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Gc 977.1 0h32 v.3 1890890
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
JEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02022 092 4
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/ohiointimeofconf03hulb
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MARIETTA COLLEGE HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
EDITED BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT
VOLUME III
THE MARIETTA HISTORICAL COMMISSION
(Created by the Trustees of Marietta College, February, 1916)
CHARTER MEMBERS
EDWY R. BROWN FRANCIS H. DEWEY
JOHN MILLS
A, GEORGE BULLOCK ARTHUR F. ESTABROOK
WILLIAM W. MILLS
MARY C. BULLOCK CHARLES A. HANNA
WILLIAM P. PALMER
CHARLES S. DANA* HARRY B. HOYT
BENJAMIN B. PUTNAM
BEMAN G. DAWES JOHN KAISER
EDWIN F. ROREBECK
CHARLES G. DAWES MARIETTA COLLEGE
BENJ. F. STRECKER
RUFUS C. DAWES
EDWARD E. MACTAGGART PETER G. THOMSON
SUSTAINING MEMBERS
M. J. AVERBECK
JULIA E. HICKOK
WILLIS A. BAILEY
JAMES F. HOVEY
HOMER C. BAYLESS
GEORGE H. HOWISON*
GEORGE C. BEST
KARL G. KAISER
CHARLES H. BOSWORTH
THOMAS H. KELLEY
WILLIAM W. BOYD
JESSE V. MCMILLEN
EDWARD H. BRENAN
MARIETTA PUBLIC LIBRARY
J. LAWRENCE BUELL
EDWARD A. MERYDITH
ROWENA BUELL
CLARENCE C. MIDDLESWART
WARREN BURNS
EDWARD C. MOORE
H. G. CHAMBERLAIN
CHARLES PENROSE
J. PLUMER COLE
BEMAN A. PLUMER
JOHN DANA
HORACE PORTER
THEODORE F. DAVIS
DANIEL J. RYAN
HENRY M. DAWES
JOHN E. SATER
LEE S. DEVOL
HARVEY E. SMITH
WILLIAM W. DOLLISON
HARRY P. WARRENER
CHARLES P. DYAR
ASA WILSON WATERS
ISAAC C. ELSTON, JR.
GEORGE WHITE
AARON A. FERRIS
WALTER A. WINDSOR
EDWARD B. FOLLETT
GEORGE M. WITHINGTON
SEYMOUR J. HATHAWAY
WILLIAM H. WOLFE
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT, CHAIRMAN Professor of American History, Marietta College GEORGE JORDAN BLAZIER, SECRETARY AND TREASURER Librarian, Marietta College
Deceased
OHIO COMPANY SERIES VOLUME III
OHIO IN THE TIME OF THE CONFEDERATION
Marietta College Historical Collections, Holume 3
OHIO IN THE TIME OF THE CONFEDERATION
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT Professor of American History, Marietta College; Chairman Marietta Historical Commission; Lecturer, National War Work Council, Y. M. C. A. of the United States
PUBLISHED BY THE MARIETTA HISTORICAL COMMISSION MARIETTA, OHIO 1918
THE TORCH PRESS CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA
1890890
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION : A TERRITORY IN THE MAKING xi PART ONE: THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1784 1 · PART TWO: OHIO IN THE Papers of the Con- tinental Congress . 92
PART THREE : JOURNAL OF JOHN MATTHEWS 187
ILLUSTRATIONS
A MAP OF THE OHIO COMPANY PURCHASE 20 (From a plate loaned by the Western Reserve His- torical Society)
A FRENCH PLAN OF THE LANDS OF THE OHIO AND "SCIOTO" COMPANIES . 100
(From a plate loaned by the Western Reserve His- torical Society)
MARTIN'S MAP OF OHIO SURVEYS
180
(By permission of the author)
.
INTRODUCTION
A Territory in the Making
This volume, chronologically, should have been the first in the present Series. There was a pro- priety, however, in permitting the original rec- ords of the Ohio Company to have the right of way, as being the most important and significant document to be issued under these auspices.
The purpose of this book is to fill a want, felt by the editor and many colleagues who conduct classes on the history of the West, in the shape of a volume giving the documentary materials in convenient form which any class or reader must study in order to understand the ideas and ideals which slowly crystallized into our first Territory -the "Territory North West of the River Ohio." This growth is not sensed by a study of the ordinances and land laws of 1784, 1785, and 1787 alone, even when supplemented by the ex- cellent writings of Adams, Hinsdale, Turner, Alden, Alvord, Barrett, Treat, or Thwaites and Kellogg. In order to make the volume fully serve the time-saving purpose suggested, the editor has been emboldened to devote a number of pages to reprints of documents not easily to be secured in the average library and not always
xii
Introduction
orderly arranged in the students' perspective when once in hand.
