Good morning, everybody. Weve been talking for the last couple of weeks in this class about the effects of the American Revolution and framing that discussion about how revolutionary was the American Revolution . What kind of changes did it initiate in american society, american law, American Government . Why should we think of the American Revolution as a revolution rather than simply a war for independence . So we talked about, weve talked about this in various frame works. Weve talked about whether the revolution altered the social structure of the states that were involved in the revolution, and on the last time we met we talked about the impact of the revolution on africanamericans and on the institution of slavery. We saw that, in that case, the legacy was quite mixed, right . The revolution set the institution of slavery on the path to destruction in the northern states, but was instrumental and kind of deepening and strengthening the institution in the southern states. Today i want to talk about two topics that are closely interrelated, and that are really two sides of the same coin. I want to talk today about how the revolution affected native americans and how the revolution created a new system for thinking about making western lands widely available to ordinary people. Those are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, the revolution initiated a new kind of commitment to pretty rapid westward territorial expansion in a widely democratic system of land holding. Land ownership, which was a really powerful engine of Economic Opportunity and democracy for a lot of ordinary white men and women and their families. But it also implied a pretty explicated pretty exploitative approach to native americans. So to say they are two sides of the same coin, and to begin thinking about this, just in an abstract sense, there were people involved in the American Revolution and foremost among them, Thomas Jefferson, who thought a great deal about this problem. Who believed that one of the most revolutionary aspects of the revolution ought to be making land more widely available to ordinary people on relatively easy terms. And this constituted a fundamental revolution in old european ways of thinking about the availability of land. Because in the old british system, in the old english system, land was a byproduct of aristocratic privilege and land holding was something that flowed from the top of society downward. In england, the land was owned by a relatively small number of people who owned a lot of it and they made it available on their own terms through rental agreements, you know, if you think about the feudal system, this is a system where tenants farm the lands of great lords and its a system that really, where Land Ownership and the power associated with it all resides at the top of society, and that principle was woven into the fabric of colonization, because if you think about how lands became available until colonies, the biggest colonies began with proprietary ownership. If you think about a colony like pennsylvania the first principle of pennsylvania is the king gives all the land to william penn and tells him he can do whatever he wants with it. This is an offshoot of that same aristocratic model where land starts at the top and is distributed downward according to whatever principles the powerful people who control it want to employ. We talked last week about the fact that far from seeing that stuff die away, we talked about the idea of a feudal revival. There were a lot of absentee landowners that had control of a lot of land and they were beginning to assert their privileges more strongly. They were collecting rents in a way they couldnt in an earlier period, so this idea of kind of land being tied to privilege, the privilege of a small number of powerful men, just foundational. Not only in english society, but to the way colonies were organized, and for jefferson, this was one of the most important things that needed to be overturned. We talked about his attack on trying to break up the greatest estates of the most powerful family. This is kind of a parallel idea. One of jeffersons cornerstone principles is the idea that the best social foundation for a republican government was to have a large number of yeoman farmers that owned relatively small amounts of land in fee simple. Meaning they did not pay rent to great landlords. They held the land on their own terms. So this idea of a society, a republic of yeoman farmers was one of the foundational principles that many people, especially including jefferson, wanted to work pretty hard to implement after the American Revolution. The problem is, of course, making abundant amounts of land widely available on cheap terms means you have to control the land in the first place, and this was not that simple. Because, of course, the land that the United States aspired to control and redistribute were lands that were occupied by native american populations, with their own claims, with their own sense of legitimacy, and in the process of trying to enact this theoretical revolution and the availability of land, what we see is the United States took a very exploitation approach to its relationship with native peoples throughout eastern north america. Thats a process that began in the revolution itself, and in order to kind of focus our discussion of this issue, i want to focus on the ohio country and ohio indians. There were indian populations up and down the eastern seaboard in the appalachian west and there were a lot of different stories associated with these groups, but for our purposes, just to focus on one of these groups i want to focus on the ohio country, which weve already talked about, because the ohio valley was the focus of lord dunmores war in 1774. Weve already talked about european aspirations