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13
initial meeting of the stockholders which was to have been held in May
1762, had to be postponed in spite of an announcement that subscriptions
were filling fast. 20 Pontiac's rebellion on the frontier and the
resulting Proclamation of 1763 ended speculative financial support for
the plan, and it remained dormant until several years later.
By 1768 the Proclamation of 1763 had proved almost unworkable,
and the line had undergone several westward revisions in the treaties
for Fort Stanwix and Hard Labor (both in 1768). Also in 1768 Enqlish
authorities returned control of the fur trade (which, since 1764,had been
under direct British jurisdiction west of the Proclamation line) to
individual colonies on the theory that the colonies had learned their
lesson from Pontiac's rebellion and would be more prudent in the future.
Moreover, English troops had to be withdrawn from the frontier to American
coastal cities to deal with the unrest from the 1765 Stamp Act and other
tax measures. While the treaties of Fort Stanwix and Hard Labor were
only intended to correct problems that the hastily drawn Proclamation
line had created, since the revisions were westward, speculators assumed
this meant that western lands were once again open for exploitation. The
removal of British Indian agents and their supporting troops after 1764
only underscored this erroneous conclusion. The result was a rush of
various speculative and political efforts to take advantage of the "new"
opportunity.
During the years that the Proclamation line had closed the frontier
and undercut support for clearing the Potomac, Thomas Johnson and a friend,
Lancelot Jacques, had become tenants on 15,000 acres of Lord Baltimore's
land at Indian Spring in Frederick County, Maryland (now Washington County).
20 Maryland Gazette, May 13, 1762, June 10, 1762.
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