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Thestate cessions are the areas of the United States that the separate states ceded to thefederal government in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The cession of these lands, which for the most part lay between theAppalachian Mountains and theMississippi River, was key to establishing a harmonious union among the former British colonies.
The areas ceded comprise 236,825,600 acres (370,040.0 sq mi; 958,399 km2), or 10.4 percent of currentUnited States territory, and make up all or part of 10 states.[1] This does not include the areaslater ceded by Texas to thefederal government, which make up parts of five more states.
Most of theBritish American colonies were established in the 17th and early 18th century when geographical knowledge of North America was incomplete. Many of these colonies were established by royal proclamation or charter that defined their boundaries as stretching "from sea to sea"; others did not have western boundaries established at all. These colonies thus ended up with theoretical extents that overlapped each other and conflicted with the claims and settlements established by other European powers. The British government'sRoyal Proclamation of 1763, while not resolving the disputes over the colonies' trans-Appalachian claims, succeeded in slowing down the movement of people into the region and the making of new claims in it. Many, however, ignored the proclamation, and various frontier settlement enterprises, owing allegiance to disparate colonial governments, continued.
By the time of theAmerican Revolution, the boundaries between theThirteen Colonies that became the United States had been for the most part surveyed and agreed upon. Their land claims also corresponded in varying degrees to the actual reality on the ground in the west at the eve of the Revolution.Kentucky, for instance, was organized into acounty of Virginia in 1776, withVirginia serving as practical sovereign over the area until its admission into the Union as a separate state in 1792.Massachusetts' claims to land in modern-day Michigan and Wisconsin,[2] by contrast, amounted to little more than lines drawn on a map.
TheTreaty of Paris (1763) that ended the war known as theFrench and Indian War in North America hadFrance cede most of itsclaims to land on the continent toGreat Britain andSpain.[3][4] Great Britain, gaining the eastern half of France's southern lands, extended the claims of its colonies ofMassachusetts,Connecticut, Virginia,North Carolina,South Carolina, andGeorgia to theMississippi River; in some cases, this reinforced earlier charter claims.
TheTreaty of Paris (1783) that ended the American Revolution established American sovereignty over the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi; the jobs of determining how that land should be governed, and how the conflicting claims to it by several of the states should be resolved, were one of the first major tasks facing the new nation.
The potential for trouble arising from these claims was twofold. One problem was obvious: in many cases more than one state laid claim to the same piece of territory, but clearly only one would be ultimately recognized as the sovereign. The other conflict also threatened the peace of the new union. Only seven of the thirteen states had western land claims, and the other, "landless" states were fearful of being overwhelmed by states that controlled vast stretches of the new frontier. Virginia in particular, which already encompassed 1 in 5 inhabitants of the new nation, laid claim to modern-day Kentucky, and the vast territory it calledIllinois County, and the smaller states feared that it would come to completely dominate the union.
In the end, most of the trans-Appalachian land claims were ceded to the Federal government between 1781 and 1787; New York, New Hampshire, and the hitherto unrecognized Vermont government resolved their squabbles by 1791, and Kentucky was separated from Virginia and made into a new state in 1792. The cessions were not entirely selfless—in some cases the cessions were made in exchange for federal assumption of the states' Revolutionary War debts—but the states' reasonably graceful cessions of their oft-conflicting claims prevented early, perhaps catastrophic, rifts among the states of the young Republic, and assuaged the fears of the "landless" states enough to convince them to ratify the newUnited States Constitution. The cessions also set the stage for the settlement of theUpper Midwest and the expansion of the U.S. into the center of the North American continent, and also established the pattern by which land newly acquired by the United States would be organized into new states rather than attached to old ones.
Georgia held on to its claims over trans-Appalachian land for another decade, and this claim was complicated by the fact that much of the land was also disputed between the United States and Spain. When Georgia finally sold the land west of its current boundaries to the United States for cash in 1802, the last phase of western cessions was complete.