to control the ohio country and dunmores effort basically to claim kentucky, whats now kentucky, from the shawnees through his victory in dunmores war. The ohio country population is kind of an interesting and complicated population because in the early 18th century, the ohio valley was largely depopulated for complicated historical reasons. In decades before the American Revolution, the ohio country was being repopulated by a pretty large and Diverse Group of indians that were coming both from the east, from pennsylvania and new jersey and new york, and also coming from the north and the west. So from the east, groups that were basically being displaced by the growth of pennsylvania, new jersey, and new york, were three populations in particular, the delawares and shawnee were migrating west out of pennsylvania and new jersey, and the western iroquois. This is the name they were given in the ohio country. These groups were forming in many cases shared communities. The most important communities in the ohio valley were often multi ethnic communities, and they were moving into the ohio valley both to move away from the immediate pressures of the growth of colonial settlement and also because the ohio valley was a really good place to hunt and trade. Pennsylvania traders started traveling in the ohio valley. As these groups moved into the ohio valley, pennsylvania traders followed them and they had a pretty robust set of Economic Opportunities in the 1740s and 1750s and 1760s, so you have these groups moving in from the east. At the same time, again, in response to the Economic Opportunity created by traders from pennsylvania, a pretty wide array of groups from the north and west that were moving out of the french sphere and into british sphere, including others, a relatively diverse population of native groups. And so the main thing i want you to understand, when we talk about the ohio indians, were talking about a diverse array of peoples that had not functioned together. They were not a coherent political unit. They had not operated together for a very long time at the time of the revolution, and the revolution forced them to make new kinds of collective choices in response to the pressures of that war. They had relied on a pattern of trade with pennsylvania, an alliance with both pennsylvania and really with each other for a number of years without really having further coalesced as any kind of political unit. And then this was the group, of course, that was directly attacked by virginia militia in dunmores war in 1774, particularly the shawnees, who dunmore thought was the most hostile of these groups, and the shawnees were engaged, and that was one battle at Point Pleasant in 1774. You remember that dunmores war established the principle, at least in the minds of virginians, that kentucky was now open to settlement. So one of the oddities of the American Revolution is that, in the spring and summer of 1775, this is at the same time that the shot heard around the world was fired at lexington, at concord, rather, battle of lexington and concord, battle of bunker hill. At the same time, all of that stuff was going on in new england, in central kentucky parties of virginians were moving into this newly claimed land in the summer of 1775, and without permission from the crown, without any legitimate authority from above, but having participated in dunmores war in 1774, dozens, hundreds of people began to occupy central kentucky in the spring and summer of 1775. This is a map that just, i just want to take a minute to look at, so im sure that you have a vision of what were talking about. Im talking about the ohio country, and this is actually a map that depicts battles during and after the American Revolution, but when we talk about the ohio country, im basically talking about this area mostly north of the ohio river. Heres where the three rivers come together at fort pitt to define the head waters of the ohio. This is the ohio country, and then kentucky the territory that people were beginning to occupy in 1775 and 1776 is down here. You can see some of these early stations. Boone spero is one of the early kentucky stations. This became the leading edge of Anglo American settlement even before there was an American Revolutionary war. This is something, its a process thats moving forward independent of the revolution, yet it intersects and it intersects with the revolution and the revolution fundamentally changes the fortunes of these people who will moving west, because, under the auspices of the crown, they were criminals. They were beyond the proclamation line of 1763. What they were doing was illegal. But under, you know, in the context of the American Revolution, as the Second Continental Congress was sitting, as revolutionary legislatures were taking over in the states, it was possible for them to make new claims to legitimacy, and thats exactly what these kentucky settlers did. In the course of the American Revolution, these kentucky settlers made common cause with the United States. And with the revolutionary governments that managed them. And they made very specific pleas about the legitimacy of their occupation and settlement. They specifically talked about the fact that the king had limited, had restricted access to these western lands, but that they had fought and bled for these lands at the battle of Point Pleasant. They had a legitimate and meaning plan to these lands and moreover, just as the United States seemed to be interested in liberty, they were also interested in liberty and they thought what the United States was talking about was pretty great and they wanted to be part of it. And they said the United States would be foolish to miss the opportunity to incorporate such skilled rifleman into their ranks. They petitioned their congress and said, if