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THE
-*;*•;
Old northwest
JK/r/y A VIEW OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
AS CONSTITUTED BY THE
ROYAL CHARTERS
BY
B. A. HINSDALE, Ph.D.
TROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE AND ART OF TEACHING, UNIVERSITY OF
MICHIGAN; AUTHOR OF "SCHOOLS AND STUDIES," AND EDITOR OF
"THE WORKS OF JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD"
" Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happi-
ness of mankind, schools and the means-, of education shall forever be encouraged."
— Ordinance of 1787.
" No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has
Just commenced at the Muskingum." — Washington.
"We look to you of the Northwest to finally decide whether this is to be a land of
slavery or freedom. The people of the Northwest are to be the arbiters of its destiny."
— SSWARD.
NEW YORK
TOWNSEND MAC COUN
1888
la
5^
'e?
w, ., '> ; (\
L) "i ^'^> .L J
COPVF'GHT, 1888
TOWNSEND MAC COUN
MEW YORK
a
\'r
TROWS
PnrNTtNQ AND eOOKBINOrNQ COMPANY,
NEW VORK.
iiii!
!)
PREFACE.
Save New England alone, there is no section of the
I United States embracing several States that is so distinct an
[historical unit, and that so readily yields to historical treat-
'ment, as the Old Northwest. It is the part of the Great
West first discovered and colonized by the French. It was
the occasion of the final struggle for dominion between
France and England in North America. It was the thea-
tre of one of the most brilliant and far-reaching military ex-
ploits of the Revolution. The disposition to be made of it
at the close of the Revolution is the most important territo-
rial question treated in the history of American diplomacy.
After the war, the Northwest began to assume a constantly
increasing importance in the national history. It is the origi-
nal public domain, and the part of the West first colonized
under the authority of the National Government. It was
the first and the most important Territory ever organized by
Congress. It is the only part of the United States ever
under a secondary constitution like the Ordinance of 1787.
No other equal part of the Union has made in one hundred
years such progress along the characteristic lines of American
development. Moreover, the Northwest has stood in very
important relations to questions of great national and inter-
national importance, as the use and ownership of the Missis-
IV
PREFACE.
sippi River, and the territorial growth and integrity of the
Union. To portray those features of this region that make it
an historical unit is the central purpose of this book. But
as the Northwest is intimately dependent upon the Atlantic
Plain, a view of the Thirteen Colonies as Constituted by the
Royal Charters has also been given. No previous writer has
covered the ground, and the work is wholly new in concep-
tion.
Dr. Edward A. Freeman insists " that the most ingenious
and eloquent of modern historical discourses can, after all, be
nothing more than a comment on a text." Historical texts
are not history, but even ingenious and eloquent comments
often suffer from lack of a sufficiency of the text that they
are written to elucidate. In this work, liberal quotations
from original documents will be found, accompanied by the
necessary discussion. The subjects treated in Chapters VL,
VII., XI., XII., and XIII., in particular, cannot be satisfac-
torily handled in any other way. Furthermore, while these
documents are in no sense rare, they do not lie in the way of
the common reader or of the ordinary student or teacher of
history. This feature of the work, it is believed, will be
highly appreciated by all these classes, and especially by the
student and the teacher. ■;
B. A. Hinsdale.
University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, March i, 188S.
CONTENTS.
I. North America in Outline, ....
II. The First Division of North America,
III. The French Discover the Northwest,
IV. The French Colonize the Northwest,
V. England wrests the Northwest from France :
The First Treaty of Paris,
VI. The Thirteen Colonies as Constituted by the
Royal Charters (I.),
VII. The Thirteen Colonies as Constituted by the
Royal Charters (II.), ....
VIII. The Western Land Policy of the British Gov-
ernment from 1763 to 1775,
IX. The Northwest in the Revolution,
PAOi
I
21
38
55
70
98
120
147
X. The United States wrest the Northwest from
England : The Second Treaty of Paris, . 162
XI. The Northwestern Land-Claims, .
XII. The Northwestern Cessions (I.), .
XIII. The Northwestern Cessions (II.), .
192
203
224
\
r ■:!
Ml
VI
CONTENTS.
XIV. The Land-Ordinance of 1785,
XV. The Ordinance of 1787, ....
XVI. The Territory of the United States Northwest
PACK
263
OF THE River Ohio,
. 280
XVII. The Admission of the Northwestern States to
THE Union, . • • • • • 3'7
XVIII. Slavery in the Northwest, . . . -345
XIX. The Connecticut Western Reserve, . . 368
XX. A Century of Progress, . . • -393
.|V. T
n !
PACK
• 2SS
. 263
i^iiiiff'^
LIST OF MAPS.
3"7
345
368
393
I. The Old Northwest,
^11.
Frontispiece.
...iv.
Drainage Features of the United States
IVI.
[II.
Iix.
!x.
:i.
French Explorations and Posts in the Old
Northwest, • . . .
Territory of the Present United States, 1755 to
1763,
Territory of the Present United States after
February 10, 1763, .
Proposal of the Court of France at the Second
Treaty of Paris,
PAGB
2
38
62
68
176
Boundary-lines proposed at the Second Treaty
OF Paris, . . „
• • • . loo
Territory of the Present United States after
September 3, 1783, ,gg
Territory of the Thirteen Original States,
Map of Ohio Surveys, .
7 • • •
The Old Northwest in 1888, ,
200
291
393
.■.>t>
In.:
; i
III
m
^ the ad
'* the G
tween
tendin
miles
openin
Th
First, 1
elevati
the At
Heigh
from il
and nc
in Noi
gently-
Plain
Lakes,
•:
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
I.
NORTH AMERICA IN OUTLINE.
I North America is easily separable into three very
plainly marked physical divisions. The Pacific Highlands,
which are a vast plateau surmounted by the Rocky and Sierra
iNevada Mountain systems, extend from the Arctic Ocean to
Ithe Isthmus of Panama, and form the primary feature of the
[continent. The Atlantic Highlands, consisting of the Lab-
rador Plateau and the Appal-ichian Mountain system, with
the adjacent eastern slope, extend from Labrador almost to
the Gulf of Mexico, and form the secondary feature. Be-
I tvveen the Pacific Highlands and the Atlantic Highlands, ex-
\ tending from the southern Gulf to the northern Ocean, 5,000
miles in length by 2,000 in breadth at the widest part, and
opening out like a fan to the north, is the Central Plain.
The Central Plain is also easily separable into three parts.
First, the Arctic Plain descends by easy slopes from the wavy
elevation called the Height of Land, north and northeast to
I the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay. Secondly, south of the
Height of Land and a second similar elevation that tjikes off
from it, near the head of Lake Superior, and sweeps southeast
and northeast until it unites with the Appalachian Mountains
in Northern New York, the Mississippi Valley falls away
gently to the Gulf of Mexico. Thirdly, between the Arctic
Plain and the Mississippi Valley lies the Basin of the Great
Lakes, that is lengthened eastward in the St. Lawrence Valley,
i; i
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
The two sides of the continent, as divided by the eastern
ranges of the Rocky Mountains, present the strongest con-
trasts. The western side consists of great mountain chains, |v
attaining high elevations, with short and abrupt descents to
the Pacific Ocean ; the eastern side is a vast plain, descending
to the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico,
by long and easy lines, save in the southeast, where it is
interrupted by the moderate elevation of the Appalachian
Mountains. Straight lines can be drawn from the Arctic
Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, from the southern shore of
Lake Ontario to the Rio Grande, and from the source of
the Ohio to the source of the Kansas, that will at no point rise
2,000 feet above the level of the sea. In fact, the geographer
passes over whole States without finding any elevations of
surface that he need represent upon a map intended for com-
mon purposes.
On the one side, and particularly south of 49° north lati-
tude, the coast line is remarkably regular ; on the other side,
remarkably irregular.
On the west, few rivers descend to the sea, and not one of
these cuts through the mountain masses and reaches the inte-
rior; on the east, every subdivision of the Central Plain is
traversed by a great natural water-way, Hudson Strait, Hud-
son Bay, and the Nelson-Winnipeg River system together
reach the very foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. The
noble St. Lawrence, cutting through the Appalachian Moun-
tains, opens a channel for the Great Lakes to discharge their
floods, and for man to ascend to the central parts of the con-
tinent. The Mississippi — Father of Waters — with his 35,000
miles of navigable affluents, gives ready means of access to
every part of the great valley that bea'-s his name. If three
men should ascend these three water-ways to their farthest
sources, they would find themselves in the heart of North
America, and, so to speak, within a stone's-throw of one
another. One of these water-ways has played hitherto no
considerable part in the affairs of civilized men; but the
P
eastern
st con-
tains,
:ents to
cending
Mexico,
re it is
ilachian
; Arctic
hore of
)urce of
oint rise
igrapher
.tions of
for com-
trth lati-
her side,
5t one of
the inte-
Plain is y
lit, Hud-
together
IS. The
m Moun-
irge their
the con-
lis 35,000
access to
If three
r farthest
of North
w of one
therto no
; but the
•>»-.
JR, S,. jiffi-t
I'i
\ 111
r^
!
NORTH AMERICA IN OUTLINE.
other two are as prominent In the history of America as they
are in its geography.
The world scarcely offers a parallel to the ease and celerity
with which the passage can be made from the upper waters
[of any one of these great water-ways to either of the others.
' The Great Lakes occupy an elevated plateau, '■he summit,
n fact, of the vast expanse of land which spreads out between
he Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains ; no large streams
ow into them, and they drain limited areas ; " ' and their
sins are separated from the regions north and south by
ater-sheds that in no point rise to the dignity of mountains.
Lalce Superior is 900 feet above the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; ,^.
iliiake Itasca, Pittsburg, and Cairo are 1650, 700, and 300 feet
respectively above the Gulf of Mexico. From Omaha west ,
tlong the Platte River, the Union Pacific Railroad ascends by
;jit grade of five feet to the mile ; while from St. Paul north-
,|!feest to the Yellowstone, the ascent is but two feet to the
tiile. In Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin the streams
owing in opposite directions often head in the same swamps ;
land in times of high water it would almost be possible to
2push a flat-bottomed boat from the Lake Basin into the Mis-
issippi Valley. The highest level of the Ohio Canal is 395
eet, the highest level of the Miami Canal, 380 feet, above j
ke Erie. A simple pump suffices to carry the sewage of
hicago to a level where gravitation takes it to the Missis-
ippi. Lake Michigan once had an outlet to the Gulf of
exico, and should the " Hennepin Canal " ever be built, it
ill be an artificial outlet.
In the days when the Northwest was discovered and ex-
lored, and again in the days when it was settled, the short
nd easy portages between the northern and southern streams,
cattered all the way from Western New York to Minnesota,
ere of very great importance.
The Appalachian system consists of several chains or
' Hubbard : Memorials of a Half Century, 3.
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ranges, and the valleys lying between them. To the ex-
plorer or pioneer attempting to reach the interior, they op-
posed a continuous mountain-wall from 3,500 to 7,000 feet in
height, a slight obstacle, indeed, as compared with the moun-
tains on the other side of the continent, but still considerable,
and pla> ing no unimportant part in history. The Atlantic
Plain, as the slope east of these mountains is called, is coursed
by maay rivers that furnish excellent harbors at their mouths
and render the whole region readily accessible from the sea.
Five of these rivers, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Sus-
quehanna, the Potomac, and the James, cut through the
mountain-wall. The valleys of these rivers to-day are road-
ways for great lines of travel and transportation leading to
the West ; but when the country was in a state of nature,
only one of them offered an easy passage from the Atlantic
Plain to the Mississippi Valley. Geologists tell us that once
Lake Ontario had an outlet to New York Bay ; and certain
it is that by the Hudson and Mohawk, the streams flowing
to the Lakes whose sources are intertwined with those of tht,
Mohawk, and the short and easy portages between them, thi
explorer and the colonist could readily have reached the in-
terior but for a formidable obstacle that will receive attention
in another place. Despite this obstacle, the site of Oswego
was visited by Englishmen before the site of Pittsburg; while
it was through the Mohawk Valley that the first canal and
railroad were built connecting the East and the West. From
New York Bay to the St. Lawrence extends a deep valley.
that cuts the mountains asunder; Hudson River fills thej
southern half, Lake Champlain and the River Richelieu thej
northern half, of this valley ; and these waters, together with!
the easy " divide " between them, have played a very impor-[
tant part in American history from the very first.
These geographical features of our continent have been!
boldly sketched, because they have had the greatest influence]
upon the course of American, and particularly of Western-
American, history. Had some convulsion of nature lowered)
the ex-
;hey op-
D feet in
e moun-
iderable,
Atlantic
; coursed
■ mouths
the sea.
the Sus-
)ugh the
are road-
ading to
f nature,
Atlantic
that once
d certain
s flowing
>se of the |
:hem, the
;d the in-
attention
f Oswego
irg; while
canal and
3t. From
:ep valley
r fills the
helieu the
2ther with
Dry impor-
NORTH AMERICA IN OUTLINE. $
he Appalachian Mountains to the level of the country east
nd west at the time the first English colonies were founded
n the Atlantic slope, or thrown up a system of mountains as
igh as the Appalachians along the low water-sheds that sep-
rate the Lake Basin and the Arctic Plain from the Missis-
fy^pippi Valley when the first French settlements in Canada
%ere planted, no one can tell in what different lines history
tould have run. Nor can one rightly estimate the prodigious
fluence upon the Northwest of the fact that it lies partly
ii^ithin the Lake Basin and partly within the Mississippi Val-
ley, and that it holds in its bosom all the rivers flowing to
the Lakes on the south, and to the Mississippi on the west,
from the Ohio to the head of Lake Superior.
Speaking relatively, North America has an open and a
closed side; and fortunately it is the open side that faces
Europe.
have been!
t influence!
Western-
,re lowered!
' ^■'
II.
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA.
For two hundred years after its discovery, North America
had no independent life and history. The seeds of future
American questions were being thickly planted, but for the
time no such questions appeared. The continent was the
theatre of European ambition, strife, and endeavor. Three
great nations played each an important part in the drama-
Spain, France, and England. We are now to see how the
country was first divided among them.
I. The Spaniards in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Spaniards had not firmly established themselves in the
West Indies before they plunged into the Caribbean Sea and
the Gulf of Mexico. Columbus himself was on the coast of j
South America in 1498, and on the coast of Central America
in 1502 and 1503. Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and |
discovered and named the South Sea, in 15 13. Cortez began
the conquest of Mexico in 15 19, and Pizarro that of Peru in
1526. In 1 5 12 Ponce de Leon discovered and named Florida.
Miruelo ran along the western side of the peninsula as far as
Pensacola in 15 16. In 15 19 Pineda coasted the northern]
shore of the Gulf as far as Panuco, in Mexico, and on his re-
turn discovered the Mississippi River, which was first called I
"The River of the Holy Spirit." In 1520 Ayllon sailed to
the coast of Georgia and South Carolina; and five years later
he continued his explorations as far as Virginia, where he]
planted an ill-fated settlement on the future site of James-
town. In 1527 De Narvaez conducted an unfortunate expe-l
mm
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA.
Idition to the northern shore of the Gulf. He lost his life
[while crossing the stream of the Mississippi out at sea, but De
jVaca, one of his lieutenants, and a few others, survived the
jerils of the deef. and of the land, to tell in after-years one of
^he most romantic tales to be found in the history of Ameri-
tan exploration. Hernando de Soto, Governor of Cuba, hav-
ig obtained from Charles V. a grant of the country from
•"lorida to the River of Palms, landed at Tampa Bay in 1539
rith a large and well-appointed command. He hoped to find
I rich Indian kingdom, such as Pizarro had found in Peru and
)rtez in Mexico. After two years' marching in the interior,
}e Soto, disappointed in his search, found himself in latitude
^° north, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. Crossing
Wlg river, he continued his march many hundreds of miles to
t^e northwest ; but, still disappointed, he returned the next
«ear to the river, his command greatly reduced by battle, dis-
' ise, and famine, and himself wasted in body and broken in
)irit, where he died. In the sonorous language of Bancroft :
His soldiers pronounced his eulogy by grieving for their
5SS ; the priests chanted over his body the first requiems that
rere ever heard on the waters of the Mississippi. To conceal
lis death, his body was wrapped in a mantle, and in the still-
less of midnight was silently sunk in the middle of the
Stream. The wanderer had crossed a large part of the conti-
lent in his search for gold, and found nothing so remarkable
|is his burial-place." * His surviving companions fled down the
|-iver to the Gulf, and made their way to their countrymen
In Mexico. At the same time that De Soto was seeking his
imaginary El Dorado in the region south of the Missouri,
7oronado, who had come overland from Mexico, was
Searching in the same region for the fabled " Seven cities of
Ahola." The two commands were so near each other " that
\n Indian runner, in a few days, might have carried tidings
)etween them ; " in fact, " Coronado actually heard of his
' History : 6-voIunie edition, 1876, I., 50.
8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
countrymnn, and sent him n letter, bui his messenger failed
to find De Soto's party." ' Spaniards had now virtually met
in the centre of the Mississippi Valley, coming from points as
distant as Tampa Bay and the Gulf of California ; they had
found no El Dorado or Cibola, and they gave over the at-
tempt at exploration and conquest in these regions.
In no important sense did the Spanish discoveries mal:e
known the Mississippi to the world. Holding the shore line
from Florida to Mexico, Spain, in the sixteenth century, had
the finest opportunity ever offered any nation to explore,
occupy, and possess the Mississippi Valley ; the Appalachi-
cola, the Mobile, the Colorado, and, above all, the Mississippi
itself, invited her to ascend them and people their banks.
No powerful Indian nation was on the soil to oppose her,
no European rival was present to deny her right. Why did
she not do so ? The answer is one of the exploded theories of
political economy. In that age Europeans generally, and
Spaniards particularly, held to the " Bullion Theory :" The
precious metals are the only form of wealth. Not finding
them in the region visited by De Soto, Spain fixed her atten-
tion on regions where she had already found them ; and sol
intent was she on the mines of Mexico and South America, j
that her gallions ploughed the waters of the Gulf for one hun-
dred years, ignorant or regardless of the fact that they were j
crossing and recrossing before a portal that stood always open
to admit them to the richest valley in the world. So indif-
ferent was Spain to her opportunity that in the next century
she allowed the Mississippi to slip from her hands to those I
of France, without serious protest. When another century
had gone, she awoke from her indifference, and made strenu-
ous efforts to recall the mistake. Unfortunately for her, but!
fortunately for the world, it was too late. Fortunately for
the world ; for what greater calamity could have befallen civ-
ilization on this continent than a South America or a Mexico!
■ Narrative and Critical History of America, II., 292.
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA.
9
planted between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains ?
Still, Spain, in the sixteenth century, founded two ^settlements
[within the present limits of the United States. Santa F^,
[hidden away, in 1582, in one of the upper valleys of the Rio
[Grande, never played any part in history until our own times,
lut to hold Florida against all comers was to Spain a simple
lecessity. The peninsula offered an excellent base for attack-
ig the fleets that bore the spoil of the East Indies, Mexico,
^nd Peru from Vera Cruz and Carthagena to Spain, as well
for menacing the islands at the entrance of the Gulf ; and
ithc hurricanes of the tropics had already strewn the Florida
)ast with the fragments of Spanish wrecks."' Hence the
savage vigor with which she expelled the Huguenot colonies
llfom Northern Florida, and the persistence with which she
Keld the English colonists on the north at bay down to 1763,
when she surrendered the peninsula as the price of the Queen
Ctf the Antilles. St. Augustine, founded in 1565, a castle
Ifether than a colony, was the key to the positions of Spain
in the Gulf and in the East India seas.
II. The French in the Valley of the St. Lawrence.
Verrazzano in 1524 led the first French ofificial exploring
expedition to North America. He sailed along the coast from
latitude 32° to Newfoundland, landing at many places, and
visiting New York Bay, and then returned to France. This
/^oyage, which added considerably to contemporary knowledge
)f America, and led to other and more important voyages,
rave color to the claim that France afterward made to the
^hole coast within the extreme points that Verrazzano
touched. James Cartier, also with a French commission,
lade three voyages to the northern parts of the continent in
[1534, 1535, and 1540. In 1534 he explored the coast of New-
|foundland and the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, visited
ibrador, and discovered the St. Lawrence River. Hoping
' Narrative and Critical History of America, XL, 254.
10
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
'Ill
>>
i
that this river was the long-sought passage to Cathay, Cartier
ailed up its current to Stadcconna, the Indian name of Que-
bec. Leaving here his ships, he pushed on with two or three
boats and a few companions to Hochelaga, an Indian town
on the present site of Montreal. It was the month of Sep-
tember ; the northern forests were putting on their gorgeous
autumn garments, and the Frenchmen could not sufficiently
admire the beauty of the country. Cartier visited Stadeconna
and Hochelaga again in 1540, when he took possession of
Canada, as the Indians called the country, in the name of his
royal master, by raising a cross surmounted by the fleur-de-
lis, and emblazoned with the legend : Franciscus PRIMUS,
DEI GRATIA Francorum Rex regnat. Attempts to col-
onize the valley were immediately made, but they ended in
failure.
Samuel de Champlain was the father of Canada. He came
to America with Pontgrav6, in 1603. Sent up the St. Law-
rence to Hochelaga, he was filled, like Cartier, with admira-
tion as he viewed the country, and was at once convinced that
this valley, and not Acadia, must be the seat of the future
French-American Empire. Deeply patriotic and fervently
religious, Champlain longed to plant among the forests and
waters of the north a colony that should shed lustre on the
arms of France and extend the bounds of the Catholic Church.
The forests and waters abounded in the valuable furs that,
next to gold and silver, were the prime object of search to the
first American colonists ; they would shield a colony from its
enemies ; while the great river that was lost in unknown re-
gions of mystery would probably lead on to the lands of
Marco Polo. He returned to France burning with desire to
carry out this purpose. His coveted opportunity soon came ;
in 1608 he had the great happiness to plant, under the rock
of Quebec, the first permanent French settlement in Canada.
The next year he plunged into the wilds of Northern New
York, where, near the head of Lake Champlain, he met a war
party of Mohawk Indices. Although he destroyed the party,
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA.
II
Champlain was so much impressed by their courage, and by
what he heard of the formidable confederacy to which they
belonged, that on returning to Canada he directed his atten-
tion to the north and west, where he found man, if not nature,
more tractable.
The Gulf and River St. Lawrence, and the streams that
fall into the river on the north, gave the French easy entrance
to the interior of the great continent. Ascending to the
head of Lake Huron by the Ottawa, Lake Nipissing, and
Georgian Bay, they were at the foot of Lakes Michigan and
[Superior, that stand to the Northwest in some such relation
lifts the lung-lobes to the human body. Ascending the St.
•?'^awrence to the southern shore of Lake Ontario, they had
turned the left flank of the Appalachian Mountains, and
gained the edge of that vast plain which stretches away to
the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande. The use that they
made of these advantages will form the subject of a future
chapter.
It was most fortunate that Champlain concluded not to
invade the seats of the Iroquois, but to lay the foundations of
New France farther to the north. Had he persisted in his
first purpose, and been successful, he would have made the re-
gion in which the Genesee and the Richelieu, the Hudson
and the Delaware, the Susquehanna and the Ohio take their
rise French territory, and so have given the French the advant-
age of a position that two great generals have called the key to
the eastern half of the United States.' As it was, Champlain
fully won the title accorded him : " Father of New France."
The planting of Quebec was the most important event that
had taken place in North America since its discovery, save
only the planting of Jamestown the previous year.
' "General Scott, standing on the field of Bemus Heights, declared this Com-
monwealth [New York] to hold the military key of the continent east of the Mis-
sissippi, and on the same spot. General Grant confirmed the judgment." Roberts :
New York, in Commonwealth Series, L, 124.
13
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
III. The English on the Atlantic Plain.
John Cabot, sailing with a commission from Henry VII.
of England, discovered North America in 1497. His son
Sebastian visited it again in 149(8. How much of the coast
these navigators skirted, is matter of controversy ; some say
the whole coast from 36° to 6/° north latitude. But it is
certain that the elder Cabot made his landfall a j'ear and
more before Columbus touched the shore of the sister conti-
nent. Both the Cabots took possession of the country in the
name of the English king, and English historians, statesmen,
and jurists have always based on these voyages England's
claim to that portion of North America which fell to her at
the first apportionment.
For a long time, owing to her unwillingness to offend
Spain, to her absorption in attempts to find the northeast and
northwest passages, to her domestic troubles, and to her indif-
ference, England took little interest in the new empire that
the Cabots had given her ; but toward the close of the six-
teenth century she began to awake to her opportunity, and
to take an interest in western planting. Her first colony was
Jamestown, planted in 1607 ; and between that date and
1733 she had absorbed the Dutch and the Swedes on the
Hudson and the Delaware, and divided the whole coast, often
by boundary lines that ran to the Pacific Ocean, into thirteen
colonies.
Both in respect to character and geographical position, the
colonists of the Atlantic Plain present strong points of con-
trast to those on the Gulf coast and those in tho St. Lawrence
Valley. They were not adventurers thirsting for gold and
conquest, like the Spaniards ; nor were they trappers, traders
in furs, voyageurs, and priests intent on Indian evangelization,
like the French. There was, indeed, in most of the thirteen
colonies a considerable infusion of adventure, but it took the
direction of business rather than of conquest. Nearly all the
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA.
13
■
English colonists were interested in industry, trade, and poli-
tics ; and many of them, as the New Englanders and Mary-
lander:;, came seeking in the wilderness those religious and
civil rijjhts that were denied them at home. They were not
lind to the advantage of the fur trade, nor wholly indifferent
o the religious state of the Indians ; but Indian trade was the
mailer wart of their commerce, and their religious zeal took
he direction ol establishing a new church where they could
hemsclves live at peace rather than of converting the savages
:o the old one. Accordingly, they were more than content
to plant their settlements by the sea.
Then the English seem to have been more thoroughly than
either the French or the Spaniards under the influence of those
false ideas of the North vXmcrican continent that did so much
to shape the course of history.
To the imag'nation of Europe, America was first an archi-
elago. The explanation of this belief is due to several cir-
umstancos : to C^olumbus's expectation that he would first
ome to the outljing Asiatic islands; to his belief that the
West Indies were rhe islands that he expected to find ; and
to the fact that the early voyagers to North America touched
the coast at widely separated parts, which geographers were
unable for a long tine properly to connect. In 1660 Endicott
called New England "this Patmos," and as late as 1740 the
Duke of Newcastle directed letters to the " Island of New
England."
Navigators and gi'ographers next conceived of our conti-
nent as a long and narrow strip of land running north and
south, cut by water-\/ays that connected the two oceans.
Most evident signs thai a great continent lay behind the shore
that seamen touched iit points as remote as Labrador and
Mexico, such as the gieat rivers that came down to the sea,
were constantly disregarded. "A Mapp of Virginia" sold in
London in 165 1 lays dotvn Hudson River as communicating
by "a mighty great lake" with "the sea of China and the
Indies," and carries a leg ;nd running along the shore of Call-
14
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
fornia, " whose happy shores (in ten days' march v/ith fifty
foot and thirty horsemen from the head of James River, over
those hills and through the rich adjacent valleys beautifyed
with as profifitable rivers which necessarily must run into that
peacefull Indian sea) may be discovered to the exceeding
benefit of Great Britain and joye of all true English," ' An of-
ficial map of Maryland, published in 1670, and certified by a
competent authority to be by " no means a bad one," represents
the Alleghanies above the Cumberland Mountains, and gives
this description of them : " These mighty high and great Moun-
taines, trending N.E. and S.W. and W.S.W., is supposed to
be the very middle ridg of Northern America and the only
Natural cause of the fierceness and extrcame stormy cold
winds that come northwest from thence all over this continent
and makes frost." " This conception of North America ex-
plains the endeavors of Smith, Hudson, and Cartier to find
the India road in the rivers that they explored. It explains
also the fact that Captain Newport, in 1608, brought over
from England a barge so constructed that it could be taken to
pieces and then put together, with which he and his company
were instructed to ascend the James River as far as the falls,
then to carry their barge beyond the falls and descend to the I
south sea, " being ordered not to return without a lump of gold
as a certainty of the said sea." This persistent misconception
of North America was due to that mental prepossession which
prevented men seeing any insuperable obstacle to their find-]
ing a western sea-road to the Indies, and to the fact that Bal-
boa, Drake, and others, from the mountains of Darien, had seen I
the two oceans that wash its shores. It is well to illustrate |
this false notion thus at length, because evidences of its influ-
ence in history are abundant.
Shut out from the Gulf of Mexico by the Spaniards, and I
from the River St. Lawrence by the French ; not caring to
' Narrative and Critical History, III., 465.
* Browne : Maryland, in the Commonwealth Series, 100.
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA.
15
utifyed
ito that
ceeding
An of-
ed by a
presents
id gives
t Moun-
)osed to
;he only
my cold
ontinent
srica ex-
• to find
explains
ght over
taken to
company ,
the falls, I
id to the I
p of gold I
jnception
on which
leir find-
that Bal-
, had seen
illustrate
its influ-|
iards, and I
caring to
venture far from the coast inland, and actually confined to it
by a great physical cause, the English were much slower than
■ their rivals in seeing in North America a vast continent.
Then, when the English colonists ascended from one to two
^hundred miles the rivers coursing the Atlantic Plain they
* found themselves confronted by the Appalachian wall and
i^-their further progress arrested. Accustomed to pass and re-
•itoass these mountains in a few hours' time at a dozen points,
^it is difficult for us to conceive how, at that day, they im-
jpressed the imaginations of men and retarded the spread of
"Itettlements to the West. The southern Indians called them
the " Endless Mountains," the English, sometimes, " the Great
"Mountains."
The memorials of the first emigrants to Ohio, although
die best natural roads had now been discovered and im-
'liiifoved, and all obstruction from the Indians had ceased, tell
•'i^s how difficult of passage they found these mountain ridges.
Hn fact, at the close of the last century, the safest, easiest, and
^^uickest line of travel from Philadelphia or Baltimore to Cen-
tral Kentucky, or even to Fort Hamilton, that stood on the
)resent site of Cincinnati, led to Wadkins' Ferry on the Po-
tomac ; thence up the Shenandoah Valley, through Martins-
)urg, Winchester, and Staunton; thence over the "divide"
New River and on to Cumberland Gap — the " Wilder-
10
less Road" of early Western emigration, the "Valley Road"
)f recent warfare — and thence by Crab Orchard and Lex-
ington to the Ohio.'
At the north. Nature had indeed prepared a highway to
khe West ; biit the Mohawk Valley was exposed to attack
from Canada, as the burning of Schenectady shows, while the
)eople of the Long House blocked the Englishman's way to
the Lake Basin almost as effectually as they blocked the
"renchman's way to the sources of the Delaware and the
>usquehanna. The Iroquois were generally friendly to the
' Speed : The Wilderness Road, 12, 23.
i6
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
English and hostile to the French ; but that haughty, jealous
race were but little more disposed to see their ancestral seats
invaded by their friends than by their foes.
The facts now presented account for the extreme tardiness
of the English colonists in entering the country west vi the
Appalachian Mountains. It is related that one Colonel Abra-
ham Wood, who dwelt at the falls of the Appomattox, with
a party of hunters and tradciS, crossed the Blue Ridge and
discovered New River in 1654. It is said that a Captain
Henry Batte, in 1666, coming also from Appomattox, crossed
the mountains, and followed for some distance a stream flow-
ing westward. It is further related that a Captain Bolton
reached the Mississippi in 1670; that a party of New Eng-
landers, in 1677, made their way overland to New Mexico,
and on their return told their story to the Boston authorities;
and that Virginians were at the falls of the Kanawha in 1671.
To find authority for these reports, or any of them, seems a
hopeless undertaking. P'arkman says neither the Wood nor
the Bolton tale is " sustained by sufficient authority," and }
he pronounces the Boston story " without proof and im-
probable." '
The tenacity with which the English colonists clung to
the coast, their meagre ideas of the continent behind them,
and the lack of romantic elements in their life, are well illus-
trated in Governor Spotswood's famous adventure to the Shen-
andoah Valley in August and September, 17 16. We have
the authority of the governor for saying that a company of
Virginians ascended the Blue Ridge Mountains, " Tho' they
had hitherto been thought to be unpassable," in 1610; but he
himself was the first to lead the way into the valley beyond,
Attended by some members of his staff, Spotswood pro-
ceeded in his coach from Williamsburg to the frontier. Here
he was joined by some Virginia gentlemen and their retainers,
a company of rangers, and four Indians, fifty persons in all.
' La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, Introduction.
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA.
^7
|Taking to horse, the gay company took their westward
/ay by the upper Rappahannock. On the thirty-sixth day
from Williamsburg they scaled the mountains, and saw the
valley beyond that has commanded so much admiration,
ifter drinking the king's health, they descended the western
lope to the river, which they crossed and named the
: Euphrates." The governor took formal possession of the
fgion for George I. of England. Much light is thrown upon
le convivial habits of Virginians at that time by an entry
iund in the diary of the chronicler. " Wc got all the men
Sgethcr and loaded their arms, and we drank the king's
health in champagne and fired a volley, the princess' health
in Burgundy and fired a volley, and all the rest of the
royal family in claret and a volley ; we drank the governor's
health and fired another volley. We had several sorts of
liquors : viz., Virginia red wine and white wine, Irish usque-
llfiugh, brandy, shrub, two sorts of rum, champagne, canary,
.ji^erry punch, cider, etc." The lapse of eight weeks and the
Mstance of 440 miles travelled, going and coming, brought
Ppotswood back to Williamsburg. He now celebrated the
hardships of the journey by creating the " Knights of the
rolden Horseshoe." To ascend the mountains the horses
lad been shod with iron, which was unnecessary in tide-water
Virginia ; and the governor caused small golden horseshoes,
=t with jewels and inscribed with the legend. Sic juvat trans-
mdcre monies, to be made in London and distributed among
|iis companions. This expedition was important in results,
»ut its most noticeable feature is its date, 17 16. This was
|ne hundred and nine years after the landing at Jamestown,
Ind thirty-four years after La Salle had navigated the Missis-
[ippi from the Illinois to the Gulf. Spotswood's main ob-
2Ct was to study the relation of the Virginia frontier to the
•"rench in the Lake country. How little advantage he de-
jived from his observations and inquiries of the Indians is
i^ell told in this paragraph from one of his letters, written
W 1718:
%
i8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
" The chief aim of my expedition over the great mountains, |
in 17 16, was to satisfy myself whether it was practicable to I
come at the Lakes. Having on that occasion found an easy '4
passage over that great ridge of mountains w'ch before were vl
judged impassable, I also discovered, by the relation of Indians
who frequent those parts, that from the pass where I was it is
but three days' march to a great nation of Indians living on a
river w'ch discharges itself in the Lake Erie ; that from ye
western side of one of the small mountains w'ch I saw that lake
-J very visible, and cannot, therefore, be above five days' march
from the pass aforementioned, and that the way thither is also
very practicable, the mountains to the westward of the great
ridge being smaller than those I passed on the eastern side,
w'ch shews how easy a matter it is to gain possession of those
lakes." '
Who the first Englishmen were to pass the Great . Moun-
tains and descend the streams flowing to the setting sun, can
never be known. They undoubtedly belonged to that class
of Indian hunters who, following every stream to its head-
spring, and entering every gap in the mountain ranges, dis-
covered the path leading from the Potomac by Wills' Creek
to the Ohio in 1748, and who, a little later, "gave names to
the streams and ridges of Tennessee, annually passed the
Cumberland Gap, and chased game in the basin of the Cum-
berland River." ' They are men who have no individuality,!
as have the French discoverers in the north and west. The
influence of the Colonial character in confining the English I
to the sea-shore has been pointed out ; the reflex of that con-
finement upon the Colonial character and life will receive at-
tention in another place ; but here the observation may be I
dropped that the colonists were a long time developing the!
• Cooke, Virginia, in the Commonwealth Series, 314, 315, and WaddcU, An-
nals of Augusta County, 6-9, give accounts of the Spotswood expedition. The|
passages quoted are from Waddell.
' Bancroft : History, II., 362 ; III., 63.
THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. 19
[typical Indian hunter and fighter. Such men as Boone and
[Kenton and Wetzel belong to the country west of the moun-
I tains.
By a sort of tacit agreement, the three powers adopted
•riority of discovery as the rule for dividing and appropriat-
ing North America. Spain was at first disposed to claim the
^hole continent under the papal bull of 1493 ; but the mari-
time enterprise, military and naval power, and diplomatic
irce of England and France compelled her to admit them to
% share of the spoil. The Spanish navigators and explorers
fifom Columbus to De Soto gave the Gulf region to Spain ;
Cartier gave the St. Lawrence to France; the Cabots, the At-
llmtic Plain to England.
/i The adjustment of territorial claims and rights was a long
id difficult process ; and it was only as the principle of use
id settlement, and even the sword, was brought in to help
iut discovery that points of dispute were ever settled. The
Recognition by Spain of discovery as the ground of title left
inanswered the question where the boundary line should be
Irawn between Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas, and
the question was never put at rest until she yielded the whole
»eninsula in 1763. France at first claimed the Atlantic coast
jouth of Nova Scotia under the voyage of Ver-azzano ; but
:he failure of the Huguenot colonies in Carolina and Florida,
ind the resolution of England in insisting upon the Cabot
:itle, led France to yield that shore, and to content her ambi-
:ion with the north. The Cabots discovered the northeastern
:oast years before the first French navigator crossed the ocean ;
lut as England did not follow up discovery with settlement,
ind as the French made greater discoveries in that quarter, a
'ast region that might have been England's fell to France,
ienry IV. of France, in the patent that he gave to De Monts,
;arried the southi^rn boundary of Acadia to the latitude of
[Philadelphia ; and the English kings lapped their charters over
ipon the French, as we shall soon see. Again, under the rule
20
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
of priority Spain was entitled to the Mississippi Valley ; but,
like England on the northeast coast, she did not follow dis-
covery with occupation, and so the valley fell to France, who
entered it from the north. This brought France and England
into collision along the western side of the Alleghanies, as
well as in the northeast and north. In general, the disputes
as to the rightful ownership of a given region of territory grew
out of one or both of two circumstances : a disagreement as to
who the first discoverer was, or a disagreement as to how far
the rights resulting from his discovery extended. Every one
of the powers admitted that the others had territorial rights,
but their quarrels never ended until France retired from the
continent.
The remark should be added that it is impossible to repre-
sent correctly these facts on maps. The names " Acadia,"
"Virginia," and " Florida "stand for very different things at
different times ; and at no particular time, for a full century
following Jamestown, were their boundary lines defined. The
lines of delimitation, drawn on the most carefully constructed ,
maps, answer but a vague general purpose. The French in-
cluded Plymouth and New Amsterdam in Acadia, and Spanish j
maps of the seventeenth century sometimes carry Florida be-
yond Quebec. But more absurd than this, some sixteenth- 1
century geographers, and notably the Dutch, " out of spite to i
the Spaniards," include the whole of both North and South |
America in New France. *
Parkman ; Pioneers of France in the New World, 183, 184, note.
III.
%
:THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
; What ready access to the heart of North America the
Saint Lawrence gave the French, was pointed out in the first
9X\d second chapters. We are now to see what use they made
j(|jf their opportunity.
:i The advantages of the position harmonized admirably with
jihe French character, particularly as developed under the
,Aew conditions, and with the great ideas that underlay New
France. These northern colonists shrunk from a life of ma-
terial development like that of their southern neighbors ;
they had some agriculture, but they were not such tillers of
the soil as the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, the Dutch of
[Hudson River, the Quakers of the Delaware, and still less
[the Virginia or Carolina planters ; they cared for no trade but
[that in furs and peltries; they were indifferent to civil and
Ireligious freedom, and had no share in that passion for politi-
cal and religious progress that characterized the British colo-
[nists ; and, so far from desiring a State without a king and a
Church without a bishop, they could not even conceive of State
[and Church without them. They never developed a self-reli-
I ant colonial character, but were more than content to go on as
they began — the children of patronage and power. But they
desired to enlarge the borders of France and increase her
glory ; they loved the fur trade ; and they longed to plant the
emblems of the true faith beside all the unknown rivers and
hidden lakes of the wilderness. Not only did the bolder
minds burn to penetrate the secrets of the continent, but the
majority, now hunters or farmers, and now soldiers or voj/-
22
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
lp\>
agcurs, loved the free and picturesque life of the forests and
waters that made the history of Canada one long adventure.
Dominion, evangelization of the Indians, and the fur trade |
were the three ideas on which the colony rested. The sol-
dier, the priest, and the trader are the three types of charac-
ter that are never out of our sight. In one marked feature the
French plan of colonization differed from that of the English.
The English found no place whatever, not even the smallest,
for the Indians : the French made them the very centre and
heart of their whole scheme. Sympathetic, social, pliable to
new conditions, the French revealed a genius for getting on
with the savages that is rather confirmed than disproved by
their sore experience with the Iroquois. With such ideas as
these, under leaders who combined adventure, religious zeal,
and far-reaching policy, they gained the rear and northern
flank of the English settlements, and, almost before the lat-
ter, absorbed with their farms and shops, fishing and trade,
churches and politics, were aware of what was going on, well-
nigh confined them to the narrow slope between the moun-
tains and tiie sea. There is no reason to think that Cham-
plain saw the final end ; but he marked out the general plan,
and was himself the first to put it in practice.
In i6ii Champlain made the rude beginnings of the city
of Montreal. Here he and the French traders met the wild
warriors and hunters as they descended the St. Lawrence and
the Ottawa : he to win influence over the Indians and to gain
knowledge of their country, they to buy the Indian catch of
beaver-skins. In 1613, following two pioneers whom he had
sent to winter with the Indians, he ascended the Ottawa, and
thus began the first survey of the route by which the Cana-
dian Pacific Railway passes from the valley of the St. Lawrence
to the region of the Upper Lakes. Trusting the false tale of
one of the two pioneers, he expected to reach a great northern
sea that would bear him on to the regions of the East, which
Columbus had sought in the western waters. Disappointed
in this endeavor, he still reached the Isle des Allumettes, the
THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
23
Indian half-way house to Lake Huron, before returning to
Quebec. In this vast primeval forest, six years after Smith
I landed on the shore of the James, but seven years before the
[foot of Miles Standish touched Plymouth Rock, Champlain
Iwon the respect of the Indian tribes and displayed the em-
[blems of his religion.
In the month of May, 161 5, four Recollet friars, a branch
lof the great Franciscan order, landed at Quebec. They came
by the procurement of Champlain to carry forward the work
of Indian conversions. Having celebrated the first mass ever
heard in Canada, they distributed to each a province of the
wilderness empire of Satan. To Le Caron the Hurons were
^signed ; and soon the priest was on his way to their distant
Villages. As well the heroic temper of the man as his relig-
ious outlook is shown by a single sentence from one of his let-
ters to a friend : " I must needs tell you what abundant con-
solation I found under all my troubles ; for when one sees so
many infidels needing nothing but a drop of water to make
them children of God, he feels an inexpressible ardor to
labor for their conversion, and sacrifice to it his repose and his
life." ' Soon the soldier followed the priest. Ascending the
[Ottawa and the Mattawan, crossing the portage to Lake
I Nipissing, and then descending French River and Georgian
Bay, Champlain found his way to the " Mer Douce " of the
French maps, the Lake Huron of ours. Striking inland from
Thunder Bay, he found Le Caron already established in the
country of the Hurons.
The savages were all expectation ; for the white chief whose
prowess on the battle-field they had already learned, had prom-
ised to lead them against the Iroquois. The attack upon the
Senecas in Central New York proved a failure, and Cham-
plain returned with the Hurons to their villages, where he
spent the winter. In the spring he returned to his colony,
where he had been given up for dead ; and the first French
' Parkman : Pioneers of France, 363, 364.
24
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
i
exploration undertaken with a settled plan was at an end.
Three or four important things had been accomplished. The
two early routes to Lake Huron had been discovered — one by
the Ottawa and Ni[iissing, the other by the Trent and Lake
Simcoe ; " Mer Douce " and Lake Ontario, the first two of
the five lakes seen by white men, had been found; French in-
fluence over the mind of the savages had been felt in a wider
sphere; and, finally, the scene of the future Huron Mission
had been visited. It was Champlain's last and greatest
achievement as an explorer; it was the first step toward the
French possession of the old Northwest, and also the first in
that long march which more than a hundred years later
brought Frenchmen and Englishmen together in deadly strife
beyond the Great Mountains.
Were we sketching the broader subject, we should now
turn aside to watch the experiment of Indian evangelization
tried by the Jesuits, who had succeeded the R^collets, among
the Hurons. Mr. Parkman has told that story with his accus-
tomed learning and eloquence. Here two facts will suffice.
Just as the Jesuits were thanking God for what seemed an as-
sured success — the conversion of a savage nation to the Cross
— the Iroquois fell upon them, and scattered the Hurons in a
storm of blood and fire. Secondly, the destruction of this
mission, rather the truculent fury of the " Romans of the
West " that caused it, was an important element in great ques-
tions. Mr. Parkman tells us that, could the French have
brought the haughty Iroquois within the circle of their full in-
fluence, American history would still have reached its des-
tined goal, but by somewhat different paths. Tamed savages
ruled by priests would have been scattered through the val-
leys of the Lakes and the Mississippi ; slaughter would have
been repressed and agriculture developed ; the Indian popula-
tion would not have declined, if it did not increase ; and the
fur trade would have enriched Canada. France would have
filled "the West with traders, settlers, and garrisons, and cut
up the virgin wilderness into fiefs, while as yet the colonies of
Engl
thci
land
plete
and ]
princ
block
the I
Lake:
*"whi
Iher c
jrowl
^r^-fetrugj
since
:,;,;vinona
;^^:||fto fre(
a star
which
Et
prefer
peneti
did
and
its si:
water;
In
man, ■
Michi
in thi
" grea
which
been
days r
In
ii!
m'
•^i-^V;
THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
25
England were but a weak and broken line along the shore of
the Atlantic ; and when at last the great conflict came, Eng-
land and Liberty would have been confronted, not by a de-
pleted antagonist, still feeble from the exhaustion of a starved
and persecuted infancy, but by an athletic champion of the
principles of Richelieu and Loyola." While the Iroquois
blocked the Englishman's way to the West, they also turned
the Frenchman aside from the St. Lawrence and the Lower
Lakes to the Ottawa and Nipissing; they ruined the fur trade
I" which was the life-blood of New France;" they "made all
ler early years a misery and a terror ; " they retarded the
jrowth of Absolutism until Liberty was equal to the final
Itruggle; and they influence our national history to this day,
lince "populations formed in the ideas and habits of a feudal
lonarchy, and controlled by a hierarchy profoundly hostile
to freedom of thought, would have remained a hindrance and
Fa stumbling-block in the way of that majestic experiment of
which America is the field." '
Etienne Brul6, who had served Champlain as an inter-
preter in his journey to the " Mer Douce," was the first to
penetrate the region beyond that body of water. This he
did before 1629, bringing back with him an ingot of copper
and a description of a lake that well fits Lake Superior,
its size, length, and the rapids by which it discharges its
waters.
In 1634 Jean Nicollet, a hardy explorer and trained woods-
man, passed through the Straits of Mackinaw, discovered Lake
Michigan, and made his way to Green Bay. He remained
in this region a year, during which time he heard much of a
" great water " to the west that he took to be the sea, but
which was really the Mississippi River. He appears to have
been on the Wisconsin, for he says if he had paddled three
days more he should have reached the sea.
In 164 1 Fathers Jogues and Raymbault preached to two
' The Jesuits in North America, 446-449,
. ?!',,'-^'5;'.t; /'''■..
,-/ ...(a,«
ilk..
26
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
thousand Indians, Ojibvvas and others, at the Saut Saintc
Marie.
In 165^1660 GrosscUiers and Radisson reached the head
of the great Lake, and visited Indians dwelling among the
streams and lakes of Western Wisconsin and Eastern Minne-
sota. They also visited the country beyond Lake Superior,
and were the first to give the world information of those for-
midable tribes, the Sioux.
In 1661 Father Menard and Jean Guerin penetrated the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan, leaving Lake Superior at
Keweenaw Bay. Their lines of travel are lost in history, as
their footsteps are in the wilderness, but some writers sup-
pose that they actually found the Mississippi.
The French had now discovered, and in this order, four of
the Great Lakes : Huron, Ontario, Superior, and Michigan.
From the day that he found the " Mer Douce," Champlain
probably conjectured theit its waters mingled with those of
the (Ottawa under the rock of Quebec ; but years elapsed be-
fore the connection was thoroughly established. The Father
of New France laid down a connection on his map of 1632,
representing Lake Erie as a widened river ; but on some maps
of later date the Upper and Lower Lakes are wholly discon-
nected. In fact, the Susquehanna was once thought to be
an outlet of Lake Erie. This lake was the very last to be
discovered, as well as the very last to be thoroughly explored.
It was known to the French as early as 1640, but we have no
certain information of its navigation, nor of the river connect-
ing it with Lake Huron, until 1669. In that year Louis
Joliet, who ranks as an explorer next to Champlain and La
Salle, returning from Lake Superior, where he had gone in
quest of copper, made the passage and sailed along the north-
ern shore to the eastward. At least, in September of that
year we find Joliet, La Salle, and two Sulpitian priests in the
woods of Grand River, between Lakes Erie and Ontario, dis-
cussing geography, trade, and Indian conversions. Adopting
Joilet's advice, the Sulpitians concluded to go by the new
while
< >f wh;
rest, tl
the CO
the "10;
p<jrtag<
that
island
retardc
I the La
transpc
hood
not occ
I came fr
The
.,«,;-|v-^
THK FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
27
route to the far-distant Pottawatomics. In 1670 they as-
cended the Strait, stopping on the site of Detroit, and made
tlieir way to the Sunt Sainte Marie. These priests were (ial-
in6c and DolHer, the fust of whom made the earliest map of
the Upper Lakes now known to exist.
Thus, from 161 5 to 1670, while the English colonists were
treading the paths of their hard practical life, making farms
and towns, fighting the Indians, and contending with the
'home government for rights and privileges, the French were
laying oi)en the northwestern lands and waters, but making
no use of Lake Erie in carrying on their hardy operations.
The reasons of this are essential to the meaning of our
Itory. Le Caron and Champlain had found Lake Huron by
lecending the Ottawa, and had thus set the direction of
northwestern travel. Later, however, the route by Lake Sim-
coe was more frequently used by the Jesuits and fur traders.
The base r f the great triangle forming Southwestern Canada
was shor'^er than the two sides. Moreover, the Ottawa route
was not much harder than the one by the lake. The voyagcur
or the priest made his way along either route in a birch-bark
canoe, and carrying over the portages, or around the rapids,
while more laborious than paddling, still broke the monotony
of what was at best a wearisome life. But more than all the
rest, the northern route was far less dangerous. It lay th? . ugh
the country of the friendly Algonquins and Hurons, while
the 'lostile Iroquois wholly barred or made very perilous the
i portage of the Niagara. Had it not been for the great river
[that discharges its floods into the St. Lawrence opposite the
i island of Montreal, northwestern discovery would have been
[retarded for half a century. The site of Detroit, the best on
the Lakes for the purposes of the French, owing to its water-
transportation, its relations to the Indians, and its neighbor-
hood to the beaver-grounds, was not known until 1669, and
jnot occupied until 1701 ; and then the finder and the founder
[came from Canada by the Ottawa and Lake Huron.
The same facts explain another curious surprise in the
28
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
early history of this region. The territory comprised within
the present State of Ohio was the last portion of the North-
west to be explored and claimed by the French. French
maps that lay down the far northern waters with much
correctness, leave us almost wholly ignorant of the size and
configuration of Lake Erie. Maps that correctly figure the
rivers of Canada and of Illinois make the Ohio and the Wabash
one stream, called "Wabash or Ohio," flowing from its source
almost due west, and thus nearly obliterating the State of
Ohio. Sometimes Lake Erie runs south far toward the Gulf
of Mexico ; and later its course is due east and west. Charle-
voix's map of 1744 bears on the southern side of the lake the
words, " this shore is almost unknown," and Celoron's map of
1750 repeats the legend. Evans's and Mitchell's maps, both
published in 1755, give the lake an almost east and west
trend. It was at this time that the rivers of Ohio made their
first appearance in cartography. The similar streams of Illinois
and Wisconsin had long been known and mapped. " The
great geographer, D'Anville of France, in 1755, lays down the
Beave;-, with the Mahoning from the west, rising in a lake, all
very incorrectly, with Lake Erie rising to the northeast like a
pair of stairs, and the Ohio nearly parallel to it."' Last of
all, when the Connecticut Land Company sent its surveyors
to Ohio, in 1796, it found, to its surprise and financial loss,
that the Connecticut Western Reserve contained a million
acr -s less land than had been supposed. The company should
have charged the shortage to the Alleghany Mountains and
the ^roquois : the mountains blocked the Englishman's path
to the fVest, while the Iroquois, who exterminated the Erics
about 1660, and whose hunting and war parties long roamed
the waste that they had made, rendered the farthest extreme
of the Northwest much safer ground than Ohio for the voya-
geurs, traders, and missionaries of France. Besides, the shorter
' Hon. C. C. Baldwin, from whose tracts, published by the Western Resene
Historical Society, these facts are mainly gathered.
THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
29
distance by the northern shore drew the travel to that side of
the Lake.
Wherever they went the French took prudent thought for
the morrow. June 14, 167 1, Saint-Lu3son, who had been sent
from Canada for that very purpose, standing amid a throng of
savages and a cluster of Frenchmen, by a white cross and a
cedar post bearing the royal arms, that had been raised at the
foot of the Saut Rapids, holding a sword in one hand and a clod
I of earth in the other, with religious and civil ceremonies, took
Ifj possession of the Saut, the Lakes Huron and Superior, with
■■llill the countries, rivers, lakes, and islands contiguous and ad-
jacent thereto, both those already discovered and those yet to
be discovered, bounded on the one side by the seas of the
north and west, and on the other by the South Sea, in the
jBame of the High, Mighty, and Redoubtable Monarch, Louis
XIV., the Most Christian King of France and Navarre. All
.fjthat " now remains of the sovereignty thus pompously pro-
Iclaimed," says Mr. Parkman, is " now and then the accents of
^France on the lips of some straggling boatman or vagabond
[half-breed — this, and nothing more." '
Meantime, the Jesuits, not cast down by the loss of the
[Huron Mission, were busy planting missions in the country
(beyond " Mer Douce."
The two most important of these missions, standing to the
' wilderness in some such relation as that of the early Christian
monasteries of Western Europe to the surrounding heathen-
ism, were those of Saut Sainte Marie and Saint-Esprit, the
latter near the head of Lake Superior. The common rally-
ing-points of Indians and Frenchmen alike, these missions be-
|came centres of real geographical information as well as of
idle rumor and vague conjecture. Only a man who has
I brought his imagination to bear on the facts of wilderness life
[ can conceive what was then going on. At any given time,
some French discoverer might be paddling his canoe along
rn Resene
' La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, 42-44.
30
THE OLD NORTHWEST,
some unknown river, or toiling through some unknown forest,
hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement or mission ;
and report of what he saw or did might be many months in
finding its way to his countrymen. The yearly reports of the
Jesuit missions, called " Relations," now that the Jesuits have
become more secular and less spiritual, abound in natural
knowledge,' which shows that the priests were grappling with
the new questions that thronged upon the dullest minds, and
which the brightest could not answer. Father Marquette had
been stationed at Saint-Esprit, where he heard much of the
mysterious river to find which had become the ambition of
every ambitious Frenchman in New France.
La Salle came out to Canada at the age of twenty-three in
1666, burning with the great passion of the Age of Maritime
Discovery — the thought of finding a western road to the
riches of the East. Of all the men who shed lustre upon
French discovery in New France, La Salle alone ranks beside
Champlain. A band of Seneca Indians who wintered with
him at his seigniory of La Chine, on the shore of Lake St.
Louis, in one of the lulls of savage warfare, told him of a
river called the Ohio that rose in their country and, at a dis-
tance of an eight moons' journey, emptied into the sea. Re
sponding to that prepossession which leads men of ardent tem-
per to interpret facts in the light of favorite theories and
cherished purposes, he concluded that this river must flow to
the Gulf of California. He had started with the Sulpitian
priests on a journey to the Ohio, resolved to put this theory
to the test, when by accident he met Joliet in the wilder-
ness of Grand River. One of the questions that the little
company discussed was that of a road to the great river
of which the French were now hearing so much, from tribes
as distant as the Senecas and the Sioux. Joliet, who had be-
come familiar with the reports that floated to the missions of
the Upper Lakes, contended that the road should be sought in
I Parkman : La Salle, 29.
)f the m
Ing the
pnsin,
5rst of
■■
THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
31
the northwest ; La Salle, who was fresh from his conference
j with the Senecas, contended as earnestly for the southwest.
I Joliet went on his way to Montreal. Galin6e and Dollier,
[turned from their former purpose by his arguments, ascended
[the Strait of Detroit. La Salle, with his few followers, was
lleft alone in the wilderness — alone, but not shaken in his pur-
)ose. Owing to the lack of original documents, and to the
:onfusion of second-hand reports, the next two or three years
)f his life are wrapped in much obscurity, and are the subject
%f much vehement debate ; but it is now generally held that
fei those years La Salle discovered the Ohio, descending it to
the Falls at Louisville, perhaps even to the Mississippi. But
this conclusion, while no doubt sound, is reached by cautious
criticism of fragmentary documents. La Salle's discovery in
1^ sense made the Ohio known to the world, and the region
'Ifetween the lake and the river remained to be explored as
ite as the year 1750. There is some evidence going to show
lat in this obscure passage of his life La Salle descended the
Illinois to the Mississippi, But History has adjudged the
lonor of discovering the great river to others, and she is not
ikely to change her verdict.
Plainly, the time had come for the Mississippi to be dis-
covered ; and in 1672 Frontenac, the French governor, com-
lissioned Joliet to make the discovery. At Mackinaw the
jntrepid explorer met the intrepid priest whose name will ever
)e associated with his own in Western annals. At the out-
let Marquette placed the enterprise under the patronage of
Ihe Immaculate Virgin, promising that if she granted them
|uccess the river should be named " The Conception." This
jledge he strove to keep ; but an Indian word, the very mean-
ing of which has been disputed, is its designation. Ascend-
ing the Fox River, crossing the portage to the Wisconsin, one
)f the most remote from Canada of the many portages unit-
ing the two systems of waters, and then descending the Wis-
consin, on June 17, 1673, they found themselves, probably
5rst of white men since De Soto's companions fled from the
3«
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
midnight burial of their chief, on the bosom of the Father of
Waters. We shall not follow them as they descend the
mighty flood to a point below the mouth of the Arkansas.
