Ohio Country
The Ohio Country, showing the present-day U.S. state boundaries
The Ohio Country (sometimes called the Ohio Territory) was the name used in the 18th century for the regions of North America west of the Appalachian Mountains and in the region of the upper Ohio River south of Lake Erie. One of the first frontier regions of the United States, the area encompassed roughly the present-day states of Ohio, eastern Indiana, western Pennsylvania, and northwestern West Virginia. The issue of settlement in the region is considered by historians to have been a primary cause of both the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War.
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For much of the 17th and 18th century centuries, the region was claimed by both Great Britain and France, which both sent merchants into the area to trade with the Algonquin- and Iroquois-speaking Native Americans in the region. The rivalry between the two nations for country of the region played an important part of the French and Indian War in the 1750s, which ended with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, giving control of the region to Great Britain.
After its acquisition by Great Britain it was closed to white settlement by the Proclamation of 1763. This proclamation also effectively established that the Crown no longer recognized claims of the states made on the land. On June 22, 1774, the parliment passed the Quebec Act which annexed this region to the province of Quebec, and was referred to as one of the Intolerable Acts leading to the Ammerican Revolution.
During the American Revolutionary War it was again the scene of military action between Great Britain and the United States. In 1778, after victories by General George Rodgers Clark, the Virginia legislature organized the first civil government in the region, called the county of Illinois, which encompassed all of the lands lying west of the Ohio River to which Virginia had any claim. In 1783, following the Treaty of Paris, the area became part of the original territory of the United States and was immediately opened to settlement. The Ohio Country quickly became one of the most desirable locations for Trans-Appalachian settlements, in particular among veterans of the American Revolutionary War.
The desirably of the land for settlement in the early years of the existence of the United States lead to the area being subject to the overlapping and conflicting territorial claims of several eastern states. These claims arose from existing colonial charters. Specifically:
In 1784 the area was part of the Trans-Appalachian region that Thomas Jefferson proposed for the creation of future states to be admitted to the Union. Jefferson proposed that the states surrender their respective claims to the region. One of the most contentious issues was whether or not the area would be open to slavery.
In 1787, with the passage by the Congress of the Northwest Ordinance, the boundaries of the region were firmly established. Virginia was granted the land south of the Ohio and Pennsylvania was granted the area around the headwaters of the Ohio. The remaining area west of the Pennsylvania boundary and north of the Ohio became part of the newly-formed Northwest Territory, the first organized territory in the United States, with a civil government under the jurisdiction of the Congress.
All the existing states surrendered all their claims to the Ohio Country land within the Northwest Territory. Connecticut and Virginia reserved the right to use land in the new territory as payment to veterans of the Revolutionary War, without claiming sovereignty over the reserved areas, known respectively and the Connecticut Western Reserve and the Virginia Military District.
The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in the territory and adopted the Jeffersonian proposal that the territory should be eventually admission as future states of the Union. The "Ohio Territory" is sometimes used in reference to the Northwest Territory. In 1802, the Enabling Act specifically provided for the admission of new states, the first of which, Ohio, was admitted to the Union on February 19, 1803, celebrated as March 1, 1803, the date of the first meeting of the Ohio state legislature.
History
Colonial Era
Claims of the states
Northwest Ordinance
External links