Besides all this, a new complication had now arisen, which disposed the Southern claimants of western territory to look with less favor upon a cession of their claims to the United States. This was the spirit manifested by the Northern States to concede to the claims of Spain the temporary control of the Mississippi river as high as Natchez, which was then occupied by Spanish troops. In August, 1786, panting for the revival of trade on any terms, seven Northern States, by their delegates in Congress, approved a plan submitted by Jay to yield to the claims of Spain temporary control of the Mississippi river, and the possession of the disputed territory. The five Southern States opposed it, and it was only defeated by lacking the constitutional majority of nine States. Georgia and the Carolinas resented this disposition to abandon their territory to Spain, and refused to listen to any proposition to cede territory to the United States.
These events occurring in 1785, and the sectional spirit which they aroused, put an end for the time to any cessions of southwestern territory. In 1787, after the excitement and sectional jealousy had been somewhat allayed, although the affairs with Spain were still unsettled, the pressure upon North Carolina and Georgia was revived by the first cession of any southwestern territory to the United States. This was the cession by South Carolina of a strip of land about 400 miles long and about twelve miles wide, lying along the southern boundary of the present State of Tennessee. It would seem that South Carolina desired to bring to bear on North Carolina and Georgia the same pressure which New York had so successfully exercised on Virginia. There may have been also some feeling of pique against Georgia in the action of the Hotspur State, caused by the suit then pending between the two States. The following are the circumstances of the cession:
In the year 1785 South Carolina instituted suit against Georgia, before Congress, under the ninth article of the Confederation. On June 1, of this year, Georgia was summoned to appear on the second Monday of May, 1786. The following is a portion of the petition of South Carolina:
To the United States of America in Congress assembled: The petition of the Legislature of South Carolina sheweth that a dispute and difference hath arisen and subsists between the State of Georgia and this state Concerning boundaries. That the case and claim of this state is as follows, viz.:
Charles II., king of Great Britain, by charter, dated the 24th March, in the fifteenth year of his reign, granted, etc. * * * That on the 30th day of June, in the seventeenth year of his reign, the said king granted to the said lords proprietors a second charter, enlarging the bounds of Carolina, etc. * * * That Carolina was afterward divided into two provinces called North and South Carolina. That by a charter dated the 9th day of June, 1732, George II., king of Great Britain, granted to certain persons therein named all the lands lying between the rivers Savannah and Altamaha, and lines to be drawn from the heads of those rivers respectively to the South Seas, and styled the said colony of Georgia. * * * That South Carolina claims the lands lying between the North Carolina line and a line to be run due west from the mouth of the Tugaloo river to the Mississippi, because, as the State contends, the river Savannah loses that name at the confluence of Tugaloo and Keowee rivers, consequently that spot is the head of Savannah river; the State of Georgia, on the other hand, contends that the source of Keowee is to be considered at the head of Savannah river.
The petition recites other disputed points of boundary, and concludes with a prayer to Congress to take jurisdiction and try the case under the Articles of Confederation. The case was adjourned from time to time, until September 4, 1786, when both States appeared by their agents. Proceedings were then instituted and a court appointed to try the case, which was to sit in New York, June 4, 1787. No judgment was ever rendered by this court in consequence of the compromise of the suit between the parties.
Both states appointed commissioners, who met at Beaufort, S. C., clothed with full powers to make a final settlement. And now comes a singular part of the history, and the origin of the twelve-mile strip. These commissioners—Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Andrew Pickens and Pierce Butler, on the part of South Carolina; and John Habersham, Lacklan McIntosh, a majority of the commissioners, on the part of Georgia—April 28, 1787, signed an agreement and convention establishing the line as it now exists between the two States, running along the Savannah river and its most northern branch, the Tugaloo, and the most northern branch of the Tugaloo, the Chatuga, to the point where it intersects the North Carolina line. This would have granted all the twelve-mile strip to Georgia. It so happened, however, that the legislature of South Carolina was at the same time in session.
On March 8th of the same year, just one month and twenty days before the completion and signature of the convention at Beaufort, the South Carolina legislature passed a bill conveying to the United States the territory bounded by the Mississippi river, the North Carolina line, and a line drawn along the crest of the mountains which divide the waters of the East from the waters of the West, from the point where these mountains intersect the North Carolina line to the headwaters of the most southern branch of Tugaloo river, and thence west to the Mississippi river, thus mapping out the twelve-mile strip. The delegates of South Carolina were directed to make a deed conveying the same.
These two apparently inconsistent acts of South Carolina both needed the confirmation of Congress. They were accordingly presented to Congress on the same day, accompanied by the deed of cession, August 9, 1787. The action of Congress bears marks of worldly wisdom. The cession to the United States was accepted on the same day. The motion to confirm the convention of Beaufort was referred to a committee which never reported. This report was, perhaps, prevented by the absorbing interest in the Constitutional Convention then in session, and which completed its labors in the following month by adopting the present Constitution, and the Congress of the Confederation soon after passed out of existence, and with it the ninth article, under which the suit of South Carolina was instituted. Thus, the twelve-mile strip became the territory of the United States, and intervened as a wedge between Georgia and North Carolina, affording for several years a suggestive invitation to cede their western lands.
The example was followed by North Carolina in 1790, when, after her patience was exhausted by the attempt to establish the State of Franklin, she ceded her froward daughter, Tennessee, to the United States; thus making the first cession under the Constitution.
Kentucky anticipated the expected second cession of Virginia, and became a State in 1792, without undergoing the territorial apprenticeship.
This left the full pressure of the demand for western cessions to fall on Georgia. This sturdy state resisted until 1802, when her cession, by no means a free gift, proved to be a shrewd bargain. She then ceded the Territory of Mississippi, nearly all of which was covered by Indian titles, and received in return that portion of the South Carolina cession immediately north of her boundary, $1,250,000 in money from the proceeds of the sale of public lands, and what ultimately proved very costly to the United States, a guarantee for the extinction of all Indian claims in her present limits. The remaining portion of the twelve-mile strip, all of which, after the admission of Tennessee, was styled in legislation the territory of the United States south of the State of Tennessee, was in 1804 added by Congress to Mississippi Territory, and now constitutes the northern portion of the States of Alabama and Mississippi.
Thus, the whole territory west of the Alleghany mountains, embracing the portion north of the Ohio, which had been claimed by Great Britain, and the southern portion which Spain and France had attempted to erect into an Indian reservation, was now ceded to the United States by all claimants except the land companies. These companies continued the struggle until finally repulsed from the Supreme court of the United States.
The following conclusions seem to be irresistible:
First.—The extension of the original United States beyond the Alleghany mountains, in opposition to the claims of Great Britain and the active efforts of France and Spain, was due alone to the titles of the charter claimant States, supported by an actual adverse possession on the part of Virginia and North Carolina.
Second.—Virginia, by expelling the British from the country north of the Ohio, by her expedition under George Rogers Clarke, and by taking military possession of the country, not only maintained her own charter claims, but also supplied the United States with the argument of uti possidetis, which successfully met the claims of Great