THE CARE OF THE PUBLIC LANDS
Having been entrusted with the responsibility of administering the
back lands, Congress immediately entered upon the work of arranging
a method for their survey and sale, and of devising a feasible
government to be extended over them. The pressing need of securing a
revenue from them, together with a realisation that prospective
purchasers would require protection both from each other and from the
savages, impelled the members to immediate action. Against the many
failures with which the old Congress stands charged during the eight
years of its national control, the ordinances for the disposition and
government of the western lands form a most pleasant and redeeming
contrast. The Congress faced an absolutely new task. There were many
precedents in history for colonial holding, varying from the policy
of Greece, which allowed complete severance of home ties, to that of
Spain, which regarded colonies as existing solely for the benefit of
the mother country. By adopting the one, the United States must have
left the western emigrants to perish. The other was repugnant to a
people who had just rebelled against even the moderate colonial system
of Great Britain. Equality is the only standard for a republic. Congress
had resolved in 1780 that the lands ceded to its jurisdiction should
be "disposed of for the common benefit and be settled and formed into
distinct republican States which shall become members of the Federal
Union and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence
as the other States." Here was an action almost unprecedented. Instead
of holding the outlying region as a colonial possession for the benefit
of the older portion, or making it into an Indian hunting-ground as
Britain had tried to do, the Confederation of States had voluntarily
agreed to erect it into independent States upon perfect equality with
themselves. It was a practical application of the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, of no taxation without representation,
and of the real equality of all portions of the domain. The action was
taken for the very practical purpose of assuring the States that if
they surrendered their claims to the western lands, their citizens who
migrated thither would not lose their rights by changing from State
to national sovereignty.
Jefferson is presumed to be the father of the ordinance which first
collected these promises into a working model; but not even Jefferson,
rejoicing in laying out imaginary states from the new national
possession and giving classic names to them, could foresee that there
was being called into existence a factor most dangerous to his beloved
individualism. The people who would remove from the States and settle
upon lands purchased from the National Government, would be under
national protection, subject to national legislation, and eventually
be admitted by the national power to national statehood. Their affection
would be gradually won away from their native States to be centred on
the Union. Yet the States had not been able to hold the lands
individually. Thus was necessity silently making the Union.
The provisions of the Jefferson Ordinance of 1784 for the temporary
government of the western territory have been almost lost sight of
because, after it had been in operation for three years and little had
been accomplished through difficulty of dealing with the Indians in
possession of the land, circumstances arose which brought about a new
ordinance superseding the old and changing it in its working details.
Yet the first ordinance embodied the main principles in creating States
which have since been followed. The number of people in any given
portion of the public lands was to be the determining factor.
Jefferson's ordinance would allow these settlers to establish a
temporary government, to adopt the constitution of any one of the
thirteen States, and to elect a legislature. When their number should
reach twenty thousand, they would be allowed to call a convention and
establish a permanent constitution and government. Upon attaining a
population of free inhabitants equal to that of the least numerous of
the thirteen original States (at this time probably Georgia, whose
population was estimated at twenty-five thousand) they would be admitted
on equal footing with the other States. Between the establishment of
the temporary government and admission to statehood, the prospective
state should be allowed a representative in Congress with a right of
debating but not of voting. The well-known Ordinance of 1787, which
replaced that of 1784, substituted for the temporary government to be
erected by the settlers a ready-made administration of governor,
secretary, and territorial judges, to be sent out by the National
Government, and to continue until the free male population should
number five thousand, when they were to be allowed to exercise home
rule in setting up a territorial government. The standard for statehood
was fixed definitely in the later ordinance at sixty thousand free
inhabitants.
Jefferson, notwithstanding the supposedly aristocratic training of a
Virginia environment, placed no qualification for suffrage or office
in his ordinance. The Ordinance of 1787, presumably drafted under
democratic New England ideas, placed a qualification of ownership of
two hundred acres of land upon a representative in the territorial
legislature and of fifty acres upon an elector for a representative.
