History: Local: Proposed Western States Prior to 1789: Multiple Cos, PA Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Bill & Carolyn Montgomery. csprings@mcsi.net USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: Printing this file within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. ____________________________________________________ Extracted from : "West Virginia and It's People" by Thomas Condit Miller and Hu Maxwell Vol. 1 New York/Lewis Historical Publishing Co. - 1913 A map on inner page titled: Original map of the District of West Augusta and Counties of Ohio, Yohogania and Monongalia constructed for this work by John G. Ruple (Includes lands of PA/OH/VA/W.VA/KY/Maryland) Also Outline Map of Virginia claims in Southwestern PA including the following counties - to date 1913: Beaver, Butler, Armstrong, Indiana, Allegheny, Washington, Westmoreland, Greene, Fayette, and Somerset. CHAPTER X PROPOSED WESTERN STATES PRIOR TO 1789 It is not easy to say when the first idea of a state, colony, or province west of the Allegheny Mountains originated or who was the originator. The plan was not a sudden creation, but grew from vague beginnings which began to take form first in the French mind when the plan was conceived of building a chain of forts and settlements to connect Canada and Louisiana. In that scheme the Ohio valley was an important part, for it was impossible to leave it out of consideration. The earliest trace of a corresponding purpose among the English appears in the official actions of Governor Spotswood of Virginia, soon after the opening of the eighteenth century. The picture which he draws of transmountain establishments is vague. It could not be otherwise in the state of knowledge which then obtained, regarding the geography of the over mountain country. The plan could not assume ample proportions or possess clear outlines while its originator confidently believed that the Great lakes were within sight of the Blue Ridge. Spotswood's purpose was to circumvent the French, and in a shadowy way he seemed to plan a state or colony beyond the mountains. It was the beginning of that dog-in-the-manger policy on the part of English statesmen which continued to come to the front on every occasion down to the close of the Revolution. They did not care to make much of the Ohio valley themselves, but wanted to keep others out. Spotswood's purpose was to protect the settled part of Virginia - the country east of the Blue Ridge - against danger from French encroachment on the west, and he conceived the idea of doing it by establishing forts or colonies in the Ohio valley. Virginia was in no condition in the time of Spotswood to set up settlements and governments west of the mountains. Many persons have accustomed themselves to think of Virginia in the first decades of the eighteenth century as though it were a powerful state. It was not that by any means. The whole population of the province was about equal to that of Richmond at the present time, that is, a little above or below on hundred thousand persons. That number was no more than sufficient to hold in a feeble way the lower country, and it would have been ridiculous for it to attempt to send out colonies to hold the western country and establish there any semblance of a state or a government. Governor Spotswood's thoughts of possession of the western valleys may therefore be dismissed as an impracticable dream so far as he was concerned. He never undertook to turn his plans to practical account. Thirty or forty years later came the schemes of the Ohio Company, which was a corporation organized to deal in western lands. At first it had the support of the government and its work was supposed to consist in counteracting the influence of the French in the west. The idea of a separate colony or province was not clearly stated, but settlements were planned on the Ohio River, and the scheme necessarily called for some kind of organization or government in the region. The movement was political and commercial. The promoters of the enterprise expected to sell land, and the English government calculated that the presence of colonies and trading posts in the western valleys would check the progress of the French in that quarter. To that extent it was a movement to establish a state or province, but the plans did not work page 156... titled... West Virginia out in practice, and its place in history is with schemes that failed to materialize. INDIANA TERRITORY -- At the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, when the Iroquois Indians ceded to the King of England the land between the Allegheny mountains and the Ohio river, a company of traders put in a claim for damages against the Indians, aggregating several hundred thousand dollars. They pretended that the Indians had robbed them of merchandise to that extent. They asked that a tract of land in the west be given in payment, and it was done. The land thus set apart, which was supposed to lie in Southwestern West Virginia and in Kentucky, was called the Territory of Indiana. It was a private adventure, and only the name suggests that it was designed to become a western state. The enterprise failed, and the scheme was lost sight of. VANDALIA --The first real attempt to found a state or province west of the Allegheny mountains was in the case of Vandalia, which Bancroft called "Franklin's inchoate province stretching from the Alleghenies to the Kentucky river." The foundation for it was the Walpole grant of land, named from Thomas Walpole, the largest stockholder, or rather the most influential member of the company. Benjamin Franklin was the ablest defender of