Editorial Note

These resolutions were merely one episode in an exceedingly difficult and prolonged controversy into which Congress was first drawn on 8 May 1776 (Journals of the Continental Congress, IV, 334–35, 405). During the war, the concern of Congress about the dispute among New Hampshire, New York, and, to a lesser degree, Massachusetts over jurisdiction and land titles in the Vermont area, and between each of these three states and the de facto independent government created by many of the Vermont settlers, was the greater because the matters at issue often diverted these states from concentrating upon, and from co-operating fully with the other ten states in, the main business of winning the Revolution. Furthermore, the efforts by Congress to solve the divisive issue of the western lands, and thereby to secure the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, were hampered by the “jockeying” of the delegations from each of these three disputants to gain votes in support of the claim of its state to Vermont (above, Motion of 6 September 1780 regarding the Western Lands, editorial note).

By mid-1780, Congress had at least made clear (a) that it would not recognize the independence of Vermont (Journals of the Continental Congress, VIII, 508–11); (b) that, despite the insistence of the New York delegation, it would not accept the King’s Order in Council of 1764 as settling the jurisdictional issue (above, notes on Livermore’s statement, n. 8); and (c) that, as soon as nine states other than the three at loggerheads were amply represented, it would, with the consent of the three, “hear and examine into and finally determine the disputes and differences relative to jurisdiction.” The resolutions summing up this position were adopted on 2 June 1780, with eight state delegations, including JM and his Virginia colleagues, voting for them and with those of Maryland and Rhode Island opposed. The delegates from North Carolina and Delaware were absent, and those from Massachusetts were evenly divided (ibid., XVII, 482–85). One week later a motion, introduced by George Walton of Georgia and seconded by Nathaniel Folsom of New Hampshire, to postpone the hearing until 12 September carried without a recorded vote but in spite of the opposition of the delegation from New York (ibid., XVII, 499). On 16 September, the second day of the hearing, the resolutions printed below were offered by JM and seconded by Francis Kinloch of South Carolina (ibid., XVIII, 832–33).

Why JM should suddenly have assumed this active role in the matter is not answered by the sources. Neither he nor Kinloch was then, nor had either of them been before, on any committee assigned to deal with the Vermont issue. Perhaps of relevance are the facts that Folsom had left for home on 15 September (Burnett, Letters description begins Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (8 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1921–36). description ends , V, lviii, 386) and Walton would do so later that month (ibid., V, lvi). Except for Walton and certain delegates from the three states primarily affected by the controversy, no member who had been prominently identified with it during the past three years was in Congress when JM submitted his resolutions. Furthermore, earlier in September he had replaced the absent Joseph Jones as Virginia’s main spokesman on the western lands question—an issue with which the Vermont problem interlocked.