WEBVTT NOTE 66. Land Claims and the Ratification of the Articles of Confederation 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 Volume 4, Part 8, The Political and Economic History of the United States, 1778-1784 2 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:18.000 Volume 4, Chapter 66, Land Claims and the Ratification of the Articles of Confederation 3 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:25.680 Unquestionably, the most important political event of the latter years of the war was the 4 00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:31.120 final ratification of the Articles of Confederation. 5 00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:38.120 Like many other fateful political and economic changes made at the end of the war, this measure, 6 00:00:38.120 --> 00:00:44.680 put through as a wartime necessity, became effective only in time of peace. 7 00:00:44.680 --> 00:00:50.580 For American radicals, this represented a disastrous cultural lag between the social 8 00:00:50.580 --> 00:00:57.260 conditions that had arisen and the institutions that were established for very different times 9 00:00:57.260 --> 00:00:58.800 and purposes. 10 00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:05.880 Maryland, under the firm political control of a tightly-knit oligarchy of land speculators, 11 00:01:05.880 --> 00:01:11.700 blocked the required unanimity for accepting the Articles of Confederation, which had passed 12 00:01:11.700 --> 00:01:19.860 Congress in late 1777 by refusing to ratify unless Virginia's vast claims to the Western 13 00:01:19.860 --> 00:01:26.660 lands were nationalized and placed under Continental Congress that the speculators could hope to 14 00:01:26.660 --> 00:01:36.260 control. During 1778 and 1779, the Virginia Assembly directly repudiated the huge land 15 00:01:36.260 --> 00:01:44.140 claims of the Indiana, Illinois and Wabash companies, whose membership included the rulers 16 00:01:44.140 --> 00:01:51.740 of Maryland, overriding the Virginia conservatives headed by Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton 17 00:01:51.740 --> 00:01:58.460 and Carter Braxton, who had close commercial connections with the land speculators, especially 18 00:01:58.460 --> 00:02:05.020 the Philadelphia merchants Robert Morris, the Whartons and the Gratz brothers. 19 00:02:05.020 --> 00:02:11.180 The liberal forces in Virginia, led by Thomas Jefferson and George Mason, nevertheless faced 20 00:02:11.180 --> 00:02:12.620 a difficult struggle. 21 00:02:12.620 --> 00:02:19.340 They were, for example, blocked in their efforts to open up a land office for the Western lands 22 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:25.940 to throw them open for settlement and to end the speculator threat once and for all. 23 00:02:25.940 --> 00:02:31.140 The conservatives opposed this plan, not only because of their connections with the land 24 00:02:31.140 --> 00:02:56.340 The defeat of the speculators seemed assured during 1778 and 1779, and the land office 25 00:02:56.340 --> 00:03:00.700 bill was finally passed in June 1779. 26 00:03:00.700 --> 00:03:06.300 Jefferson's bill, however, gave firm preemption rights only to existing settlers and failed 27 00:03:06.300 --> 00:03:12.460 to provide them for future settlers who would naturally form the main body of the population 28 00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:19.420 of the West. An all-powerful Virginia commission was therefore able to sell the virgin lands 29 00:03:19.420 --> 00:03:27.980 at 40 pounds for 100 acres, in depreciated currency, to anyone who cared to buy. Jefferson's 30 00:03:27.980 --> 00:03:34.500 This provision of granting only 50 acres to each settler was thus rejected and no limitation 31 00:03:34.500 --> 00:03:39.500 was placed on the amount that could be purchased by any non-settlers. 32 00:03:39.500 --> 00:03:45.420 The result was that within a few years the precious western lands fell into the hands 33 00:03:45.420 --> 00:03:52.420 of individual absentee land speculators who paid in a still further depreciated currency. 34 00:03:52.420 --> 00:04:01.420 Robert Morris, for example, later came to own 1.5 million acres of Western lands. 35 00:04:01.420 --> 00:04:06.420 Their claims ended in Virginia by Mason's 1779 bill. 36 00:04:06.420 --> 00:04:19.420 The powerful land companies turned once again to Congress and argued once more that Congress had plenary sovereignty over Western lands, sovereignty which had devolved from Great Britain. 37 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:32.420 Congress, they claimed, should keep Virginia from putting its land law into effect. Thus, Congress was asked to assert power over Western lands, which even the Articles would deny to it. 38 00:04:32.420 --> 00:04:47.420 But logic yielded to the aggrandizement of power, and in early October 1779, Congress voted 6 to 5 to advance the land company's proposals to a committee packed with their supporters. 39 00:04:47.420 --> 00:04:58.420 In mid-October, the committee reported a recommendation for Virginia and other states to suspend all sales and grants of their Western lands until the end of the war. 40 00:04:58.420 --> 00:05:03.420 Congress voted for the resolution, with only Virginia and North Carolina opposed. 