the proposed province when its enemies attacked it on the grounds that it was not to the interest of the government to establish or permit settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains. Much that is known of the purposes and pretensions of the promoters of the enterprise is contained Franklin's reply to Lord Hillsborough's objections to the creation of the creation of the new state. The reply is a storehouse of historical statistics and information relating to the western country at that period. Lord Hillsborough learned on that occasion, as other English public men learned later, that to join issues with Benjamin Franklin in an argument was a serious matter. His facts and logic simply overwhelmed his opponents. The discomfiture which Franklin's reply brought upon Lord Hillsborough caused him to resign his office in the government. The details of the Vandalia movement may be given briefly. The land west of the Allegheny mountains and east and south of the Ohio river was admitted to belong to the Iroquois Indians of New York up to the year 1768. The King of England recognized the claim of the Indians and by proclamation forbade settlers to enter the region. The proclamation did not keep squatters out, and in 1766 and the next year soldiers were sent from Pittsburgh to drive the settlers out of the country. They dispossessed a few on the Monogahela in the present state of Pennsylvania and on Red Stone creek, and also on Cheat river, perhaps as far up the stream as Dunkard Bottom. The soldiers had scarcely withdrawn before the settlers returned and brought others with them, and it was apparent to most persons acquainted with the circumstances that it would be impossible to keep people from occupying the fertile land between the Alleghenies and the Ohio river. Well posted men, and George Washington was one of them, did not believe that the British government ever had seriously intended to prevent the colonization of the region, but that the proclamation forbidding settlement was intended as a temporary expedient to quiet the fears of the Indians, who were disturbed by the prospect of having the country occupied near the Ohio. So firmly convinced was Washington that the land would be put on the market that he took steps to procure large tracts on the Ohio, Kanawha, and elsewhere for himself and others. He had locations made, expecting to be given the refusal of the land when it was put up for sale or pre-emption. He also took steps to lay out tracts for soldiers who had served in the French and Indian war and who had been promised bounty lands in the west. The highest officers were promised several thousand acres each, and the allotment graded down according to rank until the share of a private soldier was fifty acres. The particulars of those land surveys and their history are given elsewhere in this book. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Walpole, and others saw no reason why they should not have some of the western land, but they knew that the King would not let them have title to it until the Indian title was quieted. Steps were taken to bring that about. The Cherokees claimed ownership as far north as the Knawha River, and the Iroquois insisted that themselves were the sole proprietors of the whole region from New York to Tennessee. There was an overlapping of Indian claims as to the land between the Kanawha and the Kentucky rivers; but the Cherokee pretension was not generally taken seriously. However, steps were taken by speculators to obtain the Cherokee title, and by a scheme engineered by Stuart, an Indian agent, the Southern Indians ceded away their claim to the country as far north as the Kanawha River. This occurred at the treaty of Lochbar, South Carolina, in 1768. The same year, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, N. Y., the Iroquois ceded to the King of England their right, title, and interest in the country south and east of the Ohio river. By virtue of that treaty the crown claimed the land west of the Alleghenies, and the title thus acquired was adverse to Virginia's claim under its old charter. In other words, the King had formerly granted to the Colony of Virginia, by charter, the whole region "from sea to sea." which included the Ohio valley; but in 1768 by recognizing the Iroquois claim to the country, and then accepting title from the Indians, the King held the land as his. That was the status of affairs in 1769 when Thomas Walpole applied for a large grant for himself and his associates. Benjamin Franklin was a Pennsylvanian and was naturally unfriendly to Virginia's pretended ownership of the country beyond the mountains. The Walpole company first applied for 2,5000,000 acres, but at the suggestion of Lord Hillsbourough, they increased the amount nearly ten fold. "Ask for enough to make a province," was Hillsbourough's advice, and he afterwards admitted that he gave that advice for the purpose of defeating the scheme by inducing the company to ask for too much. When the promoters acted on his suggestion and asked for nearly two-thirds of the present area of West Virginia and a large part of Kentucky, he openly opposed them. The province of Vandalia extended from the western boundary of Maryland to a line drawn from the mouth of the Scioto River to the Cumberland gap. The petition was filed in 1769, but it was not finally approved until 1775, although favorable action was taken in 1771 and 1773. The matter was heard before the Board of Trade and Plantations, and it was there the Lord Hillsborough filed his protest, and Franklin made his reply. Soldier's Claims Menaced -- It has been stated that Washington had taken steps