Having satisfied themselves that the river did not flow to the
sea of Virginia or to the Gulf of California, but to the Gulf of
Mexico, they turned back toward the north, and, by way of
the Illinois River, the Chicago portage, and Lake Michigan,
returned to Green Bay, having paddled their canoes, in four
months, two thousand five hundred miles. Jolict lived many
years to encounter new perils, among them a journey by the
Saguenayto Hudson Bay; but Marquette, worn out by labors
and vigils, soon after died en the lonely eastern shore of Lake
Michigan.
La Salle's ambition became more ardent the longer it was
fed by his glowing imagination. But the triumph of Joliet
and Marquette changed the current of his thoughts. Asia
was no longer the vision that he saw in the v/est, but the Mis-
sissippi Valley. Spain had discovered the Mississippi, but
had failed to take possession : he would fortify its mouth and
hold the river against the world. England had planted her
colonies on the Atlantic shore, claiming the whole continent ,
behind them : he would gain their rear and shut the gats-
ways of the West against them forever. In a word, he would -^
change the seat of the French- American empire from the St.|
Lawrence to the Mississippi. It was La Salle who first dis-^
tinctly conceived the policy that led on to Fort DuquesneJ
Braddock's defeat, and Forbes's march to the Forks of thej
Ohio.
Early in the year 1679, he built, near the foot of Lake Erie,!
the Griffin, a vessel of sixty tons burden, to be used in the!
prosecution of his plans. Money was needed, and he must sup-l
ply it by trading in furs. August 7th the Griffin spread herj
sails for the northern waters. She was the first craft otherl
than an Indian canoe or a boat propelled by oars that ever]
sailed our inland seas above Lake Ontario. On the 12th oil
that month she had reached t i expansion of the Strait that!
^vent,
ined,
tlireshc
infide
favorite
)ught
Igazette
" F,
I' Sanctj
It ween
Itnent s
Inot we
Tor. Ar
:rossin
face twi
there It
listcnin
THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
33
lies just above the city of Detroit. Unlike the Protestant ex-
plorers, the Catholic drew largely upon the Saints' calendar
for geographical names ; and the school-boy of to-day, as he
pores over the map of North America, finds in the names of
rivers, lakes, and capes valuable hints of early exploration.
I Of this we have an excellent example in the naming of Lake
Sainte-Claire.
■ r " The saint whose name was really bestowed, and whose day
'is August 1 2th, is the female ' Sainte Claire,' the foundress of
the order of Franciscan nuns of the thirteenth century, known
|js ' Poor Claires.' Clara d'Assisi was the beautiful daughter
0l a nobleman of great wealth, who early dedicated herself to a
iseligious life and went to St. Francis to ask for advice. On
l^alm Sunday she went to church with her family, dressed in
/^l^ch attire, where St. Francis cut off her long hair with his own
hands and threw over her the coarse penitential robes of the
order. She entered the convent of San Damiano in spite of the
opposition of her family and friends. It is related of her that
m one occasion, when the Saracens came to ravage the con-
sent, she arose from her bed, where she had been long con-
fined, and placing the pyx, which contained the host, upon the
tlireshold, she knelt down and began to sing, whereupon the
infidels threw down their arms and fled. Sancta Clara is a
favorite saint all over Europe, and her fame in the New World
jught not to be spoiled — like the record of the dead in a battle
gazette — by a misspelt name.
" F. Way, in his work on Rome, published in 1875, says :
Sancta Clara has her tomb at the Minerva, and she dwelt be-
Itwcen the Pantheon and the Thermae of Agrippa. The tene-
Imcnt she occupied at the time of her decease still exists, but is
Inot well known. In a little triangular place on or near Via
Tor. Argentina lodged the first convent of the Clarisses. If,
:rossing the gate-way, you turn to the left of the court, you will
face two windows of a slightly raised ground-floor. It was
|;here Innocent IV. visited her, and there, on August 12, 1253,
listening to the reading of the Passion, in the midst of her weep-
3
34
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ing nuns, died the first abbess of the Clarisses and the founder
of 4,000 religious houses.' " *
The lake named, the Griffin went on her way. From
Green Bay, La Salle sent her on the return voyage loaded
with furs. She was never heard of again, to La Salle's most
bitter disappointment. What was her fate will always be a
matter of conjecture.
Who were the first white men to penetrate the territory of
Illinois, probably can never be told with certainty. It is
clear that the Illinois River had been visited by white men
before Joliet and Marquette ascended it on their way north-
ward in 1673. At least, there is a map in existence of earlier
date on which the upper parts of the river are laid down.'
Perhaps the readiest answer to the question that this map sug-
gests is, that La Salle actually discovered the Illinois in 1672.
Marquette returned to the Indian town of Kaskaskia after his
first visit, to establish the mission of the Immaculate Concep-
tion, but his stay was of short duration. La Salle's eye was
on the Illinois when he ascended the Lakes in 1679. Part of
the Griffin's cargo was rigging and anchors for a vessel to be J
built on that river, with which he expected to sail down the i
Mississippi and make the West Indies. When he parted with
his vessel at Green Bay, he ascended the western shore ol'
Lower Michigan, and built Fort Miamis at the mouth of thei
St. Joseph River. Ascending this river to the Kankakee port-
age, in December, he crossed to that stream, and launched]
his eight canoes, containing thirty-three men, himself, Tonty,
and Hennepin included, on its current. Passing places soon I
to become memorable in western annals, as " Starved Rock"
and Peoria Lake, he finally stopped at a point just below the
lake and began a fortification. He gave to this fort a name
that, better than anything else, marks the desperate condition!
of his affairs. Hitherto he had refused to believe that the|
' Hubbard : Memorials of a Half Century, 164-166.
' Parkman : La Salle, 23.
THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
35
Griffin was lost— the vessel that he had strained his re-
sources to build, and freighted with his fortunes ; somewhere
on the Lakes she must be afloat, perhaps driven by the storm
into some sheltering bay, perhaps aground on some hidden
bar. But as hope of her safety grew faint, he named his fort
CrHecmir — " Broken Heart." Neither his ardent temper nor
the state of his affairs would permit him to stand still. Hav-
ing put a vessel on the stocks, and despatched Hennepin to
the Upper Mississippi, he left Tonty in command of the post,
and started on a winter journey to Canada to procure material
for her construction. Here fresh disappointments met him,
and he returned to his Illinois fort to find that he had named
it even better than he knew : the fort had been plundered and
^as deserted.
In the autumn of 1681, La Salle once more travelled the
iong road leading from the St. Lawrence to the head of the
;** Lake of the Illinois," as he called Lake Michigan. The
winter following, he dragged his canoes on sledges to the Illi-
nois River, and then launched them on its stream. On Feb-
ruary 6, 1682, he found himself on the river that he had so
Jong sought, and which fate seemed to have decreed th"'- he
should never reach. April 9th following, he and his little
Iparty stood just above the mouth of the Mississippi, beside a
:olumn bearing the arms of France, with an appropriate in-
scription, and a cross, with a leaden plate, also appropriately
jinscribed, buried near. Some hymns having been chanted,
[amid volleys of musketry and shouts of " Long live the King "
JLa Salle took formal possession, for his royal master King
JLouis XIV. of France and Navarre, of the country of Louisi-
lana, from the mouth of the Ohio along the Mississippi and
Ithe rivers which flow into it from its source beyond the coun-
Itry of the Sioux to its mouth at the sea, and also to the
jmouth of the River of Palms. Another hymn was chanted,
land renewed shouts of " Live the King ! " completed the trans-
laction.
This act was far more significant than the similar one per-
36
THE OLD NORTH sVEST.
1
formed by Saint-Lusson at the Saut, eleven years before. It
closed the Mississippi to the Spaniards for one hundred years;
it led to a French colony in Louisiana ; it made necessary
that chain of wilderness posts which Braddock sought to
pierce at the Forks of the Ohio in 1755. That the Missis-
sippi Valley was laid open to the eyes of the world by a voy-
ageur who came overland from Canada, and not by a voyageur
who ploughed through the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico
from Spain, is a fact of far-reaching import. The first Louisiana
was the whole valley ; this and the Lake-St. Lawrence Basin
made up the second New France. How the two blended and
supplemented each other geographically, as well as their first
historical relations, have been indicated. Before we lose sight
of the act that La Salle performed that April day we should
mark the date that fixes its relation to the English colonies
— 1682, the year that Penn laid out the squares of Philadel-
phia, but thirty-four years before Spotswood and his retinue
drank their wine on the banks of the Shenandoah.
Our present theme is the discovery of the Northwest.
Other matters have been introduced only as they lead up to
that grand result. But French ambition was not absorbed
by the Mississippi problem. Frenchmen pushed into the
great forests and plains beyond the sources of that river. In
the seventeenth century, they knew the '* thousand lakes " of j
Minnesota better than Americans knew them fifty years ago.
Du Lhut, for whom the terminus of the Northern Pacific i
Railroad is named, before the year 1700 explored much of!
the region through which that railroad runs. Nor have we
attempted more than an outline map of the earliest history o( |
the old Northwest. Having done so much — having indi-
cated how the French, long before the English reached the I
foot-hills of the AUeghanies, had crossed and threaded the
great western valley, we are ready to attempt a similar mapolj
early Northwestern colonization.
'-M
But before essaying that task, a word concerning the en *
THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST.
37
It
"M
chanting tale of French discovery in North America. As we
read that tale, we seem, for the time, to be looking out of the
wondering eyes with which the French first surveyed this new
northern and western world — the eyes of Cartier as he sailed
up the St. Lawrence ; of Champlain as he paddled his bark
canoe up the current of the Richelieu or shouldered it around
the rapids of the Ottawa; of Nicollet as he steered through the
Straits of Mackinaw into the expanse of Lake Michigan; of
Joliet as he rowed beneath the cliffs of the Saguenay — the
eyes of Brul6 at the Saut, of Hennepin at Niagara, of Mar-
quette on the River of Conception, of Du Lhut in the coun-
try of the Dakotas — the eyes of La Salle as he descended the
Ohio, followed the Indian trails of Illinois and Arkansas, or
pronounced that sounding formula at the mouth of the Mis-
5'?iissippi — we seem to look out of their eyes upon this virgin
world of forest and stream, of prairie and lake, of buffalo and
elk, of natural beauty and human ugliness. But, after all,
our impressions are faint compared with theirs. Ideal pres-
ence is not real presence. Even if we could follow them on
their old paths, we could not undo the great changes that civ-
ilized man has wrought. Nor can we recall the innocency of
their eyes any more than we can renew the devotion of their
hearts to King and Church. All that is possible for us is a
pale picture of as grand a panorama of natural beauty and
sublimity as was ever unrolled to the vision of explorers. To
men like Champlain, Marquette, and La Salle, exploring New
France was a poem whose splendor almost made them forget
the hardships and perils of the exploration.
IV.
THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.
The English colonies in America began with villages and
outlying farms ; the French colonies, with missionary stations,
fortified posts, or trading houses, or with the three combined.
The triple alliance of priest, soldier, and trader continued
through the period of colonization. Often, but not always,
settlements grew up around these missions or posts ; and these
settlements constituted the colonies of New France.
Immediately following the visit of Le Caron and Cham-
plain to the " Mer Douce," in 1615, the R^collet Fathers es-
tablished missions on its eastern side, which, however, soon
passed into the hands of the Jesuits. These missions were
stepping-stones to the regions beyond. The reader who has
followed the narrative thus far will not be surprised to learn
that the French beginnings in the Northwest were within the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Some of these beginnings
long ago disappeared, others became permanent settlements.
Saint-Esprit, at La Pointe, planted by AUouez in 1665, is one
example of the first ; Saut Ste. Marie, planted by Marquette
in 1668, of the second. This village is the oldest, town in the
Northwest — fourteen years older than Philadelphia, and one
hundred and twenty years older than Marietta, O. A mis-
sion was planted on the island of Michilimackinac within a
year of that at the Saut. This establishment was soon re-
moved to Pointe St. Ignace, on the mainland, to the north
and west, and afterward to the northern point of the South-
ern Peninsula. But we are not able to trace a continuous
i
THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.
39
history from the mission to the Mackinaw of the fisherman
and tourist of to-day.
The beginnings made in Lower Michigan bear such im-
portant relations to facts of larger moment that time must be
taken to point them out.
In previous chapters I have spoken of the English colo-
nists as contented with their prosaic life, and as not seeking to
enter the regions beyond the Mountains and the Lakes. This
requires some qualification. Within the State of New York
are the Hudson and the Mohawk Rivers. The Dutch, hav-
ing a passion for beaver equal to that of the French them-
lelves, early occupied the confluence of the two streams, and
then began throwing out advanced settlements along the line
of the smaller one. The English conquest of the Dutch
Ciolony did not at once change its character. Furs long con-
tinued the leading stajjle of its commerce. The two rivers pre-
sented the readiest means of reaching the west found south of
the vSt. Lawrence. From the very first, the people of New
.York cultivated good feeling and commercial relations with
their neighbors of the " Long House ; " and these, whether in
eace or war, were able to influence all the tribes to the very
ources of the Mississippi. After they had crushed the
iHurons, these intractable warriors claimed Southwestern
anada as their own ; and after their western conquests they
et up a claim to all the lands to the Mississippi, south of the
outhern boundary of Michigan. No nation was ever more
ealous than the Six Nations ; but the skilful diplomatists of
|New York succeeded in winning from them many valuable
jconcessions, some of which they did and some of which they
did not understand. These will be more fully noticed in an-
jother place ; but here it is important to remark that after the
olony had passed into English hands, they sometimes per-
itted the New York traders to pass through their country
o the Lakes. Once on the shore of Lake Erie, the traders
vere but a few days' paddling from the best beaver-grounds in
he whole Northwest— those of the lower Michigan Peninsula.
i^i
40
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
" The region between Lake Erie and Saginaw was one of
the great beaver-trapping grounds. The Huron, the Chippe-
was, the Ottawas, and even the Iroquois, from beyond Ontario,
by turns sought this region in large parties for the capture of
this game, from the earliest historic times. It is a region pe-
culiarly adapted to the wants of this animal. To a great ex-
tent level, it is intersected by numerous water-courses, which
have but moderate flow. At the head-waters and small inlets
of these streams the beaver established his colonies. Here
he dammed the streams, setting back the water over the flat
lands, and creating ponds, in which were his habitations. Not
one or two, but a series of such dams, were constructed along
each stream, so that very extensive surfaces became thus covered
permanently with the flood. The trees were killed, and the
land was converted into a chain of ponds and marshes, with in-
tervening dry ridges. In time, by nature's recuperative process
— the annual growth and decay of grasses and aquatic plants—
these filled with muck or peat, with occasional deposits of bog-
lime, and the ponds and swales became dry again.
" Illustrations of this beaver-made country are numerous
enough in our immediate vicinity. In a semicircle of twelve
miles around Detroit, having the river for base, and embracing J
about one hundred thousand acres, fully one-fifth part consists i
of marshy tracts or prairies, which had their origin in the work 1
of the beaver. A little farther west, nearly one whole township,
in Wayne County, is of this character."*
Such temptation as this the Dutch and English traders!
could not be expected to resist. When Denonville came to
Canada as governor, in 1685, he found New France beset on
either side. The English of Hudson Bay were seeking to
draw the trade of the Northwestern tribes to those northern
waters ; the English of New York were seeking to draw it to
Hudson River. The competition threatened to become too [
keen ; for the Englishman ofifered cheaper goods, and the Ind-
ians liked his rum as well as they did the Frenchman's brandy, j
' Hubbard : Memorials of a Half Century, 362-363.
It
m
THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.
41
But more than this, Governor Dongan of New York had
divined the ideas of La Salle, and had begun to counterwork
them. He proposed that the English should enter the west,
exclude the French, and Imit them to the St, Lawrence. It
was a war of ideas. It was at this time thra New York ob-
tained from the Iroquois the first of those concessions that
afterward played so important a part in English policy, and
became the basis of the New York claim to the western coun-
try. The two mother countries were at peace ; but Dcnon-
ville and Dongan conducted a long correspondence growing
out of the rival claims, often angry, sometimes bitter. The
• French governor sometimes despaired of his cause, although
he triumphed in the end. The Iroquois were never friendly to
the French, and often hostile ; and they now strove to alien-
lite the Northwestern tribes from them. But Denonville had
.«Jlome great advantages over his rival. He was absolute in
•^Canada, and was thorough 'y supported by his king, while
Dongan was wholly unsupported. The English king was a
creature of Louis XIV. 's, and the colonies other than New
York, although Dongan was upholding their common cause,
were wholly indifferent to the issue. But he might have won
but for one force that he was powerless to overcome : he had
no weapon that he could oppose to the French courcurs des
bois. These redoubtable bush-rangers, always proud of their
French blood and language, and always impatient of French
authority ; devoted to the King, but caring nothing for his
law ; leading a lite picturesque and reckless ; with the bravery
and generosity of the traditional outlaw ; familiar with every
stream and at home in every forest ; delighting in illicit trade ;
often under the ban of the governor ; ready to confess them-
selves or quick to shed blood ; rapidly succumbing to the
hardships and dangers of their irregular life, but still more
rapidly recruited from the settlements — the coureiirs des bois
now rendered to New France one of their greatest services.
They had become so numerous that every family in Canada
was said to have a member in the bush. They had great in-
I
42
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
fluence with the Indians ; they hated the English ; and they
were often envied by their countrymen who followed more
orderly lives. They had their own leaders, some of whom
could bring together five or six hundred men. Du Lhut was
the most celebrated of these, and in this first crisis of North-
western history he played a conspicuous part. He built a
I'ort on the northern side of Lake Superior, to control the
road from the Upper Lakes to Hudson Bay. He also pointed
out to Denonville the importance of closing the gate-way of
Detroit. The governor gave him a commission to close it,
which Du Lhut hastened to execute. In 1686 he built Fort
St. Joseph, at the head of the Strait, near where Fort Gratiot
afterward stood. St. Joseph was abandoned and destroyed
soon after, but not until a fort had been built on the site of
Detroit. This action had not been taken a moment too soon,
for immediately we hear of men from New York on their way
to Mackinaw. In 1686 and 1687 strong parties of English
and Dutch traders, escorted by Iroquois warriors, made this
attempt ; the first of these had actually passed St. Joseph be-
fore it was discovered and captured, the second was stopped
on Lake Erie. Nor did the English then give over the at-
tempt to penetrate the upper country ; we hear afterward of
New York traders at various places, and notably in the neigh-
borhood of Fort Miamis, on the St. Joseph, in 1694. But
building and garrisoning forts were only a part of the ser-
vices rendered in this trying time by the coureurs dcs boh.
They placated the Indians, and patrolled the forests and lakes
for stray Englishmen. So competent an authority as Judge
Campbell expresses the opinion that but for them the Michi-
gan region would have fallen into English hands before the
close of the seventeenth century.' But before the Strait of
Detroit was occupied by the French, plantings had already
been made farther to the west.
From the time of La Salle's visit in 1679, we can trace a
Political History of Michigan, 4a
r
THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.
43
they
nore
hom
; was
orth-
lilt a
1 the
inted
ay of
)se it,
:Fort
ratiot
Toyed
site of
1 soon,
ir way
English
le this
ph be-
topped
the at-
/ard of
: neigh-
[. But
he ser-
^es bois.
id lakes
J Judge
: Michi-
fore the
strait of
already
continuous French occupation of Illinois. After La Salle had
navigated the great river to the Gulf, he had a double-headed
scheme. First, he would plant a colony on the Illinois to
hold the country against the Six Nations, who extended their
forays to the Mississippi, to protect the western Indians, and
to gather furs. A second colony, planted at the mouth of the
Mississippi, would command Lower Louisiana and receive
and ship to France the furs gathered on the upper waters.
He would bind together the two colonies by a chain of forti-
fied posts, which should also be continued through the Lake
country to the settlements on the St. Lawrence. He now
up changed the scene of his northern operations. He planted
his citadel of St. Louis on the summit of " Starved Rock,"
proposing to make that the centre of his colony. This un-
>&idertaking well under way, he started for France to carry out
f'the second part of his programme. Further we shall not fol-
low this indomitable explorer, except to say that in 1687,
while seeking, by an overland journey to Canada, to save from
destruction his southern colony, that, either by mistake or
treachery, had been landed in Texas rather than at the mouth
of the Mississippi, he was slain by an assassin of his own party,
just one hundred years before Anglo-American institutions
were established in the territory that he had called his own.
La Salle was the father of Illinois. At first his colony was
exceedingly feeble, but it was never discontinued. " Joutel
found a garrison at Fort St. Louis ... in 1687, and in
1689 La Hontan bears testimony that it still continued. In
1696 a public document proves its existence ; and when Tonty,
in 1700, again descended the Mississippi, he was attended by
twenty Canadians, residents on the Illinois."' Even while
the wars named after King William and Queen Anne were
going on, the French settlements were growing in numbers
and increasing in size ; those wars over, they made still more
rapid progress. Missions grew into settlements and parishes.
> Monette : History of the Mississippi Valley, I, 153, 154.
44
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Old Kaskaskia was begun in what La Salle called the " ter-
restrial paradise " before the close of the seventeenth century.
The Wabash Valley was occupied about 1700, the first set-
tlers entering it by the portage leading from the Kankakee.
Later the voyageurs found a shorter route to the fertile val-
ley. Ascending the Maumee, then called " The Miami of the
Lake," whose heads are interlaced with those of the Wabash,
and crossing the short portage leading to that stream, they
could descend to the Ohio. As the Frenchmen found their
way to the confluence of the two streams by the Wabash, and
as they knew little of the Ohio, then called " the River of the
Iroquois," they took the Wabash for the main stream.
Post Vincents, the Vincennes of our maps, was planted in
1735, and became the principal of a long but thin line of set-
tlements.
The nearest road from Canada to the Mississippi lies
through the State of Ohio, the most remote through the State
of Wisconsin ; the Ohio portages were the last to be travelled
by the French, that of the Fox and the Wisconsin was the
first. The Iroquois long excluded the French from Ohio, and
the remoteness of Wisconsin, aided perhaps by the rigor of the
climate, tended to a similar result. Still, the Jesuits planted
several missions in the latter State. That of St. Francis
Xavier, planted by Claude AUouez, the founder of Saint-Es-
prit, at Green Bay, in 1669, was the most important, and be-
came, in course of time, the nucleus of a small French settle-
ment. Mention may also be made of Prairie du Chien and
of the post on Lake Pepin.
The French located their principal missions and posts with
admirable judgment. There is not one of them in which we
cannot see the wisdom of the priest, of the soldier, and the
trader combined. The triple alliance worked for an imme-
diate end, but the sites that they chose are as important to-
day as they were when they chose them. The fact is, nature
had decided all these questions ages before the soil of the New
World had been pressed by the white man's foot. Marquette
long I
colony
troit
Frenc
fifty
Indi
thei
THE FRENCH COLONIZi. THE NORTHWEST.
45
called the Straits of Mackinaw " the key, and, as it were,
the gate for all the tribes from the South as the Saut is for
those of the North, there being in this section of the country
only these two passages by water, for a great number of na-
tions have to go by one or other of these channels in order
to reach the French settlements. This presents a peculiarly
favorable opportunity both for instructing those who pass here
and also for obtaining easy access and conveyance to their
places of abode." The straits were called the " home of the
fishes." " Elsewhere, although they exist in large numbers,"
says Marquette, " it is not properly their home, which is in
the neighborhood of Michilimackinac. It is this attraction
■which has heretofore drawn to a point so advantageous the
greater part of the savages in this country, driven away by
-iifear of the Iroquois." ' La Salle's colony of St. Louis was
planted in one of the gardens of the world, in the midst of
a numerous Indian population, on the great line of travel
between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. Kaskas-
kia and the neighboring settlements held the centre of the
long line extending from Canada to Louisiana. The Wabash
colony commanded that valley and the Lower Ohio. De-
troit was a position so important that, securely held by the
French, it practically banished from the English mind for
fifty years the thought of acquiring the Northwest. The
Indians and the beavers have long since disappeared from
the region lying between the lakes and the Mississippi ; that
region has twice changed hands since those early days ; the
whole country has been transformed by the hand of man;
but the Saut Canal, the Mackinaw shipping, and ti cities of
Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit show us how geography con-
ditions history, as well as that the savage and the civilized
man have much in common. Then how unerringly were the
French guided to the carrying places between the Northern
and the Southern waters, viz., Green Bay, Fox River, and
' Cooley : Michigan, in Commonwealth Series, ii.
46
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
^
'^
the Wisconsin ; the Chicago River and the Illinois ; the St.
Joseph and the Kankakee ; the St. Joseph and the Wabash ;
the Maumee and the Wabash ; and, later, on the eve of the
war that gave New France to England, the Chautauqua and
French Creek routes from Lake Eric to tb'- Ohio.
Much of this work was done while hostilities were in
progress. About the time that King William's War began,
in 1689, Governors Dongan and Denonville were both recalled.
No English governor or commander succeeded to Dongan's
ideas, while Count Frontenac vigorously prosecuted the pol-
icy of La Salle. In America the advantage of the war lay de-
cidedly with the French. The Iroquois never recovered from
the blows that Frontenac dealt them. The Northwestern
Indians were more completely wedded to the French interest.
Louisiana was colonized. Posts and settlements connecting
the mouths of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi were es-
tablished. The Strait of Detroit was guarded by a fortified
post. The Treaty of Ryswick, that will be more fully char- j^
acterized in another place, left all colonial disputes to future
wars. The English challenge to the discoverers of the West
was hurled back beyond the mountains, there to lie until re-
newed a half-century later. But the challenge had been
given, and was sure to be renewed ; and it is very probable
that, if a statesman having the genius of William Pitt had
then directed British counsels, British ascendancy in the
Western country would have been established during the
progress of King William's War.
Still New York did not at once resign her Western plans
and aspirations. In 1701 the Iroquois conveyed to King
William III. all their claims to the country formerly occu-
pied by the Hurons. These were the lands bounded by
Lakes Ontario, Huron, and Erie, " containing in length about
800 miles, and in breadth 400 miles, including the country
where beavers and all sorts of wild game keeps." ' The Iro
• Campbell : Political History of Michigan, 57.
THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NOK THWEST.
47
quois did not lay claim to the Lower Peninsula of Michigan,
but this grant nevertheless covered Detroit or " Fort De
Tret," as the deed calls it. Nor did the French feel alto-
gether easy. La INIotte Cadillac, afterward governor of Louisi-
ana, who had for some time seen that the fort at Detroit was
no longer adequate, recommended a settlement. Receiving
little encouragement in Canada, he carried his plan across the
ocean. He returned with authority from the minister Pon-
[chartrain to carry it out. Cadillac came to the spot, July 24,
il/oi, with fifty soldiers and fifty artisans and tradesmen, a
'Jesuit missionary, and a Recollet chaplain. He built a fort,
which he named Ponchartrain, for the French minister, and
began the settlement of Detroit. This settlement marks the
real beginning of civil and political history within the present
limits of Michigan.
In due time the French began to establish themselves on
the Northern frontier of the British colonies. They built
Fort Niagara in 1726, four years after the English built Fort
Oswego, Following the early footsteps of Champlain, they
ascended to the head of the lake that bears his name, where
they fortified Crown Point in 1727, and Ticondcroga in 1731.
Presque Isle, the present site of the city of Erie, was occupied
about the time that Vincennes was founded in the Wabash
Valley. Finally, just on the eve of the last struggle between
England and France, the French pressed into the valleys of
the Alleghany and the Ohio, at the same time that the Eng-
lish also began to enter them.
Writers like Monette, with a strong French bias, speak
admiringly of the growth of the French settlements in the
West.' This was more rapid than the early growth of the
Canadian settlements, but very slow as measured by the Eng-
lish colonies, not to speak of the Western settlements of the
United States.
In 17 1 2 old Kaskaskia was the capital of Illinois. In 1721
' History of the Mississippi Valley, Book II., Chaps. IIL, IV.
48
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
it was the seat of a college and a monastery. Fort Chartres,
founded in 1720, was the later capital, and one of the most
formidable fortresses on the continent. A report of the pop-
ulation of the Mississippi settlements in 1 766 assigns sixty-
five permanent families to Kaskaskia, forty-five to Cahokia,
sixteen to St. Philip, twelve to Prairie du Rocher, and forty to
Fort Chartres. These villages, with the outlying farms, prob-
ably represented a population of twenty-five hundred souls.
But this was after the English domination began, and the de-
cline may have already begun. Monette claims a population
of two or three thousand for Kaskaskia when it was at its
best estate. He also asserts that, in 1730, the settlements on
the Illinois embraced one hundred and forty families, besides
about six hundred converted Indians, many traders, voyageurs,
and coureurs des bois. In 1765 Croghan, the Indian agent,
found about one hundred families at Vincennes and Ouia-
tenon, and no doubt there were others scattered along the
river thus he did not see. The same year Rogers, the
redoubtable partisan soldier, found eighty or one hundred
families, and about six hundred souls, within the stockade at
Detroit, and about twenty-five hundred in the settlement,
which extended up and down the river, on both sides, some
eight miles. Judge Walker estimates the total white popula-
tion between the lakes and the two rivers at ten thousand, at
the close of the war that transferred the sovereignty to Eng-
land, and the estimate would seem a liberal one.'
Surely this is a poor showing for three quarters of a cen-
tury of growth in the garden of the West. But we must re-
member the ideas upon which New France was builded.
The trader was opposed to settlements because they meant
the destruction of his trade. The Jesuit was opposed to them
because they meant the destruction of his mission-field. The
voyageur and the coureur des bois were opposed to them be-
' The Northwest during the Revolution, in Michigan Pioneer Collections,
IIL, 12 et seq.
THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.
49
cause they meant the destruction of their favorite modes of
life. Only the soldier was left, and his business was not col-
lonization. Then the French people, dearly attached to their
native country, have no real genius for colonies. In .the
seventeenth century the French Protestants would have been
[only too glad to plant colonics in America that would have
[shed lustre upon the name of France ; but the same spirit
that made them desirous of removing to America made it
Impossible for them to do so. Great pains were taken to
protect the colonies against dangerous ideas. The strength
that comes from freedom and self-dependence was resolutely
suppressed ; colonial initiative in business or politics was not
permitted ; trade, and particularly the fur-trade, was kept in
the hands of grinding monopolies ; there was no politics, no
arinting press, no independent intellectual or religious life ; the
llirone was the seat of power as well as the fountain of honor ;
fci a word. New France was protected to death. The Old
Legime crushed the life out of Canada, but no Frenchmen in
Ihe world were more devoted to the Old Regime than the
;)anadians. The king expended great sums of money on the
colony, but corruption in Quebec, if possible, was ranker than
corruption in Paris. A colony without colonists is an im-
jossibility, but this the home government did not seem to
mderstand. Some of the more far-seeing governors called
tor agriculturists and artisans, and notably Jonqui^re, who
/anted ten thousand peasants sent over to people the Ohio
''alley; but these calls made little impression, and led to no
change of policy.
In 1 765 Croghan reported the habitants of the Wabash as
*' an idle, lazy people, a parcel of renegades from Canada,"
j" much worse than the Indians," and those of the Detroit
IS "generally poor wretches, a lazy, idle people depending
chiefly on the savages for subsistence," " whose manners and
:ustoms they have ce tainly adopted." Judge Walker sup-
joses that these descriptions apply to the voyagciirs and
courcurs des bois, who flocked into the settlements in great
n
I
50
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
:i«
numbers in periods of idleness, rather than to the active and
substantial traders and farmers, " many of them respectable,
and some of noble birth and connections." ' No doubt this is
perfectly true, but it is also true that the French settlements
produced these classes in great numbers. In fact, one reason
why the Frenchman got on so happily with the Indians was
that he readily became an Indian himself. This peculiar d^ |
velopment of wilderness-life is pertinent to Dr. Ellis's preg.
nant remark, that for every Indian converted to Christianity |
hundreds of white men have fallen to the level of barbarism.
Besides, Croghan visited the Wabash and the Detroit soon
after the close of the war, when the population was no doubt
much demoralized.
The industries of the Western settlements were furs,
peltries, and agriculture. Twenty thousand hides and skins
are said to have been shipped from the Wabash in 1705. The
towns on the Mississippi were peculiarly well situated to can}'
on the fur-trade, since they could reach the whole upper
country to the very sources of the river. The settlers early!
began to cultivate the soil. Besides growing maize and tliel
vegetables of the New World, they introduced the European!
grains, vegetables, and fruits. In 1746 the Wabash country j
shipped six hundred barrels of flour to New Orleans, be-i
sides large quantities of hides, peltry, tallow, and bees-wax
The Detroit habitants also cultivated the soil, but that settle-!
ment drew large quantities of supplies from the Illinois,
Describing the trade that sprung up between the Illinois!
coun<"ry and Lower Louisiana, Monette says, furs, peltries,
grair, .lour, etc., were sent down the Mississippi to Mobile,!
and thence to the West Indies and to Europe; " and in!
return, the luxuries and refinements of European capitals!
were carried to the banks of the Illinois and Kaskaskiaj
Rivers." Chartres was "the centre of life and fashion in!
the West." " The Jesuit College at Kaskaskia continued to|
' Michigan Pioneer Collections, III,, 12 et seq.
Franq
Mobi
line
by the
lost ir
of th(
theR
made
heretc
far as
'Tl
cal His
'Pa
THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.
51
prcg.
flourish until the irruption of hostilities with Great Britain."
The same writer finds "six distinct settlements, with their
respective villages," on the Mississippi in 1731, extending
from Cahokia, five miles below the present site of St. Louis,
to Kaskaskia on the river of that name, five miles above its
mouth.
While conceding such decided advantages to the French
in their competition with the English that he expresses sur-
prise that their grip of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi
was ever loosened, Professor Shaler still holds that they had
some disadvantages. Canada is covered with drift, which is
commonly fitted for cultivation at great cost of labor, and is
north of the corn and pumpkin belt. After describing the
; American method of tilling the corn and the pumpkin, by
;,j^which two crops are produced on the same land in one year,
fwhile the girdled trees are still standing. Professor Shaler
remarks : " It is hardly too much to say that, but for these
American plants and the American method of tilling them,
it would have been decidedly more difficult to have fixed
the early colonies on this shore." ' The point is well taken as
to Canada, but not as to the West, where the two plants were
thoroughly native to the soil.
The first Louisiana, in a geographical sense, is that of
Franquelin's great map, 1684. On the Gulf it extends from
Mobile to the mouth of the Rio Grande ; on the north, the
line runs along the shore of Lake Erie, and then northwest
by the sources of the streams flowing into Lake Michigan until
lost in the far North. East and west, it takes in the drainage
of the Mississippi, and the Gulf streams beyond as far as
the Rio Grande.' The first political Louisiana was the grant
made to Anthony Crozat, in 1712: "The River St. Louis,
heretofore called the Mississippi, from the edge of the sea as
far as the Illinois, together with the River of St. Philip, here-
' The Physiography of North America i
cal History of America, IV.
' Parkman : La Salle, 289, note.
Introduction to Narrative and Criti-
" ■■ IM
$2
THE OLD NORTIIWKST.
i
toforc called the Missouri, .-uul of the St. Jerome, heretofore
called the Ouabache, with all the countries, territories, lakes
within land, and the rivers which fall directly or indirectly into
that part of the river St. Louis.'" Crozat's Louisiana was u
separate colony, but not wholly independent of Canada. In
17 17 Illinois, with limits not very different from those of the
present State, was made a separate government, but still de-
pendent upon Louisiana. Still later the Wabash country was
separated from Illinois. It is foreign to our own purpose to
describe the machinery by which these governments were car-
ried on. But they were personal governments — governments
of officers not of laws. The governor and the intendant com-
monly cpiarrelled, as the king no doubt expected and desired
them to do. What constant pains were taken to smother the
very germs of political life is well shown by a letter that
Colbert wrote to Frontenac in 1672.
" It is well for you to observe that you arc always to follow
in the government of Canada the forms in use here ; and since
our kings have long regarded it as good for their service not
to convoke the states of the kingdom, in order, perhaps, to
abolish insensibly this ancient usage, you on your part should
very rarely, or, to speak more correctly, never give a corporate
form to the inhabitants of Canada. You should even, as the
colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the syndic
who presents petitions in the name of the inhabitants ; for it is
well that each should speak for himself and none for all." '
V-
Such a letter as this prepares us for the fact that " on
politics and the affairs of the nation, they [the Illinois inhabi-
tants] never suffered their minds to feel a moment's anxiety,
believing implicitly that France ruled the world and all must
be right." Major Stoddard, writing about the year 1804, says
that the people of Louisiana "did not relish at first the change
in the administration of justice when they came under the juris-
Narrative and Critical History, V., 28.
Cooley : Michigan, 9, la
THE FRKNCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.
53
diction of the United States. The delays and the uncertainty
attendant on trial by jury, and tlie multifarious technicali-
ties of our jurisprudence, they could not well comprehend,
either as to its import or its utility, and it is not strange
that they should have preferred the more prompt and less ex-
pensive decisions of the Spanish tribunals." '
The French colonists were utterly indifferent to what Ameri-
cans call political rights. They could no more comprehend
the men trained in the English colonial school than such men
could comprehend them. What fervent .''ppeals the Conti-
nental Congress made to the Canadians to join in the war
against Great Britain I What sacrifices the States made to
break the British power in Canada I And wiiit a very meagre
response was made to the appeals and sacrifices alike ! Some
of the Canadians cast in their lot with the States : the West-
ern habitants were generally friendly to the patriot cause, but
this was owing to their hostility to England rather than to
any conception that they had of what was involved in the
contest. There is, perhaps, no better measure of the provin-
cialism of the Revolutionary Fathers than their quiet assump-
tion that the Canadians, steeped to the lips in ancien regime,
had political sentiments and aspirations like their own. Pos-
sibly the national pride of a few Canadians was touched
when the Congress of 1774, in the address to the people
of Canada, invoked the shade of " the immortal Montes-
quieu ; " but that was all. The incapacity of the Canadians
to manage representative institutions and the jury system was
urged as a reason for restoring the French system of laws,
when the Quebec bill was before Parliament ; and it is impos-
sible to deny force to the argument. In fact, the want of
political ideas and habits, on the part of the habitants of Illi-
nois, was a serious inconvenience when the time came to or-
ganize society on an Anglo-Saxon basis.
Finally, the cruel oppression of the monopolies, and the
• Monette : History of the Valley of the Mississippi, i., 191, 194.
54
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
restrictive policy of the government, had much to do with
driving the young men of Canada from regular industry into
the woods ; and the remoteness of the Illinois settlements
from Quebec and New Orleans helps to explain their com-
parative prosperity.
Turgot was right when he compared colonies to fruit that
falls to the ground when ripe, but colonies never ripen under
such a regimen as this.
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V.
ENGLAND WRESTS THE NORTHWEST FROM
FRANCE :
The First Treaty of Paris.
This contest was the culmination of the long and bitter
struggle of England and France for supremacy in the New
World. I shall rapidly review the main facts leading up to
this culmination, and then assign to the West its place in the
controversy.
Professor J. R. Seeley has attempted to show that " Ex-
Ipansion " is the key to English history in the seventeenth and
[eighteenth centuries ; that the wars of England and France
[grew out of their colonial rivalries ; and that the explanation
[of the policies of the two powers must be sought in Asia, the
Indies, and America.' There is a considerable measure of
truth in the propositions that the English professor expounds
with so much eloquence and learning; but there is an unmis-
lakable difference between the first four Anglo-French wars
in America and the last one of the series. The very names
tha^. three of them bear indicate their origin and nature: they
j were wars of kings and queens. These wars began in Europe ;
they grew out of Old World quarrels, and the treaties of
peace that ended them were mainly concerned with Old
World matters. The colonies fought because the mother
[countries fought. The fifth and last of these wars began in
I America ; it was waged here two years before it was declared
' The Expansion of England.
5<5
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
'fall
in Europe; it involved a distinct and most important Ameri-
can question ; and the terms of peace affected the welfare and
destiny of America more than of any other part of the globe.
In 1629, when the colonies of both powers were in their
very infancy, David Kirk captured Quebec and sent the garri-
son to Europe; but, on the conclusion of peace, the conquest
was given up to France, and the life of the colony began
again.
King William's War, 1689-97, was but the extension to
America of the great European contest growing out of the
ascension of William and Mary to the throne of England.
The most striking features of this war are the massacres of
Schenectady, Salmon Falls, the seizure and plunder of Port
Royal, and the two unsuccessful attempts to invade and reduce
Canada, one made by way of Lake Champlain and the other
by the Lower St. Lawrence. Peace came with the Treaty of
Ryswick in 1697, each belligerent surrendering all countries,
islands, forts, and coU nies, wherever situated, that he had capt-
ured, belonging to the other at the opening of hostilities.
Queen Anne's War, 1702-13, was a prolongation of the
one that preceded it. It is the American phase of the war
of the Spanish succession. Again the English colonists cap-
tured Port Royal, thenceforth called Annapolis, and again
they vainly attempted, both by the Champlain and the St.
Lawrence routes, the reduction of Canada. America is much
more prominent in the Treaty of Utrecht than in the Treaty
of Ryswick. Newfoundland and the adjacent islands, and
Nova Scotia, or Acadia, " with its ancient boundaries," were
ceded to the English Crown. The treaty also restored to
Great Britain the Hudson Bay region, which had fallen into
French hands, and contained an agreement, " on both sides, to
determine within a year, by commissaries to be chosen forth-
with, named by each party, the limits which are to be fixed
between the said Bay of Hudson and the places appertaining
to France." Another stipulation of the treaty was the spring-
ing point of bitter controversies that we shall have occasion to
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM FRANCE.
57
touch upon hereafter. This was the admission, on the part
of France, that " the five nations or cantons of Indians " were
"subject to Great Britain."
King George's War, 1744-48, is the American phase of
the war of the Austrian succession. The single incident that
need be mentioned is the capture, by the English colonists,
aided by a British fleet, of Louisburg and the whole island of
Cape Breton, an heroic exploit that was rendered abortive by
the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which restored all conquests
made in the war, on either side, to the original owners. For
many years there had been angry disputes between the two
powers concerning their American boundaries. In particular
had there been a dispute as to the boundaries of Acadia, sur-
rendered by France to England in 1713, His Britannic Majesty
claiming the vast region bounded by the Gulf and River St.
Lawrence, the ocean, and New England, His most Christian
ISIajesty denying that his royal brother was entitled, by the
Treaty of Utrecht, to more than a part of the peninsula
of Nova Scotia. The treaty of t\ix-la-Chapelle left all these
questions open, and provided for a commission empowered to
settle them. This commission was appointed, but it never
accomplished more in its three years' discussions than to ac-
cumulate some volumes of arguments that convinced nobody.
The fact is, the question at issue had got beyond the power of
diplomatists in the year 1748. All they could do was to leave
it for soldiers to settle.
Matters were left in such condition, both in Europe and
America, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, that the peace
could not last long on either continent. We are not concerned
with the situation on the other side of the ocean, but on this
side we must give it a rapid survey.
The close of King George's War was marked by an ex-
traordinary development of interest in the Western country.
The Pennsylvanians and Virginians had worked their way
well up to the eastern foot-hills of the last range of mountains
separating them from the interior. Even the Connecticut
58
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
men were ready to overleap the province of New York and
take possession of the Susquehanna. The time for the
English colonists to attempt the Great Mountains in force
had been long in coming, but it had plainly arrived.
In 1748 the Ingles-Draper settlement, the first regular
settlement of English-speaking men on the Western waters,
was made at " Draper's Meadow," on the New River, a
branch of the Kanawha. The same year Dr. Thomas Walker,
accompanied by a number of Virginia gentlemen and a party
of hunters, made their way by Southwestern Virginia into
Kentucky and Tennessee. The names of Cumberland River,
Cumberland Mountains, Cumberland Gap, and Louisa River
are mementos of this excursion. The Cumberlands all take
their name from the Duke of Cumberland, the hero of CuUo-
den, celebrated in Campbell's line —
"Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,"
and the Louisa River was named for the royal duke's wife.
The same year the Ohio company, consisting of thirteen
prominent Virginians and Marylanders, and one London mer-
chant, was formed. Its avowed objects were to speculate in
Western lands, and to carry on trade on an extensive scale
with the Indians. It does not appear to have contemplated
the settlement of a new colony. The company obtained
from the crown a conditional grant of five hundred thousand
acres of land in the Ohio Valley, to be located mainly be-
tween the Monongahcla and Kanawha Rivers, and it ordered
large shipments of goods for the Indian trade from London.
These goods were to be carried to the Upper Potomac, and
then, by a road that the company proposed to build for trans-
portation and travel, to the waters of the Ohio. In 1750 the
company sent Christopher Gist, a veteran woodsman and
trader living on the Yadkin, down the northern side of the
Ohio, with instructions, as Mr. Bancroft summarizes them,
" to examine the Western country as far as the Falls of the
Ohio ; to look for a large tract of good level land ; to mark
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM FRANCE. 59
the passes in the mountains; to trace the courses of the
rivers ; to count the falls ; to observe the strength of the
Indian nations." ' Under these instructions, Gist made the
first English exploration of Southern Ohio of which we have
any report. The next year he made a similar exploration of
the country south of the Ohio, as far as the Great Kanawha.
The determination of the company is shown by its declara-
tion that it would go to the Mississippi, if necessary, in order
to find good lands. Gist's reports of his explorations added to
the growing interest in the over-mountain country. At that
time the Ohio Valley was waste and unoccupied, save by the
savages, but adventurous traders, mostly Scotch-Irish, and
commonly men of reckless character and loose morals, made
trading excursions as far as the River Miami. The Indian
town of Pickawillany, on the upper waters of that stream,
became a great centre of English trade and influence.
Another evidence of the growing interest in the West is
the fact that the colonial authorities, in every direction, were
seeking to obtain Indian titles to the Western lands, and to
bind the Indians to the English by treaties. The Iroquois
had long claimed, by right of conquest, the country from the
Cumberland Mountains to the Lower Lakes and the Missis-
sippi, and for many years the authorities of New York had
been steadily seeking to gain a firm treaty-hold of that coun-
try. In 1684, the Iroquois, at Albany, placed themselves
under the protection of King Charles and the Duke of York ;
in 1726, they conveyed all their lands in trust to England, to
be protected and defended by his Majesty to and for the use
of the grantors and their heirs, which was an acknowledg-
ment by the Indians of what the French had acknowledged
thirteen years before at Utrecht. In 1744, the very year that
King George's War began, the deputies of the Iroquois, at
Lancaster, Pa., confirmed to Maryland the lands within that
province, and made to Virginia a deed that covered the whole
' History, ii., 362, 363.
r.
I:
do
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
m
'1'
West as effectually as the Virginian interpretation of the
charter of 1609, soon to be noticed. This treaty is of the
greatest importance in subsequent history ; it is the starting-
point of later negotiations with the Indians concerning West-
ern lands. It gave the English their first real treaty-hold
upon the West ; and it stands in all the statements of the
English claim to the Western country, side by side with
the Cabot voyages. Again at Albany, in 1748, the bonds
binding the Six Nations and the English together were
strengthened, and at the same time the Miamis were brought
within the covenant chain. In 1750-54 negotiators were
busy with attempts to draw to the English interest the West-
ern tribes. Council fires burned at Logstown, at Shawnee-
town, and at Pickawillany, and generally with results favor-
able to the English.
There was, indeed, no small amount of dissension among
the colonies, and it must not be supposed that they were all
working together to effect a common purpose. The royal
governors could not agree. There were bitter dissensions be-
tween governors and assemblies. Colony was jealous of col-
ony. Mercenary traders appealed to the fears of the Indians,
telling them, what was true enough, that the English wanted
their lands. Every argument pointed to the necessity of for-
tifying the Forks of the Ohio ; but the dispute as to jurisdic-
tion between Virginia and Pennsylvania which broke out in
1752 not only left the increasing population to its own nat-
ural turbulence, because neither colony ventured to appoint
magistrates, but made both wary of spending money that
might prove to be for the greater advantage of the other. It
is to be feared that English interests in the West would have
been wrecked at last had they been abandoned wholly to
governors and assemblies. There were men among them of
statesman-like forecast, but these could not give direction to
affairs. Fortunately, the cause of England and the colonies
was not abandoned to politicians. The time had come for
the Anglo-Saxon column, that had been so long in reaching
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM FRANCE.
6l
them, to pass the Endless Mountains ; and the logic of events
swept everything into the Westward current.
In the years following the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle the
French were not idle. Gal issoni tire, the governor of Canada,
thoroughly comprehended what was at stake. In 1749 he
sent Celoron de Bienville into the Ohio Valley, with a suit-
able escort of whites and savages, to take formal possession of
the valley in the name of the King of France, to propitiate
the Indians, and in all ways short of actual warfare to thwart
the English plans. Bienville crossed the portage from Lake
Erie to Lake Chautauqua, the easternmost of the portages
from the Lakes to the southern streams ever used by the
French, and made his way by the Alleghany River and the
Ohio as far as the Miami, and returned by the Maumee and
Lake Erie to Montreal. His report to the governor was any-
thing but reassuring. He found the English traders swarm-
ing in the valley, and the Indians generally well disposed to
the English. Nor did French interests improve the two or
three succeeding years.
The Marquis Duquesne, who succeeded Galissonidre, soon
discovered the drift of events. He saw the necessity of action ;
he was clothed with power to act, and he was a man of action.
And so, early in the year 1753, while the English governors
and assemblies were still hesitating and disputing, he sent a
strong force by Lake Ontario and Niagara to seize and hold
the northeastern branches of the Ohio. This was a master-
stroke : unless recalled, it would lead to war ; and Duquesne
was not the man to recall it. This force, passing over the
portage between Presque Isle and French Creek, constructed
Forts Le Boeuf and Venango, the second at the confluence of
French Creek and the Alleghany River.
George Washington now makes his first historical appear-
ance. He comes with a commission from Lieutenant-Governor
Dinwiddie, of Virginia, to inquire of the officer commanding
the French force by whose authority and instructions he has
invaded the territories of the King of Great Britain, and to
62
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
demand his peaceable departure. He returns to Williams-
burg with the answer that the French commander will refer
the matter to the governor, at Quebec, and that in the mean-
time he shall continue to hold his ground. It was now winter,
and nothing more could be done that season, but early the
next year a small force of Virginians was sent to seize and
fortify the Forks of the Ohio. Before the works that should
have been built two or three years before could be completed,
or the men building them could be reinforced, the French de-
scended the Alleghany in stronger numbers and captured both
fort and garrison. They demolished the English fortification,
and built a much stronger one, that they called Fort Duquesne.
As usual, they had been too prompt for their rivals. They
had seized the door to the West. This was an unmistakaMe
act of war, and it precipitated at once the inevitable contest.
" Inevitable contest ! " The words sound like a decree of
fate. But when two hostile armies, moving on converging
roads, reach the point of convergence, a battle follows. The
French column, with the St. Lawrence as a base, has been
long moving in the direction of the Ohio ; the English col-
umn, with the seaboard as a base, has also been moving tow-
ard the same destination ; they enter the valley at practi-
cally the same time, the French asserting their right to the
country on the ground of discovery and occupation, the En;,'-
lish asserting their right by virtue of the Cabot voyages, the
Iroquois protectorate, and the Indian purchases. Given the
character of Englishmen and Frenchmen — given the geograph-
ical relations of the Atlantic Plain to the St. Lawrence-Lake
Basin, and the relations of both these to the Mississippi Val-
ley, a contest for the West was inevitable from the time that
the foundations of Jamestown and Quebec were laid down,
unless, indeed, one of the two powers should overwhelm the
other at an earlier day.
" French America had two heads — one among the snows of
Canada, and one among the cane-brakes of Louisiana ; one
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THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM FRANCE.
63
communicating with the world through the Gulf of St. Law-
rence, and the other through the Gulf of Mexico. These vital
points were feebly connected by a chain of military posts —
slender and often interrupted — circling through the wilderness
nearly three thousand miles. Midway between Canada and
Louisiana lay the Valley of the Ohio. If the English should
seize it, they would sever the chain of posts and cut French
America asunder. If the French held it, and intrenched them-
selves well along its eastern limits, they would shut their rivals
between the Alleghanies and the sea, control all the tribes of
the West, and turn them, in case of war, against the English
borders — a frightful and insupportable scourge." '
Braddock's army was the wedge intended to split French
America asunder, but it was shattered to pieces at the battle
of the Monongahela.
The shifting scenes of the French and Indian war will not
here be painted even in outline. But it is essential to bring
out in bold relief several of its larger features.
Mr. Bancroft says the question at the opening of the strug-
gle was, which of the two languages should be the mother
tongue of the future millions of the West — whether the Ro-
manic or the Teutonic race should form the seed of its people.
But the question soon became wider than the West. From
the moment that William Pitt became, in 1757, the genius of
the English Cabinet, England contemplated nothing less than
the reduction of all Canada. Pitt's policy was to crush the
French colonial empire in both worlds, and he distinctively
grasped the American issue. Mr. John Richard Green says of
Pitt : " He felt that the stake he was playing for was some-
thing vaster than Britain's standing among the powers of Eu-
rope. Even while he backed Frederick in Germany, his eye
was not on the Weser, but on the Hudson and the St. Law-
rence. " Pitt himself said in the House of Commons: " If I
Farkman : Montcalm and Wolfe, i., 39-40.
m
€4 THE OLD NORTIIWKST.
send an ariny to Germany, it is because in Germany I can
conquer America." '
From the moment that the war became one of conquest it
was more than ever a war of tjeoj^raphy. The French strong-
holds were Louisburj; in Cape Breton, ()uebcc and Montreal
on the St. Lawrence, Ticonderoga at the head of Lake Cham-
plain, Fort Frontenac at the foot of Lake Ontario, Fort Niag-
ara on the river of that name, Detroit, that held the connec-
tion between the lower and upper Lakes, and Fort Duquesnc,
at the Forks of the Ohio. Niagara and Duquesnc were the
two keys to the West. DuquesneV military relation to the
Ohio Valley was more important then than its commercial re-
lation is now. To Canada there were three lines of approach:
one by Lake Ontario, one by Lake Champlain and the Riche-
lieu, and one by the Lower St. Lawrence. The almost insur-
mountable obstacles offered by every one of these were over-
come, and in 1760 the conquest of Canada was effected by
three armies that converged at Montreal from the three direc-
tions, on the same day. I lowever, when the war became one of
invasion and conquest the advantages of the two parties were
reversed — the French moved on the exterior and longer, and
the English on the interior and shorter, line.
alth
"'Geography,* says Von Moltkc, *is three-fourths of mili-
tary science ; ' and never was the truth of his words more fully
exemplified. Canada was fortified with vast outworks of de-
fence in the savage forests, marshes, and mountains that en-
compassed her, where the thoroughfares were streams choked
with fallen trees and obstructed by cataracts. Never was
the problem of moving troops encumbered with baggage and
artillery a more difficult one. The question was less how to
fight the enemy than how to get at him. If a few practicable
roads had crossed the broad tract of wilderness the war would
have been shortened and its character changed." '
^^
' History of the English Peo])Ie, iv,, 195.
'Parknian ; Montcalm and Wolfe, ii., 380.
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM FRANCE.
65
At the outset both of the powers had much to say of
boundaries and ri^MUs. Tlie French claimed, by right of dis-
covery and (occupation, all lands draining to the St. Lawrence,
the Lakes, and the Mississippi, a plain geographical principle
of demarcation that would have given them much of New
York and Pennsylvania, as well as all the West, and have
confined the English to the Atlantic Plain. It is true that
French occupation, while perhaps fulfilling the demands of in-
ternational law, did not answer the purposes of civilization ;
but when wc contrast the heroic ardor of the French voj'a-
gcurs, soldiers, and priests who opened up the Great West to
the vision of men with the apathy of the English colonists,
although our judgment approve the final issue, we can but
agree with Mr. Parkman when he says France's " pretensions
were moderate and reasonable compared with those of Eng-
land.'" England having nothing to show in the fields of
Western discovery and exploration, rested on the Cabot
voyages and the Iroquois title. The Cabot title was never
allowed in the Court of Nations, and was abandoned in 1763
by England herself, while the acknowledgment of 171 3 that
the dominion of the Iroquois was in the English Government
gave but the flimsiest claim to the lands south of the Lakes.
" The Treaty of Utrecht declared the Iroquois, or Five
Nations, to be British subjects ; therefore it was insisted that
all countries conquered by them belonged to tht Britisli
Crown. But what was an Iroquois conquest? The Iroquois
rarely occupied the countries they overran. Their military
expeditions were mere raids, great or small. Sometimes, as in
the case of the Hurons, they made a solitude and called it
peace ; again, as in the case of the Illinois, they drove off the
occupants of the soil, who returned after the invaders were
gone. But the range of their war-parties was prodigious, and
the English laid claim to every mountain, forest, or prairie
where an Iroquois had taken a scalp." "
' Montcalm and Wolfe, i., 124, 125.
' Parkman : Montcalm and Wolfe, i., 125.
66
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
This point is noted with particularity because important
political issues turned upon it at a later day.
But the discussion of " rights" was little better than boys'
play then, as it is now. The contest wa". one of force, and
the weight of the English sword decided the issue.
Two years after the first skirmishing in the backwoods of
Pennsylvania, there broke out in Europe the Seveii Years'
War, which swept all the great powers into its vortex, v/hich
extended to every continent and reached every sea. In
Macaulay's sweeping phrase, " Black men fonght on the coast
of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great
Lakes of North America." It was the first and only European
war that began on this side of the Ocean. Its close saw France
discomfited and humiliated in both worlds. She had lost
greater dc minions than, perhaps, ever changed hands at the
close of any other war in history. But there is no more
glorious moment in the history of England. It was the time
when every Englishman could feel, with just pride —
" That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue,
And Wolfe's great heart compatriot with his own." ■
On this continent, the long conflict culminated September
13, 1759, when the armies of Montcalm and Wolfe stood face
to face on the Heights of Abraham. The next year saw the
capitulation of Canada. When the time came to treat for a
general peace in 1763, the King of France bowed to the fort-
unes of war in the manner following :
" His most Christian Majesty renounces all pretensions which
he has heretofore formed, or might form, to Nova Scotia, or
Acadia, in all iis parts, and guarantees the whole of it, and with
all its dependencies, to the Kir g of Great Britain ; moreover,
his most Christian Majesty cedes and guarantees to his said
Britannic Majesty, in full right, Cpnada, with all its depend-
encies, as well as the island of Cape Breton, and all other
islands and coasis in fV>3 Gtilf and River St. Lawrence, and, in
' Seeley : The Expansion of England, 22.
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM FRANCE.
