restore the old charter.  Similar advice was given the same year to New Hampshire and South Carolina, for it was not then supposed that the quarrel with the mother country would end in separation.  But by the spring of 1776 all the governors of the thirteen colonies had either fled or been thrown into prison.  This put an end to colonial government, and Congress, seeing that reconciliation was impossible, (May 15, 1776) advised all the colonies to form governments for themselves (p. 132).  Thereupon they adopted constitutions, and by doing so turned themselves from British colonies into sovereign and independent states.[1]

[Footnote 1:  All but two made new constitutions; but Connecticut and Rhode Island used their old charters, the one till 1818, the other till 1842.  Vermont also formed a constitution, but she was not admitted to the Congress (p. 243).]

[Illustration]

[Illustration:  THE UNITED STATES WHEN PEACE WAS DECLARED in 1783 SHOWING THE STATE CLAIMS]

%164.  Articles of Confederation.%—­While the colonies were thus gradually turning themselves into the states, the Continental Congress was trying to bind them into a union by means of a sort of general constitution called “Articles of Confederation.”  By order of Congress, Articles had been prepared and presented by a committee in July, 1776, but it was not till November 17, 1777, that they were sent out to the states for adoption.  Now it must be remembered that six states, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, claimed that their “from sea to sea” charters gave them lands between the mountains and the Mississippi River, and that one, New York, had bought the Indian title to land in the Ohio valley.  It must also be remembered that the other six states did not have “from sea to sea” charters, and so had no claims to western lands.  As three of them, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, held that the claims of their sister states were invalid, they now refused to adopt the Articles unless the land so claimed was given to Congress to be used to pay for the cost of the Revolution.  For this action they gave four reasons: 

1.  The Mississippi valley had been discovered, explored, settled, and owned by France.

2.  England had never owned any land there till France ceded the country in 1763.

3.  When at last England had got it, in 1763, the King drew the “proclamation line,” turned the Mississippi valley into the Indian country, and so cut off any claim of the colonies in consequence of English ownership.

4.  The western lands were therefore the property of the King, and now that the states were in arms against him, his lands ought to be seized by Congress and used for the benefit of all the states.