you support us out here, well fight for you and keep the native peoples off of your backs. So they made the case that in addition to the fact that they adhered to the same principles of liberty that the United States did, they also made a strategic argument, that they could be very useful allies, and that was an argument that got traction. It got traction with the new revolutionary state of virginia, which began arming and supporting their little fort. The communities that were settled in central kentucky all took a form of Something Like this where cabins were built and a circle with palisades so the community became kind of a makeshift fort. These guys recognized from the beginning that they were operating in territory where they would be regarded as hostile invaders, and it was incumbent upon them to defend themselves against both native americans that might not want them there, and also, as the war progressed against, you know, the pressures of british arms as well, one of the key people involved in this process let me ask you this. When you think of daniel boone, do you think of him as a figure of the American Revolution . He is familiar. Everyone knows who daniel boone was. He was a Great American frontiersman, right . Think of him in the era of Davey Crockett, but its weird because daniel boone and Davey Crockett are generations apart. Davey crockett was at the alamo. When was the battle of the alamo . 1840s. We are talking about 1775. This is when Daniel Boones most single famous act of pioneering took place. He led a party of settlers in the wake of dunmores war through the Cumberland Gap into central kentucky. Towns foundedst and itssborough, weird to think of daniel boone as a revolutionary war hero. His most famous act occurred before the United States even existed. In our popular imagination, we dont place him in time here. Because we dont think of the American Revolution as a pioneering era. But the American Revolution is the first pioneering era and the first intrepid western explores occupiers, you know, swung into action in the revolution and kentucky. Ill say more about daniel boone in minute, but hold that thought. Just to kind of talk quickly about the war experience in central kentucky. The various communities of central kentucky petitioned both the Virginia Legislature and the Continental Congress for support, and they received that support. The Virginia House of delegates, first of all, extended its jurisdiction across all of what is now kentucky. It created a great big new western county so that those new communities in central kentucky would have, you know, kind of a framework for government. And it started sending regular supplies of powder and lead, so that these settlements could defend themselves. The Continental Congress also responded favorably to these petitions. Beginning in july of 1776, the Continental Congress manned and supplied three new for the to toforts on the ohio river protect and support these new kentucky settlements. During the fall and winter of 1776, it sent two tons of powder, four tons of lead, boats to carry 1,500 men and food to support 2,000 people for six months. Thats a fair amount of war material that the Continental Congress was providing to kentucky at a very early stage. Then when conditions deteriorated in the following spring, congress sent a thousand rifles and another ton of lead, so from the beginning of the war effort, these small embattled kentucky communities were fortunate to receive the support of revolutionary governments both at the state level and at the national level. The ohio indians, meanwhile, were in a difficult position. They were somewhat divided in terms of a sense of their loyalties. The article that i asked you to read for today talked little bit about the ohio indians and their decisions, their loyalties, the ohio indians had had a fairly long connection by 1776 to the british empire, but they also had a fairly long connection to the pennsylvania traders, so they had preexisting relationships with both the british and the americans that could have led them in either direction. Initially both governments hoped that they would remain neutral, and u. S. Leaders pleaded with them to just stay out of the revolution. Told them it was just an internal spat between the colonies and english and they had nothing to do with it, but it became clear quickly that the u. S. Was putting a lot of new pressure on their territory, and so gradually, by about 1777, a Large Coalition of ohio indians had decided that their interests lay with the british empire, with the effort of the british to defeat the americans, and they began fighting against the kentucky settlements with british support. So from 1777 on, most of the ohio indians found themselves aligned with the british. Even though you know from that article we read a little earlier in the semester about white eyes in the delawares, there was an earlier period where white eyes and large factions of delawares thought their best bet was to ally themselves with the United States. The kentucky settlements helped change that dynamic for them. The war ended in 1783. The fighting ended in 1781, but the war was concluded in 1783 with the treaty of paris. One of the wellknown facts about this treaty, in this document that defined the peace between Great Britain and the United States, no mention was made of britains native american allies. Simply the native population of north america is simply not a subject of the treaty of paris of 1783. This meant that the United States could interpret the significance of this treaty for native peoples any way that it wanted to, and the United States chose to interpret the treaty of paris where britain basically says we lost the war, the United States interpreted this treaty to extend to britains native allies and, in fact to