USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 13
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The day before this, the proposed ordinance for the govern- ment of the Northwest had been referred to a new committee of seven : Carrington and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, Kean of South Carolina, and Dane and Melanethon Smith of the east and middle states. Of the eight states present by delegates in Congress, five were southern. An ordinance was reported on the 11th, and it
* Bancroft's History of the United States.
+ See his Marietta oration, 1888.
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appears that Dr. Cutler," being asked to examine a copy and make suggestions, did so, and then started to Philadelphia to spend the time while the ordinance was under discussion in visiting the con- stitutional convention and Benjamin Franklin. On the 13th the "Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio," was passed. It was composed of two parts : first, provisions for government as a district exclusively by Congress, and later as a territory by a legislature subject to con- gressional supervision ; second, six articles of general and funda- mental law, "to be considered as articles of compact between the original states and the people and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, except by common consent." The first part was not such a liberal recognition of "the rights of man" as might have been expected, and Lee wrote to General Washington, in apology for it, that the strong-toned features were "necessary for the security of property among uninformed and perhaps licentions peo- ple, as the greater part of them who go there are." In the second stage of government provided for (territorial), suffrage was restricted to men owning fifty acres of land .;
The second, or general part, is that which has been the subject of well-deserved praise since that day. Antedating the Federal con- stitution, it embodied some of the noblest features of that great charter. It was entirely worthy of the fathers of the nation. As Senator Hoar remarks: "From their experience there had come to the men who were on the stage in this country in 1787 an aptness for the construction of constitutions and great permanent statutes such as the world never saw before or since. Their supremacy in this respect is as unchallenged as that of the great anthors of the reign of Elizabeth in the drama."
Such were the men, and the conditions from which they evolved the ordinance and the constitution are well described in the Mari- etta address of Gen. Thomas Ewing: "The curse of land monopoly had blighted most of the colonies. The evil of large holdings was being fostered and perpetnated in many states by laws of primogeni- tre and entail and by limiting suffrage and offices to land owners, thus establishing as far as practicable, a landed aristocracy. A sec- ond curse was slavery, the twin and ally of land monopoly, both oper- ating to degrade labor; both repelling immigration of poor white
* There has been an attempt to establish Dr. Cutler's authorship of the ordinance, a theory first announced about 1872. Dr. William F. Poole has gone so far as to suggest that Dr. Cutler brought the ordinance In his pocket from Massachusetts, and Congress forthwith passed it unanimously! What the suggestions were, that he made to the committee, there is no record to show.
+ Fifteen years later a writer in the Scioto Gazette declared: "This gov- ernment, now so oppressive, was prescribed by the United States at a time when civil liberty was not so well understood as at present."
I-8
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men ; both enemies of democratic-republican government. In no one of the constitutions of the states was slavery prohibited, and in but one (Delaware) was the slave trade forbidden. In the Federal constitution, almost of the same date as the ordinance, 'every clause which touched the institution of slavery was intended to protect and strengthen it.' The slave trade which British greed had established was carried on after the revolutionary war under the American flag in ships sailing from northern ports ; and it was by northern votes in the constitutional convention that the traffic was protected until 1808. The general lack of the vital flame of democracy in the Confedera- tion is further illustrated by the fact that in only four of the states- Virginia, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island-was there absolute freedom of religious opinion. In but three-New Hamp- shire, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania-was there provision for common schools; and in less than half the eleven new state constitu- tions were to be found bills of rights containing the habeas corpus and other safeguards of liberty."
