Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/145

Rh most magnificent Christmas gift which history records, resigned the sovereignty of the largest tract of territory in the annals of the world ever voluntarily surrendered without price or bloodshed by a powerful state able to defend it.

First of the States holding charter title to tender the jurisdiction and soil of her western lands, she invited the others to follow her example, and thus made possible the local governments and magical development of the West, averting the jealousy and possibly the anarchy and bloodshed that might have followed the assertion of her claims. As we see her thus voluntarily stripping herself of her territory until she shrinks up between the Ohio river and the Atlantic, shall we view her with that kindly pity which we feel for the man whose good-natured weakness has permitted greatness and fortune to fall from his grasp? Does not her course rather reveal a broad wisdom and a philanthropy which looked to the good of mankind, and not to the grasping of power or the extension of state lines? Whether we consider her magnanimous or weak, we cannot refuse the praise which poets and historians may bestow with kindling- warmth, but which the world echoes with faint applause:

But all magnanimity was lost on the land companies. The conditions of this cession, if accepted by Congress, would forever preclude the recognition of their claims. They, therefore, set up a clamor to prevent the acceptance of the cession. The effect on Maryland was different. Just one month later, February 2, 1781, Maryland authorized her delegates to accede to the Confederation, and accompanied her act with a mild declaration that she did not thereby relinquish any rights that she might have in the western lands. Her delegates ratified the articles May 1st.

As in 1776, so again in 1781, Maryland acted with