to secure for the soldiers of the French and Indian war the lands in the west which Virginia had promised them. These lands were on the Kanawha and the Ohio and therefore within the boundaries of the proposed province of Vandalia. There was much uneasiness among the claimants as to the effect the creation of the new province would have upon the claims which had not yet been granted. Virginia was to give title, but if the new province were created, it would come into possession of the land, and it might not recognize the claims of the soldiers. For that reason there was some coolness toward the Vandalia scheme on the part of the soldiers. Yet there does not seem to have been open opposition. Washington was the recognized advocate of the page 158 soldiers, and he spoke of the probability of establishing the capital of Vandalia at the mouth of the Kanawha, and was not uneasy. Hillsborough's Opposition -- The fight against the creation of the province of Vandalia came from Lord Hillsborough, as already stated. He was a leading and influential member of the Baord of Trade and Plantations, and the question of creating the province would come before that body. The paper which he filed in the case is of great importance, not particularly because it concerned Vandalia, the proposed new state, but because it set forth the policy of the British government in dealing with trade and colonization in America. In no other extant document, perhaps, is it made clearer that a certain class of British statesmen looked upon America, and the colonies in America as existing primarily and almost solely for the benefit of the British government. The rights of the colonists were only such as the home government chose to give them, and their desire solely that it might benefit the mother country. Those colonies were spoken of as if they had been established by the English government for the purpose of increasing trade for the home merchants and gathering supplies for the government's use. The fact was lost sight of that the American colonies were made up of individuals, and that the individuals had come to America to improve their own condition, and not to raise hemp and collect naval stores for English merchants and the home government. The lack of understanding of the matter by English statesmen is amazing. They held that England was everything and America nothing. They claimed for themselves the right to say where colonies might or might not be planted in the wide open lands of America; what products the people might sell; what articles they might make, and what they must buy in England; what things they might export and where they should send them. In short, England insisted not only upon the political dependence of America, but also upon its trade dependence down to the most trifling details and in the most narrow minded way. The War of the Revolution was an inevitable result of that irritating and overbearing interference. Lord Hillsborough opposed the establishment of a new province west of the Alleghenies on several grounds, not one of which had any justice in it when viewed in the light of history. First, he declared, that colonies are established to extend England's commerce by producing raw commodities and exchanging them for fully manufactured articles. For that reason the colonies should be confined near the coast where exchange of commodities would be easy; for, if people established themselves far inland, they will find it difficult to supply themselves with manufactured products from across the sea and will be tempted to undertake manufacturing for themselves. Raw materials, therefore, will not go to England to be manufactured. Lord Hillsborough suggested that, instead of planting colonies on the Ohio, they be established in Nova Scotia and about the mouth of the St. Lawrence River where fish could be caught and lumber cut. If settlers establish themselves on the Ohio, argued Lord Hillsborough they will not only themselves contribute nothing to British commerce, but their inland property might attract foreigners who had been accustomed to buy and sell in English markets, and home trade would thus suffer loss. It was strongly urged that colonists ought to be hindered if they undertake to manufacture articles for themselves. Lord Hillsborough foresaw serious disturbance of the western fur trade if the colony was allowed to grow up on the Ohio. The Indians in that event would be deprived of their means of livelihood, and at the same time of their ability to purchase British goods. Besides, the set- page 159 tling of the country near the Ohio might provoke the Indians to hostility, and at any rate would disturb their peace and contentment. "Let the savages enjoy their deserts in peace," said he. He declared that there was no need of new country west of the mountains for colonization purposes, for the vacant land along the Atlantic coast would be sufficient to supply all growth in population for a century to come, and he again referred to the vast vacant country about the mouth of the St. Lawrence river. He thought the natural desire of people to own land should be curbed. He declared that they all wanted to become landowners, and that their disposition to roam from place to place in search of land should not be encouraged. He pointed out dangers ahead unless a curb were placed upon the tendency of the Americans to make their homes in new and distant regions. They would first take up manufacturing on their own account, and when they had learned to supply their own wants they would attempt to attain political independence of England. He dwelt, with no small inconsistency, upon the inability of a colony so far