Following the pages of reprints of theories and plans of trans-Ohio colonization and State- making, the reader will find the most important documents in the Papers of the Continental Con- gress which relate to the Ohio region in this pre- territorial period, mostly relating to Thomas Hutchins's activities in surveying the Seven Ranges, with tangible sidelights on the irrepress- ible character of the squatter movement across the Ohio River.
Taking a hint from the satisfaction expressed by many charter and sustaining members of the Commission in the value to the non-professional of an introduction which links the documents presented into an understandable whole, the edi- tor will briefly sketch the story contained in the material here published. With it as a guide, student, as well as general reader, will find, it is hoped, a completer interest in the documents themselves. To succeed in this respect were better than to satisfy the formulæ of the scien- tific critic.
One might loosely describe the growth of the territory north and west of the Ohio River in terms of evolution, as sub-organic, organic, and super-organic. Of the middle and latter period many students have developed treatises, on the
xiii
Introduction
ordinances, the creation of States, and the mani- fold problems of statehood. Of the nebulous primary era, we have had the international phases of territorial and land colonization pro- jects made clearer by several writers, particu- larly Alden and Alvord. There is need and room for more adequate treatment of the purely American schemes and theories for the coloniza- tion and government of what is commonly known as the "Old Northwest." There is a double importance in emphasizing them because, while they show the aims and ideals of individuals and reflect the spirit of the times, they came to some- thing-they created ordinances and founded Commonwealths. There is an Old Testament history of the West and a New Testament, and the break between the two was greater-meas- ured in everything save years- than the biblical parallel will show. The documentary material of England's imperial designs relating to the West does not contain the seeds of the New Dis- pensation - the theories of Deane and Paine and Pelatiah Webster, of Bland, Putnam, Pickering, Howell, Washington, and Jefferson. The Que- bec Act with its extension "of the same absolute rule" (as the author of the Declaration of Inde- pendence phrased it) was of Malachi; the plan of Deane's federated, self-governed State at the con- fluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, is of St. Matthew.
xiv
Introduction
It was for Silas Deane of Groton, Connecti- cut, secret agent for the Continental Congress in France, first to offer suggestions concerning the use of western territory as a national asset. Al- ready, as outlined elsewhere,1 Congress, in Sep- tember, 1776, had made its offer of bounty lands to men and officers who would enlist in the ser- vice ; while it is not so stated it is clear that in the back of their heads the members of the Congress contemplated fulfilling this promise by granting land in the "Old Northwest"- thus mortgaging for public benefit a conquest it was hoped their armies would make. In December of the same year Deane wrote the Secret Committee from Paris outlining the first definite plan to charge this war bill to western lands. The plan as here- in outlined in detail,2 called for the grant of a tract of twenty-five million acres at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi, in the present State of Illinois, to a company of Americans and Euro-
1 These Collections, i, xv; the act of Congress read: "That Con- gress make provision for granting lands, in the following propor- tions: to the officers and soldiers who shall so engage in the service, and continue therein to the close of the war, or until discharged by Congress, and to the representatives of such officers and soldiers as shall be slain by the enemy.
"Such lands to be provided by the United States, and whatever expense shall be necessary to procure such lands, the said expense shall be paid and borne by the states in the same proportion as the other expenses of the war, viz. To a colonel, 500 acres; to a lieuten- ant colonel, 450; to a major, 400; to a captain, 300; to a lieutenant, 200; to an ensign, 150; each non-commissioned officer and soldier, 100." - Journals of the Continental Congress (1906), v, 763.
2 Doc. i.
XV
Introduction
peans. One-fifth of every "settlement" should be reserved by the Congress for sale by the na- tional government; the company should engage to place a certain number of inhabitants on the land within seven years and regulate civil gov- ernment, taking the advice of Congress in such measures, and thus "form a distinct State Con- federated with and under the general regulations of the United States General of America." Deane estimated that a company could be formed in Europe with a capital stock of one hundred thousand pounds to establish the State on the Mississippi as outlined. The scheme is an in- teresting medley of ancient and modern ideas, the retaining of "one-fifth part of all lands, mines, etc." harking back to Columbus and Cabot, and the plan allowing "the company" to "form a distinct State" bespeaks the new consti- tutional era of a decade later, the clause permit- ting the inhabitants to have "a voice in Con- gress" as soon as they are "called on . . to contribute" to public expenses is a plain putting in practice the doctrine of the Declaration of In- dependence. The reservations for the national government forecast the "Congress Lands" of the later ordinances.
