The US government bought a bunch of land. At this point all of the citizens of the country owned the land.
At some point, an area within that federally owned land petitioned for statehood, and as part of that territory becoming a state there was a negotiation as to which entity would own which land.
There was no state to own land before it became a state. The creation of a state is a joint decision between the territory and the federal government.
Do you dispute these facts?
Yes I do. It's a distinction without a difference. How do you adequately address the matter of the early states, and not just the original 13 ( most of which are east of the Mississippi) having federal land ownership within their borders that is single digit percentage-wise, when all the states in the West that joined later having, in many cases, the Fed Gov owning at least half of the land and in many cases upwards of 90%? It flys in the face of the Constitution which set up the states as the supreme entities, with the FedGov relegated to the few matters that are/were considered to be of national importance ( like defense and immigration. which the bastards seem to be determined to ignore, and Education, etc. which they are steadfastly determined to commandeer) land ownership being also nowhere defined in the Constitution. Either you are a States Rights Advocate or you are a Federal Government Sycophant. There isn't any middle ground. You seemingly are fine with Federal supremacy and I am not. For years on end, the Fed Gov has intruded in the States business of managing their own land area. The further control of non-private land gets from the people who live on or near it, the worse it is for those people. I don't buy all this crap about “the feds preserving anything.” And added to all this you have the EPA intruding on private property rights. All of it should undergo a massive overhaul, with the end game to transfer, over time any and all land for which the Federal Goverment has no immediate legitimate use. Furthermore, Federally owned land that has ceased to be of use for it's original purpose, should also be returned to the people. To be sure, states will need to manage their "newly acquired" land, but that management will be done a whole lot closer to the people than it is now. Plus, all these rogue federal agencies will go out of business.
Then give it to the counties!
Fedgov was not the orwellian nightmare it is today, either. And federalism wasn’t such a massive problem to citizens and the states to the point it as usurped powers not explocitly given toit but taken fromthe dfates and the people, 9th and 10th amendment issues.
I understand how we purchased, and in other cases, won territory. Doesnt change my viewpoint. You cant have two classes of states, because the colonies and other states not carved out of huge purchases do not have significant portions of their states federalized, off limits and not under their own jurisdictions.