A History of the American People

practice, served in Congress 1782-3, and put himself in the forefront of those demanding a
stronger national government.
Within the government it was Hamilton's ally, Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance, who
pushed for reforms. In 1781-2 he produced a tax and finance program to provide funds and a
stable currency, and he went outside government to organize support, in Congress, in business,
and even in the army. Morris and Hamilton realized that, now all British impediments to
westward expansion had been removed, selling land to eager farmers was one way the federal
government, or the general government as they still called it, could finance itself-but only if
individual states relinquished to the federal center control over Western lands. Up to the
Revolutionary War, the states had admitted no western limit to their claims. In 1780, however,
they had agreed in principle that all western territory would be `settled and formed into distinct
republican states, which shall become members of the federal union, and have the same rights of
sovereignty, freedom and independence as the other states.'
The 1783 Peace of Paris doubled the size of the United States, adding the western territories to
the Atlantic states. But the size, number, and boundaries of the new states had to be determined,
together with the constitutional procedure to bring them into the Union. A committee of
Congress under the chairmanship of Jefferson was appointed to settle this, and in 1784 it
reported that the Western territories should be divided into fourteen new states-including
Assenisipia, Cherroonesus, Metropotamia, Miochigania, and Washington. Congress did not like
these weird names and dropped them. But in its ordinance of 1784 it laid down that the territories
should have temporary governments (managed by Congress) until each had a free population
equal to that of the least populated of the existing states. At that point it could apply for
admission. This came into effect only after each state had formally ceded all its Western claims.
The Land Ordinance of 1785 defined how this new federal land was to be surveyed and sold.
Finally, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 dealt with the northern sector of the West and made
more specific the process of state-creation. First, a governor, secretary, and judges would be
appointed to the territory by Congress. The second stage began when a district acquired 5,000
adult free males; it could then elect an assembly and nominate a list of candidates from which
Congress chose a governing council, though it retained the right of veto over legislation and still
appointed the governor. The third stage began when population passed the 60,000-free-
inhabitants mark, when it could petition to become a state.
This ordinance or law was the last passed under the old Articles of Confederation, and many
objected to it on the ground that it lodged political power in the hands of Eastern legislators or
company promoters rather than Western squatters-it was centralist rather than democratic. So it
was. But then the whole question of Western lands inevitably tended to strengthen the power of
the federal government, as Hamilton spotted, because it gave it direct authority over a huge
spread of territory as big as the existing states-much bigger as it turned out-which it could rule
like an imperial power, and support by selling off bits to settlers. That was a geographical fact,
which made it inevitable that the federal center would strengthen itself as time went by. It was
the states themselves which sold the pass on state sovereign rights when they renounced their
sovereignty over Western lands and handed it over to Congress. However, for the time being
individual states carried out all kinds of sovereign acts which logically belonged to a central
authority-they broke foreign treaties and federal law, made war on Indians, built their own
navies, and sometimes did not trouble themselves to send representatives to Congress. They
taxed each other's trade while failing to pay what they had promised to the Congressional