Petersham, and were there put to rout.

Of all the prison

ers, fourteen alone were tried and condemned, not one being executed. The insurrection had lasted about six months, (August, 1786-February, 1787.)

Dismem- Nor were such insurrections the only ones of the berments. time. A body of settlers in Wyoming, principally emigrants from New England, held their land by grants from Connecticut, long the claimant of the territory. When Connecticut gave way to Pennsylvania, and the latter state insisted upon the necessity of new titles to the settlements of Wyoming, the settlers armed themselves, and threatened to set up a state of their own, (1782-87.) What was threatened there was actually executed elsewhere. The western counties of North Carolina, excited by being ceded to the United States, organized an independent government, as the state of Franklin or Frankland, (1784.) But the people were divided, and the governor, Colonel Sevier, of King's Mountain fame, was ultimately compelled to fly by the opponents of an independent organization, (1788.) Meanwhile old projects of independence had been revived in the Kentucky counties of Virginia. Petitions and resolutions led to acts of the Virginia legislature consenting to the independence of Kentucky on certain conditions, (178586.) Kentucky soon after petitioned Congress for admission to the Union, but without immediate effect, (1787–88.) All these instances of dismemberment, proposed or accomplished, relate to frontier settlements, where independence was suggested as much by the position as by the character of the settlers. But the older districts were stirred in the same way. Maine again and again strove to be detached from Massachusetts, (1786.)

Case of

The case of Vermont was one apart. It came Vermont. up near the beginning of the war, when the inhabitants of that district, then known as the New Hampshire

*

grants, declared it the State of Vermont, (January, 1777,) and asked admission to the Union, (July.) The request was denied, on account of the claims of New York to the territory. A number of towns in the valley of the Connecticut, and partly within the limits of New Hampshire, afterwards formed themselves into the State of New Connecticut, (1779.) This soon fell through, leaving its predecessor, Vermont, to be enlarged by the New Hampshire towns on the eastern banks of the Connecticut, together with the New York settlements as far as the Hudson, (1781.) Overtures were then made to the British authorities in Canada, with whom the Vermonters might well wish to be on good terms, so long as they were excluded from the Union. Congress took alarm, as Vermont expected, and proposed to grant admission, provided the recent annexations from New Hampshire and New York were surrendered. This was done; but Congress still kept Vermont at a distance, (1782.) A member of the body, James Madison, explains the reasons why a promise, so long delayed, was finally violated. The Eastern States, except New Hampshire, and the Central States, except New York, advocated the entrance of Vermont, while New York and the Southern States opposed it, as Mr. Madison relates, through "first, an habitual jealousy of a predominance of eastern interests; secondly, the opposition expected from Vermont to western claims; thirdly, the inexpediency of admitting so unimportant a state to an equal vote in deciding a peace, and all the other grand interests of the Union now depending; fourthly, the influence of the example on a premature dismemberment of the other states." So Vermont remained aloof, contented, one may believe, to be free from the troubles of the United States.

The strife exhibited in the case of Vermont was nothing new or temporary. Disputes between state and state arose,

Disputes between

as we have had occasion to observe, in the midst of war, and peace had not put them to rest. When state and Mr. Madison speaks of sectional interests, he alludes state. to the varieties of occupation and of investment which distinguished one state from another. Such things could not but lead to different systems in different parts of the country, the more so, especially in the north and in the south, that there were differences of character, and even of principle, to enhance the differences of pursuits or of possessions. The allusion to the western territory is to a subject already noticed in our pages. Partially settled at the time when the Confederation was completed, the question of the unoccupied lands was still undecided. It united the smaller states, as a general rule, against the larger ones, by whom the western regions were claimed. Besides these great divisions between north and south, and between the larger and the smaller states, there were others of more limited nature. Boundary questions came up, some to be determined, and others to be left undetermined, but none to subside immediately. Variances as to the share of the national debt, and more particularly as to the method of meeting it, endured from year to year. In short, the thirteen states, instead of being intertwined, were set against one another on almost every point of importance that arose amongst them.

General

ment.

The general government continued in the same feegovern- ble state that has been repeatedly observed. If there was any change, it was that the Confederation and its Congress had sunk to a still lower degree of inefficiency. There was even less attention to its wants on the part of the states; its requisitions went almost unanswered, their obligations almost unregarded. The superintendent of finance, Robert Morris, of Philadelphia, by whose personal exertions. and advances the country had been forced through the last

the Bank of

years of the war, laid down his office in despair, after a year of peace. His creation of a bank North America (1781) - was recommended by Congress to the states, with the request that branches should be established; but in vain. Congress renewed its petition, as it may be styled, for power to lay a duty on imports, if only for a limited period, (1783.) After long delay, a fresh appeal was made with really piteous representations of the national insolvency. New York refused to comply upon the terms proposed, and Congress was again humiliated, (1786.) During its efforts on this point, Congress had roused itself upon another, and asked for authority over foreign commerce. Such was the urgency of the interests at stake, that Congress went so far as to appoint a commission for the purpose of negotiating commercial treaties with the European powers, (1784.) * But the supplications of Congress to the states were once more denied, (1784-86.)

Organi

of the

On one point alone was Congress worthy to be zation called a government. It organized the western territory, after having prevailed upon the states, west ter- or most of them, to abandon their pretensions to ritory. regions so remote from themselves. Virginia hav

north

ing followed the earlier example of New York, a plan was brought forward by one of her delegates, Thomas Jefferson, for the division and constitution of the western territory. The plan, at first, embraced the organization of the entire western territory, out of which seventeen states, all free, were to be formed. The proposed prohibition of slavery was at once voted down; otherwise the project was adopted,

* A treaty was made with only one of them, (Prussia,) but it contained substance enough for a score of old treaties, in prohibiting privateering, and sustaining the liberty of neutral commerce in case of war, (1785.) See the next chapter.

(April, 1784.) But the cessions of the states not yet covering the whole of the region thus apportioned, its organization was postponed until the national title to the lands could be made complete. Massachusetts (1785) and Connecticut (1786) ceded their claims, the latter state, however, with a reservation. Treaties with various tribes disposed in part of the Indian titles to the western territories, (1784-86.) * All these cessions completing the hold of the nation upon the tract north-west of the Ohio,† that country was definitely organized as the North-west Territory, by an ordinance of Congress, (July 13, 1787) This intrusted the government of the territory partly to officers appointed by Congress, and partly to an assembly to be chosen by the settlers as soon as they amounted to five thousand; the inhabitants and the authorities being alike bound to the observance of certain articles of compact between the old states and the new ones that might arise within the territory. These articles provided for religious liberty; for habeas corpus, trial by jury, and kindred privileges; for the encouragement of religion and education, and for justice towards the Indians; for the equal rights and responsibilities of the new states and the old; for the division of the territory into states; and lastly, for the prohibition of slavery. Under so liberal an organization, surveys, sales, and settlements followed fast. A colony from Massachusetts was the first to occupy Ohio, at Marietta, (1788.)

Difficul

Singular enough, while Congress was taking these ties with steps to preserve the western domains, it was taking others to endanger them. Eager to secure a treaty

Spain.

* It was many years before the Indian title was completely extinguished

†The south-west territory, though ceded in great part by the Indians, was not yet ceded by the states on whose borders it lay. South Carolina was the first to give up her claims, (August, 1787.)