USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 12
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this confederacy of the United States of America," subject to the articles of confederation and laws of congress. They should be sub- jeet to pay a share of the "federal debts," and should not interfere with the sale of lands by the United States, or tax the same while yet unsold. The eighth article provided that after the year 1800, "there shall neither he slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states, otherwise than in the punishment of erimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty." The new states were to have a temporary government, under the control of Congress, with delegates to Congress who should not be allowed to vote. All the articles should constitute an irrevocable compact and fundamental constitution between the old and new states. This plan contained the germ of the plan of organization followed ever since in new territory, and the credit for it, as well as for the proposition to abolish slavery at a very early date, south as well as north, belongs to Thomas Jefferson, the first great American expansionist.
Referring to the anti-slavery clanse, Rufus King, in his history of Ohio (1888), declares "it is safe to say that if the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territory had been left to depend upon this provision, all the states would have been slave states." Justin Winsor, in his "Westward Movement," cchoes the same opinion, and Senator Hoar, in his Marietta centennial address, said "It would have been impossible to exelnde the institution of slavery if it had once got footing. With or without his proviso the scheme of Mr. Jefferson would have resulted in dividing the territory into ten small slaveholding states." But it does not seem fair to discredit the dis- position of Jefferson and many other Southerners at that time to put an end to slavery. More generous is the expression of George Ban- croft, that "the design of Jefferson marks an era in the history of universal freedom." "At that time slavery prevailed throughout much more than half the lands of Europe. Jefferson, following an impulse from his own mind, designed by his ordinance to establish from end to end of the whole country a north and south line, at which the westward extension of slavery should be stayed by an impassable bound. Of the men held in bondage beyond that line he did not propose the instant emancipation : bnt slavery was to be rung ont with the departing century, so that in all the western territory, whether held in 1754 by Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia or the United States, the sun of the new century might dawn on no slave."
But from a North Carolinian, "a young fool." Jefferson called him, eame a motion to strike out the anti-slavery article. The vote of delegates was 16 to 7 for retaining it, but the count was by states. Delaware, Georgia and New Jersey were absent, and North Carolina divided. Though only three states opposed abolition, only six could be counted in its favor, one less than enough, So the article was
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stricken out .* "The voice of a single individual would have pre- vented this abominable crime," Jefferson wrote in 1786. "Heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail."
The ordinance of 1784 was adopted April 23d, and on May 7th Jefferson reported an ordinance for regulating the survey of the pub- lie domain, in which the division in lots one mile square was pro- posed, and it was ordained that the lands "should pass in deseent and dower according to the customs known to the common law by the name of gavelkind," i. e., to the sons equally, instead of to the eldest. This is of interest, showing Jefferson's connection with the system of see- tional survey of land, and reform of the laws of descent, as well as the institution of the dollar and the deeimal system of money. If he had also sueeceded in establishing a dead line for slavery along the Alleghanies and Chattahoochee river, who could rival him as a benefactor of his country ? But Jefferson was appointed minister to France, and the impulse of his enthusiasm was lost for a time. He was often more visionary than practical, it may be said. The steadier wisdom of Washington was shown in his disapproval of the imag- inary bounding of future states by meridians and parallels, and his recommendation that states be created politically as they grew actu- ally, and with natural bounds. But, as Bancroft says, "The land ordinances of Jefferson, as amended from 1784 to 1788, definitely settled the character of the national land laws, which are still treas- ured up as one of the most precious heritages from the founders of the republic."
After the New York and Virginia eessions, commissioners of the United States (Arthur Lee, Richard Butler and Oliver Wolcott ) met delegates of the Iroquois at Rome, N. Y. (Fort Stanwix), in Octo- ber, 1784, and a treaty was made, granting the Indians peace, on condition of the limitation of their bounds and extinction of their ancient claims in the West. In January, 1785, at Fort McIntosh, George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee met represent- atives of the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas and Ottawas, who consented for the sake of peace to restriction to a region south of Lake Erie, of which the east boundary was the Cuyahoga and the Tnsearawas and their portage, and the west boundary the Miami and Manmee and their portage; the southern extent to be limited by a straight line from the erossing of the Muskingum at Fort Laurens to the site of Old Britain's ruined fort on the Miami. Thus, appar- ently, three-fourths of Ohio was ready for survey and sale, the title of the United States being based on conquest from British and
* Benton, in his Thirty Years' View, gives this explanation: "It was struck out-the three southern states present voting for the striking out- because the clause did not then contain the provision in favor of the recov- ery of fugitive slaves, which was afterwards ingrafted upon it."