^7
general, everything that depends on the said countries, lands,
islands, and coasts, with the sovereignty, property, possession,
and all rights acquired by treaty or otherwise, which the most
Christian King, and the Crown of France, have had till now
over the said countries, islands, lands, places, coasts, and their
inhabitants, so that the most Christian King cedes and makes
over the whole to the said king, and to the Crown of Great
Britain, and that in the most ample manner and form, without
restriction, and without any liberty to depart from the said ces-
sion and guarantee, under any pretence, or to disturb Great
Britain in the possessions above-mentioned.
• •••••••
" In order to re-establish peace on solid and durable founda-
tions, and to remove forever all subject of (dispute with regard
to the limits of the British and French territories on the conti-
nent of America, it is agreed that for the future the confines
between the dominions of his Britannic Majesty and those of
his most Christian Majesty in that part of the world shall be
fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the
River Mississippi from its source to the River Iberville, and
from thence b-' a line drawn along the middle of this river
and the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea ; and
for this purpose the most Christian King cedes in full right,
and guarantees to his Britannic Majesty, the river and port of
the Mobile, and everything which he possesses, or ought to
possess, on the left side of the River Mississippi, except the
town of New Orleans and the island on which it is situated,
which shall remain to France, provided that the navigation of
the River Mississippi shall be equally free, as well to the sub-
jects of Great Britain as to those of France, in its whole
breadth and length, from its source to the sea ; and expressly
that part which is between the said island of New Orleans and
the right bank of that river, as well as the passage both in and
out of its mouth." "
These are some of the provisions of that treaty, which
always caused Count De Vergennes to shudder whenever he
' Chalmers: A Collection of Treaties, i., 471, 473.
68
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
thought of it, and that called out explosions of volcanic
wrath from the first Napoleon.
Other territorial changes deeply affecting the course of
history were made at the close of the Seven Years' War. Spain
had taken part in the contest as an ally of France, England
had captured Havana, in the island of Cuba, the very key to the
Gulf of Mexico. To regain that, Spain surrendered Florida to
England, and then received as a compensation from France all of
her possessions on the continent of North America that did
not pass to England. The grand result of these changes was
that England and Spain now divided North America, the Miss-
issippi River being the only definite boundary between them.
We must not allow our admiration of what the French had
done in the West to blind us to the fact that the British cause
was the cause of the Northwest and of America. Put in the
broadest way, the question was, whether French or English
ideas and tendencies should have sway in North America.
Montcalm and Wolfe were both gallant soldiers and able com-
manders ; both true patriots and chivalrous gentlemen ; but
they stood on the Heights of Abraham that September day for
very different things : Montcalm for the old n'givtc, Wolfe for
the House of Commons; Montcalm for the alliance of king
and priest, Wolfe for habeas corpus and free inquiry ; Montcalm
for the past, Wolfe for the future ; Montcalm for Louis XV. and
Madame de Pompadour, Wolfe for George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln. It was his clear perception of this point that
led Mr. John Fiske to say : " The triumph of Wolfe marks the
greatest turning-point as yet discoverable in modern history."'
That the war was a war of civilizations becomes per-
fectly clear when we consider the ten^per, culture, and aims
of the two classes of colonists. The history of French Amer-
ica is far more picturesque and brilliant than the history o(
British America in the period 1608-1754. But the English
were doing work far more solid, valuable, and permanent than
' American Political Ideas, 56.
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THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM FRANCE.
69
their northern neighbors. The French took to the lakes, rivers,
and forests ; they cultivated the Indians ; their explorers were
intent on discovery, their traders on furs, their missionaries on
souls. The English did not either take to the woods or culti-
vate the Indians ; they loved agriculture and trade. State and
Church, and so clung to their fields, shops, politics, and
churches. As a result, while Canada languished, thirteen
English states grew up on the Atlantic Plain modelled on
the Saxon pattern, and became populous, rich, and strong.
At the beginning of the war there were eighty thousand
white inhabitants in New France, one million one hundred
and sixty thousand in the British colonies. The disparity
of wealth was equally striking. In 1754 there was more
real civilization — more seeds of things — in the town of Bos-
ton than in all New France. In time, these compact and
vigorous British colonies offered effective resistance to Great
Britain. It is plain that, had they spread themselves out
over half a continent, hunted beaver, and trafificked with the
Indians, after the manner of the French, Independence would
have been postponed man}' years, and possibly forever. We
owe a vast debt to the inherited character of those English-
men who came to America in the first half of the seventeenth
century, and no small debt to the Appalachian mountain-wall
that confined them to the narrow Atlantic slope until, by
reason of compression and growth, they were gotten ready,
first to enter the West in force, and then to extort their inde-
pendence from England.
But the French and Indian War borrows its great signifi-
cance from another struggle. It was but the prelude to a
grander contest. " With the triumph of Wolfe on the
Heights of Abraham," writes Mr. Green, " began the history
of the United States," ' James Wolfe's Highlanders and
grenadiers at Quebec, and not the embattled farmers at Lex-
ington, won the first victory of the American Revolution.
' History of the English People, iv., 193, 194.
VI.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES AS CONSTITUTED
BY THE ROYAL CHARTERS.— (L)
To encourage American plantations, the British Crown
granted from time to time those charters that constitute the
first chapter of American Jurisprudence. In bounding the
grants of land that those charters conveyed, the Crown was
governed neither by a knowledge of American geography nor
by a legal principle. The most imaginative man alive could
not bound his estates in Spain with greater disregard of Span-
ish geography and Spanish law. The grants overlapped and
conflicted with one another in a way that was then most
troublesome to colonists and proprietors, and that is now
most exasperating to students of history. Five causes will
explain these conflictions : (i) Gross ignorance of American
geography ; (2) the great size of the early grants ; (3) the
surrender or vacation of charters ; (4) the influence of favor-
ites praying for grants to themselves or their friends ; (5) the
royal prerogative. I shall transcribe the boundary descriptions
found in the principal charters, and show how the Thirteen
Colonies took shape under them.'
The charter given to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584 granted
' The texts found in Poore's Charters and Constitutions of the United
States will be followed. In preparing this chapter and the next one the
author has received great assistance from " Bulletin of the United States Geologi-
cal Survey, No. 13 : Boundaries of the United States and of the Several States
and Territories, with an Historical Sketch of the Territorial Changes," by Henry
Gannett, Chief Geographer.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
71
to that " trusty and well-beloved servant " of Queen Eliza-
beth, his heirs and assigns forever —
" free libertie and licence from time to time, and at all times for-
euer hereafter, to discouer, search, finde out, and view such re-
mote heathen and barbarous lands, counteries, and territories,
not actually possessed of any Christian Prince nor inhabited by
Christian People, as to him, his heires and assignes, and to euery
or any of them, shall seeme good, and the same to haue, holde,
occupie, and enjoy to him, his heires and assignes, foreuer, with
all prerogatiues, commodities, jurisdictions, royalties, priuileges,
franchises, and preheminences, thereto or thereabouts both by
sea and land, whatsoeuer we by our letters patents may graunt,
and as we or any of our noble progenitors haue heretofore
graunted to any person or persons, bodies politique or corpo-
rate."
The charter further forbade any person or persons whatso-
ever inhabiting or attempting to inhabit the same countries
coming within two hundred leagues of the place or places
where Raleigh, his heirs and assigns, or his or their associates
in any company, should, within six years ensuing, make their
dwellings or abidings, without his or their consent ; and it
authorized and instructed him or them to encounter and ex-
pulse, to repel and resist, as well by sea as by land, all who
should attempt to do so. Raleigh's unsuccessful attempts to
plant under this charter are among the chivalrous and pathetic
stories of early American adventure.
While it wrs well understood that Raleigh was to plant in
the queen's American possessions, the name America does
not occur in the document. He was not to go into lands
actually possessed by any Christian prince nor inhabited by
Christian people, but that was the only limitation. It is plain
that her dominions on this continent lay before Elizabeth's
eyes an undifferentiated mass without assigned metes and
bounds, and that other grants or colonies were not then
contemplated. As those dominions then had no distinctive
^«
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THE OLD NORTHWEST.
name, Raleigh proposed Virginia, and Elizabeth, who was
fond of being called " the Virgin Queen," approved the sug-
gestion.
In 1606 James I. "vouchsafed" to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir
George Somers, and divers others of his loving subjects who
had been suitors unto him —
" Licence to make Habitation, Plantation, and to deduce a
colony of sundry of our People into that part of America com-
monly called Virginia, and other parts and Territories in Amer-
ica, either appertaining unto us, or which are not now actually
possessed by any Christian Prince or People, situate, lying, and
being all along the Sea-Coasts between four-and-thirty degrees
of Northerly latitude from the Equinoctial Line and five-and-
forty Degrees of the same Latitude, and in the main Land be-
tween the same four-and-thirty and live-and-forty Degrees, and
the Islands thereunto adjacent, or within one hundred Miles of
the Coast thereof."
The charter then provided for two companies, the first
called the London Company and the second the Plymouth
Company. The London Company should make their first
plantation at any place upon the said coast of Virginia or
America where they should think fit and convenient, between
the said four-and-thirty and one-and-forty degrees of the said
latitude, and tne Plymouth Company should begin their
plantation at any place on the said coast of Virginia and
America where they should think fit and convenient, be-
tween eight-and-thirty degrees and five-and-forty degrees
of the same latitude. Each colony should have all lands,
soils, etc., from its first seat of plantation, by the space of fifty
English statute miles, all along the coast toward the west and
southwest as the coast lies ; also all the lands, etc., along the
coast to the north, northeast, or east for the space of fifty
miles ; all the islands within one hundred miles directly over
and against the sea-coast, and also all the lands from the same
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
73
fifty miles every way on the sea-coast, directly into the main-
land one hundred miles. - The charter further provided that
no other of the king's subjects should be permitted to plant
or inhabit behind them toward the mainland without the ex-
press license or consent of the council of the colony affected
or interested first obtained in writing. It will be seen that
the two zones within which the two companies might plant
their colonies overlapped three degrees of latitude. Colli-
sions were, however, guarded against by a provision that
neither company should make a settlement within one hun-
dred miles of one already made by the other.
The charter of 1606 marks a decided step toward geo-
graphical precision and dcfiniteness. The settlements are to
be made on the coasts of V^irginia and America, within parallels
34° and 45° north latitude, which lines, falling as far apart as
the mouth of the Cape Fear River and the mouth of the St.
Croix, comprehended the larger part of King James's American
possessions. Two colonies were provided for. Evidently
that process of evolution had begun which led to the north-
ern and southern groups of colonies.
The settlement at Jamestown was made under this char-
ter. But as it did not prove satisfactory, the king, in 1609,
granted the London Company a second charter, in which he
bounded the colony that henceforth monopolized the name
Virginia as follows:
"... Situate, lying, and being in that Part of America
called Virginia, from the Point of Land called Cape or Point
Comfort, all along the Sea-Coast to the Northward two hundred
miles, and from the said Point of Cape Comfort nW along the Sea-
Coast to the Southward two hundred Miles, and all that Space
and Circuit of Land lying from the Sea-Coast of the Precinct
aforesaid up into the Land throughout from Sea to Sea, West
and Northwest, And also all the Islands lying within one hun-
dred Miles along the Coast of both Seas of the Precinct afore-
said. ..."
74
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
This was the first of the " from sea to sea" boundaries
that play so important a part in history. The description
" up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and
northwest," led to important results, the least of which is
the interminable discussion of what it meant. It has been
suggested that it meant a compound boundary line run-
ning from the Atlantic Ocean around to the Atlantic Ocean
again ; but the islands within one hundred miles along the
coast of " both seas " are given to Virginia, and this fact is
fatal to such a construction. Historians commonly assume
that the northern and southern lines of the colony were in-
tended to be due east and west lines, and much can be said
in support of this view. The lines drawn by the charter of
1606 were east and west lines. The royal intent in 1606-09
and 1620 was two colonics ; Virginia and New England
were evidently to embrace all the king's possessions from lati-
tude 34° north to the French territories. The ocean front
now given to Virginia carries the colony to the fortieth de-
gree. And, finally, the charter of 1620 bounded New Eng-
land on the south by that parallel. But the king's language
describes one west and one northwest line. If this view
be assumed, the description is still open to two constructions
that assign to Virginia very different limits. If the construc-
tion represented in the following diagram be taken, the
colony would be a triangle of very moderate size.
Northern Point.
Point Comfort.
Southern Point.
But if the following be the true construction, the colony
would be a vast trapezoid, six degrees of latitude in width on
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
75
the Atlantic Ocean, and from twenty to thirty degrees on the
Pacific.
Northern Point.
Point Comfort
Southern Point.
If the theory of one west and one northwest line be
adopted, only the second of these constructions will fill the
condition " from sea to sea." As this was the construction
adopted by Virginia, and as it materially influenced Western
history, I shall assume that such is the meaning of the lan-
guage.
The Plymouth Company was overshadowed by its richer
and stronger rival. Only one attempt at colonization was
made by its authority under the charter of 1606, and that
ended in failure. But a new charter was obtained in 1620,
under which the company became more active. This was
the second of the two charters into which that of 1606 was
merged. It absolutely gave, granted, and confirmed unto the
council established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, Eng-
land, for the planting, ruling, and governing of the northern
parts of Virginia in America, a territory that is thus bounded :
" That aforesaid Part of America lying and being in Breadth
from fEorty Degrees of Northerly Latitude from the Equinoctiall
Line to fforty-eight Degrees of the said Northerly Latitude inclu-
sively, and in Length of, and within all the Breadth aforesaid,
throughout all the Maine Lands from Sea to Sea . . . and
also within the said Islands and Seas adjoining, Provided always,
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that the said Islands, or any of the Premises hereinbefore men-
tioned, and by these Presents intended and meant to be granted,
be not actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian
Prince or Estate, nor to be within the Bounds, Limitts, or Terri-
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The king also declared it to be his will and pleasure, to
the end that the said territory should be more certainly
known and distinguished, that the same should henceforth be
called by the name of New England in America. This grant
covered eight degrees of latitude. Fully one-half of the terri-
tory that it embraced on the coast was at the time claimed
by the French ; in fact, the whole of it was covered by the
Acadia charter of 1603, and much of it remained in French
hands until they retired from the continent in 1763.
Why James I. bounded the grants of 1609 and 1620 on
the west by the South Sea, is a question asked early and
often. The common answer is found in the mistaken ideas
of American geography then current. " How natural the
'from sea to sea' lines," it is said, "to those who thought that
at most they would be but a few hundred miles in length!
How preposterous if the width of the continent had been
known ! " But it is not certain that this is the true explanation.
England claimed not only the coast that the Cabots had
discovered, but all the lands lying beyond that coast. Virtu-
ally she strove to incorporate into the public law of Europe
a rule in conformity with this claim. She ultimately failed
in both these efforts, owing to the resistance of France and
Spain ; but at the time when these charters were given she
was upholding both stoutly, and was ready to do anything
that would strengthen her position. To include the whole
breadth of the continent within colonial boundary lines might
give a faint color of occupancy to her claim ; moreover, the
charters of 1606, 1609, and 1620 all prove that, to the royal
mind, as well as to the companies that proposed to plant,
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
17
great territorial limits were essential to colonies. Professor
Alexander Johnston denies in toto " that the Crown made the
Connecticut grant under ignorance, supposing that North
America was far narrower than it proved to be." " The
Plymouth Council, when it gave up its charter in 1635, noti-
fied the king," he says, " that this grant was through all the
main-land from sea to sea, being near about three thousand
miles in length;" and he adds that ever)' geographer in Eng-
land knew such to be the length of the Connecticut grant.' It
is easy to make too much of the geographical information im-
parted to the royal mind by the Plymouth Council. No
doubt some men in England had correct views on this point
in 1662 ; but the Virginia and Maryland maps of 165 1 and
1670, described in a former chapter, and similar contemporary
facts, discredit the strong language used by Mr. Johnston.
The fact is, the early erroneous views of North American
geography gave place very slowly to correct views. The mag-
nificent distances of the New World were not grasped by
James I. and his contemporaries as realities ; and there is no
reason to suppose that the king or his counsellors really un-
derstood that the New England of 1620 embraced as many
degrees of longitude as lie between the mouth of the Tagus
and the mouth of the Euphrates.
Sandys and Southampton did not administer the London
Company in a manner to please the mean and narrow mind
of James I. The king caused legal proceedings against the
company to be instituted, and in 1624 the Court of King's
Bench, by a writ of quo warranto, vacated the charter. There-
after, as long as Virginia continued a British colony, her
governors held their commissions from the Crown. The
question as to the effect of this quo warranto on the territorial
limits of the colony has often been asked and never satisfac-
torily answered. The king had granted the northern half of
his American claim, from sea to sea, to the Plymouth Com-
' Connecticut, in Commonwealth Series, 281.
78
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
pany, and there is no reason to think that the writ was in-
tended to affect the limits of the colony, or to derange the
king's dual plan of colonization.
Passing the grant to Sir Robert Heath, which did not
lead to permanent plantations, the first invasion of Virginia,
as bounded in 1609, was on the north.
In 1632 Charles I. granted to Lord B? "timore the prov-
ince that the king, in honor of his queen, Henrietta Maria,
called Maryland. These are the boundaries :
"All that part of the Peninsula or Chersonese, lying in parts
of America, between the ocean on the east and the Bay of
Chesapeake on the west ; divided from the residue thereof by
a right line drawn from the promontory or headland called
Watkins's Point, situate upon the bay aforesaid, near the River
Wighco on the west unto the main ocean on the east, and be-
tween that boundary on the south unto that part of the Bay of
Delaware on the north, which lieth under the fortieth degree
of north latitude from the equinoctial, where New England is
terminated ; and all the tract of that land within the metes
underwritten (that is to say), passing from the said bay, called
Delaware Bay, in a right line, by the degree aforesaid, unto the
true meridian of the first fountain of the River Potomac;
thence verging toward the south unto the farther bank of the
said river, and following the same on the west and south unto
a certain place called Cinquack, situate near the mouth of said
river, where it disembogues into the aforesaid Bay of Chesa-
peake, and thence by the shortest line unto the aforesaid prom-
ontory or place called Watkins's Point, so that the whole tract
of land divided by the line aforesaid, between the main ocean
and Watkins Point unto the promontory called Cape Charles,
may entirely remain forever excepted to us. . . ."
Virginia bitterly resisted this grant as an invasion of her
jurisdiction, and she finally acknowledged Maryland as a sis-
ter colony, only because she had no alternative. Virginia's
composure does not seem to have been ruffled by the grant to
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THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
79
Sir Robert Heath three years before ; but the Virginia of
1632, like the Virginia of 1887, was comparatively isolated
from the coast to the south, while the multitude of waters
that mingle in the mouth of the great bay and flow out to-
gether through the Capes invited her to follow them to their
northern and northwestern sources. Moreover, the Virgin-
ians called Maryland a " papist " settlement ; and they cov-
eted the commercial privileges that the Marylanders en-
joyed and they did not. But Virginia finally gave up fur-
ther resistance, and entered on a discussion of boundary lines.
Successively there arose two main points of dispute with
Maryland, only one of which need be noticed here.
In 1649 Charles II. granted to Lord Hopton the tract
bounded by and within the heads of the Rappahannock and
Potomac Rivers; in 1689 James II. confirmed this grant to
Lord Culpepper, to whom it had passed by sale and purchase,
and on Culpepper's death it descended to his son-in-law. Lord
Fairfax. The grant was of the soil merely, and left the juris-
diction in Virginia, as before. Nothing in the whole history
of royal patents and charters is more absurd and tyrannical
than this grant, for at the time it was originally made Charles I.
had just been executed, and Charles II. was a fugitive. But
in time the question arose whether the southern or the north-
ern branch of the Potomac was the proper boundary between
Virginia and Maryland. The answer to that question de-
pended upon the answer to another one, viz., whether the
first fountain or westernmost source of the Potomac was on
the one branch or the other, which was at the time unknown.
It suited Lord Fairfax to claim the northern branch, since
that would give the greater extent to the Hopton grant ; but
Maryland contended for the southern branch, on which the
first fountain is really found. Virginia had an obvious motive
for taking the same view of the matter as Fairfax. In 1736 a
commission appointed by the Crown and Fairfax surveyed a
line from the Rappahannock to the Potomac; in 1745 the
king confirmed this line; and in 1746 a second commission
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80
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
'A—
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planted the " Fairfax stone " in conformity with the Virginia
view. Maryland was not consulted in the matter; but the
"Fairfax stone," although Virginia, in 1776, relinquished to
the adjacent States all the territories covered by their charters
that had once belonged to her, has remained the southern ex-
treme of the boundary line between Virginia and Maryland,
from the Potomac to Mason and Dixon's line.
The boundary descriptions of the three more southern
States will be given without particular discussion.
In 1663 Charles II. thus bounded the grant to the Caro-
lina proprietors :
. . . " All that territory or tract of ground situate, lying,
and being within our dominions of America, extending from the
north end of the island called Lucke Island, which lieth in the
Southern Virginia seas, and within six-and-thirty degrees of
the northern latitude, and to the west as far as the south seas,
and so southerly as far as the River Saint Matthias, which bor-
dereth upon the coast of Florida, and within one-and-thirty de-
grees of northern latitude, and so west in a direct line as far as
the south seas aforesaid." . . .
Two years later this grant was enlarged as follows :
. . . " All that province, territory, or tract of land situate,
lying or being in our dominions of America, aforesaid, extend-
ing north and eastward as far as the north end of Currituck
river or inlet, upon a strait westerly line to Wyonoak Creek,
which lies within or about the degrees of thirty-six and thirty
minutes, northern latitude, and so west in a direct line as far as
the South Seas ; and south and westward as far as the degree
of twenty-nine, inclusive of northern latitude ; and so west in a
direct line as far as the south sea." . . .
The Carolina charter of 1665 gave to history a memorable
line. The parallel of 36° 30' is the boundary of six States,
but its historical consequence arises more from the fact that
the compromise of 1820 made it the boundary between slavery
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
8l
and freedom beyond the western boundary of Missouri. Out
of the Carolina grant two colonies were eventually made.
The Revised Statutes of North Carolina define the boundary
between them as a line running northwest from Goat Island
on the west, in latitude 33° 56', to parallel 35°, and thence
along that parallel to Tennessee.
An independent plantation in South Carolina had been
mooted as early as 17 17, and in 1732 James Oglethorpe re-
newed the proposition, and proposed to make the new colony
a home and refuge for debtors in England who were unable
to discharge their indebtedness, and for Protestants on the
Continent who were persecuted for religion's sake. The plan
pleased the king, and he granted to a corporation consisting
of Oglethorpe and others a tract of country " in trust for the
poor " that he thus bounded :
"All those lands, countries, and territories situate, lying, and
being in that part of South Carolina, in America, which lies
from the most northern part of a stream or river there, commonly
called the Savannah, all along the sea-coast to the southward,
unto the most southern stream of a certain other great water or
river called the Altamaha, and westerly from the heads of the
said rivers, respectively, in direct lines to the south seas."
The royal proclamation of 1763, which will be fully noticed
in a future chapter, made some new territorial arrangements
in the Gulf region. The lands lying between the rivers Alta-
maha and St. Marys were annexed to Georgia. The southern
boundary of that province now became the St. Marys and a
straight line drawn from the source of that river to the con-
fluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee ; and such has been
its southern boundary until the present time. The grant
made to the Georgia trustees in 1732 had bounded South
Carolina on the southwest by the Savannah.
The charter of 1620 imparted some new life to the Plym-
outh Company, but it was never a vigorous corporation.
However, both the company and the Crown at once began
83
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
to exploit the New England soil. No other part of the At-
lantic coast is geographically so complex and intricate, and
for this or some other reason its territorial history is more
difficult than any other to trace out. The course of the com-
pany and king alike has been described as but a course of
confusion. Minutely to follow their work would require the
skill of a trained lawyer in addition to the learning of an
accomplished geographer and historian. Nothing beyond the
outlines will here be attempted.
In 162 1 the Council for New England, by direction of
James I., issued a patent to Sir William Alexander, Earl of
Stirling, conveying to him the region bounded by the St. Law-
rence, the Ocean, and the St. Croix, styled "the Lordship and
Barony of New Scotland." This grant was confirmed to the
Earl by a royal charter of September loth, the same year. The
Earl was still further favored, for by a patent dated April 22,
1635, the council, this time by the direction of Charles I.,
gave him a ** tract of the main land of New England, begin-
ning at St. Croix, and from thence extending along the sea-
coast to Pemaquid and the River Kennebeck," together with
Long Island and all the islands thereto adjacent.' In 1663
the heirs of the Earl sold this grant between the Kennebec
and the St. Croix to the Earl of Clarendon, from whom it
immediately passed to the Duke of York.
The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth late in the year 1620,
without any authority whatever; but June i, i62i,the Coun-
cil for New England granted them a " roving patent," which
assigned them no boundaries or settled place of habitation, but
allowed one hundred acres of land to be taken up for every
emigrant, with fifteen hundred acres for public buildings, and
also empowered the grantees to make laws and to set up a
government. This patent was issued in the name of John
Pierce and certain other London merchants who had given
the Pilgrims some financial assistance. In 1628 the council
' Vindication, etc., of Alexander, Earl of Sti;',ing, 34.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
83
gave Plymouth a tract of land on the Kennebec River, and
the year following it gave them a new patent, much more
favorable than the one given in Pierce's name in 1621. The
colony was now bounded west by a line drawn northerly from
the mouth of Narragansett River, and on the north by a line
drawn westerly from Cohasset Rivulet. The grant on the
Kennebec made the previous year was included. The Plym-
outh people made repeated attempts to obtain a charter from
the Crown, which alone could confer prerogatives of govern-
ment, but these attempts were never successful.
In 1628 the Council at Plymouth made to Sir Henry Ros-
well and others his associates in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony an important grant, which was confirmed by Charles
!., with powers of government, March 4, 1629. These are the
boundaries of Massachusetts as defined by the Crown :
. . . "All that Parte of Newe England in Amirica which
lyes and extendes betweene a great River there, comonlie called
Monomack River, alias Merrimack River, and a certen other
River there called Charles River, being in the Bottome of a
certen Bay there, comonlie called Massachusetts, alias Matta-
chusetts, alias Massatusetts Bay, and also all and singuler
those Landes and Hereditaments whatsoever, lying within the
Space of Three Englishe Mylas on the South Parte of the said
River called Charles River, or of any or every Parte thereof.
And also all and singuler the Landes and Hereditaments what-
soever, lying and being withia the space of Three Englishe Miles
to the southward of the southermost Parte of the said Baye,
called Massachusetts, alias Mattachusetts, alias Massatusetts
Bay: And also all those Landes and Hereditaments whatsoever,
which lye and be within the space of Three English Myles to
the Northward of the saide River, called Monomack, alias Mer-
rymack, or to the Norward of any and every Parte thereof and
all Landes and Hereditaments whatsoever, lyeing within the
Lymitts aforesaide, North and South, in Latitude and Bredth,
and in Length and Longitude, of and within all the Bredth
aforesaide, throughout the Mayne Landes there from the Atlan-
84
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
tick and Westerne Sea and Ocean on the East Parte, to the
South Sea on the West Parte.
..." Provided alwayes, That yf the said Landes . . .
were [on November 3, 1620] actuallie possessed or inhabited by
any other Christian Prince or State, or were within the Boundes,
Lymytts or Territories of that Southerne Colony, then before
graunted by our saide late Father . . . then this present
Graunt shall not extend to any such partes or parcells thereof."
•
The attempt to unify and harmonize the Northern New
England patents and charters, real and pretended, is next door
to a hopeless undertaking. I shall content myself with stat-
ing the facts material to the present purpose. On November
7, 1629, the Plymouth Council made to Captain John Mason,
one of the principal adventurers in the company, a grant
that, as reaffirmed in 1635, was thus bounded :
"All that part of the Mayn Land of New England aforesaid,
beginning from the middle part of Naumkeck River, and from
thence to proceed eastwards along the Sea Coast to Cape Anne,
and round about the same to Pischataway Harbour, and soe
forwards vp within the river Newgewanacke, and to the fur-
thest head of the said River and from thence northwestwards
till sixty miles bee finished, from the first entrance of Pischat-
aqay Harbor, and alsoe from Naumkecke through the River
thereof vp into the land west sixty mili;.^, from which period
to cross over land to the sixty miles end, accompted from
Pischataway, through Newgewanacke River to the lari north-
west aforesaid ; and alsoe all that the South Halfe of the Ysles
of Sholes, all which lands, with the Consent of the Counsel!,
shall from henceforth be called New-ham pshyre. And alsoe
ten thousand acres more of land ... on the southeast part
of Sagadihoc, at the mouth or entrance thereof, from hence-
forth to bee called by the name of Massonia, etc." . . .
There were earlier grants within the present limits of New
Hampshire, but this one may be considered the origin of that
commonwealth. It never had a royal charter, but the com-
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
85
mission of 1680 to the governor had much the same effect.
The feeble settlements within the limits of Mason's grant
were annexed to Massachusetts in 1641 ; they became a royal
colony in 1680; they became a second time a part of Massa-
chusetts in 1690, but were again separated in 1692, from
which time New Hampshire has had an independent exist-
ence.
In 1635 the Council at Plymouth renounced to the Crown
their charter, first, however, dividing into eight shares, which
they distributed among themselves, the territory of New Eng-
land. It was ordered when this partition was made that all
persons having lawful grants of land, or having made lawfully
settled plantations, should enjoy the same on their surrendering
their rights of jurisdiction {jura regalia) to the proprietor to
whom the division fell. The grant of 1620 was from sea to sea,
but this partition extended inland only sixty miles, save in one
or two cases that reached twice that distance. It was intended
to procure confirmations of these grants under the great seal,
but this appears to have been done only in the case of Sir
Ferdinando Gorges's portion, lying between the Piscataqua
and Kennebec rivers, confirmed to him by royal charter in
1639. This was " the province or county of Maine." The
grant led to serious disputes with holders under earlier grants.
Massachusetts claimed the whole district because it lies south
of a due east and west line drawn three miles north of the
lake in which the Merrimac has its rise, and she finally
bought the Gorges title for ;^i,250.
The Massachusetts charter of 1629 was cancelled by the
High Court of Chancery in 1684. Four years later the Stuarts
were expelled the throne, and were succeeded by William and
Mary. The new sovereigns favored a policy of colonial con-
solidation. Accordingly, November 7, 1691, they granted to
Massachusetts Bay a new charter which brought together
under its jurisdiction all the colonies of Central and Northern
New England, viz. : Plymouth, Massachusetts, Maine, includ-
ing the grant between the St. Croix and the Kennebec made
86
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
to Earl Stirling, and Nova Scotia. Maine, henceforth con-
sisting of the original grants to Alexander west of the St.
Croix, to Gorges, and to Plymouth, remained a part of Mas-
sachusetts until admitted to the Union as a State in 1820.
Plymouth remained permanently connected with the younger
and stronger colony at the north, and thus brought Massa-
chusetts down to the sea in the southeast.
When New Hampshire's dependence upon Massachusetts
came to an end in 1692, the territorial strifes of the two colo-
nies began. New Hampshire cut Massachusetts, as bounded
on the east by the St. Croix, in two ; so there were bounda-
ries to be drawn on the east and on the south. Commissioners
appointed by the two colonies failing to agree, these bounda-
ries were referred, by the king's order, to commissioners ap-
pointed by the neighboring colonies. The report of this
board, confirmed by the king in 1 740, and acquiesced in by
Massachusetts, drew the eastern line practically where it is to-
day. On the south, the report was less favorable to Massachu-
setis. The charter of 1629 gave her all the lands lying within
the space cf three English miles to the northward of the
River Merrimacand of every part thereof; the charter of 1635
made the southern boundary of New Hampshire on the coast,
the Naumkeck River, at Salem. The charter of 1691 reaf-
firmed the boundary of 1629. Massachusetts insisted, there-
fore, that her proper northern bonndary was a due east and
west line running through a point three miles north of the
inflow of Lake Winnipiseogee, which would have blotted
New Hampshire from the map. New Hampshire contended
that her southern boundary was a latitudinal line running
through a point three miles north of the mouth of the Merri-
mac. The report that the king confirmed gave Mew Hamp-
shire more than she asked for. It provided, " thtt the north-
ern boundary of the province of Massachusetts be a similar
curve line pursuing the course of the Merrimac Ri\ er, at three
miles distance, on the north side thereof, beginning at the At-
lantic Ocean and ending at a point due north of Pautucket
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
87
Falls, and a straight line drawn from thence, due west, till it
meets with His Majesty's other governments." Massachu-
setts refused to take part in surveying and marking this line,
and it was done by New Hampshire alone in 1741 and 1742.
It is the line of our map.
The three towns that constituted the original Connecticut
were settled by emigration from Massachusetts in 1636 and
1637. It was then supposed that the ground on which Wind-
sor, Hartford, and Weathersfield were planted belonged to that
colony, and the three settlements remained for a year or two
under its protection. The old story is that, afterward, the
emigrants obtained a title or claim under a patent which
proceeded from the Council of New England by the way of
the Earl of Warwick to Lord Say and Sele and his asso-
ciates ; but the existence of the grant to Warwick, and so
the sufficiency of the old patent of Connecticut, is denied.*
The New Haven colony, planted in 1638, had no other title
than the one obtained from the Indians by purchase. Both
the settlers on the river and at New Haven had much trouble
with the Dutch, who claimed all the coast from the Hudson
to the Connecticut. It is, therefore, hard to see that either
the Connecticut or the New Haven colonists had any title to
the lands that they occupied, proceeding from the Crown,
previous to the charter that constituted the Connecticut
Company, granted by Charles II., April 23, 1662, which gave
the colony the following limits :
"We ... do give, grant and confirm unto the said
Governor and Company, and their successors, all that part of
our Dominions in New England in America bounded on the
east by Narraganset River, commonly called Narraganset Bay,
where the said River falleth into the Sea, and on the North by
the Line of the Massachusetts Plantation ; and on the South by
the sea ; and in Longitude as the Line of the Massachusetts Col-
' Johnston : Connecticut, 8-ia
88
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ony, running from East to West, that is to say, from the said Nar-
ragansett Bay on the East, to the South sea on the West Part, with
the Islands thereunto adjoining."
This charter consolidated Connecticut and New Haven ;
it cut into the grant made to Roger Williams and his asso-
ciates in 1643 ; and it did not recognize the presence of the
Dutch on the Hudson even to the extent of making the
familiar reservation in favor of a Christian prince holding or
Christian people inhabiting.
In 1636 Roger Williams began the Providence plantation
on a tract of land that he held either by gift or purchase from
the Indians. Settlements were made on Rhode Island in
1638 and 1639, ^^'^ ^ beginning was also made on the western
coast of Narragansett Bay in 1643. An attempt of Massa-
chusetts to extend her jurisdiction over these settlements was
resisted as a usurpation. In 1643 Williams obtained from the
Parliamentary Commissioners, the Earl of Warwick, Presi-
dent, a charter of incorporation for the two pln.ntations.
In 1663 Charles II. granted a new charter, ciCciting " the
Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode
Island and Providence Plantations in New England in
America," that unified all the Bay colonies, and restored to
Rhode Island her original limits, which had been invaded by
the Connecticut charter of the year before ; an overlapping
of grants that ltd to a long and bitter controversy. Boundary
disputes between Massachusetts and the colonies on the south
began in 1742, and they came to an end, if indeed the end be
reached, only a few years ago. These disputes are among
the most remarkable of their kind in our history. To follow
them through the colonial and State legislatures, the com-
missions colonial and State, the appeals to the Court of* Eng-
land and to the Supreme Court of the United States, would
be a task as tedious as lengthy. Of course the first thing to
be done was to fix a latitudinal line that should fall three
miles south of the most southern point of Charles River.
This line
marks the so
^''e northern
^filaware.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
89
" The northern boundary of the colony was not fully settled
for more than a century. When Connecticut was settled, the
Massachusetts southern line was in the air ; and in 1642 that
colony sent two men, Woodward and Saffary, to run the line
according to the charter. The surveyors are said to have been
ignorant men ; and Connecticut authorities call them, lucus a
non lucendo, 'the mathematicians.' They began operations by
finding what seemed to them a point 'three English miles,
on the south part of the Charles River, or of any or every part
thereof:' thence the southern Massachusetts line was to run
west to the Pacific Ocean. Tlie two mathematicians, however,
either hesitating to undertake a foot journey to the Pacific, or
doubting the sympathy of casual Indians with the advancement
of science, and being sufficiently learned to know that two
points are enough to determine the direction of a line, did not
run the line directly west. Instead, they took ship, sailed
around Cape Cod and up the Connecticut River, and found
what they asserted to be a point in the same latitude as the
first. In fact, they had got some eight miles too far to the
south, thus giving their employers far too much territory ; but
they had fulfilled their principal duty, which was to show that
Springfield was in Massachusetts. An ex parte survey, and of
such a nature, could not, of course, be recognized by Connecti-
cut. The oblong indentation in Connecticut's northern boun-
dary is a remnant of the ignorance of Woodward and Saffary ;
for Massachusetts claimed a line running just north of Wind-
sor, and Connecticut finally reclaimed all but this oblong. She
made ex parte surveys of her own in 1695 and 1702, and then
both colonies appealed to the Crown. This was evidently a
dangerous tribunal for both, and in 17 14 they agreed on a com-
promise line, much as it is at present." '
This line conforms in general to the parallel of 42° 2' ; it
marks the southern limit of the Massachusetts claim and
tbe northern limit of the Connecticut claim west of the
Delaware. The disputes ai long the New England colonies
' I
' Johnston : Connecticut, 207, 208.
90
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
will not be further followed, except to quote Rufus Choate's
celebrated description of a phase of one of them. " The
commissioners might as well have decided that the line
between the States was bounded on the north by a bramble-
bush, on the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of bees
in swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with
firebrands tied to their tails " ' — a description that would apply
to a good deal of other boundary work done in colonial times.
The cutting up of the territories assigned to the London and
Plymouth Companies into two groups of colonies was mate-
rially modified by the intrusion, within the dates of the James-
town and Plymouth settlements, of a foreign body that thus far
has not been mentioned. In 1609 Henry Hudson, who, with a
Dutch commission, was then searching for a western passage
to Cathay, found his way into New York Bay, and into the
noble river that bears his name. The Dutch sent ships to
the Hudson every year for several years, one motive being
discovery and another trade with the Indians. At that time,
it will be remembered, the French claimed the coast from
the St. Lawrence to the Delaware ; moreover, the very year
that Hudson ascended the river, Champlain ascended Lake
Champlain almost to its source, when, fortunately, he turned
back to Quebec. Then there was the Cabot title of the
English, disregarding the claims of the Dutch and the French
alike. The Dutch proceeded to fasten themselves firmly upon
the mouth and valley of the river, which they called North
River; and afterward less firmly upon the country east to
Fresh River, as they called the Connecticut, and south to South
River, as they called the Delaware. The whole country claimed
by them they named New Netherlands, The English never
acknowledged, but a: ays denied, the validity of the Dutch
title ; and it is now plain that, in view of the Cabot title, the
geographical relations of the Hudson to the regions east and
south, and to the interior of the continent, and the later supe-
' Johnston: Connecticut, 209.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
91
riority of the English, the ultimate ejection of Holland, if not
of the Dutch, and the incorporation of New Netherlands into
the English system, was only a question of time. The Dutch
were in possession only fifty yea 3 ; but in that time they
materially influenced American history, as well territorial as
political and social.
In some of the northern " from sea to sea " charters the
King of England made the customary exemption of lands
possessed by a Christian prince, or inhabited by Christian
people ; but the fact that the presence of the Dutch was well
known, and that they were regarded as intruders, would seem
to show that the exemption did not apply to them, or at least
was not meant to apply to them. Further, the Connecticut
charter bounded that colony " on the south by the sea;" that
is, Long Island Sound.
Wc must also remember that the southern boundary of
the New England of 1620 was parallel 40° north, a full de-
gree south of the southernmost point of the New England
of 1887. Save the futile Plowden Palatinate, neither the
Council nor the Crown had attempted to assign this belt of
territory to any grantee. This, no doubt, would have been
done had not the Dutch been present in New Netherlands.
We may be reasonably certain, at least, that, had it not
been for the Dutch, the Hudson Valley would have become
the seat of an English colony before the Connecticut lines
were drawn in 1662. Perhaps Massachusetts and Connecti-
cut would have protested against a colony at their backs,
cutting them off from the west ; but the noble river, the pict-
uresque valley, the interior trade, the broad and fertile lands
of the Mohawk, would have been attractions too strong for
their opposition. The floods of the Hudson would have
swept away their " from sea to sea " lines, if they had ever
been really carried across that river. But while New York
geographically is no part of New England, but has a distinct
character of its own, it might have been, historically, a part
of New England, and it is fair to presume that such would
92
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
m
have been the case, had not the Dutch given another direc-
tion to history.
The long-sleeping English title to the Hudson was revived
in 1664. On March 12th of that year, "divers good causes
and considerations him thereto moving," Charles II., "of his
especial grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion," gave and
granted to his dearest brother, James Duke of York, his heirs
and assigns —
"All that part of the maine land of New England beginning
at a certaine place called or knowne by the name of St. Croix
next adjoyning to New Scotland in America and from thence
extending along the sea coast unto a certain place called Petu-
aquine or Pemaquid and so up the River thereof to the further
head of ye same as it tendcth northwards .:nd extending from
thence to the River Kinebequi and so upwards by the shortest
course to the River Canada northward and also all that Island
or Islands commonly called by the severall name or names of
Matowacks or Long Island scituate lying and being towards the
west of Cape Codd and ye narrow Higansetts abutting upon
the maine land between the two Rivers there called or knowne
by the severall names of Conecticutt and Hudsons River to-
gather also with the said river called Hudsons River and all the
land from the west side of Conecticutt to ye east side of Dela-
ware Bay and also all those severall Islands called or knowne
by the names of Martin's Vinyard and Nantukes otherwise
Nantuckett together with all ye lands islands soyles rivers har-
bours mines minerals quarryes woods marshes waters lakes, etc."
The next year a fleet sent out by the Royal Duke took
possession of New Netherlands. A few years later the
Dutch recovered the province for a single year ; but that ar-
ticle of the Treaty of Westminster, 1674, which required the
surrender by both parties of all conquests made in the course
of the preceding war, remaining in the hands of the conqueror,
gave the English a secure title as against the Dutch. A second
charter, dated 1674, confirmed the Duke in possession of the
province, the boundary descriptions remaining much as be-
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
93
fore. The Duke gave the province the name by which it has
since been known.
That part of Maine included in the Duke of York's char-
ter, Long Island, and some smaller islands to the east, had
been bought by him the year before of the heirs of Earl
Stirling, to whom they had fallen on the dissolution of the
Plymouth Company, in 1635. Pemaquid, as the Maine
tract was called, was annexed to Massachusetts in 1686, and
it was confirmed to that colony by the charter of 1691. Mar-
tha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and other islands in the neighbor-
hood were also included within the same charter. Long
Island, which Nature plainly intended to go with the country
on the north side of the Sound, and the posse-^sion of which
had been disputed by the Connecticut people and the Dutch,
was henceforth attached to New York. At the date of the
English conquest of New Netherlands, the English colonies
east and southwest had become measurably adjusted to the
Dutch ; but now matters were thrown into greater confusion
than ever, and a new series of adjustments became necessary.
Before attempting a general account of these arrangements,
we should take a closer look of some work that Charles IL
did in the years 1662 to 1664.
In the first of those years, he bounded Connecticut on the
east by Narragansett Bay, and on the west by the Pacific
Ocean ; thus jumping half the claim of Rhode Island, and
wholly ignoring the Dutch on the Hudson. In the second
year, he bounded Rhode Island on the west by the Paw-
catuck, thus jumping the eastern part of the grant made the
year before to Connecticut. In the third year, he not only
gave the Hudson to his brother, but he made the eastern
boundary of the Duke's province the Connecticut River, thus
sanctioning the widest claim that the Dutch had ever made
in that direction, and cutting away from one-third to one-
half of the present limits of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The establishment of the Dutch on the Hudson, if not
the geography of the country, had probably convinced Mas-
94
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
sachusetts and Connecticut that their "from sea to sea" limits
never would exist 6ave on parchment. At all events, they
never dreamed, now that the Hudson had passed into English
hands, of resisting the royal will. New York must Y ^ recog-
nized, as a matter of course, and the only thing now to do was
to make the best terms as to boundaries that they could.
The issue with Connecticut raised by the Duke's grant
was referred to the Royal Commissioners for the Colonies, who
promptly fixed a line twenty miles east of the Hudson ; but
the second charter to York, 1674, reaffirmed the boundaries
of 1664, and reopened the whole question. In 1683 Connect-
icut agreed with Governor Dongan, of New York, upon a
line that, with some rectifications, is the basis of the present
boundary between the two States. In 1725 and 1737 the line
was run practically where it k to-day ; but we have a curious
example of how the boundary disputes of the seventeenth
century project themselves forward in the fact that the line
was resurveyed by New York in i860, agreed upon by the
two States in 1878 and 1879, and ratified by Congress in 1881.
The western boundary of Connecticut happens to fall, at the
sea shore, on the forty-first degree of north latitude ; and that
fact determines the latitude of a western line that we shall
have occasion to consider hereafter.
In the case of Massachusetts, as in the case of Connecticut,
New York claimed eastward to Connecticut River. The con-
test was so bitter that the two colonies never came to an agree-
ment until 1773, and then the Revolution, coming on imme-
diately after, prevented the running of the line until 1787.
With a modification or two of no consequence for our purpose,
the line of 1 773-1 787 stands to-day.
Whether Massachusetts and Connecticut, or either of them,
considered at the time what the effect of the lines of 1733 and
1773 would be upon their claims in the interior, I have no
means of knowing ; but it is certain that the Governor of Con-
necticut, in 1720, had spoken of New York as cutting that
colony " asunder," and that a few years later Connecticut men
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
95
were making their way into the wilderness west of the Dela-
ware. When the two States were afterward told that by con-
senting to the lines east of the Hudson they had barred their
own charter-rights to extend farther west, they replied that
the Duke of York's grant was bounded on the west by the
Delaware, that he had jumped them, therefore, only to that
limit, and that their consenting to the fact in no sense barred
them west of his boundary.
No part of the whole coast was mere sought after, or was
the scene of more experiments in colonization, than the Dela-
ware country and the region east of it to the ocean. Tht
Swedes, the Fins, the Dutch, and men from New Haven,
all mingled in the opening scenes in that region; and it
was in New Jersey that Sir Edmund Plowden sought to set
up the palatinate of "New Albion." In 1655 the country
passed into the hands of the Dutch, who, however, received it
only as trustees for the nation whose navigators had discov-
ered the continent. The Duke of York laid claim, when the
time came, to the western side as well as the eastern side of
the river, although it was not included in his grant, basing the
claim on the Dutch capitulation. In 1664, two months before
the expedition sent to the Hudson sailed, the Duke sold to
Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret a territory that
he thus described :
"All that tract of land adjacent to New England, and lying
and being to the westward of Long Island and Manhitas Island,
and bounded on the east part by the main sea and part by
Hudson's River, and hath upon the west Delaware Bay or
river, and extendeth southward to the main ocean as far as
Cape May, at the mouth of Delaware Bay, and to the north-
ward as far as the northernmost branch of the said bay or
river of Delaware, which is forty-one degrees and forty min-
utes of latitude, and crosseth over thence in a strait line to
Hudson's River in forty-one degrees of latitude ; which said
tract of land is hereafter to be called by the name or names
of New Ceaserea or New Jersey."
96
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
New Jersey had a changeful history until 1702, when the
proprietors surrendered the province to the Crown. Royal
Commissioners fixed the boundary line between the colony
and New York substantially where it is to-day, in 1769.
In the Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York
grants, we find the key to another memorable territorial con-
test. The Massachusetts of 1629 included all lands lying
within the space of three English miles to the northward of
any and every part of Merrimac River. The New Hamp-
shire of 1635 reached on the south to the Naumkeck, and on
the west sixty miles inland. The commissioners of 1740,1:0
whom the dispute between the two colonies was referred, laid
down a line three miles north of the Merrimac, following its
course to a point north of Pawtucket Falls, and then proceed-
ing due west " till it meets with His Majesty's other govern-
ments." Under this decision New Hampshire claimed that
she extended as far west as Massachusetts, but Massachusetts
continued to assert her right to the country west of Connecti-
cut River extending north to the possessions of France. New
York said the region between Lake Champlain and Connect-
icut River belonged 10 her, under the grant of 1664, 1674.
New Hampshire and Massachusetts claimed that New York
was barred by the twenty-mile line drawn by the Royal Com-
missioners between Connecticut and New York in 1664; but
New York denied that this line held north of Massachusetts,
and in 1764 the King in Council decided the issue in her favor.
Both before and after the decision of 1 740 was rendered, Mas-
sachusetts and New Hampshire made grants of land in the
disputed district. Settlers from all the New England colo-
nies flowed into the territory, and especially from Connecticut.
After the king's decision of 1 764 New York strove to extend
her jurisdiction over the " New Hampshire Grants," as the
district came to be called. She repudiated the New Eng-
land titles of land-holders, and sought to compel the set-
tlers to purchase anew of her. This was the beginning of the
long and bitter quarrel between the " Green Mountain Boys"
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
97
and the " Yorkers." The settlers madi^ common cause against
New York's selfish policy. Their determination to maintain
their titles and to repel aggression ripened into a desire for in-
dependence. In 1777 a convention declared the Grants a sepa-
rate and independent State, with the name of " l^ew Connect-
icut." The next year a constitution was adopted and the
name Vermont selected. It is hardly too much to say that
Vermon^ was before Congress asking for admission to the
circle of States tor fifteen years. For much of that time the
people hardly considered themselves a part of the United
States at all ; they denied allegiance to all other States, and
were not a State themselves. Through the Revolution they
waged a separate war against Great Britain, and even entered
into negotiations for a separate peace. Their condition is an
anomaly in the history of our system. Not to touch on in-
termediate points, Vermont was finally admitted to the Union
in 1791.
7
VII.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES AS CONSTITUTED
BY THE ROYAL CHARTERS.— (II.)
We come now to a charter that is the source of more
boundary disputes than any other in our whole history.
This is the charter given to William Penn, in 1681, by Charles
II., in discharge of a debt that the king owed to Penn's father.
"... all that Tract or Parte of Land in America,
with all the Islands therein conteyned, as the same is
bounded on the East by Delaware River, from twelve miles
distance Northwards of New Castle Towne unto the three and
fortieth degree of Northerne Latitude, if the said River doeth
extende so farre Northwards ; But if the said River shall not
extend soe farre Northward, then by the said River soe farr as
it doth extend ; and from the head of the said River the East-
erne Bounds are to bee determined by a Meridian Line, to bee
drawne from the head of the said River, unto the said three
and fortieth Degree. The said Lands to extend westwards five
degrees in longitude, to bee computed from the said Easterne
Bounds ; and the said Lands to bee bounded on the North by
the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of Northern
Latitude, and on the South by a Circle drawne at twelve miles
distance from New Castle Northward and Westward unto the
beginning of the fortieth degree of Northern Latitude, and
then by a streight Line Westward to the Limitt of Longitude
above mentioned."
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
99
Penn proceeded at once to extend his province and to per-
fect his title. He bought Delaware of the Duke of York, and
also obtained from him the relinquishment of all his claim to
the western shore of the river above the twelve-mile circle,
which had been drawn to leave the town of New Castle and
neighborhood in the Duke's hands. The Duke's deeds to
Penn, which bear the date 1682, completed the limitation of
his province of New York on the sea-coast.
The grant to Penn confused the old controversy between
Virginia and Lord Baltimore as to their boundary, and led to
fresh controversies. The question soon arose : " What do the
descriptions ' the beginning of the fortieth,' and ' the begin-
ning of the three and fortieth degree of northern latitude '
mean ? " If they meant the fortieth and forty-third paral-
lels of north latitude, as most historians have held, Penn's
province was the zone, three degrees of latitude in width,
that leaves Philadelphia a little to the south and Syracuse a
little to the north ; but if those descriptions meant the belts
lying between 39° and 40°, and 42° and 43°, as some authors
have held, then Penn's southern and northern boundaries
were 39° and 42° north. A glance at the map of Penn-
sylvania will show the reader how different the territorial
dispositions would have been if either one of these construc-
tions had been carried out. The first construction would
avoid disputes on the south, unless with Virginia west of
the mountains ; on the north it would not conflict with New
York, but would most seriously conflict with Connecticut and
Massachusetts west of the Delaware. The second construc-
tion involved disputes with the two southern colonies con-
cerning the degree 39-40 to the farthest limit of Pennsylvania,
and it also overlapped Connecticut's claim to the degree 41-
42. Perhaps we cannot certainly say what was the intention
of the king, or Penn's first understanding ; but the Quaker pro-
prietary and his successors adopted substantially the second
construction, and thus involved their province in the most
bitter disputes.
lOO
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
The first quarrel was with Lord Baltimore. It has been well
said that this "notable quarrel" "continued more than eighty
years ; was the cause of endless trouble between individuals ;
occupied the attention not only of the proprietors of the
respective provinces, but of the Lords of Trade and Planta-
tions, of the High Court of Chancery, and of the Privy Coun-
cils of at least three monarchs ; it greatly retarded the settle-
ment and development of a beautiful and fertile country, and
brought about numerous tumults, which sometimes endcil in
bloodshed." ' The eastern boundary of Maryland was Dela-
ware Bay and River, from the intersection of the line drawn,
across the peninsula from Watkins's Point to the main ocean,
on the south, " into that part of the Bay of Delaware on th:
north which lieth under the fortieth degree of north latitude
from the equinoctial where New England is terminated," on
the north ; the northern boundary was " the fortieth parallel
from the bay to the true meridian of the first fountain of
the River Potomac." But Baltimore's charter described the
country granted to him as " not yet cultivated," Jtactenus in-
culta ; and at once, on his taking possession in 1634, the
question arose whether this was a mere description of the
land, or a condition of the grant equivalent to the familiar
" not actually possessed by any Christian prince nor inhab-
ited by Christian people " of the seventeenth-century charters.
Some Virginians were already within the limits marked out
for Baltimore when the Ark and the Dove entered the St.
Marys. Notably, Claiborne had set up his trading-post on
Kent Island in 1632 ; and, not unnaturally, hactenus incidta
was at once invoked in the Virginia interest. After much
strife and some bloodshed, this controversy was finally set-
tled in Baltimore's favor. In 1659, when Baltimore attempted
to expel them from his limits, the Dutch said hactenus inculta
applied to them as the first possessors of the country ; and
historians of our day have invoked the phrase in the Dutch
' Scaife : Pennsylvania Magazine of History, 1885, 241.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
lOI
interest. Considering that the Kings of England never ac-
knowledged the Dutch claims on the Delaware more than on
the Hudson, it would not be necessary to notice this point
but for one fact. Such title as the Dutch had, passed by
conquest to the Duke of York, in 1664, who sold it to Penn ;
and he did not fail to make the most of it in maintaining his
cause against his Southern nciglibor.
liut the principal contention between Penn and Baltimore
grew out of the inconsistent and conflicting boundaries that
the Crown had given them. First, Baltimcro's northeast
corner should be " in the Bay of Delaware " as well as on the
fortieth parallel, while the fortieth parallel crosses the Dela-
ware many miles north of the head of the bay. We are forced
to the conclusion that Charles I. intended to bound Baltimore
on the north by the fortieth parallel, for we cannot suppose
that he intended, in 1632, to leave either for Virginia or the
Crown a narrow strip of territory south of the New England
line ; but it was very unfortunate for Baltimore that the refer-
ence to the bay left open a door for Penn to enter with his
equally impossible boundary, when the day came to deal with
him. Penn's southern boundary was " a circle drawn at twelve
miles distance from New Castle northward and westward unto
the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and
thence by a straight line westward " to the limit of longitude
fixed by the charter. There was a dispute whether this .circle
should be drawn " horizontally" or " superficially ; " but no
matter which way it was drawn, it would not touch either
the thirty-ninth or the fortieth degree of latitude.
Definite and precise as the boundaries of 1632 and 1681
apparently were, it is clear that they were drawn in ignorance
of the geography of the Delaware region. Nor was this ig-
norance soon removed ; maps of the next century are extant
on which the heads of both Delaware and Chesapeake Bays
are laid down north of the fortieth parallel." Moreover, the
' Scaife : Pennsylvania Magazine of History, 1885, 248.
m
irr
m
'1
102
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
\i
mistake consisted in carrying the parallel too far south, rather
than in bringing the heads of the bays too far north ; at least
both Penn and Baltimore were surprised to find, when they
came to make surveys, that parallel falling so far north.
The proofs that the king intended to bound Penn on the
south by the fortieth parallel are the fact that said parallel
was the southern boundary of New England, established in
1620, and the Maryland charter. Baltimore stood stoutly
for that construction of his charter, relying on the literal
force of the language. Penn claimed to the thirty-ninth paral-
lel, but he could hardly have expected at any time to main-
tain that line. His determination was to gain a frontage on
both Delaware and Chesapeake Bay, and to push his southern
boundary as far south as possible. Fortunately for Penn and
unfortunately for Baltimore, Penn's line must touch the twelve-
mile circle, as well as be " the beginning of the fortieth de-
gree," while Baltimore's northern line must touch Delaware
Bay as well as be the fortieth degree. It will be seen that
each one of the descriptions contains a major and a minor
point ; and also that the two major points supported Balti-
more's, and the two minor points Penn's pretensions. Hence
Penn urged that the particular and the definite should control
the general and the indefinite. This was holding that the
Delaware Bay and the twelve-mile-circle limitations should
override those in regard to the fortieth degree. Penn had a
further advantage in the fact that he had obtained his title to
the three counties of Delaware, which were aiso within Balti-
more's grant, by purchase from the Duke of York. First and
last, Baltimore stood for his charter-line, while Penn was dis-
posed to compromise, but not in such a way as to give the
Delaware counties to his rival or to surrender Philadelphia.
