[purpleraine]

Here's a follow-up. The federal government was still in debt with no way out a decade later. Then they decided that all new territories would be federal land giving the government the right to sell off property and put the money in the federal treasury.

This book provides a history of how some of the early boundary disputes between the states were settled and how Ohio was surveyed and the subsequent retiring of the Revolutionary War debt and the strengthening of the federal government.

http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-America-Boundaries-National-Identity/dp/0802715338/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206154854&sr=8-2

[RightWhale]

Sounds like an excellent book. I probably won’t get to it since I have several shelves of other assigned reading, but Andy Jackson’s threat to turn over all the Fed land to the States that were being created in the West was a powerful bargaining chip. Didn’t even come close to happening, but it should now.