The obvious obstruction in the path of carry- ing out any plan like Deane's (aside from the detail of ending European claim of sovereignty by winning the war) was the need of having the
xvi
Introduction
several States claiming western land relinquish those claims. In our brief sketch of the process by which this was accomplished 3 the psychic and moral influence of the theories like Deane's, of eventual-federated-statehood for the western provinces, was only mentioned; and while the economic disturbance to be caused in the older commonwealths by the opening of unlimited re- gions for healthy and adventurous pioneering and a resultant loss of a "balance of power" were potent arguments, the great plain facts of the case were that the rich West would be occu- pied by friend or foe, that the logical dream of every far-seeing man was a republic of conti- nental dimensions - let what upsettings of equil- ibrium come that might.
Thomas Paine was such a man, and though his proposed "State"- outlined in his Public Good in 1780- was south of the Ohio River it was a western State and his ideas concerning it secured the attention that any work by the author of Common Sense and The Crisis received. In these treatises he advocated the use of western lands for the creation of a fund "for the benefit of all," with Congress acting in the role of "con- tinental trustees."4 Later Paine advances a plan of a new State of between twenty and thirty mill-
3 These Collections, i, xv-xxiv.
4 Doc. ii. For the words "continent" or "continental" the un- initiated must supply "nation" or "national" as we use those words today.
xvii
Introduction
ion acres bounded in general by the Allegheny Mountains on the east, the Ohio River on the north, the North Carolina line on the south and on the west by a straight line from the "Falls of the Ohio" (Louisville) to the southern boun- dary.5 He called this "fighting the enemy with their own weapons" because his State occupied, in part, the proposed site of the Vandalia colony which was to have redowned to "the emolument of the Crown of England"; to use it now, by way of securing a fund to fight England, aroused all of Paine's latent enthusiasm.
He estimated that twenty million acres could be sold (through land offices established in Eu- rope) for four million pounds- a fund sufficient to carry on the war three years. To satisfy Vir- ginian objections to the loss of a western empire Paine brilliantly forecasts the probable aliena- tion of the trans-Allegheny Virginians, in effect casting a true prophesy of what took place when Kentucky broke from the Old Dominion; he points out the value of a buttress State and the value of the import trade which must pass through Virginia. Among other suggestions and prophecies which tumble with such facility from Paine's pen, one notes the idea of western lands being used to reimburse those whose property is despoiled by war, as happened by the grant of the "fire-lands" later in Ohio.
Although antedated by Silas Deane in advo-
5 Doc. iii.
xviii
Introduction
cating the amalgamation of western States with the "original Thirteen" on terms of equality, Paine may well be remembered as the chief early champion of this epoch-making idea ; more accurately than was done by any other at the time does he trace the probable steps-the settling of the matters of boundaries, the creation of an organic law by the national Congress which should be supplanted, when the State acquired a given population, by a constitution drafted by the inhabitants themselves; he advocates the right of an embryonic western State to a non- voting representative in Congress and reëchoes his argument in Common Sense concerning the necessity of a constitutional convention of all the States to define and describe the powers of Con- gress.
It is plain that real progress was being made in the development of men's ideas in these years 1776-1780 as to what should be the character of the first American State west of the Alleghenies. While the departures from the ideas which were in the thoughts of those who planned the western States of the Revolutionary period like Vandalia are marked -necessitated by the separation of the Colonies from the Mother Country - certain of the olden theories remained; in the reserva- tion called for in the Vandalia grant of three hundred acres "for the purpose of a glebe for
xix
Introduction
the support of a minister of the church of Eng- land" we have the kernel of the later reserva- tions for schools and religion of the Ordinance of 1787; in general, however, the charters for the proposed colonies followed the ancient type, as that of the Massachusetts Bay charter.6
By 1780 these ideas crept into the acts passed by the Continental Congress. The question of western cessions was precipitated by Maryland, and various representatives began to show friendship in proportion to the shallowness of their States' claim, as witness New York.