After conferences, arguments, propositions, litigations in the
courts and hearings before the Privy Council, the proprietors
compromised the case in 1760. This compromise, which
practically carried out an older one, as well as a decision by
Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, was to this effect : (i) To run a
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
103
due east and west line across the peninsula through Cape
Henlopen (but not the Henlopen of our maps) ; (2) to run a
line from the middle of this Henlopen line tangent to the
twelve-mile circle drawn horizontally ; (3) to run a line from
the point where the tangent touches the circle due north to
the parallel of latitude fifteen miles south of the southern
limit of Philadelphia ; (4) to run the said parallel of latitude —
the lands north and east of this series of lines to belong to
Pennsylvania, the lands south and west to Maryland. The
proprietors sent over two distinguished mathematicians, Jere-
miah Mason and Charles Dixon, who established the various
lines in the years 1763-67. The east and west line, which
they ran and marked two hundred and forty-four miles west
of the Delaware, is the Mason and Dixon's line of history, so
long the boundary between the free and the slave States. Its
precise latitude is 39° 43' 26.3 " north. The Penns did not,
therefore, gain the degree 39-40, but they did gain a zone
one-fourth of a degree in widtli, south of the fortieth degree,
to their western limit, because the decision of 1760 controlled
that of 1779, made with Virginia. Had the heads of the
two bays really extended north of the fortieth degree, we
should no doubt have seen the Penns struggling to limit
Baltimore by that line, rather than by a point in Delaware
Bay, and to carry their grant north to latitude 43°. As it is,
Pennsylvania is narrower by nearly three-fourths of a degree
than the charter of 1681 contemplated. No doubt, however,
the Penns considered the narrow strip gained at the south
more valuable than the broad one lost at the north. With
the Revolution, Delaware ceased to be a dependency of Penn-
sylvania, and became an independent state with the boun-
daries of 1 760.
But the grant to Penn conflicted with the Virginia boun-
daries of 1609. No matter whether the beginning of the for-
tieth degree meant the thirty-ninth or the fortieth parallel, it
would cut that northwest line running " throughout from sea
to sea" which that province claimed as her northern boun-
I04
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
dary. The issue was not raised as soon as the issues between
Maryland and the other two States, for an obvious reason ;
but that great awakening to Western interests that followed
the close of King George's war in 1748 brought it at once to
the fore. Virginians and Pennsylvanians alike now began to
find their way over the mountains, not furtively, as hunters,
but openly, as traders and tillers of the soil, and their meeting
in the valley of the Upper Ohio was alone sufficient to force
the issue. Besides, building works of defence against the
Indians and the French, that the renewed mutterings of war
made necessary, hastened it. The controversy began for-
mally in 1752, eight years before Penn and P>altimore reached
their agreement and fifteen years before Mason and Dixon
planted their two hundred and forty-fourth mile-post from
the Delaware.
Mention has already been made of Governor Spotswood's
famous ride over the Blue Ridge in 17 16. The Virginians
had been one hundred and ten years in reaching the Valley of
Virginia, and even then the glowing reports that the gov-
ernor's company made of its fertility and beauty did not lead
to its immediate settlement. But in 1738 the General As-
sembly created Augusta County, bounding it on the east by
the Blue Ridge and on the west and northwest by "the ut-
most limits of Virginia." Whether these limits were the
Pacific Ocean or the Mississippi River, they included all West-
ern Pennsylvania. Accordingly, when the Pennsylvanians
began to settle west of the mountains they were within the
limits of a Virginia county already organized. When Wash-
ington led the Virginia Blues into that region to dispute the
progress of the French, he went not only to defend the terri-
tory of His Britannic Majesty, but also to defend the territory
of the Old Dominion. Moreover, the Pennsylvania Assembly
declined Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddle's proposal to assist
in fortifying the Forks of the Ohio, on grounds that gave
Lord Dunmore some advantage in the correspondence with
Governor Penn, soon to be mentioned. To stimulate volun-
: ti
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
105
teering in 1754, Governor Dinwiddie issued a proclamation
offering 200,000 acres of land in bounties, 100,000 near the
Forks of the Ohio, to be called the " garrison lands," and the
remainder down the river, and this was in part the stimulus
that brought into the field the force that Washington com-
manded that year. While the Pennsylvanians were too apa-
thetic to assist the Virginia governor in building the pro-
posed fortifications, they would not brook this invasion of
their rights. Governor Hamilton expostulated, and Dinwid-
die defended himself on the ground that the issue was doubt-
ful and the case urgent. The grant was approved by the
king, 1763, but it was not until the very eve of the Revolu-
tion that the patents were issued to the claimants.'
Braddock's defeat gave the French commander on the Ohio
the opportunity that he so well improved, and also so well
described, of "ruining the three adjacent provinces, Pennsylva-
nia, Maryland, and Virginia, driving off the inhabitants, and
totally destroying the settlements from a tract of country
thirty leagues wide reckoning from the line of Fort Cumber-
land;'" and of course adjourned the boundary-war until the war
of arms should cease. With the fall of Fort Duquesne into
the hands of the English in 1758, settlers began again to find
their way to the valleys of the streams flowing to the Missis-
sippi. For some years Virginia allowed her claim to the part
of Pennsylvania west of the mountains to sleep ; she did not
even remonstrate when Mason and Dixon carried their line
west of the meridian of the " Fairfax stone ; " but Virginians,
as well as Pennsylvanians, continued to make their way into
the disputed region. In 1769 the lands about Pittsburg
' In some cases, at least, patents for land in Pennsylvania issued by the Gov-
ernor of Virginia were aflfirmed by Pennsylvania courts. Thus, in 1775, Lord Dun-
more gave Washington a patent for 2,813 acres, described as being in Augusta
County, Virginia, on the waters of Miller's run, etc., that are within Washington
County, Pennsylvania. The lands were occupied .by squatters, who denied the
validity of the title, but the Pennsylvania court sustained the patent and ejected
the intruders in 1784- Butterfield : Washington and Crawford Letters, 73.
'Parkman : Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 329.
io6
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
were surveyed for the Pennsylvania proprietors, and settle-
ments under the government of this province now became
more rapid. Bedford County, embracing all Western Pennsyl-
vania as claimed by the Penns, was organized in 1771, and
Westmoreland County, embracing the part of Bedford west
of Laurel Hill, in 1773. This region was also included in
Augusta County, Virginia, as already related. The result was,
that some of the inhabitants sided with one State, some with
the other, and some with neither. As early as 1771 the more
turbulent entered into an agreement, which they proclaimed
openly, to keep ofi all ofificers of the law whatever, under a
penalty of ;^50, to be forfeited by the party who should re-
fuse to keep the contract.' Arthur St. Clair, of whom we
shall soon hear more on a greater theatre of action, made
his home in the disputed district in 1770, where he became
first a surveyor, and then a magistrate, with a Pennsylvania
commission. In January, 1774, Dr. John Connolly, who fig-
ures in the history of those times as a land-jobber and politi-
cal tool of Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, appeared
at the Forks of the Ohio with a commission from his Lord-
ship, with the high-sounding title of " Captain-Commandant
of the Militia of Pittsburg and its dependencies." Connolly
seized Fort Pitt, dismantled two years before, named it Fort
Dunmore, and issued a proclamation declaring that the Gov-
ernor of Virginia was about to take steps to redress the griev-
ances of the people of the region, and calling them to meet as
a militia the twenty-fifth of that month. St. Clair caused him
to be arrested for the act, but he was soon released on his own
recognizance. Afterward Pennsylvania magistrates were ar-
rested and hurried off to Staunton in the Virginia Valley.
The arrest of Connolly led to a correspondence between
Governors Penn and Dunmore, to only one feature of which
attention will be paid. Penn stated that, according to the
Pennsylvania calculations, Fort Pitt was " near six miles east-
•St. Clair Papers, L, 258.
m
I . I
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
107
ward of the Western extent of the province." Dunniore re-
jected this view, and asserted the Virginia claim. He also said
that the Pennsylvania Assembly, at the time when Dinwiddie
was proposing to fortify the Upper Ohio, had admitted that
Pittsburg was not within the limits of that government ; but
Penn replied denying that the assembly had made such an
admission, and afifirming that the act would not conclude any-
thing if the assembly had done so.
In May, Messrs. Tilghman and Allen, appointed commis-
sioners on the part of Pennsylvania, visited Williamsburg to
arrange matters, if possible. Propositions were made on both
sides, and all were rejected.
Meantime the strife went on. St. Clair wrote, in 1774:
" As much the greatest part of the inhabitants near the line
have removed from Virginia, they are inexpressibly fond of
everything that comes from that quarter, and their minds are
never suffered to be at rest." ' He also describes the panic as
so great that it threatened to depopulate the country. He
charged Dunmore with desiring to bring on an Indian war,
which charge proved to be true. His Lordship was more than
suspected of having an interest in lands over which he pro-
posed to extend the jurisdiction of Virginia. Governor Penn
told the Westmoreland magistrates that, as he could not raise
a militia like the Governor of Virginia, it was vain to contend
with the Virginians " in the way of force," and warned them
not to enter into such contests with Dunmore's ofificers, or
even to proceed against them by way of criminal prosecution
for exercising the powers of government. Dunmore himself
visited Pittsburg; and in 1775 the Augusta County Court
sat for two terms at Pittsburg, at which terms Pennsylva-
nians were arraigned for defying Virginia authority. Finally,
the Pennsylvanians carried Connolly off to Philadelphia, and
then the Virginians retaliated by sending some Pennsylvanians
to Wheeling as hostages.
' St. Clair Papers, I., 284.
io8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
It is but fair to say that this unhappy controversy was
forced by Lord Dunmore rather than by Virginia. He
continued to carry things with a strong hand, despite the
steady resistance of the Pennsylvania authorities, down to
the Indian war that takes its name from him, which was an-
other part of his arbitrary Western policy, and even to the
time that he went on board the man-of-war that saved him
from the vengeance of the Virginians.
Perhaps there is no better illustration of the confused
state of affairs in those Pennsylvania wilds than the conduct
of Colonel William Crawford, the mention of whose name
always suggests the terrible tragedy that closed his life.
Crawford was a Virginian by birth, and marched to Fort Du-
quesne with the Virginia troops in 1758. In 1765 he made his
home on the Youghiogheny River, in the disputed district.
He was Washington's Western land-agent for many years, and
his letters to him and to St. Clair throw much light on the
events in the midst of which he moved. He accepted a com-
mission as a Pennsylvania magistrate in 1770, and sided with
this State in the boundary-controversy until 1774; then, ac-
cepting a commission from Dunmore, he took an active part
in the Indian war, calling out from St. Clair the remark : " I
don't know how gentlemen account for these things to them-
selves ; " and afterward he became a Virginia magistrate for
the County of Augusta.
At the opening of the Revolution the dispute between the
two States threatened danger to the patriot cause. The sub-
ject did not come before Congress as a body, but, July 25,
1775, the members of Congress united in the following rec-
ommendation to the people living in the disputed territory;
" We recommend it to you that all bodies of armed men,
kept up by either party, be dismissed ; and that all those on
either side who are in confinement, or on bail, for taking part
in the contest, be discharged."' And this was the end of
active strife.
' St. Clair Papers, I., 361.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
109
In 1779 commissioners appointed by the two States met at
Baltimore to agree upon the common boundaries of Pennsyl-
vania and Virginia. In the ensuing correspondence the Penn-
sylvania commissioners had much to say of " the beginning
of the fortieth degree," the Virginia commissioners much of
the twelve-mile circle. On both sides there was an evident
desire to end the dispute. Various lines were proposed and
rejected. On August 31 the commissioners signed this agree-
ment : " To extend Mason and Dixon's line due west five
degrees of longitude, to be computed from the River Dela-
ware, for the southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and that a
meridian line drawn from the western extremity thereof to
the northern limit of the said State be the western boundary
of Pennsylvania forever." ' This contract was duly ratified
by the legislatures of the two States. In 1785 Mason and
Dixon's line was extended, and the southwestern corner of
Pennsylvania established. The " Pan-handle" is what was left
of Virginia east of the Ohio River and north of Mason and
Dixon's line, after the boundary was run from this point to
Lake Erie in 1 786.'
Ere this Virginia had acknowledged, in her constitution
of 1776, the validity of the grants made at her expense so
far as the shore States are concerned :
" The territories, contained within the charters, erecting the
colonies of Maryland, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina,
are hereby ceded, released, and forever confirmed to the people
of these Colonies respectively, with all the rights of property,
jurisdiction, and government, and all other rights whatsoever,
which might, at any time heretofore, have been claimed by
Virginia, except the free navigation and use of the rivers Pato-
' The correspondence is found in X. Hening's Statutes of Virginia.
' "When the State of Ohio was formed, in 1802, the Pan-handle first showed
its beautiful proportions on the map of the United States. It received its name
in legislative debate •'rom Hon. John McMillan, delegate from Brooke County,
to match the Accomn rojection, which he dubbed the Spoon-handle." — Cregh.
Hist. Wash. Co., Pa quoted by Butterfield. Crawford's Expedition, 14, note.
:'!"r
no
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
maque and Pokomoke, with the property of the Virginia shores
and strands, bordering on either of the said rivers, and all im-
provements, which have been, or shall be made thereon."
The most serious of all the disputes that originated in the
grant to William Penn was that with Connecticut ; a dispute
that, in the words of a Pennsylvania writer, " was over the
political jurisdiction and right of soil in a tract of country
containing more than 5,ooo,ocx) acres of lands ; " that " in-
volved the lives of hundreds, was the ruin of thousands, and
cost the State millions ; " that " wore out one entire genera-
tion;" that "evoked strong partisanship," was "urged, on
both sides, by the highest skill of statesmen and lawyers,"
and was " righteously settled in the end." '
The grant made to Penn, carried to latitude 43° north,
jumped half a dozen New England charters ; carried to 42°
north, it jumped all those in which Connecticut was inter-
ested, and notably the one given by Charles II. to the Gov-
ernor and Company of Connecticut in 1662. West of the
Delaware, south of the forty-second parallel, north of the
forty-first, and east of the western limit of Pennsylvania, was
the tract of 5,000,000 acres that the two colonies claimed ; a
tract full of coal, iron, and oil, and of great fertility. Appar-
ently the earliest intimation that anybody in Connecticut
was thinking of these Western lands is found in a letter
written to the Lords of Trade in 1720, by Governor Salton-
stall : " On the west the province of New York have carried
their claim and government through this colony from north
to south, and cut us asunder twenty miles east of the Hud-
son."
New Haven had taken an early interest in the Delaware
region. At one time there was a considerable probability that
the major part of the town would go there in a body ; and Mr.
Levermo
and Eato
Follo\
outburst (
and Conr
Valley, ai
Connectic
the ideas ^
lands west
753. On
ing m the (
The Susqi
scheme; ai
the favor oJ
The con
Albany Cor
certain Iroq
the Connect
length, from
Another
The Congr<
Pennsylvani
resolutions
Massachuset
western claii
recommendei
carrying on \
on the "plan
liaving boun(
length to one
fluced to don-
of governmer
^n 175s th
' Hoyt : Brief of a Title in the Seventeen Townships in the County of Lu-
aeme, 5.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
Ill
Levermore says that after 1666 the New Haven of Davenport
and Eaton must be sought upon the banks of the Passaic'
Following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle there was a great
outburst of interest in the West, and particularly in Virginia
and Connecticut ; the first finding her " West " in the Ohio
Valley, and the second hers in the Susquehanna country,
Connecticut was now well filled up with people, according to
the ideas of those days, and a scheme to settle the colony's
lands west of New York was thrown before the public in
1753. One hundred petitioners, many of them of high stand-
ing in the colony, asked the General Court for a grant of land.
The Susquehanna Company was organized to promote the
scheme; and in 1755 the General Court recommended it to
the favor of the king.
The company sent its agents to Albany in 1754, when the
Albany Congress was in session, where they purchased from
certain Iroquois chiefs, for ;^2,ooo, a tract of land lying within
the Connecticut parallels, one hundred and twenty miles in
length, from ten miles east of the Susquehanna westward.
Another important thing was done at Albany in 1754.
The Congress itself, by a unanimous vote, not even the
Pennsylvania Commissioners objecting, adopted a series of
resolutions declaring the validity of the Connecticut and
Massachusetts claims west of the Delaware, and also of the
western claims of Virginia. Besides, the " Plan of Union "
recommended by the Congress provided a machinery for
carrying on Western colonization ; and Franklin, in his notes
on the "plan," remarked that " the from 'sea to sea' colonies,
having boundaries three thousand or four thousand miles in
length to one or two hundred in breadth, must in time be re-
duced to domains more convenient for the common purposes
of government." '
In 1755 the Susquehanna Company sent out surveyors to
' The Republic of New Haven, Ii3-i2a
* Sparks : Writings of Franklin, IIL, 32-55.
112
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
!b^
survey the lands on the Lackawaxen and in the Wyoming Val-
ley. The colonization-fever rose so high that a second com-
pany, called the Delaware Company, was organized, and this
also made a purchase of lands from the Indians. Notwith-
standing the French and Indian war, a settlement was made
on the Delaware in 1757, and another on the Susquehanna in
1762. In 1768 the elder company directed the survey of five
townships in the heart of the Wyoming Valley, and in the
same year Captain Zebulon Butler, with forty men, took pos-
session of one of them, taking the precaution to build a fort
as a protection against the Indians, and possibly the Pennsyl-
vanians also.
Thus far the Pcnns had done nothing but object to the
Susquehanna Company and its aims. Up to 1769 not a single
Pennsylvania settler was anywhere in the neighborhood of
the plantings that the Connecticut men had made. But now
the proprietors began to bestir themselves. They improved
the opportunity furnished by the Congress at Fort Stanwix, in
1768, to buy " of the Indians all that part of the province of
Pennsylvania not heretofore purchased of the Indians," and
this included the whole Connecticut claim. They also began
to lease lands in the Connecticut district on the condition that
the lessees should defend them against the Connecticut claim-
ants ; and the attempt of these lessees to oust the settlers
already in possession, backed by the Pennsylvania authorities,
brought on a skirmish of writs and arrests that soon led to the
first " Pennamite and Yankee War," in which the lessees liter-
ally, and the settlers figuratively, spread out as their respec-
tive banners the Penn leases and the charter of 1662.
Connecticut men pressed into the territory in increasing
numbers. The accomplished historian of Windham County
says : " The fertility of the soil, the mildness of the climate,
the beauty of the country, and the abundance of its resources
far excelled expectations; and such glowing reports came back
to the rocky farms of Windham County, that emigration raged
for a time like an epidemic and seemed likely to sweep away
THE THIRTFJ.N COLONIES.
113
a great part of the population."' Hitherto the Connecticut
government had done nothinjj to promote the Susquehanna
and Delaware schemes, but commended the first to the good
graces of the king. Even in 1771 Governor Trumbull, on
being interrogated by the authorities at Philadelphia, wrote
that the persons engaged therein had no order or direction
from him, or from the General Assembly for their proceed-
ings, and that the Assembly, he was confident, would " never
countenance any violent, much less hostile, measures in vin-
dicating the rights which the Susquehanna Company sup-
posed they had to lands in that part of the country within
the limits of the charter of their colony." As the State
did not recognize them, and as they could not get on with-
out government, the colonists proceeded to organize a gov-
ernment of their own after the purest democratic model.
Townships, settlements, 'ortifications, taxes, civil and criminal
legal processes, and a militia, were provided for. But the
colony had taken too strong a hold of Connecticut for the
government to disown it, even if the charter-claim to the
country had been much weaker than it was. So the General
Court resolved, in 1773, " That this Assembly, at this time,
will assist, and in some proper way support their claim to
those lands contained within the limits and boundaries of
their charter which are westward of the province of New
York." Commissioners were sent to Philadelphia to arrange
matters with the Penns, if possible, but they returned empty-
handed. So the Assembly, in 1774, erected the territory from
the Delaware to a line fifteen miles west of the Susquehanna,
into the town of Westmoreland, attaching it to Litchfield
County, Connecticut ; and two years later it organized the
same territory into the County of Westmoreland. The extem-
porized government of the settlers now gave place to the
government set up by the mother colony. Thus the colonists
and Connecticut carried things with a strong hand down to
' Miss Larned :
8
History of Windham County, IL, 49-51.
•is;:
.'III)
n
114
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
the Revolution, when the population numbered three thou-
sand. How jrreat the promise was for a new Connecticut in
Northern I'cnnsylvania, a Connecticut writer shall tell.
"Connecticut laws and taxes were enforced regularly; Con-
necticut courts alone were in session ; and the levies from the
district formed the Twenty-fourth Connecticut Regiment in the
Continental armies. The sordid, grasping, long-leasing policy
of the Penns had never been able to stand a moment before the
oncoming wave of Connecticut democracy, with its individual
land ownership, its liberal local government, and the personal
incentive offered to individuals by its town system. So far as
the Penns were concerned, the Connecticut town system sim-
ply swept over them, and hardly thought of them as it went.
But for the Revolution, the check occasioned by the massacre,
and the appearance of a popular government in place of the
Penns, nothing could have prevented the establishment of Con-
necticut's authority over all the regions embraced in her West-
ern claims." '
But the Penns were not idle. In 1761 they obtained from
Attorney-General Pratt, afterward Lord Camden, an opinion
that firmly supported their cause. Connecticut, too, sought
unto men learned in the law.. She obtained from Lord
Thurlow, Wedderburn, afterward Lord Loughborough, Chan-
cellor Dunning, and Mr. Jackson the counsel that she
wanted. The Penns determined at last to resort to that argu-
ment which their great ancestor had so much deprecated. In
1772 one Colonel Plunkett, under orders from the government,
destroyed some Connecticut settlements on the west bank of
the Susquehanna; and late in 1775, with a strong force, he
attempted to drive the settlers out of the Wyoming Valley,
but was repulsed. At this point the Continental Congress
broke in upon the dispute, in the name of the common cause
against the mother country, with a " whereas " that the quar-
' Johnston : Connecticut, 278.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
115
rcl, if continued, would be productive of consequences very
prejudicial to the common interest of the colonies, and with
an urgent recommendation " that the contending parties im-
mediately cease all hostilities, and avoid every appearance of
force, until the dispute can be legally decided."* This re-
monstrance produced the desired effect.
The VVestmorelanders stood as an outpost in the war
against Great Britain, and in 1778, when nearly all the able-
botiicd men were absent in the army, two savages, Butler the
Tory and Brandt the Indian, wrought at Wyoming a deed 01
blood that, wherever told during a hundred years, has never
failed to move horror and pity. The men, women, and chil-
dren who then fell at the hands of the enemy, or perished
miserably in the wilderness from hunger, disease, or fatigue,
were not Pcnnsylvanians. The Gertrudes of Wyoming were
all Connecticut girls. The massacre materially strengthened
Pennsylvania's case : a Westmoreland containing thousands
of thriving people was one thing ; a Westmoreland that was
waste and desolate, quite another.
The parties had submitted t-'e dispute to the King in Coun-
cil, but the war rendered the appeal to tha<- fountain of jus-
tice nugatory. Article IX. of the Confederation vested juris-
diction over such disputes between States in Congress. So,
as the war was now drawing to a close, Pennsylvania called
upon that arbiter to decide between the contestants. A Fed-
eral court was accordingly organized to try the issue ; and
this court, at Trenton, December 30, 1782, after a full hear-
ing, rendered the following decision :
"We are unanimously of opinion that the State of Connect-
icut has no right to the lands in controversy.
"We are also unanimously of opinion that the jurisdiction
and pre-emption of all the territory lying within the charter-
boundary of Pennsylvania, and now claimed by the State of
Connecticut, do of right belong to the State of Pennsylvania." '
I
' Journals of Congress, I., 211.
5 Ibid., IV., 140.
ii6
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Ten or more years after the trial, it became known that the
court agreed beforehand " that the reasons for the determi-
nation should never be give 1," and "that the minority should
concede the determination as the unanimous opinion of the
court." The first of the two rules suggests at once, what, in-
deed, has always been understood to be true, that the court
did not consider the points of law involved at all, but that
the case, as lawyers say, " went off on State reasons."
The Trenton decision, while final and conclusive as to the
public corporate rights of Connecticut, in no way touched the
land-owners, who, the war over, began to find their way back
to their old homes. These were left to the justice or mercy of
Pennsylvania ; and it is to he feared that the treatment they
received sometimes made them think more kindly of Butler
and of Brandt. The Trenton judges all commended the un-
fortunate holders to the favorable consideration of the victor
State, urging that they should be quieted in all their claims
by an act of the Assembly, and that the right of soil, as de-
rived from Connecticut, should be held sacred. There now
ensued that generation of legislation and litigation, " Yankee
claims," and " accommodation" and " intrusion " acts, of Ethan
Allen and his Vermont methods, of plans to organize a new
State and to force its recognition upon Pennsylvania and Con-
gress, and reckless agitation which together make up the sec-
ond " Pennamite and Yankee War." The " Accommodation
Act," once repealed and then re-enacted, put an end to the
strife.
Had the court of 1782 decided this issue the other way,
Connecticut could not permanently have retained the country;
a State of Westmoreland would have been the almost certain
result. The conviction that one State within the present lim-
its of Pennsylvania would be better than two was probably
one of the State reasons that led the court to its conclusion,
However, when the second " Pennamite and Yankee War"
was in progress, and still more when it was over, Connecticut
men flowed into the Northern belt of Pennsylvania, where
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
117
their presence is seen to-day in New England names, towns,
and manners.
The decision of 1782 was wider than the case submitted,
applying as it did to the whole Connecticut claim within the
charter-limits of Pennsylvania ; but Connecticut made no ob-
jection on that score. Fortunately for her, Pennsylvania had
a definite boundary on the west. Carrying her stake west-
ward, she resolutely drove it into the ground five degrees west
of the Delaware ; that is, she asserted her right to the strip of
land lying between 41° and 42° 2' west of Pennsylvania to the
Mississippi River, which, by the treaties of 1763 and 1783,
had taken the place of the South Sea as the western boundary.
In 1783 Governor Trumbull issued a proclamation forbidding
all persons to settle on those lands without permission first
obtained of the General Assembly.
The good grace with which Connecticut submitted to the
Trenton decision has excited the surprise of historians, who
have cast about for the cause. Governor Hoyt supposes
'•that Connecticut had prearranged the case with Pennsylvania
and Congress, and that out of the arrangement she was to get
the Western Reserve," and refers for proof to a congressional
report on finance, made a month after the decision, which
says : " Virginia and Connecticut have also made cessions, the
acceptance of which, for particular reasons, have been de-
layed." ' Mr. Johnston also supposes " that Connecticut had
reasons apart from the justice of the decision," and he finds
them in the relation of the Western lands to the question of
American nationality." The suggestion is ventured that if
Connecticut was actuated by any reason other than deference
to the authority of the Trenton tribunal, it was a desire to
strengthen her position west of the Pennsylvania line. She
would evidently be better able to deal with the new dispute
if the old one was off her hands.
The Pennsylvania construction of the charter of 1681 was
' Brief of Title, etc., 46, 47.
* Connecticut, 280, 281.
ii8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
wholly satisfactory to New York, when the time came for her
to look after the country" west of the Delaware. That con-
struction saved her a dispute, and, possibly, a large extent of
her present territory as well.' Commissioners appointed by
the two colonies fixed the northeastern boundary of Penn-
sylvania on an island in the Delaware in 1774; the line west
of that point was surveyed in 1786-87, and ratified in 1789.
The northern boundary of Connecticut is 42° 2', the south-
ern boundary of New York 42° ; and the overlapping tract,
called at the time " the Gore," led to a controversy between
the two States. In 1795 Connecticut, for the consideration of
$40,000, quit-claimed to Ward and Halsey all her right and
title to the said strip of land. Those to whom they sold the
lands found settlers with New York titles already in posses-
sion. In 1796 suits were brought in the United States Cir-
cuit Court to eject the New York claimants. Before the
cases were heard, Connecticut wholly renounced her right and
title to land or jurisdiction west of the line of 1733, which
threw the suitors out of court. This act of r-^nunciation led
to long and bitter murmuring on the part of those holding
the Ward and Halsey titles, which was finally quieted, partly
by time and partly by a compensation voted from the State
treasury.
Massachusetts fared much better than Connecticut in main-
taining her Western title. Her cession of 1785 to the nation
will be treated in another place ; but here it is important to
remark that that cession did not touch her contest with New-
York for the lands within her charter-limits west of the Dela-
ware and east of the north and south cession-line. That
issue was compromised in 1786. Massachusetts surrendered
to New York all her claim to the jurisdiction over said tract;
and New York surrendered to Massachusetts all claim to the
lands within the Massachusetts limits lying west of a line
' Maps of the middle of the last century often bound Pennsylvania north by
parallel 43°,
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
119
running from the eighty-second mile-post west of the north-
east corner of Pennsylvania north to Sodus Bay in Lake On-
tario. This tract, the southeast corner of which is a little
southwest of Elmira, embraced several million acres of land,
including the famous Genesee Valley.
In June, 1788, Congress instructed the Geographer to run
the meridian by which New York and Massachusetts had
limited themselves on the west, and to ascertain the quantity
of land in the triangular tract lying west of said meridian and
north of parallel 42° north. This tract was sold to the State
of Pennsylvania the same year. The act of Congress author-
izing the President to issue the letters patent bears date, Janu-
ary 3, 1792.
Mr. H. G. Stevens writes : " Dear fussy old Richard
Hakluyt, the most learned geographer of his age, but with
certain crude and warped notions of the South Sea ' down the
back of Florida,' which became worked into many of King
James's and King Charles's charters, and the many grants that
grew out of them, was the unconscious parent of many geo-
graphical puzzles." ' Puzzles there are in abundance, whether
Hakluyt was the parent of them or not. The principal of
these puzzles on the Atlantic slope we have sought to solve.
In future chapters we shall consider the similar ones found in
the Northwest.
I
Narrative and Critical History, V., 180.
VIII.
THE WESTERN LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH
GOVERNMENT FROM 1763 TO 1775.
The ink with which the Treaty of Paris was written was
hardly dry when Great Britain took a very important step in
the line of a new land-policy. Just how much this step meant
at the time is a matter of dispute, but the consequences flow-
ing from it were such as to mark it a distinct new departure.
Previous to the war, England had virtually affirmed the
principle that the discoverer and occupant of a coast was en-
titled to all the country back of it ; she had carried her colo-
nial boundaries through the continent from sea to sea ; and,
as against France, had maintained the original chartered lim-
its of her colonies. Moreover, the grant to the Ohio Com-
pany in 1748 proves that she then had no thought of prevent-
ing over-mountain settlements, or of limiting the expansion
of the colonies in that direction. But now that France had
retired from the field vanquished, England began to see
things in new relations. In fact, the situation was materially
changed. She was left in undisputed possession of the east-
ern half of the Mississippi Valley. Canada and Florida were
British dependencies, and governments must be provided for
them. The Indians of the West were discontented and an-
gry ; and, strange to say, at the very moment that they lost
the support of France, they formed, under Pontiac, a wide-
spread combinati i against the British power. Then the
strength and resource that the colonies had shown in the
war had both pleased and disturbed the mother country;
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 121
pleased her because they contributed materially to the defeat
of France, and disturbed her because they portended a still
larger growth of that spirit of independence which had already
become somewhat embarrassing. The eagerness with which
the Virginians and Pennsylvanians were preparing to enter
the Ohio Valley in the years 1748-1754 told England what
might be expected now that the whole country lay open to
the Mississippi. The home government undertook to meet
the occasion with the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763.
After congratulating his subjects upon the great advantages
that must accrue to their trade, manufactures, and navigation
from the new acquisitions of territory, His Majesty proceeded
to constitute four new governments, three of them on the
continent and one in the West Indies. His new territories
on the Gulf he divided into East Florida and West Florida,
by the Appalachicola River ; separating them from his pos-
sessions to the north by the thirty-first parallel from the
Mississippi River to the Chattahoochee, by that stream to its
confluence with the Flint, by a straight line drawn from this
point to the source of the St. Marys, and then by the St.
Marys to the Atlantic Ocean. The next year, in consequence
of representations made to him that there were considerable
settlements north of the thirty-first parallel which should be
included in West Florida, he drew the northern boundary of
that province through the mouth of the Yazoo. The terri-
tory lying between the Altamaha and St. Marys Rivers, so
long the subject of dispute between Spain and England, as
well as between South Carolina and Georgia, was given to
Georgia. It was the proclamation of 1763 that first defined
what afterward became the first southern boundary of the
United States. As I shall have occasion to refer to them
again, it will be well to give the boundaries of Quebec in the
words of the royal proclamation.
"The Government of Quebec, bounded on the Labrador
coast by the River St. John [Saguenay], and from thence to a
122
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
line drawn from the head of that river, through the Lake St.
John, to the south end of the Lake Nipissim ; from whence
the said line crossing the River St. Lawrence and the Lake
Champlain, in forty-five degrees of nortli latitude, passes along
the highlands which divide the rivers that empty themselves
into the said River St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the
sea ; and also along the north coast of the Baic des Chaleurs,
and the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosieres,
and from thence crossing the mouth of the River St. Lawrence
by the west end of the Island of Anticosti, terminates at the
aforesaid River St. John." '
The king gives directions for constituting the governments
of the new provinces on the principle of representation. He
also instructs the royal governors to grant lands to the officers
and men who have served in the army and navy in the war,
according to a prescribed schedule.
It will be seen that the country west of the mountains,
from parallel 31° to the lakes, was not embraced within the
new governments. But this was not due to a sensitive regard
for the chartered rights of the old colonies, as the following
paragraph defining the new departure shows :
" We do, therefore, with the advice of our privy council,
declare it to be our royal will and pleasure, that no governor
or commander-in-chief, in any of our Colonies of Quebec, East
Florida, or West Florida, do presume, upon any pretense what-
ever, to grant warrants of survey, or pass any patents for lands
beyond the bounds of their respective governments, as de-
scribed in their commissions ; as also that no governor or com-
mander-in-chief of our other colonies or plantations in Amer-
ica, do presume, for the present, and until our further pleasure
be known, to grant warrants of survey or pass patents for any
lands beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which
fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest ; or
upon any lands whatever, which not having been ceded or pur-
chased by us," etc.
' The Annual Register, 1763.
L
Jus
matter
disputa
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LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 1 23
Just what was the meaning of this prohibition has been a
matter of dispute from that day to this ; the opinions of the
disputants depending, often at least, upon the relation of
those opinions to other matters of interest. Solicitude for
the Indians, and anxiety for the peace and safety of the colo-
nies, are the reasons alleged in the proclamation itself. The
" whereas " introducing the proclamation says it is essential
to the royal interest and the security of the colonies that the
tribes of Indians living under the king's protection shall not
be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of
his dominions and territories as, not having been ceded to or
purchased by him, are reserved to them as their hunting
grounds ; and a declaration follows the prohibition that it is
his royal will and pleasure, for the present, to reserve under
his sovereign protection and dominion, for the use of the said
Indians, all the lands within the new governments, within the
limits of the Hudson Bay Company and beyond the sources
of the rivers falling into the sea from the west and north-
west. The king strictly forbids his loving subjects making
any purchases or settlements whatever, or taking possession
of any of the lands described, without his special leave and
license; and he further enjoins all persons who have seated
themselves upon any of the lands so reserved to the Indians,
forthwith to abandon them. If at any time the Indians are
inclined to dispose of their lands, they shall be purchased
only in the king's name, by the governor or commander-in-
chief of the colony within which the lands lie. The procla-
mation winds up with some wholesome regulations respecting
the Indian trade.
No doubt a desire to conciliate the Indians was one of the
motives that led to the prohibition of 1763. But was it the
only motive ? Was it also the royal intention permanently to
sever the lands beyond the sources of the rivers flowing into
the Atlantic from the old colonies within whose charter-lim-
its they lay ? and, when the time should come, to cut them
up into new and independent governments ?
124
THZ OLD NORTHWEST.
I
" The Annual Register" for 1763 says many reasons may
be assigned for the prohibition. It states the necessity of
quieting the Indians, and then presents the desirability of
limiting the " from sea to sea" boundaries.
"Another reason, we suppose, why no disposition has been
made of the inland country, was, that the charters of many of
our old colonies give them, with very few exceptions, no other
bounds to the westward but the South Sea ; and consequently
these grants comprehended almost everything we have con-
quered. These charters were given when this continent was
little known and little valued. They were then scarce ac-
quainted with any other limits than the limits of America it-
self ; and they were prodigal of what they considered as of no
great importance. The colonies settled under royal govern-
ment have, generally, been laid out much in the same manner ;
and though the difficulties which arise on this quarter are not
so great as in the former, they are yet sufficiently embarrassing.
Nothing can be more inconvenient, or can be attended with
more absurd consequences, than to admit the execution of the
powers in those grants and distributions of territory in all their
extent. But where the western boundary of each colony ought
to be settled, is a matter which must admit of great dispute, and
can, to all appearance, only be finally adjusted by the interpo-
sition of Parliament." '
Obviously, Edmund Burke, or whoever wrote the " Regis-
ter's" review for that year, thought the prohibition meant
something more than simply to guard the rights of the Ind-
ians. Washington, on the other hand, wrote his Western
land-agent. Colonel Crawford, in 1767 : " I can never look
upon that proclamation in any other light (but this I say be-
tween ourselves) than a temporary expedient to quiet the
minds of the Indians. It must fall, of course, in a few years,
especially when those Indians consent to our occupying the
' The Annual Register, 1763, 20, 21.
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 125
lands." ' The authors of the Report on the Territorial Limits
of the United States, made to Congress, January 8, 1782, ex-
amined the proclamation very thoroughly, and came to the
same conclusion that Washington had arrived at fifteen years
before. They declare the king's object to have been •' to keep
the Indians in peace, not to relinquish the rights accruing
under the charters, and especially that of pre-emption." " Dr.
Franklin held the same view, as we shall soon see. Mr. Ban-
croft says the West " was shut against the emigrant from fear
that colonies in so remote a region could not be held in de-
pendence. England, by war, had conquered the West, and a
ministry had come which dared not make use of the con-
quest." ' No matter what the proclamation meant, it was a
great disappointment to the colonies. " Wherein are we bet-
ter off, as respects the Western country," they said in sub-
stance, " than we were before the war ? "
No man of his time more thoroughly comprehended the
Western question than Dr. Franklin. Notices of his princi-
pal writings on the subject will more clearly define that ques-
tion, and throw much light on its shifting phases.
Reference has already been made to the Plan of Union
adopted by the Albany Congress in 1754, and to Franklin's
exposition of the same. This " plan " placed the regulation
of the Indian trade, the purchasing of Indian lands, and the
planting of new colonies under the control of the Union.
Franklin supported this part of the scheme with the obvious
arguments. A single colony could not be expected to extend
itself into the West ; but the Union might establish a new
colony or two, greatly to the security of the frontiers, to in-
crease 01 population and trade, and to breaking the French
connections between Canada and Louisiana.* The " from sea
to sea " colonies must be suitably limited on the vilest.
Soon after the Albany Congress, Franklin wrote his
• Butterfield : Washington-Crawford Letters, 3.
' Secret Journals of Congress, III., 154.
* Sparks : Writings of Franklin, III., 32-55.
» History, IIL, 32.
f.
126
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
" Plan for Settling two Western Colonies in North America,
with Reasons for the Plan." He says the country back of the
Appalachian Mountains must become, perhaps in another cen-
tury, a populous and powerful dominion, and a great accession
of power to either England or France. If the English delay
to settle that country, great inconveniences and mischiefs will
arise. Confined to the region between the sea and the moun-
tains, they cannot much more increase in numbers owing to
lack of room and subsistence. The French will increase much
more, and become a great people in the rear of the English.
He therefore recommends that the English take immediate pos-
session of the country, and proceed at once to plant two strong
colonies, one on the Ohio and one on Lake Erie. The new
colonies will soon be full of people ; they will prevent the dis-
asters sure to follow if the French are allowed to have their
way in the West ; the Ohio country will be a good base for op-
erations against Canada and Louisiana in case of war ; and the
colonies will promote the increase of Englishmen, of English
trade, and of English power. Franklin again assumes that
the " from sea to sea" charters are still in force, and argues that
they must be limited by the Western mountains. The tract
closes with a ^)lea for urgency.' War with the French had
now begun, and new colonies were necessarily postponed until
the sword should decide the destiny of the West ; but Frank-
lin still kept the subject in mind. In 1756 he wrote to Rev.
George Whitfield :
" I sometimes wish that you and I were jointly employed by
the Crown to settle a colony on the Ohio. I imagine that we
could do it effectually, and without putting the nation to much
expense ; but I fear we shall never be called upon for such a
service. What a glorious thing it would be to settle in that fine
country a large, strong body of religious and industrious peo-
ple ! What a security to the other colonies and advantage to
Britain, by increasing her people, territory, strength, and com-
' Sparks : IIL, 69-77.
LA>
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LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. \2^
mcrcc! Might it not greatly facilitate the introduction of pure
rnligion among the heathen, if we could, by such a colony, show
them a belter sample of Christians than they commonly see in
our Indian traders ?— the most vicious and abandoned wretches
of our nation." *
Immediately after Wolfe's victory in 1759, men on both
sides of the ocean began to speculate upon the terms of the
peace that they saw mi..t soon come. It seemed inevitable
that England would be able to dictate her own terms to her
old enemy ; and the question arose, what territorial indemni-
ties and securities she should exact. More specifically, the
question arose whether Canada should be retained or return-
ed to France in exchange for Guadaloupe. Two or three
pamphlets discussing this question appeared in London. To
one of them, that advocated the surrender of Canada, pub-
lished without a name, but sometimes ascribed to Edmund
Burke, Franklin wrote a reply that he entitled " The Interest
of Great Britain Considered with Regard to the Colonies
and the Acquisition of Canada and Guadaloupe," but that is
commonly called " The Canada Pamphlet." A rapid review
of this vigorous production will throw much light upon the
state of opinion touching the West both in America and in
Europe.
Franklin holds, in opposition to his antagonist, that Eng-
land might properly demand Canada as an indemnification,
although she had not, in the outset, put forward such an
acquisition as one of the objects of the war. He argues that
the relations of England and France in America are such as
to prevent a lasting peace, declaring that such a peace can
come only when the whole country is subject to the English
government. Disputes arising in America will be the occa-
sion of European wars. Wars between the two powers origi-
nating in Europe will extend to America, and give oppor-
I
i'
' Bigelow ! Works of Franklin, IL, 467.
128
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
tunities for other powers to interfere. The boundaries be-
tween the English and French in North America cannot be
so drawn as to prevent quarrels. The frontier must neces-
sarily be more than fifteen hundred miles in length. Happy
was it for both Holland and England that the Dutch, in 1674,
ceded New Netherlands to the English ; since that time
peace between them has continued unbroken, which would
have been impossible if the Dutch had continued to hold
that province, separating, as it does, the eastern and middle
British colonies.
Franklin next contends that erecting forts in the back set-
tlements will not prove a sufficient security against the French
and Indians, but that the retention of Canada implies every
security. The possession of that province, and that alone,
can give the English colonies in America peace.
He then devotes several pages to the proposition that th2
blood and treasure spent in the war were not spent in the
cause of the colonies alone. This is in reply to the argument
that the interests at stake in America were rather colonial than
British or imperial. The retention of Canada will widen the
landed opportunities of the colonists, and will tend to keep
them agricultural and to prevent manufactures. Franklin
then enunciates a proposition that would make Pennsylvania
economists of to-day stare and gasp. " Manufactures are
founded in poverty. It is the multitudeof poor without land
in a country, and who must work for others at low wages or
starve, that enables undertakers to carry on a manufacture,
and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation of the
same kind from abroad, and to bear the expense of its own
exportation." He contends that the North American colo-
nies are the western frontier of the British Empire ; that they
must be defended by the empire for that reason, and that
Canada will be a conquest for the whole, the advantage of
which will come in increase of trade and ease of taxes.
To the argument that the colonies are large and numer-
ous enough, and that the French ought to be left in North
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. I2g
America to keep them in check, Franklin replies that, in time
of peace, the colonists double by natural generation once in
twenty-five years, and that they will probably continue to do
so for a century to come ; but that the colonies will not cease
to be useful to the Mother Country for that reason. On this
point he accumulates a variety of information relating to the
industiial and commercial possibilities of the country east of
the Mississippi River that is as interesting as curious. One
hundred millions of people can subsist in the agricultural con-
dition east of that river and south of the Lakes and the St.
Lawrence. The facilities for inland navigation are dwelt
upon with admiration. Franklin dwells at much length upon
the improbability of the colonists taking up manufactures, and
upon the vast quantities of British goods that they will be
sure to buy and consume.
Having striven at such irngth to prove that the colonies
will not be useless to the Mother Country, he takes up the
proposition that they will not be dangerous to her. This is
the most delicate subject handled in the whole pamphlet,
and one that attracted attention before the war began. Kalm,
the Swedish naturalist who visited the colonies in 1748, and
',vho saw so much more than natural objects in the course of
his travels, reports that in New York he found much doubt
whether the King of England, if he had the power, would
wish to drive the French out of Canada. Kalm thus expresses
his own opinion : " As this whole country is toward the sea
unguarded, and on the frontier is kept uneasy by the French,
these dangerous neighbors are the reason why the love of
these colonies for their metropolis does not utterly decline.
The English Government has, therefore, reason to regard the
French in North America as the chief power that urges their
colonies to submission." ' It is well known that Choiseul
warned Stanley when the two ministers were discussing the
treaty of 1763, that the English colonies in America " would
'Bancroft: History, IL, 310-311.
N i
130
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
not fail to shake off their dependence the moment Canada
should be ceded." ' This feeling was shared by many people
in England, and it probably influenced those who said " Gua-
daloupe not Canada " quite as much as the superiority of the
Guadaloupe sugar to the Canada furs. Such is a fair state-
ment of the argument that Franklin sets himself to answer.
His reply is "that the colonies cannot be dangerous to
England without union, and that union is impossible." To
prove that union is impossible, he sets forth the jealousies of
the colonies and the failure of all attempts hitherto made to
bring them to act together. There are now fourteen sepa-
rate governments on the sea-coast, and there will probably
be as many more behind them on the inland side. These
have different governors, different laws, different forms of
government, different interests, different religious persuasions,
and different manners. " If they could not agree to unite for
their defence against the French and Indians, who were per-
petually harassing their settlements, burning their villages, and
murdering their people, can it reasonably be supposed there
is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which
protects and encourages them, with which they have so many
connections and ties of blood, interest, and affection, and
which, it is well known, they all love much more than they
love one another?" And yet Franklin was careful to leave
an open door through which he could have escaped the charge
of inconsistency if such charge had been preferred a dozen
years later. "When I say such a union is impossible, I mean
without the most grievous tyranny and oppression." " The
waves do not rise," he says, " but when the winds blow."
What such an administration as the Duke of Alva's might
bring about he does not know ; but he has a right to deem
that impossible. Under this head he answers the argument
"that the remoteness of the Western territories will bring
about their separation from the Mother Country." "While our
' Parkman : Montcalm and Wolfe, IL, 403.
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 131
strength at sea continues, the banks of the Ohio, in point of
easy and expeditious conveyance of troops, are nearer to Lon-
don than the remote parts of France and Spain to their re-
spective capitals, and much nearer than Connaught and Ulster
were in the days of Queeu Elizabeth." Of the two, the pres-
ence of the French in Canada will engender disaffection in
the colonies rather than prevent it. The only check on their
growth that the French can possibly be, is that of blood and
carnage.
Franklin then argues that Canada can be easily peopled
from the colonies without draining Great Britain of her in-
habitants. Last of all comes the proposition that the value
of Guadaloupe is much overestimated by those who prefer
that island to Canada.
Many of the arguments contained in this famous pamphlet
would now be set aside by an economist as fallacious ; but,
fallacious as they may be, they have that plain directness
which, along with other qualities, rendered Franklin's political
tracts so conclusive to the common mind. The pamphlet at-
tracted great attention at the time, and " was believed," ac-
cording to Dr. Sparks, '' to -have had great weight in the min-
isterial councils, and to have been mainly instrumental in
causing Canada to be held at the peace." '
In 1765, Sir William Johnson, Governor Franklin, and
other influential persons formed a project for establishing a
new colony in the Illinois country. They applied to Dr.
Franklin, then in London, acting as agent for Pennsylvania,
for assistance, and he entered warmly into the enterprise, in
which he also had an interest. For a time the application for
a grant of lands was regarded with much favor, but was fi-
nally rejected. The Doctor's letters to his son, in the years
1766-1768, report the progress of the negotiation, and help
us to understand English opinion touching Western settle-
ments. He found the following objections urged against
' Sparks : IV., 1-53.
i
Ill
I'.
i
n.
1!
1
132
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
^fiSI^BVi
the plan: (i) The distance would render such a colony of
little use to England, as the expense of the carriage of goods
would urge the people to manufacture for themselves; (2)
the distance would also render it difificult to defend and gov-
ern the colony ; (3) such a colony might, in time, become
troublesome and prejudicial to the British Government ; (4)
there were no people to spare, either in England or the other
colonies, to settle a new colony. Lord Hillsborough was ter-
ribly afraid of " dispeopling Ireland." To overturn these ob-
jections, Franklin brought forward the arguments with which
we are now familiar. Some London merchants, who were
called upon for testimony, gave the unanimous opinion that
colonies in the Illinois country and at Detroit would enlarge
British commerce. Franklin " reckoned " that there would be
63,cxx),ooo acres of land in the proposed colony. He also
reported an inclination on the part of ministers to abandon
the Western posts as more expensive than useful, unless the
colonies should see fit to keep them up at their own expense.
Fort Pitt was actually abandoned soon after.
Here I must interrupt the narrative concerning Franklin,
to state some other facts material to the purpose. In 1768
Stuart, the Southern Indian agent, following the proclamation
of 1763, and the instructions of Lord Hillsborough, negotiated
with the Cherokees, who had no claim whatever to lands on
the south side of the Ohio, a treaty that was very obnoxious
to Virginia, since it limited her on the west by the Kanawha
River. A few days later Sir William Johnson, the Northern
agent, negotiated with the Six Nations, who claimed the
country to the Cumberland Mountains, a treaty that was
much more to her liking. This treaty established the fol-
lowing boundary-line between the lands that the Nations
claimed in the West and the lands of the whites on the
East : The Ohio and Alleghany Rivers from the mouth of
the Cherokee, as the Tennessee was then called, to Kittan-
' Sparks : IV., 233-241.
LAI
ning, ab(
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LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 133
ning, above Fort Pitt ; thence by a direct line east to the
west branch of the Susquehanna ; thence through the moun-
tains to the east branch, and on to the Delaware ; and finally
by the Delaware, the Tianaderher, and Canada Creek to Wood
Creek, above Fort Stanwix. While this line left nearly one-
half of the State of New York in the hands of the Six Na-
tions, it gave to the colonies the whole southeastern half of
the Ohio Valley to the Tennessee. This line itself shows that
the Nations regarded their Western possessions but lightly.
It should be observed, also, that the alienation of their claim
still left the English to deal with the Indians actually on the
Western soil. In the end, this boundary came very near giv-
ing Virginia a still closer limitation on the west than the one
drawn by Stuart, as will soon appear. The opening up of the
country south of the Ohio to settlement was followed by great
land-speculations, and by quickened emigration to that region.
In 1769 the proposition to establish a Western colony was
revived, but in a new form. Thomas Walpole, Samuel Whar-
ton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Pownal, and others peti-
tioned the king for the right to purchase 2,400,000 acres of
land on the south side of the Ohio River, on which to found
a new government. After the delays incident to such busi-
ness, this petition was granted by the King in Council in
1772. Slow progress was made in perfecting the details ; but
the price of the land was finally fixed, the plan of government
agreed upon, and the patent actually made ready for the seals,
when the Revolution broke out, and dashed the new colony
forever. Walpole, the leading promoter of the scheme, was
an eminent London banker, and the company and grant were
commonly called by his name. The company called itself
the Grand Company, and proposed to name the colony
Vandalia. Although the project finally failed, its history
presents some exceedingly interesting features. It should be
observed that the Ohio Company of 1748, which had been
kept alive thus far, although thwarted in its original purposes
by the war, was absorbed in this new scheme.
134
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
In May, 1770, the Privy Council referred the Walpole pe-
tition to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations ;
and two years later their Lordships made an elaborate report,
drawn by their president, Lord Hillsborough. This report ob-
jected to the petition, that the tract of land prayed for lay partly
within the dominion of Virginia south of the Ohio ; that it
extended several degrees of longitude westward from the
mountains ; and that a considerable part of it was beyond the
line that had been drawn between His Majesty's territories
and the hunting grounds of the Six Nations and the Chero-
kees. Besides, to grant the petition would be to abandon
the principle adopted by the Board of Trade, and approved
by His Majesty at the close of the war. "Confining the
Western extent of settlements to such a distance from the
sea-coast as that those settlements should lie within the reach
of the trade and commerce of this Kingdom, upon which the
strength and riches of it depend," and also within the exercise
of that authority and jurisdiction which were conceived to be
necessary for the preservation of the colonies in due subor-
dination to, and dependence upon, the Mother Country— are
declared the " two capital objects " of the proclamation of
1763. Lord Hillsborough, indeed, admits that the line agreed
upon at Fort Stanwix in 1768 is, in the southwest, far be-
yorfd the sources of the rivers that flow into the Atlantic;
but since this Stanwix line still further restricts the Indians'
hunting grounds, he sees in this fact a new reason for adher-
ing closely to the restrictive policy. His Lordship declares
the proposition to form inland colonies in America " entirely
new ; " he says the great object of the North American colo-
nies is to improve and extend the commerce, navigation, and
manufactures of England ; shore colonies he approves be-
cause they fulfil this condition, and inland colonies he con-
demns because they will not fulfil it. To the argument that
settlers are flowing westward, and that Western settlements
are inevitable. Lord Hillsborough replies that His Majesty
should take every method to check the progress of such set-
■¥
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 135
dements, and should not make grants of land that would have
an immediate tendency to encourage them. The report closes
with a recommendation that the Crown immediately issue a
new proclamation forbidding all persons taking up or settling
on lands west of the line of 1763.
It would be hard to say whether this report won for its
author the wider fame by reason of its odious application of
the doctrines of the colonial system to the question of West-
em settlements, or by reason of the crushing reply that it
called out from Dr. Franklin. Before taking up that reply,
however, the remark is pertinent that Lord Hillsborough's
notion that royal proclamations were going to keep the ad-
venturous people of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas
out of the Western country, is one of a multitude of proofs of
the incapacity of the British mind, at that time, to under-
stand American questions. It was only less absurd than
Dean Tucker's famous plan for guarding the frontier against
the incursions of the Indians, viz., that the trees and bushes
be cut away from a strip of land a mile in breadth along the
back of the colonies from Maine to Georgia.'
Franklin begins his reply with correcting the noble Lord's
ideas of American geography. The land asked for lies be-
tween the Alleghany Mountains and the Ohio River, which
are separated, " on a medium," by not more than a degree
and a half. The grant will not be an invasion of the domin-
ion of Virginia, because that colony is bounded on the west
by the mountains. The country west " the Alleghanies was
in the possession of the Indians previous to the Stanwix
treaty, and since that time the king has not given it to Vir-
ginia. To support the proposition that Virginia does not ex-
tend beyond the mountains, which is absolutely essential to
his argument, he draws up a territorial history of the region
within which the grant will fall, entirely ignoring the Vir-
ginia charter.
• Sparks : Writings of Franklin, IIL, 48, 49.
I
136
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Mil
1. The country southward of the Great Kanawha, as far
as the Tennessee River, originally belonged to the Shawanese
Indians.
2. The Six Nations, L jinningabout the year 1664, carried
their victorious arms over the whole country, from the Great
Lakes to the latitude of Carolina, and from the Alleghanies
to the Mississippi. They, therefore, became possessed of the
lands in question by right of conquest.
3. Much stress is then laid on the English protectorate
over the Six Nations, acknowledged by the French in 17 13,
and by the Nations in 1726. When the French came into
Western Pennsylvania, in 1754, the English held them in-
vaders on the express ground that the country belonged to
their allies and dependents. This was the view held by the
British court in discussing the subject with Paris in 1755.
In the French and Indian war the English had simply main-
tained their old rights ; they expelled the French from the
West as intruders, and held the country not by conquest, but
by the Iroquois title. At Fort Stanwix the Iroquois sold to
the Crown all their lands south of the Ohio, as far down as
the Tennessee. The Crown is, therefore, vested with the un-
doubted right and property of those lands, and can do what
it pleases with them.
4. The Cherokees never resided or hunted in the country
between the Kanawha and the Tennessee, and had no right
to it. The claim that this region ever belonged to the
Cherokees is a fiction altogether new and indefensible, in-
vented in the interest of Virginia. When that government
saw that it was likely to be confined on the west by the
mountains in consequence of the Stanwix purchase, it set up
the Cherokee title in opposition to the Northern Indians.
5. Nor do the Six Nations, the Shawanese, or the Dela-
wares now reside or hunt in the region where the grant will
fall.
Franklin's object is to find room for the new colony be-
tween the Alleghanies and the Ohio. He follows closely the
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 137
facts of history touching the matter immediately in hand.
The Iroquois had pretended to own the whole West north
of the Cumberland Mountains, and the British government
and New York had humored them in that pretension. But
Franklin's reasoning on this point recalls forcibly what Mr.
Parkman says in a passage already quoted concerning Iroquois
conquests and titles. What is more, the Iroquois never occu-
pied the Ohio Valley, while the Indians who were occupying
it did not acknowledge the Iroquois title. The signers to the
Stanwix treaty were all Iroquois, the Delaware and Shawa-
nese delegates present at the council refusing, or at least neg-
lecting, to sign. But granting that the British-Iroquois title
was perfectly good as against the French and Western Indians,
it had no force as against Virginia. The right that priority
of discovery gave the discoverer was the right of pre-emption,
and the fact that the Indian title to the Ohio Valley was ac-
quired long after the Virginia charters in no way affected the
rights of Virginia, if she ever had any. If the English had
waited to acquire Indian titles before sending over colonies,
America would be a wilderness at this day. Even the hu-
mane Penn first sent over his colony, two thousand strong,
and then treated with the Indians. Franklin had himself, in
1754, expressly acknowledged the binding force of the " from
sea-to-sea" charters until they should be duly limited. It is
hard to see, therefore, that the Fort Stanwix purchase af-
fected Virginia's rights, unless it be claimed that the purchase
was made by a royal ofificer at the expense of the Crown, and
not by the colony at her own expense ; but it must be re-
membered that the Crown had taken Indian affairs out of
the hands of the colonies, and that New York, Massachusetts,
and Connecticut never regarded the purchase as at all easing
their rights in the West. At the same time, Franklin's rea-
soning was admirably adapted to his immediate purpose. It
would appear, from Franklin's account of things, that Virginia
had concluded that after all she had more to fear from John-
son's line than from Stuart's.
,;:. h
138
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Franklin restates the old arguments in favor of interior
settlements, and, after a thorough examination of the whole
subject, comes to the conclusion that the proclamation of
1763 was intended solely to pacify the Indians at a critical
time, and that the Stanwix treaty has set the proclamation-
line effectually aside. Looking into the West, he reports that
in the years 1 765-1 768 great numbers of the king's subjects
from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were settling over
the mountains ; that this emigration led to great irritation
among the Indians ; that the emigrants refused to obey the
proclamations issued ordering them to return to the other
side of the king's line ; that attempts to remove them by force
ended only in failure ; that the frontier troubles were among
the causes that led to the treaty of 1 768 ; that the said treaty,
negotiated by Sir William Johnson under express orders from
the home government, proves that the permanent exclusion
of settlers from the Western country could not have been in-
tended in 1763. The Doctor states that Pennsylvania had
made it felony to occupy Indian lands within the limits of
that colony ; that the Governor of Virginia had commanded
settlers to vacate all Indian lands within the limits of his gov-
ernment ; and that General Gage had twice sent soldiers to
remove the settlers from the Monongahela region, but all
these efforts to enforce the restrictive policy had proved un-
availing. He asserts that the object of the Stanwix purchase
was to avert " an Indian rupture, and give an opportunity to
the king's subjects quietly and lawfully to settle thereon."
