Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/132

100 way affected, except that a tribunal was provided for the peaceable adjustment of conflicting claims. This was done by the unanimous consent of the States, and was carefully guarded to prevent the United States from abusing the position of umpire.

But it was argued that these western lands were unoccupied and unsettled, and therefore different from other lands; that the settled lands, although &quot;defended by the blood and treasure of all,&quot; were not claimed as a common stock, but inured to their respective States and were covered by their respective charters ; these lands, how ever, were different, and the charters of their States did not protect them. The fallacy of this argument appears on its face. The charter protected the entire jurisdiction of the State. The war was undertaken to secure to each State its rights of person and property. No right accrued to the United States to usurp the jurisdiction and abridge the charter limits of any State.

Later on, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware, though not going to the extreme position of Maryland, came to her aid. The land companies, which had been repudiated by Virginia, joined the alliance, and the argument was revived in a modified form.

Conceding that the jurisdiction of the several States was protected by their charters, it was urged that the property rights in the soil were not thus protected ; that the King of Great Britain owned the property right to all ungranted lands within the charter limits of the several colonies until they became States, and therefore the general government, as the successor to the king, became at once the owner of these unoccupied or &quot;crown lands,&quot; holding them within the jurisdiction of the several States. This argument, yielding half the controversy, was more plausible and less repulsive than the former, but was totally unsound.

If it applied to the unoccupied lands in the west, it must apply with equal force to all unoccupied lands in all