Commentaries on the Constitutions and Laws, Peoples and History, of the United States; And Upon the Great Rebellion and Its Causes (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 Excerpt: ...on that account. After several years' discussion and controversy in congress and in the State legislatures upon that subject, the state of New York finally ceded to congress, in 1781, all her public lands and claims of jurisdiction and territory west of her present limits; and thereupon the state of Maryland acceded to and ratified the articles of confederation as heretofore stated. (See ante. p. 120.) The states of Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina, severally made similar cessions some years afterwards. North Carolina made a cession in 1790, and Georgia, in 1802. In those cessions, each state retained a certain portion of her claims. Virginia retained Kentucky and a large reserve of lands in Ohio; New York retained the present western part of the state, then a wilderness; Massachusetts retained the present state of Maine, and Connecticut reserved and had ceded to her, the soil, but not the jurisdiction, to a large district of country in north-eastern Ohio--comprising nearly an eighth part of the state. All those concessions and grants to congress, were made after years of dissension and controversy upon the subject. They were made as a matter of expediency and compromise, to conciliate the states that had no public lands, and to produce harmony and union between the states. They may be very properly regarded aa the second great compromise upon which the American Union was based; and without which the constitution and present form of government never could have been established. 3d. The ordinance of congress of July 13th, 1787. The next great difficulty-which arose between the states was in relation to the government of the newly ceded territories. The fifth article of the ordinance, reported by Mr. Jefferson, in 1784, (see ante. p. 1...