| State | Date ceded | Date accepted | Claims and cessions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connecticut | May 11, 1786 | May 28, 1786 | Ceded a swath between presentnorth andsouth border-latitudes west to theMississippi River, across present-dayPennsylvania (notably theWyoming Valley disputed in thePennamite–Yankee War),Ohio,Michigan,Indiana, andIllinois, except for a portion south ofLake Erie. Sovereignty over this "Western Reserve" was ceded to the federal government in 1800. |
| Georgia | April 24, 1802 | June 16, 1802 | Ceded the "Yazoo lands", between35th parallel and31st parallel of latitude west to the Mississippi River, across present-dayAlabama andMississippi. Unique among the cessions, Georgia charged the federal government $1.25 million for this land, which it apparently paid. |
| Massachusetts | November 13, 1784 | April 19, 1785 | Ceded a swath between presentnorth andsouth border-latitudes west, across present-dayNew York,Michigan andWisconsin, to which it was entitled by its interpretation of its original sea-to-sea grant from The British Crown. |
| New York | February 19, 1780 | October 29, 1782 | Ceded claims west ofLake Ontario. New York was allowed to keep the land claimed by it and Massachusetts west of thePreemption Line in 1786, which eventually becameWestern New York. |
| North Carolina | December 22, 1789 | February 25, 1790 | Ceded its trans-AppalachianWashington District, a swath between present north and south border-latitudes west to the Mississippi River, from which the federal government created theSouthwest Territory, and subsequently theState of Tennessee. |
| South Carolina | March 8, 1787 | August 9, 1787 | Ceded a swath, approximately 12 miles (19 km) wide (north–south), west from its northwestern tip to the Mississippi River, across extreme southwest North Carolina, northern Georgia, plus the southern edge of present-day Tennessee, along with the northern edge of present-day Alabama and Mississippi. In a separate agreement, South Carolina and Georgia adjusted their common boundary.[5] Note that the claim by South Carolina had been for land between theheadwaters of theSavannah River and the southern boundary ofNorth Carolina, and thence westward. In fact, however, later and more accuratesurveying showed that the headwaters of the Savannah River actually extended into North Carolina. This meant that this strip of land for South Carolina had actually been illusory. |
| Virginia | January 2, 1781 | March 1, 1784 | Ceded its vast claim tothe territory north of the Ohio River, which would subsequently become theNorthwest Territory, but initially retained its remaining trans-Appalachian claim, theKentucky County, south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi River – present-dayKentucky. Also ceded land to the federal government that became part of theDistrict of Columbia; this land was laterretroceded back to Virginia. |
| State | Notes |
|---|---|
| Delaware | No land claim farther west. Its western border forms part of theMason–Dixon line. |
| Maryland | No land claim farther west, but ceded land to the federal government that became part of theDistrict of Columbia (and is now the entirety of it). Maryland's northern border forms part of the Mason–Dixon line. |
| New Hampshire | Prior to the American Revolution,New Hampshire claimed territory west ofConnecticut River, in present-dayVermont, territory that was also claimed byNew York. The resulting "New Hampshire Grants" dispute led to the rise of theGreen Mountain Boys and the later establishment of theVermont Republic. New Hampshire's claim upon the land was extinguished in 1764 byroyal order ofGeorge III, and in 1790 the State of New Yorkceded its land claim to Vermont for 30,000dollars.[6] |
| New Jersey | No land claim farther west. |
| Pennsylvania | Original land grant from KingCharles II of England toWilliam Penn was for the land between the42nd parallel and the38th parallel in latitude, and extending west five degrees inlongitude from the western boundary of New Jersey and northwestern boundary ofDelaware. Its southern border forms part of the Mason–Dixon line. Pennsylvania claimed the portion of land along Lake Erie commonly known as theErie Triangle; after Massachusetts and Connecticut ceded their claims to it, the Erie Triangle was sold to Pennsylvania by the federal government in 1792. |
| Rhode Island | No land claim farther west. |
Later in the 19th century, there was one more case of a state ceding some of its land to the federal government. Before theRepublic of Texas joined the United States in 1845, itclaimed a good deal of land that had never been under thede facto control of the Texan government – Texan attempts to exercise control of these territories as a sovereign state (most famously, theSanta Fe expedition) had ended in disaster. Thus, there was a border dispute between Texas, Mexico, andNative American tribes that the U.S. government inherited upon the annexation of Texas. This was one of the causes of theMexican–American War of 1846–47 (another being the western land aspirations of the U.S. coupled with the refusal by theUnited Mexican States to sell its territory to the U.S.). After the American victory in that war, the Mexican government recognized American sovereignty over the disputed Texan lands and also ceded/sold the land extending west to the Pacific Ocean. The Mexican government was paid $25,000,000 under theTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848.
In addition, the maximalist land claims of the Republic of Texas did not set the northern and western borders of theState of Texas. Most, but not all, of its northern boundary had been set by a treaty between the United States and theSpanish Empire – along theRed River.
In an act of Congress, theCompromise of 1850, Texas ceded its conflicting northern and western territorial claims to the U.S. in return for debt relief, removing its conflicting claims from the U.S. territorial gains of the Mexican–American War. This ceded land eventually became portions of the states ofKansas (1861),Colorado (1876),Wyoming (1890),Oklahoma (1907), andNew Mexico (1912).