Franklin does not fail to convict the Board of Trade of
inconsistency. In 1748 it was anxious to promote settle-
ments in the Ohio Valley ; in 1768 it was of the opinion that
the inhabitants of the middle colonies should be permitted
gradually to extend themselves backward ; in 1770 Lord Hills-
borough recommended a new colony there, and two years later
he made to the council the adverse report to which Franklin
is now replying. The promoters of the new colony have no
idea, he says, of draining Great Britain or the old colonies of
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 139
their population. That will be wholly unnecessary. If the
colony is planted the colonists will not become lawless or re-
bellious, because they will be subjected to government ; but
if the present restriction be continued the country will become
the resort of desperate characters. Moreover, there is already
a considerable population in the very district that the peti-
tion<;rs pray for ; and if these lawless people are not soon
made subject to some authority, an Indian war will be the
consequence. They are beyond the jurisdiction of Virginia,
which cannot be extended over them without great difficulty,
if at all. Hence, the only way to prevent the back country
becoming the home of violence and disorder is to establish a
new government there.
Many pages of Franklin's paper are devoted to the eco-
nomical bearings of the proposed colony. He does not deny
the doctrines of the colonial system ; he rather assumes them ;
but he contradicts Hillsborough's applications of those doc-
trines to the matter in hand. On these points he collects a
mass of information concerning the Ohio country and its ca-
pabilities, its relations to the commercial world, methods of
reaching it, etc., that makes the report exceedingly readable.
Franklin's reply to Hillsborough, read in Council, July i,
1772, immediately led to granting the Walpole petition. His
Lordship, who had considered his report overwhelming, at
once resigned his office in disgust and mortification. Hills-
borough, it is said, " had conceived an idea, and was forming
the plan of a boundary-line to be drawn from the Hudson
River to the Mississippi, and thereby confining the British col-
onists between that line and the ocean, similar to the scheme
of the French after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which brought
on the war of 1756." The fact is, the British government
had bo rowed of the French their restrictive scheme.'
It appears from Franklin's pamphlet that the Virginia gov-
' The Hillsborough Report, Franklin's reply, and the proclamation of 1763 are
i;i Sparks, IV., 302-380.
140
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ernment had been disturbed by the proceedings at Fort Stan-
wix. It was still more seriously disturbed by the proceedings
of Walpole and his associates in London. On April 15, 1770,
George Washington wrote a letter to Lord Botetourt, the
governor, explaining how the Walpole grant would affect
that colony. He says the boundary would run from the
mouth of the Scioto River south through the pass of the
Ouasioto Mountains near to the latitude of North Caro-
lina ; thence northeast to the Kanawha at the junction of
the New River and the Greenbrier; thence by the Green-
brier and a due-east line drawn from the head of that river to
the Alleghany Mountains ; after which the boundaries will
be Lord Fairfax's line, the lines of Maryland and Pennsyl-
vania, and the Ohio River to the place of beginning — a large
surface, surely, over which to spread 2,40x3,000 acres of land.
Washington says that many Virginians are already settled on
New River and the Greenbrier upon lands that Virginia has
patented. He declares that the grant will give a fatal blow to
the interests of Virginia. Having thus delivered his " senti-
ments as a member of the community at large," he begs leave to
address his Excellency from " a more interested point of view,"
alleging that the 200,000 acres of land promised the Virginia
troops called out in 1754 lie within these very limits. He
protests earnestly against any interference with the rights of
these men, and prays his Lordship's interposition with His
Majesty to have these lands confirmed to the claimants and
rightful owners. Washington continued to watch the new
colony with a lively interest. In a letter to Lord Dunmore,
written June 15, 1771, he says the report gains ground that
the grant will be made and the colony established, and de-
clares again that the plan will essentially interfere with the
interests and expectations of Virginia. He also renews his
plea in behalf of the officers and soldiers of 1754.'
' The two letters are found side by side in Sparks ; Writings of Washington,
IL. 355-361.
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 141
The facts presented show conclusively that in the years
following the French war the Western policy of the British
was not steady or consistent, but fitful and capricious ;
prompted by a solicitude for the Indians that was partly
feigned, and partly by a growing jealousy of the shore colo-
nies. Vandal ia was the more welcome to the Council because
it would limit Virginia on the west, and so weaken her influ-
ence. It is perfectly plain that George III. did not excel
James I. in regard for the charter of 1609.
The policy of restriction culminated in 1774 in the Quebec
Act. This act guaranteed to the Catholic Church in the Prov-
ince of Quebec the possession of its vast property, said to
equal one-fourth of the old French grants ; it confirmed the
Catholic clergy in the rights and privileges that they had en-
joyed under the old rdgime ; it set aside the provisions of the
proclamation of 1763, creating representative government, and
restored the French system of laws ; it committed taxation to
a council appointed by the Crown ; it abolished trial by jury
in civil cases; and, finally, it extended the province on the
north to Hudson's Bay, and on the southwest and west to the
Ohio and the Mississippi, Some features of this enactment
can no doubt be successfully defended. As a whole it had two
great ends. One was to propitiate the French population of
Canada, to attach them by interest and sympathy to England,
and so to prevent their making common cause with the colo-
nies in case worse should come to worst ; the other was per-
manently to sever the West from the shore colonies, and put
it in train for being cut up, when the time should come, into
independent governments that should have their affiliations
with the St. Lawrence basin rather than with the Atlantic
slope. Here it may be observed that twice the old North-
west was subject to a jurisdiction whose capital was on the
St. Lawrence ; once in the old French days, and once in the
last year of the British control of the colonies — a fact that
shows how thoroug the home government had adopted
French ideas concernmg the West.
142
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
The year 1774 is remarkable for odious colonial measures;
it was the year of the Boston Port Bill and the Massachusetts
Bay Bill ; but no one of these measures was more odious to
the colonists than the Quebec Act. They regarded the
changes made in the government of Canada as a stroke at
their own governments, while they looked upon the new
boundaries as a final effort to wrest the West from them for-
ever. The act provoked a general outcry of denunciation.
The youthful Hamilton made it the subject of one of his
first political papers. The Continental Congress, enumerating
" the acts of pretended legislation " to which the king had
given his assent, included in the formidable list the act " for
abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring
province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and
enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example
and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in
these colonies." The Declaration of Independence arraigned
the king on another charge. " He has endeavored to prevent
the population of these States ; for that purpose obstructing
the laws for the naturalization of foreigners ; refusing to pass
others to encourage emigration hither, and raising the condi-
tions of new appropriations of lands." The presence of these
counts in the indictment of 1776 shows the power with which
the royal policy had taken hold of the colonial mind. Those
colonies that had definite Western boundaries joined in the
indictment, as well as those that claimed to the Mississippi
River. There was a universal feeling that " lands which had
been rescued from the French by the united efforts of Great
Britain and America were now severed from their natural
connections with the settlements of the seaboard, and formed
into a vast inland province like the ancient Louisiana."'
The eiil, -gement of the province was defended in Parlia-
ment, according to the " Annual Register," on the ground that
' Adams : Maryland's Influence on Western Land Cessions to the United
States, 19.
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 143
there were French inhabitants beyond the proclamation-limits
of 1763 "who ought to have provision made for them; and
that there was one entire colony at the Illinois." The " Reg-
ister" thus sums up the objections of the opposition :
" Further they asked, why the proclamation limits were en-
larged, as if it were thought that this arbitrary government
could not have too extensive an object. If there be, which they
doubted, any spots on which some Canadians arc settled, pro-
vide, said they, for them ; but do not annex to Canada immense
territories now desert, but which are the best part of that con-
tinent, and which run on the back of all your ancient colonies.
That this measure cannot fail to add to their other discontents
and apprehensions, as they can attribute the extension given to
an arbitrary military government, and to a people alien in ori-
gin, laws, and religion, to nothing else but that design, of which
they see but too many proofs already, of utterly extinguishing
their liberties, and bringing them, by the arms of those very
people, whom they had helped to conquer, into a state of the
most abject vassalage." '
The restoration of the French system of laws was defended
on the ground that the Canadians were indifferent to English
institutions, and were incapable of carrying on representative
government.
But the Quebec Act did not accomplish its expected pur-
pose. It was nullified by the Revolution. By and by, when
the limits of the Thirteen Colonies, as they were after 1763,
were set up as the criterion to determine the boundaries of
the United States, England, France, and Spain, all took the
position that the Royal Proclamation and the Quebec Act
limited the States on the west. To this claim the replies,
"The king's line of 1763 was a temporar}' expedient to quiet
the Indians," and " The Quebec Act was one of the causes
that brought on the war, and that we are fighting to resist,"
' Annual Register, 1774, 76,77.
144
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
are pressed once and again in the American state papers of
the period.
Even Lord Dunmore, that bitter enemy of the colonies
and steadfast upholder of the British cause, ignored the
Western policy of the home government. His personal char-
acteristics, love of money and of power, contributed to this
end. "His passion for land and fees," says Bancroft, " out-
weighing the proclamation of the king and reiterated most
positive instructions from the Secretary of State, he supported
the claims of the colony to the West, and was a partner in
two immense purchases of land from the Indians in Southern
Illinois. In 1773 hi; agents, the Bullets, made surveys at the
Falls of the Ohio ; and parts of Louisville and parts of the
towns opposite Cincinnati are now held under his warrant."
The Indian war that takes its name from his Lordship, which
was brought on by his own Western policy, was in contraven-
tion of the policy of the home government ; and the historian
just quoted goes so far as to ray : " The royal Governor of
Virginia, and the Virginian Army in the Valley of the Scioto,
nullified the Act of Parliament which extended the Province
of Quebec to the Ohio, and in the name of the King of Great
Britain triumphantly maintained for Virginia the Western and
Northwestern jurisdiction which she claimed as her chartered
right." Virginia " applauded Dunmore when he set at naught
the Quebec Act, and kept possession of the government and
right to grant lands on the Scioto, the Wabash, and the Illi-
nois."' Dunmore's invasion of the Northwest, in 1774, added
another link to the Virginia chain of titles to those regions,
" From its second charter, the discoveries of its people, the au-
thorized grants of its governors since 1746, the encouragement
of its legislature to settlers in 1752-53, the promise of lands
as bounties to officers and soldiers who served in the French
war, and the continued emigration of its inhabitants, the An-
cient Dominion derived its title to occupy the Great West."'
> History, IV., 82, 83, 88.
'Bancroft: History, HL, 32a
LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 145
Strangely enough, the British Government strove to keep
the Northwest a waste, years after having lost all control of it.
The British commissioners at Ghent, in 1814, proposed as
one of the first conditions of peace, " that the United States
should conclude a peace with the Indian allies of Great Brit-
ain, and that a species of neutral belt of Indian territory should
be established between the dominions of the United States
and Great Britain, so that these dominions should be nowhere
conterminous, upon which belt or barrier neither power should
be permitted to encroach even by purchase, and the bounda-
ries of which should be settled in this treaty " [about to be
negotiated] ; and Dr. Adams, one of those commissioners,
answering the question what should be done with the one
hundred thousand citizens of the United States already set-
tled in Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois, replied that they must
shift for themselves.'
There was one English statesman, at least, at the period
of the Revolution who saw the futility of all attempts to carry
out the restrictive policy. In his famous " Speech on Con-
ciliation of America," delivered in the House of Commons,
March 22, 1775, Edmund Burke replied to the suggestion
that, as a means of checking the too rapidly growing popula-
tion, the Crown should make no further grants of land, thus
working an " avarice of desolation " and a " hoarding of a
royal wilderness." If the grants are stopped, the people will
occupy without grants, as they have already done in many
places; if driven from one locality, they will remove to an-
other, for in the back settlements they are little attached to
particular situations. And then, launching out into one of
those glowing descriptive passages for which his eloquence is
so celebrated, the orator proceeds :
" Already they have topped the Appalachian Mountains.
From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one
vast, rich level meadow : a square of five hundred miles.
Morse : JohnQuincy Adams, in Statesmen Series, 78, 80.
10
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146
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
::^
Over this they would wander without a possibility of re-
straint ; they would change their manners with the habits of
their life ; would hence soon forget a government by which
they were disowned ; would become hordes of English Tar-
tars, and, pouring down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce
and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and
your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and of
all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and in
no long time must be, the effect of attempting to forbid as a
crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command and blessing
of Providence, ' Increase and multiply.' Such would be the
happy result of an endeavor to keep as a lair of wild beasts
that earth which God by an express charter has given to the
children of men."
Signally as England failed in the attempt to exclude civili-
zation from the Great West, she did not abandon the attempt
to apply the principles of the Royal Proclamation to the
American wilderness. In discussing the Oregon Question
with the United States in 18 18-1846, she stubbornly strove
to prevent settlements on the waters of the Columbia, and to
devote the shores of the distant Pacific to the purposes of the
Hudson Bay Company, Fortunately she was again foiled by
the power that had foiled her before — the enterprise and hardi-
hood of the American pioneer.'
' See Barrows : Oregon, in Commonwealth Series.
^
^IRtf*
IX.
THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
Mr. Bancroft says the French and Indian war was be-
gun by England " for the acquisition of the Ohio Valley.
She achieved this conquest, but not for herself. . . . Eng-
land became not so much the possessor of the valley of the
West as the trustee, commissioned to transfer it from the
France of the Middle Ages to the free pec^le who were mak-
ing for humanity a new life in America." ' How unfit Eng-
land was, in the days of George III., to be the possessor of
the valley is shown by the policy that she pursued from the
close of the French war to the beginning of the Revolution.
She was first anxious to secure possession of the Ohio, and
then reluctant to see it put to any civilized use. Her restric-
tive Western policy, as we have seen, was one of the causes
leading to the War of Independence, and so leading to the loss
of the whole West.
Although a solitude, and because a solitude, the over-
mountain country had more at stake in the Revolution than
the Atlantic slope. On the slope, whatever the issue of
the war, an Anglo-Saxon civilization, although it might be
greatly stunted and impoverished, was assured ; but in the
Western valleys such few seeds of civilization as had been
planted were Galilean and not Saxon. Moreover, there were
uncertainties and perils growing out of the relation of that
country to the Franco-Spanish civilization of Louisiana. Be-
tween 1748 and 1783 the Western question presented three
' History, II., 565.
Ubi
M'
®'
148
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
/
^
#
distinct phases. In 1748- 1763 it was the supremacy of Eng-
land or France in the West; in 1763-1775 it was whether the
country should belong to the red man or the white man ; and
in 1 775-1 783 it was whether it should form a part of the
United States or of some foreign power. In general, this last
question was settled by the " skirmishes of sentinels and out-
posts " east of the mountains, as Lafayette called the Rev-
olution. Still the Northwest appears in the Revolution in
two or three aspects that must be presented.
For a few years before the beginning of the French war
the Western Indians had been disposed to listen to the Eng-
lish envoys who visited them rather than to the French ; but
the defeat of Braddock brought upon the English frontier-
settlements all the scalping knives of the Western hordes.
The Indians were really a part of the soil, like the trees and
the buffalo, but France could not transfer them in 1763 with
the same facility to their new masters. The savages under-
stood perfectly that the English were far more dangerous to
them than the French had been. The posting of garrisons in
the Western forts would be likely to bring to their best hunt-
ing grounds swarms of colonists greedy for lands. The offi-
cers of the garrisons sent to the West reported the Indians
sullen and angry. Pontiac was at that very time organizing
his formidable conspiracy, the aim of which was to roll back
the tide of English invasion. In the summer of 1763 the
storm of war burst upon the wilderness-garrisons : Mackinaw,
St. Joseph, Sandusky, Ouiatenon, Fort Miami, Presquc Isle,
Le Boeuf, and Venango fell into the hands of the savages;
and Fort Pitt and Detroit were beleaguered. But Boquet's
brave march to the heart of Ohio and Gladwin's heroic de-
fence of Detroit broke the power of the Ottawa chieftain, and
the Indians were compelled to come to terms. And now
began a process of mutual reconciliation. The royal procla-
mation o'i 1763, the subsequent restriction of the Western
population, the measurable adoption of French methods by
the British ofificers, the growing conviction of the savage that
m.
THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
149
the British Government and the colonies were not the same,
and that his danger came from the latter — these causes, with
the widening breach between the Mother Country and the
colonies, gradually won the Indians over to the British side,
and made them ready to accept the war-belt whenever the
British commandant at Detroit should send it to them. It
is a fact, and perhaps a curious one, that whenever the St.
Lawrence Valley and the Atlantic Slope have been arrayed
against each other in deadly strife, the Western Indians have
sided with the former— in 1755, in 1775, and in 1812.
In 1763 Sir William Johnson estimated the Western Ind-
ians, exclusive of the Illinois, at 9,000 warriors,' and we may
accept that as the number at the beginning of the Revolu-
tion. Of these the large majority were already enemies of
the Americans, fully prepared to do their part to wrap the
long frontier from the Susquehanna to the Tennessee in
flames and blood. Left to themselves, these savages would
have been a formidable foe ; but with a base of supplies on
the Detroit, with rallying points in the wilderness-forts, and
with the constant stimulation and frequent leadership of Brit-
ish officers, they were simply portentous. The American
Revolution in its Northwestern aspect was a continuation of
the French and Indian war, the old conflict renewed with
some change of parties. The States find the savage power of
the Northwest arrayed against them as before. France has
dropped out and England has taken her place, succeeding to
all her ideas— even that of employing the savage's tomahawk
against her revolted colonies — and to all the advantages of
the old French position.
The proposition to employ the scalping knife called out
from Lord Chatham one of his immortal bursts of eloquence.
It was repugnant to the feelings of General Howe and Sir Guy
Carleton ; but it was heartily approved by Governor Hamil-
ton, at Detroit, who at once made ready to use all the re-
' Walker : Michigan Pioneer Collections, III., 16.
W ■
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THE OLD NORTHWEST.
I
sources that his position gave him, to bring upon the rear
and flank of the States the only form of warfare known in
those regions. He employed Elliot, McGee, and the Girty
brothers. He subsidized the Indians. Time and again he
sent to the tribes the war-belt, summoning them to bloody
forays that he himself had planned. His acts will not be here
recounted, nor will the history of this phase of the Rcvolu.
tion be written ; but it is due to Hamilton to say that his hand
was seen at Wheeling, at Harrodsburg, at Boonsborough, at
the Blue Licks, where the flower of Kentucky fell, as well as
in a hundred attacks upon outlying stations and defenceless
farms.
The only other force that the British commander at De-
troit could wield was that of the habitants. Before we can
describe the part that they played in the struggle, we must
sketch their history from the close of the previous war.
The moment the French settlements in the West passed
into English hands, they began to decline in both the number
and the quality of their population. The causes of this de-
cline are easily found.
The sources of such strength as they had had were now
sapped. The proclamation of 1763 left them outside the pale
of any civil jurisdiction, subject only to military authority.
Nor did the Quebec Act work any real change. All through
the Revolution, the commander of the Detroit garrison was
the civil as well as the military head of the whole Northwest,
and most of his subordinates weie military oflficers. There
were magistrates, but their commissions came from the com-
mandant, and they dealt out a very arbitrary and capricious
justice. For example, Governor Hamilton adjudged a
defendant, who pleaded that he could not pay a debt, to
give the plaintiff an old negro wench ; and Dejean, a magis-
trate who cuts a great figure in Detroit in those days, con-
demned men to the gallows whom a jury had found guilty of
theft. The orderly was a more conspicuous officer of the law
than the constable. Military officers sometimes solemnized
>tt7
L
THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
151
marriages, and even administered the rite of baptism. The
Canadian officers of the time knew ahnost nothing of the
country beyond the Lakes. Sir Guy Carleton, Governor of
Canada, told the House of Commons in 1774 that Michigan
w as a part of Canada, but that Detroit was not ; and that he
did not know where Canada ended and Illinois began. At
that time, it must be remembered, English statesmen had less
knowledge of the boundaries of great provinces in North
America than they have now of narrow valleys or small oases
in the deserts of Turkistan. Between the Western habitants and
the British officers there was a strong mutual dislike. They
had been trained for generations to believe the British their
implacable enemies, and they could not suddenly consent to
be governed by them. To be sure, the capitulation of 1760
and the treaty of 1763 both guaranteed them fullest pro-
tection, with the full enjoyment of their religion ; but these
pledges did not overcome their repugnance to the change
of governors. Then most of them had sympathized with
Pontiac, and this made them shy of the British authorities.
The authorities of Louisiana offered the French in Illinois
and Michigan special inducements to remove so that prov-
ince. The mild climate, productive soil, a congenial popula-
tion, and the French laws, religion, and customs, together with
the more direct inducements, made the invitation very attrac-
tive. The Illinois people had only to cross the Mississippi to
find another Illinois. Then just at that time La Clede founded
St. Louis. Very naturally, therefore, the Northwestern set-
tlements began to diminish in numberi and to deteriorate in
quality. In a few years Kaskaskia and Detroit dwindled
to one-third their former population. Nor did a British pop-
ulation come in to take their places. No doubt men from
New York and other colonies would have flocked to Detroit,
had it not been for the adoption by the British Government
of the French policy of restriction. Judge Walker says that
in 1778 there were at Detroit thirty Scotchmen, fifte ' ^t-ish-
men, and two Englishmen j and he estimates the t^ c~
^f-
fi
'%■
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\
152
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
manent population of the territory between the two rivers and
the lakes aS'five thousand at the beginning of the Revolution.'
Evidently this was not an inviting field in which to find
recruits for the British service.
In the fall of 1775 Lord Dunmore despatched his creature
Dr. Connolly, who had just figured so prominently in the
Western Pennsylvania troubles, to Detroit, with orders to
raise a regiment of Canadians and a force of Indians with which
to join his Lordship ; but Connolly's arrest and imprisonment
in Maryland, and Dunmore's precipitate flight, nipped this en-
terprise in the bud. The next year Captain de Langlade, of
Green Bay, who had seen service in the French war, recruited
a motley force of whites and Indians, mainly upon the upper
waters, with which he descended to Montreal and joined the
British army.
It must not be supposed that the men of the frontier
sat nerveless while the Indians were making their raids and
the British officers were seeking to array the French against
them. Mention will not here be made of the minor invasions
of the Indian country ; but one heroic movement, that was
fraught with large consequences, must be treated somewhat
at length.
In the middle of the last century Virginia, owing to her
position, her vast land-claims, and the stage of civilization
which she had attained, had more Western enterprise than
any other colony. In 1774 Dunmore's war gave her the
" back-lands," into which her frontiersmen had been for some
time pressing,, Boone was a Carolinian, but Kentucky was a
distinctively Virginia colony. In 1776 the Virginia legisla-
ture erected the County of Kentucky, and the next year a
Virginia judge dispensed justice at Harrodsburg. Soon the
colony was represented in the legislature of the parent state.
While thus extending her jurisdiction over the region south-
west of the Ohio, the Old Dominion did not forget the lan-
. ' Michigan Pioneer Collections, III,, 12 et seq.
guage (
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THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
153
guage of 1609, " up into the land throughout from sea to sea,
west and northwest."
George Rogers Clark, a Virginian who had made Ken-
tucky his home, was endowed with something of the general's
and statesman's grasp. While floating down the Ohio in
1776, being then twenty-four years of age, he conceived the
conquest of the country beyond the river. It does not appear
that he saw the remote bearings of such an achievement ; at
least, in his own account of it he says he was " clivated with
the thoughts of the great service we should do our country in
some measure puting an end to the Indian war on our fron-
teers." ' But this was a great object. The savages scattered
through the Northwestern wilderness were constantly attack-
ing at one point or another the long thin line of frontier set-
tlements ; and they drew their supplies of powder and lead
and other necessaries, and often received leaders as well as
direction, from the fortified forts, Detroit, Vincennes, and the
rest. Accordingly, if the posts could be captured, the Indians
would lose their rallying points and supplies, they would be
overawed and restrained in a degree, and the war on the fron-
tier would be put an end to "in some measure," if not alto-
gether. Probably this was as far as Claik saw. But Thomas
Jefferson saw much further. In a letter to Clark, the date of
which is lost but that was written before the issue of the
campaign was known in Virginia, that great statesman wrote :
" Much solicitude will be felt for the result of your expedition
to the Wabash ; it will at least delay their expedition to the
frontier-settlement, and if successful have an important bear-
ing ultimately in establishing our northwestern boundary." '
Clark says he had since the beginning of the war taken
pains to make himself acquainted with the true situation of the
Northwestern posts; and in 1777 he sent two young hunters to
spy out the country more thoroughly, anc' especially to ascer-
tain the sentiments of the habitants. On the return of these
' Clark's Campaign in the Illinois, 24.
' Ibid., 2, note.
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154
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
luinters with an encouraging report, he wont to Williamsburg,
then the capital of Virginia, where he enlisted Governor Pat-
rick Henry and other leading minds in a secret expedition to
the Illinois. Acting under a vaguely worded law, authorizing
him to aid "any expedition against their Western enemies,"
Governor Henry gave Clark some vague public instruc-
tions, directing him to enlist, in any county of the common-
wealth, seven companies of men who should act under his
command as a militia, and also private instructions that were
much more full and definite. He is to attack the post of Kas-
kaskia, but this he is to confide to as few as possible. If the
white inhabitants of the post " will give undoubted evidence
of their attachment to this State (for it is certain they live
within its limits)," says the governor, they shall be treated as
fellow-citizens; but if not, they must feel the miseries of war.
He remarks that it is in contemplation to establish a post near
the mouth of the Ohio, Boats, provisions, powder and lead,
will be provided at Fort Pitt. Both the public and private
instructions are dated January 2, 1778.' The governor also
gave the young captain a small supply of money.
Clark immediately recrossed the mountains, and began
to recruit his command. The secrecy that he was obliged to
maintain made his undertaking difficult in the extreme. He
complains bitterly of the obstructions thrown in his way by
"many leading men in the fronteer," which prevented the en-
listment of as many men as had been contemplated, and also
led to frequent desertions. Overcoming as best he could the
difificulties that environed him, he collected his feeble com-
mand at the Falls of the Ohio. On June 26, 1778, he began
the descent of the river. Leaving the Ohio at Fort Massac,
forty miles above its mouth, he began the march to Kaskas-
kia. This fell into his hands, July 5th, and Cahokia soon
after, both without the loss of a single life. Clark found few
Englishmen in these villages, and the French, who were weary
' Appendix to Clark's Campaign in the Illinois.
M
f:i% ■> '^■■^>
-^ -^-
J,fl7;.«^'->''' ^
THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
155
of British rule, he had little diificulty in attaching to the
American interest. Vincennes, soon after, surrendered to a
mere proclamation, when there was not an American soldier
within one hundred miles of the place. The ease with which
this conquest was accomplished was largely due to the Kas-
kaskia priest, Father Pierre Gibault, who entered into Clark's
plans with the greatest warmth and energy.'
" I now found myself," says Clark, " in possession of the
whole, in a country where I found I could do more real ser-
vice than I expected, which occasioned my situation to be
the more disagreeable as I wanted men." " At no time had
he had two hundred men in his command ; and now, the
time for which they had enlisted having expired, and the im-
mediate object of the expedition having been gained, they
were anxious to return home. Although the Illinois and the
Wabash had fallen almost without a blow, it was necessary
that they should be held or all would be lost, no matter
whether the situation was viewed with the eyes of George
Rogers Clark or the eyes of Thomas Jefferson. Clark pre-
vailed upon one hundred men to re-enlist for eight months ;
he then filled up his companies with recruits from the vil-
lages, and sent an urgent call to Virginia for re-enforcements.
' The editor of Clark's Campaign in the Illinois quotes from Judge Law,
Colonial History of Vincennes, the remark that to Gibault, "next to Clark and
Vigo, the United States are indebted for the accession of the States comprised
in what was the original Northwest Tenitory [more] than to any other man " —
33' 34, note.
Ill 1778, St. Louis was a young town fourteen years of age, and the Spanish
as well as the French population were very friendly to the Americans. Colonel
Francis Vigo was a St. Louis merchant who rendered Clark and the Ameri-
can cause most valuable services. Among others, he cashed Clark's drafts for
|i2,ooo on New Orleans, a large sum in the Mississippi Valley one hundred
years ago, and thus enabled him to keep the field. Clark's drafts were pro-
tested; and the debt due Vigo was not paid until 1876, and then after many
hearings by congressional committees and protr.^cted litigation in the United
States courts. See Tract 35 of the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio His-
torical Society, "A Centennial Lawsuit," by Judge C. C. Baldwin.
• Clark's Campaign, 36. ^,f
#■:
,«ir
m-.
156
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
n
The salutary influence of the invasion upon the Indians was
felt at once ; it " began to spread among the nations even to
the border of the lakes ; " and in live weeks Clark settled a
peace with ten or twelve different tribes. With great ability
Clark outwitted the English, counteracted their influence
upon the savages, and kept " spies continually in and about
Detroit for a considerable time." He even captured Ouiate-
non, which stroke, he says, " completed our interest on the
Wabash."
And now Clark began really to feel the difficulties of his
situation. Destitute of money, poorly supplied, commanding
a small and widely scattered force, he had to meet and cir-
cumvent an active enemy who was determined to regain what
he had lost. Governor Hamilton projected a grand campaign
against the French towns that had been captured and the small
force that held them. The feeble issue was the capture, in
December, 1778, of Vincei-ies, which was occupied by but
two Americans. Clark, who was in the Illinois at the time
of this disaster, at once put his little force in motion for the
Wabash, knowing, he says, that if he did not take Hamilton,
Hamilton would take him ; and, February 25, 1779, at the
end of a march of two hundred and fifty miles, that ranks in
peril and hardship with Arnold's winter march to Canada, he
again captured the town, the fort, the governor, and his whole
command. Hamilton was sent to Virginia a prisoner of war,
where he was found guilty of treating American prisoners
with cruelty, and of offering the Indians premiums for scalps,
but none for prisoners.
American statesmen and soldiers perfectly understood the
importance of Detroit. Congress considered the feasibility
of capturing it as early as April, 1776, and often returned to
the subject thereafter. But nothing was done, or really at-
tempted, in the early years of the war, for want of men, mu-
nitions, and money. Washington gave the subject his earnest
attention. In December, 1778, he considered it in connection
with a grand invasion of Canada, then projected. In January,
f%!«--^-.
THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
157
1779, when a Northwestern expedition, under General Mcin-
tosh, was proposed, he said the best way to deal with the Ind-
ians was to carry the war into their own country. In April of
the same year he imiuired of Colonel Broadhead the best time
to attempt a march to JJetroit, and suggested the winter, be-
cause the British would not then be able to use their naval
force on Lake Erie.' Naturally, Clark's achievement, since it
made the reduction of the post seem more feasible, led to
more serious consideration of the subject. Clark himself con-
sidered his work only half done, and was very ambitious to
lead an army through the wilderness to the gateway of the
Northwest. More than once a force seemed almost on the
point of starting. A joint Virginia and continental expedi-
tion was at one time contemplated. But the same causes
that operated to defeat the earlier attempts continued to
operate. Clark, who probably did not appreciate the differ-
ence between seizing Detroit and seizing Kaskaskia, was com-
pelled to abandon the enterprise, and Detroit remained in
British hands at the end of the war, and, in fact, until 1796.
"Detroit lost for a few hundred men," was his pathetic la-
ment as he surrendered an enterprise that lay near his heart.
Had he been able to achieve it, he would have won and
held the whole Northwest. As it was he won and held
the Illinois and the Wabash in the name of Virginia and
of the United States. The bearing of this conquest on the
question of western boundaries will be considered in another
place, but here it is pertinent to remark that the American
Commissioners, in 1782, at Paris, could plead titi possidetis in
reference to much of the country beyond the Ohio, for the
flag of the Republic, raised over it by George Rogers Clark,
had never been lowered. It would not be easy to find in our
history a case of an ofificer accomplishing results that were so
great and far-reaching with so small a force. Clark's later life
is little to his credit, but it should not be forgotten that he
' Sparks : Writings of Washington, VI., 120, 156, 225.
^
I5S
THE OLD NORTHWEST,
'I i
.
rendered the American cause and civilization a very great ser-
vice.
All this time the British were not idle. War-party after
war-party was sent against the American border. In 1780 a
grand expedition was organized at Detroit and sent to Ken-
tucky, under the command of Captain Bird. But it accom-
plished nothing commensurate with its magnitude and cost.
Great efforts we-j made to raise a white contingent, but they
brought together only some eighty men. Judge Walker finds,
among the bills for supplies furnished the British Indian De-
partment, items that plainly reveal the character of Bird's
command; viz., 476 dozen scalping-knives, 1,206 pounds of
vermilion, 21,663 yards tinsel roll, 301 dozen looking-glasses,
8,200 ear-bobs, etc.
The Northwest had been won by a Virginia army, com-
manded by a Virginia officer, put in the field at Virginia's ex-
pense. Governor Henry had promptly announced the con-
quest to the Virginia delegates in Corgress. He spoke of
Detroit as being "at present defended by so inconsiderable a
garrison, and so scantily furnished with provisions, for which
they must be still more distressed by the loss of supplies from
the Illinois, that it might be reduced by any number of men
above five hundred," and closed his interesting communi-
cation with the w Is : " Were it possible to secure the St.
Lawrence and prev^.it the English attempts up that river by
seizing some post on it, peace with the Indians would seem
to be secured." ' In the same letter he also expressed much
gratification at the spirit in which Clark's command had been
receiv d by the French settlers. But before Patrick Henry
wrote this letter Virginia had welded the last link in her
chain of ti "2 to the country beyond the Ohio. In October,
1778, her Legislature declared: "All the citizens of the com-
monwealth of Virginia, who are actually settlers there, or
who shall hereafter be settled on the west side of the Ohio,
' Tyler : Patrick Henr/, 230, 231.
. miii
THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
159
shall be included in the district of Kentucky, which shall be
called Illinois County." Nor was this all. Soon after, Gov-
ernor Henry appointed a lieutenant-commandant for the new
county, with full instructions for carrying on the government.'
The French settlements remained under Virginia jurisdiction
until March, 1784.
Attention should more particularly be drawn to the spirit
in which the French settlers beyond the Ohio received the
Americans. It is perfectly clear that had they actively taken
the side of the British, Clark could never have done his work.
The ancient antipathy to the British ; a desire to see the
work of 1763 apparently undone, although it was only being
perfected; the French alliance of 1778, which made them
think they were again opposing the old enemy — these, with
the intelligent and spirited conduct of the Kaskaskia priest,
decided the habitants of the Illinois and the Wabash. In
the far North, where the straggling white men were more
reckless, and at Detroit, the centre of British influence, the
French were more favorably disposed to the British. But
even at Detroit the British ofificers complained of the apathy
of the Canadians, and the small number of volunteers 'En-
rolled in the expeditions there organized confirms the com-
plaints. It is not too much to say that, in the end, the set-
tlements upon which the British so much relied proved a
means of their destruction.
In future chapters we shall have occasion to refer to these
French settlements again. But this is the place to say that
the welcome which they gave the Americans did not arrest
their fate or retard their decline. The breath of Anglo-Aancr-
ican civilization seemed almost as fatal to them as to the Ind-
ians themselves. Louisiana and the fur lands continued to
draw away their strength ; and scarcely a trace of them can
be found in Northwestern life to-day. Champlain laid the
foundation of the British Province of Quebec : the State of
' I* dwards : History of Illinois, and Life of Ninian Edwards, 5, 7.
i6o
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Louisiana is the child of the French colony; but the habi-
tants of the Northwest seem as effectually lost in the past as
the Mound Builders.
Although the French settlements did not become an ele-
ment in the civilization of the Northwest, they will always re-
main an attractive and, in many respects, a pleasing chapter of
American history. The story of Northwestern discovery and
exploration will long be drawn upon for examples of heroic
endurance, high courage, and unyielding devotion. It will
long point the moral that sound ideas and practical purposes
are as essential to success as zeal and enthusiasm. The
French colonies as much surpass the English in poetic ele-
ments as the English surpass them in strength and perma-
nence ; and the long procession of discoverers, explorers,
priests, coureiirs dcs bois, traders, voyagairs, soldiers, and ha-
bitants, with its retinue of bedizened savages, will stir the
hearts of those who respond to high qualities, and catch the
attention of those who have an eye for the picturesque.
French life was marked by a good humor, contentment, sim-
plicity, freedom from cankering care and desire for acquisi-
tion, hospitality, childlike faith, and sociability that make it
very attractive. Cable has touched some of its phases in his
Creole pictures. Longfellow idealizes some of its traits, as
well as much of its scenery, in " Evangeline." The descrip-
tions written by tourists and United States officers at the
time of the Louisiana purchase are more prosaic, but still have
many elements of charm. Detroit stood the shock of the
Americaii emigration better than any other of the Western
posts ; and many of the striking features of the old French
town remained until they were fixed in enduring colors. Mr.
Bela Hubbard's chapters, entitled "Fiench Habitants of the
Detroit," are a series of delightful pictures of the "pipe-stem
farms," the uncouth ploughs and carryalls, the pony-carts, the
races, the apple-orchards, the cicet-mills, and ancient pear-trees
whose origin no one can explain, the quaint houses, the wind-
mills, the jaunty costumes, the fishing, the language, religion,
THE NORTHWEST IN THE REVOLUTION.
I6l
manners, and recreations, and the voyageurs, with a few speci-
mens of their songs.'
But while the French life has so thoroughly disappeared
from the old Northwest, some of its wilder aspects may still
be seen far north in the Great Fur Land. The voyageur,
for example, has disappeared from the streams of Michi-
gan and Wisconsin ; but he still paddles his canoe on the
rivers falling into Hudson's Bay and on the affluents of the
Mackenzie. His blood is more mixed, his language more
corrupt, and he is more a savage than one hundred years ago ;
but he still preserves the main features of the type. A
traveller who has visited those haunts describes him as merry,
light-hearted, obliging, hospitable, and extravagant ; when
idle, devoted to singing, dancing, gossip, and drinking to in-
toxication ; having vanity as his besetting sin ; intensely su-
perstitious ; completely under the influence of his priest ; de-
voted to the forms of religion, grossly immoral, often dishon-
est, and generally untrustworthy ; with no sense of duty in
his daily life ; controlled by passion and caprice, and having
little aptitude for continuous labor. " No man will labor more
cheerfully and gallantly at the severe toil pertinent to his call-
ing ; but those efforts are of short duration, and when they
are ended, his chief desire is to do nothing but eat, drink,
smoke, and be merry — all of them acts in which he greatly
excels." "
' "The labor of the oar," says Mr. Hubbard, "was relieved by songs, to which
each stroke kept time, with added vigor. The poet Moore has well caught the
spirit of the voyageurs' melodious chant, in his ' Boat-song upon the St, Law-
rence.' But to appreciate its wild sweetness, one should listen to the melody as
it wings its way over the waters, softened by distance, yet every measured cadence
falling distinct upon Mie ear." — Memorials of a Half Century, 107-154.
' Robinson : The Great Fur Land, 108, 109.
II
X.
THE UNITED STATES WREST THE NORTH-
WEST FROM ENGLAND.
The Second Treaty of Paris.
On the Fourth of July, 1776, the thirteen British colonies
in North America, by their chosen representatives in general
congress assembled, solemnly published and declared that
they were, and of a right ought to be, free and independent
States. By this act they assumed a separate and equal place
among the powers of the earth as the United States of
America. Less than two years thereafter — that is, on February
6, 1778 — the King of France entered into two treaties with
the new nation : one of alliance, and one of amity and com-
merce ; the essential and direct end of the first being, a? de-
clared in the second article, "to maintain effectually the lib-
erty, sovereignty, and independence absolute and unlimited
of the said United States, as well in matters of government
as of commerce." Article 5 stipulated that, if the United
States should conquer the British in the Northern parts of
America, or the Bermuda Islands, those countries or islands
should be confederated with, or be made dependent upon, the
said United States. Article 7 stipulated that if His Majesty
the King of France should attack any of the islands in the
Gulf of Mexico, belonging to Great Britain, or islands near
that gulf, such islands should, in case of success, appertain to
the Crown of France. In Article 6 the king renounced the
possession of the Bermudas, as well as those parts of North
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 163
America that, by the treaty of 1763, were acknowledged to
belong to Great Britain, or to the United States, before
called British colonies, or which then were, or had lately
been, under the power of the Crown of Great Britain. By
Article 1 1 the United States guaranteed to His Majesty his
present possessions in America, as well as those he might
acquire by the future treaty of peace ; while His Majesty
guaranteed to the United States not only their liberty, sover-
eignty, and independence in both matters of government and
commerce, but also their possessions, and the conquests that
they might make from Great Britain during the war, as pro-
vided in the previous article. The Declaration of Independ-
ence bore the caption : " The unanimous Declaration of the
United States of America ; " the names of the States were
given, with the signers at the end. One of the French treaties
was made with " the thirteen United States 01 North Amer-
ica," the other with " the United States of North America ; "
the names of the States being added in both cases. Beyond
these general terms neither the Declaration nor the treaties
contained one word describing the new nation. Were the
terms clothed with such definite meaning that all the world
knew just what the new nation was ?
In a social and political sense " the thirteen British col-
onies in North America," previous to 1776, stood for clear
and definite ideas. They were the thirteen communities
planted by England, at least by Englishmen, in the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries on the eastern shore of
North America, between the St. Croix and Altamaha Rivers ;
communities that had an individual history and a collective
history which plainly marked them off, to the minds of
Europeans, from the French settlements to the north and the
Spanish settlements to the south. Nor did they lose their
individuality even when these French and Spanish settle-
ments, after 1763, took rank with thetri as American colonies
of the British Crown. Who were the people that put forth
the Declaration of Independence was therefore well under-
1 64
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
derstood wherever that Declaration was read ; as it was, like-
wise, who entered into the treaties with France in 1778,
But what the names found in the Declaration and French
treaties stood for in a geographical and territorial sense was
not equally plain. " Massachusetts," " Virginia," " Carolina,"
for example, had meant very different things at different
times. Nor did they represent definitely ascertained units in
1776. Probably, too, there were no two States lying side by
side between which there were not pending boundary-dis-
putes. The chapters on the " Thirteen Colonies as Constituted
by the Royal Charters " make that sufficiently plain. Then
there arose sharp controversies as to the division and pro-
prietorship of the country beyond the Alleghany Mountains.
But above these internal territorial questions towered one
that may be called external, viz. : " What is the extent of the
thirteen States of America considered as a whole ? " Neither
the Declaration nor the treaties contained any answer ; so far
from it, the name used in these documents might mean, and
soon came to mean, very different things to different people.
For instance, although the King of France entered into the
defensive alliance of 1778 solely to make sure and effectual
the liberty, sovereignty, and absolute independence of the
United States, in less than two years he used his influence to
induce his allies to consent to the Alleghany Mountains as a
western boundary, which would have cut off fully one half of
the territory that the United States claimed, and that Great
Britain ultimately conceded. Again, the United States de-
scribed in 1779 in the instructions to John Adams, commis-
sioner to negotiate a peace, are not geographically the same
United States whose independence was acknowledged at Paris
in 1782. Hence it is plain that England might, the day after
the French treaties were signed, or even the day after the Dec-
laration was published, have conceded the independence of
the States in the very terms used in those documents, and
still have left unsettled a territorial question larger than the
one which brought on the French and Indian war in 1754. It
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 165
is quite clear, therefore, that in 1776 the United States were
not as definitely marked off from other nations territorially
as they were from other peoples politically and socially.
At the beginning the United States were a purely federal '
nation and government. They could not touch directly a sin-
gle citizen, a single dollar, or a single foot of land. They
were dependent upon the States individually for a Congress,
a treasury, an army, and a capital. The States made up the
United States. At different times, in the course of the war.
Congress offered land-bounties for volunteers in the conti-
nental line, but when the offers were made Congress had no
lands, and, had it not been for the Northwestern cessions,
it would have been compelled to ask the States for special
grants with which to satisfy them. When the time came to
instruct the national representatives abroad in regard to the
national limits, the federal principle was strictly followed.
Hence Mr. Jay, who went to Spain in 1779, was instructed,
October 4, 1780, to insist upon the Mississippi River because
it was " the boundary of several States in the Union." On
January 8, 1782, a committee of which Mr. Madison was a
member, to which had been referred certain papers in regard
to the prospective negotiations for peace with His Britannic
Majesty, thus stated the rule by which the national boun-
daries should be ascertained :
" Under his authority the limits of these States, while in the
character of colonies, were established ; to these limits the
'As Mr. G. T. Curtis points out, the term "federal" or "federalist" has
been used in our politics in three distinct senses : First, in its j)hilosophical sense,
in that of federal in distinction from national ; second, in that of a supporter of
the Constitution, when it was before the people for their adoption ; third, in that
of a member of the political party at the head of which stood Washington. The
three meanings all appeared within the limits of a few years. In 1787 Hamilton
was not a Federalist, because opposed to the continuance of the Confederation,
and desirous of a National Government ; in 1788 he was a Federalist, because he
desired the adoption of the Constitution, and he continued a Federalist, because
he favored a particular political policy. History of the Constitution, II., 497.
The word is used above in its proper philosophical sense.
1 66
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
United States, considered as independent sovereignties, have
succeeded. Whatsoever territorial rights, therefore, belonged
to them before the Revolution were necessarily devolved upon
them at the era of independence."
Then follows a long argument to show that this principle
would give the United States the territories that they
claimed in the instructions soon to be mentioned.' This re-
port was referred to a second committee, which reported it
back, August i6th following, with a mass of " facts and obser-
vations " sustaining its positions. This document covers forty
pages of the printed journal, and is the best statement extant
of the territorial rights of the States. It makes very promi-
nent the fact that Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York,
Virginia, and the two Carolinas and Georgia claimed to the
Mississippi River. This was pleading the royal charters as
modified b)'- the treaty of 1763. But if His Majesty should
reply that at the beginning of the war he, and not the colo-
nies, was seized of the Western country, the American Com-
missioners could meet the claim with the argument that —
" The character in which he was so seized was that of king
of the thirteen colonies collectively taken. Being stripped of
this character, its [his] rights descended to the United States
for the following reasons : (i) The United States are to be con-
sidered in many respects as one undivided independent nation,
inheriting those rights which the King of Great Britain en-
joyed as not appertaining to any one particular State, while he
was what they are now, the superintending governor of the
whole. (2) The King of Great Britain has been deth -oned as
King of the United States by the joint efforts of the whole.
(3) The very country in question hath been conquered through
the means of the common labors of the United States.'"
Under the third specification the reference is, of course, to
the conquest of George Rogers Clark.
' The Secret Journals, III., 151 et seq.
» Ibid., I<j8, 199.
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 167
In these reports the charge that the from sea-to-sea char-
ters were due to geographical ignorance is rebutted ; the view
that they sprang from a desire to hold the West against Spain
is advanced;' and the theory that the proclamation of 1763
had worked a limitation of the colonies on the west is ex-
pressly set aside in favor of the theory held by Washington
in 1767, viz., a temporary device for quieting the Indians.
The stress laid on the chartered extension of certain States to
the West becomes all the more significant when we remem-
ber that for several years some of the States, and particularly
Maryland, had been denying that the West belonged to the
claimant States at all. At the same time, the American com-
missioners were to plead nti poisidctis, growing out of the
Clark conquest of the country beyond the Ohio, if the appeal
to the charters did not prove effectual.
The events that at last compelled England to treat for
peace arc not pertinent to the present inquiry. The year
1782 found her ready to treat ; the final commission given to
Mr. Oswald, her principal representative in the Paris discus-
sions with the Americans, owing to the insistance of Mr.
Jay, formally acknowledged the independence of the United
States ; and this acknowledgment became the point of de-
parture for the later negotiation. But all this left many very
difficult questions to be adjusted, such as the fisheries, com-
pensation to Loyalists, and especially the boundaries.
The instructions given to John Adams by Congress, bearing
date August 14, 1779, are the earliest authoritative statement
of the territorial claims of the United States with which I am
acquainted. Only disappointment came from Mr. Adams's
mission to Europe at that time; but <^hese instructions were
' " Had the interv.il between those seas been precisely ascertained, it is not
probable that the King of England would have divided the chartered boundaries
now in question into more governments. For perhaps his principal object at that
time was to acquire by that of occupancy which originated in this Western World,
to wit, by charters, a title of the lands comprehended therein against foreign
powers." — The Secret Journals, III., 177.
1 68
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
substantially those under which the commissioners acted in
1782. They claimed on the northeast the St. Johns River; on
the north, the proclamation line of 1763 as far as the foot of
Lake Nipissing, and beyond that point a straight line drawn
to the source of the Mississippi ; on the west, the Mississippi
to parallel 31° north; on the south, the northern boundary of
Florida as established in 1763; and on the east, the ocean.
Mr. Adams was instructed " strongly to contend that the
whole of the said countries and islands lying within the
boundaries aforesaid ... be yielded to the powers of
the States to which thev respectively belong," a clear out-
cropping of the federal idea ; " but, notwithstanding the clear
right of these States, and the importance of the object, yet
they are so much influenced by the dictates of religion and
humanity, and so desirous of complying with the earnest re-
quest of their allies, that if the line to be drawn from the
mouth of the Lake Nipissing to the head of the Mississippi
cannot be obtained without continuing the war for that pur-
pose, you are hereby empowered to agree to some other line
between that point and the River Mississippi ; provided the
same shall in no part thereof be to the southward of lati-
tude 45° north." Similarly, Mr. Adams was authorized to
consent that the northeastern boundary be afterward adjusted
by commissioners duly appointed for that purpose, if the St.
Johns could not be obtained. The cession of Canada and
Nova Scotia was declared " of the utmost importance to the
peace and commerce of the United States, but it should not
be made an ultimatum." '
Save the ocean and the St. Johns, these were the lines es-
tablished by the French treaty and the royal proclamation of
1763. The line northwest of the St. Lawrence could be de-
fended on the ground that the grant to the Plymouth Com-
pany was bounded north by the forty-fifth parallel in 1606,
and by the forty-eighth parallel in 1620. The source of the
The Secret Journals, II., 225-228.
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 169
Mississippi had not been discovered in 1779, but it was sup-
posed to be at least as far north as the Lake of the Woods.
Had this supposition been correct, the Nipissing line would
have excluded Great Britain from all the great lakes but
Lake Superior; the real Nipissing line, however, would have
left nearly the whole ot that lake, with large parts of Michi-
gan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to that power. At the close of
the Revolution the Mississippi was the natural, and, we may
say, indispensable western boundary of the United States ;
next to independence, which was, in fact, already conced-
ed, our extension to that river was the most important ques-
tion involved in the negotiation, far transcending the St. Johns,
compensation to the Loyalists, and even the fisheries. This
was the question, whether the trustee commissioned twenty
years before to transfer the West from the France of the Mid-
dle Ages to the free people who were making for humanity
a new life in North America, should execute the commission.
On the British side the negotiation was opened by Mr.
Oswald, under the direction of the Rockingham ministry; on
the American side, by Dr. Franklin. The promptness with
which the British Commissioner consented to all the boun-
daries of the Adams instructions appeared to show that the
trustee was ready to transfer the West without objection. In
fact, those boundaries were incorporated in the treaty draft
sent to London as late as the early days of October. Nor is
it probable that these lines would have been seriously ob-
jected to if the courts of Paris and Madrid had not meddled
with the question. Before taking up that topic, however, at-
tention must be drawn to another fact that strikingly illus-
trates the pliable temper of Mr. Oswald, as well as the yield-
ing spirit of the Court of London in the first stage of the
negotiations. Dr. Franklin actually proposed that the British
Crown should cede the whole of Canada to the United States."
' " The territory of the United States and that of Canada, by long extended
frontiers, touch each other. The settlers on the frontiers of the American prov-
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This proposition was finally rejected on the one side, and
dropped on the other, but for a time there seemed to be a
probability that the cession would actually be made. Mr.
Oswald certainly listened to it with favor, and he reported
the British ministers, to whom he communicated theproposi-
^ tion, as not offering particular objection.
/ In previous chapters we have seen that in the sixteenth
r century Spain despised her grand opportunity to take posses-
■" sion of the Mississippi River, and that in the seventeenth she
allowed it to pass quietly into the hands of France. At the
close of the French and Indian war, the western half of the
; great valley, with the exclusive possession of the mouth of
) the river, passed into her hands ; but this was only a partial
i recovery of what she had before lost, and was a compensation
for Florida, that si.j was obliged to cede to England in ex-
change for Havana.
; Responding to the pressing intercessions of France, and to
the promptings of her own ambition, Spain declared war
against England in June, 1779. In America she hoped to re-
cover Florida and to strengthen her position on the Missis-
inces aic generally the most disorderly of the people, who, being far removed
from .!ie eye and control of their respective governments, are more bold in com-
mitting offences against neighbors and are forever occasioning complaints and
furnishing matter for fresh differences between their States
" Britain possesses Canada. Iler chief advantage from that possession consists
in the trade for peltry. Her expenses in governing and defending that settlement
must be considerable. It might be humiliating to her to give it up on the demand
of America. Perhaps America will not demand it. Some of her political rulers
may consider the fear of such a neighbor as a means of keeping the thirteen
States more united among themselves and more attentive to military discipline.
But, on the mind of the people in general, would it not have an excellent effect if
Britain should voluntarily offer to give up this province ; thougii on these condi-
tions : That she shall in all times coming have and enjoy the right of free
trade thither, unencumbered with any duties wliatsoever ; that so much of the
vacant lands there shall be sold as will raise a sum sufficient to pay for the houses
burnt by the British troops and their Indians, and also to indemnify the Royal-
ists for the confiscation of their estates." — Diplomatic Correspondence, III., 3S8
et s«q.
#>. _
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 171
sippi. How thoroughly these projects had been thought out
at that time may be questionable ; but Spain was careful to
demand in her engagement with France a stipulation that left
her free to exact from the United States, " as the price of her
friendship, a renunciation of every part of the basin of the St.
Lawrence and the lakes, of the navigation of the Mississippi,
and of all the land between that river and the Alleghanies." '
Hoping to effect treaties with the Court of Madrid similar to
those already effected with the Court of Paris, Congress de-
spatched John Jay as an envoy at the end of the year 1779,
authorizing him to guarantee to His Catholic Majesty, Flor-
ida, East and West, if he should conquer it and the fortunes
of war should leave it in his hands at the peace : " Provided
always, that the United States shall enjoy the free navigation
of the River Mississippi into and from the sea." He was also
particularly to endeavor to obtain some convenient port or
ports below the thirty-first degree of north latitude on the
Mississippi for all merchant-vessels, goods, wares, and mer-
chandises belonging to the inhabitants of the United States.'
The free navigation of the Mississippi was already a practical
question. In 1779 both Pennsylvania and Virginia had con-
siderable populations west of the mountains; settlements were
springing up in the valleys of the Holston and the Kentucky,
while Louisville dates from the George Rogers Clark expe-
dition ; and there were the old French settlements on the
Wabash and in the Illinois that had always enjoyed the free
use of the great river. By that time, too, there were several
American merchants in New Orleans — men from Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia; and these merchants, in the
years 1776-78, with the consent of the Spanish governor,
shipped arms and munitions up the Mississippi and Ohio to
Pittsburg. Plainly, therefore. Congress was simply doing its
duty in looking out for the interests of the scattered settle-
' Bancroft: History, VI., 183. Boston, 1879.
* The Secret Journals, II., 261 et seq.
*
IM!I
172
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
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ments beyond the mountains. But the Spanish Court would
not listen to the overture, nor receive Mr. Jay as an accred-
ited envoy. The reasons that controlled its conduct are a
material part of this chapter of Western history.
First, the war was proving to be much more protracted
and more costly than France and Spain had anticipated ; and
at the opening of 1780 they desired nothing so i.iuch as a
speedy peace, provided measurably satisfactory terms could be
made. This desire led France to wish a full alliance between
the United States and Spain, since such an alliance would
lead to a more vigorous prosecution of the war while it lasted ;
and it would no doubt have had the same effect upon Spain,
but for her dread of everything that touched, or seemed to
touch, her own interests on the Mississippi. France there-
fore began to exert a steady pressure upon Congress, to in-
duce that body to recede from its aemand for the free navi-
gation of the river, and Congress, yielding to the pressure and
to the depression of feeling produced by the wasting continu-
ance of the war, withdrew, February 15, 1781, the offensive
ultimatum. Moreover, the French representatives at Phila-
delphia, first Gerard and afterward Luzerne, told Congress
repeatedly that the United States had no valid claim to the
country west of the king's line of 1763. One object of the
French ministers in insisting upon this boundary was, as we
shall soon see, to keep the United States out of the way of
Spain in the Western country, and another object was to keep
the conditions of peace on the part of the United States
within narrow limits.
But this modification of Mr. Jay's instructions, made con-
trary to his advice, wholly failed to accomplish its object.
At first Count Florida Blanca, the Spanish Prime Minister,
had tacitly consented to the Mississippi as our western boun'
dary ; but, now that the other obstacle to a treaty was out of
the way, he held that such a westward extension was alto-
gether inadmissible. The fact is, the Clark conquest of the
Northwest, the spread of Western settlements, and the stay-
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 173
ing power that the States were showing in the war, were re-
vealing to the Spanish Court the fact that an Anglo-Ameri-
can republic, stretching down the Atlantic slope from Nova
Scotia to Florida and spreading over the Alleghanies to the
great lakes and the great river, meant a future menace to
His Catholic Majesty's North American dominions ; and the
annexation of Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and portions of
Mexico to the United States show how well grounded these
fears were. Spain had always striven to exclude all rival
powers from the Gulf of Mexico ; she expected to regain
Florida and the practical control of the Gulf at the peace ;
and to allow the United States to extend westward to the
river and southward to parallel 31° seemed little less than
abandoning her dearest American interests. At that time,
too, Spain was the greatest colonial empire of the world ; and
it was no more the business of her king to offer a premium
on colonial revolutions than it was the business of Francis of
Austria to foster rebellion.
