CHAPTER V
The period of western expansion.
1783 — 1830
THE EFFECT of the Revolutionary War was to nationalize the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, thus creating a public domain and laying the foundation for a national land policy. Indeed, since the relation of the people to the land is a fundamental factor in all history and the basic factor in economics, it is absolutely necessary to refer first to all the land policy and point out the methods by which a region of practically 296,000 square miles was transferred, in the course of about 130 years, into private hands.
Apparently there never was any other idea in the American mind than that the public domain should become private property as rapidly as possible. And, since the colonists were casting off all the major incumbrances of Kingly rule and feudalism, the Ordinance of 1787 is of the greatest importance, for it not only provided for republican government and made provisions against slavery, but determined the form of land tenure in the public domain. Land was to be held in "fee simple" to be freely transferred by bargain and sale, and the estates of persons dying without will were to be divided among their heirs in equal parts. This ordinance not only determined
