Volume III Part 13 (1/2)
The Federal officers in the backwoods north of the Ohio got on badly with the backwoodsmen. Harmar took the side of the French Creoles, and warmly denounced the acts of the frontiersmen who had come in among them. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 150, vol. ii., Harmar to Le Gra.s.se and Busseron, June 29, 1787.] In his letter to the Creoles he alluded to Clark's Vincennes garrison as ”a set of lawless banditti,”
and explained that his own troops were regulars, who would treat with justice both the French and Indians. Harmar never made much effort to conceal dislike of the borderers. In one letter he alludes to a Delaware chief as ”a manly old fellow, and much more of a gentleman than the generality of these frontier people.” [Footnote: _Do_., Harmar to the Secretary of War, March 9, 1788.] Naturally, there was little love lost between the bitterly prejudiced old army officer, fixed and rigid in all his ideas, and the equally prejudiced backwoodsmen, whose ways of looking at almost all questions were antipodal to his.
The Creoles of the Illinois and Vincennes sent warm letters of welcome to Harmar. The American settlers addressed him in an equally respectful but very different tone, for, they said, their hearts were filled with ”anxiety, gloominess, and dismay.” They explained the alarm they felt at the report that they were to be driven out of the country, and protested--what was doubtless true--that they had settled on the land in entire good faith, and with the a.s.sent of the French inhabitants. The latter themselves bore testimony to the good faith, and good behavior of many of the settlers, and pet.i.tioned that these should not be molested, [Footnote: _Do_., Address of American Inhabitants of Vincennes, August 4, 1787; Recommendation by French Inhabitants in Favor of American Inhabitants, August 2d; Letter of Le Chamy and others, Kaskaskia, August 25th; Letter of J. M. P. Le Gras, June 25th.] explaining that the French had been benefited by their industry, and had preserved a peaceable and friendly intercourse with them. In the end, while the French villagers were left undisturbed in their ancient privileges, and while they were granted or were confirmed in the possession of the land immediately around them, the Americans and the French who chose to go outside the village grants were given merely the rights of other settlers.
The Continental officers exchanged courtesies with the Spanish commandants of the Creole villages on the west bank of the Mississippi, but kept a sharp eye on them, as these commandants endeavored to persuade all the French inhabitants to move west of the river by offering them free grants of land. [Footnote: Hamtranck to Harmar, October 13, 1788.]
The Real Founders of the Northwest.
But all these matters were really of small consequence. The woes of the Creoles, the trials of the American squatters, the friction between the regular officers and the backwoodsmen, the jealousy felt by both for the Spaniards--all these were of little real moment at this period of the history of the Northwest. The vital point in its history was the pa.s.sage by Congress of the Ordinance of 1787, and the doings of the various land companies under and in consequence of this ordinance.
Individualism in the Southwest, Collectivism in the Northwest
The wide gap between the ways in which the Northwest and the Southwest were settled is made plain by such a statement. In the Northwest, it was the action of Congress, the action of the representatives of the nation acting as a whole, which was all-important. In the Southwest, no action of Congress was of any importance when compared with the voluntary movements of the backwoodsmen themselves. In the Northwest, it was the nation which acted. In the Southwest, the determining factor was the individual initiative of the pioneers. The most striking feature in the settlement of the Southwest was the free play given to the workings of extreme individualism. The settlement of the Northwest represented the triumph of an intelligent collectivism, which yet allowed to each man a full measure of personal liberty.
Difference in Stock of the Settlers.
Another difference of note was the difference in stock of the settlers.
The Southwest was settled by the true backwoodsmen, the men who lived on their small clearings among the mountains of western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. The first settlement in Ohio, the settlement which had most effect upon the history of the Northwest, and which largely gave it its peculiar trend, was the work of New Englanders. There was already a considerable population in New England; but the rugged farmers with their swarming families had to fill up large waste s.p.a.ces in Maine and in Northern New Hamps.h.i.+re and Vermont, and there was a very marked movement among them towards New York, and especially into the Mohawk valley, all west of which was yet a wilderness. In consequence, during the years immediately succeeding the close of the Revolutionary War, the New England emigrants made their homes in those stretches of wilderness which were nearby, and did not appear on the western border. But there had always been enterprising individuals among them desirous of seeking a more fertile soil in the far west or south, and even before the Revolution some of these men ventured to Louisiana itself, to pick out a good country in which to form a colony. After the close of the war the fame of the lands along the Ohio was spread abroad; and the men who wished to form companies for the purposes of adventurous settlement began to turn their eyes thither.
Land Claims of the States.
The first question to decide was the owners.h.i.+p of the wished-for country. This decision had to be made in Congress by agreement among the representatives of the different States. Seven States--Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Georgia, and both Carolinas--claimed portions of the western lands. New York's claim was based with entire solemnity on the ground that she was the heir of the Iroquois tribes, and therefore inherited all the wide regions overrun by their terrible war-bands. The other six States based their claims on various charters, which in reality conferred rights not one whit more substantial.
These different claims were not of a kind to which any outside power would have paid heed. Their usefulness came in when the States bargained among themselves. In the bargaining, both among the claimant States, and between the claimant and the non-claimant States, the charter t.i.tles were treated as of importance, and substantial concessions were exacted in return for their surrender. But their value was really inchoate until the land was reduced to possession by some act of the States or the Nation.
Virginia and North Carolina.
