Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/155

Rh the line as it now exists between the two States, running along the Savannah river and its most northern branch, the Tugaloo, and the most northern branch of the Tugaloo, the Chatuga, to the point where it intersects the North Carolina line. This would have granted all the twelve-mile strip to Georgia. It so happened, however, that the legislature of South Carolina was at the same time in session.

On March 8th of the same year, just one month and twenty days before the completion and signature of the convention at Beaufort, the South Carolina legislature passed a bill conveying to the United States the territory bounded by the Mississippi river, the North Carolina line, and a line drawn along the crest of the mountains which divide the waters of the East from the waters of the West, from the point where these mountains intersect the North Carolina line to the headwaters of the most southern branch of Tugaloo river, and thence west to the Mississippi river, thus mapping out the twelve-mile strip. The delegates of South Carolina were directed to make a deed conveying the same.

These two apparently inconsistent acts of South Carolina both needed the confirmation of Congress. They were accordingly presented to Congress on the same day, accompanied by the deed of cession, August 9, 1787. The action of Congress bears marks of worldly wisdom. The cession to the United States was accepted on the same day. The motion to confirm the convention of Beaufort was referred to a committee which never reported. This report was, perhaps, prevented by the absorbing interest in the Constitutional Convention then in session, and which completed its labors in the following month by adopting the present Constitution, and the Congress of the Confederation soon after passed out of existence, and with it the ninth article, under which the suit of South Carolina was instituted. Thus, the twelve-mile strip became the territory of the United States, and