The things we do!

Not that
the land was all sold, but all that was immediately valuable.
As soon as the War of Independence was over, and even during the struggle,
the territories of several of the Atlantic States (or colonies) expanded
to the Mississippi. There was a quadrilateral, trans-Alleghany
Massachusetts, as indifferent to natural boundaries as a "state of mind"
(which Massachusetts has often been defined to be), respectful only of
imaginary lines of latitude and the Mississippi River, the Spanish border.
Little Connecticut multiplied its latitude by degrees of longitude till it
reached in a thin but rich slice from Pennsylvania also to the
Mississippi. Virginia disputed these mountain-to-river claims of her New
England sisters, but held unquestioned still larger territories to the
north and south--and so on from the sources of the river to Florida, South
Carolina even claiming a strip a few miles wide and four hundred long.
There was almost a duplication of the Atlantic front on the Mississippi
River.


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