The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775-1787

4. Virginia and the West

Virginia and the West On March 1, 1784, Virginia ceded its vast charter claims north of the Ohio River to the Continental Congress. This epochal transaction resolved the protracted dispute over western claims between the landed states and Congress. It secured the first strong congressional claim to a national domain and set in motion a liberal territorial policy that led to the formation of new western states. The cession also climaxed Virginia's decade-long pursuitof policygoals in the West deemed vital to its sovereign pretensions. Virginia did not intend to retain jurisdictionacross the Ohio. It did require that state claims there, based on the 1609 charter, be recognized by Congress and the other states. Though it acknowledged that abridgement of those claims was ultimately necessary, it insisted that this be done on terms the General Assembly itself should dictate. A cession of Virginia western claims to Congress, under express stipulations, was the logical culmination of this policy. The Virginia cession vindicated the state's claims and eliminated one of the chief threats to its sovereignty. Both in a symbolic sense and a real sense, challenges to territorial jurisdiction were challenges to the existence of the new states. British tampering with colonial boundaries was seen as one of the reasons for revolution. Similarly, new state leaders had to fend off threats by domestic separatists, local and out-of-state land 75 4 76 State-Making claimants (including loyalists), the conflicting claims of other states, and, for those states with western claims, counterclaims by Congress or other nations. Virginia faced imperial boundary changes, implied in the Proclamation of 1763 and subsequent Indian boundaries, and explicitly in the proposed new colony of Vandalia and the Quebec Act in the 1770s. Separatists challenged colony and state jurisdiction in Transylvania (Kentucky) and in southwestern Virginia. Private land companies, including the Ohio and Loyal companies of Virginia, in addition to the the Indiana, Illinois, and Wabash companies, all dominated by out-of-staters, sought to establish property claims within Virginia's charter lines.1 Meanwhile Pennsylvania asserted its claims in the contested Pittsburgh region. In the farther West, England, Spain, and the United States Congress promoted various title pretensions, as did Connecticut and Massachusetts on the basis of their charters, and New York State on the strength of its suzerainty over the Iroquois—all within the limits of the Virginia charter.2 A successful reconciliation of the states' various interests and policies was vitally important to the future health of Congress and the Union. If Virginia failed to gain guarantees from Congress and the other states for its territorial claims, it would be perpetually exposed to encroachments from its neighbors—and from Congress. Congress might assert itsjurisdiction in the West on its own initiative. This would "introduce a most dangerous precedent which might hereafter be urged to deprive [any state] of territory or subvert [its] sovereignty.'" Yet if state rights and sovereignty were secured , it would be possible to entrust Congress with larger powers, even in such ambiguous areas as commerce and taxation where it was much less certain what state rights or powers were or should be. The vindication and guarantee of state rights had to precede the enlargement of congressional powers. The controversy over western land claims dragged on throughout the war years, despite the obvious need for harmony among the states. As early as 1776, Virginia's leaders showed a willingness to abridge the state's claims. The Virginia constitution provided for the creation of "new governments " in the West.4 In 1778, Richard Henry Lee proposed "the Ohio as a boundary to the Westward."5 The Northwest could be "settled for [the] common good and ma[d]e a new State." That a cession of state claims to Congress might be the best means of achieving these goals was a famil- Virginia and the West 77 iar idea by this time in Virginia and at Congress. The Virginia House of Delegates passed the state's first cession act in January 1781, in response to a congressional call for cessions in September 1780. But the cession offer aroused suspicion and hostility in other states, and Congress refused to accept it.6 The opposition to Virginia's claims and to its cession offer included land company speculators, chiefly from Pennsylvania, and the small, landless states, led by Maryland, another center of land speculation.7 The small states feared that Virginia's...