Here was an illustration of that revertive tendency in the sections
which has maintained the national equilibrium. Accumulated wealth in
the North was beginning to overcome the levelling creed of the Puritan,
while the economic loss resulting from slave labour in the South was
reducing the colonial Cavalier class in the planter States. The
exceedingly profitable cotton culture had not yet developed in the
Gulf States to create the ante-bellum aristocracy of the lower South,
nor had the stream of European immigration set in to the Northern
States to restore the levelling tendency there.
The two ordinances were alike in precluding the separation of any part
of the territory from the United States, requiring the inhabitants to
pay a portion of the national debt, and forbidding new States, to
interfere with the sale of or to tax the national public lands within
their limits.
Two provisions in Jefferson's first draft of the Ordinance of 1784
were struck out by the Congress before adoption. One, which forbade
granting of titles of nobility, was eliminated because, as Jefferson
wrote to Madison, "it was thought an improper place to encounter them."
The contest against the introduction of aristocracy was unlikely to
be precipitated in the backwoods bordering the Ohio River. Yet the
provision would have been in keeping with the spirit of the times.
Congress had recently rejected a proposition made to Washington by the
Polish Order of Knights of Divine Providence that their order should
be officially extended to the United States. The other eliminated
provision, forbidding slavery and involuntary servitude in the territory
after the year 1800 except as a punishment for crime, is important not
only as the first attempted restriction of the slavery system by the
National Government, but also as furnishing an interesting comparison
with the later sentiment on this unfortunate controversy which affected
every phase of United States history for a century.
When he incorporated this provision in his draft of the ordinance,
Jefferson was but little in advance of the opinion of the day on the
effects of employing slave labour. Never until its death was the system
so near dissolution as in the organising days between the birth of the
republic and the invention of the cotton-gin. State after State in
forming its constitution, or by special enactment, arranged for
immediate abolition or gradual emancipation. Even in slaveholding
Virginia and North Carolina, few could be found to defend the system
from an economic standpoint, although they had to admit the necessity
of its use in the rice swamps of South Carolina and Georgia.
Lafayette was urging Washington to employ his recently acquired leisure
in transforming slaves into free tenants. "Such an example as yours,"
he wrote from Cadiz, "might render it a general practice."
"Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into the minds
of the people of this country," replied the Virginia farmer, "but I
despair of seeing it. To set the slaves afloat at once would, I really
believe, be productive of much inconvenience and mischief, but by degrees
it certainly might and assuredly ought to be effected; and that too by
legislative authority."
At the same time he put himself on record as determined never to add
another to the number of his slaves by purchase. A petition for
emancipation had just been introduced into the Virginia House of
Delegates and was "rejected without dissent; but not without an avowed
patronage of its principles by sundry respectable members," as Madison
informed Washington. "A motion was made to throw it under the table,
which was treated with as much indignation on one side as the petition
itself was on the other."
Jefferson had been disappointed at an earlier time because no
emancipation provision had been incorporated in the Constitution of
Virginia.
"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!" he wrote in
this connection, "who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and
death itself in vindication of his own liberty and the next moment be deaf
to all those motives whose power supported him thro' his trial and inflict
on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery
than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."
An interesting commentary on the industrial progress of the country
is afforded by comparing these early views of Southern statesmen upon
the slavery system with those held by a later generation.
Public sentiment in Virginia was not ready to follow the champions of
individual freedom to the emancipation point, and it refused as
strenuously to be coerced as it did in later years. When the Quakers
of Philadelphia attempted to secure by law the freedom of a body-servant
whom a neighbour of Washington had taken with him on a visit to that
city, the General wrote to his friend, Robert Morris, the wealthy
merchant of Philadelphia, "If the practice of this society, of which
Mr. Dalby speaks, is not discountenanced, none of those whose
_misfortune_ it is to have slaves as attendants, will visit the city
if they can possibly avoid it."
