n the Union. Not
even the danger from the British armies could keep this question in
abeyance, and while the war was at its height the States were engaged in
bitter wrangles over the subject; for the weakness of the Federal tie
rendered it always probable that the different members of the Union
would sulk or quarrel with one another rather than oppose an energetic
resistance to the foreign foe. At different times different non-claimant
States took the lead in pushing the various schemes for nationalizing
the western lands; but Maryland was the first to take action in this
direction, and was the most determined in pressing the matter to a
successful issue. She showed the greatest hesitation in joining the
Confederation at all while the matter was allowed to rest unsettled; and
insisted that the titles of the claimant States were void, that there
was no need of asking them to cede what they did not possess, and that
the West should be declared outright to be part of the Federal domain.

Maryland was largely actuated by fear of her neighbor Virginia.
Virginia's claims were the most considerable, and if they had all been
allowed, hers would have been indeed an empire. Maryland's fears were
twofold. She dreaded the mere growth of Virginia in wealth, power, and
population in the first place; and in the second she feared lest her own
population might be drained into these vacant lands, thereby at once
diminishing her own, and building up her neighbor's, importance. Each
State, at that time, had to look upon its neighbors as probable
commercial rivals and possible armed enemies. This is a feeling which we
now find difficulty in understanding. At present no State in the Union
fears the growth of a neighbor, or would ever dream of trying to check
that growth. The direct reverse was the case during and after the
Revolution; for the jealousy and distrust which the different States
felt for one another were bitter to a degree.

The Continental Congress Advocates a Compromise.

The Continental Congress was more than once at its wits' ends in
striving to prevent an open break over the land question between the
more extreme States on the two sides. The wisest and coolest leaders saw
that the matter could never be determined on a mere consideration of the
abstract rights, or even of the equities, of the case. They saw that it
would have to be decided, as almost all political questions of great
importance must be decided, by compro