Excerpts from The Papers of George Mason, 1725-1792

Robert A. Rutland, ed., 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970).

1779 Documents

12 April 1779 To Richard Henry Lee, pp. 497-500.

pp. 498-499: I see the Maryland Declaration, upon the Subject of Confederation, & their modest Claim to part of the back Lands, after skulking in the Dark for several Months, has at last made it's Appearance. It has confirm'd me in an Opinion I have long had, that the secret & true Cause of the great Opposition to Virginia's Title to her chartered Territory was the great Indian Purchase between the Obache & the Illionoise Rivers, made in the Year 1773 or 1774, in which Governor Johnston, & several of the leading Men in Maryland, are concerned with Ld. Dunmore, Governor Tryon, & many other Noblemen & Gentlemen of Great Britain. Do you observe the care Governor Johnston (for I dare say the Declaration in his Manufacture) has taken to save this Indian Purchase[?] In the explanatory articles which the Maryland Assembly require, before they will accede to the Confederation, after reserving the back Lands as a common Stock to the United States, is the following Exception "not granted to, surveyed for, or purchased by Individuals at the Commencement of the present War."

"Was Congress to declare that every Purchase of Lands heretofore made, or hereafter to be made of any Indian Nation, except by public Authority, and upon public Account shou'd be void, it wou'd, in my Opinion, be more effectual, upon this Subject, than all the Argument in the World. Had the British Ministry employed a Mansfield, or a Wedderburne to have managed the M[atte]r they cou'd not more effectually have pleased the Cause of Great Britain than this Declaration has. In the Year 1744 when the Canada Bill was passed by the British Parliament, the Bounds of that Province were extended so as to include the whole Country between the Ohio & the Mississippi Rivers; this being before the Rupture between Great Britain & her Colonies, the Parliament's Authority to pass such a Bill can not be impeached, upon any other G[ro]und than the Right of some of the old Colonies to that Country, by their Charters; aware of this, & to preserve giving too great an Alarm, a Cause of Exception was inserted, saving to any of the Colonies the Territory within their respective Charters; but the Declaration, denying the Right of any of the States by their Charters, if it proves any thing, proves that all the Country is part of the British Province of Canada; and unless the United States conquer Canada by Force of Arms, what Claim have we upon it? Or what Arguments cou'd be urge, in a Negotiation with Great Britain, for curtailing the Bounds of Canada, as setled by the Canada Bill; but that the Country they included was part of the Chartered Territory of the other Colonies at the time the said Bill passed; and the Consequences of suffering the Bounds of Canada to remain, in that extended Manner, surrounding great Part of the United States, are too obvious to mention."

p. 500: Ed. note: The Maryland Declaration had been presented by her delegation to the Continental Congress on 6 Jan. 1779. It claimed that the western lands belonged to all the states as common property. GM spoke sarcastically of this modest Claim because the pique of certain Maryland land speculators was known to be a major stumbling block to the ratification in Annapolis of the Articles of Confederation. The Indian Purchase between the Obache [Wabash] and the Illinois Rivers was the grant of 1773 secured by the combine of Maryland and Pennsylvania land speculators who later included Lord Dunmore in a second grant north of the Ohio River, and in time the Wabash and Illinois claims were merged by interlocking members of both schemes. Governor Thomas Johnston (Johnson) of Maryland was indeed a participant in the venture, which had already drawn GM's public concern with his suspiciously worded resolution of 18 Dec. 1778, above, which called upon the Virginia Delegation in Congress to inquire into American citizens' involvement "with some of the King of Great Britain's late governors in America" in the Illinois or Wabash companies. After a courtesy hearing for the out-of-state claimants, the House of Delegates on 9 June 1779 followed GM's suggestion with a sweeping renunciation of the validity of every purchase of lands . . . made of any Indian Nation, but the battle with a powerful combination of speculators continued until the western public domain was created in 1784. Meanwhile, the Virginia delegation at Philadelphia was so anxious to place the Articles of Confederation in force that they suggested the pact be implemented without Maryland.

[I include this letter and the editor's note because it illustrates the distrust between Virginians and Marylanders over their respective designs on western lands which formed the background of Virginia's resolution of 1776 (in which she gave up her claims to lands described in other states' charters), as well as the Mount Vernon Conference of 1785.]

[The foregoing letter does not appear in James Curtis Ballagh, ed., The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Vol. II, 1779-1794 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914.]