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Indians, and relinquishment of state claims. Washington urged Lee, of Virginia, toward the close of 1784, to arouse Congress to the necessity of providing a plan of survey and sale of land, and the mat- ter was discussed widely, Timothy Pickering and other northerners advocating township surveys, and the Virginians inclining to haphaz- ard locations. The New Englanders also wanted reservations of land for the support of churches as well as schools, while the Virgin- ians were not inclined to perpetuate even that much association of church and state. In both these differences were illustrated the characteristics of the two sections, or rather, the peculiarities of New England. The settlements begun at Plymouth Rock were religious in character. "They formed civil organizations; yet the church principle or influence was completely the dominant one in these soci- eties. It made public opinion. It gave and took away personal influence. It, in effect, made the laws and made the magistrates."* That people were as solicitous for the maintenance of churches as of schools : for the support of the minister as of the magistrate. Under the new constitution the legislators of Massachusetts were required to take oath of allegiance to the Christian religion, while Virginia adopted Jefferson's proposition of entire freedom of opinion and no religious test of capacity for public service, a doctrine novel enough to gain the attention of Europe. New Englanders organized, fur- thermore, with the town or township as the unit, while Virginia, typ- ical of the South, had for its essential unit the broad area of a county, with great plantations and scattered mansions. There were more people, also, in New England who believed the system of slavery opposed to the interests of the average farmer than there were in Virginia. Timothy Piekering, early in 1785, was urging Rufus King, a delegate from Massachusetts, to see that lands in the west were reserved for support of religion and education, with slave labor prohibited, and King, in April, again brought before Congress the Jefferson clause prohibiting slavery after January 1, 1801, with special application to the Northwest, and with the addition of a pro- vision for the restoration of fugitive slaves. But with the reporting of this resolution by King the matter seems to have been dropped.
The leadership in lawmaking for the Northwest was now in the hands of William Grayson, of Virginia, who had been educated at Oxford and associated with General Washington as aide-de-camp. Through his efforts an ordinance was framed, written by him, and put through Congress May 20, 1785, which provided a practical plan for surveying and selling the lands of the Northwest. It embodied a compromise of various opinions, and while it did not extend to mat- ters of organization and government, it was the fundamental instru- ment on which was based the settlement of the new country. This
* Randall's Life of Jefferson.
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"ordinance for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the western territory," established the system of rectangular survey, with townships six miles square, formed by intersecting range and town- ship lines. The west boundary line of Pennsylvania (run by Andrew Ellicott in 1785-86) was taken as the principal meridian, which the range lines should parallel, and a base line, as a guide for township lines, was to be established dne west from the intersection of the boundary line with the north bank of the Ohio river. As the bill was reported, section No. 16 in each township, that is, one-thirty- sixth of the land, was reserved for the support of education, and the same amount for religion, but the latter reservation was stricken out" before the bill was enacted. The provisions for education were for the purpose of encouraging settlement. On the sale of this wild land the confederation depended for the payment of the debts in- curred in the Revolution, even the compensation of soldiers. No other method seemed possible. Alexander Hamilton had retired from public affairs in disgust, and the funding of debt and wise pro- vision for its payment were vet in the future. There were other reservations : One seventh of all the land for soldiers of the Con- tinental army, four sections in each township for future disposal by Congress, and one third of all gold, silver and copper mines ; three townships for refugees from Canada and Nova Scotia, and suffi- cient lands for the Moravian missionaries and Indians about their former towns. Another great reservation was for Virginia veterans, between the Scioto and Little Miami rivers, provided certain lands reserved for them south of the Ohio were not sufficient. Five ranges were to be first surveyed, and portions offered at public sale in each state, at $1 an acre, payable in obligations of the United States. Thomas Hutchins, who had been General Bonquet's engineer in Ohio, was made geographer-general of the United States, and put in charge of the survey, with an assistant from each of the states, and in the fall of 1785, for the protection of the surveyors, Fort Harmar was built at the mouth of the Muskingum river. Hutchins' first work was to run a base line west from the boundary of Pennsylvania, on the north bank of the Ohio, forty-two miles, under the protection of the troops. This is called the "Geographer's line."
