition of the settlers, 187 00:20:51.400 --> 00:20:57.400 it guaranteed to the actual settlers the right to preemption of their land. 188 00:20:57.400 --> 00:21:06.400 This resolution of May 14 was the first legislation in American history to assert the rights of the settler. 189 00:21:06.400 --> 00:21:15.400 It was this Virginia claim and the guarantee to the settlers that led the land speculators to try for nationalization of the western lands. 190 00:21:15.400 --> 00:21:26.400 The Dickinson draft, completed less than a month after Virginia's action, granted to the land speculators more or less all of their goals of nationalization. 191 00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:40.400 Congress was given the sole power to decide state boundaries and to purchase lands beyond these boundaries from the Indians, thus implying the existence of American lands outside the bounds of any state. 192 00:21:40.400 --> 00:21:48.400 It was also specifically given sole and exclusive power to limit the bounds of state claims to Western lands. 193 00:21:48.400 --> 00:22:00.400 The Virginians reacted to the Dickinson Draft with understandable bitterness, after all, one of the grievances against Great Britain had been its meddling and authority over the Western lands. 194 00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:11.400 Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson led the attack, while Samuel Chase and Thomas Johnson of Maryland and James Wilson led the nationalizers. 195 00:22:11.400 --> 00:22:14.400 The Landed States had triumphed. 196 00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:19.400 Lee successfully moved to insert in the articles a clause to the effect, 197 00:22:19.400 --> 00:22:25.400 that no state shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States. 198 00:22:25.400 --> 00:22:34.400 For his part, Thomas Jefferson was quite clear that the United States should be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States. 199 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:39.240 deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States. 200 00:22:39.240 --> 00:22:45.080 For his part, Thomas Jefferson was quite clear that his resistance to land nationalization 201 00:22:45.080 --> 00:22:51.280 was founded not on the territorial claims of Virginia, but on his deep-seated belief 202 00:22:51.280 --> 00:22:54.280 in justice to the settlers. 203 00:22:54.280 --> 00:23:01.720 As his biographer puts it, in his, Jefferson's, mind, this was not primarily a question of 204 00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:08.040 rivalry between one state and another. His major concern was not for the land, but for 205 00:23:08.040 --> 00:23:13.200 the people who settled on it, and at this time he believed that the interest of the 206 00:23:13.200 --> 00:23:20.400 pioneers could be better safeguarded by states than by Congress, which seemed more susceptible 207 00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:26.800 to the pressure of speculative land companies. He was deeply sympathetic with squatters, 208 00:23:26.800 --> 00:23:32.080 Woodward had little patience with absentee groups who came seeking special favors. 209 00:23:32.080 --> 00:23:38.560 What he most relied on for protection of individuals was local self-government, favoring the early 210 00:23:38.560 --> 00:23:41.900 development of it in Virginia's outlying lands. 211 00:23:41.900 --> 00:23:47.660 But until he could be reassured about the attitudes of Congress toward the small landholders, 212 00:23:47.660 --> 00:23:52.000 he preferred to depend on the states to protect them. 213 00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:57.820 In the drive for land nationalization were three large and international companies of 214 00:23:57.820 --> 00:24:04.560 land speculators, the Indiana Company which claimed an enormous tract south of the Ohio 215 00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:10.980 virtually consisting of what is now West Virginia and the Illinois and Wabash Companies claiming 216 00:24:10.980 --> 00:24:17.480 a still vaster region including much of present day Indiana and Illinois. 217 00:24:17.480 --> 00:24:21.800 All these enormous tracts were in Virginia claimed territory. 