XLVI. barrassments anticipated from it were fully realized-its CHAPTER provisions becoming the occasion, a few years after, of very serious difficulties with the French revolutionary 1785. government. A Negotiations for commercial treaties, on the basis suggested by Jefferson, were commenced by the commissioners with Prussia, Denmark, Portugal, and Tuscany. treaty was presently concluded with Prussia, remarkable July. for its provisions, that in case of war between the contracting parties, privateering should not be allowed, and that free ships should make free goods. Prussia, very little of a maritime state, was the more ready on that account to assent to these novelties. A treaty under this same commission was negotiated two or three years after with the Emperor of Morocco, through the agency of Barclay, the consul at Paris. The negotiations with the other states came to no results. A few days before the appointment of Jefferson as Feb. 24. Franklin's successor at the French court, John Adams, who still remained in Holland, had been selected as minister plenipotentiary to Great Britain. The first person to wait upon him after his arrival at London was the aged Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia. When introduced to the king, he was received with a very magnanimous speech; but it was not long before he found his situation even more embarrassing than it ever had been in Holland. To a formal memorial which he presented Nov. 30 claiming the surrender of the western posts, the reply was made that, contrary to an express provision of the 1786. treaty, obstacles continued, in several of the states, to be Feb. 28 placed in the way of the collection of debt contracted in Great Britain before the commencement of the war; and that, until those obstacles were removed, the posts in question would not be surrendered. The younger Pitt, XLVI. CHAPTER who had succeeded as prime minister to the short-lived coalition of Fox and North, perceiving the weakness of 1785. Congress, and the incapacity of the federal government to adopt any system of counter-regulation, declined to enter into any treaty arrangements on the subject of commerce; nor did he even reciprocate the compliment of sending a diplomatic agent to America. The retention of the western posts by the British was unfavorable to the scheme of Congress for fixing by treaty the Indian boundaries, and laying open a part of the west1784. ern lands for settlement. A treaty, however, had been Oct. 4. concluded at Fort Schuyler, by commissioners on the part of the United States, with the chiefs and warriors of the Six Nations, by which the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayu. gas, and Senecas, who had adhered during the late war to the British side, consented to a peace and the release of prisoners. At the same time, they ceded all their claim to the territory west of Pennsylvania. Another 1785. treaty was presently held at Fort M'Intosh with the WyJan. 21. andots, Delawares, Chippewas, and Ottawas, by which the two former nations agreed to limit themselves to a tract on Lake Erie, from Cuyahoga (now Cleveland) west to the Maumee, bounded on the south by a line half way from the lake to the Ohio. Buckongahelas, a celebrated chief of the Delawares, present at this treaty, took no notice of the other commissioners, but approaching General George Rogers Clark, who was one of the number, he seized his hand, and thanked the Great Spirit for hav. ing thus brought two such great warriors together! As the Shawanese still manifested a hostile disposition, March 8. Congress passed an ordinance regulating the office of secretary of war, to which post Knox was chosen; they also April 7. ordered seven hundred men to be enlisted for three years, for the defense of the western settlements. XLV. For the convenience of the increasing population of CHAPTER Kentucky, and to save the necessity of suitors traveling. to Richmond, the Assembly of Virginia had erected the 1785. three western counties into a separate judicial district, March. with a Supreme Court of its own. The court was opened at Harrodsburg; but, as there was no house there sufficient to accommodate it, the clerk and attorney general were directed to fix on some safe place near the present town of Danville, and were authorized to build a log-house large enough for a court-room in one end and two juryrooms in the other, and also to erect a jail of hewn or sawed logs. Among the indictments found at the first court were nine for selling spirituous liquors without a license, and eight for adultery and fornication. A commercial intercourse was already opened with Philadelphia by way of Pittsburg. Dec. 1785. May. Aug. The inhabitants of Kentucky, separated from Virginia by so many intervening mountains, began to entertain the idea of constituting themselves into a separate communi- 1784. ty. Two conventions successively held at Danville had resulted in a petition to the Assembly of Virginia for liberty to form a new state. A third convention had commenced its deliberations by unanimously voting in favor of the same project. An address was also put forth to the people, in which this step was strongly urged. As yet there was neither newspaper nor printing-press in Kentucky, and this address was circulated in manuscript. Fresh emigrants, meanwhile, continued to pour in. The new county of Nelson had already been taken from Jefferson, and before the end of the present year three other new counties were erected: Bourbon, taken from Fayette; and Mercer and Madison, from Lincoln. The interest of Virginia in retaining her western jurisdiction was by this time much liminished. Land warrants had CHAPTER already issued sufficient to cover the soil three or four times over. XLVI. 1785. East Tennessee already contained three counties, Washington, Sullivan, and Greene, on the upper waters of the Nolichucky, the Houlston, and the Clinch. The remote settlements on the Cumberland, erected into the county of Davidson, increased rapidly; the town of Nashville had lately been laid out, named, like the county, after a North Carolina general who had fallen on the field of battle in his country's cause. A very large proportion of the present State of Tennessee was yet, and long remained, the property of the Cherokees at the east, 1784. and of the Chickasaws at the west. During the late reJune. cess of Congress, North Carolina had passed an act ced ing her western territory to the United States on certain Nov. conditions; but at a subsequent session the same year, before the new Congress had any opportunity to accept it, this act was repealed. Νον. 13. Massachusetts having authorized her delegates in Congress to cede to the United States so much of her claims to western territory as they might see fit, it 1785. was proposed by Rufus King, one of her delegates, to Mar. 16. modify the report on the Western Territory, accepted by the late Congress, by inserting into it a total and immediate prohibition of slavery. This motion was referred to a committee by the vote of eight states, the single delegate present from Georgia also concurring; Delaware unrepresented; Virginia and the two Carolinas in the negative. April 19. A few weeks after, King and his colleague executed a deed of cession as to all the territory west of the present western boundary of New York; and Congress proceed May 20. ed to enact an ordinance for the survey and sale of the lands northwest of the Ohio. The land-office system of Virginia and North Carolina, 7 XLVI. by which each person was required to locate and survey CHAPTER his own grant, gave rise to many conflicting titles, and led to troublesome and expensive law-suits. The Unit- 1785. ed States, in the ordinance now passed, adopted the sys. tem of New England and Pennsylvania, that of regular surveys of the whole territory at the public expense. The plan of those states was even improved upon by giving to it more of system and uniformity. By a series of lines perpendicular to each other, the one set running north and south, the other east and west, the federal lands were to be lotted out into townships of six miles square; these townships to be subdivided by similar lines into thirty-six sections, each containing a square mile, or six hundred and forty acres. The survey has since been carried to half sections, quarter sections, and eighths, and in some cases to sixteenths. One section in each township was to be reserved as the basis of a school fund-a beneficent provision, which, in too many states, negligence and misappropriation have almost defeated. The public lands, when ready for market, were to be of fered to purchasers in the several states in quantities proportioned to their Continental quotas; the sale to be by public vendue, in quantities not less than a section, at the minimum price of one dollar per acre, to which the expenses of survey were to be added at the rate of $49 per township. Payment was to be made in specie or certificates of federal debt. Already the year was half spent, and no provision was yet made to meet its expenses. The current Continental charges for the year were put down at $404,000. Adding the deficit on the last year's requisition, and one year's interest on the debt, the sum needed was $3,650,000; but a small additional loan having been obtained in Holiand, and appropriated to pay the interest on the foreign |