In 1833 Salmon P. Chase, afterward one of the most famous of Ohioans, wrote of the ordinance :
"It comprehended an intelligible system of law on the descent and conveyance of real property and the transfer of personal goods. It also contained five articles of compact between the original states, and the people and states of the territory, establishing certain great fundamental principles of governmental duty and private right, as the basis of all future constitutions and legislation, unalterable and indestructible except by that final and common ruin, which, as it has overtaken all former systems of human policy. may yet overwhelm our American union. Never, probably, in the history of the world, did a measure of legislation so accurately fulfill and vet so mightily exceed the anticipations of the legislators. The ordinance has been well described as having been a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, in the settlement and government of the northwestern states. When the settlers went into the wilderness, they found the law already there. It was impressed upon the soil itself, while it vet bore up nothing but the forest. The purchaser of land became by that act, a party to the compact, and bound by its perpetual cov- enants. This remarkable instrument was the last gift of the congress of the old confederation to the country, and it was a fit consummation of their glorious labors. At the time of its promulga- tion, the federal constitution was under discussion in the conven- tion, and in a few months, upon the organization of the new national government, that congress was dissolved, never again to assemble."*
Nathan Dane, who drew up the ordinance for the committee, has distinetly stated that he took from Jefferson's resolve of 1784 the
* Chase's Sketch of the History of Ohio.
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substance of the general provisions regarding the permanent union of the new states with the Confederacy, their preliminary subjec- tion to the laws of congress, ineluding taxation to pay public debt, the control of public lands by congress without taxation by the states, and the provision that non-resident proprietors must not be taxed higher than residents. The recent Shay's rebellion in Massachu- setts, based on opposition to collection of debts, inspired the clause : "No law ought ever to be made or have force in the said territory that shall in any manner whatever interfere with or conflict with private contracts or engagements, bona fide and without fraud, previously formed." This principle was also embodied in the constitution of the United States, and has ever since been "the safeguard of public morals and of individual rights." Mr. Dane claimed the authorship of this extremely important part of the ordinance, as well as of those elanses securing the Indians in their rights and property and elabor- ating Jefferson's proposal to divest land titles of the feudal features persisting in the old states. "But," says Bancroft, "the clause regard- ing impairment of contracts related particularly to the abuse of paper money, and bears in every word the impress of the mind of Richard Henry Lee." The remaining general provisions were selected from the constitution and laws of Massachusetts, including the famous declaration that "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
As for the artiele forbidding slavery, Dane wrote at the time to Rufus King: "When I drew the ordinance (which passed, a few words excepted, as I originally formed it) I had no idea the states would agree to the sixth article, prohibiting slavery, as only Massa- chusetts in the eastern states was present, and therefore omitted it in the draft. But finding the house favorably disposed on this sub- ject, after we had completed the other parts, I moved this article, which was agreed to without opposition." Forty-three years later Mr. Dane declared, when there was seetional dispute about the sub- ject, that he took the words "from Mr. King's motion made in 1785." As King's motion was based on Jefferson's resolve of 1784, the anti- slavery article of 1787 is in fact a reproduction of the Jefferson model, changed to apply to the Northwest alone, and at once instead of after 1800, a concession of time to balanee a concession in scope of application.
Furthermore, there was a very great and portentous concession to the slaveholding interest in an added clause: "Provided always, that any persons escaping into the same [Northwest territory] from whom labor or service is lawfully elaimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her service as aforesaid." It is strange that
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this taeit recognition of the lawfulness of slavery," and foundation of the fugitive slave law, is not discussed when the Ordinance of 1787 is the subject of panegyrie. The ordinance seems in faet to be, as one studies it, the first of the famous compromises that char- acterize the history of slavery in America. One suspects that its nature as a compromise is what caused the house to be "favorably disposed" to the anti-slavery artiele, and that Mr. Dane might have told more of the reason for delay in constructing and presenting the artiele.
There is apparent compromise in other regards in the ordinance. Religion and knowledge are declared to be necessary to good govern- ment and happiness, but it is deereed that education only "shall for- ever be encouraged." It is likely that the question of slavery was not so important in the minds of the delegates as the number of states authorized in the future, of which three and five were made the limits. The balance of power between North and South was already a matter of solicitude. John Brown, the first western delegate to congress, wrote home to Kentucky in 1788 that the East would not consent to the admission of that district, unless Vermont or Maine were admitted at the same time, and added, "the [ Eastern] jealousy of the growing importance of the western country, and an unwilling- ness to add a vote to the southern interest, are the real causes of oppo- sition."
