A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 1: James Monroe
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 1: James Monroe
Monroe, James, 1758-1831; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
the expense, extent, and nature of the work done, the United States have
exercised no act of jurisdiction or sovereignty within either of the
States by taking the land from the proprietors by force, by passing acts
for the protection of the road, or to raise a revenue from it by the
establishment of turnpikes and tolls, or any other act founded on the
principle of jurisdiction or right. Whatever they have done has, on the
contrary, been founded on the opposite principle, on the voluntary and
unqualified admission that the sovereignty belonged to the State and not
to the United States, and that they could perform no act which should
tend to weaken the power of the State or to assume any to themselves.
All that they have done has been to appropriate the public money to
the construction of this road and to cause it to be constructed, for
I presume that no distinction can be taken between the appropriation
of money raised by the sale of the public lands and of that which
arises from taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; nor can I believe that
the power to appropriate derives any sanction from a provision to that
effect having been made by an article of compact between the United
States and the people of the then Territory of Ohio. This point may,
however, be placed in a clearer light by a more particular notice of
the article itself.
By an act of April 30, 1802, entitled "An act to enable the people of
the eastern division of the territory northwest of the river Ohio to
form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such
State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and
for other purposes," after describing the limits of the proposed new
State and authorizing the people thereof to elect a convention to
form a constitution, the three following propositions were made to the
convention, to be obligatory on the United States if accepted by it:
First, that section No. 16 of every township, or, where such section
had been sold, other lands equivalent thereto, should be granted to the
inhabitants of such township for the use of free schools. Second, that
the 6 miles' reservation, including the salt springs commonly called
the Sciota Salt Springs, the salt springs near the Muskingum River and
in the military tract, with the sections which include the same, should
be granted to the said State for the use of the people thereof, under
such regulations as the legislature of the State should prescribe:
_Provided_, That it should never sell or lease the same for more than
ten years. Third, that one twentieth part of the proceeds of the public
lands lying within the said State which might be sold by Congress from
and after the 30th June ensuing should be applied to the laying out and
making public roads from the navigable waters emptying into the
Atlantic, to the Ohio, and through the State of Ohio, such roads to be
laid out under the authority of Congress, with the consent of the
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