USA > Indiana > St Joseph County > A history of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Volume 1 > Part 16
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It was further provided that all the lands within the territory so ceded to the United States. except those disposed of in bounties to the officers and soldiers of the American army, including Clark and his command, and lands reserved for certain other purposes named in the act of cession, "shall be considered as a common fund for the use and benefit of such
of the United States as have become, or shall become, members of the confederation or federal alliance of said states, Virginia inclu- sive, according to their usual respective pro- portions in the general charge and expendi- ture, and shall be faithfully and bona fide disposed of for that purpose, and for no other use or purpose whatsoever."
When we remember that the constitution of the United States was not yet written, and that the several states, but loosely joined under the articles of confederation, were still almost independent sovereignties, the gener- ous character of the order surrendering this great territory to the equal ownership of all the states of the Union will be more apparent. The Deed of Cession, so authorized by the - Virginia assembly was duly exeented March 1, 1784, by Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee and James Monroe, then the dele- gates in congress from the commonwealth of Virginia. On that day the territory now comprising the county of St. Joseph, together with all the remainder of the northwest, be- came for the first time, in letter and in faet, a part of the United States of America. The other states having or making any claims to any parts of the western territories followed the patriotic lead of Virginia, and from time to time, executed formal deeds of cession to the United States: Massachusetts, April 19, 1785; Connectieut, September 13, 1786; South Carolina, August 19, 1787; North Carolina, in 1790; and Georgia, in 1802. New York had at one time a claim of an exceedingly vague and indefinite character, which was surren- dered to the United States, March 1, 1781. Connecticut, in her deed of cession, at first reserved her claim to the lands south of Lake Erie, long called the Western Reserve: this reservation was finally surrendered, May 30, 1800. The claims affecting the northwest were only those of Virginia, Connecticut and Mas- sachusetts,-unless we consider the intangible claim of New York.
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
TIIE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
Sec. 1 .- FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN : SEVENTEEN STATES .- The Virginia deed of cession was made on March 1, 1784; and, on April 23, 1784, congress, by a series of reso- lutions, provided for the maintenance of tem- porary government in the northwest terri- tory.ª
It would seem that after the capture of Vincennes the same wise course with the In- dians pursued by Clark after his invasion of the Illinois country was not followed; cer- tainly. very soon after that time, there began a deplorable border warfare which continued, with interruptions, until the decisive victory of General Anthony Wayne over the Indians in the battle on the banks of the Maumee river, August 20, 1794. There is little doubt the Indians were encouraged in this barbarous warfare by British agents and officers, to whom the success of American army in the Revolutionary war was exceedingly unpalat- able.b
The resolutions and code of government for the northwest, adopted by the continental congress, April 23, 1784. although intended only for temporary purposes and until a more satisfactory system could be devised, were yet the result of much deliberation and disens- sion. The situation was novel, and the wise men of congress were, as it were, groping in the dark and feeling their way. One plan suggested was to divide the new territory into seventeen states. Eight states were to be between the Mississippi and a line dne north from the falls of the Ohio, at Louisville; and eight more to be between the Ohio falls line and a line parallel to it running north from the western side of the month of the Great Kanawha. On the extreme east was to be
a. Dillon, Hist. Indiana, p. 182.
b. In Dillon's History of Indiana, a large part of Chapters XVI to XXVIII, inclusive, is de- voted to an account of those harassing Indian wars, culminating in Governor St. Clair's humil- iating defeat, followed by the brilliant and de- cisive victory of General Wayne and the historic treaty of Greenville, which was signed August 3, 1795.
the seventeenth state. This scheme found lit- tle favor; and the subject was referred to a special committee of which Thomas Jefferson was chairman.
Sec. 2 .- JEFFERSON'S PLAN: TEN STATES. -Jefferson, Chase and Howe devised a second plan for dividing the territory into ten states. The lines of division are now quite forgotten, and even the high-sounding names of the pro- posed states are seldom heard. Some of the names were Latin, some Greek, and some were latinized forms of Indian names of rivers in the territory. The states were to be about two degrees in width, north and south, and bounded on the east and west, so far as prac- ticable, by the north and south lines of the first plan. That part of the territory north of the forty-fifth parallel of latitude, cover- ing the then heavy woodlands of northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, was to be called Sylvania. The remainder of the southern peninsula of the present state of Michigan was to be called Chersonesus, the Greek word for peninsula. South of Syl- vania, covering a part of the present state of Wisconsin, was to be the state of Michi- gania. South of Michigania, as far as the forty-first parallel of latitude, was to be the state of Assenisipia, a word derived from the Indian name for Rock river. East of Asseni- sipia, and extending north to the shore of Lake Erie, was to be the state of Metropo- tamia, mother of rivers. South of Assenisipia, to the thirty-ninth parallel, was to be the state of Illinoia. To the east of Illinoia was to be Saratoga ; and east of Saratoga, bounded by the Ohio river, the west line of Pennsyl- vania and the eastern part of the south shore of Lake Erie, was to be the state of Washing- ton. South of Illinoia and Saratoga, and ly- ing along the Ohio river, was to be a state named Polypotamia, from its many rivers. East of Polypotamia was to be the . tenth state, called Pelisipi, from a Cherokee name sometimes given to the Ohio river. While all those state lines have disappeared, and even the names given by Jefferson and his commit-
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tee are no longer applied to the territories for which they were intended, yet it will be ob- served that one of the names, that of the father of his country, has since been given to the extreme northwest state of the Union, lying on the borders of an ocean which even the most far-seeing statesmen could not then dream of as the western boundary of the great republic. Two more of Jefferson's names, with slight changes of orthography, have also been adopted for commonwealths since created. Michigania, which Jefferson applied to territory bordering on the west of Lake Michigan, has been given, without the Latin termination, to the great state east of the same lake; and Illinoia, which was applied to parts of the present states of Illinois and Indiana, has been given. with like change of orthography, to the great southwestern state of the territory.
There is some uncertainty in which of two of those proposed states the county of St. Joseph would have been situated. The state of Chersonesus was to be the southern part of the peninsula bounded on the west by Lake Michigan and on the east by Lake Huron, the Straits and Lake Erie; that is, the southern part of what is now the lower peninsula of Michigan. This would seem to include the north part of St. Joseph county. and, indeed, all that part of Indiana north of an east and west line through the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. On the other hand, the state of Assenisipia was to extend. north and south, from the forty-third to the forty-first parallel of latitude; and from the Mississippi east to the line running north from the falls of the Ohio. That would give a state bounded on the north by a line of latitude a little south of Milwaukee. Wiscon- sin : on the south, by a line of latitude a little south of Fort Wayne, Indiana; on the west. by the Mississippi river: and on the east, by a line running nearly from Jeffersonville. Indiana, or Louisville. Kentucky, to Grand Rapids. Michigan. The state of Assenisipia
would therefore comprise the southern part of the present state of Wisconsin, the northern part of Illinois, the northwestern part of In- diana and the southwestern part of Michigan. But as the southern part of the lower Michi- gan peninsula was to constitute the state of Chersonesus, it is probable that the state of Assenisipia would have embraced no territory east of Lake Michigan. Consequently, the north ten miles of St. Joseph county would have been in the state of Chersonesus and the rest of the county in the state of Assenisipia.
At the time that the boundaries of the ten states were defined, as above set out, a code of laws was prepared to serve for the govern- ment of each state until it should contain twenty thousand free inhabitants. One article of the code, as prepared by the committee, provided that after the year 1800 there should be no slavery in the states so organized. This is believed to have been the first national attempt to provide for the abolition of slavery. Another article of the proposed code provided that no person holding a hereditary title should ever become a citizen of any of the new states. This article was directed against the society of the Cincinnati, then recently organized by the officers of the late Continental army. There was strong oppo- sition to a provision of the constitution of this society making the sons and other direct descendants of those officers, to the latest generation, members of the organization This looked to the stern republicans of that day as savoring too strongly of an order of mobility : and they wished for nothing of that nature in the free institutions of America. The uncompromising republicanism of Jef- ferson is seen in his advocacy of these two measures-against slavery and against orders of nobility. Both articles, however, were strieken out by congress. The paragraphs giving names to the ten new states were also stricken out. The resolutions as so amended were then adopted, April 23. 1784, and re- mained the law for the government of the
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
northwest until the adoption of the ordinance of 1787.ª
See. 3 .- EMIGRATION TO THE WEST .- Soon after the close of the Revolutionary war a heavy tide of emigration, chiefly officers and soldiers of the war, set in for the lands west of the Alleghanies. The southern soldiers found lands in Kentucky, then in effect a part of Virginia; Tennessee, then western North Carolina:' and in the western part of Georgia, which then extended to the Missis- sippi. The soldiers farther north naturally looked to the lands in the new territory north- west of the Ohio. The long debates of con- gress in providing for the organization of this territory, and the delay in the enactment of laws for the survey and sale of the lands, tired the patience of those who were anxious to start life anew on those rich lands. On March 1, 1786, the Ohio Company was formed for the purchase and sale of western lands in shares of $1,000 each. The directors of this company were General Rufus Putnam, Gen- cral Samuel H. Parsons and the Dr. Manasseh Cutler. Dr. Cutler was the master spirit of the body, and exercised a very decided in- fluence on the future of the new country. Under the old confederation a treasury board acted as commissioners of public lands, but had no power to make sales without the ap- proval of congress. Dr. Cutler, after weary waiting for favorable action by congress, finally succeeded in obtaining confirmation of the sale of the lands desired by the Ohio Com- pany; and on October 27, 1787, the contract of the treasury board with the company was agreed to and the contract executed. In De- cember and January following, two com- panies, forty-eight persons in all, under the general direction of General Putnam, and consisting of surveyors, boat-builders, carpen- ters, smiths, farmers and laborers, set out for the west with their stores and outfit, descended the Ohio, and on April 7, 1788, landed at the mouth of the Muskingum. At a point oppo-
a. McMaster, Hist. U. S., Vol. 1, Chapt. 2. Per- kins' Annals of the West, p. 312.
site Fort Harmar, at the junction of the Ohio and the Muskingum, they founded their town. Before leaving Boston the prospective town was called Adelphia ; but at the first meeting of the directors, on the ground, July 2, 1788, the name of Marietta was selected, in honor of Marie Antoinette, then queen of France." The founding of Marietta, the first settlement in the limits of the present state of Ohio, was a most noteworthy event, and marks the be- ginning of a new era in the history of the northwest territory.
Sec. 4 .- DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORDINANCE. -After the adoption of the resolutions of April 23, 1784, congress continued to discuss the future of the northwest, not being satis- fied with the form of government established by those resolutions. Little progress was made, however, until May 10, 1786, when a committee appointed on motion of Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, reported in favor of fixing the number of states at from two to five, to be admitted according to the proposi- tion of Jefferson, as reported to congress previous to the resolutions of April 23, 1784, but leaving the question of slavery open. No definite action was taken on this report. On April 26, 1787, another committee, consisting of Johnson of Connecticut, Pinckney of South Carolina, Smith of New York, Dane of Massachusetts and Henry of Maryland, re- ported "An ordinance for the government of the western territory." This first draft of the ordinance is said to have been prepared by Nathan Dane. After many amendments, May 10, 1787, was fixed for the third reading of the ordinance; but the bill was postponed for further consideration. Congress was evi- dently not yet satisfied as to what should be done. At this time Dr. Cutler, representing the Ohio company, and anxious for the future form of government in which that company had so mneh at stake, appeared before con- gress and its committees; and it is believed that he greatly influenced many important amendments which were thereafter made to a. king, Hist. Ohio, Ch. 8.
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the ordinance. On July 9, 1787, the bill was referred to a new committee, consisting of Carrington of Virginia, Dane of Massachu- setts. Smith of New York, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and Kean of South Carolina. It was after this that the clauses against slavery, and in favor of the liberty of conscience and of the press, the right of habeas corpus and trial by jury, the equal distribution of estates, and the encouragement of education, were added. The anti-slavery clause was at first rejected by the committee, but on July 11th this and other amendments were accepted, although a majority of the committee were from the southern states. On July 13, 1787, the great charter of free institutions became a law, with but one member of congress, Yates of New York, voting against it.ª The Or- dinance of 1787 was adopted nearly two years before the Constitution of the United States went into effect. Except the Declaration of Independence, it was at the date of its adop- tion the most noted declaration of funda- mental law ever enacted by a free people. In- deed the Constitution of the United States is itself but the normal outgrowth of the Declar- ation of Independence and the Ordinance of 1787.
The ordinance provides, as already indi- cated, for the equal distribution of property among kindred of equal degrees, without dis- tinetion as to whole blood or half blood, ex- cept in case of a devise by will. The fathers of the republic took every occasion to protect the people against the accumulation of estates in the hands of elder sons or other favored persons, to the exclusion of others equally re- lated to the ancestor. Corporations had not then become a menace to the fair and equal distribution of property, and occasioned the enactment of no legislation to guard against wrongful accumulations; but primogeniture and entail were well known evils, and against these they guarded. The rights of the French inhabitants of Vincennes, Kaskaskia a. Winsor and Channing, Hist. Am., Vol. 7, App.
and other settlements were carefully guarded. A governor and courts were provided for, and were authorized to adopt, at first and until the organization of a legislature, such laws of the original states as they should find snit- able to the needs of the new government. As soon as there should be five thousand free male inhabitants of full age, a legislature should be elected by the people, and should have power to enact all laws, subject to the approval of the governor.
See. 5 .- THE SIX ARTICLES OF THE ORDI- NANCE .- The important provisions of the ordi- nance, and those which give it so high a place in the jurisprudence of the world, are set out in the following six articles :
Art. 1st. No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of wor- ship or religions sentiments, in the said terri- tory.
Art. 2nd. The inhabitants of said territory shall always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the trial by jury: of a proportionate representation of the people in the legislature; and of judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law. All persons shall be bailable, unless for capital offenses, where the proof shall be evident or the presumption great. All fines shall be moderate; and no cruel or un- usual punishments shall be inflieted. No man shall be deprived of his liberty or property, but by judgment of his peers or the law of the land. and, should the publie exigencies make it necessary, for the common preserva- tion, to take any person's property, or to de- mand his particular services, full compensa- tion shall be made for the same. And, in the just preservation of rights and property, it is understood and declared, that no law ought ever to be made, or have force in the said territory, that shall, in any manner what- ever, interfere with or affeet private contracts or engagements, bona fide, and without fraud, previously formed.
Art. 3rd. Religion, morality and knowl- edge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of edneation shall forever be en- conraged. The utmost good faith shall al- ways be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
them without their consent; and, in their property, rights and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall, from time to time, be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.
Art. 4th. The said territory, and the states which may be formed therein, shall forever remain a part of this confederacy of the United States of America, subject to the Articles of Confederation, and to such altera- tions therein as shall be constitutionally made ; and to all the acts and ordinances of the United States in congress assembled, conform- able thereto. The inhabitants and settlers in the said territory shall be subject to pay a part of the federal debts contracted or to be contracted, and a proportional part of the expenses of government, to be apportioned on them by congress according to the same com- mon rule and measure by which apportion- ments thereof shall be made on the other states; and the taxes, for paying their pro- portion, shall be laid and levied by the anthority and direction of the legislatures of the district or districts, or new states, as in the original states, within the time agreed upon by the United States in congress assem- bled. The legislatures of those distriets or new states, shall never interfere with the primary disposal of the soil by the United States in congress assembled, nor with any regulations congress may find necessary for securing the title in such soil to the bona fide purchasers. No tax shall be imposed on lands the property of the United States; and in no case, shall non-resident proprietors be taxed higher than residents. The navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common highways, and for- ever free, as well to the inhabitants of the said territory as to the citizens of the United States, and those of any other state that may be admitted into the confederacy, without any tax. impost or duty, therefor.
Art. 5th. There shall be formed in the said territory not less than three nor more than five states; and the boundaries of the states, as soon as Virginia shall alter her act of ces- sion, and consent to the same," shall become
a. In the Virginia Act of Cession, passed December 20, 1783, the cession was made "upon condition that the territory so ceded shall be laid out and formed into states, containing suitable
fixed and established as follows, to-wit: The western state in the said territory shall be bounded by the Mississippi, Ohio and Wabash rivers ; a direct line drawn from the Wabash and Post St. Vincent's, due north, to the ter- ritorial line between the United States and Canada, and, by the said territorial line, to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi. The middle state shall be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash from Post St. Vin- cent's to the Ohio; by the Ohio, by a direct line, drawn due north from the month of the Great Miami to the said territorial line, and by the said territorial line. The eastern state shall be bounded by the last mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the said territorial line: Provided, however, and it is further understood and declared, that the boundaries of these three states shall be sub- jeet so far to be altered, that, if Congress shall hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to form one or two states in that part of the said territory which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michi- gan. And whenever any of the said states shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such state shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitution and state government: Provided, the eonsti- tution and government so to be formed shall be republican and in conformity to the prin- ciples contained in these articles; and so far as it can be, consistent with the general in- terest of the confederacy, such admission shall be allowed at an earlier period, and when there may be a less number of free inhab- itants in the state than sixty thousand.
Art. 6th. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said terri- tory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted : Provided, always, that any per- son escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully elaimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be law-
extent of territory, not less than one hundred nor more than one hundred and fifty miles square, or as near thereto as circumstances will permit." By an act passed December 30, 1788, the General Assembly of Virginia altered her act of cession as to the foregoing condition, and consented to the boundaries of the new states as fixed by Congress, in the ordinance of 1787.
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fully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as afore- said.
Sec. 6 .- THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES .- The Congress that adopted the Ordinance of 1787 was the old Continental Congress, which, under the Articles of Con- federation, had carried the government through the Revolutionary war and secured the independence of the young republic. As soon, however, as the pressure of the common enemy was removed it was perceived that the loose Articles of Confederation were insuffi- cient to hold the former independent colo- nies together in one government; and steps were taken by the people of all the states, "to form a more perfect union, establish jus- tiee, insure domestie tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general wel- fare, and secure the blessings of liberty." At the very time that the Ordinance of 1787 was under discussion, and when it was adopted, the convention for the adoption of a constitu- tion which should "form a more perfect union" was in session. In the ordinance we find the same patriotic provisions that are permanently established in the constitution ; and both great documents were the product of practically the same wise Fathers who laid the foundations of the republic.
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