e the
disputed western country in American hands rather than to leave a chance
for it to fall under the control of one of her European rivals.

Accordingly, the Treaty of Paris drew the interior boundary of the new
nation through the Great Lakes and connecting waters to the Lake of the
Woods; from the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods due
west to the Mississippi (an impossible line); down the Mississippi to
latitude 31 degrees; thence east, by that parallel and by the line which
is now the northern boundary of Florida, to the ocean. Three nations,
instead of two, again shared the North American Continent: Great Britain
kept the territory north of the Lakes; Spain ruled the Floridas
and everything west of the Mississippi; the United States held the
remainder--an area of more than 825,000 square miles, with a population
of three and one half millions.

Chapter V. Wayne, The Scourge Of The Indians

"This federal republic," wrote the Spanish Count d'Aranda to his royal
master in 1782, "is born a pigmy. A day will come when it will be
a giant, even a colossus. Liberty of conscience, the facility for
establishing a new population on immense lands, as well as the
advantages of the new government, will draw thither farmers and artisans
from all the nations."

Aranda correctly weighed the value of the country's vast stretches of
free and fertile land. The history of the United States has been
largely a story of the clearing of forests, the laying out of farms,
the erection of homes, the construction of highways, the introduction
of machinery, the building of railroads, the rise of towns and of great
cities. The Germans of Wisconsin and Missouri, the Scandinavians of
Minnesota and the Dakotas, the Poles and Hungarians of Chicago, the
Irish and Italians of a thousand communities, attest the fact that the
"farmers and artisans from all the nations" have had an honorable part
in the achievement.

In laying plans for the development of the western lands the
statesmanship of the evolutionary leaders was at its best. In the first
place, the seven States which had some sort of title to tracts extending
westward to the Mississippi wisely yielded these claims to the nation;
and thus was created a single, national domain which could be dealt with
in accordance with a consistent policy. In the second place, Congress,
as early as 1780, pledged the national Government to dispose of the
western lands for the common ben