Ohio History Journal

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RECENT ADDRESSES OF

RECENT ADDRESSES OF

JAMES EDWIN CAMPBELL

 

HOW AND WHEN (?) OHIO BECAME A STATE*

 

On the third day of September, 1783, a treaty of

peace was concluded at Paris, between Great Britain

and the United States of America. The commission-

ers on behalf of the United States were Benjamin

Franklin, John Jay and John Adams who had ne-

gotiated it, and Henry Laurens who arrived from cap-

tivity in the Tower of London just in time to sign it.

There had been nearly two years of vexatious wrang-

ling over the details of the treaty. The bitterest con-

tention was over the location of the boundary line be-

tween the United States and Canada. In transmitting

the treaty to America, the commissioners made a re-

port which contained the following statement: "The

Court of Great Britain claimed all of the land of the

Western Country and of the Mississippi which was not

expressly included in our charters and governments."

This "Western Country" was that immense, unsettled

tract which now comprises the states of Ohio, Indiana,

Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and a small part of Min-

nesota, with a present population of twenty-four mil-

lions -- a great and fertile empire well worth contend-

ing for.

The American commissioners demanded that the

 

* Last formal address of Governor James E. Campbell, read before the

Kit Kat Club, November 25, 1924.

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