When the United States won independence from Britain, the borders were set as seen in the map below:
As you can see, several states had claims on the land west of the Ohio River due to the confusing sea-to-sea grants. In order to avoid conflict between the states, they agreed to cede these lands to the federal government.
My question is, what if this never happened and the federal government never owned land?
- Who would have gotten that land? Virginia IMO would have the upper hand, but lets not forget that much of that land was at the time populated by Native Americans.
- This would also mean that there would never be a federal district. Would the capital be where it is now or somewhere else?
- There would obviously be no expansionary wars, such as the war against Mexico, but states that were independent could request to join the Union. People that wanted to become independent could also ask for assistance from the U.S., and if they succeeded they could join the Union afterwards (say California or Texas).
- The Louisiana or the Alaska purchase wouldn't be possible either, unless one of the states made the purchase (Jefferson for example may have tried to purchase New Orleans for Virginia not the U.S.)
There is of course the possibility that the country wouldn't have survived if the states had to fight over territories.
My question is what do you think the U.S. would have liked like now if this was the case, and how would this have affected the rest of the world?