inland to produce any article of barter which could be exchanged for English manufactures. He could think of nothing but furs which such a wilderness could produce, and the Indians already had that trade and were buyers of British merchandise to the extent of their ability. Therefore, said he, it could no possibly be of any advantage to British merchants to take the fur trade from the Indians and hand it over to white competitors. Besides, by settling the country, the fur trade must inevitable diminish, and the home merchants must suffer loss. He emphasized what he had already said, that the savages ought to be let alone in their country. Franklin's Reply -- Benjamin Franklin published his reply to Lord Hillsborough concerning Vandalia in 1772. It was a pamphlet and was offered for sale. It convinced the Board of Trade and Plantations almost instantly that the province of Vandalia ought to be established. When Franklin saw that his purpose was so quickly accomplished he withdrew his pamphlet from sale. It is said that no more than five copies were sold. The reply to Hillsborough was logical and powerful. It showed a mastery of the subject so far superior to Hillsborough's that comparison was almost impossible. Every argument was answered, and the answers were supported with arrays of facts and statistics which carried conviction at that time; but subsequent events have shown that Franklin was mistaken in some of his conclusions. For example, his claim that cotton would be one of the paying crops in the proposed province of Vandalia has not been borne out by history. The season is too short in any part of that region to mature cotton with sufficient certainty to make it a reliable crop. His prediction regarding the culture of silk has not materialized, though there seems to be no climatic obstacle that could not be overcome. Franklin took up one by one the advantages and resources of the region where the new government was to be set up. The climate was declared to be ideal for the support of a civilized community. It would produce wine grapes, flax, hemp, the grains, and tobacco. These commodities would supply the articles of commerce on which the board of trade laid so much stress. Instead of nothing to export except furs and pelts, it was shown that the land would produce the very articles which were most desired in England. Among such were naval stores for the shipping and lumber for the West Indies, to be exchanged for sugar, and the sugar to go to the English merchants to be distributed over the world. Page 160 One of Franklin's most telling arguments was in reply to Hillsborough's assertion that even if commodities were produced in the Ohio valley, they could never be transported to market because of distance and cost. Franklin called attention to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers as avenues of commerce. That great waterway seemed to have escaped the notice of the objectors. They appeared to consider only the difficulties of an over-mountain route for commerce from the Ohio valley. Even accepting the way across the Alleghenies, Franklin quoted prices to show that freight could be carried cheaper from the Ohio to Alexandria in Virginia than from Northampton to London. Franklin based his calculations on the use of the upper tributaries of the Ohio to the western base of the Alleghenies, and the Potomac on the eastern side, with a portage across the mountains. That was the trade route on which Washington so strongly insisted later. Franklin gives figures which are important, considering their early date (1772). He speaks as if the transportation of freight by that route was already and established business. The cost of water carriage from Alexandria to Cumberland was about 27 cents a hundred pounds, and by wagons from there to the Monongahela at Redstone (now Brownsville), was 97 cents a hundred, or $1.24 per hundred pounds. It would be interesting to know to a certainty if Franklin was quoting actual figures, obtained from schedules of freight carriers, or only theoretical figures-those which might be expected to prevail when the route should be improved. The suspicion is that Franklin's figures on freight cost were theoretical. The Potomac had not been improved and boats would have encountered very rough water in the passage between Alexandria and Cumberland; and the possibility of carrying freight for twenty-seven cents a hundred is doubtful-at least in ascending the stream. The route across the mountain at that time was Braddock's road. The distance from Cumberland to navigable water on the west side was more than forty miles, which is the distance given by Franklin. It has been generally stated, too, that the freight charges for the over-mountain haul on Braddock's road were more than 07 cents a hundred pounds. The principal argument advanced by Franklin to show that Ohio valley products could reach English markets without being overloaded with freight charges, was based upon the use of the western rivers for ships which could load at the banks of the Ohio and discharge their cargoes in any open seaport in the world. It is not known that any ship had ever done so before that time, but it was abundantly demonstrated afterwards that Franklin was right. From January to April, said he, large ships may be built on the Ohio and be sent to England, laden with hemp, iron, flax, and silk. He does not quote the exact cost of carriage by the river route, but he compares it with rates then in force from Philadelphia and New York, and says that the interior river route would be cheaper than the sea route when the objective points were West Florida and the West Indies. He