The Constitution of the United States nowise took the place of the instruments under which the various sites were governed. It was a general constitution strictly for the control of federal functions. But now an entirely new question had to be dealt with - that of federal jurisdiction over lands belonging to no state. Within five years after the close of the Revolution four states, New York, Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had ceded to the national government lands that they had claimed, lying west of the Allegheny ranges. These claims, as referred to in history, were somewhat obscure and overlapping; but at any rate the cessions placed under the control of the United States a tract of virgin territory, and this comprised the country northwest of the Ohio River that George Rogers Clark had won in the name of Virginia. It was the beginning of the "public domain," and one duty of the new government was to take care of it.

Thus it was that while the Federal Convention in Philadelphia was making the nation's constitution, Congress, in New York, was elaborating a policy of government for this domain.