On March 12, 1823, the United States Supreme Court challenged Daniel Webster’s case involving Vermont land.

Original land grants in Vermont included plots in every town set aside for the Church of England and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, as decreed by British law.

After the Revolutionary War, Vermont created a law to redistribute these plots in 1794. This was in blatant defiance of the British treaty that retained these plots as British property. Britain did, however, transfer the plots of land for which they laid claim to the Episcopal Church.

Image courtesy the Vermont Historical Society.