March 26

[In my March 26, 1791 letter to Governor Alexander Martin of North Carolina, I write from Philadelphia in my current position as Secretary of State to request essential cartographic and legal data regarding the lands North Carolina recently ceded to the federal government. I ask him to help me map the cession's eastern boundary and precisely identify all pre-existing private land claims, including military bounties and a major land grant to General Nathanael Greene, so that the federal government can avoid selling tracts that already have legitimate owners. My proactive attempt to meticulously cross-reference state and federal records to protect individual property rights highlights my deep dedication to systemic administrative order, showing how I used the tedious work of public land management to quietly reinforce stability, minimize legal chaos, and secure the territorial authority of the young republic.]

Having in charge to lay before Congress a general statement of all the lands subject to their disposal, it becomes necessary for me, so far as respects the proceedings of North Carolina, to draw on a map the line which forms the Eastern boundary of the cession of that State to Congress, and then to specify all the private claims within the cession, which form exceptions to their general right of granting the ceded territory. Three classes of these exceptions have been stated to me. First, the returns from Armstrong's office. Second, the claims of the officers of the North Carolina line of the lands reserved for them on the Cumberland. Third, a grant of twenty-five thousand acres to General Greene. I find myself under the necessity of troubling your Excellency to enable me to lay down with precision this dividing line, and then a precise specification and location of the three classes of exceptions before mentioned, and also, any other exceptions which you may know of. Besides that these things can be known only from your offices, I am induced to ask you to take the trouble from an assurance that you will be glad to assist in furnishing any information which may prevent the citizens of your State from being involved in litigations by a sale to others of lands to which they may have a just claim, and which would not be so sold, if their claims could be previously known. As I propose to set about this statement immediately, I shall consider it as a great personal obligation, if the measures which your Excellency may be pleased to take for my assistance, can be immediately executed, and the result communicated to me.