However, the clause which was struck from the Ordinance of 1784 was
not intended to abolish slavery where it already existed, but to prevent
the extension of the system to new territory. It was the forerunner
of a similar controversy which attended every addition to the national
territory as the people spread westwardly, and which eventually became
a strong factor in precipitating the Civil War. The motion to cast out
was made by Spaight, of North Carolina, but Williamson, his colleague,
voted to retain the clause and thus divided the State. Jefferson was
outvoted by his two colleagues who favoured no restriction on the
people desiring to migrate to the new lands. Maryland and South Carolina
were the only Southern States unanimously against the clause. Six
States north of the Mason and Dixon line voted to retain the clause.
Jefferson took the defeat sorely.
"Seven States being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively," he
said, "it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the State which
was divided or of one of those which were of the negative, would have
prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new
country."
To Madison he reported, "South Carolina, Maryland, and! Virginia! voted
against it. N. Carolina was divided as would have been Virginia had
not one of its delegates been sick in bed." The absent member was young
James Monroe, serving his first term in Congress.
The close vote, of which Jefferson complains, well illustrates the
evils of voting by States in Congress. Seven affirmative State votes
were necessary to retain the anti-slavery clause. Only eleven States
were represented. One of these had but one delegate and his vote was
cast out by the rule requiring a State to be represented by at least
two delegates to participate in a vote. Of the ten States remaining,
seven must have at least two delegates of an affirmative mind from
each to retain the clause. Six of these States voted solidly to keep
the restriction, but the seventh State could not be secured, as
Jefferson stated. Considered by our present method of voting, sixteen
of the twenty-three delegates present voted affirmatively and seven
negatively; yet the motion was lost and the clause struck out. Rarely
has the power of a minority been so great. The individual may be allowed
to hide the mass by being held too close to the vision.
However, the defeat of Jefferson's plan of excluding slavery from the
territory after the year 1800 must be considered fortunate by all in
sympathy with the general purpose. By it, slavery would have been
permitted in the western country for sixteen years. The large influx
of migration into the territory within that period, especially from
the Southern States, would have established the system too thoroughly
to be eradicated. The difficulty with which slavery was permanently
kept out, although expressly prohibited by the Ordinance of 1787, is
a proof of this assertion. The clearing of the way for the later
prohibitive action by striking out the clause tended to the ultimate
good. On the other hand, it is pointed out that the Jefferson ordinance
provided only for "a temporary government of the western territory"
and covered "so much of the territory ceded or to be ceded by the
individual States to the United States as is already purchased or shall
be purchased of the Indian inhabitants and offered for sale by
Congress." Eulogists of Jefferson argue, consequently, that if his
restricting clause had been allowed to remain it would have prohibited
slavery in all the land west of the thirteen States, both north and
south, after the year 1800, and thus the entire slavery system would
have died through non-extension. But it must be remembered that the
only land thus far ceded lay north of the Ohio and immediately west
of the free States. It is not conceivable that such a restriction would
have been permitted to hold south of the Ohio and west of the
slaveholding States, directly in the line of migration. Indeed, when
the time did arrive to create a government south of the Ohio,
interference with slavery was distinctly prohibited. It is true, also,
that Jefferson's ordinance as adopted solemnly declared its articles
a charter of compact to stand as unalterable constitutions both before
and after the sale of any part of the vacant land; but that a new
ordinance should supersede it after three years, simply because a
proposed purchaser demanded some additional guarantees, is a proof
that none of its provisions could have withstood the pressure of slave
territorial expansion.
However, at the time, there seemed small prospect that the National
Government would ever be required to make regulations for any territory
south of the Ohio. Congress had sent out appeal after appeal to North
Carolina, citing the action of the other States, and begging her to
yield her claim to what is now the State of Tennessee. But she resisted
until 1790. South Carolina retained control of a long, narrow strip,
south of the present Tennessee and extending to the Mississippi, until
1787. Georgia, claiming almost the whole of the present States of
Alabama and Mississippi, remained deaf likewise to the entreaties of
Congress until 1802. Virginia, having yielded so much of her original
claim as lay north of the Ohio, was disposed to retain her claim to
the Kentucky country. Jefferson wished to yield all lying west of the
mouth of the Kanawha. Washington approved of this limit, seeing, as
he said, "the impolicy of this State's grasping at more territory than
they are competent to the government of." This liberal sentiment was
never sufficiently general to be effective. Thus it came about that
the Southwestern territory, which Congress ultimately created from all
land ceded south of the Ohio, was never more than a temporary and
passing arrangement compared with the North-west territory.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE PROPOSED WESTERN STATES. From Morse's
"American Gazetteer". The five States here outlined in the North-west
Territory, with slightly changed boundaries, are to be found on the
map at present.]