In the third place, Galvez, the gallant young Governor of
Louisiana, had captured and was holding possession of the
British posts on the Gulf and the Mississippi : Pensacola, Mo-
bile, Baton Rouge, and Natchez. These conquests had daz-
zled the Spanish imagination, opening up new possibilities of
territorial expansion in the vast region west of the Appa-
lachian Mountains, including, perhaps, a complete retrieval
of the great blunder of one hundred years before. Now that
West Florida was in her hands, she remembered its ancient
extension northward. Her ambition growing with what it
fed on, Spain now conceived the thought of laying claim to
the whole West, as far as the lakes. To lay the foundation for
such claim, the Spanish commandant at St. Louis, in the dead
of the winter of 1780-81, sent an expedition into the very heart
of the Northwest, to seize the post of St. Joseph, established
by La Salle in 1679, just after he had sent back the Griffin
from Green Bay. This expedition was completely successful ;
Don Eugenio Purre, the commander, seized the post, captur-
•fe
IWlif
m
174
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ing the garrison, and took formal possession of the region
commanded by it, and of the Illinois River, displaying the
Spanish standard in token of conquest and carrying off the
English colors as a Spanish title-deed. News of this exploit
reached Philadelphia by way of Madrid and Paris in the
Spring of 1782, accompanied by this message from Mr. Jay
to Mr. Livingston : " When you consider the ostensible ob-
ject of this expedition, the distance of it, the formalities with
which the place, the country, and the river were taken posses-
sion of in the name of His Catholic Majesty, I am persuaded
it will not be necessary for me to swell this letter with re-
marks that would occur to a reader of far less penetration
than yourself." ' Dr. Franklin also saw in the expedition a
purpose to " coop up " the United States between the Alle-
ghanies and the sea, and he demanded that Congress should
insist upon the Mississippi as a western boundary, and upon
its free navigation from its source to the ocean. Nor can
there be any doubt that the Illinois towns would have been
seized and held by the Spaniards, if they had not already
passed into the custody of the Virginia troops. While this
Northwestern expedition did not occur in time to influence
the discussions with Mr. Jay at Madrid, it is still a material
part of the history as a whole, and it strikingly illustrates the
Spanish policy.
Mr. Jay wholly failed to accomplish the object for which
he was sent to Madrid ; but he acquired a knowledge of
Spanish purposes, and had an experience of Spanish charac-
ter, that enabled him to render his country invaluable service
at Paris as one of the commissioners who negotiated the
treaty of peace with Great Britain.
As Mr. Jaj/ was leaving Madrid for Paris, in the early ,
summer of 1782, Count Florida Blanca told him that the
Count de Aranda, the Spanish ambassador at the French
Court, was authorized to continue the discussion of a treaty
Diplomatic Correspondence, VIII., 78.
^^*.
Im
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 175
between Spain and the United States. In due time, Jay put
himself in communication with the Count ; but as the Span-
iard would never show his full powers, and the American
would not treat without seeing them, their frequent confer-
ences were all informal and non-official. However, in these
conferences the Spanish diplomatist fully disclosed the ideas
of his government touching the Western country.
Having drawn from Mr. Jay the statement that the
United States claimed on the south to the proclamation line
of 1763, and on the west to the middle of the Mississippi, the
Count replied : That the Western country had never be-
longed to the ancient English colonies, or been claimed by
them ; that, previous to the Treaty of Paris, the West had be-
longed to France, and that it continued, after that treaty, a
distinct part of the British dominions ; that, in consequence
of Spanish conquests in West Florida and on the Mississippi •
and Illinois Rivers, the title had become vested in Spain ;
and that, supposing the Spanish right did not cover all the
country, it was possessed by nations of Indians, free and in-
dependent, whom the States had no right to disturb. He
therefore proposed a longitudinal line on the east side of the
river as a boundary between Spain and the United States,
adding that he did not mean to dispute about a few acres or
miles. What De Aranda's " longitudinal line " was he after-
ward made plain, by drawing a red line on a copy of Mitchell's
map " from a lake near the confines of Georgia, but east of
the Flint River, to the confluence of the Kanawha with the
Ohio; thence round the western shores of Lake Erie and
Huron; and thence round Lake Michigan to Lake Supe-
rior." ' West and south of this line Spain should hold ;
east, the United States ; while north of the lakes the United
States might make such terms with Great Britain as she
could. Here we may drop the so-called negotiation with
Spain, with the remark that until the year 1795 the Missis-
' Diplomatic Correspondence, V^II., 150-152.
<Ak ..« JL
176
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
sippi River remained an insuperable obstacle in the way of
::^ an American treaty with that power.
The Spanish claim to the West was dangerous mainly be-
cause, in a modified form, it was supported by France. When
Dr. Franklin and Mr. Jay pointed out to the Count de Ver-
gennes, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, the extrav-
agance of De Aranda's claim, the Count was " very cautious
and reserved ; " but M. Rayneval, his principal secretary,
who was present, was talkative, and expressed the opinion
that the Americans claimed more than they had a right to.
Soon after, Rayneval suggested to Mr. Jay a " conciliatory
line ; " and in a memoir dated September 6th he explained at
length what he meant by it. In this paper the secretary
stated the conflicting United States and Spanish claims, and
then urged that the one had no support in colonial history,
•and that the other was not justified by the Spanish conquests.
His conciliatory line he drew from a point on the Gulf mid-
way between the Chattahoochee and the Mobile, nearly due
north to the Cumberland River, and then down the Cumber-
land to the Ohio. The savages west of this limit should be
free, under the protection of Spain ; those east should be free,
under the protection of the United States. Spain would lose
almost the whole course of the Ohio ; America would retain
her settlements on that river, and have a large space in which
to plant new ones. Spain had no claim to the lands north of
the Ohio ; " their fate must be regulated with the Court of
London." The navigation of the Mississippi would be con-
trolled by the power owning its banks.'
Mr. Jay very naturally concluded that the Count de Ver-
gennes was the real author of this scheme. He concluded,
also, that in case the American Commissioners would not
consent to it, then France would aid Spain in a negotiation
to divide the West with England. It is now well known that
such was, in substance, the programme of the two counts.
;^ ' Diplomatic Correspondence, VIIL, 156 et seq.
4
■"i^
'^a,'
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. \^^
As a first step toward carrying it out, M. Rayneval was sent
on a secret mission to England, where he informed Lord
Shelburne that his chief would not support the Americans
in several of their claims, as the fisheries and the Missis-
sippi.
The destiny of the West had thus become a European
question involving the three powers, all of which had inter-
ests of their own to look after in both worlds. England
would naturally make the best terms that she could with her
enemies, one and all ; more specifically, she would obtain
whatever advantage she could in the negotiations with the
Americans from the jealousies of the two other powers. Spain
was resolved on the recovery of Gibraltar as well as of Florida,
and France was committed to her support. France had not
entered into alliance with America from love of the American
cause, but from hatred of England ; and now that a rival
power to England had been raised up on the shores of the
New World, Vergcnnes was apprehensive that power would
become so strong as to feel wholly independent of France.
He was, indeed, committed irrevocably to the independence
of the United States so far as England was concerned ; but
he was also determined that their independence should not
be finally settled until a general peace had been arrived at.
Possibly the country beyond the Alleghany Mountains could
be traded off for Gibraltar, or be balanced against some other
make-weight in the diplomatic scale. Fortunately, for his
purpose, the treaty of 1778 bound the United States not to
conclude a peace with England until France should also
conclude one; and, as early as June, 1781, he had induced
Congress to instruct the commissioners who were to negoti-
ate with England " to make the most candid and confidential
communications upon all subjects to the ministers of our
generous ally the King of France ; to undertake nothing in
the negotiations for peace or truce without their knowledge
and concurrence, and to make them sensible how much we rely
upon His Majesty's influence for effectual support in every-
12
ft>,^>'
;3SF''
178
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
thing that may be necessary to the present security or future
prosperity of the United States." '
Such, in brief, was the diplomatic situation in Paris when
the American negotiation entered on its second stage. In
this tremendous game of politics, the fate of the West seemed
to hang on issues wholly beyond the control of the American
Commissioners. No more critical or anxious moment can be
found in the whole history of our diplomacy. Determined, if
possible, to keep their country from becoming the football of
the three powers, the commissioners resolved, in disregard of
their instructions," to propose to the British Cabinet a nego-
tiation to be conducted without the knowledge of the French
ministers. Lord Shelburne, now Prime Minister, for reasons
of state that are here immaterial, promptly accepted this over-
ture, and the negotiation took a new departure.
Owing to important successes of the British arms in the
West Indies and at Gibraltar, and to the discovery of a want
of good understanding between America and France, the
British ministers now held a firmer tone than in the first
negotiation. The determination of the ministers to obtain a
compensation for the British refugees whose property had been
confiscated by the States became the occasion for reopening
the question of boundaries in the Northeast, the West, and
the Northwest. Mr. Strachcy was sent over the Channel to
assist Mr. Oswald in retreating from some of his concessions ;
and Lord Fitzmaurice tells us that his instructions were :
" To urge the claims of England, under the proclamation of
1763, to the lands between the Mississippi and the Western
boundary of the States, and to bring forward the French boun*
' The Secret Journals, II., 435.
' Mr. Lyman, Diplomacy of the United States, I., 121, note, relates the fol-
lowing anecdote, which he says he has from a direct source. Dr. Franklin, one
day sitting, during the discussion of the question of instructions, in Mr. Jay's
room at Paris, said to that gentleman, "Will you break your instructions?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Jay, who was smoking a pipe, " as I break this pipe ;" and
immediately threw it into the fire.
/0^
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 179
dary of Canada, which was more extensive at some points than
lliatof the proclamation of 1763. lie was to urge these claims,
and the right of the King to the ungranted domain, not indeed
for tlieir own sake, but in order to gain some compensation for
tiie refugees, either by a direct cession of territory in their
favor, or by engaging the iialf, or some proportion of what the
back lands might produce when sold, or a sum mortgaged on
those lands ; or by the grant of a favorable boundary of Nova
Scotia, extending, if possible, so as to include the province of
Maine ; or, if that could not be obtained, the province of Saga-
dahock, or, at the very least, Penobscot."
Lord Shelburne urged the same view, in a strong despatch
to Oswald.
" As a resource to meet the demands of the refugees the
matter of the boundaries and back lands presents itself. Inde-
pendent of all the nonsense of charters, I mean, when they talk
of extending as far as the sun sets, the soil is, and has always
been acknowledged to be the King's. For the good of America,
whatever the government may be, new provinces must be
erected on those back lands and down the Mississippi ; and
supposing them to be sold, what can be so reasonable as that
part of the province, where the King's property alone is in ques-
tion, should be applied to furnish subsistence to those, whom
for the sake of peace he can never consistently with his honor
entirely abandon."'
This was a very different view from the one that Oswald
had held when he declined " any attempt at asserting the
daims of the English Crown over the ungranted domains,
deeming that no real distinction could be drawn between
them and other sovereign rights which were necessarily to be
ceded."
It is impossible to say much about the Western boundary
discussions, because we know next to nothing about them.
' Life of Earl Shelburne, IIL, 281, 282.
« Ibid., IIL, 284.
i8o
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
•Ill
f
u
Other controversies at Paris, far less important, were re-
ported much more fully ; but here the information that we
possess only piques our curiosity. The right to fish on the
banks of Newfoundland was thought more valuable in 1782
than the ownership of the valleys of Ohio, the prairies of
Illinois, and the forests of Michigan. What would we not
give for a full review of the whole subject from the pen that
wrote the "Canada Pamphlet," and the "Reply to Hillsbor-
ough ? "
The Mississippi was finally conceded by the British Cabi-
net. Still, this concession left unanswered the question
where the northern boundary should strike the Mississippi.
Writing to Minister Townsend, November 8th, Mr. Strachey
says : " 1 despatch the boundary line originally sent to you by
Mr. Oswald, and two other lines proposed by the American
Commissioners after my arrival at Paris. Either of these you
are to choose. They are both better than the original line, as
well in respect to Canada as to Nova Scotia." ' Mr. Adams
tells us that one of these lines was the forty-fifth parallel,
northwest of the St. Lawrence, and the other the line of the
middle of the lakes. Most fortunately for us, the British
ministers, owing, no doubt, to their desire to give Canada
frontage on the four lakes, and to a preference for a water
boundary, chose that line which left the Northwest intact.
Had the forty-fifth parallel become the boundary, nearly one-
half of Lakes Huron and Michigan, and of the States of
Michigan and Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, would have
fallen to Great Britain. Writing to Robert R. Livingston,
the American Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the commission-
ers say : " Congress will observe, that although our northern
line is in a certain part below the latitude of forty-five, yet in
others it extends above it, divides the Lake Superior, and
gives us access to its western and southern waters, from which
aline in that latitude would have excluded us." " If the com-
' Fitzmaurice : Life of Earl Shelburne, IIL, 295.
' Diplomatic Correspondence, X., 118.
have
gston,
ission-
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and
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THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. l8l
missioners had understood Northwestern geography better, to
say nothing of the then unknown resources of Lake Superior,
they would have stated the argument '.vith even greater
strength.
To close the war that began on Lexington Green, April
19, 177s, three separate treaties were necessary. France and
the United States conducted simultaneous negotiations with
different English commissioners, the understanding being that
the preliminaries should be signed the same day. On Novem-
ber 29th Dr. Franklin wrote to M. de Vergennes that the
American articles were already agreed upon, and that he
hoped to lay a copy of them before his Excellency the next
day. Except a single secret article, they were duly communi-
cated ; but, to the astonishment and mortification of the Count,
they were already signed, and therefore binding, as far as the
commissioners could make them so. The game for despoiling
the young Republic of one-half her territorial heritage was
effectually blocked. Vergennes bitterly reproached Franklin
for the course that he and his associates had followed, and
Franklin replied, making such defence as he could, admitting
no more than that a point of bicnsdancc had been neglected.
The American Congress and Secretary for Foreign Affairs at
first were also disposed to blame the commissioners ; but so
anxious was the country for peace and so much more favora-
ble were the terms obtained than had been expected, that
murmurs of dissatisfaction soon gave place to acclaims of
gratification and delight. The preamble to the treaty con-
tained the saving clause that it should not go into effect un-
til France and England came to an understanding, a fact that
the astute Franklin did not fail to press upon the attention of
the irate Vergennes. However, that condition was soon ful-
filled, and a general peace assured.
The definitive treaty of peace between the United States
and England, which is merely the preliminary treaty over
again, with the exception of the secret article to be noticed in
the note at the end of this chapter, was signed September 3, ^^
i i
l82
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
1 783. His Britannic Majesty acknowledged the United States
to be free, sovereign, and independent States, and relinquished
for himself, his heirs, and successors "all claim to the govern-
mt nt, propriety, and territorial right of the same and every
pa;t thereof ;" assigning them boundaries that have proved
to be more satisfactory than those proposed by Congress in
1779 could have been. It was a treaty of partition of the
British Empire, and of the English-speaking world. At the
time, British statesmen generally dreaded its effect on the
Mother Country, but time has proved it a godsend to her as
well as to America.
The happy issue of this negotiation was very largely due
to William, Earl of Shelburne, afterward first Marquis of
Lansdowne. Both as Secretary for the Colonies In the Rock-
ingham Cabinet, and as Prime Minister, he was governed by
the sentiment that he thus expressed : " Reconciliation with
America on the noblest terms by the noblest means." Had
the negotiation remained open at the downfall of his ministry,
which was largely the result of the liberal terms that he gave
the Americans, and so passed into the hands of the Fox-North
coalition, no one can tell what the fate of the West would
have been.
It is impossible nicely to divide among Dr. Franklin, Mr.
Adams, and Mr. Jay, the honor of saving the West to their
country. On that issue, Mr. Adams was unquestionably
firm. A tradition has floated down the stream of diplomacy
to the effect that Dr. Franklin was indifferent, or at least dis-
posed to yield ; but we have Mr. Jay's express testimony to
the contrary,' to say nothing of the improbability of the Doc-
tor's taking such a course, in view of his Western record as
set forth in a previous chapter. However, the man who goes
through the original documents, including the discussions at
Madrid as well as those at Paris, will be pretty certain to con-
clude that the old Northwest has greater reason for gratitude
to John Jay than to either of his colleagues.
4
' Sparks : Works of Franklin, X., 8,
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 1 83
It is not easy to tell what were the decisive arguments in
this Western controversy. It is often said, and particularly by
Western writers, that the issue turned miiinly on the George
Rogers Clark conquest. This view rests on tradition rather
than on historical evidence, and I venture the opinion that it
is largely erroneous. No man, at least, can read the reports on
the national boundaries submitted to Congress v/ithout seeing
that far more reliance was laid, by the committees that pre-
pared them, on the colonial charters than on Clark's great
achievement. The report of August 16, 1782, urges the argu-
ment : " The very country in question hath been conquered
through the means of the common labors of the United
States;" " for a considerable distance beyond the \lleghany
Mountains, and particularly on the Ohio, American citizens
are actually settled at this day " — " fencible men," not " behind
any of their fellow-citizens in the struggle for liberty," who
will be thrown back within the power of Great Britain if the
Western territory is surrendered to her ; but the same report
contains page after page of arguments based on the charters
and on colonial history. It was indeed most fortunate that
the Virginia troops were in possession of the Illinois and the
Wabash at the close of the war, but there is no reason to
think that the Clark conquest, separate and apart from the
colonial titles, ever would have given the United States the
Great West. Writing to Secretary Livingston, the American
Commissioners give color to the idea that the decision turned
on the charters and not on the conquest. They say the Court
of Great Britain " claimed not only all the lands in the West-
ern country and on the Mississippi, which were not ex-
pressly included in our charters and governments, but also
all such lands within them as remained ungranted by the
King of Great Britain." " It would be endless," they add,
"to enumerate all the discussions and arguments on the sub-
ject." ' It is highly probable that the British ministry, see-
' Diplomatic Correspondence, X., 117.
1 84
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ing that the West would go to Spain if not to the United
States, preferred to give it the latter direction. Moreover, the
Clark conquest was much more potent in keeping the West
from falling into the hai.ds of Spain than in wresting it fro
the hands of England.
The refusal of England to surrender so much of the
Northwest as remained in her hands at the close of the war
is a very striking proof of the reluctance with which she
consented to the Northwestern boundaries. In July, 1783,
Washington sent Baron Steuben to General Haldiman, Brit-
ish commander in Canada, with a commission to receive pos-
session of Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Mackinaw, and the
minor posts ; but Haldiman made reply that he had not re-
ceived instructions for their surrender, and that he could not
even discuss the subject with him. ^it the time there was no
reason for retaining the posts consistent with national good
faith ; afterward the British Government alleged as a reason
the non-fulfilment by this country of certain stipulations of the
treaty of peace. For thirteen years the Northwestern posts
were sharp thorns in the sides of the United States. The Rev-
olution was followed by a harassing Indian war that, in reality,
never ceased until Wayne's victory of the Fallen Timbers, in
1794 ; and from its first day to its last the savages found al-
ways sympathy, and often active support, at the British gar-
risons. British ofificers, audaciously invading territory which
they did not hold at the end of the war, built Fort Miami
at the rapids of the Maumee, where Perrysburg, O., now
stands. General Wayne pursued the Indians under the very
muzzles of the cannon of this fortification, and laid waste the
surrounding country to its gates. The Indian war and the
British occupation, that had been so closely connected, virtu-
ally ceased at the same time. In 1795, Wayne negotiated
with the Indians the Treaty of Greenville, and, the year be-
fore. Jay negotiated with the British Government the treaty
that bears his nariiC, by which England bound herself to
yield possession of the posts that she should have yielded in
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 18$
1783. On July II, 1796, a detachment from Wayne's army
raised the stars and stripes above the stockade and village of
Detroit, where the French and British colors had successively
waved, and this act completed the tardy transfer of the old
Northwest to the United States. No doubt England had
some reason to complain of the United States for the imper-
fect fulfilment of the treaty of 1783 ; but her retention of the
posts, so calamitous in results to the growing Western settle-
ments, was largely due to a lingering hope that the young re-
public would prove a failure, and to a determination to share
the expected spoil. The fact is, neither England nor Spain
regarded the Treaty of Paris as finally settling the destiny of
the country west of the mountains.
It is not improbable that the War of 18 12, for a time,
revived English hopes of again recovering the Northwest.
Tecumsch strove to erect his " dam " to resist " the mighty
water ready to overflow his people." Hull's surrender placed
ail Michigan in British hands. General Proctor sought to
compel the citizens of Detroit to take the oath of allegiance
to the King of England ; and although Harrison's successes
on the Maumee and Perry's victory on Lake Erie forced Proc-
tor to evacuate Detroit, a British garrison continued to hold
Mackinaw to the close of the war. Only three of the thirty-
two years lying between 1783 and 1815 were years of war;
but for one-half of the whole time the British flag was flying
on the American side of the boundary-line. In the largest
sense, therefore, the destiny of the Northwest was not assured
until the Treaty of Ghent.
The Iroquois called themselves the owners of the lands
northwest of the Ohio ; the Indians living on those lands they
considered simply as occupants or tenants. It is obvious that
the tenants valued them much more highly than the owners.
The long wars that the Western Indians waged for Ohio tell
the story of their affection for their homes. The same wars
also tell at what fearful cost the American frontier was ex-
tended west of the Alleghany Mountains. From the defeat
1 86
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
of Braddock, in 1755, onward to Wayne's Treaty, in 1795,
with a few short intermissions, that frontier was undergoing a
constant baptism of fire and blood.
The original United States were bounded on the north by
Great Britain, on the west and south by Spain, arid on the
east by the Ocean — the last named being the only neighbor
with whom we never had any trouble. One of the most
striking evidences of the value of this domain, and of its ad-
mirable position, is the remarkable growth of the United
States. An area of eight hundred and twenty-seven thou-
sand square miles has become an area of three million six
hundred thousand. Parallel thirty-one degrees north and
the Mississippi have given place, as boundaries, to the Gulf
of Mexico, the Rio Grande, and the Pacific Ocean. Our
marvellous territorial expansion and material development
westward discourage prophecy ; but, at this time, it does
not seem probable that the territory wrested from England
will soon, if ever, cease to be the most valuable part of our
whole national domain, described by Mr. Gladstone as "a
natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever estab-
lished by man."
The man curious about " what might have been " cannot
help speculating on the course of history provided any one of
the limitation-schemes proposed at Paris had prevailed. As
he reflects on the facts of geography, on the strength and au-
dacity of American civilization, on the weakness of Spanish
America and of Spain herself, and on the feeble Canadian
settlements in 1783, he may conclude that the eastern half of
the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic Plain would have
been reunited even if once separated ; that the idea of separa-
tion, supported in some form by the three powers, was against
Nature ; that Spain, in particular, lost her only opportunity
to control the Father of Waters in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, and that the great valley of the West was
the predestined field of Anglo-Saxon institutions and life.
There is undeniable force in this reasoning ; perhaps it is al-
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FKOM ENGLAND. 187
together conclusive. At the same time, the proposed limita-
tion might have turned American events into wholly differ-
ent channels. What if the Confederacy had fallen to pieces ?
What if the Constitution of 1787 had never been frimed or
ratified ? What if the United States had become dependent
upon one of the European powers ? In any one of these
events, the world would never have seen that magnificent
growth which has absorbed territories four times as great as
that bounded by the treaty of 1783, and which furnishes the
main argument for the conclusion, "It would have made lit-
tle difference." The longer one considers the subject, the less
will he be disposed to think that the delivery of the West by
the trustee appointed in 1763 was a foregone conclusion ; the
more will he think the retention of the Northwest by Great
Britain would have been a much more serious mischance than
the gaining of the Southwest by Spain ; and the more reason
will he discover for congratulation that the logic of events
gave us our proper boundaries at the close of the War of Inde-
pendence, and did not leave us to succumb to untoward fate
or to renew the struggle with two European powers instead
of one in after years.
Note. — Article 2 of the Treaty of Paris reads thus : "And
that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of
the boundaries of the United States may be prevented, it is here-
by agreed and declared that the following are and shall be their
boundaries, namely : From the northwest angle of Nova Scotia,
namely, that angle which is formed by a line drawn due north
from the source of St. Croix River to the Highlands ; along the
said Highlands, which divide those rivers that empty themselves
into the River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the
Atlantic Ocean, to the northwesternmost head of Connecticut
River ; thence down along the middle of that river to the forty-
£fth degree of north latitude ; from thence, by a line due west
on tlie said latitude, until it strikes the River Iroquois or Cata-
raquy [that is, the St. Lawrence] ; thence along the middle of
said river into Lake Ontario, through the middle of said lake
i88
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
until it strikes the communication by water between that lake
and Lake Erie ; thence along the middle of said communica-
tion into Lake Erie, through the middle of said lake until it ar-
rives at the water communication between that lake and Lake
Huron ; thence along the middle of said water commuftication
into the Lake Huron; thence through the middle of said lake
to the water communication between that lake and Lake Su-
perior ; thence through Lake Superior northward of the isles
Royal and Philipeaux to the Long Lake ; thence through the
middle of said Long Lake and the water communication be-
tween it and the Lake of the Woods to tlie said Lake of the
Woods ; thence through the said lake to the most northwestern
point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the
R!ver Mississippi ; thence by a line to be drawn along the mid-
dle of the said River Mississippi until it shall intersect the
northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of nortli latitude.
South, by a line to be drawn due east from the determination
of the line last mentioned, in the latitude of thirty-one degrees
north of the equator, to the middle of the River Appalachicola
or Catahouche ; thence along the middle thereof to its junc-
tion with the Flint River ; thence straight to the head of St.
Mary's River, and thence down along tlie middle of St. Mary's
River to the Atlantic Ocean. East, by a line to be drawn along
the middle of the River St. Croix, from its mouth in the Bay of
Fundy to its source, and from its source directly north to the
aforesaid Highlands, which divide the rivers that fall into the
Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the River St. Law-
rence ; comprehending all islands within twenty leagues of any
part of the shores of the United States, and lying between lines
to be drawn due east from the points where the aforesaid boun-
daries between Nova Scotia, on the one part, and East Florida,
on the other, shall respectively touch the Bay of Fundy and
the Atlantic Ocean, excepting such islands as now are or here-
tofore have been within the limits of the said province of Nova
Scotia."
The fullest report of the discussion of the Western question,
at Paris, found in any contemporary State paper,is in the letter
that the Commissioners wrote to Mr. Livingston, July i8, 1783,
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THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 189
in reply to his censure " for signing the treaty without commu-
nicating it to the Court of Versailles till after the signature, and
in concealing the separate article from it even when signed."
The preceding narrative is sufficiently full touching the rea-
sons for secrecy, but a few remarks may properly be added
concerning the secret article, which was in these words : " It is
hereby understood and agreed that in case Great Britain, at
the conclusion of the present war, shall recover or be put lu
possession of West Florida, the line of north boundary be-
tween tlie said province and the United States sliall be a line
drawn from the mouth of the River Yazoo where it unites with
the Mississippi due east to the River Appalachicola." This
line was the northern boundary of West Florida as established
in 1764. At the time of the negotiation this province was in the
possession of the Spanish troops, and it was a question what
disposition would be made of it at the general peace. The
Commissioners show very plainly that this question materially
affected the whole Western negotiation. Mr. Oswald, wishing
to cover as mucli of the eastern shores of the Mississippi with
British claims as possible had much to say of "the ancient
boundaries " of Canada and Louisiana ; and the British Court,
expecting to regain the Flo. Idas, " seemed desirous of annexing
as much territory to them as possible, even up to the mouth of
the Ohio."
Oswald avowed the desire to render the British countries
on the gulf large enough " to be worth keeping and protect-
ing," and also to gain a convenient retreat for the Tories ;
but he finally consented to yield to the United States the
country north of the Yazoo line, if the Commissioners would
yield to England south of that line. Hence it will be seen
that the secret article was a bargain between the parties. At
the same time the Commissioners say: "We were of opin-
ion that the country in conquest was of great value, both on
account of its natural fertility and of its position, it being, in
oar opinion, the interest of America to extend as far down
toward the mouth of the Mississippi as we possibly could." '
' Diplomatic Correspondence, X., 187 et seq.
190
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Hi
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:
This boundary-description flows smooth, but it is doubtful
if the same number of words in a treaty ever concealed more
seeds of controversy. To draw boundary-lines on paper is
one thing ; to go upon the ground where they are supposed
to fall, with instruments to run and mark them, is quite an-
other, as the high contracting parties in this case found to their
cost the moment an attempt was made to transfer the treaty-
lines to the surface of the earth. No doubt the diplomatists at
Paris used the language in good faith ; but their lines had to
be drawn, not only on paper, but also through vast wildernesses
uninliabited and unexplored, and some of the lines, naturally,
were found impracticable. In part, however, the disputes that
arose had other sources than ignorance of geography. Serious
doubts having arisen as to the practicability of reaching the
Mississippi by a due west line from the nortluvesternmost point
of the Lake of the Woods, Jay's Treaty provided that measures
should be taken in concert to survey the Upper Mississippi, and
that, in case the due-west line was found impracticable, the
" two powers would thereupon proceed by amicable negotia-
tion to regulate the boundary in that quarter," etc. 1 have
found no trace of such a survey being made, and the boundary
was not fixed for more than twenty years thereafter,'
A convention was signed, May 12, 1803, by the representa-
tives of the two powers, which contained arrangements for de-
termining the boundary from the Lake of the Woods to tlie Mis-
sissippi. But at the same time that Rufus King was negotiating
this treaty in London with Lord Ilawkesbury, Messrs. Living-
ston and Monroe were negotiating a much more i'amiliar one
in Paris with the ministers of the First Consul. This was the
treaty for the cession of Louisiana to the United States, signed
April 30, 1803. When the London treaty came before the Sen-
ate, the argument was made that the Louisiana cession would
affect the line from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi
River; the Senate accordingly struck out the article, which the
' The best maps of the period put down the course of the river above the
forty-fifth parallel as "the Mississippi by conjecture." McMaster : History of
the People of the United States, II., 153.
THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 19I
British Government resented, and so the whole treaty fell. By
the purchase of 1803 we succeeded to all the rights, as respects
Louisiana, that had belonged to Spain or France, and this car-
ried us, west of the Mississippi, north to the British posses-
sions. By a convention dated October 20, 1818, the United
States and England settled the Lake of the Woods controversy,
and established the boundary between them to the Rocky
Mountains.
"It is agreed that a line drawn from the most northwestern
point of the Lake of the Woods, along the forty-ninth parallel
of north latitude, or if the said point shall not be in the forty-
ninth parallel of north latitude, then that a line drawn from the
said point due north or south, as the case may be, until the
said line shall intersect the said parallel of north latitude, and
from the point of such intersection due west along and with
the said parallel, shall be the line of demarcation between the
territories of the United States and those of His Britannic
Majesty, and that the said line shall form the northern boun-
dary of the said territories of the United States, and the south-
ern boundary of the territories of His Britannic Majesty, from
the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains."
This extract, together with the facts of geography, explains
the singular projection of our northern boundary on the west
side of the Lake of the Woods, which first appeared on ordi-
nary maps some ten years ago.
The line from the intersection of the St. Lawrence and par-
allel 45° north to the foot of the St. Marys was established in
1823, by joint commission under the Treaty of Ghent ; the line
from the foot of the St. Marys to the northwesternmost point
of Lake of the Woods, by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in
1842.
1;^
i
XI.
THE NORTHWESTERN LAND-CLAIMS.
The second part of the chapter devoted to the territorial
questions growing out of the royal patents and charters closed
with a promise to consider, in the proper place, the similar
question affecting the old Northwest. In fact, the only
reason for introducing the charters at all is their bearing on
Western questions. Accordingly, this chaj^ter will be given
to a statement of the Western land-claims ; the two fol-
lowing chapters, to their settlement. Unfortunately, the dis-
cussion of the' whole subject is often colored by State feel-
ing or by patriotism. Connecticut writers are apt to stand
for the Connecticut claim. New York writers for the New
York claim, while Virginians pride themselves on Virginia's
being the mother of States as well as of statesmen. Again,
Western men, little disposed to admit that the Northwestern
States were the children of the Atlantic commonwealths, and
fond of looking at the subject from a national point of view,
tend either to belittle or to deny the titles of the claimant
States to the Western lands.
In her constitution of 1776, Virginia ceded, released, and
forever confirmed to the people of Maryland, Pennsylvania,
and North and South Carolina, the territories contained
v/ithin their charters, so far as they were embraced in her
charter of 1609, with all the rights of property, jurisdiction,
and government, and all other rights that had ever been
claimed by Virginia, except the navigation of certain rivers;
after which she said :
THE NORTHWESTERN LAND-CLAIMS.
193
" The western and northern extent of Virginia shall, in all
other respects, stand as fixed by the charter of King James L,
in the year one thousand six hundred and nine, and the public
treaty of peace between the Courts of Britain and France, in
the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three ; unless,
by act of this Legislature, one or more governments be estab-
lished westward of the Alleghany Mountains. And no pur-
chases of lands shall be made of the Indian natives, but on be-
half of the public, by authority of the General Assembly."
This declaration meant, that Virginia claimed the whole
Northwest as falling within her west and northwest lines.
The claim has been often denied by historians, statesmen,
lawyers, and pamphleteers, on grounds that will be stated as
concisely as is consistent with clearness.
Probably no bolder or stronger denial was ever made than
that of Hon. Samuel F. Vinton, of counsel for the defendants
in the case of Virginia vs. Peter M. Garner and others,' be-
fore the General Court of Virginia, in December, 1845. The
legal question involved was that of the boundary between the
States of Virginia and Ohio. In the course of his argument to
the court Mr. Vinton affirmed the following historical propo-
sitions :
(i) " That Virginia, during the War of the Revolution, set
up a claim to the country beyond the Ohio;" (2) "that she
never had a valid title to it ; " (3) " that her title, not only to
it, but to both sides of the Ohio, was disputed by the Con-
' Garner and the other defendants, citizens of Ohio, were seized by a party of
Virginians, between low-water and high-water mark, on the north side of the
Ohio River, in the act of assisting some slaves belonging to one Harwood, a
Virginian, to escape from slavery. The case went up from Wood County to the
General Court on a special verdict, the question being whether the defendants
were, at the time of meeting and assisting the slaves, witliin the jurisdiction
of Virginia or of Ohio. The case is reported at length in Grattan, Reports of
Cases decided in the Supreme Court of Appeals and in the General Court of Vir-
ginia, III., 655. Mr. Vinton's argument was published in pamphlet. Marietta,
0., 1846 ; and it is also found in the Second Annual Report of the Ohio State
Fish Commission, 1877.
13
194
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
liii
federacy, and by other States ; " (4) " that they claimed all
that she asserted a right to ; " (5) " that, in the end, she ad-
justed her claim by compromise ; " (6) " that she relinquished
her claim beyond the Ohio with the express understanding
that the acceptance of her act of cession was not to be taken
as an admission by the Confederacy (who was the grantee)
that Virginia had a title to the country ceded by her ; " (7)
" that the separate and acknowledged right of Virginia to the
country on the lower, and of the Confederacy to that on the
upper, bank of the Ohio, began with this compromise."
From these propositions Mr. Vinton deduced others of a
legal nature that do not here concern us.
These seven propositions may all be reduced to two, for
convenience. The first of these, the absolute denial of the
charter-title, is supported by this chain of reasoning: (i) The
Virginia grant of 1609 was made in total ignorance of the ex-
tent of the continent and of the grant sought to be conveyed ;
(2) the English king at that time had no right or title to the
lands included within the limits beyond the Atlantic slope;
(3) the charter was annulled by a writ of quo ivarranto issued
by the Court of King's Bench in 1624, and was never re-
newed ; (4) the English Crown's later title to the country be-
tween the Alleghaniesand the Mississippi was the treaty with
France in 1763 ; (5) the Crown plainly signified by numerous
acts, as the proclamation of 1763 and the Walpole grant of
1772, that colonial Virginia did not extend beyond the moun-
tains, and that the over-mountain lands were Crown lands;
and (6) later grants than that of 1609, as those to the Caro-
lina proprietors, to Baltimore and Penn, and to the New Eng-
land colonies, show that the Crown did not regard those limits
as conclusive, either on the sea-shore or in the West. Mr.
Vinton rested his second cardinal proposition, that Virginia's
title to the country southeast of the Ohio is a compromise
with other States and with Congress, made in 1784, on the
history of the cessions. The cessions will be treated in the
next chapters, and need not be anticipated here. Nearly all
THE NORTHWESTERN LAND-CLAIMS.
195
the judges who gave opinions in Garner's case waived the his-
torical issue that Mr. Vinton had raised, on the ground that
a Virginia court could not question the fundamental law of
the State; but the temptation proved so strong that some of
them discussed the subject more or less at length. McComas,
Judge, thus touched some of the points involved :
" It will not be necessary to inquire into the rights of the
British king, because no civilized nations had claim to the
country except England and France ; and, by treaty between
those two nations, the boundaries were ascertained and fixed
between them ; and the territory in controversy was acknowl-
edged to be in the English Crown, and of course by that treaty
the title of Virginia to the lands contained in her charter, and
comprehended in the limits of the British possessions, was con-
firmed, and thereby made good. The British king by several
acts, and particularly by grants of large tracts of land, ac-
knowledged that the Northwestern territory was within the
jurisdiction and limits of Virginia. . . . But it is stated
that the charter of Virginia was annulled, and that she has no
right to claim under said charter. It has been decided, and I
think rightly, 'that *^he charter was annulled so far as the rights
of the company were concerned, but not in respect to the rights
of the Colony, The powers of government, the same powers
which the charter had vested in the company as proprietor,
were vested in the Crown : the same title to the lands within its
chartered limits, which the charter had vested in the company,
was revested in the Crown.' . . .
"In relation to the territory northwest of the Ohio River,
it ought to be recollected that during the Revolutionary War,
and before the cession, Virginia conquered the territory by her
own troths, unaided by the other States of the Union; and
formed the whole territory into the county of Illinois. It
therefore seems to me, as the territory was not within the
chartered limits of any other State, and as it undoubtedly be-
longed to the British Crown, this conquest would give Virginia
an undoubted right to it."
196 THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Lomax, Judge, held that :
"The charter of 1609 was the commencement of the colo-
nial or political existence of Virginia ; and it was that charter
which separated and designated the country called Virginia,
and the community which was settled upon it. That charter
became the primal and perpetual law of this Commonwealth.
The Crown of England, when by the judgment of quo warranto
against the company in London it took the charter out of their
hands, did not cancel the charter. The government of the Col-
ony, when it thereby became a Royal Colony, was still ad-
ministered according to the scheme of government established
by the previous charters. The rights guaranteed to the people
of Virginia by that charter, were frequently and strenuously
appealed to, down to the time of the Revolutionary contest, as
the chartered rights of Virginians. In March, 1651, the treaty
between Virginia and the commonwealth of England, stipu-
lated that Virginia should have, and enjoy the ancient bounds
and limits granted by the charters of the former Kings. This
was a recognition in the most solemn form, notwithstanding
the judgment above referred to in 1624, of the boundaries of
Virginia and of her ancient charters. The subsequent grants
by the King to Penn, Baltimore, and Carteret could not disturb
those limits, but to the extent that those grants conveyed ; and
even to that extent were remonstrated against by the colony.
. . . There are many public acts of the Colonial govern-
ment of Virginia, in which her title was asserted, and dominion
exercised by her over the territories she claimed, as her west-
ern territories, extending to the River Oliio, and beyond it,
including the present State of Ohio ; nor was any question
ever raised as to that title or dominion by any civilized people,
except for a time by the French. These acts show that she
had extended her jurisdiction over the Northwestern territory
which was ceded, and that she had made grants of lands and
settlements on the Ohio. In all these acts the consent of the
King, the proprietor of the colony, must necessarily have been
given by himself or those who were authorized by him to give
it. For in all the laws and public acts of the Colony, the ap-
THE NORTHWESTERN LAND-CLAIMS.
197
probation of the sovereign, or of a substitute, fully represent-
ing him as to that matter, was indispensable."
The learned judge then recounts a long series of public
acts in which Virginia exercised sovereignty west of the
mountains. Among the most prominent of these are the cre-
ation of counties: Orange, in 1734; Augusta, in 1738; Bote-
tourt, in 1769, " bounded west by the utmost limits of Vir-
ginia." The act creating one of these counties speaks of
"the people situated on the waters of the Mississippi" as
living " very remote from their court-house." Other coun-
ties erected before the Revolution extended to the Ohio, and
embraced Kentucky. The Dinwiddle proclamation of 1754,
offering lands to volunteers to serve against the French — one
hundred thousand acres contiguous to the fort at the Forks
of the Ohio, and one hundred thousand on or near the Ohio
-was recognized by the Virginia land-law of 1779. In 1752
and 1753 Virginia passed acts for encouraging persons to settle
on the Mississippi (" meaning, doubtless, the waters of Ohio ") ;
and in 1754 and 1755 acts for their protection. Grants of land
on the southeastern side of the Ohio, made in the colonial
period, were numerous. Marshall's " Life of Washington " is
quoted as authority for the statement that the grant made
to the Ohio Company in 1748 was made as a part of Virginia.
The proclamation of 1763 was obviously designed for the pres-
ervation of peace with the Indians, and their enjoyment of
the hunting-grounds. The Treaty of Paris, 1763, limited the
colony on the west ; but Virginia continued to fill up and oc-
cupy, both geographically and politically, the territory to the
Mississippi, " until that signal act of her sovereignty over the
Western territories was exercised by her in the cession she
made of them in March, 1784, and which was consummated by
the acceptance of it by the United States in Congress assem-
bled upon the sam< day."
These facts cer- nly demolish Mr. Vinton's proposition
that the Virginia claim was •' set up " during the Revolution.
^^
fill
198
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
The grant made to the Duke of York in 1664 was
bounded on the west by the Delaware River. But at the
beginning of the Revolution, as well as before that time,
New York claimed a far greater western extension, on these
grounds: (i) That the grant to the Duke of York and the
boundary east of the Hudson barred the New England colonies
on the west ; (2) that the quo warranto of 1624 and the grant to
Penn limited Virginia and Pennsylvania on the west, the first
by the Alleghanies, the second by the five-degree line west
of the Delaware ; (3) that the country west of these lines be-
longed to the Iroquois, in the north from times immemorial,
in the south after the Iroquois conquest of 1664 ; (4) that after
1624, 1664, and 1 68 1, the pre-emption of the West was vested
in the Crown, not in particular colonies ; (5) that the acces-
sion of the Duke of York, the proprietary of the province, to
the throne, in 1685, afifiliated the territory on the two sides
of the Delaware north of Penn's line ; and (6) that the later
Iroquois treaties made the whole Western country, from the
Lower Lakes to the Cumberland Mountains, and from Vir-
ginia and Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River, a part of
New York. A report on the Western land-claims, made in
Congress, November 3, 1781, preferred the New York claims
to all those with which it conflicted, and thus justified the
preference :
" I. It clearly appeared to your committee, that all the lands
belonging to the Six Nations of Indians, and their tributaries,
have been in due form put under the protection of the crown
of England by the said Six Nations, as appendant to the late
government of New York, so far as respects jurisdiction only.
" 2. That the citizens of the said colony of New York have
borne the burthen both as to blood and treasure, of protecting
and supporting the said Six Nations of Indians, and their tribu-
taries, for upwards of one hundred years last past, as the de-
pendents and allies of the said government.
" 3. That the crown of England has always considered and
treated the country of the said Six Nations, and their tributa-
THE NORTHWESTERN LAND-CLAIMS.
199
ries, inhabiting as far as the 45th degree of north latitude, as
appendant to the government of New York.
"4. That the neighboring colonies of Massachusetts, Con-
necticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, have also,
from time to time, by their public acts, recognized and admitted
the said Six Nations and their tributaries, to be appendant to
the government of New York.
" 5. That by Congress accepting this cession, the jurisdic-
tion of the whole western territory belonging to the Six Na-
tions, and their tributaries, will be vested in the United States
greatly to the advantage of the Union." '
At this distance it is difficult, notwithstanding the particu-
larity of this report, to repel Mr. Hildreth's characterization of
the New York claim as the " vaguest and most shadowy of
all." ' Furthermore, there is reason to think the report part
of a political scheme that will be duly noticed hereafter. But
here it is pertinent to point out that this claim was virtually
the claim to the Northwest which England made just before
the French War, characterized by Mr. Parkman as including
every mountain, forest, or prairie where an Iroquois had taken
a scalp.'
The two New England States rested their claims on the
charters with which the reader is already familiar. Connecti-
cut's claim, at the beginning of the Revolution, was the zone
lying between parallels 41° and 42° 2' north latitude, and
Massachusetts's, the zone north of this to the parallel of three
miles beyond the inflow of Lake Winnipiseogee in New
Hampshire ; both claims extending from the Delaware and
the line thereof to the Mississippi. Connecticut's claim was
largely reduced by the Trenton decision of 1782 ; but this
in no way affected her rights west of Pennsylvania. It was
urged that these claims were barred west of the present west-
' Journals of Congress, IV., 21, 22.
' Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 125.
' History, III., 399.
i
,.,....1;.,
P
if/-.
200
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
crn limits of these States: (i) By the words, " actually pes-
scssed aiui occupied by a Christian people or prince," found
in the Plymouth charter of 1620, because they related to the
lands west of the Dutch settlements ; (2) by the presence of
the Dutch on the Hudson in 1620, 1629, and 1662; (3) by
the grant to the Duke of York ; (4) by the boundary-settle-
ment of 1733 ; (5) by the grant to Penn in 1681 ; and (6) by
New York's Iroquois title. Stress was also laid on the old
argument against the from sea-to-sea grants ; viz., they were
made in ignorance of geography, and included vast tracts of
land that did not, at the time, belong to the English Crown.
The most important of these points were sustained by Attor-
ney-General Pratt in 1761, who also held that there were
State reasons for deciding the Wyoming controversy in favor
of Pennsylvania ; but Thurlow, and the other Crown lawyers
consulted by Connecticut, held that the reservation made in
the charter of 1620 did " not extend to lands on the west side
of the Dutch settlements ; " that the Plymouth grant did not
mean to except in favor of anyone anything to the westward
of such plantations; that the agreement of 1733 between
Connecticut and New York extended " no further than to
settle the boundaries between the respective parties," and
" had no effect upon other claims that either of them had in
other parts ; " and that as the charter to Connecticut was
granted but eighteen years before that to Penn, there was " no
ground to contend that the Crown could, at that period,
make an effective grant to him of that country which had
been so recently granted to others." '
The two New England claims rested on substantially the
same foundation ; but it is curious to note how differently
they were treated east of the western limits of Pennsylvania
and New York. A Federal court threw the one claim aide
as invalid, while the State of New York virtually cone ^ed
' Hoyt gives the substance of the two opinions : Title in the Seventeen Town-
ships in the County of Luzerne, 32, 33.
, Town-
.OP-
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tj'i^
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A-'*
THE NORTHWESTERN LAND-CLAIMS.
201
the validity of the other in her compromise with Massachu-
setts in 1786.
The report of the committee on the national limits made
August 16, 1782, assigns the treaties of 1684, 1701, 1726, 1744,
and 1754, with the Six Nations, as the sources of New York's
title to the West.' The report of January 8th on the same
subject speaks of the royal geographer, in a map describing
and distinguishing the British, Spanish, and French dominions
in America according to the treaty of 1763, as carrying the
States of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Vir-
ginia as far as the Mississippi." Some maps of that period, it
may be added, do carry the east and west lines of these States
as far as the great river ; others carry them no farther than
the mountains; but all maps making any pretentions to thor-
oughness lay down the lines of the royal proclamation.
Such were the Northwestern land-claims that, for many
years, were a foremost question of domestic polity. Practi-
cally they were not heard of until the time came for the
American column to pass the Endless Mountains and take
possession of the Great West. And, strange to say consider-
ing the vehemence with which they were afterward disputed,
the first time they were brought before a Congress of the
Colonics they met with a unanimous approval.
NoTK. — These are the resolutions in which the Albany Con-
gress set its seal to the claims in 1754.
"That His Majesty's title to the northern continent of
America appears to be founded on the discovery thereof first
made, and the possession thereof first taken in 1497, under a
commission from Henry the Seventh of England to Sebastian
Cabot : That the French luive possessed themselves of several
parts of this continent, which by treaties have been ceded and
confirmed to them.
"That the right of the English to the whole sea-coast from
Georgia on the south, to the river St. Lawrence on the north,
' Secret Journals, IIL, l68.
"Ibid., IIL, 154.
■' *.v,*
202
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
excepting the Island of Cape Breton, and the Islands in the bay
of St. Lawrence remains indisputable :
" That all the lands or countries westward from the Atlantic
Ocean to the South Sea, between 48 and 34 degrees north lati-
tude, was expressly included in the grant of King Charles the
First to divers of his subjects, so long since as the year 1606,
and afterwards confirmed in 1620, and under this grant the
colony of Virginia claims extent as far west as the South Sea,
and the ancient colonies of the Massachusetts Bay and Con-
necticut, were by their respective charters made to extend to
tlie said South Sea ; so that not only the right to the sea-coast,
but all the inland countries from sea to sea, has at all times
been asserted by the crown of England :
"That the bounds of those colonies, which extend to the
South Seas, be contracted and limited by the Alleghany or
Appalachian mountains ; and that measures be taken for settling
from time to time, colonies of his Majesty's Protestant subjects
west of said mountains, in convenient cantons to be assigned
for that purpose ; and finally, that there be a union of his Maj-
esty's several governments on the continent, that so their coun-
cils, treasures, and strength, may be employed in due propor-
tion against their common enemy."
XII.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.— (I.)
The United States and the States taken together might
possibly have continued conterminous until the Louisiana an-
nexation in 1803, provided all the States had been bounded
on the west by the Mississippi River. But such was not the
case. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Dela-
ware, and Maryland were all confined to the Atlantic Plain,
and Pennsylvania did not extend far beyond the Forks of the
Ohio ; while the seven remaining States claimed the whole
West, from the Florida line to the Lakes, and some of it two
and even three times over. The division of the States into
the two clabses, in connection with the nature of the Avar,
made the Western lands an inevitable issue. The claimant
States were more numerous, more populous, and more wealthy
than the non-claimant States, not to speak of their territorial
superiority ; they also stood on the plain federal principle
that the Confederation was the States confederated ; but they
could not prevent the issue being raised or prevent its going
against them in the end. Before the boundaries of 1783
were agreed upon. Congress had adopted a policy that ul-
timately gave the jurisdiction of the West, and a large part of
the lands, to the nation ; and we are now to follow the de-
velopment of this policy so far as it relates to our subject.
On October 14, 1777, Congress adopted the following rule
for supplying the treasury of the United States :
" All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be
incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and al-
204
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
lowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be
defrayed out of a common treasury which shall be supplied by
the several states, in proportion to the value of all land within
each state granted to, or surveyed for, any person, as such
land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be esti-
mated according to such mode as the United States in Con-
gress assembled shall from time to time direct and appoint." '
This rule, which left the States wholly free to raise the
supplies for the treasury in their own way, was made a part
of Article VIII. of the Articles of Confederation. The vote
on this rule does not appear to have been influenced by the
land-issue. That issue was first raised the following day,
when this proposition, submitted no doubt by one of the
delegates from that State, received the single vote of Mary-
land :
" That the United States in Congress assembled shall have
the sole and exclusive right and power to ascertain and fix the
western boundary of such states as claim to the Mia^lssippi or
the South Sea, and lay out the land beyond the boundary so ascer-
tained into separate and independent states, from time to time, as the
numbers and circumstances of the people thereof may require."
Because this was the first proposition " that Congress should
exercise sovereign jurisdiction over the Western country,"
Prof. H. B. Adams calls it a " pioneer thought. " " In one re-
spect it is a very different thought from that which finally
prevailed. The proposition was really double — an end to be
gained and a means of gaining it. The end was national
jurisdiction over the Western lands ; the means, the assertion
of this jurisdiction by Congress, no more attention being paid
to the claimant than to the non-claimant States. It was a
' The history of the Confederation in Congress is found in the Secret Jour-
nals of Congress, I., 2S3 ct seq. The citations will be found under the appro-
priate dates.
' Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States, 23.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
205
plain proposition to nationalize the lands. The end was the
highest statesmanship ; but if Congress had adopted the
means of reaching it proposed by Maryland, it is reasonably
certain that the Confederation and the patriot cause would
have been hopelessly wrecked.
Scenting danger, the claimant States, October 27th, caused
a declaration to be incorporated in the Articles that the
United States in Congress assembled should be the last re-
sort, on appeal, in all disputes and differences between two
or more States concerning boundaries, jurisdiction, or any
other cause whatever, with an elaborate machinery for the
exercise of such jurisdiction. The amendment closed with
this bulwark against " pioneer thoughts," or other encroach-
ments, on the Western preserves : " No State shall be de-
prived of territory for the benefit of the United States."
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Vir-
ginia, and North Carolina voted for the amendment ; New
Hampshire voted against it ; New Jersey and South Carolina
were divided ; Maryland and Georgia were not present or
voting ; and Connecticut was not counted, as but one mem-
ber was present.
Within a month of the time that Maryland brought for-
ward her " pioneer thought," the Congress had perfected the
Articles of Confederation ; and November 17, 1777, they
were sent out to the States, with a circular letter recommend-
ing that they empower th^'r delegates in Congress to ratify
them in their name and behalf.
Some of the legislatures promptly gave their delegates
such instructions, and some hesitated, A number of amend-
ments to the Articles were proposed, and of these several re-
lated to the land-question.' One of those that came from
Maryland was a virtual renewal of the proposition of the year
before, but in a somewhat less emphatic form. Rhode Island,
' All the amendments proposed may be found in the Secret Journals, I., un-
der June 22, 23, 1778.
206
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, all non-
claimant States, voted for this amendment ; New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and South Carolina, all
claimant States but the first, voted against it ; New York
was divided ; North Carolina and Georgia were not present
or voting. Rhode Island submitted the following amend-
ment, which was also lost, nine votes to one :
" That all lands within these States, the property of which,
before the present war, was vested in the Crown of Great Brit-
ain, or out of which revenues from quit rents arise payable to
the said Crown, shall be deemed, taken, and considered as the
property of these United States, and be disposed of and ap-
propriated by Congress for the benefit of the whole Confed-
eracy, reserving, however, to the States, within whose limits
such Crown lands may be, the entire and complete jurisdiction
thereof."
New Jersey laid before Congress a lengthy " representa-
tion," in which she stated, though not in the form of amend-
ments, her views on various provisions of the Articles. This
document touched the land-issue at two points: (i) "The
boundaries and limits of each State ought to be fully and
finally fixed and made known;" and if circumstances did not
admit of this being done before the Articles were ratified
and went into effect, then it should be done afterward, not
exceeding five years from the final ratification of the Confeder-
ation. (2) It was urged that the war was undertaken for the
general defence of the confederating States ; that the benefits
derived from a successful contest should be general and pro-
portionate ; that the property of the common enemy, acquired
during the war, should belong to the United States and be
appropriated to their use ; that the Articles of Confederation
should empower Co: ress to dispose of such property, and es-
pecially the vacant and unpatented lands, commonly called
the " Crown Lands," for defraying the expenses of the war, and
for other general purposes ; but that the jurisdiction ought, in
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
207
every instance, to belong to the respective States within the
charter or determined limits of which such lands may be
seated. These recommendations were voted down, receiving
but three votes to six against them.
None of the amendments proposed by the States received
much consideration ; they were voted down one and all, in the
apparent belief that the surest and quickest way to complete
the Confederation was to adhere to the Articles as originally
adopted. It is clear, however, that the opposition to the land^
claims of the claimant States was broadening and deepening.
At the same time, we must not overlook the difference be-
tween the " pioneer thought " brought forward by Maryland
in 1777 and the propositions now submitted by Rhode Island
and New Jersey. The first was that the United States in
Congress assembled should assert jurisdiction over the West-
ern lands ; the others were, that the lands, or parts of them,
should be disposed of for the benefit of all the States, or of the
nation as a unit, not disturbing the jurisdiction.
The Confederation had now been fully ratified by eight
States, and of the five others, North Carolina had empowered
her delegates to do so. The four that had not ratified were
Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia. To these
Congress, on July 10, 1778, sent a circular letter, urging them
to instruct their delegates to ratify " with all convenient des-
patch," putting forward as the one conclusive argument that
Congress had " never ceased to consider a confederacy as the
great principle of union, which can alone establish the liberty
of America, and elude forever the hopes of its enemies."
Future deliberations should be trusted to make such alterations
and amendments as experience might show to be expedient
and just. Georgia responded to this appeal at once, and New
Jersey soon followed.
In the act empowering her delegates to ratify the Articles,
the legislature of New Jersey reaflfirmed that they would, in
diverse particulars, be unequal and disadvantageous to that
State, but that she was willing, in reliance on the justice and
208
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
candor of the several States, to surrender her State interest to
the general good of the Union.' On February 22, 1779, the
Delaware delegates ratified the Articles in behalf of that
State, and the day following laid before Congress some resolu-
tions which the Delaware Council had adopted, asserting that
moderate limits should be assigned to the States claiming to
the Mississippi ; that Congress should have the power of fix-
ing those limits ; also that Delaware was justly entitled to a
right, in common with the other members of the Union, to the
lands westward of the frontiers, the property of which was
vested in individual States at the beginning of the war, but
that ought now " to be a common estate to be granted out on
terms beneficial to the United States," since they have been
or must be gained by the blood and treasure of all. Congress
received and filed this paper, but declared " that it should
never be considered as admitting any claim by the same set
up or intended to be set up."
The ratification of Delaware left Maryland standing soli-
tary and alone ; but she still refused her ratification as
stoutly as ever. Moreover, she refused it on the sole ground
that she defined in the amendment Article proposed October
^S> ^777- ■A.s her assent alone was wanting to complete the
Confederation, Maryland felt compelled to justify herself to
Congress and to her sister States. In fact, she had already
taken the first steps in that direction before Delaware's final
assent to the Articles was given.
On December 15, 1778, the Maryland Legislature adopted
a " declaration," stating her objections to the policy touching
the Western lands thus far pursued. It was declared funda-
mentally wrong and repugnant to every principle of equity
and good policy that Maryland, or any other State entering
into the Confederation, should be burdened with heavy ex-
penses for the subduing and guaranteeing of immense tracts of
country, if she is not in any way to be benefited thereby.
' The Secret Journals, IV., 422.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
209
Maryland will ratify the Confederation when it is so amended
as to give full power to Congress to ascertain and fix the west-
ern limits of the States claiming to extend to the Mississippi,
and expressly to reserve to the United States a right in com-
mon in and to all the lands lying to the westward of the
frontiers as thus fixed, not granted to, or surveyed for, or pur-
chased by individuals at the commencement of the war.
Further, the exclusive claim set up by some States to the
whole Western country is declared to be without any solid
foundation; and it will, if submitted to, prove ruinous to
Maryland and to other States similarly circumstanced, and,
in process of time, be the means of subverting the Confeder-
acy.' This document, which was intended to influence public
opinion as well as Congress, was brought forward in Con-
gress, January 6, 1779; ^"t a longer and more earnest one,
adopted by the General Assembly on the same day, entitled
" Instructions to the Maryland Delegates," was not presented
until May 21st.' The two documents are t'" defince of her
position that Maryland made to the country.