By October, 1780, Congress was ready to out- line in plain words the position of the govern- ment toward the West as soon as the States claiming that region should relinquish their claims, namely that it "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."7 The main point at issue being settled, all details were waived for future determination, excepting only the probable di- mensions of the future States; one hundred miles square was set as the minimum size and one hundred and fifty the maximum.
From this date on public interest and discus-
6 George Henry Alden, New Governments West of the Alleghenies Before 1780, 29.
7 Docs. iv and v.
XX
Introduction
sion centered in the manifold questions raised by the problem which Congress had settled in outline.
The main discussion was led in 1781 by the able retired clergyman-economist Pelatiah Web- ster who came into large reputation five years be- fore for his advocacy of "continental currency" to meet the struggling Colonies' debts. Mr. Webster strongly opposed selling or mortgaging western lands to foreigners and boldly advanced fresh plans that seemingly won the respect of all thinking men and, more than any one man on definite record, hastened the day when the Or- dinance of 1784 could be passed.8 In his homely but graphic phrase he urged that Congress pre- serve the goose which could in time lay a golden egg a day instead of killing it "in order to tear out at once all that was in her belly." In out- spoken confidence in the future value of western lands and of future growth of western popula- tion he is outranked only by the Washington who wrote that classic "Letter to Harrison" three years later. Every thought of his as to the de- tail of handling the western country was "path- breaking" in its effect.
He first proposed that all emigrants be vigor- ously kept out of the West until a portion could be surveyed into tiers of townships of from six
8 Doc. vi.
xxi
Introduction
to ten miles square ; survey-before-sale and com- pact settlement were thus advanced simultan- eously. He proposed that no land be sold at less than a Spanish dollar an acre, and that a second tier of townships should not be put on sale until the first had been disposed of. The plan, he said, would obviate the inconveniences and dan- gers of hit-or-miss settlements as had been made in the South; it would effectually prevent spec- ulation by absentee promoters as no land would be sold except to an actual settler; public senti- ment in favor of law and order would advance methodically with the advancing tiers of town- ships; by such a uniform advance could the problem of Indian relations be handled best. From any view-point, although his ideas may only in a measure have been original with him, all generations which have profited from the wis- dom and liberality of the Ordinances of 1784 and 1785 must recognize Pelatiah Webster's manful wrestling with the many-sided problem and the vital contribution that he made, or the ideas, at least, of which he became chief spokesman.
A new and important element now enters into the development of the western problem with the conclusion of the Revolutionary War-an army clamoring for a fulfillment of the government's promise of bounty lands and standing ready to accept, in payment for services, the only asset in the governments possession, western lands.
xxii
Introduction
The two schools of thought, heretofore represent- ed by Paine and Webster, the one favoring the killing of the goose for its immediate egg and the other favoring its preservation for steady fu- ture production, find their counterpart in the post-Revolutionary period in the writings of Pickering and Bland who offered the "Army" and the "Financier's" plans.
With this changing phase in the discussion the new ideas are found to be much more similar in character than is true of Paine's and Webster's plans, the one marked difference being that no longer did men plan a western State to be dis- posed of by setting up land offices in Europe and the sale of lands to individuals or companies across the sea. Though the two new schools which supplanted the old had much in common, as the names suggest, one had migration and set- tlement as its chief objective and the other the use of the West as a national asset. In working out a final decision, through numerous compro- mises, both ideas contributed to the final solution.
Timothy Pickering, who, as Adjutant-General and Quartermaster-General, had won for himself an enviable reputation during the Revolution, became spokesman for the army with reference to western lands and Statehood.º The "Pick- ering Plan" called for the creation of a new
9 Doc. viii.
xxiii
Introduction
State bounded by the Pennsylvania line, the Ohio and Maumee river and Lake Erie; the western line was to be a meridian running northward from a point on the Ohio River thirty miles west of the mouth of the Scioto River. This State was to be settled by those of the disbanded army entitled to bounty lands banded together as "as- sociators," the government, in a parental way, to aid the movement by supplying means of transportation, rations, utensils, arms, etc., etc. The unclaimed lands were to be sold by the State for its own benefit; the associators were to adopt their own constitution and the State was to be admitted into the Union on equal terms with the original States. Compared with the earlier plans, Pickering's scheme is notable because it ignores Webster's compact settlement and sur- vey-before-sale ideas, also because it first voices the use of money accruing from the sale of undis- posed lands for "schools and academies" and the "total exclusion of slavery" from the new State.