all the native peoples in the near east, whether they were allied with Great Britain, neutral, or whether they were allied with the United States. In the case of some indians, for example, it didnt help them at all in the postwar period that they had been an ally of the u. S. During the war. And so the logic of victory in the revolution for the United States meant that not only had Great Britain been defeated, but all the native peoples of the near Eastern Region of the transappalachian west had been in effect defeated by extension. Indians never accepted this premise. The ohio indians had never been defeated them in the course of the American Revolution. They were still in a pretty strong position in 1783. Kentucky was still it was starting to grow a lot faster, but it was still embattled, and they simply did not accept the logic that the u. S. Applied to the treaty of paris. So at the end of the war, everything was unclear in terms of relations between the u. S. And the ohio indians, and in the sense, it was a similar situation, the u. S. Relation with indian groups throughout the transappalachian west. I want to pause at this point and talk a little bit about daniel boone, because placing him in kentucky in 1775 is a little bit surprising, you know, if you dont know a lot about him. If you havent thought very much about daniel boone. I want to talk for a minute about how daniel boone first became famous, because he became a famous figure right after the revolutionary war. He became famous as a result of the publication of this text. Johns discovery and settlement of kentucky. John was a land speculator and promoter who was interested in encouraging the rapid occupation of kentucky. In the year after the signing of the treaty of paris, he published this book on the discovery and settlement of kentucky. It is kind of interesting. It narrates the story of the of kentucky, and its experiences in the revolution and it includes an appendix, entitled the adventures of colonel daniel boone containing a narrative of the wars in kentucky. It included this little biographical appendix, including this illustration that shows daniel boone with his rifle and his hunting dog. The earliest depiction of boone, and the purpose of this, well, the purpose of the pamphlet was to promote settlement in kentucky, and the purpose of the appendix that talked about daniel boone was both to describe his heroism and harrowing experience of the war and also to stress that those experiences were now over. Became this kind of First American pioneering hero. And his fame took off rather quickly. He became famous even in his own lifetime. This is the first portrait painted of boone. This was painted late in his life by a man named chester harding. Its a wellknown image of boone later in life. There is another early unattributed painting depicting him. Its interesting to look at the closing in these three portraits. What strikes you about this one . What do you see . What is he wearing . He was wearing a lot of furs, implying he has been in the west. Rather than just being settled in the east, hes wearing a lot of leather, carrying a rifle, he looks like hes armed to go out and take on the frontier rather than in the portrait where he looks like more of a gentleman, scholar type of individual. You see the fur trim in this suit of clothes. You can also see the leather leggings and the coat. The coat is stitched together. This is obviously not factory made clothing. You can also see his trademark coonskin cap already in his hand, as well as hunting equipment. Hes got a powderhorn around his shoulder and rifle. This portrait does seem to depict him as more of an urbane gentleman, although this is a later period. This is not fancy clothing, but he seems to be wearing an this depiction begins to, i think, take on some of the familiar trappings of daniel boone as a mythic figure in american culture, where the collared shirt and wool jacket in the previous portrait has been replaced by a fringed, buckskin jacket, and it is unclear what kind of shirt he is wearing, but not a fancy one. The most famous depiction of daniel boone of the 19th century is this painting done by George Caleb Bingham in the 1850s. He is one of the great genre painters of the 19th century. If you are not familiar, i recommend checking it out. He did a lot of interesting stuff. This is one of his most famous paintings, daniel boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap. He is depicting something that occurred four generations earlier. This is a later painting. What strikes you about this depiction of daniel boone . And of the party he was leading . What do you see here . Student i think choosing to portray the party coming out of the shadows into the light, the light of entering the new land, but in the end, it was still more of the new, unexplored, the beginning of an era, i suppose. Eric yeah, that is really well said. It does have the sense of coming out of darkness into light. To think about that as historical as well as geographical is useful. This is a dangerous wilderness these people are traversing. You can see by the blasted tree, the threatening weather, the craggy rocks, right . Also, by just how dark everything is. You see the swordsman in the background. I think that is a sword, presumably fending off enemies, possibly hostile native people. His party was attacked by native warriors. What else . Student the woman on the horse is reminiscent of the virgin mary, maybe, which would suggest maybe that Divine Providence is smiling down on this act. Eric exactly. This female figure is clearly echoing traditional artistic depictions of the virgin mary, so, yes, the idea of Divine Providence at work in this immigration, i think for sure. Student i have a different interpretation of the guy in the back when i first