..........26,000
-------
265,562
or 169,959,680 acres.
Virginia claimed this entire region. New York claimed an indefinite
amount. Connecticut claimed about 25,600,000 acres and ceded all but
3,300,000. Massachusetts claimed about 34,560,000 acres.
SOUTH OF KENTUCKY South Carolina ceded about 3,136,000 acres. North
Carolina ceded (nominally) 29,184,000 acres. Georgia ceded 56,689,920
acres.--Payson J. Treat, "The National Land System, 1785-1820."]
So it was that even before the National Government was organized under a
federal constitution in 1789, the land beyond the western boundaries of
the several colonies, out as far as the Mississippi, was held for the good
of all. And later the same policy followed the expansion to the Rockies
and beyond. Can one imagine a greater or more fateful task than confronted
this young, inexperienced republic--to have the disposal of a billion
acres of timber lands, grazing lands, farm lands, ore lands, oil lands,
coal lands, arid lands, and swamp lands for the good not only of the first
comers and of those then living in the Atlantic States but also of the
millions that should inhabit all that country in future generations as
well--for the good of all of all time?
This one-time bed of the Paleozoic sea between Archaean shores, raised in
time above the ocean and enriched of the mountains that through millions
of years were gradually to be worn down by the natural forces of the
valley, and finally, as we have seen, opened by the French as a new-
created world to be peopled by the old world, then overflowing its brim,
became all of it in the space of a single lifetime the property of a few
million human beings, their heirs, and assigns forever.
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