After this, September 13, 1786, Connecticut ceded her claims in the west, reserving, on promise to settle it, as much of her strip "from sea to sea" as lay between the Pennsylvania border and a line 120
* Another feature stricken out would have been "of the most fatal charac- ter." said Thomas H. Benton in 1830. "It was, that each township should be sold out complete before any land should be offered in the next one. . The effect of such a provision may be judged by the fact that above one hundred thousand acres remain to this day unsold in the first land dis- trict, that of Steubenville, in Ohio, which included the first range and first township. If that provision had remained in the ordinance the settlements would not yet have got out of sight of the Pennsylvania line."
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miles west. This became known as the Western Reserve," and was surveyed with a new base line on the 41st parallel. This eession was very important. Virginia prided herself on a tremendous sacrifice . in behalf of the United States. But the Connecticut claim was more definite and certainly as valid as that of Virginia, and Con- nectieut gave up that very important belt of country passing through the finest lands of Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and including the sites of Toledo and Chicago.
But all this legislation was ineffective withont an understanding with the Indian possessors of the land. It soon became apparent that the treaty of Fort MeIntosh would be repudiated by the Indians as unauthorized, because all the tribes who claimed title were not represented. Neither did they rest quietly under the theory of con- quest, and asked payment for the lands. A similar treaty was made by Clark and Butler and Samuel H. Parsons, at a stockade called Fort Finney at the mouth of the Great Miami, in January, 1786, by which the Shawanees vielded southern Indiana and the west side of the Miami, and this was also repudiated. Joseph Brant, the great Iroquois chief, visited England to find out the real international status of the Indian in the West, and came home sullen and dis- heartened. From the first he announced his policy that no treaty was valid unless all the nations consented, and just as pertinacionsly contended that the Ohio river must be the boundary. A western confederacy of Indians was formed, at least on paper, and a strong argument, reinforced no doubt by British logie, was sent to Congress in 1786, asking for a general treaty on the basis of compensation for land ceded. Border depredations were carried on by white and red men alike, and in the summer of 1786 General Clark was again com- pelled to raise an army in Kentucky to fight the Indians on the Wabash, and Col. Benjamin Logan, with Boone and Kenton and a considerable force of Kentnekians, marched into the head-water region of Mad river, killed twenty Indians, captured seventy or eighty more, and destroyed eight villages and the surrounding fields.
The British still held the military posts south of the lakes, of which Detroit was most important, as Spain held on to the western region claimed by Georgia. Really, the United States had obtained nothing in the west by the treaty of 1783 but the right to get what they could from the Indians, for that was all England had. England apparently deserted her Indian allies by the treaty, which Sir Jolm Johnson on that account declared "infamous," but the policy of the mother country was to encourage the red men to hold the land up to the Ohio river. Her representatives were always protesting that
* The Western reserve was not under the jurisdiction of the Northwest Territory until April, 1800.
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they would not encourage an Indian war, and they did not desire one, because they wished the Indians to remain at peace for the profit of the great fur-trading houses of Canada. But England would have been glad to see an Indian state maintained between Kentucky and the lakes, and the warriors were supplied with arms and ammunition for "hunting." At the same time the white people about Detroit were obtaining deeds from the red men for large tracts of land. John Askin, a native of Ireland (whose daughter married Alexander McKee, the Indian agent ), obtained, in company with several others, the most important of whom was Alexander Henry, the great fur- trader of Montreal, this sort of title to a million acres on the Maumee including the site of Toledo, the Sandusky peninsula, and further east, including a large part of the site of Cleveland. Askin's claim in northern Ohio amounted to five and a quarter million acres.