looked at this. His elevated status. It strikes me he has a crop. Eric it could be a crop. He could be driving livestock forward. That is true. Im not sure which it is. Yeah . Student to tie these two comments together, they are coming through this shadowy valley, confident in the Divine Providence, and coming into the light, walking out of that valley. Eric yeah, yeah, it does make you think of the 23rd psalm. What about boone . We havent sorry. Student it is interesting to see the perspective of the artist in this and how it seems like this party, by their saving grace, they will save kentucky and make it better. They dont seem to be struggling even though there are the woods around them and the wilderness. It seems like were going to do this, no problem. Eric yeah, yeah, that is a good point. They are surrounded by dangers, but they seem to be apart from the danger, yeah, and bringing a new kind of civilized existence into the wilderness. What about daniel boone himself . What would you say about the way he is depicted . Student he was depicted as a plain and ordinary man. Eric plain and ordinary . Yeah. Student my interpretation is he is trying to lead regular, normal American People into the west, and it is the place for people of the United States to go west and head into this brave new world and any man can do it. It is not just some military officers, some wealthy person paying for this expedition. It is normal men exploring into this new world. Eric yeah, yeah, yeah, i like the emphasis on the ordinariness of this party. I also think it is interesting. He seems to be wearing like the leather suit that is appropriate to picture him in, yet bingham has transformed it into a respectable looking it looks almost like a middleclass gentleman, and particularly by giving him a different kind of hat, there is a way he is dressed up from those earlier depictions. Anyway, this is a very interesting and important painting, and one that really captures the sensibilities in mid19th Century America about the whole western enterprise, the whole idea american westward expansion is about bringing civilization to a howling wilderness. This is another painting that i could not find an inscription for, but this is an interesting variation on the bingham depiction, and i think it is characteristic of mid to late 20th century values associated with the same process. What strikes you here in contrast . How would you say this painting differs from binghams painting in depicting the enterprise of westward expansion . Student in the first picture the light is shining on boone. Here the light is on everybody. You can see it all the way across, not just the guy in front. Eric yeah, the light is on everybody so a more democratic depiction of the group. What about the natural setting . Student softer. It looks like their way is being lit through the trees. It looks easier for them than it did in the first painting. Eric it is softer, easier. It is the cathedral of nature, not a howling wilderness. That seems to capture a lot about the difference between 19th and 20th century sensibilities. There are no benign glories in the bingham painting. It is interesting to think about why boone is misplaced in our imaginations, why we tend to confuse him with the sort of Davy Crockett era. I do have one theory, and this might not relate at all to your generation, but it relates to mine. When i was a kid, i confused daniel boone with Davey Crockett. The same actor played them both and he wore almost the same exact costume for both roles. That is what i blame my confusion on, but i think more fundamentally we dont really think that the era of the revolution as being an era of westward expansion, but it really is. And in fact, in the experience of those early kentucky settlements, the American Revolution legitimizes westward expansion, a kind of unbridled form of western expansion, for the first time in american history. This is a map that was printed in that 1784 book, about the discovery and settlement of kentucky. What strikes you about this image . If you were, i dont know, renting land in new jersey and contemplating the possibility of moving to kentucky, what with what would this image tell you about what to expect in kentucky . Student it is empty. It is open land. Eric it looks like open land. If you look carefully, you will see those early settlements, but there is a lot of open space. Yeah, what else . Student it seems to me like there is a lot of detail on the river networks, but not a lot of detail on a whole lot else, which to me would tell me that they dont really know what is out there. They know who controls the land, but they dont know what is out there anymore then anyone else does, so i dont know what im getting into if i buy land out there. Eric yeah, yeah, its true, there are not a lot of political demarcations. The point you started with is the point i would emphasize the most, which is if you are a farmer, what you want is well watered, fertile land. This is a picture of what appears to be extraordinarily wellwatered fertile land. It is. If you know kentucky bluegrass, this is a great place to be a farmer. Filson is basically, in this pamphlet and in this map, he is throwing the doors of peoples imaginations open to the possibility of settling in kentucky. So it is an interesting question. A, did it work . And b, if you follow his advice and move there, what would your experience be . And the answer is, man, it was complicated. People who took up land in early kentucky stumbled into a kind of nightmarish set of problems associated with land distribution, and the problems are really embodied in the Virginia Land ordinance of 1779. Remember, i said virginia extended its jurisdiction all over kentucky and created a new western county, so in 1779, the Virginia House of delegates passed