The " instructions " assume that some of the States have
acceded to the Confederation from dread of immediate ca-
lamities growing out of the war and other peculiar circum-
stances, and that, when these causes cease to operate, said States
will consider it no longer binding, but will improve the first
favorable opportunity to assert their just rights and secure
their independence. The Western lands, if the gourse marked
out is persisted in, will present such an opportunity. The
same grasping spirit that leads the claimant States " to insist
on a claim so extravagant, so repugnant to every principle of
justice, so incompatible with the general welfare of the States,
will urge them on to add oppression to injustice." The de-
population and impoverishment of the non-claimant States,
'ff;
' This declaration, with other important papers relating to the same subject,
IS found in Hening's Statutes of Virginia, X., 546 et seq.
* Found in the Secret Journals, under this date.
H
210
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
if not their oppression by open force, will follow. The prob-
able consequences to Maryland of the undisputed possession
by Virginia of the Western country that she claimed are thus
vigorously described :
" Virginia, by selling on the most moderate terms a small
proportion of the lands in question, would draw into her treas-
ury vast sums of money ; and in proportion to the sums arising
from such sales, would be enabled to lessen her taxes. Lands
comparatively cheap, and taxes comparatively low, with the
lands and taxes of an adjacent state, would quickly drain the
State thus disadvantageously circumstanced of its most useful
inhabitants ; its wealth and its consequence in the scale of the
confederated States would sink of course. A claim so injurious
to more than one-half, if not to the whole of the United States,
ought to be supported by the clearest evidence of the right.
Yet what evidences of that right have been produced ? What
arguments alleged in support either of the evidence or the
right ? None that we have heard of deserving a serious refuta-
tion."
To the argument that some of the States were too large
for one practicable government, and that it would be found
necessary to divide them into two States even if the Articles
stood as they were, it was replied that, for a State to divide
its territory to erect under its auspices and direction a new
State, upon which it would impose its own form of govern-
ment, binding the new State to itself by some alliance or con-
federacy, and influencing its councils, thus forming a sub-con-
federacy, imperiuni in imperio, would certainly be opposed by
the other States as inconsistent with the letter and spirit of
the proposed Confederation. Moreover, if these States con-
template such a policy, why insist now upon the territories
that they intend to surrender? But two motives can be as-
signed. Either the suggestion is made to lull suspicion and
to cover the designs of the secret coalition, or the purpose is
to reap an immediate profit from the sale of the lands.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
211
)0 large
found
Articles
divide
a new
govern-
or con-
,ub-con-
)Osed by
spirit oi
^tes con-
:rritories
[n be as-
:ion and
irpose is
The Maryland proposition as presented in 1777 is then re-
affirmed, and the Maryland delegates are instructed not to
ratify the Confederation unless an amendment be added in
conformity with that view ; but should the delegates succeed
in obtaining such an amendment, then they are fully empow-
ered to ratify it. The document closes with a fervent hope
that Congress may be led by these arguments to amend the
Articles in such a manner as to bring about a permanent
union.
The fallacy that there is value in wild lands appears to
have been universally accepted in Congress and the States
one hundred years ago. It was constantly assumed that the
Western lands, when sold, would enormously enrich the claim-
ant States or the Nation, as the case might be ; while experi-
ence has proved, in this case as in many others, that the man
who subdues such land " can," as Professor W. G. Sumner
puts it, " only afford to give a remuneration for the survey
which secures him a definite description and identification of
the land which he has appropriated, and for the authority of
a civil government which protects his title." ' In the long
run, the national Government has not found the public do-
main a source of revenue.
The economical arguments so warmly urged by the non-
claimant States were, therefore, next to worthless. Besides,
the most weighty political arguments in favor of nationalizing
the lands were practically overlooked, or at least not carried
out to their results.
As the Articles were Articles of Confederation and Per-
petual Union among thirteen States, the ratifications of the
twelve did net give them force and effect even over the
twelve. Maryland refur^od to close the circle, and her refusal
was followed by very serious results. The machinery that
' Andrew Jackson as a Public Man, — Professor Sumner says (p. 185) : " Down
'"September 30, 1832, the lands had cost $49.7 million and the total revenue
received from them had amounted to $38.2 million."
'^A
1*.
fid.
MM
212
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
the Articles furnished for filling the treasury and recruiting
the army could not be set in motion ; the domestic and for-
eign enemies of the national cause were elated at the appear-
ance of serious dissensions among the States ; and the friends
of the cause were correspondingly depressed.
Virginia now prepared practically to assert her claim to
the lands west of the Alleghany Mountains. In May, 1779,
the very month that the Maryland instructions were read to
Congress, her legislature passed an act directing the opening
of a land-ofifice the ensuing October, and fixing the terms on
which lands should be sold ; and, about the same time, a sec-
ond act, regulating the land-patents issued by royal authority
to the Virginia officers and troops in the French and Indian
War. The meaning of the two acts was unmistakable : Vir-
ginia proposed to disregard the growing sentiment in favor
of endowing the United States with the Western lands. To
her surprise she immediately called into activity a power that
had been sleeping since the beginning of the war ; the range
of controversy was at once widened, and the way to agree-
ment prepared by increasing the confusion.
On Septic. aber 14, 1779, a memorial signed by George
Morgan in behalf of certain land claimants, was read in
Congress. This memorial recited : That at the Indian Con-
gress held at Fort Stanwix in 1768, in consideration of the
loss of some ;^85,ooo sustained by certain traders, the Six
Nations granted a tract of land, lying on the southern side
of the Ohio between the southern limit of Pennsylvania and
the Little Kanawha River, called Indiana ; that afterward, but
before the war began, this tract of land, as included within
the bounds of a larger tract called Vandalia, was by the King
in Council separated from the dominion which, in right of the
Crown, Virginia claimed over it ; that, as the memorialists
are advised, the said tract is not subject to the jurisdiction of
Virginia or any particular State, but of the United States;
and that the action of Virginia directing the sale of the lands
in question seems intended to defeat the interposition of Con-
^ ■'
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
213
gress. Hence, the memorialists pray Congress to take such
speedy action as shall arrest the sale of the lands until Vir-
ginia and the memorialists can be heard by Congress, and the
rights of the owners of the tract called Vandalia, of which
Indiana is a part, shall be ascertained, in such a manner as may
tend to support the sovereignty of the United States and the
just rights of individuals. A memorial signed by William
Trent, in behalf of Tho as Walpole and his associates in the
Grand Company, was presented at the same time.' New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Virginia, and both the Carolinas
voted against the motion to refer the Morgan memorial to a
committee, but the motion prevailed. Messrs. Witherspoon,
Jenifer, Atlce, Sherman, and Peabody, on October 8th, were
appointed said committee. The Trent memorial had the
same reference. It should be observed that, when the me-
morials were introduced, the Virginia delegates objected that
Congress had no jurisdiction over their subject-matter. The
committee was also instructed to inquire into the foundation
of this objection, and first to report the facts relating to that
point. This action is evidence that Congress was prepared at
least to inquire whether the Nation had any title to lands
in the West,
On October 29, 1779, *^^ committee reported that they
had considered the facts presented to them by the Virginia
delegates ; and that they " could not find any such distinc-
tion between the question of the jurisdiction of Congress
and the merits of the cause as to recommend any decision
upon the first separately from the last." The next day a pre-
amble and resolution offered by the Maryland delegates, but
somewhat amended, was adopted as follows :
"Whereas, the appropriation of vacant lands by the several
states during the continuance of the war will, in the opinion of
Congress, be attended with great mischiefs ; therefore,
' The Morgan memorial is found in the Journals of Congress, III., 359. The
Trent memorial is not found in the Journals at all.
^,»i:!J
214
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
" Resolved, That it be earnestly recommended to the State of
Virginia to reconsider their late act of assembly for opening
their land office ; and that it be recommended to the said State,
and all other States, similarly circumstanced, to forbear set-
tling or issuing warrants for unappropriated lands, or granting
the same during the continuance of the present war." '
Virginia and North Carolina are the only States that
voted in the negative, but New York was divided. This
action at once shifted the onus from Maryland to Virginia.
The Old Dominion was now compelled to speak. On Decem-
ber 14, 1779, her legislature addressed to the delegates of the
United States in Congress assembled a " remonstrance " of
which these are the leading points: (i) That Virginia has al-
ready enacted a law to prevent further settlements on the
northwest banks of the Ohio River; (2) That Virginia learns
with surprise and concern that Congress has received and
countenanced petitions from the Indiana and Vandalia Com-
panies asserting claims to lands within her limits as claimed;
and that for Congress to assume a jurisdiction and right of
adjudication such as granting these petitions would imply,
would be contrary to the fundamental principles of the Con-
federation, would introduce a most dangerous precedent which
might be urged to deprive one or more of the States of terri-
tory, or subvert its sovereignty and government, and establish
in Congress a power which would degenerate into an intoler-
able despotism; (3) that there are many other land-companies
than those that have already petitioned Congress, claiming
lands in the West, repugnant to Virginia's laws ; and that
listening with consideration to the Indiana and Vandalia Com-
panies will encourage these to bring forward their claims ; (4)
Congress have stated their ultimatum as to boundaries in their
terms of peace (in the instructions to Mr. Adams, mentioned
in a previous chapter). " The United States hold no terri-
' Journals of Congress, III., 385.
il'
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
215
tory but in right of some one individual State in the Union ;
the territory of each State from time immemorial hath been
fixed and determined by their respective charters, there being
no other rule or criterion to judge by." The setting aside of
this rule will end in bloodshed among the States. " Nor can
any argument be fairly urged to prove that any particular
tract of country within the limits claimed by Congress on be-
half of the United States, not part of the chartered territory
of some one of them, but must militate with equal force
against the right of the United States in general ; and tend
to prove that tract of country (if northwest of the Ohio
River) part of the British I'rovince of Canada ; " (5) the limits
of Virginia are defined in her constitution of 1776; (6) Vir-
ginia is ready to listen to any just and reasonable proposition
for removing the ostensible causes of delay to the complete rat-
ification of the Confederation — referring, of course, to Mary-
land. Virginia is now ready, as she has before declared herself
ready, to furnish lands northwest of the Ohio to the troops
on the continental establishment of such of the States as have
not unappropriated lands for that purpose ; but she solemnly
"protests against any jurisdiction or right of adjudication in
Congress upon the petitions of the Vandalia or Indiana
Companies, or any other matter or thing subversive of the
internal policy, civil government, or sovereignty of this or
any other of the United American States, as unwarranted by
the Articles of Confederation.'
Firm as is the tone of the remonstrance, it is plain that
Virginia is becoming more yielding and pliable.
Particular attention should be drawn to the bearing of the
question with which we are dealing on the national boun-
daries. Virginia states the point with great force in her re-
monstrance ; and it is perfectly clear, in the light of the facts
already presented, that a denial of the Western titles on
the ground that the Western lands belonged to the Crown,
' Hening's Statutes of Virginia, X.
^H
ffc.
..♦;;.,
2l6
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
tended to subvert the very foundation on which Congress
instructed its foreign representatives to stand while contend-
ing with England, France, and Spain for a westward extension
to the Mississippi. Accordingly, the Maryland doctrine was
a dangerous one ; it left no standing ground on which to con-
tend for the Western country but that of conquest and occu-
pancy. But Congress wisely kept wide of the Maryland path
leading to the Maryland goal, and eventually worked out a
solution of the Western question on the principle of com-
promise and concession.
The first practical step toward a solution of the question
was taken by the State of New York. On January 17, 1780,
her legislature passed an " Act for facilitating the completion
of the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union among
the United States of America." After reciting^ the desirabil-
ity of a more perfect Union, the dissatisfaction of some States
with the Articles, growing out of the waste lands, and the de-
sire of New York to accelerate the Union by removing, as far
as possible, this impediment, the legislature provides: (i)
That the delegates of the State in Congress, or the majority
of them, are authorized and empowered, in behalf of the State,
to limit and restrict its boundaries in the western parts by
such line or lines, and in such manner and form, as they shall
judge to be expedient, with respect either to the jurisdiction
or the right of soil, or both ; (2) that the territory so ceded
shall be and inure for the use and benefit of such of the
United States as shall become members of the federal alli-
ance of the said States, and for no other use or purpose what-
ever ; (3) that such of the lands, so ceded, as shall remain
within the jurisdiction of the State, shall be surveyed, laid
out, and disposed of only as Congress may direct.
Virtually this act was the first of the cessions. It imme-
diately changed the whole situation. Henceforth, the claim-
ant states were compelled to justify themselves to Congress
and the country for not following New York's example.
Moreover, the act is remarkable for the large powers with
^;-^*'
_^ n, 1^, ,, .M^' ■
If'
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
217
which it clothed the New York delegates in Congress, mak-
ing them the sole judges whether the boundaries of the State
should be restricted, and, if so, what should be the manner
and the extent of the restriction. This act was the result of a
growing conviction that the Western country ought not to be-
long solely to the seven claimant States, and of the growth of
national ideas. Professor Adams seeks to prove that it was
the distinct result of Maryland's influence, and his argument,
whether wholly conclusive or not, contains some valuable
information, chiefly drawn from a letter written by General
Philip Schuyler, then a delegate in Congress, to the New
York Legislature, that immediately preceded the Facilitating
Act.'
On Septembci 6, 1780, a committee to whom all the
documents in relation to the subject, accumulated on the
table, had been referred, submitted a report on which the
final issue turned.
"That having duly considered the several matters to them
submitted, they conceive it unnecessary to examine into the
merits or policy of the instructions or declaration of the gener-
al assembly of Maryland, or of the remonstrance of the gener-
al assembly of Virginia, as they involve questions, a discussion
of which was declined, on mature consideration, when the ar-
ticles of confederation were debated ; nor, in the opinion of the
committee, can such questions be now revived with any pros-
pect of conciliation : That it appears more advisable, to press
upon those states which can remove the embarrassments re-
specting the western country, a liberal surrender of a portion
of their territorial claims, since they cannot be preserved entire
without endangering the stability of the general confederacy ;
to remind them how indispensably necessary it is to establish
the federal union on a fixed and permanent b?sis, and on prin-
nples acceptable to all its respective members ; how essential
to public credit and confidence, to the support of the army, to
' Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States, 30 et seq.
2l8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
the vigor of our councils, and success of our measures, to our
tranquillity at home, our reputation abroad, to our very exist-
ence as a free, sovereign, and independent people ; that they are
fully persuaded the wisdom of the respective legislatures will
lead them to a full and impartial consideration of a subject so
interesting to the United States, and so necessary to the happy
establishment of the federal union ; that they are confirmed in
these expectations by a review of the before-mentioned act of
the legislature of New York, submitted to their consideration ;
that this act is expressly calculated to accelerate the federal al-
liance by removing, as far as depends on that state, the impedi-
ment arising from the western country, and for that purpose to
yield up a portion of territorial claim for the general benefit ;
" Resolved^ That copies of the several papers referred to the
committee be transmitted, with a copy of the report, to the leg-
islatures of the several states ; and that it be earnestly recom-
mended to these states who have claims to the western country
to pass such laws, and give their delegates in Congress such
powers, as may effectually remove the only obstacle to a final
ratification of the articles of confederation : and that the legis-
lature of Maryland be earnestly requested to authorize their
delegates in Congress to subscribe the articles." '
This report was agreed to without call of the roil. Its
adoption marks a memorable day in the history of the land-
controversy. No other document extant shows so clearly the
wise policy that Congress adopted. That policy was neither
to affirm nor to deny, nor even to discuss, whether Congress
had jurisdiction over the wild lands, but to ask for cessions
and to trust the logic of events to work out the issue. The ap-
peal made to Maryland was one that she could not well refuse
to heed. And then, that nothing but selfish interest might
stand in the way of the other claimant States following the
example of New York, Congress adopted, October lOth, this
further resolution :
• Journals of Congress, III., 516, 517.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
219
^^ Resolved, That the unappropriated lands that may be ceded
or relinquished to the United States, by any particular state,
pursuant to the recommendation of Congress of the sixth day
of September last, shall be disposed of for the common benefit
of the United States, and 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 : That each state which shall
be so formed shall have a suitable extent of territory, not less
than one hundred nor more than one hundred and fifty miles
square, as near thereto as circumstances will admit : That the
necessary and reasonable expenses which any particular state
shall have incurred since the commencement of the present war,
in subduing any British posts, or in maintaining forts or garri-
sons within and for the defence, or in acquiring any part of
the territory that may be ceded or relinquished to the United
States, shall be reimbursed ;
That the said lanas shall be granted or settled at such times
and under such regulations as shall hereafter be agreed" on by
the United States in Congress assembled, or any nine or more
of them." '
The offer to reimburse the reasonable expenses that any
State had incurred in subduing any British posts, etc., was, in
substance, a proposition to reimburse Virginia for the cost of
the George Rogers Clark expedition.
The papers sent to the claimant States under the resolu-
tion of September 6th called out immediate responses. Con-
necticut replied by a legislative act, October loth, offering a
cession of lands within her charter-limits, west of the Sus-
quehanna purchase and east of the Mississippi, on condition
that the State retain the jurisdiction, the quantity of land so
ceded to be " in just proportion of what shall be ceded and re-
linquished by the other States claiming and holding vacant
lands as aforesaid with the quantity of such their claim un-
• The Journals of Congress, III., 585.
*,-..
220
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
appropriated at the time when the Congress of the United
States was first convened and held at Philadelphia." The
preamble of this act explains that its enactment was due to
the anxiety of the State to promote the liberty and indepen-
dence of " this rising empire."
Virginia was the next State to respond. On January 2,
1781, her legislature resolved to yield to Congress, for the
benefit of the United States, all the right, title, and claim
which Virginia had to the lands northwest of the River Ohio,
upon eight conditions. The seventh of these conditions was,
that all purchases and deeds from any Indian or Indians, for
any lands within the cession made for the use of any private
person or persons, as well as grants inconsistent with the
chartered rights of Virginia, should be deemed and declared
absolutely void, in the same manner as if the said territory
had still remained part of the commonwealth of Virginia.
The last condition was that all the remaining territory of Vir-
ginia, enclosed between the Atlantic Ocean and the southeast
side of the River Ohio, and the Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
North Carolina boundaries, should be guaranteed to Virginia
by the United States. Plainly, these two conditions, if agreed
to, would involve a declaration of the validity of Virginia's
claim to the Northwest, and a ruling out of the claims of
New York, if not of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and so
be a departure from the policy that Cong.-ess had thus far
pursued." In the year or more that elapsed before Congress
replied to this overture, some very important things were
done.
On February 2, 1781, the Maryland Legislature empow-
ered the Maryland delegates in Congress to subscribe and
ratify the Articles of Confederation. The preamble of the
act recites the reasons why the circle of the Confederation
should be closed, and declares the devotion of Maryland to
the common cause. The act also declares that the State
' Journals of Congress, IV., 265, 266.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
221
does not, by acceding to the Confederation, toiinquish any
right or interest that she had, with the other Si;ates, in the
back country. She still stands on the declaration of 1778;
but she relies on the justice of the States hereafter as to the
said claim. Further, she says no Article in the Confederation
can bind Maryland, or any other State, to guarantee any ex-
clusive claim of any particular State to the soil of the back
lands. This act was read in Congress on the 12th of the same
month,' and preparations were made for the immediate con-
summation of the Confederation.
Messrs. Duane, Floyd, and McDougal, the New York dele-
gates, now prepared a deed of limitation, in the name of the
State, ceding to the United States all her right, title, interest,
jurisdiction, and claim to all lands and territories northward of
the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude and westward of a
meridian line drawn through the western bent or inclination
of Lake Ontario, or westward of a meridian line twenty miles
west of the most westerly bent of the Niagara River,
provided the former meridian should not be found to fall
that distance beyond said river. At the same time, the New
York delegates prepared another paper, that they named an
"actor declaration," calling attention to the guarantee that
Virginia demanded for the territory that she did not cede;
asserting that it was unjust to ask New York to guarantee the
territories that other States making cessions reserved, at the
same time that she was herself making la: ^ cessions of lands
and receiving no guarantee for those she aid not cede ; and
declaring, therefore, that the deed of cession was not absolute,
but, on the contrary, should be subject to ratification or dis-
avowal by the people of the State, represented in the legis-
lature, at their pleasure, unless the territories reserved for
the future jurisdiction of New York should be guaranteed by
the United States in the same manner as the territories of
other States making cessions of lands were guaranteed.
' Sec Journals of Congress, under that date.
222
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
On March i, 1 781, two important transactions were con-
summated. Messrs. Duane, Floyd, and McDougal exe-
cuted, in tlie name of New York, the deed of limitation and
the " act or declaration ; " and John Hanson and Daniel Car-
roll, delegates in behalf of the State of Maryland, signed and
ratified the Articles of Confederation, " by which act [so runs
the " Journal "] the Confederation of the United States of
America was completed, each and every of the Thirteen
United States, from New Hampshire to Georgia, both in-
cluded, having adopted and confirmed, and by their delegates
in Congress ratified the same." Congress had anticipated this
auspicious event by providing that the completion of the Con-
federation should be announced to the public at noon of that
day ; that the Boards of War and of Admiralty should take
order accordingly ; that information be communicated to the
executives of the several States ; that the American ministers
abroad be informed, and that they be instructed to notify the
respective courts at which they resided ; that information be
given to the honorable the minister plenipotentiary of France;
that information be transmitted to the commander-in-chief,
and that he announce the same to the army under his com-
mand. We now note a change in the style of the '' Journals
of Congress." On and after March 2, 1781, the style is, "The
United States in Congress Assembled."
That Maryland had not theoretically abandoned her old
ground is proved by the Act of February 2, 1781 ; that she
had not abandoned it practically, is proved by the history
thus far recited. The Connecticut and Virginia cessions were
far from satisfactory either to Maryland or to Congress, but
they were an earnest of what might, in time, be looked for.
The resolutions of September and October, 1780, proved con-
clusively the drift of national sentiment. The New York
cession arrayed that great State on the side of the small
States, and was an example that the other claimant States
could not long refuse to follow. So much had been gained
that Maryland could well afford to close the circle of the Con-
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
223
federation, " relying on the justice of the several States here-
after " to dedicate the Western lands to the Nation. The com-
pletion of the Confederation took away the great argument
hitherto relied upon in favor of the limitation-policy ; and
henceforth, the strong appeal addressed to the claimant States
is the needs of the treasury.
In a recent article, Professor Alexander Johnston says the
provision of the national Constitution " for the admission of
new States was the result of State experience only. All the
States had experienced the British system of treating colonies
as mere creatures of an omnipotent Parliament ; and they had
been determined that their territories should be treated in a
different way, as inchoate States. The Constitution's provi-
sion had its origin in the Congress of the Confederation. It
is to the Ordinance of 1787, not to the Convention of that
year, that we must look for the conception of this powerful
factor in our peculiar national development ; and the Con-
gress of the Confederation took it, not from creative genius,
but from the natural growth of State feeling." ' There is, in-
deed, a wide difference between dependent colonies and in-
dependent States. Mr. Bancroft's felicitous chapter, " The
Colonial System of the United States," does not bear a felici-
tous name. Professor Johnston's praise of this feature of the
Constitution is well deserved ; but its ultimate source is the
" pioneer thought " of Maryland, which antedates the ordi-
nance of 1787 by ten years. However, nothing is said of
new States in either the New York Facilitating Act or the
New York Deed of Limitation ; the only arguments upon
which those documents rest are the desirability of closing the
Confederation and the justice of distributing the lands among
the States.
* The New Princeton Review, September, 1887, 184.
XIII.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.— (II.)
On January 31, 1781, the resolution of October 10, 1780,
together with the accumulated acts and resolutions of the
States of Connecticut, New York, and Virginia, had been re-
ferred to a committee consisting of Messrs. Witherspoon,
Duane, Root, Adams, Sullivan, Burke, and Walton. The pe-
titions of the Indiana and Vandalia Land Companies, as well
as of two other companies that had memorialized Congress con-
cerning their claims, were also referred to the same committee.
Ultimately this committee, and another one that came in its
room, became a sort of clearing house to which all troublesome
questions that in any way touched the land-issue were sent.
One of the first questions that it had to deal with, as well as
one of the most difificult, was the guarantee demanded by Vir-
ginia as the condition of ceding the country beyond the Ohio.
We must see what such a guarantee really involved.
First, the lands claimed by the Indiana and Vandalia
Companies lay on the southeastern side of the Ohio, Sec-
ondly, the State of New York, before her deed of cession,
claimed the whole country west of the Alleghanies, from the
Lakes to the Cumberland Mountains. Thirdly, it was held
by some, irrespective of the claims of the company and of
New York, that the Crown had limited Virginia on the west
by the Alleghanies, and that her claim to what is now West
Virginia and Kentucky was spurious. Hence the committee
was compelled to inquire into the merits of the case as be-
tween the companies and New York on the one part and
Virginia on the other, unless, indeed. Congress should either
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
225
give or rufuse the guarantee without any inquiry whatever.
It will be remembered that the question had been touched by
the report of October 29, 1779, when it declared that, in the
matter of the Indiana and Vandalia claims, it could " not find
any such distinction between the question of the jurisdiction
of Congress and the merits of the cause as to recommend any
decision upon the first separately from the last." In the light
of these facts, the motive of Virginia in asking a guarantee of
her whole territorial claim east and south of the Ohio River is
obvious. Evidently, Congress must waive the Virginia cession
altogether, or it must inquire whether part of the territories
to be guaranteed did not belong to the land-companies, as also
whether a still larger part of them had not already been ceded
to the United States by New York.
Accordingly, the committee of seven called on the Con-
necticut, New York, and Virginia delegates in Congress, as
well as the agents of the four land-companies, to present their
respective claims, with the proofs on which they rested them.
On October 16, 1781, the Virginia delegates submitted to
Congress a representation urging that such an inquiry as was
contemplated into the claims of companies claiming lands with-
in the limits of particular States was beyond its jurisdiction,
and asking whether Congress had intended that the committee
should hear evidence, in behalf of the companies, that was ad-
verse to the claims or cessions of Virginia, New York, or
Connecticut. The paper declared it derogatory to the sover-
eignty of a State, thus to be drawn into contest with a land-
company.' On the 26th of the same month the Virginia
delegates brought up the question again, this time seeking
to carry i motion denying to the committee the right '• to ad-
mit counsel, or to hear documents, proofs, or evidence not
among the records, nor on the files of Congress, which have
not beer specially referred to them." This was all in har-
' '''lie citations to proceedings in Congress are now found in the Journals of
Congress, under the respective dates, unless otherwise indicated.
IS
• •'■*.„.
226
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
mony with the Virginia ♦•em onst ranee of two years before.
But Congress persisted, voting down the motion of Octo-
ber 26th, five votes to three; and on November 3, 1781, the
committee submitted an elaborate report covering the whole
ground. In the first paragraph of this very important docu-
ment, the committee state that the New York and Connecti-
cut delegates had submitted the claims of their States, with
vouchers to support the same, but that the Virginia delegates,
" declining any elucidation of their claim, either to the lands
ceded in the act referred to your [the] committee, or the lands
requested to be guaranteed to the said State by Congress,
delivered to your [the] committee the written paper hereto
annexed and numbered 20."' This paper is not printed in
the " Journals," but the original is found among the unpub-
lished papers of Congress. It is signed by the Virginia dele-
gates, including Mr. Madison, and is a statement of the reasons
why they refused to present the grounds of the Virginia claim
to the committee. This is the most important :
" The acts of Congress in compliance with which the above
mentioned cessions [viz., those of New York, Connecticut, and
Virginia] were made, are founded on the supposed inexpedi-
ency of discussing the question of right, and recommended to
the several states having territorial claims in the western coun-
try, a liberal surrender of a portion of these claims for the ben-
efit of the United States, as the most advisable means of remov-
ing the embarrassments which such questions created. To make
these acts of surrender, then, the basis of a discussion of terri-
torial rights, is a direct contravention of the acts of Congress,
and tends to diminish the weight and efficacy of future rec-
ommendations from them to their constituents.""
' This report is found in the Journals under the date of May i, 1782. Messrs.
Boudinot, Varnum, Jenifer, Smith, and Livermore are here given as constituting
the committee. I have not found any mention, in the Journals, of a second com-
mittee being appointed.
' See argument of Samuel F. Vinton in case of Virginia vs. Gamer and
others, Marietta, C, 1846.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
229
and fully aflRrm the sufficiency of New York's title. Still, to
put an end to all questions, the committee recommended the
following resolution :
•' That it be earnestly recommended to the state of Virginia,
as they value the peace, welfare and increase of the United
States, that they re-consider their said act of cession, and by a
proper act for that purpose, cede to the United States all
claims and pretensions of claim to the lands and country be-
yond a reasonable western boundary, consistent with their
former acts while a colony under the power of Great Britain,
and agreeable to their just rights of soil and jurisdiction at
the commencement of the present war, and that free from any
conditions and restrictions whatever."
The committee further reported that the Indiana claim
was a bona fide claim, made in the usual way ; and it therefore
recommended that, in case the said lands were finally ceded
to the United States by Great Britain, Congress should con-
firm to such of the purchasers as were citizens of the United
States their respective shares and proportions of such lands.
After reciting the facts relating to the Vandalia grant,
the committee declared it wholly incompatible with the in-
terests of the United States to permit such inordinate grants
of lands to be vested in individual citizens of the States ;
nevertheless, in order to do strictest justice to such of the said
company as should remain citizens of the United States, it
recommended that, in case the tract should finally be ad-
judged to the United States, Congress should make reason-
able provision for them out of the lands.
The committee recommended, further, that the claims of
the Illinois and Wabash Companies be dismissed, on the
ground that they were originally illegal.
Finally, the committee declared that many inconveniences
would arise unless thf ' -risdiction of Congress in regard to
Indian affairs was moi^ clearly defined, and so submitted a
number of resolutions intended to accomplish that end.
230
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
This report was never acted upon as a whole ; and to fol-
low it through the " Journals " is a wearisome undertaking,
especially as the land-issue soon becomes complicated with
other subjects, as the national finances.
As early as 1776, attention was drawn to the Northwest-
ern lands " as a resource amply adequate, under proper regu-
lations, for defraying the whole expense of the war." ' Now
that the Confederation had been completed, and the financial
embarrassments of the country were becoming greater and
greater, the eyes of the people and of Congress were more and
more turning to the Northwest to find the means of relief.
On July 31, 1782, a grand committee of one from each State,
appointed to consider and report the most effective means of
supporting the credit of the United States, recommended
Congress to decide upon the cessions made by Connecticut,
New York, and Virginia. " It is their opinion," say the com-
mittee, " that the Western lands, if ceded to the United States,
might contribute toward a fund for paying the debt of these
States." As a substitute for this part of the report, Mr.
Witherspoon offered a series of resolutions asserting that such
cessions, if made agreeably to the resolutions of 1780, "would
be an important fund for the discharge of the national debt,"
and strongly urging them upon the claimant States. For
some reason these resolutions, as well as the foregoing item
of the report, were lost ; but the phrase " national debt " '
shows that the national idea was growing.
Replying, January 30, 1783, to the complaints of Pennsyl-
vania that she could not procure payments of money due her
from the Federal Government, Congress called attention to
the steps taken to secure the Western cessions, begging Penn-
sylvania to consider the subject " as of importance, not only
as may affect the public credit, but as it will contribute to
' Silas Deane : See Adams's Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to
the United States, 22.
* Journals of Congress, IV., 68, 69 ; 82, 83.
M
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
asi
give general satisfaction to the members of the Union." On
April 1 8th the subject came up again as a part of the well-
known financial scheme of that year, as will soon be pointed
out more at length.
Next to the " Journals of Congress," the " Madison
Papers "and Mr. Madison's reports of the debates in Con-
gress, found in " Eliot's Debates," are the principal sources of
information concerning the land-cessions. Mr. Madison was
in Congress in 1780, 1781, 1782; and his letters to his Vir-
ginia correspondents in those years throw a flood of light on
the whole subject, making clear the motives that governed
the Virginia delegates, revealing hidden springs of action, and
showing conclusively that politics played a large part in those
transactions.
Writing to Edmund Pendleton, September 12, 1780, of the
resolution of Congress adopted six days before, he expresses
the sanguine belief that the States to which that appeal is
made " will see the necessity of closing the union in too
strong a light to oppose the only expedient that can ac-
complish it.'" To Joseph Jones, September 19th, October
19th, and November 21st of the same year, he suggests that
the States making cessions can shut off the land-companies,
called by him " land-mongers," by expressly excluding them
from all participation in the lands ceded ; he does not believe
there is any design in Congress to gratify the avidity of land-
mongers, but the best security for their virtue in this respect
will be to keep it out of their power ; and declares a prop-
osition to arbitrate the issue between the Indiana Company
and Virginia, submitted by Morgan, irreconcilable with the
honor and sovereignty of the State. Writing to Jones, Novem-
ber 28th, he thus touches the Connecticut cession : "They
reserve the jurisdiction to themselves, and clog the cession
with some other conditions which greatly depreciate it, and
Cessions to H
' Unless otherwise designated, the citations from Madison are from the Mad-
ison Papers. See the respective dates.
232
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
are the more extraordinary as their title to the land is so con-
trovertible a one." December 19th, he expresses to Jones
regret that the Virginia Assembly has not acted on the con-
gressional recommendation, because the delay will tend to
postpone Maryland's ratification of the Confederation. To
Edmund Randolph he writes, May i, 1781, that the attempt
to secure the acceptance of the Virginia cession " has pro-
duced all the perplexing and dilatory objections which its
adversaries could devise." He declares to Randolph, October
30th of the same year, that "an agrarian law is as much
coveted by the little irembers of the Union as ever it was by
the indigent citizens o^ Rome ; " he cherishes " little hope of
arresting any aggression upon Virginia which depends solely
on the inclination of Congress ;" he thinks the rule requiring
seven States to carry a vote will be a check on the " agrarians,"
but in another letter he speaks of the same rule as retarding
business. November 13th, he tells Pendleton that the Vir-
ginia cession will not "be adop ed with the conditions an-
nexed to it ; " and then states the programme of the opposi-
tion as follows :
"The opinion seems to be, that an acceptance of the ces-
sion of New York will give Congress a title which will be
maintainable against all the other claimants. In this, however,
they will certainly be deceived ; and even if it v^ere otherwise,
it would be their true interest, as well as conformable to the
plan on which the cessions were recommended, to bury all
further contentions by covering the territory with the titles of
as many of the claimants as possible."
In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 18, 1781, Mad-
ison writes of the " hostile machinations of some of the States
against our territorial claims ; " says the report of the com-
mittee, made November 3, 1781, " is not founded on the ob-
noxious doctrine of an inherent right in the United States to
the territory in question, but on the expediency of clothing
them with the title of New York, which is supposed to be
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
233
maintainable against all others ; " utters the opinion that the
principles of the report will not be ratified by Congress ; and
adds that the committee was composed of a member each
from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island,
and New Hampshire, " all of which States, except the last,
are systematically and notoriously adverse to the claims of
Western territory, and particularly those of Virginia." In
this, as in others of his letters, Mr. Madison expresses the
fear that the Virginia Assembly will become offended at the
unreasonable course pursued by Congress, and so refuse fur-
ther help to end the controversy. He says, also, that the in-
vestigation made by the committee of the rights of States
and companies was vindicated on the ground that the condi-
tions annexed by Virginia to the cession made it necessary.
In a second letter to Jefferson, bearing date, January 15, 1782,
he reviews the history of the cessions to date. He speaks
again of the " machinations " against Virginia, and of the per-
severance with which her territorial rights are " persecuted ; "
he says an accurate and full collection of the documents bear-
ing on Virginia's title would be of great service to the Vir-
ginia delegation, and calls upon Mr. Jefferson to investigate
the whole subject from the original charter down. Writing to
Mr. Jefferson again, April i6th, he describes the line of at-
tack on the Virginia title. The adversaries of the State will
be either the United States or New York, or both. " The
former will either claim on the principle that the vacant coun-
try is not included in any particular State, and consequently
falls to the whole, or will clothe themselves with the title of
the latter by accepting its cession." He again calls on his
distinguished correspondent to trace the title of Virginia to
the disputed lands.
In a letter to Randolph, of August 13, 1782, he says
"several of the Middle States seem to be facing about."
Maryland, however, *' preserves its wonted jealousy and ob-
stinacy." In another letter to Randolph he discusses the
financial bearings of the land-question in reference to a recent
234
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
debate in Congress, and states the circumstances leading to
the Witherspoon resolutions already cited.
" After the usual discussion of the question of right, and a
proposal of opposite amendments to make the report favor the
opposite sides, a turn was given to the debate to the question
of expediency, in which it became pretty evident to all parties,
that unless a compromise took place no advantage would ever
be derived to the United States, even if their right were ever
so valid. The number of States interested in the opposite doc-
trines rendered it impossible for the title of the United States
ever to obtain a vote of Congress in its favor, much less any coer-
cive measure to render the title of any fiscal importance ; whilst
the individual States, having both the will and the means to
avail themselves of their pretensions, might open their land
offices, issue their patents, and, if necessary, protect the execu-
tion of their grants, without any otiier molestation than the
clamors of individuals within and without the doors of Con-
gress. This view of the case had a manifest effect on the tem-
perate advocates of the Federal title. . . .
" Every review I take of the western territory produces
fresh conviction that it is the true policy of Virginia, as well
as of the United States, to bring the dispute to a friendly com-
promise. A separate government cannot be distant, and will
be an insuperab)-: barrier to subsequent profits. If, therefore,
the decision of the state on the claims of companies can be
saved, I hope her other conditions will be relaxed."
He means, no doubt, that Virginia shall drop her demand
for a guarantee.
Replying, March 24, 1782, to Madison's loud calls for help,
Mr. Jefferson expresses surprise at the plan to set up New
York's claim against Virginia's. Previous to the receipt of
Madison's letter, he had never been able to comprehend a
ground on which Virginia's right could be denied that " would
not at the same time subvert the right of all the States to
the whole of their territory." He confesses his inability to
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
235
add anything to the argument on the Virginia side, and
ventures the opinion that, if the decision of Congress is un-
favorable to Virginia, it will not close the question ; and
supposes that men on the Western waters who are ambitious
of ofifice will urge a separation of the West by authority of
Congress. Neither Mr. Madison's correspondents nor Mr.
Madison himself ever suggested any standing ground for Vir-
ginia other than the charter of the colony.
We are indebted to Mr. Madison's correspondence for
the information that the Western issue hinged on another
famous question of those days. This is the question of the
admission of Vermont to the Union, that has already been
treated in another place. This issue became involved with
the land-question as early as 1781. On August 14th of that
year, Mr. Madison predicted the speedy triumph of Vermont,
assigning this as one of his reasons : " The jealous policy of
some of the little states which hope that such a precedent
may engender a division of some of the large ones." Under
date of May i, 1782 — the very day that the report of 1781
was taken up — Mr. Madison committed to writing some
noteworthy " observations relating to the influence of Ver-
mont and the Territorial Claims on the politics of Congress."
The New England States, with the exception of New
Hampshire, patronize the independence of Vermont from an-
cient hostility to New York, from the interest of their citi-
zens in Vermont lands, but principally from the accession of
weight this will give that section in Congress. Pennsylvania
and Maryland also patronize the pretensions of Vermont, as
do New Jersey and Delaware ; the first two, " with the sole
view of reinforcing the opposition to claims of Western terri-
tory, particularly those of Virginia ; " the other two, " with the
additional view of strengthening the interests of the little
states." Rhode Island is also influenced by these considera-
tions, as well as by those that influence the other New Eng-
land States. New York opposes Vermont for obvious rea-
sons. Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia oppose Vermont
236
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
on four grounds : A habitual jealousy of Eastern predomi-
nance ; the opposition that it is expected Vermont, if admitted,
will oppose to Western claims ; the inexpediency of admitting
so small a State on an equal footing with the first members
of the Union ; the tendency of the example to bring about a
premature dismemberment of the other States.
It is plain that the admission of Vermont under the cir-
cumstances would be a sort of premium on rebellion, and
might encourage the Virginians west of the mountains to
revolution. Mr. Madison then defines the motives from
which the States act on the other question. Of those that
oppose the Western claims, Rhode Island is influenced by a
desire to share the lands as a revenue-fund, and by the envy
excited by superior resources and importance ; New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland are influenced by these
considerations, but more by the intrigues of their citizens who
are interested in the land-companies. The peculiar hostility
of these States to Virginia is due to the fact that the claims
of the companies lie within the limits of Virginia. Pennsyl-
vania and Maryland would oppose Vermont, only their allies
in the Western combination require them to favor her ; Mas-
sachusetts and Connecticut thwart the settlement of the
Western question until the admission of Vermont is made
sure. With these States, Vermont is first and the lands sec-
ond; with Pennsylvania and Maryland, the lands are first and
Vermont second. No direct interest in the lands is accorded
to Massachusetts, and but a slight one to Connecticut. New
York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia all have Western
claims in which they take an interest ; South Carolina least
of all. New York's claim is very extensive, but her title
is very flimsy. She urges it, expecting to obtain some ad-
vantage or credit by its cession rather than hoping to main-
tain it.
It should be observed that the cession-policy was actually
attended by some dangers that do not appear on the surface
of the subject. On the one hand, the cessions tended to
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
227
It cannot be denied, that for Congress to conduct an in-
quiry into the grounds of title by which any State held, or
claimed to hold, her territories was a departure from the
policy hitherto pursued ; nor that Virginia, in asking for the
guarantee, had presented sufficient occasion for the departure
to be made. In view of the outcome, it is plain that Virginia
made a false step when she asked for the guarantee. But the
conclusions reached bj' the committee were still more distaste-
ful to Virginia than the inquiry itself, as we shall now see.
The report made, November 3, 1 781, came up for action,
May I, 1782. First, it recommended the acceptance of the
New York cession as contained in the deed executed by
Messrs, Duane, Floyd, and McDougal, March i, 1781. The
reasons that induced the committee to recommend the ac-
ceptance of this cession are an important part of the literature
relating to the ownership of the Western lands. These were
fully presented, with remarks, in the statement of the North-
western claims made in the last chapter. The additional
observation is called for that, at this distance, the New York
claim appears the most flimsy of all the Western claims ; and
it is hard to resist the conclusion that it was preferred by the
committee from a desire to get a leverage on the other States,
and particularly on Virginia. This view is supported by the
general history of the subject, by the composition of the com-
mittee, and by the testimony of Mr. Madison, soon to be ad-
duced. The five men who composed the committee were
Boudinot of New Jersey, Varnum of Rhode Island, Jenifer
of Maryland, Smith of Pennsylvania, and Livermore of New
Hampshire.
The report strongly urged Massachusetts and Connecticut
to make an immediate release of all their claims and preten-
sions to the Western territories, without condition or reserva-
tion. Not a word was said about the conditional cession that
Connecticut had already made.
Coming to the cession proffered by Virginia, the com-
mittee reported that it was not consistent with the interest of
228
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
the United States, the duty that Congress owed to their con-
stituents, or the rights necessarily vested in Congress as the
sovereign power of the United States, to accept the said ces-
sion, or to guarantee the tract of country claimed by Virginia
southeast of the Ohio ; assigning the following reasons for
this conclusion :
" I. It appeared to your committee from the vouchers laid
before them, that all the lands ceded, or pretended to be ceded,
to the United States by the state of Virginia, are within the
claims of the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New
York, being part of the lands belonging to the said Six Nations
of Indians and their tributaries.
" 2. It appeared that great part of the lands claimed by the
state of Virginia, and requested to be guaranteed to them by
Congress, is also within the claim of the state of New York,
being also a part of the country of the said Six Nations and
their tributaries.
" 3. It also appeared that a large part of the lands last afore-
said are to the westward of the west boundary line of the late
colony of Virginia, as established by the King of Great Britain,
in Council, previous to the present revolution.
"4. It appeared that a large tract of said lands hath been
legally and equitably sold and conveyed away under the gov-
ernment of Great Britain before the declaration of indepen-
dence by persons claiming the absolute property thereof.
"5. It appeared that in the y r 1763, a very large part
thereof was separated and appointed for a distinct government
and colony by the King of Great Britain, with the knowledge
and approbation of the government of Virginia.
*' 6. The conditions annexed to the said cession are incom-
patible with the honor, interests, and peace of the United States,
and therefore, in the opinion of your committee, altogether in-
admissible."
These reasons, together with those given for adopting the
re;'olution accepting the New York cession, totally deny the
/alidity of Virginia's claim to territory west of the mountains,
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
237
Strengthen the Union by conciliating the non-claimant States ;
on the other, they tended, or at least might tend, to engender
dangerous divisive tendencies. Discussing the admission of
Vermont, in a letter dated September 19, 1780, Mr. Madison
says : " For my own part, if a final decision must take place,
I am clearly of opinion that it ought to be made on prin-
ciples that will effectually discountenance the erection of
new governments without the sanction of proper authority,
and in a style marking a due firmness and decision in Con-
gress."
Again, November 19, 1 782, he writes that he has seen a
letter from General Irvine, then at Fort Pitt, " which displays
in full colors the avidity of the Western people for the vacant
lands and for separate governments." Mr. Jefferson's corre-
spondence bears a similar testimony. The over-mountain peo-
ple of North Carolina, in defiance both of the parent State
and of Congress, actually sought to set up the State of Frank-
lin. And this divisive tendency was no doubt a fact to be
considered by cautious statesmen.
Having let in this side-light on the stage, we are ready to
follow the movement of the scenes.
On motion of the Maryland delegation, October 29, 1782,
Congress accepted the New York cession as defined in the
deed executed, March i, 1781, Virginia alone voting in the
negative. November 5th, Mr. Madison explained to Mr.
Randolph the reasons that led to this negative vote : " In the
first place, such a measure, instead of terminating all contro-
versy — the object proposed by the original plan — introduces
new perplexities ; and, in the second place, an assent from us
might be hereafter pleaded as a voluntary acceptance of the
United States in the room of New York as a litigant against
Virginia." The acceptance of the New York cession, how-
ever, did not include the approval of the reasons given by the
committee of 1781 for its recommendations. This was a fort-
unate circumstance, as it proved, for the way was "^^ left
open for the compromise finally made. At the sau .le,
'■m
238
THE OLD NORTHWEST,
the acceptance of the New York cession was understood to
be a decisive defeat of Virginia. Some members of Congress
expected never again to hear of Virginia's land-claims. Such
was the consummation of the long and determined effort
made by Virginia to secure the acceptance by Congress of her
cession with the guarantee. After this, the final success of
the cession-policy was only a question of time.
In the letter to Randolph last cited, Mr. Madison recounts
the action of October 29th, and points out its bearings.
" The success of the Middle States in obtaining the cession
of New York has given grea, encouragement, and they are
pursuing steadily the means of availing themselves of the
other titles. That of Connecticut is proposed for the next
object. Virginia will be postponed for the last. By enlisting
the two preceding into their party, they hope to render their
measures more effectual with respect to the last." He says
the " coalition " of the Middle States with New York will hurt
the pretensions of Vermont. New York, " by ceding a claim
which was tenable neither by force nor by right," " has ac-
quired with Congress the merit of liberality, rendered the
title to her reservation more respectable, and at least damped
the ardor with which Vermont has been abetted."
The lands again came to the front in connection with the
national finances.
In a note to his report of the debate of February 26, 1783,
on the famous revenue-plan of that year, Mr. Madison defines
the position of the States with reference thereto. New
Hampshire would approve of a share in the vacant territory.
Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and
Maryland are deeply interested in the lands. New York,
since the acceptance of her cession, is interested in those of
other States. Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia must make
larger or smaller sacrifices of territory. Massachusetts, so
far as appears, has no interest in the question. Connecticut
may, perhaps, consider herself interested in the acquisition of
the vacant lands " since the condemnation of her title to her
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
239
Western claims," ' the reference being, of course, to the refusal
to accept her cession.
On April 9, 1783, a memorial praying Congress to grant a
tract of land on Lake Erie to the Canadian refugees who had
engaged in the cause of the United States led to a protracted
discussion of the land-question. On the i8th of the same
month the revenue-plan was adopted, containing the follow-
ing recommendation ;
"That as a further means, as well of hastening the ex-
tinguishment of the debts as of establishing the harmony of
the United States, it be recommended to the states which have
passed no acts towards complying with the resolutions of Con-
gress of the 6th of September and loth of October, 1780, rela-
tive to the cession of territorial claims, to make the liberal ces-
sions therein recommended, and to the states which may have
passed acts complying with the said resolutions in part only, to
revise and complete such compliance."
Mr. Madison's reports of these discussions contain no argu-
ments with which we are not already familiar.
Many members of Congress supposed that this recom-
mendation was a finality; they thought that, with the accept-
ance of the New York cession, it sealed the fate of Virginia's
Western claims. But the delegates from that State appar-
ently had not given up the hope of obtaining the acceptance of
the Virginia cession. At least, Mr. Bland made a motion to
accept it, and the motion was referred to a committee. This
committee reported, June 9, 1783, that action should be post-
poned until Congress had proceeded to a determination on
the report of November 3, 1781. Accordingly, Congress re-
sumed the consideration of that report, and so much of it as
related to the Virginia cession was referred to a committee
consisting of Messrs. Rutledge, Ellsworth, Bedford, Gorham,
and Madison. This reference alarmed the States that had so
• Eliot's Debates, V., 59, 60.
240
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
*
unflaggingly opposed the pretensions of Virginia, and that
supposed the acceptance of the New York cession and the
finance scheme meant the limitation of Virginia's claim on
the west by the Alleghany Mountains. They feared that the
reference meant a reopening of the whole question, and pos-
sibly a backing down from the position taken, April i8th.
This view of the case is well put in a vigorous remonstrance
that New Jersey sent to Congress, June 20th, expressing sur-
prise at the reopening of the question ; applying the recom-
mendation of April 1 8th expressly to Virginia, whose cession
is declared "partial, unjust, and illiberal," and requesting
Congress not to accept that cession but to press Virginia " to
make a more liberal surrender of that territory of which they
claim so boundless a proportion." The same day the report
of the Rutledge Committee was considered. This report,
after being under discussion for three months, was finally
adopted, September 13, 1783. Mr. Madison thinks this report,
when first offered, " a fit basis for a compromise," and ex-
presses the hope, when it is finished, that it will meet the ul-
timatum of Virginia.' How well grounded his view was, is
shown by an examination of the report itself, and by the sub-
sequent history.
The report states the eight conditions that Virginia an-
nexed to the cession of January 2, 1781, and disposes of them
one by one ; pointing out that some of them have been met
already, that others are reasonable and should be met, and
that some are unnecessary because they are covered by others.
The last condition, that requiring the guarantee, is thus dis-
posed of :
" As to the last condition, your committee are of opinion,
that Congress cannot agree to guarantee to the commonwealth
of Virginia, the land described in the said condition, without
entering into a discussion of the right of the state of Virginia
' Madison Papers, 543, 572.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
241
to the said land ; and that by the acts of Congress it appears
tu have been their intention, which tlie committee cannot but
approve, to avoid all discussion of the territorial rights of in-
dividual states, and only to recommend and accept a cession
of their claims whatsoever they might be, to vacant territory.
Your committee conceive this condition of a guarantee, to be
either unnecessary or unreasonable ; inasmuch as, if the land
above mentioned is really the property of the State of Virginia,
it is sufficiently secured by the Confederation, and if it is not
the property of that state, there is no reason or consideration
for such guarantee."
The report closes with a recommendation that, if the
legislature of Virginia make a cession conformable to these
views, Congress shall accept such cession. Maryland and
New Jersey alone voted in the negative.
The report adopted September 18, 1783, is in marked
contrast with the one offered November 3, 1781, and for which,
in some sense, it was a substitute. Particularly is it impossi-
ble to harmonize what is said of the guarantee in 1783 with
the arguments adduced two years before to prove the validity
of the New York claim and the invalidity of the Virginia
claim. The one document gives the results of an inquiry
into the question of right ; the other waives such inquiry al-
together, on the ground that it is the settled policy of Con-
gress to avoid all such inquiries and discussions, and only to
recommend the cession of State claims, whatever they may
be. Evidently a change had come over the temper of Con-
gress. In 1 78 1 the policy was to put pressure on Virginia
with a view of inducing her to cede the territory between the
Alleghanies and the Ohio. Hence the afifirmation of New
York's claim. The Union was to be clothed with New
fork's title, as Mr. Madison states in his letters. Such was
the plan of the non-claimant States in 1781. Time has told
against that plan, and a new one has been agreed upon as a
compromise. Nothing is said in the report of 1783 about the
lands southeast of the Ohio ; the right to inquire into titles
16
1
m
k ;i
242
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
is denied ; Congress can only recommend cessions and accept
them when made. This leaves the way open for Virginia to
withdraw her demand for a guarantee, at the same time that
she renews the cession of the Northwest. As the reasons of
1 78 1 have never been adopted, Congress can tacitly assent to
the southern limitation of the cessions by the Ohio River.
This will leave the lands within the present States of West
Virginia and Kentucky in Virginia's possession, which is ex-
actly what she has been contending for from the first. The
details of this plan were evidently arranged by the Rutledge
Committee.
Virginia promptly performed the part assigned her. On
October 20, 1783, her legislature passed an act authorizing a
cession of the territory northwest of the Ohio. Before stating
the terms of this cession, however, we must attend to an at-
tempt that was made to break up the compromise, and to
wrest the lands claimed by the Indiana Company from the
grasp of Virginia.
Alarmed at the prospect of being abandoned by Congress,
Colonel George Morgan, the petitioner of three years before,
in behalf of himself and his fellow-proprietors, applied to New
Jersey for protection, of which State some of them were citi-
zens. He proposed, virtually, that the State should adopt
the Indiana Company's claim as its own, at least to the ex-
tent of suing for an investigation of the title by a Federal
court. The legislature, probably in the hope of defeating the
compromise, accepted the proposal, and appointed Morgan its
agent for the purpose of bringing the claim before Congress.
In his petition, dated February 24th, and presented in
Congress, March i, 1784, Morgan recites the fact of his ap-
pointment, quotes the finding of the committee of 1781 con-
cerning the Indiana Company, says Virginia still claims the
same lands, denies the validity of her claim, and prays for a
hearing in the premises agreeably to the Ninth Article of the
Confederation. A motion to commit was lost, as was a
motion for a committee to prepare an answer to New Jersey.
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
243
We have no intimation why Congress refused this applica-
tion—possibly because it did not consider Article IX. as cover-
ing the case. Mr. Madison^ in one of his letters, says he does
not understand the policy of the land-companies in opposing
the Virginia compromise. " They can never hope for specific
restitution of their claims ; they can never even hope for a
cession of the country between the Alleghany and the Ohio
by Virginia; as little can they hope for an extension of a
jurisdiction of Congress over it by force. I should suppose,
therefore, that it would be their truest interest to promote a
general cession of the vacant country to Congress ; and in
case the titles of which they have been stripped should be
deemed reasonable, and Congress should be disposed to make
any equitable compensation, Virginia would be no more in-
terested in opposing it than the other states." ' The petition
of March i, 1784, is the last that we hear of the Indiana
Company in the Old Congress.
Having thus refused to do anything with Morgan's peti-
tion, Congress the same day took up and accepted the deed of
cession that Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues had already pre-
sented in behalf of Virginia. After reciting the resolutions
of Congress of 1780, the Virginia cession of 1781, and the re-
port adopted by Congress, September 13, 1783, the act on
which the deed is based stipulates that " the territory so ceded
shall be laid out and formed into states, containing a suitable
extent of territory, not less than one hundred nor more than
one hundred and fifty miles square, or as near thereto as cir-
cumstances will admit, and that the states so formed shall
be distinct republican states, and admitted members of the
Federi-1 Union, having the same rights of sovereignty, freedom,
and independence as the other states ; " that the reasonable ex-
penses incurred by Virginia in subduing and garrisoning any
part of this territory shall be paid ; that the inhabitants of
the Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and the neighboring French vil-
' Madison Papers, 543, 544.
244
THE OLD NORTHWEST,
ill
i:i
I
lages who have become citizens of Virginia shall have their
titles confirmed to them ; that one hundred and fifty thousand
acres of land promised by Virginia to Clark and the officers
and men who served under him in the Nortiiwest shall be
granted to them ; t!.at in case certain lands reserved for the
Virginia troops on the continental establishment, south of the
Ohio River betv ecn the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers,
should " prove insufficient for their legal bounties, the defi-
ciency shall be made up to the said troops, in good lands, to
be laid off between the Rivers Scioto and Little Miami, on
the northwest side of the River Ohio ; " and that all the
lands so ceded, not reserved for any of the enumerated pur-
poses, and not disposed of in bounties to the officers and sol-
dieis of the American army, shall be a common fund for the
use, aid, and benefit of the members of the Union, present or
future, Virginia included, "according to their usual respective
proportions in the general charge and expenditure, and sliall
be faithfully and bona fide disposed of for that purpose, and
for no other use or purpose whatsoever." The cession is of
" all right, title, and claim, as well of soil as of jurisdiction,
which the said commonwealth hath to the territory or tract of
country within the limits of the Virginia charter, situate, lying,
and being to the n 'iwest of the River Ohio." The act also
expresses the hope that Congress, in justice to Virt^inia for
her liberal cession, will earnestly press upon the other States
claiming large bodies of waste lands to make cessions equally
liberal for the common benefit and support of the Union.
A motion to add to the resolution accepting the deed
the proviso that its acceptance should not be considered as
implying any opinion or decision of Congress respecting the
extent or validity of the claim of Virginia to Western terri-
tory, by charter or otherwise, received the votes of only New
Jersey and Pennsylvania. New Jersey alone voted against
accepting the deed, South Carolina was divided, Maryland
was not present.
Such was the end of the long struggle between Congress
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
245
and Virginia. The sole question at issue had long been the
territory southeast of the Ohio. Virginia demanded a guar-
antee in 1 78 1 as a reply to the demand that she should be
bounded on the west by the mountains. That guarantee was
not given, and yet Virginia won a substantial victory. Now
that the demand to shut her up between the sea and the moun-
tains was pressed with less vigor, and there was a disposition
to recede from the reasons of the report of 1781, she was quite
willing to let the guarantee go, and accept in its stead a tacit
understanding that she should not be molested in the posses-
sion of the back lands. By this time the dispute had become
wearisome; the compromise suggested by the report of 1783
offered a practicable settlement, and a large majority of Con-
gress, as the votes show, were veiy glad to accept that compro-
mise and let the matter drop. The controversy with Virginia
was considerably affected by the events of the war. Hildreth
says the terror inspired by Arnold's approach to Richmond was
amain motive with Virginia in making the cession of 1781.'