When the United States remonstrated against the retention of the Western posts, Great Britain replied that in the treaty of 1783 Con- gress had been pledged to secure the repeal of the acts of banishment and confiscation directed against the Tories, but on the contrary the states were redoubling their persecution of these people and driving them from the United States by tens of thousands. Furthermore, the Virginia statutes to prohibit the collection of British debts, in retaliation for the British taking away Virginia slaves, and similar laws in other colonies, had not yet been repealed as was promised. England was also justified, politically, in holding her posts, as Spain was holding hers in the country elaimed by Georgia, because the United States, under the confederation, showed signs of speedy dis- solution. The proposition of John Jay, in 1785, to leave the Mis- sissippi under the control of Spain for twenty-five years in exchange for commercial privileges in the West Indies, enraged the western settlers and suggested a scheme to separate the Atlantic states into three independent groups, East, Middle and South.
The Kentucky settlers strenuously urged war on the Ohio Indians, frequently frustrating efforts for peace by their warlike enthusiasm. At the same time they were asking independence from Virginia, and some of them were plotting with Spain. The leader, as George Rogers Clark sank into obscurity, was James Wilkinson, a gallant Revolutionary officer, of remarkable eloquence, magnificent manner and restless ambition, who had made great trouble in the Continental army by becoming the confidant of a cabal and betraying it, and was again to act such a part in American history. Wilkinson was for Western independence of Virginia, and of the United States also, if the United States could not give the West free commerce on the Mis- sissippi. There is no doubt that he was for a time privately engaged to go further and bring the West under the dominion of Spain. Eng- land was watching these intrigues, and carrying on intrigues of her
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own to counteract them, in which Dr. John Conolly," Lord Dun- more's former lieutenant at Pittsburg, was a conspicuous agent. The United States Indian agent, Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons, was approached by these British emissaries, and according to an entry in the secret service books, he was disposed to be friendly. It is not likely that the main body of the frontiersmen of Kentucky and Ten- nessee really favored an alliance with Spain or England. More than Wilkinson could count on as friends would have preferred join- ing an American army to drive Spain out of the Mississippi valley. But they would not submit to loss of the Mississippi as a channel of commerce. In May, 1782, a Pennsylvania German, Jacob Yoder, had started out from Redstone, on the Monongahela, with a big boat load of flour. He sold his cargo at New Orleans and took his pay in furs ; traded his furs at Havana for sugar, sailed with that to Phila- delphia, and then, with money in his pocket, reerossed the mountains to his home. Thus began the great river commerce, which Spain soon foolishly interfered with, in the hope of forcing the West into union with her colonial power.
Wilkinson made a commercial voyage to New Orleans in 1787, and came under the Spanish influence so thoroughly that some time later he wrote Governor Miro: "I have voluntarily alienated myself from the United States. . I have rejected the proffered honors and rewards of Great Britain. . I have given my time, my property, and every exertion of my faculties to promote the interests of the Spanish monarchy." For a considerable time all the trade between the Ohio and New Orleans was carried on in Wil- kinson's name, a line from him suffieing to ensure the owner of the boat every privilege and protection.i In 1789 he took an expedition of twenty-five armed boats down the river, carrying tobacco, flour and provisions. Another expedition, under Colonel Armstrong, of the Cumberland settlement, had its goods confiscated, and the men fought a battle with the Spaniards to prevent their arrest.
While affairs were in this dubious condition, with the savages in actual possession, and England and Spain watching a chance to seize the land, the first authorized American settlements in Ohio were pro- jected.
Gen. Rufus Putnam was the surveyor selected by Massachusetts for the work upon the "seven ranges"# in Ohio, but being unable to go, Gen. Benjamin Tupper, a veteran of the French war as well as
* Dr. Conolly went through Ohio in November, 1788, to study the situation in Kentucky, and talked of a British plan to send an army down the Mis- sissippi while a fleet attacked New Orleans, and hold the river for the use of Great Britain and the West. Wilkinson, the agent of Spain, frightened the British emissary away by threats of violence.
+ American State Papers.
