een France and England relative to the
boundaries of the Canadas. At that period France claimed all the
countries west of the Alleghany mountains, while England on the other
hand had granted to Virginia, Connecticut and other colonies, charters
which extended across the continent to the "South Sea," as the Pacific
ocean was then called. A grant also was made by Virginia, and the crown
of Great Britain, of 600,000 acres to a company called "The Ohio
Company." The governor of New France, as Canada and Louisiana was then
called, protested, erected forts on lake Erie, and at the present site
of Pittsburg, and enlisted the Indians against the English and
Americans. Pittsburg was then called Fort du Quesne. Then followed
Braddock's war, as this contest is called in the west,--the mission of
Major (afterward General) Washington,--the defeat of Braddock; and
finally by the memorable victory of Wolfe at Quebec, and the lesser ones
at Niagara and Ticonderoga, and by victories of the English fleet on the
ocean, the French were humbled, and at the treaty of Paris, in 1763,
surrendered all their claims to the country east of the Mississippi.
Towards the close of the war, however, France, by a secret treaty, ceded
all the country west of the Mississippi, and including New Orleans, to
Spain, who held possession till 1803, when it was delivered to the
French government under Napoleon, and by him ceded to the United States
for 15,000,000 of dollars.

The English held possession of the military posts, and exercised
jurisdiction over the country of Illinois, and the adjacent regions,
till 1778, during the revolutionary war; when by a secret expedition,
without direct legislative sanction, but by a most enterprising,
skilful, and hazardous military manoeuvre, the posts of Kaskaskia,
Cahokia, Fort Chartres and Vincennes were captured by Gen. GEORGE
ROGERS CLARK, with a small force of volunteer Americans, and that
portion of the Valley fell under the jurisdiction of Virginia.

The legislature of Virginia sanctioned the expedition of Clark, which
the Executive, Patrick Henry and his council, with Thomas Jefferson,
George Wythe, and George Mason, by written instructions, had agreed
should be done, and a county called "Illinois" was organized the same
year.

In 1784, Virginia, in conjunction with other states, ceded all claims to
the Great West, to the United States, reserving certain tracts for the
payment of revolutionary claims. This cess