With little power to tax, the federal government decided to use the sale of the Western Territories to pay off American Revolutionary War debt. The Continental Congress was deeply in debt following the Declaration of Independence. The Land Ordinance of 1785 marks the beginning of the Public Land Survey System. Before this could happen, the land needed to be surveyed. The government wished both to distribute land to Revolutionary War soldiers in reward for their services, as well as to sell land as a way of raising money for the nation. Originally proposed by Thomas Jefferson to create a nation of “yeoman farmers”, the PLSS began shortly after the American Revolutionary War, when the federal government became responsible for large areas of land west of the original thirteen states. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, following the end of the American Revolution. The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. All, I cheated this morning, all this is taken directly from Wikipedia in an article on the Public Land Survey System.
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