After the ordinance was passed Dr. Cutler returned to New York, and aided by Winthrop Sargent, addressed himself to proeuring authority to buy a great traet of land for his company, as recom- mended by the special committee. But he found Congress so little disposed to agree to his terms, which almost amounted to giving away the land, that he thought of abandoning the enterprise. Then Col. William Duer, secretary of the board of the treasury, came to him, the doctor wrote in his journal, "with proposals from a number of the principal characters in the city, to extend our contraet and take in another company; but that it should be kept a profound seeret. He explained the plan they had eoneerted and offered me generous conditions if I would accomplish the business for them. The plan struek me agreeably ; Sargent insisted on my undertaking; and both urged me not to think of giving the matter up so soon." Colonel Duer "lived in the style of a nobleman," his wife, "Lady Kitty," daughter of Lord Sterling, was a charming entertainer, and Dr. Cutler agreed to the Duer proposition, which was in effeet, that Duer should be allowed to organize a sub-speeulation, under the wing of the Ohio company, to buy a great area of western land with depre-
* The actual effect of the anti-slavery article was to prevent the importa- tion of slaves. It did not, as administered, abolish the slavery already exist- ing in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.
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ciated scrip. The appeal of the veterans of the Ohio company would obtain for the New York speculators better terms than they could hope for without such a motive." At the same time Dr. Cutler made a "bluff" to Congress that as there was no prospect of coming to terms he would drop the matter and buy land of the states. Then, when some delegates came to him in anxiety lest the sale should fall through, he sprang upon them a new proposition based on the secret arrangement with Duer, that he would extend the purchase from the Seven ranges to the Seioto river, by which sale Congress could extinguish "more than four millions of the public debt" and secure "an actual, large and immediate settlement of the most robust and industrious people in America."; This resulted in the passage of an ordinance July 23d, authorizing the sale of the land between the Seventh range and the Seioto, back to an extension of the north line of the tenth township of the Seven ranges and reserving the sixteenth sections for support of schools and the twenty-ninth sections for sup- port of the church.
Cutler and Sargent then made their formal proposition to buy, and renewed the struggle to obtain the approval of Congress, aided by Duer and all the help he could enlist. The Ohio Company had made a slate of territorial officers, and this they found must be abandoned. General Parsons had been selected for governor, but he was dropped for Arthur St. Clair, president of Congress, with the proviso that Parsons should be a judge and Sargent secretary. Then "matters went on much better," Dr. Cutler was told, but there was such delay that on the 27th he packed his baggage and went around on a morning call to bid the congressmen farewell, saying if the terms he had offered, which he considered very good, consider- ing the state of the country, were not accepted, he would deal with New York, Connecticut or Massachusetts, and doubtless obtain more exclusive privileges. He added another significant argument in favor of the deal. "The uneasiness of the Kentucky people with respect to the Mississippi was notorious. \ revolt of that country from the Union, if a war with Spain should occur, was universally acknowledged to be highly probable; and most certainly a systematic settlement in that country, conducted by men thoroughly attached to the federal government, and composed of young, robust and hardy laborers, who had no idea of any other than the federal government, I conceived to be an object worthy of much attention." The full meaning of this was probably not realized by Cutler or the men he
* In the "Narrative and Critical History of America," vii, 535, this is called "a sort of bribe, linked in the legislation of Congress for the purpose of affording opportunities for private speculation." This is an inconsider- ate expression. It was an unfortunate alliance, but without the help of Duer the Ohio company could not have made its first payment on the land. ¿Cutler's Journal, July 21st.