4 June 1779 To Richard Henry Lee, pp. 506-509.

p. 508: "A Committee is appointed to answer the Maryland publications. . . ."

p. 509: Ed. note: The committee appointed to answer the Maryland publications was appointed 31 May after Speaker Benjamin Harrison exhibited "certain proceedings of the General Assembly" of Maryland which had been forwarded by the Virginia delegation at the Continental Congress. Jefferson was named chairman, with GM as one member of the drafting body. The matter concerned Maryland's failure to ratify the Articles of Confederation and the Virginians' proposal to declare the Articles ratified without their sister state's assent (Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, XIV, 617-618). GM apparently did not become involved in any effort to chide the Maryland legislature, but he did draft a resolution calling for a remonstrance to the Congress reasserting Virginia's claims to western lands and denouncing the Indiana Company for its attempts to "interfere with the Laws and internal Policy" of Virginia (15 June 1779, below).

[The foregoing letter does not appear in Ballagh, ed., The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Vol. II.]

19 June 1779 To Richard Henry Lee, pp. 522-525.

p. 522: "The Indiana Company's Title, after two or three Days Debate, & every Effort, within & without Doors, to support it, is rejected; and an Act passed, in the most explicite Terms, firmly asserting the Commonwealth's exclusive Right of Pre-emption from the Indian's, within our own Territory, declaring that all Deeds or Cessions heretofore made to the Crown shall inure to the Use & benefit of the Commonwealth. . . ."

[Control over its own western lands seems to have been Virginia's aim when it released any claims to western lands described by the charters of other states in its Resolution of 1776. The giving up of jurisdiction over the Potomac River was the unintended, or at least unavoidable, consequence of that attempt to secure ownership of the western lands.]

[The foregoing letter does not appear in Ballagh, ed., The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Vol. II.]

[10 Dec 1779] The Remonstrance of the General Assembly of Virginia to the Delegates of the United American States in Congress Assembled, pp. 595-598.

pp. 595-597: "Congress have lately described and ascertained the Boundaries of the United States as an ultimatum in their terms of peace. The United States holds no Territory but in the right of some one individual State in the Union. The Territory of each State from time immemorial, hath been fixed and determined by their Respective Charters: there being no other Rule or criterion to judge by, should these in any Instance (where there is no disputed Territory between particular States) be abridged without the consent of the States affected by it, general confusion must ensue; each State would be subjected in its turn to the incroachments of the others, and a field opened for future Wars & bloodshed; nor can any arguments be fairly urged to prove that any particular tract of Country, within the limits claimed by Congress on behalf of the United States, is not part of the chartered territory of some one of them, but must militate with equal force against the right of the United States in general; and tend to prove such tract of Country (if North West of the Ohio River) part of the British province of Canada."

"When Virginia ceded to the Articles of Confederation, her Rights of Sovereignty and jurisdiction within her own territory were reserved & secured to her, & cannot now be infringed or alterd without her Consent. . . ."

"But altho' the General Assembly of Virginia would make great Sacrifices to the common interest of America (as they have already done on the subject of Representation) and will be ready to listen to any just & reasonable propositions for removing the ostensible causes of delay to the complete Ratification of the Confederation; they find themselves impelled . . . to remonstrate and protest. . . ."

pp. 597-598: Ed. note: Essentially, the remonstrance was aimed at a small faction in the Congress, prodded by the Maryland delegation, which had connections with the Indiana-Vandalia speculators or with the Illinois-Wabash group, and which had explicitly denied the Virginia charter claims to territory between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi. In Jan. 1779 the Maryland delegation had presented to Congress a manifesto which said, in effect, that Maryland would not ratify the Articles of Confederation as long as Congress lacked full power and jurisdiction in the transmontane West (Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, XIII, 29-30). The Articles of Confederation, still inoperative because Maryland had not ratified them, recognized the Congress as a court of appeal only in land disputes involving states (Morison, Sources and Documents Illustrating the Revolution, 182-183); hence the declaration that the pretentions of a private company to a congressional decision might introduce a most dangerous precedent. . . . The ostensible causes of delay to the complete ratification was, of course, an innuendo aimed at the Maryland delegation in Congress and the Maryland General Assembly which hinted that Virginia sought "to cover the designs of a secret ambition" by holding on to her western land claims (letter of instruction to Maryland delegation, 15 Dec. 1778, Hening, X, 553-556). The rancor exhibited in Annapolis and Williamsburg had an explosive potential. . . . The remonstrance was approved by the Senate on 14 Dec. and read to Congress on 28 Apr. 1780.