218 00:24:21.800 --> 00:24:28.760 Only and prominently involved in the Indiana Company were Robert Morris, the Wharton Brothers, 219 00:24:28.760 --> 00:24:35.320 Philadelphia merchants and financiers, William Trent, brother-in-law of George Krogan, the 220 00:24:35.320 --> 00:24:41.840 Franks and Gratz families, international Jewish merchants based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania 221 00:24:41.840 --> 00:24:47.960 and Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, his son William and Benjamin's son-in-law Richard 222 00:24:47.960 --> 00:24:55.140 Batch, and the Tory Joseph Galloway. Arch-Conservative and nationalist James Wilson was in the pay 223 00:24:55.140 --> 00:25:00.920 of the Indiana Company and Thomas Wharton was selected by the speculators to distribute 224 00:25:00.920 --> 00:25:07.680 shares of their stock in bribes to members of Congress. The huge Illinois Company grant 225 00:25:07.680 --> 00:25:14.400 included virtually the same crew, Trent, the Franklins, the Whartons, Krogan and Galloway. 226 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:19.760 Patrick Henry, who later broke angrily with the land speculators, was at the time either 227 00:25:19.760 --> 00:25:25.720 in the pay of the Illinois Company or direct participant in it, and accordingly favored 228 00:25:25.720 --> 00:25:28.080 the nationalization plan. 229 00:25:28.080 --> 00:25:34.440 The Wabash Company claiming nearby lands included the Gratz-Frank's group and the entire top 230 00:25:34.440 --> 00:25:40.560 leadership of the Maryland oligarchy, Samuel Chase, Governor Thomas Johnson, former Governor 231 00:25:40.560 --> 00:25:46.400 by William Pacca, the brother-in-law of Robert Morris, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton. 232 00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:52.040 No wonder that Maryland fought fiercely for nationalizing the Western lands. 233 00:25:52.040 --> 00:25:58.560 In late 1778, after the American forces had wrested the Illinois country from the British, 234 00:25:58.560 --> 00:26:04.560 the Illinois and Wabash companies merged their interests into one powerful force, which would 235 00:26:04.560 --> 00:26:10.960 To then include Silas Deane and Conrad Girard, French Minister to the United States. 236 00:26:10.960 --> 00:26:18.320 At about the same time, 1774-76, Virginia won a successful three-cornered conflict of 237 00:26:18.320 --> 00:26:23.360 its own with settlers and with speculative land companies. 238 00:26:23.360 --> 00:26:29.280 Its most important land struggle involved pioneers who had trekked across the Appalachian 239 00:26:29.280 --> 00:26:43.320 In 1774, Lord Dunmore's Royal Virginia Troops had driven the Shawnee Indians out of the 240 00:26:43.320 --> 00:26:50.520 Kentucky region, Dunmore's War, and settlement across the mountains promptly ensued. At first, 241 00:26:50.520 --> 00:26:55.120 the settlers simply regarded themselves as the extreme western end of Virginia's Finn 242 00:26:55.120 --> 00:26:57.720 in Castle County. 243 00:26:57.720 --> 00:27:04.020 Very quickly the new settlers began to imbibe the very ideas of self-government for occupiers 244 00:27:04.020 --> 00:27:09.480 of new land that the Americans in general were using against Great Britain. 245 00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:15.320 The arguments were clearly applicable to the Kentucky settlers as against the remote government 246 00:27:15.320 --> 00:27:17.080 of Virginia. 247 00:27:17.080 --> 00:27:22.960 Into this potentially explosive situation stepped an ambitious group of land speculators 248 00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:26.740 headed by Judge Richard Henderson of North Carolina. 249 00:27:26.740 --> 00:27:34.840 They formed the Transylvania Company in January 1775 and soon bribed the Cherokee tribe to 250 00:27:34.840 --> 00:27:42.120 come together and cede the company the large land area southwest of the Kentucky River 251 00:27:42.120 --> 00:27:44.640 and north of the Cumberland. 252 00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:51.440 Since the Cherokees, ensconced in the mountains to the south, made no use of this land anyway 253 00:27:51.440 --> 00:27:57.360 and didn't really own it, they were happy to consent to this sale at the Treaty of Sycamore 254 00:27:57.360 --> 00:28:03.960 Shoals in mid-March. To head company operations in the Kentucky lands, Henderson hired the 255 00:28:03.960 --> 00:28:10.080 celebrated frontiersman Daniel Boone, who hacked a trail, the Wilderness Road, westward 256 00:28:10.080 --> 00:28:16.520 across the Cumberland Gap in the mountains. In the next step of his ambitious scheme, 257 00:28:16.520 --> 00:28:22.820 Menon persuaded the fewer than 200 settlers in Kentucky to send 18 delegates to a convention 258 00:28:22.820 --> 00:28:30.900 at Boonesboro on the Kentucky River at the end of May 1775. Demagogically playing on 259 00:28:30.900 --> 00:28:36.560 ideas of independence and self-government, he eloquently proclaimed that all power is 260 00:28:36.560 --> 00:28:42.880 originally in the people and the delegates unanimously decided to establish Transylvania 261 00:28:42.880 --> 00:28:48.080 as an independent colony, free of all Eastern ties. 262 00:28:48.080 --> 00:28:55.160 The Convention established new courts, militia and scales of punishment for the new Transylvania 263 00:28:55.160 --> 00:28:58.280 and established freedom of religion. 