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addressed, and it was not especially obvious during the early history of the State. But it became quite clear in 1861. Upon this appeal of Cutler's Congress immediately referred the Ohio company offer to the treasury board, with the requirement that after the second pay- ment the residue should be paid in six semi-annual installments. "By this ordinance," says Cutler, "we obtained the grant of near five million acres of land, amounting to three million and a half of dollars ; one million and a half acres for the Ohio company, and the remainder for a private speculation, in which many of the principal characters of America are interested. Without connecting this speculation, similar terms and advantages could not have been obtained for the Ohio company." A verbal contract was made with the treasury board, and on October 27th following the contract was made in writing. By this instrument the Ohio company contracted to buy between the seventh and seventeenth ranges, back from the Ohio river far enough to include one and a half million aeres, besides the donations of two sections in each township for support of schools and the ministry, and two townships for a university, and three sections in each township retained under the control of Con- gress. The company paid down half a million dollars in final set- tlement certificates, and was then authorized to take possession of 750,000 aeres in the east, but until the balance was paid, after the completion of surveys, the United States withheld a deed.
For the first payment Colonel Dner advanced $143,000, and a contract for sale (or rather for option of purchase) of the western tract being closed at the same time, a half interest in it was trans- ferred to Dner. Thus the Scioto company had its origin. Cutler and Sargent were the other partners in the Scioto speculation, and afterward conveyed the greater part of their interests to Putnam, Tupper and others, including the famous poet of that day, Joel Bar- low, who went to Europe to interest the French nation in the enter- prise .*
Congress was justified in its reluctance to accept the Ohio com- pany proposal, as it was pure speculation, based on the low price of certificates. These certificates at once began to advance when such an attractive use for them was pointed out, and the inauguration of the federal government and the financial system of Alexander Ham- ilton made them altogether too dear for purposes of speculation. The Ohio company was imable to meet even the second payment, and had no patent to its land until 1792.
In the winter of 1787-88 the Ohio company sent two parties of people, all capable of doing some part of the varied work of a community, to begin the colony on the Muskingum. From the Youghiogheny they came down river in a vessel constructed for the
* Maj. E. C. Dawes, in Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications.
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purpose, called the "Mayflower," and on April 7, 1788, they landed at the mouth of the Muskingum. There, opposite Fort Harmar, was the first authorized settlement by English speaking colonists in Ohio .*
"No colony in America," said Washington, "was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community." Carrington, another Virginian, added his generous tribute, "The best men in Connecticut and Massachusetts-a deserip- tion of men who will fix the character of politics throughout the whole territory, and which will probably endure to the latest period of time." "I know them all," cried Lafayette, when the list was read to him at Marietta in 1825. "I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave."
Rufus Putnam, who had been chosen superintendent at the meet- ing of the Ohio company in Boston, November 21, 1787, "to be obeyed and respected accordingly," was at the head of the colony, which included forty-eight men. Among them were "Varnum, a courtly gentleman, soldier, statesman, scholar, orator, whom Thomas Paine, who had heard the greatest English orators in the greatest days of English eloquenee, declared the most eloquent man he had ever heard ; Whipple, first of the American naval heroes, first to fire an American gun at the flag of England on the sea, pioneer of the river eommeree of the Ohio to the gulf; Meigs, hero of Sag Harbor, of the march to Quebec and of the storming of Stony Point, whom the Cherokees named White Path in recognition of his unfailing kindness and fairness ; Parsons, one of the strongest friends of Wash- ington, the man who first proposed the Continental Congress ; the ehivalric Devol, said by his biographer to be 'the most perfect figure of a man to be seen amongst a thousand;' the noble presence of Sproat ; the sons of Israel Putnam and Manasseh Cutler; Fearing and Greene and Goodale and the Gilmans; Tupper, leader in church and state and veteran of a hundred exploits."i
General Putnam, taking the title of governor, two days later issued a set of ordinances, for the government of the territory of the company, ereating a judicial system, a militia, and a public library to be kept at the governor's headquarters. Another provision was that the town thus established should bear the name of Marietta, in honor of Marie Antoinette, queen of France, whose former friend- ship to America and present persecution by calumny in the rising storm of French revolution, appealed to the chivalry of these sturdy
* It is to be remembered that there had been unauthorized settlements in Ohio along the river, for ten years before this.
