VIII.

was desirous to meddle with the matter, since both had CHAPTER formerly taken ground in conflict with their present interest, and thus the question still remained open for fu- 1796. ture contentions. It was settled, by an amendment of the Constitution, five years after, in favor of the council, the governor being thus reduced to be a mere member, with no more weight than any of the others.

New York followed the example of Pennsylvania in establishing a penitentiary and in meliorating her penal code; but an attempt in Pennsylvania to imitate the appropriation made by New York for the support of public schools was opposed and defeated by the Quakers and the members of some other religious sects, on the ground that as they already supported schools of their own, they ought not to be taxed for the benefit of other people. The religious uniformity prevailing in New England made a system of public schools practicable there -such was the argument-but no such system would be possible in Pennsylvania, except upon the principle of no religious instruction, and that principle, it was said, was no better than heathenism. By such arguments the bill was defeated by the very persons who might have been expected to support it; and, very greatly to the social and political damage of Pennsylvania, the provision in the state Constitution requiring the establishment of a system of education by which the poor might be taught gratis remained for a long time unexocuted.

From being a decidedly Federal state, the politics of Pennsylvania had become very doubtful. The constant increase of the backwoods population, consisting, in a considerable proportion, of emigrants from Europe, chiefly from Ireland, bringing with them a bitter hatred of England and a high enthusiasm for French politics, con

CHAPTER tributed more and more to separate Pennsylvania from VIL her old political sympathies with New England, and to 1796 subject her to the controlling influence of Virginia. Antipathy to New England was also nourished by the Wyoming controversy, still kept up. The repeal of the law confirming the Connecticut titles prior to the Trenton decree had left the whole body of the New England settlers in the Wyoming district exposed to ejectment suits. This process being found very slow and tedious, a bill was presently introduced in the Pennsylvania Legislature for driving out these intruders by an armed force, and burning their houses. This bill failed to pass; but the bitter antipathy of which it was the index tended to weaken the Federal party.

An attempt had been made, while the Indian war was still pending, to establish a settlement, under the patronage of the state, on that triangular tract, bordering on Lake Erie, which Pennsylvania had purchased of the general government. This attempted settlement had occasioned no little excitement among the Seneca tribe of the Six Nations, who claimed some title to the land; and, on the representations of the president, it had, in consequence, been temporarily suspended. It was now renewed, and the town of Presque Isle, since called Erie, was founded.

Simultaneously with this first settlement on the shores of Lake Erie, to which were presently added those soon after undertaken by the speculators who had purchased the Connecticut reserve, large emigrations also began to be made to the more southern settlements on the Muskingum and the Miami, the increase of which had hitherto been impeded by the Indian hostilities.

Whatever might be the case with Pennsylvania, the little State of Delaware, which had set the example of

VIII.

ratifying the Federal Constitution, remained firmly at- CHAPTER
tached to the Federal party. New Jersey also still con-
tinued a Federal state. Maryland inclined decidedly 179
the same way, thus exhibiting an opposition to Virginia
traceable through almost the whole course of her history.
South of the Potomac the Federal party possessed hard-
ly any political strength. While Washington leaned
with confidence on New England, as he had done during
the war of the Revolution, and received from that sec-
tion of the Union a steady and enthusiastic support, very
few measures indeed of his administration had found
favor in his native state. Yet even there his personal
weight and popularity were so formidable, that the po-
litical leaders found it convenient to draw a distinction
not very well suited to the nature of our government,
and which Washington himself expressly repudiated, be-
tween the personal views of the president and the policy
and aims of the administration. North Carolina hither-
to had passively followed the lead of Virginia. The only
Southern state from which Washington's administration
had received any substantial support was South Carolina.
In that state there were several able and influential men
who had been educated in England, and who did not
participate in that bitter antipathy toward the mother
country which seems to have been the leading principle
of the Virginia politicians. On the great question of
the assumption of the state debts, the interests of New
England and South Carolina had been coincident, and
they had also united against the Virginia scheme of re-
taliatory restrictions on British navigation and commerce.
Yet the opposition party, led by Charles Pinckney and
lately re-enforced by John Rutledge, kept the balance of
power in that state exceedingly doubtful.

Other reasons aside, the dissatisfaction of Georgia
IV.-S S

VII.

CHAPTER with the Indian policy of the government-especially its refusal to allow the Creeks to be bullied or frightened 1796. into the involuntary cession of the tract between the Oconee and the Oakmulgee-was enough to throw her decidedly into the opposition. At the present moment, attention in Georgia was chiefly engrossed, and the feeling against New England greatly excited, by the speculative purchases, already referred to, of the pre-emption right to the lands west of the Chattahooche. Jackson, the Georgia senator, had resigned his seat, and procured himself to be elected a member of the state Legislature, for the very purpose of nullifying those sales, a business into which he entered with characteristic energy. The lands had been sold for the sum of $500,000 to four separate companies, the Georgia, the Georgia Mississippi, the Upper Mississippi, and the Tennessee. The right to become interested in these purchases to the extent of two millions of acres, on the same terms as the original members, was reserved by the act to the citizens of Georgia; and it appeared that of the members of the Legislature who voted for the bill, all except one did, in fact, become interested, under this provision, in one or more of the companies. Upon this state of facts, together with other general allegations of corruption and of the inadequacy of the sum paid, the Legislature of the present year passed a new act, revoking the sale as unconstitutional and void, and directing the repayment to the companies of their respective amounts of the purchase money, if called for within eight months; the several amounts uncalled for at the end of that period to be adjudged "derelict, and forfeit to the state." As an additional evidence of the indignation of the Legislature, and a means, too, of destroying all proof of the existence of the grant, the orig inal act authorizing the sale was ordered to be burned,

Feb.

ant all the records relating to it to be expunged. The CHAPTER burning was executed with great formality. The two houses, moving in procession for that purpose, were pre- 1796. ceded by a committee bearing the obnoxious parchments. A fire having been kindled in front of the State House, the committee handed the documents to the President of the Senate, he to the Speaker of the House, he to the clerk, and the clerk to the door-keeper, by whose hands they were committed to the flames.

Previous to this attempt to nullify the sale, the original purchasers, among whom were Patrick Henry, Judge Wilson, and other distinguished citizens, had already transferred their rights to others. These transfers had been made partly in South Carolina and the Middle States, but principally in New England, at a large advance on the original purchase money. Nor were these new purchasers at all disposed to concede the right of the Georgia Legislature to nullify the contracts of their predecessors, especially in a case like the present, where the interests of third parties were concerned. Hence loud complaints of unconstitutional breach of faith on the one side, and of corruption and fraud on the other. When these same lands were subsequently sold by Georgia to the United States, Congress, as we shall see, was loudly called upon for an indemnity to the claimants under the Georgia grants; but this claim was very vigorously contested, and near twenty years elapsed before the matter was brought to a final settlement.

A renewal of the treaty with the Creeks failed, in June 9 deed, to satisfy the Georgians, as no new cessions of land were obtained; but it put an end to the mutual depredations which had prevailed on that frontier, and provided for the restoration of prisoners and property aptured by the Indians. The mutual boundaries of the