The Cession of the Old Northwest

Abstract

More than fifty years ago Herbert Baxter Adams discussed the cession of the Old Northwest in a monograph that has had a pervasive and enduring influence." Maryland's refusal to agree to the Articles of Confederation until Congress should be given some portion of the West was interpreted as a result of the "farsighted policy of Maryland in opposing the grasping land claims of Virginia and three of the Northern States." Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware also opposed the claims of Virginia, but Adams denied that they shared Maryland's vision of a national commonwealth based on western expansion. These lesser states were interested only in sharing the revenues to be derived from the West or in defraying the expenses of the war. He insisted: "The credit of suggesting and successfully urging in Congress that policy which has made this country a great national commonwealth . . . belongs to Maryland, and to her alone." 2The determination of Maryland and the other Middle States played a part in the creation of the national domain. But the causes of their determination lay less in patriotic abstraction and national vision than in the jealousy these states felt for Virginia, and in the often thwarted but ever-reviving hopes of the members of speculative land companies within these states. The measure of the influence wielded by such companies is indicated by their membership. Among the members were Gov-

Guarantee Clause

“…JOHN RICHARD Against this backdrop, the framework contemplated by Dickinson's initial draft of the Articles, which would have conferred broad power on Congress to determine, and even "cut off," state boundaries, proved politically toxic to the landed states. 201 Both the proposal to confer on Congress the power to settle state boundaries and the related provision calling for a mutual "guarantee" of the boundaries so ascertained were dropped from the final draft of the Articles. 202 Instead of conferring on Congress a power to settle state boundaries, as Dickinson's draft contemplated, the final version of the Articles provided for a complex adjudicative procedure for the settlement of disputed land claims with a proviso "that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States."…”