This general plan, as we have suggested, was Pickering's probably in the same sense that the Declaration of Independence was Jefferson's - it voiced the ideas of his coterie of friends and advisers and was framed in his language. How- ever, no document of the hour, written by the adherents of the "army" school, quite equals in interest the broad outlook and sane judgment of General Rufus Putnam's contemporaneous
xxiv
Introduction
"Thoughts on A Peace Establishment for The United States of America"1º and his letter to General Washington of June 16, 1783. Though different in purpose and character, the two docu- ments play into each other. The original copy of the "Thoughts on A Peace Establishment" is endorsed on the back "Requested by Gen'l Wash- ington"; it is a military survey of the United States, its chief harbors, defenses, and lines of communications and is remarkable for its pro- posal to defend the trans-Allegheny provinces by a line of forts stretching from the Ohio River at Yellow Creek to Lake Erie, at the present site of Cleveland. Following this outline of the strate- gic military keys of the continent, is a well con- sidered plan of a "regular Continental Militia" calling for the maintenance of fifty-four com- panies of infantry, twelve companies of artillery, and one company of artificers. Writers on our military history, who have decried our studied policy of unpreparedness, would do well to note that one trenchant writer of the Revolutionary era, of wide experience, was advocating at this time an army of some proportions (30,000 men and officers) on a basis of compulsory military service.
General Putnam's letter to Washington ac- companied the "Petition of the Subscribers, Offi- cers in the Continental Line" which we have
10 Doc. x.
1
XXV
Introduction
printed elsewhere.11 That petition was based on the Pickering outline; it called for the setting apart of a State between the boundaries drawn by Pickering which was "in time to be admitted one of the confederated States of America." General Putnam's accompanying letter 12 de- serves high place in the annals of the building of the "Old Northwest;" its breadth of view, its amazing foresight and its ring of hopeful pa- triotism are, alike, unequalled by any document of the time. The lines of Putnam's State coin- cided with those of Pickering's, the whole to contain about seventeen and one-half million acres; like Webster, he advocates the township system, and, like Pickering, he suggests lands allotted for schools; but Putnam goes a step further than either and includes land for the support of religion. He opposes large grants to individuals but forecasts his own Ohio Company of 1788 by suggesting that others beside officers and soldiers be allowed to "petition for charters on purchase." His scheme, however, is pre- eminently that of a soldier's, and he repeats his arguments in favor of military establishments at strategic points. Clearer than any man at the time he foresees the dangers that lurk in Spain's grasp on the Mississippi; nor does the impor- tance of fortifying the lake frontier "in case of a
11 Vol. i, xxvi-xxviii.
12 Doc. xi.
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Introduction
war with Great Britain" miss his eye; and he closes with a strong plea for the opening of the land to the proposed adventurers who, establish- ed on the Ohio and the lakes, will "banish forever the idea of our western territory falling under the dominion of any European power." His choice of West Point (which he later laid out) as the "Grand Arsenal of America" is worthy of special mention.
We have slightly broken into the correct chronological order by treating the Pickering and Putnam plans in sequence; but as one is a complement of the other it was proper to do so. But between the two, in point of time, was voiced what is called the "Financier's Plan," Theo- doric Bland, a member of Congress from Vir- ginia, being its chief spokesman.13 As the name implies, it was the plan of those who had on their shoulders the heavy task of meeting with an empty treasury the demands of the Army cry- ing for pay long over due. It was embodied in a motion made by Bland in Congress June 5, 1783, to enact an ordinance laying out "a tract of unlocated or vacant territory" in "districts" two degrees of latitude in length and three de- grees of longitude in width. Hitherto men had planned western States on natural geographical lines; with the Bland ordinance we have the in-
13 Doc. ix.
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Introduction
troduction of arbitrary lines which took less ac- count of watersheds, river valleys, and lake shores. Each "district" was to be surveyed into townships and be admitted "a separate, inde- pendent, and sovereign State"; each soldier was to have thirty acres for every dollar owed him by the government - over and above the regular bounty in land due to him. Ten thousand acres from each hundred thousand were to be reserved to the government and the money accruing therefrom was to be used in payment of the civil list, for erecting forts and founding "seminaries of learning"; any surplus remaining was to be used in "building and equipping a navy and to no other use or purpose whatever." Of all the schemes for western States Bland's alone made provision for use of funds for the protection of the eastern sea-coast by a navy. The plan is of no little importance for its contribution of the arbitrary line idea; otherwise it reëchoes most of the old ideas of federated States, government survey, and reservations to promote education, the township system, etc. No action on Bland's ordinance was taken.
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