British Government resented, and so the whole treaty fell. By the purchase of 1803 we succeeded to all the rights, as respects Louisiana, that had belonged to Spain or France, and this carried us, west of the Mississippi, north to the British possessions. By a convention dated October 20, 1818, the United States and England settled the Lake of the Woods controversy, and established the boundary between them to the Rocky Mountains.

"It is agreed that a line drawn from the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods, along the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, or if the said point shall not be in the fortyninth parallel of north latitude, then that a line drawn from the said point due north or south, as the case may be, until the said line shall intersect the said parallel of north latitude, and from the point of such intersection due west along and with the said parallel, shall be the line of demarcation between the territories of the United States and those of His Britannic Majesty, and that the said line shall form the northern boundary of the said territories of the United States, and the southern boundary of the territories of His Britannic Majesty, from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains."

This extract, together with the facts of geography, explains the singular projection of our northern boundary on the west side of the Lake of the Woods, which first appeared on ordinary maps some ten years ago.

The line from the intersection of the St. Lawrence and parallel 45° north to the foot of the St. Marys was established in 1823, by joint commission under the Treaty of Ghent; the line from the foot of the St. Marys to the northwesternmost point of Lake of the Woods, by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842.

XI.

THE NORTHWESTERN LAND-CLAIMS.

THE second part of the chapter devoted to the territorial questions growing out of the royal patents and charters closed with a promise to consider, in the proper place, the similar question affecting the old Northwest. In fact, the only reason for introducing the charters at all is their bearing on Western questions. Accordingly, this chapter will be given to a statement of the Western land-claims; the two following chapters, to their settlement. Unfortunately, the discussion of the whole subject is often colored by State feeling or by patriotism. Connecticut writers are apt to stand for the Connecticut claim, New York writers for the New York claim, while Virginians pride themselves on Virginia's being the mother of States as well as of statesmen. Again, Western men, little disposed to admit that the Northwestern States were the children of the Atlantic commonwealths, and fond of looking at the subject from a national point of view, tend either to belittle or to deny the titles of the claimant States to the Western lands.

In her constitution of 1776, Virginia ceded, released, and forever confirmed to the people of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and North and South Carolina, the territories contained within their charters, so far as they were embraced in her charter of 1609, with all the rights of property, jurisdiction, and government, and all other rights that had ever been claimed by Virginia, except the navigation of certain rivers; after which she said:

"The western and northern extent of Virginia shall, in all other respects, stand as fixed by the charter of King James I., in the year one thousand six hundred and nine, and the public treaty of peace between the Courts of Britain and France, in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three; unless, by act of this Legislature, one or more governments be established westward of the Alleghany Mountains. And no purchases of lands shall be made of the Indian natives, but on behalf of the public, by authority of the General Assembly."

This declaration meant, that Virginia claimed the whole Northwest as falling within her west and northwest lines. The claim has been often denied by historians, statesmen, lawyers, and pamphleteers, on grounds that will be stated as concisely as is consistent with clearness.

Probably no bolder or stronger denial was ever made than that of Hon. Samuel F. Vinton, of counsel for the defendants in the case of Virginia vs. Peter M. Garner and others,' before the General Court of Virginia, in December, 1845. The legal question involved was that of the boundary between the States of Virginia and Ohio. In the course of his argument to the court Mr. Vinton affirmed the following historical propositions":

(1) "That Virginia, during the War of the Revolution, set up a claim to the country beyond the Ohio;" (2) "that she never had a valid title to it ;" (3) "that her title, not only to it, but to both sides of the Ohio, was disputed by the Con

'Garner and the other defendants, citizens of Ohio, were seized by a party of Virginians, between low-water and high-water mark, on the north side of the Ohio River, in the act of assisting some slaves belonging to one Harwood, a Virginian, to escape from slavery. The case went up from Wood County to the General Court on a special verdict, the question being whether the defendants were, at the time of meeting and assisting the slaves, within the jurisdiction of Virginia or of Ohio. The case is reported at length in Grattan, Reports of Cases decided in the Supreme Court of Appeals and in the General Court of Virginia, III., 655. Mr. Vinton's argument was published in pamphlet, Marietta, O., 1846; and it is also found in the Second Annual Report of the Ohio State Fish Commission, 1877.

federacy, and by other States;" (4) "that they claimed all that she asserted a right to;" (5) "that, in the end, she adjusted her claim by compromise;" (6) "that she relinquished her claim beyond the Ohio with the express understanding that the acceptance of her act of cession was not to be taken as an admission by the Confederacy (who was the grantee) that Virginia had a title to the country ceded by her;" (7) "that the separate and acknowledged right of Virginia to the country on the lower, and of the Confederacy to that on the upper, bank of the Ohio, began with this compromise."

From these propositions Mr. Vinton deduced others of a legal nature that do not here concern us.

These seven propositions may all be reduced to two, for convenience. The first of these, the absolute denial of the charter-title, is supported by this chain of reasoning: (1) The Virginia grant of 1609 was made in total ignorance of the extent of the continent and of the grant sought to be conveyed; (2) the English king at that time had no right or title to the lands included within the limits beyond the Atlantic slope; (3) the charter was annulled by a writ of quo warranto issued by the Court of King's Bench in 1624, and was never renewed; (4) the English Crown's later title to the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi was the treaty with France in 1763; (5) the Crown plainly signified by numerous acts, as the proclamation of 1763 and the Walpole grant of 1772, that colonial Virginia did not extend beyond the mountains, and that the over-mountain lands were Crown lands; and (6) later grants than that of 1609, as those to the Carolina proprietors, to Baltimore and Penn, and to the New England colonies, show that the Crown did not regard those limits as conclusive, either on the sea-shore or in the West. Mr. Vinton rested his second cardinal proposition, that Virginia's title to the country southeast of the Ohio is a compromise with other States and with Congress, made in 1784, on the history of the cessions. The cessions will be treated in the next chapters, and need not be anticipated here. Nearly all

the judges who gave opinions in Garner's case waived the historical issue that Mr. Vinton had raised, on the ground that a Virginia court could not question the fundamental law of the State; but the temptation proved so strong that some of them discussed the subject more or less at length. McComas, Judge, thus touched some of the points involved:

"It will not be necessary to inquire into the rights of the British king, because no civilized nations had claim to the country except England and France; and, by treaty between those two nations, the boundaries were ascertained and fixed between them; and the territory in controversy was acknowledged to be in the English Crown, and of course by that treaty the title of Virginia to the lands contained in her charter, and comprehended in the limits of the British possessions, was confirmed, and thereby made good. The British king by several acts, and particularly by grants of large tracts of land, acknowledged that the Northwestern territory was within the jurisdiction and limits of Virginia. . But it is stated

that the charter of Virginia was annulled, and that she has no right to claim under said charter. It has been decided, and I think rightly, 'that the charter was annulled so far as the rights of the company were concerned, but not in respect to the rights of the Colony. The powers of government, the same powers which the charter had vested in the company as proprietor, were vested in the Crown: the same title to the lands within its chartered limits, which the charter had vested in the company, was revested in the Crown.' . .

"In relation to the territory northwest of the Ohio River, it ought to be recollected that during the Revolutionary War, and before the cession, Virginia conquered the territory by her own troops, unaided by the other States of the Union; and formed the whole territory into the county of Illinois. It therefore seems to me, as the territory was not within the chartered limits of any other State, and as it undoubtedly belonged to the British Crown, this conquest would give Virginia an undoubted right to it."