After much study, Congress drew up the Ordinance of 1785 for the survey
and sale of such land as might be given to its care. The details of
this important arrangement in the story of the American people
illustrate the advantages arising from instituting new governments at
a stroke. The rectangular system of land surveys, like the decimal
system of money, was devised and not inherited. Each has proved a
blessing in its simplicity. The divisions of the land upon an
even-number basis, the progressive numbering of the divisions, the
elasticity of the system, and the subdivisions arranged to accommodate
small purchasers, have conduced by their simplicity and adaptability
to speedy disposition and settlement of the national domain and have
minimised later litigation and discord. Since the history of the
American people has been influenced so extensively and persistently
by the disposal and peopling of the public lands, the simple survey
system may be counted among the valuable parts of the national
machinery.
Surveys were to be made by the "geographer" of the United States,
assisted by a surveyor from each of the States. One-seventh of all
lands surveyed was to be reserved for the land bounties promised to
those who had served in the Continental army. An old handbill,
frequently reproduced, shows that among the inducements to enlistment
held out during the darkest period of the war were "Ease, affluence,
and a good farm." The certificates issued to the soldiers at the close
of the war in lieu of money were made receivable in payment for public
land. A share in all gold, silver, lead, and copper mines was retained
by the National Government. Lot number sixteen in every township was
reserved for the maintenance of public schools. A provision for setting
aside the section adjoining it for the support of religion was struck
out, nor could a motion prevail to preserve it for "charitable uses."
The votes on this question seemed to be governed purely by individual
opinion. The delegates from Virginia, whose Legislature had just dealt
the Established Church in that State its death-blow, voted to retain
the reservation of land for religious purposes, much like the old
church glebe lands. But the separation of Church and State had become
too complete to enter upon a scheme so suggestive of establishment.
For three years the Ordinance of 1784 awaited the migration of settlers
to the territory who would be protected by it, and, at the same time,
put it into effect. Thomas Hutchins, the national "geographer," and
his assistants from the several States, laid off seven ranges of
townships, in the eastern part of the present State of Ohio, according
to the land Ordinance of 1785, before rumours of hostile Indians drove
them back. The Secretary of War was instructed to draw by lot enough
of the surveyed land to satisfy such bounty land certificates as might
be presented and to advertise the remainder for sale. United States
troops were employed to drive out the "squatters" on the public lands,
to burn their cabins, and destroy their crops. But not an acre was
sold in those three years, not a certificate of national indebtedness
redeemed, and not a shilling received from the land sales for the needy
treasury.
The Jefferson ordinance had been intended for such western lands as
might from time to time be given to the National Government. But no
land south of the Ohio was surrendered. Congress, therefore, determined
to cast aside the old ordinance, and to form the portion yielded into
a specific territory, with a new ordinance which would allow more
leeway in forming the States and give Congress more control over the
domain from its incipience. Accordingly, Johnson, of Maryland, offered
a new ordinance in the spring of 1786, which passed to a second reading.
With the exception of the reforms noted above, it closely resembled
the old ordinance. But in July following, after an interregnum of no
quorum, the Congress passed, by an almost unanimous vote and after a
consideration of only a few days, an entirely new law governing the
territory north-west of the Ohio. It was the famous Ordinance of 1787.
Its sudden transformation, inexplicable to early investigators and
solved only by later research, was the result of a business transaction
connected with the bounty certificates given to the Revolutionary
soldiers.
