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x Virginia and the Western Problem 1778- 1779 IN THE autumn of 1778 the Virginia Assembly continued the policy toward the West which had been inaugurated by the Convention in the summer of 1776. Since that time counties had been set up west of the Alleghenies,t a commission had been at work gathering evidence against those claiming land under grants from Indian nations,2 and George Rogers Clark had been sent to the Ohio to subdue the enemy posts there.3 Such activity forecast what was to be done by the Assembly between October and December, 1778, in spite of the fact that the land question had now become a definite issue between the two strong groups contending for leadership in the state. Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and George Mason were leaders of the radical party, which opposed the schemes of the land companies of the Middle states. The conservative party was led by such men as Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, and Carter Braxton. Many of its leaders had commercial connections with Robert Morris, the Whartons, and the Gratzes, and hence supported the claims of the speculators from the Middle states both within and outside the halls of the Assembly.· Nevertheless the radical-expansionist element was able to continue with the policy initiated by earlier measures. On November 4 the House of Delegates declared void all purchases from Indians within the state's charter bounds. Thus, in general terms, the 1 See Frederick J. Turner, "Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era," in the American Historical Review, 1:70-87, 251-269 (October, 1895). • See Calendar of Virginia State Papers, I: 277-281, for the type of investigation that was carried on; also the opinion of George Morgan, leader of the Indiana Company, concerning the investigations, in a letter to Thomas Whanon, Fort Pitt, February 25, 1777, in the George Morgan Letter Books, 1:55, in the Wisconsin Historical Society. • James A. James, Life of George Rogers Clark (Chicago, 1918), chs. 6-8. • Abernethy, Western Lands and the American Revolution, 117-111. Virginia and the Western Problem 199 claims of four important groups of speculators in neighboring states were declared to have no validity so far as Virginia was concerned.5 The first of these was the Transylvania Company, which had been organized by Judge Henderson of North Carolina . His claim was not without influence, however, for on the same day that the above act was passed, the House of Delegates, while declaring the Henderson grant void, recommended that the company be given some compensation, since Virginia was receiving advantages from it in frontier defense and increased population .6 In accordance with this recommendation, Henderson's co~pany was given a grant of land between the Green and Ohio rivers.7 The claims of the three other companies, whose membership centered chiefly in Pennsylvania and Maryland, were voided. The most important of these was the Indiana Company, most of whose members resided in Pennsylvania and particularly in Philadelphia. The grant it had obtained from the Six Nations at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768 covered a large region to the south of Pittsburgh in what is now West Virginia. It was almost exactly the same area as had been granted to the Ohio Compa:1y of Virginia in 1749. The action of Virginia also voided the claims of the two land companies north of the Ohio River, the Illinois and Wabash companies. Their membership likewise centered largely in Pennsylvania , but it included also a number of Marylanders. not the least important of whom was Thomas Johnson, governor of Maryland during a part of the time when the struggle over the control of the West was most bitter.8 Meanwhile some officers and soldiers of the Virginia line were apparently more interested in the prospect of a land office in Virginia than in fighting the battles of the American Revolution; Colonel William Russell was even ready to resign from the army rather than have his hopes of a fortune in Western lands thwarted o Journal, House of Delegates lOctober-December, 1778], 1777-1780, 4z. • Ibid. 7 William Hening, The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from . .. 1619 [to 1792], 9:571 (Richmond, 1821). 8 The original members of both companies are listed in American State Papers: Public Lands (Washington, 1832-1861), z:I17-I18, I19. The Wabash Company of 1775 included Lord Dunmore and his son; John Murray, Moses and Jacob Franks...

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