>>There is no reason given, that I saw, whereby this principle should be considered a constitutional requirement for lands acquired by the USA in other ways, such as by the Louisiana Purchase or the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, which is how the USA acquired title to Nevada.<<
By posting this I am not representing myself to be a Constitutional expert!
Articles of Confederation, Article VI, clause 1 All engagements entered into before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. In Article IX “... no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States.”
Which is of course why the agreements entered into between the Confederation and the various eastern states continued to be valid under the Constitution.
But those agreements were with regard to particular territories, and did not establish a general law with regard to territories. Though they could perhaps be construed as creating a non-binding precedent.
no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States.
True. BTW, that is the closing phrase of what is possibly the longest sentence I have ever seen!
The next paragraph is as follows.
"All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under different grants of two or more states, whose jurisdictions as they may respect such lands, and the states which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either party to the congress of the united states, be finally determined as near as may be in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different states."
This appears to draw a distinction between "the private right of soil" and "territorial jurisdiction" of a State.
IOW, property in land, title to ownership of land, is a very different thing from territorial sovereignty. Title to land can change many times, but it does not affect the state's sovereign rights over the land.
I'm having some trouble getting an overview of whether or when federal title to land was transferred to states.
However, I did run across an Executive Order issues by A. Jackson, the Specie Circular, in 1836. This required that payment to the federal government for purchase of public land be in specie rather than paper money.
Since most of the land east of the Mississippi had already become states in 1836, I suspect much of the land in question was land within these states still in possession of the federal government and being sold to settlers. But I can't prove that yet.
The Specie Circular caused huge uproar throughout the West, which doesn't seem likely if it was limited to the few areas that were still territories.
MI and AR became states right around then. IA, MN and WI weren't even organized territories yet, so the US wasn't selling land in them.
This may all seem more than a little irrelevant. But I keep seeing articles and comments implying that states east of the Rockies had title to all land within their borders transferred to the state at time of statehood, and that therefore the western states were ripped off.
But I haven't seen any real evidence that this was the case, particularly for the states between the Mississippi and the Rockies.