During the progress of the war, it had been necessary to secure enlistment
by offering bounty lands. The desire to realise on these promises was
shared by officers and privates alike. Doubtless around many a camp-fire,
as the war drew to a close, the value of these land certificates was
discussed, and plans made for "associating" to form colonies in the "back
lands" to which the soldiers were winning both right and title. The
danger-line in the future would be along the frontier, where the newly
won empire must be guarded from invasion both from British Canada and the
Spanish Floridas, and where the advancing line of pioneers must be
protected from hostile Indians. Bands of these "associators" were
organised to obtain their allotments in the new country and to settle upon
them. They would "plant a brave, a hardy, and respectable race of people
as our advanced post," wrote Washington in presenting the project to
Congress. "A settlement formed by such men would give security to our
frontiers; the very name of it would awe the Indians."
One body of men, styling themselves "The Ohio Company of Associators,"
composed of ex-Revolutionary officers and privates residing in and
about Boston, sent a botanist-parson, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler,
to the Congress in the summer of 1787, to urge a proposition they had
advanced for the purchase of a large tract on the Ohio River. These
"adventurers," as they styled themselves, were desirous of driving a
good bargain in a low price for the land and also of gaining certain
guarantees from Congress which would give them as much personal liberty
and protection in the new home and under the National Government as
they enjoyed in their present residences under their State Governments.
Cutler, provided with forty-two letters of introduction to members of
Congress and prominent citizens of New York city, reached the seat of
government in due time. "At 11 o'clock," he wrote in his private
journal, "I was introduced to a number of members on the floor of
Congress Chamber, in the City Hall, by Colonel Carrington, member from
Virginia. Delivered my petition for purchasing lands for the Ohio
Company, and proposed terms and conditions of purchase." Fortunately
there was a quorum in Congress, the first in nearly two months. A few
days later, Cutler was sent a copy of the Johnson ordinance then
pending. To this he proposed "several amendments." Three days afterward,
the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, for the government of that portion
of the territory north-west of the Ohio, was completed and adopted to
Cutler's satisfaction. "It is in a degree remodelled," he wrote in his
journal. "The amendments I proposed have all been made except one, and
that is better qualified."
Nevertheless it took a week more of haggling and lobbying before
acceptable terms of sale could be agreed upon. Another company composed
of "principal characters" in the city had to be taken into the deal
in a "profound secret." Arthur St. Clair, the president of the Congress,
had to be accepted by the Associators as the governor of the territory,
in order to gain his support. Cutler had to finesse by threatening to
buy from some of the States which had land for sale within their
borders. It is unfortunate for those who believe that our fathers were
actuated entirely by disinterested motives and utterly devoid of
political guile that the parson lobbyist kept such a candid diary. Day
by day the business proceeded, Cutler even making a side visit to
Philadelphia while his leaven was working. At last even "that stubborn
mule of a Kearney," as the disgusted agent called him, was "left alone,"
a sufficient number of votes was secured, and Cutler was receiving
congratulations on the prospects of the Ohio Company.
"By this Ordinance," he wrote, "we obtained the grant of near 5,000,000
of acres of land, amounting to three millions and a half of dollars; one
million and a half of acres for the Ohio Company and the remainder for a
private speculation in which many of the principal characters in America
are concerned."
The importance of this transaction lies not only in the fact that it
was the first sale of public lands in the United States, but that the
government established for the territory formed many precedents for
later Territories and States. Some of its provisions deserve a close
examination. The changes made in the Johnson ordinance to satisfy the
Ohio Company are found chiefly in the appended six articles of the
Ordinance of 1787. These formed a guarantee that citizens in the
territory deprived of the protection of their States would have the
same personal rights which they enjoyed before leaving the States. The
United States, later destined to become a protector, was feared lest
it might be an oppressor. Such individual rights as _habeas corpus_,
trial by jury, freedom of conscience, possession of property, and
similar birthrights of Englishmen, had been secured in the States by
incorporating them in the various State Constitutions under the general
name of "declaration of rights" or "bill of rights." Without such
specific title, they were placed in the Ordinance of 1787. The sixth
article, no doubt also demanded by Cutler, incorporated the very wording
of Jefferson's rejected anti-slavery clause of three years before,
except making it immediate instead of after 1800. The New England
Associators were unwilling to offer their free labour in competition
with slave labour in their new home. The idea was general. "The total
exclusion of slavery from the State" had been a prominent provision
in a transitory association in Connecticut four years before.
