Western Reserve, The: When, by the treaty of 1783, Great Britain relinquished the territory south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River, disputes arose among the States of Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut as to the right of occupancy in that locality. The difficulty was finally settled by the cession of the whole to the Federal Government, but Connecticut reserved a tract of nearly 4,000 000 acres on Lake Erie. That State finally disposed of this in small lots to colonists, and so accumulated a

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