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The New Western Colony Schemes: a Preview of the United States Territorial System

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The New Western Colony Schemes: a Preview of the United States Territorial System The New Western Colony Schemes: A Preview of the United States Territorial System Chad J. Wox.niak* The history of the United States territorial sxstem properly begins several decades before the American Revolution. Many of the ideas ultimately incorporated into the American territorial system first found expression, in one form or another, some time during the half century or so before 1775. In this period developments took place illustrative as antecedents of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which created the United States territorial system, and of the companion Land Ordinance of 1785, which established the characteristic Ameri- can rectangular land survey system. These antecedents were encom- passed in the plans for settlement west of the Appalachians in colo- nial times and in the schemes for new British colonies in the interior of North America. While none of the new colony schemes was ever realized, their sponsors put forth some of the initial suggestions of elements in the later plan of the territorial system. Their ideas and plans were known and carefully evaluated by the Continental Con- gress during and after the Revo1ution.l Since they represented the first proposed departure from the old pattern of expansion westward by the original colonies2 and the first indigenously American deliberations upon new colonization, the new colony ven- tures merit consideration as a phase of the ideological growth and shaping of the territorial system and of America constitutionalism. Upon examination, the proposals and schemes for new western settle- ment in the late colonial period exhibit many tendencies and philo- sophies later expressed again in the Ordinances of 1785 and 1787. * Chad J. Wozniak is assistant professor of history, University of Wisconsin- Parkside, Kenosha. 1 In the Papers of the Continental Congress (National Archives, Washington, D.C.), are numerous memorials and other documents relating to the various new colony proposals. See, for example, those relating to the Vandalia colony project, the best known and most nearly successful, ibid., Item 41, X, 500ff. zFor the purposes of this essay, two kinds of westward expansion in colonial America may be noted: peripheral expansion into unoccupied areas by the exist- ing colonies without central direction from the imperial authorities : and unitary expansion, under such central direction, through the creation of new colonies. Peripheral expansion was the only kind actually undertaken in the period con- sidered here, but the proposals for new western colonies anticlpated a system of unitary exDansion such as was later provided in the territorial scheme of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. One of the factors favoring unitary expansion was the distance of the newly annexed parts of the existing colonies from their centers of government and commerce. Another was their isolation either across natural barriers, such as the Appalachians, or the intervening territory of another colony, as in the case of the Wyoming Valley and Connecticut (see pp. 289-90). 284 Indiana Magazine of History Reference Map for New W estem Colony Projects Map prepared by Chad J. Wozniak New Western Colony Schemes 285 The proposals for new western colonies originated with the accel- erated growth of English America in the decades immediately preced- ing the French and Indian War (1754-1760). During this time almost all of the lands east of the Appalachian divide were either settled or owned by speculators. The Indian traders’ frontier also advanced so far that by the middle of the 1740s it had penetrated into the older sphere of French interest in the Ohio Valley. The result was increased concern on the part of both the British and the French for their claims to the trans-Allegheny region, which not only precipi- tated the showdown of 1754-1763,but stirred the English colonists to plan for the future of their claimed western The first steps toward an actual Anglo-American occupation of the transmontane district were taken by Virginians. As early as 1716 Governor Alexander Spotswood led an expedition across the Alle- ghenies, and two years later he suggested to the British ministry the establishment of permanent settlements in the Great Lakes are&’ While no immediate action followed upon Spotswood’s proposals, the colonies’ interest in the western country was already receiving re- cognition.5 3This article deals only with the development and significance of the idea of new western colonies in relation to ideas embraced in the territorial system as established by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. No attempt is made here to detail in full the history of all the many colonial land companies and speculations. For that