[Illustration: NATHAN DANE'S DRAFT OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CLAUSE IN THE
ORDINANCE OF 1787. The authorship of this article of the Ordinance has
been in much dispute. Benton attributed it to a similar provision,
drafted by Jefferson, which was struck out of the Ordinance of 1784.
Northern men gave the credit to Nathan Dane, a Massachusetts jurist,
who was in Congress in 1787. During the sectional feeling aroused over
the admission of Missouri in 1820, a dispute arose in Congress over
the respective claims of Jefferson and of Dane. Of this, Dane himself
said: "In April, 1820, search was made for the original manuscript of
the Ordinance of 1787. Daniel Bent's answer was 'that no written draft
could be found'; but there was found attached to the printed Ordinance
in my handwriting the sixth article, as it now is, that is, the slave
article." The original is now in the Library of Congress, Manuscript
Division. The signature of Chas. Thomson, Jr., calls attention to the
faithful secretary of the Continental Congress during its entire
existence.]
The century contest over slavery in the United States made that factor
so prominent in national history that it overshadows matters of equal
importance in many transactions. The anti-slavery provision of the
Ordinance of 1787 has been extravagantly praised ever since the oratory
of Daniel Webster first called general attention to it. Sectional
partisans have exhausted logic in trying to trace the authorship to
Jefferson, a Southern man, or to Dane, a Northern man. The North has
credited it to the persistence of New England; the South, pointing to
the five Southern affirmative votes out of the eight, has attributed
it to the indulgence of their section. In recognising this first
anti-slavery action of the National Government, Northern orators have
overlooked an attendant clause, the first national fugitive slave law.
It paved the way for a similar provision in the Constitution and led
to the obnoxious slave rendition laws of later years. In praising the
indulgence of the South, the eulogists of that section have failed to
consider the price the New England Associators paid in this first
slavery compromise of the nation.
When the blinding passion of the slavery question is eliminated from
a consideration of this ordinance some other beneficent provisions,
added through the desire to satisfy the New England purchasers, begin
to appear. They are taken largely from the "bill of rights" placed in
the first constitution of the State of Virginia by George Mason, and
copied in many of the later constitutions, including that of the United
States. They seek to guarantee the rights of the individual against
the encroachments of the Government; to embody the principles which
the English barons secured at Runnymede; to secure the inheritances
left to the English-speaking people by Hampden and Pym. Although many
of the early State Constitutions contained a guarantee of religious
freedom, _habeas corpus_, trial by jury, rights to property, and regard
for contracts, as has just been stated, these principles had not been
expressed in the Articles of Confederation and the General Government
was not bound in any manner to grant them in the western territory.
But their incorporation in the ordinance gave assurance that their
benefits were not to be confined to the original States.
Equally important is the clause providing for equal division of the
property of people dying intestate. This first legislation of the
National Government on the subject of real property dealt a death-blow
to primogeniture, and to the last of the inherited feudal customs of
the Middle Ages. It prevented the accumulation of large estates, and
insured the individual ownership of thousands of homes. No system of
foreign landlordism was possible under it. The people were to become
their own lords paramount of all socage lands. Quit-rents were to be
converted into bank accounts. The individual title derived from the
National Government involves all the elements necessary for a transfer
of the soil. Indeed, this principle of the Ordinance of 1787 not only
became a pattern for future State Constitutions, but reacted in similar
provisions for those already created.
Another clause of the ordinance has often been the subject of eulogy.
"Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government
and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall
for ever be encouraged." Yet this is simply the statement of a principle
and precisely such a principle as would be held by the New England
Associators where learning had been almost a fetich and where education
at the public expense had its inception in the guise of charity schools.
The principle only is expressed here, since the land ordinance of two
years before promised an endowment for public education as long as
enough land remained to lay out a county. The Associators carried out
this principle in their own tract by donating lands for a university
and for the support of the gospel.
