Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/140

108 &quot;Strongly impressed with these sentiments, the General Assembly of Virginia cannot avoid expressing their surprise and concern upon the information that Congress had received and countenanced petitions from certain persons, styling themselves the Vandalia and Indiana companies, asserting claims to lands in defiance of the civil authority, jurisdiction and laws of this common wealth, and offering to erect a separate government within the territory thereof. Should Congress assume a jurisdiction, not only unwarranted by but expressly contrary to the fundamental principles of the Confederation, superseding or controlling the internal policy, civil regulations and municipal laws of this or any other State, it would be a violation of public faith, introduce a most dangerous precedent which might hereafter be urged to deprive of territory or subvert the sovereignty and government of any one or more of the United States, and establish in Congress a power which, in process of time, must degenerate into an intolerable despotism.

&quot;It is notorious that the Vandalia and Indiana companies are not the only claimers of large tracts of land under titles repugnant to our laws; that several men of great influence in some of the neighboring States are concerned in partnership with the Earl of Dunmore and other subjects of the British king, who, under purchases from the Indians, claim extensive tracts of country be tween the Ohio and Mississippi rivers ; and that propositions have been made to Congress evidently calculated to secure and guarantee such purchases; so that, under color of creating a common fund, had those propositions been adopted, the public would have been duped by the arts of individuals, and great part of the value of unappropriated lands converted to private purposes.

&quot;Congress has lately described and ascertained the boundaries of these United States as an ultimatum in their terms of peace. The United States hold no territory but in right of some one individual State in the