X.

THE UNITED STATES WREST THE NORTHWEST FROM ENGLAND.

THE SECOND TREATY OF PARIS.

ON the Fourth of July, 1776, the thirteen British colonies in North America, by their chosen representatives in general congress assembled, solemnly published and declared that they were, and of a right ought to be, free and independent States. By this act they assumed a separate and equal place among the powers of the earth as the United States of America. Less than two years thereafter-that is, on February 6, 1778-the King of France entered into two treaties with the new nation: one of alliance, and one of amity and commerce; the essential and direct end of the first being, as declared in the second article, "to maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and independence absolute and unlimited of the said United States, as well in matters of government as of commerce." Article 5 stipulated that, if the United States should conquer the British in the Northern parts of America, or the Bermuda Islands, those countries or islands should be confederated with, or be made dependent upon, the said United States. Article 7 stipulated that if His Majesty the King of France should attack any of the islands in the Gulf of Mexico, belonging to Great Britain, or islands near that gulf, such islands should, in case of success, appertain to the Crown of France. In Article 6 the king renounced the possession of the Bermudas, as well as those parts of North

America that, by the treaty of 1763, were acknowledged to belong to Great Britain, or to the United States, before called British colonies, or which then were, or had lately been, under the power of the Crown of Great Britain. By Article 11 the United States guaranteed to His Majesty his present possessions in America, as well as those he might acquire by the future treaty of peace; while His Majesty guaranteed to the United States not only their liberty, sovereignty, and independence in both matters of government and commerce, but also their possessions, and the conquests that they might make from Great Britain during the war, as provided in the previous article. The Declaration of Independence bore the caption: "The unanimous Declaration of the United States of America;" the names of the States were given, with the signers at the end. One of the French treaties was made with "the thirteen United States of North America," the other with "the United States of North America; the names of the States being added in both cases. Beyond these general terms neither the Declaration nor the treaties. contained one word describing the new nation. Were the terms clothed with such definite meaning that all the world knew just what the new nation was?

In a social and political sense "the thirteen British colonies in North America," previous to 1776, stood for clear and definite ideas. They were the thirteen communities. planted by England, at least by Englishmen, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the eastern shore of North America, between the St. Croix and Altamaha Rivers; communities that had an individual history and a collective history which plainly marked them off, to the minds of Europeans, from the French settlements to the north and the Spanish settlements to the south. Nor did they lose their individuality even when these French and Spanish settlements, after 1763, took rank with them as American colonies of the British Crown. Who were the people that put forth the Declaration of Independence was therefore well under

derstood wherever that Declaration was read; as it was, likewise, who entered into the treaties with France in 1778.

But what the names found in the Declaration and French treaties stood for in a geographical and territorial sense was not equally plain. "Massachusetts," " Virginia," "Carolina,” for example, had meant very different things at different times. Nor did they represent definitely ascertained units in 1776. Probably, too, there were no two States lying side by side between which there were not pending boundary-disputes. The chapters on the "Thirteen Colonies as Constituted by the Royal Charters" make that sufficiently plain. Then there arose sharp controversies as to the division and proprietorship of the country beyond the Alleghany Mountains. But above these internal territorial questions towered one that may be called external, viz.: "What is the extent of the thirteen States of America considered as a whole?" Neither the Declaration nor the treaties contained any answer; so far from it, the name used in these documents might mean, and soon came to mean, very different things to different people. For instance, although the King of France entered into the defensive alliance of 1778 solely to make sure and effectual the liberty, sovereignty, and absolute independence of the United States, in less than two years he used his influence to induce his allies to consent to the Alleghany Mountains as a western boundary, which would have cut off fully one half of the territory that the United States claimed, and that Great Britain ultimately conceded. Again, the United States described in 1779 in the instructions to John Adams, commissioner to negotiate a peace, are not geographically the same United States whose independence was acknowledged at Paris in 1782. Hence it is plain that England might, the day after the French treaties were signed, or even the day after the Declaration was published, have conceded the independence of the States in the very terms used in those documents, and still have left unsettled a territorial question larger than the one which brought on the French and Indian war in 1754. It

is quite clear, therefore, that in 1776 the United States were not as definitely marked off from other nations territorially as they were from other peoples politically and socially.

At the beginning the United States were a purely federal' nation and government. They could not touch directly a single citizen, a single dollar, or a single foot of land. They were dependent upon the States individually for a Congress, a treasury, an army, and a capital. The States made up the United States. At different times, in the course of the war, Congress offered land-bounties for volunteers in the continental line, but when the offers were made Congress had no lands, and, had it not been for the Northwestern cessions, it would have been compelled to ask the States for special grants with which to satisfy them. When the time came to instruct the national representatives abroad in regard to the national limits, the federal principle was strictly followed. Hence Mr. Jay, who went to Spain in 1779, was instructed, October 4, 1780, to insist upon the Mississippi River because it was "the boundary of several States in the Union." On January 8, 1782, a committee of which Mr. Madison was a member, to which had been referred certain papers in regard to the prospective negotiations for peace with His Britannic Majesty, thus stated the rule by which the national boundaries should be ascertained:

"Under his authority the limits of these States, while in the character of colonies, were established; to these limits the

1 As Mr. G. T. Curtis points out, the term "federal" or "federalist" has been used in our politics in three distinct senses: First, in its philosophical sense, in that of federal in distinction from national; second, in that of a supporter of the Constitution, when it was before the people for their adoption; third, in that of a member of the political party at the head of which stood Washington. The three meanings all appeared within the limits of a few years. In 1787 Hamilton was not a Federalist, because opposed to the continuance of the Confederation, and desirous of a National Government; in 1788 he was a Federalist, because he desired the adoption of the Constitution, and he continued a Federalist, because he favored a particular political policy. History of the Constitution, II., 497. The word is used above in its proper philosophical sense.

United States, considered as independent sovereignties, succeeded. Wher territorial rights, therefore, belonged evolution were necessarily devolved upon independence."

to them before the them at the era of

Then follo

would give t

claimed in the

long argument to show that this principle United States the territories that they ructions so~~ + De mentioned.' This report was referr to a scond committee, which reported it back, August 16th following, with a mass of "facts and observations" sustaining its positions. This document covers forty pages of the printed journal, and is the best statement extant of the territorial rights of the States. It makes very prominent the fact that Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and the two Carolinas and Georgia claimed to the Mississippi River. This was pleading the royal charters as modified by the treaty of 1763. But if His Majesty should reply that at th nies, was seiz

missioners c

eginning of the war he, and not the colothe Wen country, the American Commeet the ***with the argument that—

"The charter in which he s so seized was that of king of the thirteen colonies collectively taken. Being stripped of this character, its [his] rights descended to the United States for the following reasons: (1) The United States are to be considered in many respects as one undivided independent nation, inheriting those rights which the King of Great Britain enjoyed as not appertaining to any one particular State, while he was what they are now, the superintending governor of the whole. (2) The King of Great Britain has been dethroned as King of the United States by the joint efforts of the whole. (3) The very country in question hath been conquered through the means of the common labors of the United States.""

Under the third specification the reference is, of course, to the conquest of George Rogers Clark.