41 00:05:03.420 --> 00:05:09.420 Virginia did not passively accede to this aggrandizement of central power, 42 00:05:09.420 --> 00:05:39.420 New York, however, was scarcely as sturdy, and under the pressure of Congress in mid-February 1780, it agreed to cede its dubious claims to the lands of the Iroquois, to make them the property of the Continental Congress. Congress, 43 00:05:39.420 --> 00:05:46.140 Congress agreed to this session in September, urging other landed states to cede voluntarily 44 00:05:46.140 --> 00:05:52.580 their own claims for the sake of confederation, and even Virginia's delegates approved. 45 00:05:52.580 --> 00:05:59.580 Connecticut also ceded its claims to Western lands in Congress in October 1780, reserving 46 00:05:59.580 --> 00:06:06.340 to itself a tract of three million acres in northern Ohio, the Western Reserve. 47 00:06:06.340 --> 00:06:14.340 Thus began the central government's fateful ownership and sovereignty over virgin lands. 48 00:06:14.340 --> 00:06:22.340 In this way, sovereignty, at least over all territories not yet states, was placed solely in the hands of Congress, 49 00:06:22.340 --> 00:06:28.340 a vast accretion of central power that for the most part went unchallenged. 50 00:06:28.340 --> 00:06:34.340 Virginia's turnabout was largely caused by the 1780 invasion of the South, 51 00:06:34.340 --> 00:06:47.340 prompting a panicky and irrational urge to ratify the confederation and thus gain more effective northern support for the war effort, support which never materialized. 52 00:06:47.340 --> 00:06:59.340 The liberal administration of Virginia, headed by Jefferson as governor and by George Mason, was more interested in justice for the settlers than in power for Virginia. 53 00:06:59.340 --> 00:07:07.340 Hence, they overlooked future questions of central power and ceded the lands north of the Ohio to Congress. 54 00:07:07.340 --> 00:07:16.340 There were, however, certain conditions attached to their agreement, the most important being that the Indian land claims to the region, 55 00:07:16.340 --> 00:07:24.340 that is, the claims of the land companies, be voided and that Virginia be guaranteed the Kentucky lands. 56 00:07:24.340 --> 00:07:40.340 Congress refused to void the company land claims and the land companies put up a furious barrage of propaganda, including subsidized pamphlets by Samuel Wharton, Benjamin Franklin and Tom Paine, all of Philadelphia. 57 00:07:40.340 --> 00:07:52.340 Paine's hiring out to the Indiana Company to present its case in a pamphlet, Public Good, continued the practice of selling his pen and his principles for hire. 58 00:07:52.340 --> 00:07:59.020 ," that he had begun the year before in his dealings with La Lucerne. 59 00:07:59.020 --> 00:08:05.820 After the Dean-Lee affair, the impecunious pain quietly allowed himself to join the paid 60 00:08:05.820 --> 00:08:12.680 ranks of the very French government that he had recently so strenuously opposed. 61 00:08:12.680 --> 00:08:17.260 It goes without saying that the developing pattern of this sell-out to the privileged 62 00:08:17.260 --> 00:08:23.820 interest dealt a grievous blow to the radical cause in America for which pain had been the 63 00:08:23.820 --> 00:08:28.100 most eloquent and popular champion. 64 00:08:28.100 --> 00:08:35.100 In October 1780, Congress again agreed to all of Virginia's conditions except the crucial 65 00:08:35.100 --> 00:08:38.660 voiding of speculative land claims. 66 00:08:38.660 --> 00:08:44.020 The following January, the Virginia Assembly made the Mason offer official by voting to 67 00:08:44.020 --> 00:08:52.020 to cede the lands north of the Ohio, the Old Northwest, provided that the Mason conditions were met. 68 00:08:52.020 --> 00:09:02.020 In the meantime, Maryland's intransigence was also being undermined by the threat of British invasion or raids from the Chesapeake. 69 00:09:02.020 --> 00:09:12.020 Appealing for naval protection, Maryland was urged by La Lucerne, who was anxious for the war effort, to ratify the Confederation. 70 00:09:12.020 --> 00:09:26.020 Bludgeoned by this virtual blackmail, Maryland finally ratified the Confederation on February 2, 1781, after the Maryland Senate was convinced that their claims would still be pressed in Congress. 71 00:09:26.020 --> 00:09:33.020 Meanwhile, Virginia clung to control of the lands despite repeated attempts in Congress to dislodge it. 72 00:09:33.020 --> 00:09:41.020 Congress finally celebrated the enactment of the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781. 73 00:09:41.020 --> 00:09:48.020 The struggle over the western lands raged for three more years within the confederation. 74 00:09:48.020 --> 00:09:55.220 Finally, driven by greed for revenue to be derived from the virgin public domain, Congress 75 00:09:55.220 --> 00:10:02.180 tacitly agreed to ignore land company claims, with only New Jersey and Maryland objecting. 76 00:10:02.180 --> 00:10:08.420 Virginia's northwest lands were finally ceded to the suzerainty and total ownership of 77 00:10:08.420 --> 00:10:11.780 Congress on March 1, 1784.