CHAPTER III

THE CARE OF THE PUBLIC LANDS



Having been entrusted with the responsibility of administering the
back lands, Congress immediately entered upon the work of arranging
a method for their survey and sale, and of devising a feasible
government to be extended over them. The pressing need of securing a
revenue from them, together with a realisation that prospective
purchasers would require protection both from each other and from the
savages, impelled the members to immediate action. Against the many
failures with which the old Congress stands charged during the eight
years of its national control, the ordinances for the disposition and
government of the western lands form a most pleasant and redeeming
contrast. The Congress faced an absolutely new task. There were many
precedents in history for colonial holding, varying from the policy
of Greece, which allowed complete severance of home ties, to that of
Spain, which regarded colonies as existing solely for the benefit of
the mother country. By adopting the one, the United States must have
left the western emigrants to perish. The other was repugnant to a
people who had just rebelled against even the moderate colonial system
of Great Britain. Equality is the only standard for a republic. Congress
had resolved in 1780 that the lands ceded to its jurisdiction should
be "disposed of for the common benefit and be settled and formed into
distinct republican States which shall become members of the Federal
Union and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence