USA > Indiana > Centennial history and handbook of Indiana : the story of the state from its beginning to the close of the civil war, and a general survey of progress to the present time > Part 5
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to be laid off in one tract . . . in such place on the northwest side of the Ohio as the majority of the officers shall choose, and to be afterward divided among the said officers and soldiers in due proportion according to the laws
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NAP
INDIAN CESSIONS OF LANDS.
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Map of Indian Land Cessions. The numbers from 1 to 53 indicate order of purchase of tracts within the original Indiana Territory. There were not fifty- three purchases within the present boundaries of Indiana. (See page 43.)
of Virginia." In 1783 another act was passed for locating and surveying the amount of land above specified. and a board of commissioners was appointed to take the business in hand. One thousand acres was to be laid out for a town site and the other one hundred forty-nine thousand to be surveyed for the individual claimants. The tract chosen was at and above the falls of the Ohio and now lies mostly in Clark county. Ind.,
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY AND HANDBOOK OF INDIANA
though lapping over into Floyd and Scott coun- ties. It was first called the "Illinois Grant," the conquered territory being known as the "Illinois country," but later took the name of "Clark's Grant." The principal surveyor was William Clark, the cousin of George Rogers Clark. The thousand acres for the town site was located at the falls, between the present Jeffersonville and New Albany, and was called Clarksville. The rest was apportioned among a total of 300 men, ranging in amount from 108 acres for each pri- vate to 8,049 acres to General Clark. There has been some criticism of this division, the feeling being that privates should have received 600 acres each. that being the amount suggested in the letter of Jefferson, Mason and Wyeth, above spoken of. Of the men who received lands in this tract by no means all settled there, but many sold their portions, preferring the cash benefit.
The surveys of Clark's Grant, taking the Ohio river for a base, do not correspond to the rect- angular system as it exists over the State gen- erally and thus the original donation can be read- ily located on any map that shows the congres- sional townships.
For exhaustive information on this subject see English's "Conquest of the Northwest."
Father Gibault and Francis Vigo .- Two names that are imperishably connected with Clark's conquest and which as imperishably stand as reminders of public ingratitude, are those of Father Pierre Gibault and Francis Vigo, the for- mer a Catholic priest in spiritual charge of the French residents of the Illinois country, and the latter a Spanish merchant. With the arrival of Clark at Kaskaskia Gibault heartily espoused his cause, and it was largely through his influence that the French generally rallied to the support of the invader. He it was who suggested that the easiest way to win Vincennes, as the English commandant and his garrison were temporarily away, would be by a peaceful conquest of the French there, and his proposition was that he go and, by virtue of his power among them, ac- complish that end. This program was carried out with fullest success, and after he had paved the way Captain Helm was sent to take charge of Fort Sackville, which he held until the Eng- lish governor, Hamilton, recaptured the place. The penalty for Gibault's zeal was excommuni- cation by his bishops, besides pecuniary loss for
which he was never reimbursed. In his old age he sent a memorial to General St. Clair, Gov- ernor of the Northwest Territory, in which he stated that he had risked his life and sacrificed his little property to aid the Americans ; that his loss had amounted to at least fifteen hundred dollars, and that he was now dependent. All that he asked was a beggarly pittance of five acres out of the millions he had worked to se- cure, where he might have an orchard and a home in which to spend his few remaining years. He never received the five acres and eventually he betook himself into Spanish territory beyond the Mississippi, where he died in 1804 .*
Francis Vigo, a merchant of St. Louis, then a Spanish possession, who carried on an extensive trade in the Illinois country, espoused the Ameri- can cause, as did Gibault, when Clark invaded the territory, although he did so at considerable risk, being a citizen of a neutral nation. He it was that brought to Clark, at Kaskaskia, the news that General Hamilton had recaptured Vincennes from Captain Helm, and the result of the infor- mation he had gained was Clark's swiftly exe- cuted winter campaign which forestalled Ham- ilton's plans for the spring, and won Vincennes permanently. Vigo did most important service by the rendering of financial aid. In the midst of his operations Clark became seriously handi- capped for want of funds to provision his little army and to renew enlistments, the expiring of which threatened to disband his force. No help could be had from Virginia. In this emergency his only recourse was private aid, and exercising the discretion given him by his letter of instruc- tions he issued drafts on the State. Accepting these drafts as security, Vigo furnished money and supplies to the amount of $12,000 or more. Being wealthy at that time and Virginia being embarrassed with her debts, he did not push his claims for years. When his needs began to press him the Virginia agent was unable to meet his drafts and he sold some of them at a discount of eighty per cent. He still held one for over $8,000, and twenty-one years after its date of issue this was put in the hands of two collectors. Through some seemingly criminal negligence, not explained in history, the draft was lost and with it all chance of recovering the money until it was found again amid the dust in the attic of the
* Dunn's "Indiana," p. 151.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY AND HANDBOOK OF INDIANA
capitol at Richmond. The debt was now fifty-five years old. Meanwhile Vigo, stricken in years, had long suffered poverty. Three years later he died, unrelieved. Thirty-nine years more of dawdling and red tape passed and finally, ninety- seven years after the original transaction, the money that made possible the capture of Vin- cennes plus accumulated interest was paid to the heirs of the man who had been more generous than prudent. The expenses of his funeral, even, were not paid until forty years after his death .*
Soon after Clark's conquest Vigo became an American citizen and came for permanent resi- dence to Vincennes, where he was honored and prominent for many years. His sense of grati- tude was livelier than that of the nation he had served, for in appreciation of the fact that Vigo county was named for him, he provided in his will that, if his claim on the government were allowed, $500 should be given to the county for a court-house bell. He died in Vincennes in 1836 and is buried there.
The Lasselle Documents .- Among the pos- sessions of the State Library is a large collection of letters and other papers, some of them orig- inals, some copies, that relate to Vincennes dur- ing the early American occupancy. These docu- ments were gathered up by the late Charles B. Lasselle, of Logansport, who for many years was an industrious collector of everything per- taining to French life in the Wabash valley. Mr. Lasselle was himself a member of an old French family that had been intimately identified with the valley since Revolutionary times. In his later years he occupied a room in the court-house at Logansport which was fairly filled with a mis- cellaneous mass of documents, relics and news- papers. Among the relies were the mahogany liquor chest which was one of Governor Ham- ilton's private possessions when he was captured by Clark; a Revolutionary drum that had been found in old Fort Wayne, and the original parch- ment document that was delivered to the Miami Indians at the treaty of St. Mary's, in 1819. This parchment bears the marks of the various chiefs that represented their tribe, and the signatures of Jonathan Jennings, Benjamin Parke and Lewis Cass, commissioners, and William and John Conner, interpreters. It was delivered to the Miami head chief, Richardville, and finally came
into the Lasselle family through marriage rela- tions. It is now in the possession of the State Library.
The other documents referred to as in the li- brary are now being classified and arranged for convenient reference.
The First Civil Organization .- In October of 1778 Virginia was electrified by the news that Clark had actually accomplished the conquest of Kaskaskia and the other Mississippi posts. and one of the first acts of the Virginia Assem- bly, thereafter, was to organize the newly-ac- quired country as the "County of Illinois." (11 December 12, Col. John Todd. of Kentucky, a friend of Clark's, was appointed county lieuten- ant, or local governor, and he arrived at Kas- kaskia in May. 1779. to assume charge of civil affairs. This was the first American government north of the Ohio river, and the first election of officers was held by Todd soon after his arrival. In Vincennes about a dozen civil and nearly that many militia officers were elected, all of them Frenchmen. The law then established was to be temporary and agreeable to those "which the present settlers are now accustomed to." and the instructions from the Virginia governor to Todd were "to use every effort to win the friendship of the French." and to conciliate the Indians as far as possible ; which shows that Patrick Henry. at least, contemplated a just and friendly rela- tion toward the new citizens of the State.
Todd did not remain in Illinois very long but the government went on undisturbed until the judges of the Vincennes court proceeded to gen- erously apportion among themselves tracts of land from an old Indian grant, when the United States interposed an objection.
Meanwhile Virginia, in 1784, had relinquished her claim to the whole Illinois country in favor of the United States, and with that act the way was cleared for the new political policy which. a little later, had its birth in the famous ordi- nance of 1787.
The Wabash Land Company .- The Wabash Land Company, which negotiated what was per- haps the first land deal in Inchana, dates back to 1775. Then, as now, real estate speculator- were a thrifty class and their opportunities were great. In the year mentioned Louis Vivial, the agent of the company mentioned, negotiated with the Piankeshaw Indians at Vincennes for two
* English, p. 188.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY AND HANDBOOK OF INDIANA
tracts of land bordering on the Wabash river, that, besides a large tract out of eastern Illinois, comprised perhaps one-half of Indiana. The first, extending along the Wabash above Vin- cennes for one hundred twenty miles, reached from the river westward for ninety and eastward for one hundred twenty miles. The other, ex- tending from the mouth of White river to the junction of the Wabash and the Ohio, reached the same distance west and east as the first one. This eastward stretch carried it almost across the present state. This vast possession amount- ing, all told, to about thirty-seven million, four hundred and ninety-seven thousand six hundred acres, was actually transferred, being "signed by the grantees, attested by a number of the in- habitants of Post Vincennes, and subsequently registered in the office of a notary public at Kas- kaskia." The contract between the parties, printed in full in Dillon's Indiana (pp. 104-9) is too long to reproduce here, though the pur- chasing price may be given. The items specified are: "Five shillings in money, four hundred blankets, twenty-two pieces of stroud, two hun- dred and fifty shirts, twelve gross of star garter- ing, one hundred and twenty pieces of ribbon,
twenty-four pounds of vermilion, eighteen pairs of velvet laced housings, one piece of malton, fifty-two fusils, thirty-five dozen large buckhorn- handle knives, forty dozen couteau knives, five hundred pounds of brass kettles, ten thousand gun flints, six hundred pounds of gunpowder, two thousand pounds of lead, four hundred pounds of tobacco, forty bushels of salt, three thousand pounds of flour, three horses ; also the following quantities of silverware, viz .: eleven very large armbands, forty wristbands, six whole- moons, six halfmoons, nine earwheels, forty-six large crosses, twenty-nine hairpipes, sixty pairs of earbobs, twenty dozen small crosses, twenty dozen nose-crosses, and one hundred and ten dozen brooches."
All these commodities, amounting in value to but a very few thousand dollars, even when fig- ured at traders' prices, doubtless seemed to the simple Indians a bewildering display of wealth.
As a matter of fact, they got the best of the bargain, for Clark's conquest of the country threw it all into other hands: the claim of the Wabash Land Company was, of course, not con- firmed, and later the land was again purchased of the original claimants by the United States.
CHAPTER III
THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY-CIVIL, BEGINNINGS
Political Antecedents .- Strictly speaking the beginnings of our civil history antedate by many years the history of Northwest Territory, and a very brief consideration of our political ante- cedents may not be amiss as an introduction to the form of government we live under in the present State of Indiana.
It is, of course, understood and need merely be mentioned, that we are the lineal heirs of those forces in English history that have made for the liberties and enlargement of man. "Magna Charta," or the Great Charter, wrung from King John by the barons in 1215, is cus- tomarily regarded as the logical starting point for a study of those liberties and their develop- ments. When, four hundred years later, the stream of English history divided, sending forth its minor current in the new world, those who founded the colonies brought with them ideas of individual rights and of forms of government that all Englishmen had contended for since the concessions of King John, and that all English- men shared alike. Then came a differentiation in the development, due to the introduction of new conditions. The isolated life of the colonies, remote from the home government, fostered lo- cal government ; local government fostered self- sufficiency, independence and the spirit of democ- racy, and a century and a half of development along this line could hardly fail of distinctive results.
In brief, the elements that emerge as we exam- ine the unfolding of the American ideal are, the idea of inherent rights, common to all men, the right to realize these through self-government. and the right to safeguard them at every point. How far these ideas had progressed by 1776 is revealed by the immortal Declaration of Inde- pendence, which startled the world with the bold and radical proposition that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." When, in addition to this, the age-honored alle- giance to kings was cast aside, the instrument
15012.
certainly took rank as marking a new departure in the affairs of men.
The Written Constitution .- The formal written political constitution is peculiarly an American institution,* and is correspondingly dear to the American heart. It is the funda- mental law of the land, the ultimate authority, which the legislative power must respect, and its provisions are set forth in explicit language. In its supreme character it was the offspring of the old charter, only, as Fiske says, "instead of a document expressed in terms of a royal grant it was a document expressed in terms of a pop- ular edict." The "Fundamental Orders of Con- necticut," of 1639, is cited as the first written con- stitution known to history. Similar instruments were adopted in America before the formation of the federal union, and the full flower of the process was the work of the Federal Convention when, in 1787, it framed the Constitution of the United States, which instrument William E. Gladstone has designated as "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."
A New Question ; The Public Domain .- The Constitution of the United States nowise took the place of the instruments under which the various States were governed. It was a general constitution strictly for the control of federal functions. But now an entirely new question had to be dealt with-that of federal jurisdic- tion over lands belonging to no State. Within five years after the close of the Revolution four States, New York. Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had ceded to the national govern- ment lands that they had claimed, lying west of the Alleghany ranges. These claims, as referred to in history, were somewhat obscure and over- lapping ; but at any rate the cessions placed under the control of the United States a tract of virgin territory, and this comprised the country north- west of the Ohio river that George Rogers Clark had won in the name of Virginia. It was the be-
* For an interesting treatment of this subject, see Fisk's "Civil Government," chap. vii.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY AND HANDBOOK OF INDIANA
ginning of the "public domain," and one duty of the new government was to take care of it.
Thus it was that while the Federal Conven- tion in Philadelphia was making the nation's constitution, Congress, in New York, was elab- orating a policy of government for this domain.
The Ordinance of 1787 .- This policy, as em- bodied in a document, was the famous ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio river, passed by Congress on July 13, 1787, and commonly known as the "Ordinance of 1787." It may be called a special federal constitution for the organization and government of the territory belonging to the United States preliminary to the creation of States with their own constitutions. It is con- spicuous among the instruments of the country as shaping the character of government in the territory it was framed for. Daniel Webster said of it: "I doubt whether one single law of any law given, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting char- acter than the Ordinance of 1787." Its bill of rights has led some to speak of it, with a little grandiloquence, perhaps, as the Magna Charta of the west. Its most famous proviso was one for- bidding the existence of slavery in the territory at a time when that institution was forbidden no- where else. The Ordinance was the culmination of previous attempts to cope with a problem that was even then recognized as a growing danger, and as it constitutes our immediate political foun- dation we here examine it in its parts .*
The Ordinance contemplates the ultimate di- vision of the territory into not less than three nor more than five States, certain boundaries of these being definitely set. It established grades of government, based on population, for these divisions : "five thousand free male inhabitants, of full age," entitling to the "second grade" of territorial government, and sixty thousand en- titling to statehood "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever." The territorial government, in the first grade, is to be in the hands of a governor and three judges, whose first duty is to "adopt and publish in the district such laws of the original States, criminal and civil, as may be necessary and best suited to the circumstances of the district." The gov-
ernor shall be the commander-in-chief of the militia and shall have the appointing of most of the officers, both military and civil.
On entering the second grade the inhabitants of a territory shall be entitled to elect repre- sentatives from their counties or townships for their own general assembly, and this "general assembly or legislature shall consist of the gov- ernor, legislative council and a house of repre- sentatives," the legislative council to consist of five members, to continue in office five years, and to be appointed and commissioned by Congress out of ten that have been nominated by the gov- ernor and the representatives. The body thus formed is to have the authority to make laws "not repugnant to the principles and articles in this Ordinance," all bills passed to be "referred to the governor for his assent." The Legislature has the authority to elect a delegate to Congress, and this delegate will have the right to join in the Congressional debates, but can not vote. The bill of rights feature takes the form of "articles of compact between the original States and the peo- ple and the States in the said territory," to for- ever remain unalterable, unless by common con- sent. These articles are, that no person demean- ing himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiment ; that all shall be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, to a trial by jury, to judicial proceedings according to the course of the com- mon law, and to proportionate representation in the Legislature. All persons shall be bailable, unless for capital offense ; all fines shall be mod- erate, and no cruel or unusual punishments shall be inflicted ; no man shall be deprived of his lib- erty or property but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land.
It may seem somewhat curious that before taking up these fundamentals, in fact, in the very first provision, the Ordinance deals with the question of the equitable distribution of in- testate estates, thus checking at the start any system of primogeniture. The last article in the document is the one that is cited oftenest in history-namely, the slavery clause, which af- firms that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, other- wise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This
* See Dunn's "Indiana" for an elaborate discussion of this instrument.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY AND HANDBOOK OF INDIANA
was regarded as the provision of all others that was to give a distinctive character to the civiliza- tion of the northwest, for it meant free territory as opposed to the institution of slavery, which was already coming to be regarded as a national curse. The promise it held out undoubtedly played its part in the character of the population that from the beginning gravitated to this region.
From these salient features of the Ordinance it will be seen that its Congressional framers aimed not only at a constitution of the territories. as such, but as a federal instrument, as well, that should impose certain limitations on future State constitutions. Thus while the State con- stitution is, in a sense, the "fundamental law of the land," it must, after all, recognize a higher, ultimate authority.
Virginia's Cession to United States ; Forma- tion of Northwest Territory .- The last two sections have outrun the present one chronolog- ically in the attempt to follow the lineal develop- ment of our fundamental instruments. Prior to the question of public domain and the Ordinance of 1787 came the cession by Virginia of her northwestern possessions to the United States, along with other territorial relinquishments by other States. As said on a previous page, the first civil organization was attempted by the Vir- ginia Assembly, which established courts among the French and temporarily installed John Todd as governor of Kaskaskia. This organization was no doubt cruder than it would have been had the future ownership been more certain. As early as 1781 Virginia thought favorably of the proposition to cede her newly-acquired domain, and in 1784 the cession was made and the whole territory passed over to a new jurisdiction. For the three years following there seems to have been little that could be called civil government, but with the adoption of the Ordinance of 1787 steps were taken to organize the country in ac- cordance with the provisions of that instrument. The region then took the name of "The Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio," but this, in popular usage, became simply "The Northwest Territory."* General Arthur St.
Clair, an officer of the Revolution, was elected governor by Congress, and he, on July 27, 1788, issued a proclamation organizing Washington county, which comprised the eastern half of the present State of Ohio. Prior to that a land com- pany had purchased of Congress a tract on the Ohio, taken thither the first colony, and founded the town of Marietta. This settlement and the one county above named marked the real starting point of civil government in the Northwest Ter- ritory. It was two years before any other county was formed. With the election of the governor, the three judges required by the Ordinance had likewise been chosen and with the convening of
Superior
Late Mure"
Michigar
Erte
INDIANA
TERRITORY
OCMYY
Fecetery
ST
CLAIR
RAN. DOLPH
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