purpose, the reader should refer to the following standard works: Thomas P. Abernethy, Western Lands and the American Revolution (New York, 1937); Shaw Livermore, Early American Land Companies (New York, 1939) ; Kenneth P. Bailey, The Ohio Company 01 Virginia (Glendale, Calif., 1939) and Alfred P. James, The Ohio Company (Pittsburgh, 1959) ; George E. Lewis, The Indiana Corn- pany, 1768-1798 (Glendale, Calif., 1941) ; Clarence E. Carter, Great Britain and the Illinois Country, 1765-1774 (Washington, 1910) ; the introductions to each volume of Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Susquehannah Company Papers (4 vols., Ithaca, N. Y., 1962) ; Albert T. Volwiler, George Croghan and the Westward Movement (Cleveland, 1926) and Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croyhan, Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1959); and William S. Lester, The Transylvania Colony (Spencer, Ind., 1935). Similarly, the purpose here is to examine thoughts of colonial Americans on western policy. For thorough coverage of British western policy see Clarence W. Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics (2 vols., Cleve- land, 1917), some of whose findings are disputed, however, in Jack M. Sosin, Whitehall in the Wilderness (Lincoln, Neb., 1961). Separatist movements among the western settlers, both before and after the Revolution, are discussed in Frederick Jackson Turner, “Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era,” American Historical Review, I (October, 1895; January, 1896), 70-87, 251-69. The general affairs of the colonies are well documented in Lawrence H. Gipson, The British Empire Before the American Revolution (14 vols., New York, 1936- 1968). George H. Alden, New Governments West of the Alleghenies before 1780 (Madison, Wis., 1897), covers much of the same ground as this article but has overlooked important materials and fails to relate adequately the new colony ideas to the future United States territorial system. 4Governor Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, August 14, 1718, in R. A. Brock, ed., The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia (2 vols., Richmond, Va., 1888), 11, 286-98. Spotswood reported that “The Chief Aim of my Expedition over the Great Mountains in 1716, was to satisfye my Self whether it was practicable to come at the Lakes.” Ibid., 295. For additional details of Spotswood’s expedition see Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), 11, 446-51. 5 Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, August 14, 1718, Brock, Letters of Bpots- 286 Indiana Magazine of Historg Twenty years later, however, Virginia’s burgeoning population and speculative interests incited her to further action. In 1738 her legislature boldly proclaimed that the newly organized frontier county of Augusta extended “to the utmost limits of Virginia,” mean- ing the enormous bounds designated by her early chartem6 During the following decade Virginia began to grant lands amidst and beyond the mountains. By the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster, Pennsylvania,‘ to which Virginians were parties, the Six Nations Iroquois vacated their claims to lands south of the Ohio River. This treaty stimulated a sudden new interest in western lands, and 1745 the Virginia council made four large grants.8 In November, 1747, John Hanbury and several others, including Thomas and Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, and Lawrence and Augustine Washington, petitioned the council for a grant of 200,000 acres near the forks of the Ohio River.s These petitioners, along with Governor Robert Dinwiddie and some others, formally incorporated as the Ohio Company of Virginia in 1751, having received a royal charter and royal confirmation of their grant two years earlier.l0 This company was the first venture to undertake the actual occupation of trans-AllegLmy territories. While the principal interest of the company lay in the Indian trade, the company also planned to settle a hundred families upon its land- wood, 11, 295-97. See also Bailey, Ohio Company of Virginia, 22, which, however, makes the erroneous statement that Spotswood’s plans “merely pushed the Virginia frontier farther toward the Alleghenies.” As his letter shows, Spots- wood had much more to offer than that. See page 287 for the full scope of Spots- wood’s ideas and suggestions. 6 Act organizing Augusta and Orange counties, November, 1738, in William Waller Hening, ed., The Btatutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia (13 vols., Richmond, Va., 1814-1823), V, 78-80. 7 The treaty of Lancaster is in the Minutes 01 the Provincial Council of Penn- sylvania (8 vols., Harrisburg, Pa., 1851), IV, 698-737. Representatives from Virginia present for the making of the treaty included Thomas Lee, a future member of the Ohio Company of Virginia. See the documents cited in notes 9 and 10. 8 Record of Virginia land grants, George Croghan Papers (Cadwallader
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