Editing Midwestern United States (section)

==== Squatters ====
{{Main|Northwest Territory|Squatting in the United States}}

[[File:Northwest-territory-usa-1787.png|thumb|[[Northwest Territory]] 1787]]

Settlers without legal claims, called "squatters", had been moving into the Midwest for years before 1776. They pushed further and further down the Ohio River during the 1760s and 1770s and sometimes engaged in conflict with the Native Americans.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|title=Winning the West with Words, Language and Conquest in the Lower Great Lakes|last=Buss|first=James|year=2011|pages=39}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815|url=https://archive.org/details/middlegroundindi0000whit_d8e7|url-access=registration|last=White|first=Richard|year=1991|pages=[https://archive.org/details/middlegroundindi0000whit_d8e7/page/340 340]–341}}</ref> British officials were outraged. These squatters were characterized by British General [[Thomas Gage]] as "too Numerous, too Lawless, and Licentious ever to be restrained", and regarded them as "almost out of Reach of Law and government; Neither the Endeavors of Government, or Fear of Indians has kept them properly within Bounds."<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815|url=https://archive.org/details/middlegroundindi0000whit_d8e7|url-access=registration|last=White|first=Richard|year=1991|pages=[https://archive.org/details/middlegroundindi0000whit_d8e7/page/340 340]}}</ref> The British had a long-standing goal of establishing a [[Indian barrier state|Native American buffer state]] in the American Midwest to resist American westward expansion.<ref>Dwight L. Smith, "A North American Neutral Indian Zone: Persistence of a British Idea" ''Northwest Ohio Quarterly'' 1989 61(2-4)|page=46-63</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Francis M. Carroll|title=A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783–1842|url=https://archive.org/details/goodwisemeasures0000carr|url-access=registration|year=2001|publisher=U of Toronto Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/goodwisemeasures0000carr/page/24 24]|isbn=9780802083586}}</ref>

With victory in the American Revolution the new government considered evicting the squatters from areas that were now federally owned public lands.<ref>Alan Brown, "The Role of the Army in Western Settlement Josiah Harmar's Command, 1785-1790" ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 93#2  pp. 161-172. [https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/download/42499/42220 online]</ref> In 1785, soldiers under General [[Josiah Harmar]] were sent into the Ohio country to destroy the crops and burn down the homes of any squatters they found living there. But overall the federal policy was to move Indians to western lands (such as the [[Indian Territory]] in modern Oklahoma) and allow a very large numbers of farmers to replace a small number of hunters. Congress repeatedly debated how to legalize settlements. On the one hand, Whigs such as [[Henry Clay]] wanted the government to get maximum revenue and also wanted stable middle-class law-abiding settlements of the sort that supported towns (and bankers). Jacksonian Democrats such as [[Thomas Hart Benton (politician)|Thomas Hart Benton]] wanted the support of poor farmers, who reproduced rapidly, had little cash, and were eager to acquire cheap land in the West. Democrats did not want a big government, and keeping revenues low helped that cause. Democrats avoided words like "squatter" and regarded "actual settlers" as those who gained title to land, settled on it, and then improved upon it by building a house, clearing the ground, and planting crops. A number of means facilitated the legal settlement of the territories in the Midwest: [[Speculation|land speculation]], [[Public domain (land)|federal public land auctions]], bounty [[land grant]]s in lieu of pay to military veterans, and, later, [[Preemption (land)|preemption rights]] for squatters. The "squatters" became "pioneers" and were increasingly able to purchase the lands on which they had settled for the minimum price thanks to various preemption acts and laws passed throughout the 1810s-1840s. In Washington, Jacksonian Democrats favored squatter rights while banker-oriented Whigs were opposed; the Democrats prevailed.<ref>Richard White, '' "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West'' (U  of Oklahoma Press, 1991) pp. 137-143.</ref><ref>On federal policy see  Benjamin Horace Hibbard, ''[[iarchive:historyofpublicl00hibb|A history of the public land policies]]'' (1924).</ref><ref>On the settlers and squatters, see Everett Dick, ''[[iarchive:lureoflandsocial0000dick|The Lure of the Land: A Social History of the Public Lands from the Articles of Confederation to the New Deal]]'' (U of Nebraska Press, 1970) pp 9-69.</ref><ref>Matthew Hill,  " 'They are not surpassed...by an equal number of citizens of any equal country in the world': squatter society in the American West", ''American Nineteenth Century History'', (2023), {{doi|10.1080/14664658.2022.2167296}}.</ref>