free to insist on the retention of the latter.
Congress, in a spirit of slavish subserviency, had instructed the
American commissioners to take no steps without the knowledge and advice
of France. Franklin was inclined to obey these instructions; but Jay,
supported by Adams, boldly insisted on disregarding them; and
accordingly a separate treaty was negotiated with England. In settling
the claims to the western territory, much stress was laid on the old
colonial charters; but underneath all the verbiage it was practically
admitted that these charters conferred merely inchoate rights, which
became complete only after conquest and settlement. The States
themselves had already by their actions shown that they admitted this to
be the case. Thus North Carolina, when by the creation of Washington
County--now the State of Tennessee--she rounded out her boundaries,
specified them as running to the Mississippi. As a matter of fact the
royal grant, under which alone she could claim the land in question,
extended to the Pacific; and the only difference between her rights to
the regions east and west of the river was that her people were settling
in one, and could not settle in the other. The same was true of
Kentucky, and of the west generally; if the States could rightfully
claim to run to the Mississippi, they could also rightfully claim to run
to the Pacific. The colonial charters were all very well as furnishing
color of title; but at bottom the American claim rested on the peculiar
kind of colonizing conquest so successfully carried on by the
backwoodsmen. When the English took New Amsterdam they claimed it under
old charters; but they very well knew that their real right was only
that of the strong hand. It was precisely so with the Americans and the
Ohio valley. They produced old charters to support their title; but in
reality it rested on Clark's conquests and above all on the advance of
the backwoods settlements. [Footnote: Mr. R. A. Hinsdale, in his
excellent work on the "Old Northwest" (New York, 1888), seems to me to
lay too much stress on the weight which our charter-claims gave us, and
too little on the right we had acquired by actual possession. The
charter-claims were elaborated with the most wearisome prolixity at the
time; but so were the English claims to New Amsterdam a century earlier.
Conquest gave the true title in each case; the importance of a claim is
often in inverse order to the length at which it is set