# Seven ranges were actually surveyed, instead of five, as provided in the. ordinance of 1785.
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the Revolution, took his place. The Indians interrupted the survey. Tupper went back to Putnam, and the two friends sat up all the first night planning a colony of veterans in the West. At daybreak they had completed a call for a convention. The result was the organi- zation of the "Ohio Company of Associates," at a meeting of dele- gates from the various Massachusetts counties, which convened at the "Bunch of Grapes" tavern in Boston, March 1, 1786. The plan contemplated a capital of $1,000,000, mainly in continental specie certificates, divided in a thousand shares. A year later two hundred and fifty shares had been subscribed for, and General Putnam, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler and Gen. Samuel H. Parsons were chosen as directors, and Maj. Winthrop Sargent, secretary. Manasseh Cut- ler was a graduate of Yale, late chaplain in the army, and a distin- guished scientist. General Parsons had made the trip down the Ohio as Indian commissioner, and recommended the location on the Muskingum. He was selected to present the scheme to Congress.
Meanwhile, there were many who did not have faith in the future of the West, such as James Monroe, who dodged all the votes on the prohibition of slavery. As the result of a visit to Fort Pitt, he brought about a reference of the proposed creation of states to the grand committee of Congress, which reported in March, 1786, advis- ing the repeal of all legislation conflicting with the power of Con- gress to set off states at discretion. In April, Nathan Dane, one of the Massachusetts members, an able lawyer and patriot, a man of remarkable clearness of thought and expression, moved a committee to frame a temporary form of government of the proposed western states. Monroe, made chairman of that committee, reported a plan of division into at least two and not more than five states. But there could be no change in the number of states without consent of Virginia, that state having embodied the Jefferson ordinance in her deed of cession. So the matter was dropped for the time. In May, however, Grayson had a law enacted making the navigable rivers. and portages public highways of the United States, and in July he proposed the plan of division into five states, practically the same now established, with the mouths of the Wabash and Great Miami as the starting points of the north and south lines. But this was voted down and the three state plan adopted, through jealousy of future political power in the Northwest. In September a bill was intro- duced to postpone the admission of any northwestern state until its population should be one-thirteenth of the population of the original states at the time of the proposed admission. This timorous propo- sition, that would have kept out the frontiersmen for many years, was fortunately checked by the adjournment of Congress. The new Congress, obtaining a quorum in February, 1787, was first busied with discussion of the proposed convention "to form a more perfect union," and the rebellion in Massachusetts, inspired by resistance
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to collection of debts, complicated by the evils of depreciated paper money. In April the ordinance for government of the Northwest was brought up, the restriction of population was stricken out, and the bill was up to a third reading when the memorial of the Ohio company was presented. "It interested everyone. For vague hopes of colonization, here stood a body of hardy pioneers, ready to lead the way to the rapid absorption of the domestic debt of the United States, selected from the choicest regiments of the army, capable of self-defense, the protectors of all who should follow them."# The memorial was referred to a committee composed of Edward Carring- ton, Rufus King, Nathan Dane, James Madison and Egbert Ben- son. But the quorum of Congress soon disappeared, and attention was diverted to the constitutional convention. In the interval Manasseh Cutler was deputed by the Ohio company to take the place of Parsons as negotiator. Cutler was probably the fittest man on the continent, except Franklin, for a mission of delicate diplomacy, says Senator Hoar.f He seems, at least, to have had some of Frank- lin's eraft in negotiation. "He was a man of consummate prudence in speech and conduet; of eourtly manners, a favorite in the draw- ing room and in the camp; with a wide cirele of correspondents among the most famous men of his time." Congress obtained a quorum July 4th, and next day Dr. Cutler arrived, armed with a bundle of letters of introduction, and with the experience of Parsons to guide him. The judgment of Parsons in recommending the Muskingum country as the place of settlement was reinforced by the opinion of Hutchins, with whom Cutler had frequent interviews. He also conferred with the special committee on the Ohio company memorial, and on July 10th Chairman Carrington reported a bill in his own handwriting recommending a sale of land to the company, providing for what the Ohio company asked : donations in each town- ship for support of both religion and education, and four townships near the centre of the traet for a university; the company to do the township and seetion surveying, and to have an allowance of one- third the price to make up for poor land. The price, therefore, would be 6633 cents an aere, payable in certificates worth then about 12 cents on the dollar, making the speculative price eight or nine cents.
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