Political controversy about the public-land policy of the United States began with the American Revolution. In fact, even before independence from Britain was won, it became clear that resolving the dilemmas surrounding the public domain prove necessary to preserve the Union itself.

At the peace negotiations with Britain. Americans demanded, and got, a western boundary at the Mississippi River. Thus the new nation secured for its birthright a vas internal empire rich in agricultural and mineral resources. But under their colonial charters, seven states-Massachusetts. Connecticut. New York. Virginia. North Carolina. South Carolina, and Georgia-claimed portions of the western wilderness. Virginia's claim was the largest, stretching north and west to encompass the later states of Kentucky. Ohio. Indiana. Illinois. Michigan, and Wisconsin. The language of the charters was vague and their validity questionable, but during the war Virginia reinforced its title by sponsoring colonel George Rogers Clark's 1778 expedition to Vincennes and Kaskaskia, which strengthened America's trans-Appalachian pretensions at the peace table.

The six states holding no claim to the transmontane region doubted whether a confederacy in which territory was so unevenly apportioned would truly prove what it claimed to be a union of equals. Already New Jersey, Delaware. Rhode Island, and Maryland were among the smallest and least populous of the states. While they levied heavy taxes to repay state war debts, their larger neighbors might retire debts out of land sale proceeds. Drawn by fresh lands and low taxes, people would desert the small states for the large, leaving the former to fall into bankruptcy and eventually into political subjugation. All the states shared in the war effort, said the New Jersey legislature, how then could half of them 'be left to sink under an enormous debt, whilst others are enabled, in a short period, to replace all their expenditures from the hard earnings of the whole confederacy?' As the Revolution was a common endeavor, so ought its fruits, including the western lands, to be a common property.