In April 1784, the Continental Congress adopted the Report of Government for the Western Territory, a broad plan drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson for organizing the United States' new western lands that were ceded by the states and purchased from Native Americans. The resulting Land Ordinance of 1785, passed on May 20th, established the public land system by which all federal land was surveyed and distributed. It created a rectilinear survey system dividing land into townships of six miles square aligned by north-south and east-west baselines, and set aside certain lands for Revolutionary War veterans and for public schools. In late 1785, Thomas Hutchins, geographer of the United States, began the first federal land survey under the ordinance, extending a base line called the Geographer's Line westward from the Pennsylvania border along the north bank of the Ohio River to form the northern boundary of seven ranges of townships. Each township was subdivided into one-mile-square sections, with a range as a north-south row, and a section of 640 acres was the smallest unit offered for sale at public auction. Because few could afford land at $1.00 per acre, and because illegal settlers and tensions with Native Americans slowed the work, only Ohio's Seven Ranges was completed under the first survey.