Selling the State

This chapter shows how New York State was given away piecemeal in large tracts for small sums to elites with political connections from the earliest colonial times, and this process continued into the early American period. With a few notable exceptions, such as the New Military Tract and the Cayuga and Onondaga Reservations, all the land alienated from Haudenosaunee possession after the revolution passed into and through the hands of speculators. Although these speculations gave wealth to a few, they bankrupted others. A close examination of the financial history of these speculations reveals a great deal about the challenges and difficulties faced by participants in the land market at the time. It also provides clues to the real value of land. The chapter then describes the business of land dealing in several of the more carefully investigated of these speculations, including the Holland Land Company purchases in Cazenovia and western New York and the Phelps–Gorham and Pulteney purchases to the west of Seneca Lake.