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State cessions are the western territories of the United States lying between the original 13 states and the Mississippi River where state claims were either relinquished or ceded to the federal government.

North of the Ohio River the land would become the Northwest Territory in 1787, the first public domain of the nation. State cessions south of the Ohio River came later and were nominal, with the condition that slavery must be allowed. The formal legislative process began in 1780 and was completed in 1802.

The cessions were an unintended consequence of the 1776 offer of the Second Continental Congress to grant land in exchange for military service during the American Revolutionary War, made at a time when Congress did not have the land with which to honor the obligation. A simultaneous but separate issue was in determining the status of the western territories ceded by Great Britain to the United States.

The remedy adopted, to create a public domain of the United States out of the western territories, would solve both problems and begin an epoch in American political history. However, it would first be necessary to extinguish the competing state claims to these lands. This was accomplished by the state cessions.

As well as their claims on the western territories, a number of states also held claims to parts of other states. These would be settled as a part of the same legislative process that resulted in the state cessions of their territorial claims, but are not considered a part of those state cessions.

Background
On September 16, 1776 the Second Continental Congress made a call to the states to raise troops for the Revolutionary War, offering a monetary bounty and land grants as enlistment inducements, with the states assigned their proportionate share of the cost. States that hoped to gain control of land west of the Appalachian Mountains assumed that their old colonial claims would be upheld, and intended to discharge their land obligation by granting lands in that region. However, Maryland had no unoccupied land nor any claims on other lands, and offered additional bounty money instead. Congress objected forcefully and asserted that states should not replace its offer with their own. Maryland's response was the starting point that would result in the state cessions and the creation of a national public domain.

Maryland
The state expressed its willingness to accept its share of the burdens of War for Independence, but noted that the only way it could acquire land to meet the Congressional obligation was to purchase it at retail prices from states that had land claims that they could sell, unjustly enriching the land-claiming states at Maryland's expense, and selling to Maryland land that had been gained through the sacrifice of Maryland's citizens.

The land to be given to those veterans was the western territories owned by Great Britain, which were to be ceded to the United States. Several states had laid claim to owning those lands based on their old colonial charters, but Britain had nullified their claims by the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Maryland emphasized that it was fighting for the nation as a whole, and not for the narrow benefit of states that hoped to gain the territories ceded by Britain for their own profit. Any land gained through the common sacrifice should be considered "common stock". On this point Maryland would remain adamant, at first standing alone, but ultimately gaining the support of the other states.

Other states without western land claims also objected to the financial obligation of purchasing land when they had none of their own. New Jersey and Delaware would ratify the Articles of Confederation under protest, on this very point. However, only Maryland raised and sustained the moral objection to public sacrifice for private gain.

Colonial land claims
State claims to land outside of their state boundaries originated in 17th century English colonial charters and royal proclamations. At the time the charters were issued the lands described were poorly understood and the descriptions were given in grandiose terms, such as in the Colony of Connecticut's grant of land extending to the Pacific Ocean. Where there was British rule there was also British land law, and thus the claims were legally tenable. This accounts for the seemingly nonsensical claims of Massachusetts and Connecticut to land 800 mi distant from those states, in the present states of Wisconsin and Illinois.

Colonial charters were revoked and different charters issued from time to time, often with different conditions attached, and made under changed circumstances. The individual colonies maintained their positions in a manner most advantageous to themselves by preferring one royal charter or proclamation over another. The issue was rendered moot following the French and Indian War, as Britain's Royal Proclamation of 1763 converted the British territory west of the Appalachian Mountains into a Crown Estate, separate from the coastal colonies. The lands north of the Ohio River were further removed from the colonies when they became a part of the Province of Quebec under the Quebec Act of 1774.

With the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 the former colonies, now states, renewed their old land claims. Six states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) claimed land under their former charters, while New York held land claims by virtue of its treaties with the Six Nations (the Iroquois). The remaining six states (New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland) had no western territorial land claims to press.

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North of the Ohio
The first act of cession was by New York. Its legislature passed the act and it was laid before Congress in 1780. The cession was accepted in 1782.

Virginia's act of cession was enacted in 1783 and accepted in 1784. It contained provisions for the U.S. to reimburse Virginia for the expenses incurred in George Rogers Clark's expeditions, consideration for the French settlers who had accepted Virginia's offer of citizenship, and the reservation of land to be granted to Virginia's Revolutionary War veterans. Conditions were also placed on the territorial extents of future states, but in 1786 Congress asked Virginia to waive the requirement and the state agreed in 1788. Virginia had previously passed an act of cession in 1781, but the conditions were objectionable and this offer had been rejected by Congress.

Massachusetts' offer of cession was accepted in 1785.

Connecticut's offer of a partial cession of its land claims was accepted in 1786. The state held onto a large portion of its claims in the form of a "Western Reserve", selling the land to investors for $1.2 million. It also reserved the so-called "Firelands" for the benefit of Connecticut citizens whose property had been burned by the British during the Revolutionary War. The final transfer of all lands to the federal government would not be completed until 1800.

South of the Ohio
The lands that became Kentucky were never ceded to the United States. Kentucky was first a territory of Virginia, then a part of that state, then voluntarily detached from Virginia and admitted to the union in its own right in 1792.

South Carolina's claim consisted of a thin oblong strip, between 12 and 14 miles wide (ie, between 19 and 23 km wide), running west from the state border to the Mississippi River. The land was also claimed by Georgia, and the dispute was before Congress when South Carolina ceded its claim to the land in 1787, leaving the claims of Georgia yet to be settled.

The lands that became Tennessee were ceded the the United States by North Carolina in 1790 under a list of 10 conditions, making it a cession in little more than name. One condition of the deed of cession required acceptance of previous land grants by North Carolina that virtually included the entire territory, another ensured that North Carolina law would be applicable in the territory until it formed its own legislature, and yet another forbade Congress to enact any regulation that tended to emancipate slaves. The constraints of North Carolina had left almost nothing for the benefit of the United States, in recognition of which an 1841 act of Congress abandoned any remaining U.S. interests in favor of the state of Tennessee.

North Carolina had previously enacted a conditional cession in 1784, but the conditions were objectionable to the people living in the lands to be ceded, and following some unrest that act was repealed by the North Carolina legislature.

Georgia held onto its land claims until the corruption of the Yazoo land scandal became public and forced the state to act in 1802. Under the conditions of the Articles of Agreement, the United States first had to agree to Georgia's terms, after which the Georgia legislature would enact a deed of cession. Georgia's terms included a direct payment by the U.S. to Georgia of $1.25 million, a promise not to prohibit slavery in the territory ceded, and a promise to extinguish all Indian land claims, particularly those of the Creeks, and then cede the land to the state of Georgia. The Yazoo lands were still a point of legal contention in 1814, and the United States would ultimately pay a total of $6.2 million to Georgia and for claims related to the Yazoo lands.

Georgia had previously passed an act of cession in 1788, but this was rejected by the federal government due to concerns over the validity of some of Georgia's claims and also due to concerns over the status of the Yazoo lands, the same lands that would figure so prominently in the scandal that ultimately resulted in Georgia's cession.