264 00:28:58.280 --> 00:29:04.240 Congress was petitioned to recognize the new region as a separate colony. 265 00:29:04.240 --> 00:29:08.640 But Transylvania was not destined to remain an idol for very long. 266 00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:15.360 Henderson quickly began to use its newfound independence to mulk the settlers unmercifully. 267 00:29:15.360 --> 00:29:20.360 He raised the price of land he charged to settlers and imposed quit rents as stiff as 268 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:22.720 those charged in Virginia. 269 00:29:22.720 --> 00:29:27.760 The unfortunate settlers soon came to regard Henderson's Transylvania scheme as a far 270 00:29:27.760 --> 00:29:30.360 worse threat than Virginia. 271 00:29:30.360 --> 00:29:35.200 Actually, the Kentucky settlers would have preferred to be independent and truly free 272 00:29:35.200 --> 00:29:42.480 of both Transylvania and Virginia. But for remote settlers facing an Indian threat, this 273 00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:48.760 was not a very realistic hope. Led by the citizens of Harrodsburg, the settlers turned 274 00:29:48.760 --> 00:29:54.960 to the idea of reincorporation into Virginia. In a convention held at Harrodsburg on June 275 00:29:54.960 --> 00:30:02.200 6, 1776, the delegates selected the young frontiersman George Rogers Clark and a young 276 00:30:02.200 --> 00:30:08.840 John Attorney, John Gabriel Jones, to be their delegates to apply for representation in the 277 00:30:08.840 --> 00:30:12.640 Virginia Assembly as a new western county. 278 00:30:12.640 --> 00:30:18.320 Their trip to the Virginia governmental seat at Williamsburg was a truly heroic one, for 279 00:30:18.320 --> 00:30:22.200 they ran into the newly erupted Cherokee War. 280 00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:29.840 In early July 1776, the pro-war wing of the Cherokees, led by the fiery young chief Dragan 281 00:30:29.840 --> 00:30:37.000 The New erupted to attack frontier settlements from southern Virginia to northern Georgia. 282 00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:42.960 Their timing was remarkably bad, for the Tory risings in the south, as well as the British 283 00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:50.760 attack upon Charleston, had already been defeated, and the militia of four southern states, especially 284 00:30:50.760 --> 00:30:56.960 of the Carolinas, were able to devote full attention to the Cherokees, spurred on by 285 00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:03.520 By handsome government payments for every Indian scalp, they had brutally and systematically 286 00:31:03.520 --> 00:31:11.440 burned and devastated every inch of Cherokee cultivated land and property by August. 287 00:31:11.440 --> 00:31:18.200 Had the Cherokees waited another year to coordinate with Iroquois attacks or to unite with other 288 00:31:18.200 --> 00:31:22.720 Indians, their war might have been far more successful. 289 00:31:22.720 --> 00:31:29.000 As it was, Dragon Canoe's militant policy proved to be merely adventurous. 290 00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:33.680 In addition, his braves did not always bother to make a distinction between Tory and Whig 291 00:31:33.680 --> 00:31:40.640 settlers and only succeeded in deeply alienating many southern Tories from the British cause 292 00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:43.960 with which the Cherokees were allied. 293 00:31:43.960 --> 00:31:49.180 Finally reaching Williamsburg after their travail, Clark and Jones presented their case 294 00:31:49.180 --> 00:31:55.740 to the Virginia Assembly in early October. There they argued against Henderson, who was 295 00:31:55.740 --> 00:32:01.940 aided by those apathetic to the West Country and by Fincastle County, which stood to lose 296 00:32:01.940 --> 00:32:08.020 its claim to jurisdiction over Kentucky. But Kentucky was backed by Governor Patrick Henry, 297 00:32:08.020 --> 00:32:14.180 George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, who was always an eloquent friend of the settler. 298 00:32:14.180 --> 00:32:23.180 Finally, on December 7, 1776, Virginia voted to grant Kentucky admission as its western-most county. 299 00:32:23.180 --> 00:32:27.180 The Henderson Land clique had been totally foiled.