At the close of the Revolutionary War there existed wide differences between the various States as to the actual owners.h.i.+p and possession of the lands they claimed. Virginia and North Carolina were the only two who had reduced to some kind of occupation a large part of the territory to which they a.s.serted t.i.tle. Their backwoodsmen had settled in the lands so that they already held a certain population. Moreover, these same backwoodsmen, organized as part of the militia of the parent States, had made good their claim by successful warfare. The laws of the two States were executed by State officials in communities scattered over much of the country claimed. The soldier-settlers of Virginia and North Carolina had actually built houses and forts, tilled the soil, and exercised the functions of civil government, on the banks of the Wabash and the Ohio, the Mississippi, the c.u.mberland, and the Tennessee.
Counties and districts had been erected by the two States on the western waters; and representatives of the civil divisions thus const.i.tuted sat in the State Legislatures. The claims of Virginia and North Carolina to much of the territory had behind them the substantial element of armed possession. The settlement and conquest of the lands had been achieved without direct intervention by the Federal Government; though of course it was only the ultimate success of the nation in its contest with the foreign foe that gave the settlement and conquest any value.
Georgia.
As much could not be said for the claims of the other States. South Carolina's claim was to a mere ribbon of land south of the North Carolina territory, and need not be considered; ceded to the Government about the time the Northwest was organized. [Footnote: For an account of this cession see Mr. Garrett's excellent paper in the publications of the Tennessee Historical Society.] Georgia a.s.serted that her boundaries extended due west to the Mississippi, and that all between was hers. But the entire western portion of the territory was actually held by the Spaniards and by the Indian tribes tributary to the Spaniards. No subjects of Georgia lived on it, or were allowed to live on it. The few white inhabitants were subjects of the King of Spain, and lived under Spanish law; the Creeks and Choctaws were his subsidized allies; and he held the country by right of conquest. Georgia, a weak and turbulent, though a growing State, was powerless to enforce her claims. Most of the territory to which she a.s.serted t.i.tle did not in truth become part of the United States until Pinckney's treaty went into effect. It was the United States and not Georgia that actually won and held the land in dispute; and it was a discredit to Georgia's patriotism that she so long wrangled about it, and ultimately drove so hard a bargain concerning it with the National Government.
Claims to the Northwest.
There was a similar state of affairs in the far Northwest. No New Yorkers lived in the region bounded by the shadowy and wavering lines of the Iroquois conquests. The lands claimed under ancient charters by Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut were occupied by the British and their Indian allies, who held adverse possession. Not a single New England settler lived in them; no New England law had any force in them; no New England soldier had gone or could go thither. They were won by the victory of Wayne and the treaty of Jay. If Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut had stood alone, the lands would never have been yielded to them at all; they could not have enforced their claim, and it would have been scornfully disregarded. The region was won for the United States by the arms and diplomacy of the United States. Whatever of reality there was in the t.i.tles of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut came from the existence and actions of the Federal Union. [Footnote: For this northwestern history see ”The Life, Journal, and Correspondence of Mana.s.seh Cutler,”
by Wm. Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler; ”The St. Clair Papers,”
by W. H. Smith; ”The Old Northwest,” by B. A. Hinsdale; ”Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions,” by Herbert Adams. See also Donaldson's ”Public Domain,” Hildreth's ”History of Was.h.i.+ngton County,” and the various articles by Poole and others. In Prof. Hinsdale's excellent book, on p. 200, is a map of the ”Territory of the Thirteen Original States in 1783.” This map is accurate enough for Virginia and North Carolina; but the lands in the west put down as belonging to Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, and Georgia, did not really belong to them at all in 1783; they were held by the British and Spaniards, and were ultimately surrendered to the United States, not to individual States.
These States did not surrender the land; they merely surrendered a disputed t.i.tle to the lands.]
The Non-claimant States.
All the States that did not claim lands beyond the mountains were strenuous in belittling the claims of those that did, and insisted that the t.i.tle to the western territory should be vested in the Union. Not even the danger from the British armies could keep this question in abeyance, and while the war was at its height the States were engaged in bitter wrangles over the subject; for the weakness of the Federal tie rendered it always probable that the different members of the Union would sulk or quarrel with one another rather than oppose an energetic resistance to the foreign foe. At different times different non-claimant States took the lead in pus.h.i.+ng the various schemes for nationalizing the western lands; but Maryland was the first to take action in this direction, and was the most determined in pressing the matter to a successful issue. She showed the greatest hesitation in joining the Confederation at all while the matter was allowed to rest unsettled; and insisted that the t.i.tles of the claimant States were void, that there was no need of asking them to cede what they did not possess, and that the West should be declared outright to be part of the Federal domain.
Maryland was largely actuated by fear of her neighbor Virginia.
Virginia's claims were the most considerable, and if they had all been allowed, hers would have been indeed an empire. Maryland's fears were twofold. She dreaded the mere growth of Virginia in wealth, power, and population in the first place; and in the second she feared lest her own population might be drained into these vacant lands, thereby at once diminis.h.i.+ng her own, and building up her neighbor's, importance. Each State, at that time, had to look upon its neighbors as probable commercial rivals and possible armed enemies. This is a feeling which we now find difficulty in understanding. At present no State in the Union fears the growth of a neighbor, or would ever dream of trying to check that growth. The direct reverse was the case during and after the Revolution; for the jealousy and distrust which the different States felt for one another were bitter to a degree.
The Continental Congress Advocates a Compromise.