Westsylvania

In the years before the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), jurisdiction of the region west of the Allegheny Mountains around Pittsburgh and along the Ohio River had been disputed between the British colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Inspired by the ideals of the American Revolution, in the summer of 1776 settlers in the region proclaimed their independence from Pennsylvania and Virginia by petitioning the Second Continental Congress to recognize Westsylvania as the fourteenth state.

They also informed the Congress that "Land Jobbers" were facilitating unlawful encroachment on Indian land, which would produce "a bloody, ruinous & destructive War with the Indians...." Hoping to create order out of this chaos, the petitioners therefore asked that: the Said Country be constituted declared & acknowledged a separate, distinct, and independent Province & Government by the Title and under the name of — 'the Province & Government of Westsylvania,' be empowered and enabled to form such Laws & Regulations & such a System of Polity & Government as is best adapted & most agreeable to the peculiar Necessities, local Circumstances & Situation thereof & its inhabitants invested with every other power, Right, Privilege & Immunity, vested, or to be vested in the other American Colonies, be considered as a Sister Colony & the fourteenth Province of the American Confederacy....[3]States with western land claims were reluctant to recognize the independence of frontier regions, however, and so Congress chose to ignore the petition.

In 1782, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a Pittsburgh lawyer and strong supporter of the national government, convinced the Pennsylvania Assembly to declare that agitation for a separate state was treason.

[7] According to historian Jack Sosin, "Finley's efforts, the threat that the settlers' land might be sold, and the cool reaction to the proposed new state by Congress finally quieted the Westerners.