Historians will recall, when this much has been said, the events that were pressed close upon each other, before the soil upon which Ohio now stands, was declared the property of the nation, disentangled from the conflicting claims of jealous States, and how New York by her self-renunciation, led the way to harmony. For a century had Virginia and Connecticut made their claims to the vast westward territory; vaster than the imagination of any living man then conceived. When the French were driven from the lands west of the bounds of Pennsylvania, the contention commenced, and claims were urged from time to time, until both voices of dispute were temporarily silenced by the war in which the rivals fought side by side for the freedom of both. When that conflict was ended, the question again arose; not, this time, with the English Crown as the greater power, but with the loose jointed Confederation, under which America endeavored to work out a national salvation. Virginia, made her demand under the grant of James, in 1609, which gave her: “All those lands, countries and territories, situated, lying, and being in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of the eastern land called Cape or Point Comfort, all that space and circuit of land lying, from the seacoast of the precinct aforesaid, up into the land, throughout, from sea to sea, west and northwest, and also all the islands lying within one hundred miles along the coast of the both seas of the precinct aforesaid.” This generous King, who was giving away so much that did not belong to him, was really giving more than he dreamed of; for the writer of the grant evidently believed that the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean, was but little westward of the Atlantic, and never dreamed that he was extending his line so as to take in the magnificent Western and Northwestern empire of to-day. Connecticut made her claim under Charles the II, who in 1662, gave to the colony “All that part of our dominion in New England, in America, bounded on the east by the Narragansett River, commonly called Narragansett Bay, where the said river falleth into the sea, and on the north by the line of the Massachusetts plantation, and on the south by the sea, and in longitude as the line of the Massachusetts colony, running from east to west; that is to say, from the said Narragansett Bay, on the east to the South Sea on the west part, with the islands thereto adjoining.” It was under this very vague, but very extensive grant, that Connecticut laid claim to, and maintained that claim, for that part of Ohio known the world over, as the “Connecticut Western Reserve.”