listed among the articles which would constitute the river cargoes down stream as flour, corn, beef, and lumber. Concerning the return freight or cargoes up the Mississippi and the Ohio, Franklin said it was cheaper, and must ever remain cheaper, than the cost of hauling from the coast to most of the counties of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The English merchants were especially solicitous at that time to procure commodities which could be readily exchanged with the West Indies sugar growers for their output, and lumber seemed the easiest and best medium of exchange. Franklin drove a strong point by showing how easily and to what enormous extent the Ohio valley could meet Page 161 the conditions of that exchange. When exports form the Ohio valley began a few years after that time, lumber was among the first to reach market, and its market was to the southward. The expectation of procuring naval stores for the Ohio valley was not realized. Hemp for rope making was never largely grown there, and the yellow pines from which tar, pitch, and rosin are procured, were found in sufficient quantity only in regions further south. Franklin confined his reply chiefly to answering Lord Hillsborough's objections; but he gave many sound reasons why a province should be established in the west. It would afford protection to the eastern provinces in case of hostility from the Indians, and it would make the holding of the uninhabited western territory easier and less expensive by providing supplies for frontier garrisons without excessive transportation charges. Besides as the number of people in the country west of the mountains increased, there would be need of fewer forts, and protection could be afforded by smaller garrisons. The petition of the company was granted and the province of Vandalia was established, but it was a province and a government on paper only. It was understood that its capital was to be at the mouth of the Kanawha, yet no visible capital was ever established there. The province was to have a governor, but the King procrastinated and no governor ever occupied the office. There was no governmental machinery, no government business, no taxes, no officers, and the very metes and bounds of the province were never surveyed, and in some parts were never definitely located. The whole province lay within territory claimed by Virginia, yet there is no evidence that Virginia ever considered that any of its territory had been cut off or in any way alienated. Surveyors went ahead locating lands for soldiers and for private parties, assuming all the time that they were on Virginia soil. When General Lewis marched his army across the Alleghenies and down the Greenbrier and Kanawha in 1774, and fought the battle of Point Pleasant, he traversed the supposed territory of Vandalia nearly two hundred miles, and there is not one word in all the published correspondence concerning the campaign indicating that a single person in the army knew anything about Vandalia, or suspected that the army was outside of Virginia and marching through another Province. The battle of Point Pleasant was fought in the capital of the province, yet the fact was not suspected at the time, and it is doubtful if a dozen of the soldiers ever heard of it afterwards. No man knows when Vandalia ceased to exist. It was still on paper when the revolution came on, and in the general shakeup and readjustment consequent on that event, the province disappeared. Fifteen years later it was monentarily heard of again. That was after the adoption of the United States Constitution. Virginia had ceded her land west of the Ohio river to the general government, but retained that lying east of the river, now a part of West Virginia. Vandalia now appeared, through representatives, and asked that its rights be duly considered. It was not made to appear that it had any rights that the government should recognize and the history of "Franklin's inchoate province" of Vandalia was closed. TRANSYLVANIA- In 1775 what might have become a new state appeared south of the Ohio river, and was considerably larger than the present state of West Virginia. It was bounded by the Kentucky, Ohio, Holston, and Cumberland rivers, as far as these streams could be connected in a boundary. The boundary was therefore, somewhat vague, and the southwestern part of West Virginia was concerned. As the promise of a state, it should be taken much less seriously than Vandalia. Page 162 In that instance, the promoters took proper steps to procure title to the land from the British crown, and the consent of the Board of Trade and Plantations to the enterprise. But the man back of the proposed province of Transylvania had not even that small base on which to build. They bought the land from Indians who pretended to have a right to sell, but who certainly did not have power to deliver the goods. Nine men constituted the company which purchased the land. For fifty thousand dollars in Indian goods they bought a tract of eighteen million acres, which was more than three acres for a cent. There were a considerable number of settlers on the land at that time. The proprietors, if the purchase made them such, probably did not expect much political power to accrue from the transaction, but looked to financial returns for their profit. The end came sooner than was expected. In December, 1776, the county of Kentucky came into existence, and the province or state of Transylvania vanished. WESTSYLVANIA- A movement began in August, 1776, looking to the formation of a "sister colony and the fourteenth province of the American confederacy" west of the Alleghenies under the name