a law that set out the terms by which people could claim land in this new western county, and it was really complicated. The first thing about the Virginia Land ordinance of 1779 is that it gave priority to settlers rather than speculators. You can see a revolutionary impulse to make sure some rich guy who never goes out there does not control of all the land. It gave priority to people who would actually settle the land, but created a bewildering and expensive process that they had to follow in order to gain title. And so, the process was multistage. First of all, you had to go to kentucky in order to have a legitimate claim because it gave priority to settlers, but then once you had gone to kentucky, then the next thing you have to do do is, is go back to richmond in order to pay the fees that would allow you to claim the land that you had already visited, so you would go to the Treasurers Office in richmond to pay a patent fee, get a treasurers receipt, then to the Auditors Office where you would get the treasurers receipt, then you would go to the land office, where the receipt and certificate entitled you to a land warrant, and then with the land warrant in hand you could return to kentucky, and in kentucky register with the county surveyor and have the land surveyed. So you go first of all to kentucky to find out where you want to be in the first place, then you go back and go through this elaborate series of steps in richmond to get all of the legal paper that you need go back to kentucky, and then you ire a surveyor to do a survey, and this is a lot of people are doing this at the same time and there is no system in place in kentucky to make sure that any of this occurs in an orderly way. Then the surveyor issues you a certificate along with an endorsed warrant, then you would go back to richmond to receive a land title. This is impossible. Nobody can do this right. So what happened in the course of the revolution and especially after the revolution, very quickly, is a lot of people went to kentucky and chaos ensued. The population of kentucky rose very slowly as long as there was active fighting going on and it ebbed and flowed during the war years, but in 1783, there were 12,000 people in kentucky. 1783 is the date of the treaty of paris. After that point, it rose fast. By 1790, there were 100,000 people in kentucky. By 1800, 220,000 people, 40,000 of them enslaved. This is obviously a rapid pattern of population growth. If you look at what resulted from all of these people going to a place that had a bad land distribution system, early history of kentucky as a state features legal documents with a lot of pictures like this. [laughter] eric this is a plaque that was made by hancock taylor. Im not sure which one this is. This is near the falls of ohio, near louisville, kentucky, that shows all the other claims that overlapped and competed with hers. The early history of kentucky was the history of nonstop litigation over survey problems like this, but this kind of problem is woven into the structure of that land distribution, that Land Ordinance of 1779, which the Kentucky Legislature i mean, the Virginia Legislature thought they were creating a system that was fair and democratic. You had to do the stuff in the right order in the right way, but nobody can actually do what the statute describes effectively, many people cant, so what you get is chaos on the ground. So it is with this in mind that people like Thomas Jefferson in the 1780s were rethinking in fundamental ways the problem of land distribution, and this is a process, a reconceptualization process that coordinated in the that culminated in the northwest ordinance of 1787. I asked you to read not about the northwest ordinance of 1787, but the Land Ordinance of 1784 and the jefferson papers, the editors of the jefferson papers have a really good essay on the evolution of thinking about western lands that i asked you to take a look at. So there are a lot of details in the Land Ordinance of 1784, then that got modified for the Land Ordinance of 1787, but what in your reading of the essay in the jefferson papers, what particularly struck you as the main take away points that the editors emphasize in describing this process of developing a land system . Do you remember any key points, particularly focusing on jefferson and on his evolving thought about the transappalachian west, that part of the u. S. Territory beyond the bounds of the existing states . Student i think the editors might have diluted what jefferson was trying to get across. I think jefferson was radical and thinking they should settle the lands and get it over with. The editors really wanted to look at the land as an extra resource and to not just put it off and say we cant keep expanding. Eric that is interesting, so you think that dilutes the radicalism of jeffersons intention. Yeah, you can see jeffersons thought evolving. Initially, they talk about the fact he is considering one or a couple of western states, and eventually this involves this is a map. There is no map in jeffersons hands of his intentions, but there is a surviving map, the so called jeffersonhartley map. From 1784. One of the things jefferson had in mind and a lot of people had in mind thomas payne wrote a pamphlet about this is that all the colonies that had claims to western lands that extended far into the interior, because a lot of the early to sea. Had sea virginia was advantaged in this, new york. Certain colonies were advantaged in this. The first thing jefferson others belief was important to do was to have all of the individual states ceede their western land claim so they could deal with them altogether. You can see jefferson imagined a pretty aggressive western boundary for pennsylvania, to open up these lands to new settlements. You can see by 1784 that