Immediately following the bargain of Dr. Cutler with Congress, the
Associators prepared to migrate _en masse_ to their purchase. What the
hardy spirits among the country people of the South Atlantic States
had been able to accomplish by individual initiative and sheer
endurance, the town-dwellers of the North Atlantic States did more
systematically and rapidly by concerted action. Organisation and
government protection saved the Ohio Associators from such experiments
of colonisation as had frequently led to Indian captivities and
abandoned settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky. The project of a line
of forts along the frontier settlements, conceived during the Indian
and Revolutionary wars, assumed shape after the first sale of public
lands had really been consummated. Forts McIntosh, Steuben, Washington,
Harmar, Vincennes and Massac, were speedily erected or garrisoned,
thus guarding the length of the Ohio River, the pathway to the
North-west. By subsequent Indian treaties, additional reservations
were secured and forts scattered throughout the territory at portages
and along the river highways. Under this protection, the Ohio Company
sent out its band of artificers to erect dwellings and a stockade for
the first settlement. Scarcely a year was allowed to elapse after the
purchase until Marietta was founded on the Ohio at the mouth of the
Muskingum by the veterans of the Revolutionary War and their friends.
It was 170 miles down the Ohio beyond the outpost of civilisation at
Pittsburg. Similar settlements were speedily founded on other purchases
and on the military lands.
[Illustration: DR. CUTLER'S CHURCH AND PARSONAGE AT IPSWICH HAMLET, 1787.
The rendezvous from which the first company started for the Ohio, December
3, 1787.]
The national governor and judges for the Northwest territory in due
time created a set of laws, established courts, and erected local
governments. The latter was effected by applying the county system,
familiar to the people of the Central and Southern States, to the land
survey county, and by giving to the township, a unit in the survey
system, some of the functions of the New England town. By this happy
combination, settlers from any part of the old States would find a
local government with whose forms they were to some extent familiar.
The Symmes purchase on the Ohio below the Ohio Company's grant was
opened to settlement, as was the Virginia Military tract lying between
the two. Through Pittsburg, "the gateway of the west," came a throng
of pioneers to float down the Ohio to the land of promise. The United
States forts protected them on the northern or "Indian side" of the
river. In 1786, no less than 117 boats were counted passing Fort Harmar.
So rapidly did the people take possession of this heritage of the
Revolutionary struggle that within fifteen years the eastern part was
ready to claim the promise of statehood. Eight years later, this new
State, Ohio, had passed in rank of population the older
trans-Alleghanian States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Blessed with
contiguous waterways lying in the line of travel, forming the gateway
into the West by the down-thrusting arm of Canada, the first State to
be created out of the public domain, with definite land surveys instead
of tomahawk marks, with an endowed system of public schools, Ohio
gained a political pre-eminence among the newer States and a national
prestige which has scarcely yet been rivalled.
The solution of the problem of the frontier was thus so easily and
permanently solved by the Central Government in its home-making policy
that one scarcely appreciates the fear of Washington and others
interested in the back country lest it become a refuge for outlaws and
banditti. Mingling with the savages, it was feared that these outcasts
would create a constant menace to the advance of civilisation. Colonial
governors had much difficulty in controlling the "lawless banditti of
the borders." The first settlers across the mountains were considered
in England as "uncultivated banditti" and as "fanatical and hungry
republicans" and the "overplus of Ireland's population." So late as
1835, De Tocqueville, the French commentator on America, declared that
Americans who quit the posts of the Atlantic to plunge into the western
wilderness were adventurers, impatient of restraint, greedy of wealth,
and frequently men expelled from the State in which they were born.
But he had no doubt that in time society would assume as much stability
and regularity in the remote West as it had done upon the coast of the
Atlantic ocean.
At the time, the action of Congress called fresh attention to the
attractiveness of the back country and the possibilities there when
population should warrant the erection of States. Stanzas of Philip
Freneau represent the feeling of the day:
"What wonders there shall Freedom show,
What mighty _States_ successive grow.
What charming scenes attract the eye
On wild Ohio's savage stream.
Here Nature reigns, whose works outvie
The boldest pattern art can frame.
The _East_ is half to slaves consigned,
And half to slavery more refined."