of Westsylvania. The boundaries were identical with those of Vandalia with the addition of a section of Maryland and portion of Pennsylvania extending as far eastward as Altoona and northward to the line established by the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, about fifty miles north of Pittsburgh. A memorial asking for the new state was presented to the Continental Congress under the caption: "The Memorial of the Inhabitants West of the Allegheny Mountains," and it set forth that 25,000 families lived in the area of the proposed state, having settled there since 1768. It was stated that they were separated from the rest of Pennsylvania and Virginia "by a vast, extensive, and almost impassable tract of mountains by nature itself formed as a boundary between this country and those below it." That may be regarded as the first real embodiment of the idea of a new state which ninety years later led to the formation of West Virginia. It partook much more of a state movement than Vandalia. The former was a private land enterprise with no visible basis for a commonwealth; but Westsylvania consisted of people enough for a state and property to give permanency to it. As early as 1773 Croghan at Pittsburgh estimated that 60,000 people were on the Ohio and its tributaries below that place, and immigration was pouring in rapidly. The reasons given in the memorial for a western state were good and sufficient. Nature had separated the east from the west by mountains. The mountains still would remain as barriers separating the two regions. A serious obstacle was in the way of forming the proposed new Maryland, and Virginia. Opposition might be expected to come from all of them, for states and provinces are no disposed to part with their territory. At that time several thousand square miles on the Monongahela and Ohio were in dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia. The latter state claimed Pittsburgh and all south of it and east of the Ohio, while Pennsylvania had set up its claim to a tract covering several modern counties in West Virginia. The two states had agreed to a truce in their land disputes when the Revolutionary war created a common purpose in which they could unite; but it was understood by both that their boundary lines would come up for settlement in the future. Maryland had a dispute, or grounds for a dispute, over boundaries along the upper Potomac which might affect some of the territory west of the mountains. Page 163 These conflicting claims were in abeyance when the memorial for the new trans Allegheny state reached the Continental Congress. Perhaps some looked upon it as an easy way to settle the disputes by forming the new state from the disputed territory. But there was still further ground for conflict. The shadowy province of Vandalia was included in the proposed Westsylvania. Opposition to the new state might come from that quarter. It was therefore apparent that the new state movement would have a rough road to travel, and it did not travel it far. Realization of the scheme never seemed very near. Pennsylvania and Virginia settled their differences by dividing the disputed territory, and Maryland was not called upon to assert or defend its rights. The movement for a new state dropped out of sight, and as far as Pennsylvania was concerned, it never came forward again. When it appeared next time, Virginia alone was concerned. Had the new western state been formed during or about the close of the Revolution, it might have materially affected the future history of the United States. It would have been a rich and powerful state, extending for one hundred miles north in western Pennsylvania to Tennessee, and west to the Kentucky river. Its area would have been sixty or seventy thousand square miles. It would have extended four hundred miles north and south, and at the present day its population would exceed five millions. The effect which such a state, occupying that position, would have had on the cause of politics before and during the Civil war can scarcely be calculated. It would have been strongly for the Union, because the people of Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky were that way, and they would have composed the population for Westsylvania , instead of being divided among three states. Acting as one body, that state would have constituted a vast Union wedge extending from the north down almost halfway across the Southern Confederacy. Its presence would have strengthened the hands and courage of the friends of the Union in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, and the history of the Civil war -if there had been any civil war- would probably have been quite different. It is an interesting field for speculation as to what might have happened; but since the state was never created, its probable influence can not now rise above the field of speculation. It would have been much easier to have formed the state before the adoption of the United States Constitution than afterwards, because under the constitution it is necessary that states must give their consent before any part of their territory can be taken to form a new state. It is not probable that Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia would have consented after the adoption of the constitution. In only one instance has a state ever consented that part of its territory be taken to form another state. That was in the case of West Virginia; but it was hardly a fair test of what would be done in normal times, for it happened in war, when only part of Virginia's counties were represented in the legislature which consented to the division of the state.