jefferson is imagining the possibilities of 14 different new western states, right . In both the Land Ordinance of 1784 in the northwest ordinance of 1787, they are very conscious of the kinds of problems that the Virginia Land ordinance created. They want a system that will allow for rapid western expansion in a more orderly way, so uniform surveys and public sales are principles that are woven into these early ordinances, and then the thing that is most famous, most noteworthy, and also i think most easily overlooked by americans, by us, because we take it for granted, the territorial system. What do i mean by this phrase territorial system . What is a territorial system . Student areas with a population that cant be incorporated into states until they reach a certain number. Technically there are some states in the u. S. Today that would not of reach that number. I think kentucky is one of them. Kentucky is big enough but thats right, you cant become a state until you reach a certain population, so it creates a territorial status, which is to say an area that is governed by the federal government, but does not yet have state status. In the northwest ordinance, when 60,000 people reside in the territory, then they can, you know, gather together and apply for statehood status. This is so unusual, and it is, it is contrary to like, for example, the british model of colonization, because Great Britain creates the colony, name your colony, virginia, but it will never become part of great written Great Britain. It is permanently a colony. This is a crazy idea for a nation made up of states to envision this kind of elastic, elastic western boundary, elastic number of states. Jefferson here has drawn a map in which new, not yet existing states outnumber the original 13 states of the United States. What nation would do this to itself . It is a very strange idea, right, to have woven into the fabric of the constitution a system that allows the indefinite expansion of the nation through space and the accretion of additional political units that have the power over time to overwhelm the original, the political units, the states that originally made up the country. Student i have a question about the expansion part. What did like france, spain, or Great Britain think of this map . This very clearly incorporates territories that they had claims to, like the northwest or southwest down there. Eric well, thats right, and it became, you know, the United States had to worry a lot about the hostility of foreign powers in the early decades of its existence. Even in territories that had been ceded to the United States by Great Britain through the treaty of paris in 1783, britain never gave up its western posts in the great lakes region, and it continued to encourage native allies to harass settlements, the war of 1812, you know, a British Assault on american sovereignty on multiple fronts at once. And similarly in the southeast, spain in particular. Ehrenberg aaron burr considered conspiring. Actually a lot of people who settled in kentucky spent some time thinking about whether an alliance with spain would serve them better than alliance with the United States. The United States had a real problem. This map is envisioning a system that will encourage the rapid occupation and settlement of a gigantic New Territory of land, but as people take up the challenge or the promise of the possibility, there is very good possibility that the United States would not be the superintending power that would best serve their interests. There is a period in the early republic when a lot of people in the southwest were as interested in spain as a possible ally as they were in the United States. Student wasnt the oregon territory i may be overstepping a little bit, but wasnt the oregon territory split between britain and the longd states for a good time . Eric it was split. It is not resolved it is not clear until the 1840s that that boundary would be resolved without a fight, but originally the dividing line between u. S. And british claims in oregon was fuzzy just because the treaty of paris didnt really draw the line that far out. Well, this territorial system, i want to stress this is a very radical system. This is a radical thing. There is no real clear precedent for a nation inventing a system for occupying New Territory in this way, and the idea new states would be admitted on an equal footing with old states is particularly striking. Ultimately what you see in these provisions is the creation of an elastic nation. Here is a map that shows the Northwest Territory as it is ultimately created in 1787. And, you know, this is a map that stands. In 1787, this was an act of the Second Continental Congress before the constitution had even been drafted, so this is at the point that the United States is still an infant, illdefined stands and yet the map as an invitation to people interested in westward expansion and moving into new lands on easy terms. ,ts kind of an open invitation that the United States will somehow oversee and guarantee that process. The idea of a kind of uniform public system of land distribution was partly, was partly undermined by a more complicated set of arrangements in the revolutionary period. In an ideal sense, jefferson thought it would be great to have this blank slate where you could ensure some kind of open public access, but in fact, congress had all kinds of supportto favor and ,ther kinds of purchases particularly because Congress Needed money. They were always willing to take shortcuts with western lands. That it wastime inventing the territorial system, it was also proceeding with other kinds of private sales. For example, in 1787, it sold 5 million acres of land to the ohio company of new england. It was a company made up of former offices officers of the continental army