Senator Hoar's Marietta address.
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conquerors of the wilderness. These ordinances, written out by Sec- retary Benjamin Tupper, were posted in three places.
During these proceedings the old warrior, Captain Pipe, was eneamped with his band near by, but he had left the war path, and looked on with quiet interest in the inevitable new order of things in Ohio. But, for protection, Fort Hammar being on the opposite side of the river, the colonists began the building of a stoekade, near the ancient earthworks which told of a town far antedating the Ohio company. The place thus fortified was called the Campus Martius, for the people of that day were devoted to their Roman history. Later a very strong fortified place was built, with log bastions, and a palisade enclosing a parade ground and several dwelling places used by the settlers who had families and by the company and territorial officials. On July 2d there was a meeting of directors and agents, to formally name the town and the streets and squares, and on July 4th Independence day was celebrated with a barbecue and an oration by the eloquent Varnum, aided by the eannon of Fort Harmar.
At the same time the first efforts were being made toward a settle- ment of the Virginia military reserve between the Seioto and Little Miami rivers, a settlement as worthy of attention as that at Marietta, and of very great importance in the history of the State. Kentucky was being rapidly settled under the very liberal donations to actual settlers made by the Virginia government, and the greater portion of the country was soon more than doubly appropriated, says MeDon- ald, by the pre-emption and settlement claims and military and treas- ury warrants, issued in almost as large quantities by Virginia as con- tinental paper." A traet for soldiers of the Revolution was reserved in Kentucky between the Green and Cumberland rivers, and before Virginia made her cession Col. Richard C. Anderson (father of Gen. Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame) was entrusted with the sur- vey of the military reservations. Early in 1787 Major O'Bannon and Arthur Fox, Kentucky surveyors, looked over the Ohio reserva- tion, and on August 1st of the same year Colonel Anderson, who had made his home near Louisville, opened an office for that region and many entries of land were made in the Ohio, Scioto and Little Miami bottoms. About that time, or a little before, says MeDonald, several expeditions were made from Kentucky to destroy the Indian towns, in which Simon Kenton was a prominent figure. But Con- gress interfered in 1788, and all these Ohio entries were made void until the governor of Virginia should report that the land reserved in Kentucky was exhausted. One of the adventurous spirits who viewed the promised land in 1788 was Nathaniel Massie,t a fine
* Biographical Sketches, by John McDonald, 1838.
# Nathaniel Massie was born in Goochland county, December 28. 1763, son of Maj. Nathaniel Massie, a substantial planter. As a boy he served in the Revolutionary war, and afterward he came to Kentucky as a surveyor.
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looking young Virginian who was employed in Colonel Anderson's land office. A little later he was to make good use of his knowledge of locating and surveying land, according to the haphazard Vir- ginian way, that furnished occupation for the lawyers for many years to come.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONQUEST OF OHIO.
GOVERNOR ST. CLAIR-TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT-THE MIAMI SETTLEMENTS-FRENCH SETTLEMENT-HARMAR'S CAMPAIGN -THE VIRGINIA SETTLEMENT-ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGN-FOR- EIGN INTRIGUE-WAYNE'S CAMPAIGN-JAY'S TREATY.
T HE ORGANIZATION of the first territorial government was made by Congress in October, 1787, with Maj .- Gen. Arthur St. Clair as governor and Winthrop Sargent as see- retary. Brig .- Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons, Brig .- Gen. James Mitchell Varmum, and John Armstrong were appointed judges. All were officers of the war of the Revolution. Armstrong deelining, John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, was appointed in his place in February, 1788.
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