After the peace of 1783 Congress was less disposed to press
Virginia to make a more liberal cession, and Virginia was Ip'-s
disposed to yield. Had the war gone on a year or two longer
—at least, had Maryland's ratification of the Articles been
postponed so long — it is highly probable that Virginia's west-
ern boundary would have been drawn where it now is, at the
close of the Revolution rather than at the beginning of the
Civil War.
In the course of the long discussion about the West, there
was a considerable fluctuation of opinion as to the proper
number and size of the new States. Virginia was the only
State making a cession which stipulated that the territory
ceded should be formed into States ; and she imposed a rule
i^f division that would have given anywhere from ten to
twenty States in the Northwest. But in 1788, in response to
^ representation made by Congress two years before, that such
' History, III., 399.
246
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
division would " be productive of many and great inconveni-
ences," growing out of geographical conditions, Virginia con-
sented to such a modification of her deed and cession as
would admit of "not more than five states nor less than three,
as the situation of that country and future circumstances may
require." This was simply ratifying Article V. of the com-
pacts of 1787.
The two States making largest land-pretensions had now
ceded as much of their lands as they proposed to cede. Con-
necticut and Massachusetts stili retained their claims in the
Northwest, and the Carolinas and Georgia theirs in the South-
west. It was confidently expected, however, that the two ces-
sions would bring about the others in time. From this point
the subject is less prominent in the national councils, is less
interesting, and can be more rapidly despatched.
In April, 1784, Congress again called attention to the
Western territory as an important financial resource, and urged
those States that had not complied with the recommendation
of September 6, 1780, to make immediate and liberal cessions.
On November 13, 1784, the General Court of Massachusetts
passed an act authorizing her delegates in Congress to exe-
cute a deed of cession of such part of the tract of land lying
between the Hudson River and the Mississippi, belonging to
the State, as they might think proper, in such manner and
on such conditions as should appear to them most suitable,
On April 10, 1785, Samuel Holton and Rufus King, delegates,
executed and Congress accepted, such deed, conve^'ing and
releasing to the United States all of Massachusctts's right
and title to lands, both soil and jurisdiction, lying within the
charter-limits of the State, west of a meridian line drawn
through the western bent or inclination of Lake Ontario, pro-
vided such line should fall twenty miles or more west of the
western limit of the Niagara Ri\'er ; and if not, then west of
the meridian falling that distance west of said river. This was
adopting the New York line of four j^ears before. It will be
remembered that Massachusetts then claimed nearly all West-
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
24;
em New York. The New York and Massachusetts cessions
did not in any way touch that controversy. It was finally
settled by a joint commission of the two States in 1786, The
meridian marking the eastern limit of the New York and
Massachusetts cession, which is also the western boundary of
the former State from latitude 42° to Lake Erie, was surveyed
and marked in i/go.
The State of Connecticut, by an act of May 11, 1786, au-
thorized "an ample deed of release and cession of all the right,
title, interest, jurisdiction, and claim of Connecticut to certain
western lands, beginning at the completion of the 41° of north
latitude, 120 miles west of the western boundary line of the
commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as now claimed by said com-
monwealth, and from thence by a line drawn north, parallel to
and 120 miles west of the said west line of Pennsylvania, and
to continue north until it come to 42° 2' north latitude." The
effect of this cession, if adopted, would be to leave in the
hands of Connecticut that part of her original claim which is
bounded north by the international boundary-line, cast by
Pennsylvania, south by parallel 41°, and west by a meridian
line one hundred and twenty miles west of the western bound-
ary of Pennsylvania — the Western Reserve, It also left the
controversy between New York and Connecticut as to the
"Gore" unsettled. The extent of one hundred and twenty
miles east and west was given to the reservation because
that was the extent of the Susquehanna purchase of 1754.
The acceptance of this cession was strongly opposed in Con-
gress because it was partial, and because to accept it would be
indorsing the charter of 1662. After a severe struggle it was
accepted, May 26, 1786, Maryland alone voting in the nega-
tive. Messrs. Johnson and Sturgess executed the deed Sep-
tember 14th, following.
Mr. Grayson, of Virginia, writing to Washington, said the
result of the Connecticut reservation was a clear loss of about
six million acres of land to the United States, which had al-
ready been ceded by Virginia and New York. Connecticut,
248
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
m'i
Bi
he said, would at once open a land-office and sell the lands.
Grayson then states the reasons urged in Congress for accept-
ing the cessior •
"That the claim of a powerful State, although unsupported
by right, was, under present circumstances, a disagreeable
thing ; that sacrifices nust be made for the public tranquillity,
as well as to acquire an indisputable title to the residue ; tliat
Connecticut would settle it immediately with emigrants well
disposed to the Union, who would form a barrier, not only
against the British but the Indian tribes ; and that the tliick
settlement they would immediately form would enhance the
value of the adjacent country and facilitate emigration thereto.'
Washington ascribed the acceptance of the cession, with
the reservation, to " a want of competent knowledge of the
Connecticut claim to Western lands.'" Grayson can be ex-
cused for magnifying three million two hundred and fifty
thousand acres of land into six million, as the geography of
the Lake Eric region was not then carefully known ; but what
shall we say of Mr. Bancroft, who repeats the blunder in the
last edition of his history !"
It has always been the fashion to berate Connecticut for
illiberality in making her cession. No State came through
the cession controversy with less credit. This feeling is hard
to explain. Connecticut was more tardy than New York,
Virginia, and Massachusetts, but she was much more prompt
than the Carolinas and Georgia. She reserved some lands,
but so did all the other ceding States, and particularly Vir-
ginia, whose course at the time provoked much more ill-feel-
ing. Her charter had been jumped by later charters, but so
had those of Virginia and Massachusetts. The lands that she
retained were separated from her home territory ; but so
were those that Massachusetts retained in Western New
York. Of course she had not the reasonable excuse that
' Sparks : Writings of Washington, IX., 177, 178. ' VI., 279, 28a
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
249
New York and Virginia had ; for the first of these States
wished to have a Lake Erie front, and the second desired to
be brought out to the Ohio River.
The Connecticut cession completed the national title to
the Northwest, except the Connecticut reservation. The
next year Congress enacted the Ordinance of 1787, and the
civil life of the territory began in 1788. At that time the
Southwest attracted less attention than the Northwest ; the
framing of the Constitution and the organization of the gov-
ernment under it, as well as the foreign embarrassments of
the government coming soon after, drew more and more of
the public attention ; and, very naturally, the subject of ces-
sions fell somewhat into the background. Moreover, the
Southwestern cessions were delayed and complicated by do-
mestic disturbances and by foreign troubles. They do not
come within the scope of this inquiry.
This history shows that four different ideas as to the West-
ern lands were first and last suggested. The original idea of
the claimant States was to retain them for their own exclu-
sive use ; and for a time the other States seemed to acquiesce
in this policy. Secondly, it was proposed to distribute the
lands or their proceeds, in whole or in part, among the States,
leaving the jurisdiction in the hands of the claimant States.
Connecticut acted on this idea in offering her first cession.
The third proposition was the one for which Maryland con-
tended so long and valiantly, viz. : That Congress should as-
sert the sovereign power of the United States over the West-
ern country without waiting for cessions. Lastly the plan of
cession. This ultimately reached the same practical end that
Maryland proposed, but by a different road. Manifestly, to
persuade the claimant States to cede their lands to the Na-
tion was not to assert a national title to them.
But the lands were not, and could not be fully national-
ized as long as the Confederation lasted. The Articles gave
Congress no resources except those that came from the
States ; and although the Nation should ultimately receive
250
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
the proceeds of the cessions, it could receive them only by
way of the States. Accordingly, the deeds made to the
United States stipulated that the lands, or their proceeds,
should be distributed among all the States in the Union, and
this was the principle on which the Land-Ordinance of 1785,
that will form the subject of the next chapter, was con-
structed. When the Constitution went into effect, in 1789, it
fully nationalized the public domain.
Unfortunately, the history of the cessions has not always
been so presented as clearly to define the course that Con-
gress pursued. For example. Chief Justice Chase speaks of
the " claim " of the United States, which rested on the
ground that the " Western lands had been the property of
the Crown, and naturally fell, on the declaration of indepen-
dence, to the opponent of the former sovereign." He thus
balances this " claim " against the claims of the States :
•'Of these various claims, that of the United States seems
to have been the most rational and just. The charter of Vir-
ginia had been vacated by a judicial proceeding ; the company
to which it was granted had been dissolved, the grant itself had
been resumed by the Crown, and large tracts of the country
included by its original limits had been patented to various in-
dividuals and associations, without remonstrance on the part of
the colony of Virginia. The expenses incurred, and the efforts
made by Virginia, in the reduction of the British posts, and in
the defence and protection of the frontier, created a just claim
upon the treasury of the Union, but could not, of themselves,
confer a valid title to the Western lands. The western boun-
dary of Connecticut had been so clearly defined in her agree-
ment with New York, that her claims to territory beyond that
line could not be entitled to much consideration ; the preten-
tions of New York were liable to easy refutation upon an ap-
peal to western geography, and an investigation into the real
extent of the territory of the Six Nations ; and the claim of
Massachusetts rested upon a charter granted at a period when
the territory now claimed under it was actually possessed and
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
251
occupied by France. In opposition to these various preten-
tions, the Congress, as tlie common head of tlie United States,
maintained its title to the Western lands upon the solid ground
that a vacant territory wrested from the common enemy, by the
united arms, and at the joint expense of all the States, ought of
right to belong to Congress, in trust for tlie common use and
benefit of the wliole union." '
Congress never maintained a
national " claim " on this
"ground" or on any other ground. The argument here
stated as a ground of title was often urged in discussion in
and out of Congress, and is found in State resolutions. It no
doubt had a material effect in forming the opinion of the
time, but it cannot be found in a single act or resolution
that ever passed the doors of Congress. The great argu-
ments advanced by Congress in its appeals for cessions were
the desirability of perfecting the Union, the need of harmony
among the States, and the necessities of the treasury. Effec-
tive as the national view was. Congress kept it sedulously in
the background, and constantly acted on the federal theory
of the national territory. The Western lands came to the
Nation by a series of cessions that proceeded upon the as-
sumption that the States making them ceded something, and
that Congress received something in accepting them.
The longer one studies the land-question of the Revolu-
tion the more he is impressed by its difficulty, by its impor-
tance, and by the wisdom and self-restraint that marked its
settlement. No one can deny that the young republic had a
happy escape from what might easily have been a great dis-
aster. The cessions prevented a scries of inevitable contro-
versies growing out of conflicting claims ; and we may well
question whether the machinery provided for settling such
controversies by the Articles of Confederation was adequate
to the task that their adjustment would have entailed. The
cessions satisfied the non-claimant States, and so removed
Statutes of Ohio : Preliminary Sketch of the History of Ohio, I., 12, 13.
i
252
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
jealousy and heart-burning. They tended materially to na-
tionalize the government, by creating the public domain for
Congress to control and to prepare for future republics.
They prepared the way for " the more perfect union " of the
Constitution. Next to independence and union, the Western
lands were the most important question that the old Con-
gress dealt with ; and no small part of their importance arose
from their relation to independence and union.
Note. — There has been much discussion as to the value of
the claims and titles now described, and therefore as to the value,
in a legal poi it of view, of the cessions growing out of them.
Sometimes <.ne cessions are set wholly aside, and the North-
western titles derived immediately from the treaty with Great
Britain in 1783. An example of this procedure may be found
in the Report of the Tenth Census, 1880. But such is not the
procedure of the Supreme Court of the United States. The
case of Handley's Lessee vs. Anthony ' involved the question
whether a certain tract of land on the Indiana side of the Ohio
River, that was an island at high water and a peninsula at low
water, belonged to the jurisdiction of Indiana or of Kentucky,
and so a construction of the language found in the Virginia deed
of cession, " situate, lying, and being to the northwest of the
River Ohio." Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of
the Court, stated the question to be whether the river at low-
water mark, or at its middle state, is the boundary between the
States of Kentucky and Indiana. He said two cases were to
be considered. When a great river forms the boundary be-
tween two nations or states, if the original property is in nei-
ther, and there is no convention respecting it, e.ach nation holds
to the middle of the stream. The second case is that of a
state's being the original proprietor, and granting the terri-
tory on one side only. Here the rule is that the grantor retains
the river within its own domain, and the newly created state
extends to the river only. The Chief Justice declared that
the case before the Court fell ander the second rule ; and that
' Wheaton, V., 691,
THE NORTHWESTERN CESSIONS.
253
the only question to be determined was, What is the river in
such a case ? " Wherever the river is a boundary between
states, it is the main, the permanent river, which constitutes
that boundary," he says; "and the mind will find itself embar-
rassed with insurmountable difficulties in attempting to draw
any other line than the low-water mark." "The sole question
in the cause respected the boundary of Kentucky and Indiana ;
and the title depended entirely upon that question." He held
that low-water mark on the northwest bank is the boundary
between the two States, and closed his opinion with the words,
"the shores of a river border on the water's edge."
To the historian the principal interest of this decision arises
from the fact that it recognizes the Virginia cession of 1784 as
the ground of title on the southern limit of Indiana, and so,
by parity of reasoning, throughout the whole Northwest wher-
ever there had been no conflict of claims between Virginia and
other States. Marshall's reasoning all proceeds on that as-
sumption, and he expressly says : " The question whether the
lands in controversy lie within the State of Kentucky or Indi-
ana depends chiefly on the land-laws of Virginia, and on the
cession made by that Stale to the United States." The distin-
guished jurist had a good opportunity, if he had desired one, to
ignore the Virginia cession altogether ; and to base the title on
the treaty with Great Britain he had only to apply the rule of
international law that makes the middle thread of a river flow-
ing between two states the boundary, when the original prop-
erty was in neither, and there is no convention respecting it.
He quotes this rule, but sets it aside as not applying to the
case before the Court. He bases the decision distinctly on the
other rule. "When, aj in this case, one state is the original
proprietor, and grants the territory ou one side only, it retains
the river within its own domain, and the newly-created state
extends to the river only."
In Garner's case, Mr. Vinton sought to break the force of
this decision on the ground that the Virginia cession was not
in the record of the case before the Chief Justice ; but the Gen-
eral Court of Virginia followed the precedent that Marshall had
set, and directed the defendants to be set at liberty, because the
!,:SrJ5jlTOt: ,
TIW
254
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
offence with which they were cliargcd was not committed within
the jurisdiction of the State.
In 1800, Marsliall reviewed tlie Connecticut title to tlie West-
ern Reserve in an elaborate report to the House of Repre-
sentatives.' He held tliat title to be good and sufficient in this
report ; and there can be no reasonable doubt that he would
have done the same thing, if the occasion had arisen, from the
Supreme Bench of the United States.
' State Papers : Public Lands, L, 94 et seq.
XIV.
THE LAND-ORDINANCE OF 178^.
One of the great arguments used in urging the claimant
States to surrender some portion of their Western lands was
the needs of the State and Federal treasuries. In the resolu-
tions of Congress asking for them, the cessions are considered
as lands to be sold as well as territory to be made into new
States. The idea of revenue is also prominent in the acts of
cession. It was almost distinctively a new idea. In colonial
days, waste lands had not proved a source of income to either
che colonies or the Crown. The Crown had reserved a small
quit-rent, but it was rarely paid. Virginia imposed an an-
nual rental of two cents per acre upon her waste lands, and
then threw them open to indiscriminate locations. Whole
States, as West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, were dis-
posed of without affording any public revenue whatever. It
is, therefore, somewhat difficult to understand how the idea
that the over-mountain lands would be a source of large
income became current. But so it was. Whatever is the
explanation, the new idea could not be realized without a
system of surveys such as was unknown to any one of the
colonies. This need was met by Congress in "An Ordi-
nance for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the
Western territory," enacted May 20, 1785, but applying only
to such lands as had already been ceded by individual States
to the United States, and also been purchased by the United
States of the Indians. Before presenting the salient features
of this ordinance, it is necessary to glance at two or three of
these Indian treaties.
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256
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
By the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, 1768, the Six Nations had
sold all their right and title to lands lying south and south-
east of the treaty-line running from the mouth of the Ten-
nessee to Wood Creek, save those in the Province of Pennsyl-
vania, the pre-emption of which belonged to the Penns. North
and west of that line they continued in as full possession as
ever. The protectorate of the Iroquois, recognized in 1713
and in 1726, in no way touched the fee of the Indian lands.
Braddock marched toward the Forks of the Ohio to defend
the allies of England, whose dominions were invaded, and he
called upon the Indians to come to his help for that reason.
But by a second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, negotiated in 1784
by Oliver Wolcott, Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee, commis-
sioners appointed by Congress, and the representatives of the
Six Nations, they yielded to the United States all their claims
to the country west of a line drawn from Johnston's Landing
Place on Lake Ontario southerly to the mouth of Buffalo
Creek on Lake Erie, and always four miles south of the
" carrying path " between the two lakes ; thence south to the
north boundary of Pennsylvania ; thence west to the end of
the said north boundary ; and thence south to the Ohio
River. The first practical effect of this line was the aliena-
tion by the Iroquois of all their interest in the Northwest.
The United States still had to deal with the Western Ind-
ians — those on the soil — for these tribes did not acknowledge
that the Six Nations could deed away their lands. A treaty
concluded at Fort Mcintosh, January 21, 1785, between com-
missioners of the United States and the sachems and war-
riors of the Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa, and Ottawa na-
tions, made the Cuyahoga River, the portage between that
stream and the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum, and the
Tuscarawas as far as the crossing place above Fort Laurens;
a line drawn thence westerly to the portage of the Great
Miami; the portage between the Miami and the Maumee,
and the Maumee ; and Lake Erie to the north of the Cuya-
hoga, the boundaries between the United States and the said
THE LAND-ORDINANCE OF 1785.
257
tribes. Within these lines the Indians could still live and
hunt ; but lands east, south, and west were declared to belong
to the United States, "so far as the said Indians formerly
claimed the same." This treaty, which was reaflfirmed at
Fort Harmar in 1789, was the first of a long series of treaties
that finally put the United States in full possession of all the
Northwestern lands. The two treaties now sketched show
how matters stood when the old Congress enacted the land-
ordinance that we are now to examine.
This ordinance provided for a corps of surveyors, to be ap-
pointed by Congress, or a committee of the States, one from
each State, to survey the lands already ceded and purchased,
under the directions of the Geographer of the United States.
These paragraphs describe the main features of the plan of
survey :
" The surveyors . . . shall proceed to divide the said
territory into townships of 6 miles square, by lines running due
north and south, and others crossing these at right angles, as
near as may be. . . .
"The first line, running north and south as aforesaid shall
begin on the River Ohio, at a point that shall be found to be
due north from the western termination of a line, which has
been run as the southern boundary of the State of Pennsyl-
vania ; and the first line running east and west shall begin
at the same point and shall extend throughout the whole terri-
tory; provided that nothing herein shall be construed as fixing
the western boundary of the State of Pennsylvania. The Ge-
ographer shall designate the townships, or fractional parts of
townships, by numbers progressively from south to north ; al-
ways beginning each range with No. i ; and the ranges shall be
distinguished by their progressive numbers to the westward.
The first range, extending from the Ohio to the Lake Erie being
marked No. 1. The Geographer shall personally attend to the
running of the first east and west line ; and shall take the lati-
tude of the extremes of the first north and south line, and of
the moutlis of the principal rivers.
17
258
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
" The lines shall be measured with a chain ; shall be plainly
marked by chaps on the trees, and exactly described on a plat,
whereon shall be noted by the surveyor, at their proper dis-
tances, all mines, salt-springs, salt-licks, and mill-seats, that
shall come to his knowledge ; and all water-courses, mountains
and other remarkable and permanent things, over and near
which such lines shall pass, and also the quality of the lands.
" The plats of the townships respectively, shall be marited
by subdivisions into lots of one mile square or 640 acres, in the
same direction as the external lines, and numbered from i to
36 ; always beginning the succeeding range of tiie lots with the
number next to that with which the preceding one concluded.
And where, from the causes before mentioned, only a fraction-
al part of a township shall be surveyed, the lots, pit)tracted
thereon, shall bear the same numbers as if the township had
been entire. And the surveyors, in running the external lines
of the townships, shall, at the interval of every mile, mark cor-
ners for the lots which are adjacent, always designating the
same in a different manner from those of the townships.
"The Geographer and surveyors shall pay the utmost atten-
tion to the variation of the magnetic needle ; and shall run and
note all lines by the true meridian, certifying, with every plat,
what was the variation at the times of running the lines thereon
noted." •
As soon as seven ranges were surveyed, the Geographer
should transmit the plats to the Board of Treasury, to be
carefully recorded ; and so for every succeeding series of sev-
en ranges. It was made the duty of the Secretary of War,
from time to time, to take by lot from the whole number of
townships and fractional townships making up each series of
seven ranges, as well those to be sold entire as those to be sold
in lots, one-seventh of the whole, for the use of the Continen-
tal Army ; until enough land should be drawn to satisfy the
claims arising under the resolutions of Congress, adopted Sep-
tember 16 and 18, 1776, and August 12 and September 22,
'Journals of Congress, IV., 52a •
THE LAND-ORDINANCE OF 1785.
259
1780. The Board of Treasury should cause the remaining
numbers " to be drawn for in the name of the thirteen States
respectively, according to the quotas in the last preceding
requisition on all the States," and should certify the results
of such drawings to the Commissioners of the State Loan
offices. The State Commissioners should now proceed to
sell the lands at public vendue, after first advertising them, in
the following manner: Townships i, 3, 5, etc., whole or frac-
tional, in the first range, entire ; Nos. 2, 4, 6, etc., in the same
range, in lots ; townships i, 3, 5, in the second range, in lots;
Nos. 2, 4, 6, entire ; and so on, alternating throughout, pro-
vided that no lands should be sold at a less price than one dol-
lar an acre in specie or its equivalent in certificates of State
or United States indebtedness, and the cost of surveying and
other charges, which are rated at $36 a township. Lots Nos.
8, II, 26, 29, in all whole townships, and such of them as were
found in the fractional townships, were reserved to the United
States for future sale. The ordinance also declared : " There
shall be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township for the
maintenance of public schools, within the said township; also
one third part of all gold, silver, lead, and copper mines to
be sold or otherwise disposed of as Congress shall hereafter
direct."
The lands between the Scioto and Little Miami Rivers,
that Virginia had contingently reserved, were excepted from
the operation of the ordinance. Three townships adjacent to
Lake Erie were reserved for the use of the Canada and Nova'
Scotia refugees who had adhered to the cause of the colonies
in the war, and lands on the Muskingum were reserved for
the Christian Indians of Gnadenhiitten, Schonbrunn, and
Salem. Deeds should be given for lands by the Loan Com-
missioners of the States ; records of deeds should be kept in
the loan offices ; and a regular system of accounting between
the Federal and State authorities should be observed. All
moneys received by the commissioners for the lands sold
should be charged to them. Provision was also made for dis-
26o
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
tributing the lands reserved for bounties for service in the
Continental Army.
Under this ordinance, the Federal Government made its
first land-surveys, the so-called "seven ranges" adjoining
Pennsylvania, south of the forty-first parallel, frequently men-
tioned in histories of Ohio.
The Land-Ordinance of 1785 is eminently characteristic of
the time in which it was enacted. It is a curious medley of
state and national ideas. In operation it would have been
exceedingly complex and cumbersome. But its state feat-
ures passed away when the Constitution went into operation,
while national features are still alive. It contained the germs
of our present admirable system of national land-surveys:
Base-lines ; boundaries carefully run, measured, and marked
according to a uniform plan ; the six-mile township and the
"section;" maps and plats, deeds and records. In no case
was the land to be sold or otherwise disposed of before it had
been surveyed. The greatest defect of the plan of survey was
the lack of subdivisions smaller than a square mile, but this
was afterward overcome.
With all its defects, this ordinance was perfection itself
compared with the old colonial methods ; say, that of Virginia.
Here the State made no surveys whatever before disposing of
the lands to the settler or speculator. The prospective owner
sought out a tract of land that pleased him, and caused a sur-
vey to be made and marked, the latter generally by "blaz-
ing " the trees with a hatchet. The survey was then recorded
in the State land-office, and became the basis for warrants
covering the land. Such was the way in which the lands of
West Virginia and Kentucky were "taken up." The read-
er of Washington's correspondence with Crawford finds it
well illustrated in practice, and at the same time gets an in-
sight into a phase of Washington's character. This method
gave the greatest scope to settlement. The pre-emptor was
never obliged to wait for the surveyor. Such a system led to
the " running out " of all sorts of tracts of land. Half a dozen
THE LAND-ORDINANCE OF 1785.
261
patents would sometimes be given for the same tract. Pieces
of land, of all shapes and sizes, lay between the patents ; and
in time, as lands became more valuable, huge "blanket"
patents were thrown out to catch these pieces. Such a sys-
tem naturally begot no end of litigation, and there remain
in Kentucky curious vestiges of it, that Professor Shaler thus
describes :
M
'blaz-
"Of all these conflicts the Virginia, and, following it, the
Kentucky land-office took no note. To this day one can, if he
please to pay the costs, * patent ' any land that lies in Ken-
tucky, and repeat the process on the same area each year. The
State only guarantees the entry if the land is unpossessed under
previous title of valid kind. In time a vast amount of litiga-
tion and no end of trouble came out of this scheme. At this
moment, owing to the absence of records, there are hundreds
of thousands of acres in Kentucky over which no sort of
ownership has ever been exercised. No taxes are collected on
them. If they have ever been surveyed, no one knows under
what patents they are claimed." '
As it was, there was a sufficiency of land-litigation in the
Northwest Territory ; but the first settlers and their descend-
ants have the greatest reason to be grateful to the old Con-
gress for saving them from such confusion as Virginia suffered
to come upon Kentucky.
The system of surveys inaugurated did not extend to
the Connecticut and Virginia reservations on the south-
ern shore of Lake Erie and the northern bank of the Ohio.
Every Ohioan can join with Dr. Andrews, of Marietta, in
this opinion : " It would have been desirable if the system
of uniform ranges, townships and sections, which commenced
with the seven ranges in the summer of 1786, could have
been carried out over the whole surface of the State ; avoid-
ing the confusion of the five-mile system of the Western
' Kentucky, 49, 51.
262
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Reserve and the no system of the Virginia Military Dis-
trict." '
The reservation to Congress of one-third of the gold, silver,
and copper came to naught ; but the dedication to the sup-
port of public schools of lot No. i6 in every township was a
far-reaching act of statesmanship that is of perpetual interest.
It was the first and greatest of the long series of similar dedi-
cations made by Congress to education ; and the funds de-
rived from the sale of these original " school lands " are the
bulk of the public-school endowments of the five great States
of the old Northwest.
Note. — There has been some controversy as to the author
of the plan of survey incorporated in the Ordinance of 1785.
The late Colonel Charles Whittlesey accords the honor to
Thomas Hutchins, first Geographer of the United States, whose
duties were similar to those now performed by the Surveyor-
General of the Public Lands. Whittlesey says Hutchins con-
ceived "this simplest of all known modes of survey" in 1764,
when he was a captain in the Sixtieth Royal Regiment, and
engineer to the expedition to Ohio, under Colonel Henry Bou-
quet. It formed a part of his plan of military colonies north
of the Ohio as a protection against Indians. The seven ranges
were surveyed in 1786-87, under the protection of United States
troops. The base-line of this survey, known as " the Geogra-
pher's line," runs west from the north bank of the Ohio, where
the State line crosses it, forty-two miles.
Hutchins died at Pittsburg in 1788, where his remains now
lie unnoticed, in the cemetery of the First Presbyterian
Church. — Oliio Surveys, Tract No. 59, of Western Reserve and
Northern Ohio Historical Society.
' Ohio Archseological and Historical Quarterly, 4, June, 1887.
i-l«-'.Vj ■• ,«*■*.':». ,^V
XV.
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
The ordinance enacted, July 13, 1787, for the govern-
ment of the territory of the United States northwest of the
River Ohio is one of the memorable documents that passed
the doors of the old Congress. It ranks with the great State
papers of 1774 and 1775, that won from Lord Chatham the
encomium : " For solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wis-
dom of conclusion, under a complication of difficult circum-
stances, no nation or body of men stand in preference to the
General Congress at Philadelphia ; " with the Declaration of
Independence, that should always hang. Lord Brougham said,
in the cabinets of kings ; with, or rather above, the Articles
of Confederation, that, with all their imperfection and weak-
ness, still formed the first constitution of the American peo-
ple, and contained the elements for the evolution of a more
perfect union.
The Ordinance of 1787 stands at the convergence of three
series of important events. The first of these entered into
many great questions of the time, as Confederation, finance,
the national boundaries, foreign relations. Western settlements,
the Northwestern and Southwestern territories, the admis-
sion to the Union of Vermont as a State, the navigation of
the Mississippi, and the fidelity of the Southwest to the
Union. These events are the cessions that have already been
treated, so far as they relate to the old Northwest. Except
the Western Reserve, and the lands that Virginia had re-
tained in Southern Ohio to discharge her obligations to her
soldiers, the four cessions gave the United States a clear title
"T"
264
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
to the territory bounded by the Lakes, the Ohio, and the
Mississippi. This was the original public domain. It was a
territory in which all the States had a common interest ; it
furnished national subjects of legislation ; and it prepared the
way for the Constitution. The happy effects of the cessions
upon the States, and upon the Nation, cannot be overesti-
mated ; one of them being the escape from the difficulties
attending any attempt to adjust the conflicting jurisdictions.
These Northwestern cessions are the culmination of the first
series of events leading up to the Ordinance. Moreover,
they put the United States in what was really a very anom-
alous position. The Articles of Confederation were "ar-
ticles of confederation and perpetual union " among States ;
and they no more contemplated a Federal territory to be
managed by Congress than the Constitution of 1787 contem-
plated the acquisition of territory beyond the boundaries of
1783, To some extent, no doubt, this fact explains the re-
markable form of government that was devised for the
Northwest.
Previous to 1748, the English colonies had taken little in-
terest in the interior of North America. After that all was
changed. The Ohio Company, organized in 1748; the " Plan
of Union," adopted by the Albany Congress of 1754; Dr.
Franklin's comments on the " Plan," and his " Plan for set-
tling two Western Colonies in North America," have all been
fully treated in another place. Governor Thomas Pownall,
who has been called the only British official in the country
who had a statesman-like grasp of colonial questions, favored
what he called " barrier colonies," after the fashion of the
marks and marches of the Middle Ages. Pownall wrote home:
" If the English would advance one step farther, or cover them-
selves where they are, it must be at once, by one large step
over the mountains, with a numerous and military colony."'
The coming on of the French and Indian war adjourned the
' Sparks : Works of Franklin, IIL, 69.
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
265
plans of the Ohio Company, of Franklin, and of Pownall, un-
til the sword should decide to whom the West belonged ; and
even when the sword had rendered a verdict in favor of Eng-
land, the proclamation of 1763 still further adjourned similar
plans. But the paths that the wild deer had made over the
mountains could not be blocked up. The hunter followed
the deer, and the settler followed the hunter. Adventurous
Pennsylvanians and Virginians began to enter the valleys
leading to the Ohio ; James Robertson was at Watauga in
1769, and John Sevier came soon after ; Boone entered the
Dark and Bloody Ground the same year ; and when the em-
battled farmers fired the shot heard round the world, a party
of hunters in the valley of the Elkhorn heard the echo, and
baptized the station that they were building " Lexington."
It has been said that the English race has a hunger for the
horizon. " Have not all America extended their back settle-
ments in opposition to laws and proclamations ? " is a ques-
tion that Judge David Campbell asked Governor Caswell,
when the people of the back counties of North Carolina were
trying to set up the State of Franklin. But sporadic settle-
ments under the jurisdiction of the old States did not fill the
ambition of the times ; and in less than three years from the
signing of the royal proclamation the discussion of interior
colonies was boldly renewed. Again Franklin bore a promi-
nent part in the discussion. In 1766, 1767, and 1768 he
pressed upon the home government a grant for a colony in
the Illinois, and was refused. In 1769 he presented another,
praying for a grant on the southern side of the Ohio. This
time he was successful; the petition was granted in 1772,
terms of government were agreed upon, and the charter was
made ready for the seals, v/hen the breaking out of the war
with England again adjourned Western colonies to more
peaceful times.
All through the Revolution the over-mountain settlements
were slowly growing ; the Maryland amendment of 1777, and
the Congressional resolutions of 1780, kept the thought of new
I m.
:: I
:i
"mi
■',;il
im\
266
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
and independent States before the country ; and with the re-
turn of peace, the acknowledgment of independence, and the
concession of the Lakes and the Mississippi as our northwest-
ern and western boundaries, together with the land-cessions,
the hour of preparation for planting the West with new
States struck. There was no time to lose if the West was to
remain in our hands ; for the Briton and the Spaniard con-
tinued to retain considerable portions of our territory, and
neither looked upon the boundaries of 1783 as finalities. In liis
well-known letter to Governor Harrison, Washington wrote
in 1784: "The flanks and rear of the United States are
possessed by other powers, and formidable ones, too;" it is
necessary to " apply the cement of interest to bind all parts of
the Union together by indissoluble bonds ; " " the Western
States stand, as it were, upon a pivot — the touch of a feather
would turn them any way." '
On the 1st of March, 1784, the very day that Virginia
completed her cession, Mr. Jefferson, as chairman of a roin-
mittee, reported to Congress a temporary plan of govern-
ment for the Western territory; and this plan, variously
amended, became an ordinance of Congress on April 23d fol-
lowing. This ordinance did not organize a territorial govern-
ment, but left everything inchoate ; and, with all its merits,
was a nullity, and was repealed by the Ordinance of 1787.
Between April 23, 1784, and July 9, 1787, as many as three
ordinances for the government of the Western territory were
reported to Congress: May 10, 1786, September 19, 1786,
and April 26, 1787. These ordinances, one and all, were
quite different documents from the one whose history we
are now tracing. On May 10, 1787, the last one had reached
the third reading, when its further progress was suddenly
arrested by a third series of events that we must now follow.
But first, the facts now related in regard to new States and
governments are the second series, at the junction of which
* Sparks : Writings of Washington, IX., 62, 63.
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
267
with the two others wc find the Ordinance for the Govern-
ment of the Northwest Territory.
November 2, 1783, Washington took leave of the rank and
file of the Continental army, and two days later, of the officers.
He left both in a most distressful condition ; the majority
were poor, many broken in health ; they were all unpaid, and
Congress could do no more than give them the " final cer-
tificates" that were almost worthless; eight years of suffering
lay behind, and they knew not how many more of poverty
before. In that dark hour some of them looked beyond the
Western mountains for a theatre where they might repair
their broken fortunes, as they had in darker hours often looked
there as a place of retreat from the enemy in case of over-
whelming disaster ; and Washington, in his final order, had
dieered them with these words : " The extensive and fertile
regions of the West will yield a most happy asylum to those
who, fond of domestic enjoyment, are seeking for personal
independence.'" Even before that order was issued, a plan
for forming a new State westward of the Ohio was in con-
templation; and on June 16, 1783, two hundred and eighty-
five officers of the Continental line of the army had petitioned
Congress to assign and mark out the tract of land bounded by
Lake Erie on the north, Pennsylvania on the east, the Ohio
on the south, a meridian twenty-four miles west of the mouth
of the Scioto, and the Miami of the Lakes on the west, as
the seat of a distinct colony of the United States, " in time
to be admitted one of the confederated States of America." *
The petitioners also asked that their bounty lands be set off
to them in this district. This petition was really the foun-
dation of the Ohio Company of Associates, organized at the
' Sparks : Writings of Washington, VIII., 493.
' Of the two hundred and eighty-five names, two hundred and thirty-five be-
longed to New England, thirty-six to New Jersey, thirteen to Maryland, and one
to New York. The New England names belonged, one hundred and fifty-five to
Massachusetts, thirty-four to New Hampshire, and forty-six to Connecticut.
-Ohio Archxological and Historical Quarterly, June, 1887, 46.
268
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
" Bunch of Grapes," in Boston, March 3, 1786. This organ-
ization meant, as has been well said, " The conversion of those
old final certificates into future homes, westward of the Ohio,"
and " the formation of a new State." The directors sent
one of their number, General S. H. Parsons, of Middletown,
Conn., to Congress to negotiate the purchase of a tract of
land ; and it was his arrival in New York, May loth, that
arrested the progress of the ordinance that had been reported
the previous month. Parsons presented his memorial, which
was referred to a committee, and returned home. His place
was shortly taken by Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswich, Mass.
Cutler reached New York on July 5th, the day before the
pending ordinance was to be taken up. The few days fol-
lowing his waiting upon Congress are big with the issues of
futurity. They are the convergence of the three lines of
events that we have been following — the land-cessions, the
growing interest in Western colonization, and the objects of
the Ohio Company — where we find the immortal Ordinance.
Dr. Cutler's ostensible business in New York was to pur-
chase as much of the land bounded by the petition of 1783 as
Congress would exchange for $1,000,000 of the evidences of
the public debt. But he was really as much interested in the
ordinance that Congress was then considering as in the me-
morial of General Parsons ; for what would homes be worth
to New England men without good government ? He seems,
indeed, to have had almost as much to do with the one as
with the other. It is impossible and unnecessary to give in
detail the history of those eventful July days, but a rapid
summary of events is essential to our purpose.
Only eight States were then present by their delegates in
Congress — Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. On
the 9th of July the ordinance of April preceding was re-
ferred to a new committee — Carrington and Lee of Virginia,
Dane of Massachusetts, Kean of South Carolina, and Smith
r .S jHl
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
269
of New York — three of them Southern men. On the loth,
Dr. Cutler, in response to an invitation of the committee,
submitted in writing his views touching an ordinance ; on the
nth, the committee reported ; and on the 13th, after receiving
some amendments, the report was adopted by the unanimous
vote of the States present, and the unanimous vote of the
eighteen delegates, with the exception of Yates of New York.
Thus, an act of legislation that had been before Congress for
more than three years was consummated within a week from
the time that Dr. Cutler, who haa been twelve days on the
way, drove his gig up to the " Plough and the Harrow," in
the Bowery.
Admirable in matter and in literary style as the Ordinance
is, its provisions are not arranged with that careful method
which Gouverneur Morris gave to the Constitution of the
United States. I shall make no attempt at classification be-
yond remarking that the Ordinance created a machinery of
government for immediate use, defined the method and spirit
of its administration, provided for the creation of the long-
promised new States, and established certain principles of
civil polity that should be of perpetual obligation.
Section i constituted the Territory one district for tempo-
rary government, but reserved to Congress the power to divide
it into two districts in the future.
Section 2 ordained that landed estates in the Territory, of
persons dying intestate, should be divided among the chil-
dren of the intestate, or if none, among the next of kin, in
equal shares. This provision Jefferson had introduced into
the ordinance for Western lands that he reports J in 1784, and
that Congress never acted upon, in the words : " The lands
therein shall pass in descent and dower according to the cus-
toms known in the common law by the name of gavelkind."
It adds interest to the fact to recall that, not long before, en-
tails and primogeniture had been eradicated from the laws of
Virginia.
fs. lb . ^^^
.»., :**^'#*.«.,
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Sections 3 to 12, inclusive, created a Territorial govern-
ment, and directed how it should be administered. Congress
should appoint a governor for a term of three years, a secre-
tary for a term of four years, and three judges for good be-
havior. Until the election of a general assembly, the gov-
ernor and judges should adopt and publish in the district such
of the laws, civil and criminal, of the original States as they
deemed necessary and best suited to the circumstances of the
people, subject to the approval of Congress. The governor
should be commander-in-chief of the militia, should appoint
and commission militia officers below the rank of general
officers, and appoint such magistrates and other civil officers
in counties and townships as he deemed necessary to the
maintenance of peace and good order. The secretary's duties
are sufficiently indicated by his title. Any two of the judges
should form a court having a common-law jurisdiction. A
general assembly was authorized as soon as there should be five
thousand free male inhabitants, of full age, in the district. The
legislature should consist, when formed, of a governor, a legis-
lative council, and a house of representatives ; the representa-
tives to be chosen by the people, but the five members of the
council to be chosen by Congress from a list of ten nominated
by the house of representatives. The legislature should elect
a Territorial delegate to Congress. All the officers must re-
side in the Territory. The governor must own a freehold of
1,000 acres of land in the district; the secretary, the judges,
and the members of the council must have similar freeholds
of 500 acres each ; representatives must hold, in their own
right, 200 acres of land in the district, and no man was a
qualified elector of '• representative, the only elective office,
unless he filled the following requirement : " That a freehold
in 50 acres of land in the district, having been a citizen of one
of the States, and being resident in the district, or the like
freehold and two years' residence in the district, shall be nec-
essary to qualify a man as an elector of a representative."
What havoc these rules would make with the legislatures
■*f:.
:*i., A
A r.,fe,« ?. ;P
-«<.-.,.-
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
271
and electoral bodies of to-day ! They were intended to con-
fine the government of the Territory to those men who had,
as the English say, " a stake in the country." Moreover, they
were in accord with the temper ot the times, and they stand
on the statute-book of 1787 a landmark from which we may
measure how far the American people have drifted on the tide
of democracy in one hundred years. The whole government
was centralized to a degree that would not now be endured in
the United States outside of Utah.
Then follow the articles of compact between the original
States and the people and States in the Territory, forever un-
alterable, unless by common consent — the six bright jewels in
the crown that the Northwest Territory was ever to wear.
Article I. declares that " No person demeaning himself in
a peaceable and orderly manner shall ever be molested on ac-
count of his mode of worship or religious sentiments, in the
said Territory."
Article II. guarantees to the inhabitants the writ oi habeas
corpus, trial by jury, proportional representation in the legis-
lature, and the privileges of the common law. The article con-
cludes with the declaration " That no law ought ever to be
made or have force in the said Territory that shall, in any
manner whatever, interfere with or affect private contracts, or
engagements bona fide, and without fraud previously formed."
A few weeks later, this provision was copied into the Consti-
tution of the United States, but this is its first appearance in
a charter of government. It was an outgrowth of the troub-
lous commercial condition of the country. Lee, who origi-
nally brought it forward, intended it as a stroke at paper
money.
Article III. contains those words that should be embla-
zoned on the escutcheon of every American State : " Religion,
morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government
and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of edu-
cation shall forever be encouraged." It also says that good
faith shall be observed toward the Indians.
» n
2/2
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Article IV. ordained " That the said Territory, and the
States which may be formed therein, shall forever remain a
part of this Confederacy of the United States of America, sub-
ject to the Articles of Confederation, and to such alterations
therein " as might be made, and to the laws enacted by Con-
gress. It concludes, after some provisions in regard to taxa-
tion : " The navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and
St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall
be common highways, and forever free, as well to the inhab-
itants of the said Territory as to the citizens of the United
States, and those of any other States that may be admit-
ted into the Confederacy, without any tax, imposts, or duty
therefor."
Article V. provided for the formation in the Territory of
States, not less than three nor more than five, and drew their
boundary-lines subject to changes that Congress might after-
ward make. A population of 60,000 free inhabitants should
entitle every one of these States to admission — not " into the
Union," a phrase that came in with the Constitution, but—
" by its delegates into the Congress of the United States, on an
equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever,"
and to " form a permanent constitution of State government,"
with the proviso that " the constitution and government so
to be formed shall be republican, and in conformity to the
principles contained in these articles."
Article VI. dedicated the Northwest to freedom forever.
" There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." But this
prohibition was coupled with a proviso that stamps the whole
article as a compromise. " Provided always, that any person
escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully
claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be
lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his
or her labor or service as aforesaid."
Mr. W. F. Poole says that " in the whole range of topics
M
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
273
in our national history there is none which has been more ob-
scure, or the subject of more conflicting and erroneous state-
ments, than the Ordinance of 1787." ' Much labor and acute-
ness have been devoted to the discovery of the authorship of
its different parts. I shall neither emulate these labors nor
particularize their results, but shall content myself with three
or four observations.
We have seen that four different ordinances had been
previously reported to Congress, and that one had already
been enacted. The fifth and great Ordinance, as Mr. Ban-
croft says, embodied the best parts of all its predecessors.
But it embodied more ; and all the evidence points to the
conclusion that much of the new material \^ as contained in
the paper that Dr. Cutler handed to the committee, July loth,
after he had studied the ordinance then pending. Whoever
may have brought them forward, the imperishable principles
of polity woven into the Ordinance of 1787 were the ripe
fruit of many centuries of Anglo-Saxon civilization ; but the
best places to search for them, are the bills of rights of the
Revolutionary constitutions.
The immortal prohibition of slavery has been the subject
of many a heated controversy. In the " great debate " of
1830, Mr. Webster claimed it for Nathan Dane, of Massachu-
setts, and Mr. Hayne and Mr. Benton claimed it for Thomas
Jefferson. Mr. Dane claimed it for himself. President King
of Columbia College claimed it for his father, Rufus King.
William Grayson and Richard Henry Lee have also been
nominated for the honor. The facts are these : Mr. Jeffer-
son's draught of the Ordinance of 1784 contained a prohibition
of slavery in all Western territory, south as well as north of the
Ohio River, to take effect at the beginning of the year 1801,
but it was struck out in Congress. In March, 1785, Mr. King
moved to commit a proposition to prohibit slavery in the
Northwest immediately ; the motion prevailed, but Congress
' North American Review, No. 251.
k8
274
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
,H,i ' ti
never acted upon the subject. The first draught of the Ordi-
nance of 1787 did not contain the prohibition; but Mr. Dane,
who was a m'^mber of the committee of July 9th, and who
wrote that draught, brought it forward on the sec id reading,
apparently on a suggestion from Virginia, and it was made
the sixth article of compact. Nothing can be finer than Mr.
Bancroft's distribution of the honors among those who helped
to bring about this grand result :
"Thomas Jefferson first summoned Congress to prohibit
slavery in all the territory of the United States ; Rufus King
lifted up the measure when it lay almost lifeless on the ground,
and suggested the immediate instead of the prospective prohi-
bition ; a Congress composed of five Southern States to one
from New England and twc from the Middle States, headed by
William Grayson, supported by Richard Henry Lee, and using
Nathan Dane as scribe, carried the measure to the goal in the
amended form in which King had caused it to be referred to a
committee ; and as Jefferson had proposed, placed it under the
sanction of an irrevocable compact." '
The value of Rufus King's suggestion will appear when
we come to study, farther on, the efforts afterward made in
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to break the prohibition down,
and when we reflect upon the enormous power that slavery
would have had in the Northwest if once it gained a foothold.
Any man who believes that it was Article VI. of the com-
pacts of 1787 that decided the great issue brought to a close
at Appomattox in 1865 must read the history of those July
days with bated breath. Once that prohibition had been
voted down, and once it had been set aside ; it had been re-
jected by Southern men when Mr. Jefferson first brought it
forward, and now five of the eight States present are South-
ern States and eleven of the eighteen men Southern men.
We have now traced the main events that led up to July
• History, VI., 290.
*.«.. .Mm.^ff'-iff ■*«.;
t
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
275
13 1787 ; but we should also observe that at last the Ordinance
could not have been secured, as it is, had it not been for the
happy constitution of Congress at that time, for the address
of Dr. Cutler in conducting his mission, and for the blessed
influences of peace and wisdom that brooded over America in
that year. How admirable the words of Bancroft :
" Before the Federal Convention had referred its resolutions
to a committee of detail, an interlude in Congress was shap-
ing the character and destiny of the United States of America.
Sublime and humane and eventful in the history of mankind
as was the result, it will take not many words to tell how \t
was brought about. For a time wisdom and peace and justice
dwelt among men, and the great Ordinance, which could alone
give continuance to the Union, came in serenity and stillness.
Every man that had a share in it seemed to be led by an invis-
ible hand to do just what was wanted of him ; all that was
wrongfully undertaken fell to the ground to wither by the way-
side ; whatever was needed for the happy completion of the
mighty work arrived opportunely, and just at the right moment
moved into its place." '
But Dr. Cutler came to New York to buy land ? Strange to
say, the land-purchase was attended by more trouble than the
ordinance of government ; but on July 27th Congress author-
ized the sale of 5,cxx),ooo acres lying north of the Ohio, west
of the seven ranges, and east of the Scioto River, 1,500,000
for the Ohio Company, and " the remainder," to quote Dr.
Cutler's diary, " for a private speculation in which many of
the principal characters of America are concerned." ' The total
price agreed upon was three and a half millions of dollars, but
as the payments were made in public securities worth only
twelve cents on a dollar, the real price was only eight or nine
cents per acre.
' History, VI., 277.
' The "private speculation" vras the Scioto Company. See note at the end
of chapter.
' ^' ^■■'^ l^^i. t*??.^.,i .f -f^fe .ft..
276
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
" The Ordinance of 1787 and the Ohio purchase," says Mr.
Poole, " were parts of one and the same transaction. The
purchase would not have been made without the Ordinance,
and the Ordinance could not have been enacted except as an
essential condition of the purchase." Th«; meaning of this is,
that the New England men would not buy the land unless a
satisfactory government was secured, and that Congress would
not have enacted the Ordinance had it not been for the
opportunity to make a large sale of lands. This alone makes
the sale and purchase memorable, but it is memorable for
other reasons. The agent who negotiated it says it was " the
greatest private contract ever made in America," up to that
time. Besides, the " Powers to the Board of Treasury " au-
thorizing the sale contain some features that rank with those
of the Ordinance itself. The Land Ordinance of 1785 r^
served lot No. 16 in every township, or a thirty-sixth part
of the whole West, for the maintenance of public schools
within the township ; and the " powers " reaffirmed the reser-
vation. Other kindred provisions were these : The lot No.
29 in each township or fractional part of a township to be given
perpetually for the purposes of religion. Not more than two
complete townships to be given perpetually for the purposes of
a university, to be laid off by the purchaser or purchasers, as
near the centre as may be, so that the same shall be of good
land, to be applied to the intended object by the legislature
of the State. These two townships of land are the endow-
ment of the Ohio University at Athens. Once more, it was
in consequence of the Ordinance and the jDurchase that Mari-
etta, the first colony in the Northwest Territory, was planted
at the mouth of the Muskingum, April 7, 1788.
No act of American legislation has called out more elo-
quent applause than the Ordinance of 1787. Statesmen, his-
torians, and jurists have vied with one another in celebrating
its praises. In one respect it has a proud pre-eminence over
•all other acts of legislation on the American statute-books. It
alone is known by the date of its enactment, and not by its
•^
#.*.
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
277
subject-matter. It was more than a law or statute. It was a
constitution for the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio.
More than this, it was a model for later legislation relating to
the national territories ; and some of its provi' ions, particu-
larly the prohibition of slavery, stand among the greatest prec-
edents of our history. The sixth compact was the old-time
platform of the Republican Party previous to 1861.
The record of the vote on the Ordinance shows eighteen
delegates present in Congress. As we look over the list, we
are surprised to see how few of them have any place in his-
tory.
Massachusetts, Holten and Dane ; New York, Smith,
Harring, and Yates ; New Jersey, Clark and Scheurnian ;
Delaware, Kearny and Mitchell ; Virginia, Grayson, Lee, and
Carrington; North Carolina, Blount and Hawkins; South
Carolina, Kean and Huger ; Georgia, Few and Pierce. We
must remember, however, that the Old Congress was not
now what once it had been; also that the Federal Convention
was sitting at Philadelphia, and that Franklin, Sherman,
King, Hamilton, the Morrises, Madison, Rutledge, the Pinck-
neys, Randolph, Wilson, and Washington were in attendance
there. The ease with which the Ohio Company carried its
proposition through Congress has been the subject of sur-
prise for a hundred years. No doubt the explanation con-
sists largely in the fact that the new colony was proposed by
a body of men fully able to make it successful. Contrasting
it with earlier propositions, Mr. Bancroft says :
" 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-defence ; the
protectors of all who should follow them ; men skilled in the
labors of the field and of artisans ; enterprising and laborious ;
trained in the severe morality and strict orthodoxy of the New
England villages of that day. All was changed. There was
the same difference as between sending out recruiting officers
\^r*
* f
» ■<»#,^ .,s*^>.
278
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
and giving marching orders to a regular corps present with
music and arms and banners." '
But, after all, one cannot help thinking that the silence
and celerity with which the Ordinance was enacted was
partly due to the fact that the Federal Convention was in
session. Men's eyes were fixed upon the statesmen who were
discussing in secret the National Constitution ; and Grayson
and Lee and Carrington and Dane, assisted by Manasseh
Cutler, were left with fourteen men, all but one of whom
were willing to follow them, to enact in serenity and stillness
an ordinance of government that might not have been se-
cured if New York and not Philadelphia had been the focus
of public attention. The year 1787 is thus doubly memor-
able ; it gave us the Ordinance for the Territory Northwest
of the River Ohio, and the Constitution of the United States.
" Peace hath her victories
1^0 less renowned than war ; "
and History may yet adjudge that year the greatest in our
annals.
Note. — Hitherto Mr. W. F. Poole's article, " Dr. Cutler and
the Ordinance of 1787," in the North American Review, No. 251,
has been the best single account of the origin of the Ordinance
of 1787, and particularly of the part that Dr. Cutler played in
its enactment. But now a much fuller account may be found
in the " Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh
Cutler, LL.D." This work will immediately take rank with
the " St. Clair Papers," as a contribution to Northwestern
history. The circumstances leading up to the organization of
the Ohio Company and the planting of Marietta, are narrated
with great fulness and particularity. Much the best account
extant of the Scioto purchase will also be found in this work.
This purchase was " the private speculation in which many of
' History, VL, 285.
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
279
the principal characters of America are concerned," that Cutler
was compelled to include in his proposition to Congress before
he could buy the lands that he wanted for the Ohio Associates.
The Scioto purchase was purely a speculation, projected by
Colonel William Duer, and proved to be very disastrous to all
concerned.
;st m our
XVI.
THE TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES
NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO.
The region beyond the Ohio that the Virginia troops and
the American Commissioners at Paris wrested from England,
that the four States ceded to the Nation, and that Congress
constituted a district for the purposes of government in 1787,
of itself is a noble physical base for an empire. It contains
265,878 ' square miles of land to Austria-Hungary's 240,943,
Germany's 212,091, France's 209,091, Great Britain and Ire-
land's 120,874, and Italy's 114,296. Triangular in form, its
sides are washed by about three thousand miles of navigable
waters. The Great Lakes, one of which reaches its very cen-
tre, contain nearly one-half the fresh water of the globe. The
volume of the waters of the Mississippi is equal to that of
three Ganges, of nine Rhones, of twenty-seven Seines, or
eighty Tibers, or of all the rivers of Europe, exclusive of the
Volga.' The Ohio, one thousand miles in length, is one of
• The territory northwest of the River Ohio contained an area of 265,878
square miles, and from it were formed and now lie in its original territory-
Square Miles.
The State of Ohio 39,964
•' " " Indiana 331809
" •« " Illinois 55,414
" " " Michigan 56,451
II II i( Wisconsin S3>924
II II II Minnesota, east of the Mississippi River and international
boundary of 1783, estimated to contain 26,000
" Erie Purchase (in Pennsylvania) about 316
Grand Total, 170,161,867 acres. — Donaldson: The Public Domain, 161.
* Carnegie : Triumphant Democracy, 301.
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 281
the largest affluents of the Mississippi. The rivers flowing
to these three water-ways render every part of the interior of
the Northwest easily accessible ; and some of them, as the
Wabash, the Illinois, and the Wisconsin, arc small streams
only because they appear in such noble company. The sur-
face is exceedingly favorable to the construction of canals and
railroads; and such are the geographical relations of the re-
gion to the remaining pa^ts of the country that it gathers in
its grasp nearly all the great lines of transportation and travel
uniting the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. With
a very large proportion of arable land unsurpassed in fertility
and adapted to a wide range of productions ; rich in forests of
hard and soft woods ; the waters abounding in fish ; abundant
in coal, iron, and lead, copper, oil, gas, and salt, it is the fit
home of the great people who arc making its history.
On July 13, 1787, this great domain was an unbroken
wilderness. By far the larger number of the few inhabitants
were savages, who were resolved that the wilderness should
remain unbroken. Passing by the roving hunters and traders,
the few Americans then making a small beginning at New De-
sign on the Mississippi, and the occasional Moravian mis-
sionaries, the French colonists, not five thousand in number,
were the only civilized population. As Michigan was in the
hands of the British, the habitants of the Illinois and the
Wabash, who had practically been without government since
1784, were the only people on the ground calling for a gov-
ernment. However, the Territory was not established for the
resident population. A new colonial period was opening,
promising grander results than the old one. The Ordinance
of 1787 and the Powers to the Board of Treasury take rank
with the colonial charters of one hundred and fifty years be-
fore. The magnificent territory that the Indian had for cen-
turies put to uses but little superior to those of the buffalo,
the bear, and the wolf; that the Frenchman had used for pur-
poses but little higher than those of the Indian ; and that the
Englishman had refused to use at all, was now to be devoted
282
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
i
to the greatest of human objects — was now to become the
homes of a progrejsive people excelling in all the arts of civil-
ized life.
The apex of the Northwestern triangle points to the east ;
two of its sides face the Atlantic slope ; but causes now to
be pointed out made the Ohio River the seat of the earliest
settlements.
The census-takers of 1790 found in the United States a pop-
ulation of 3,929,214 souls, and the number was not much less
in 1788. All of this population, save about five per cent., was
distributed along the seaboard from Maine to Georgia, pre-
senting an average depth of settlement, in a direction at right
angles to the roast, of two hundred and fifty-five miles. This
was the population that the Northwest was first to draw upon ;
for the days of European emigration had not then dawned.
General Walker, the superintendent of the tenth census,
has pointed out that, in the early census-years, population
moved westward along four main lines : (i) Through Central
New York, following Lhe valley of the Mohawk River; (2)
across Southern Pennsylvania, Western Maryland, and North-
ern Virginia, parallel to and along the course of the Upper
Potomac; (3) southward down the Valley of Virginia, and
through the mountain-gaps into Tennessee and Kentucky;
(4) around the southern end of the mountains, through Geor-
gia and Alabama.' These movements were along the original
lines of communication, surveyed by Nature ages before man
appeared on the continent. The Great L?ikes lie in the first
of these directions, and they afterward became a main
thoroughfare of emigration ; but, at the time of which we
write, no road had been cut through the wilderness of Western
New York to Lake Erie, and as late as 1796 the surveyors of
the Connecticut Land Company reached that lake by the
Wood Creek portage, Lake Ontario, and the Niagara portage.
' Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census, June
30, 1880, xiiL
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 283
Nor had population then advanced on this line west of the
interior New York lakes. Besides, the country above the
head of Lake Erie was in the possession of England, and her
garrison at Detroit would have turned back adventurous
pioneers as promptly as Du Lhut turned back the Dutch
traders at the close of the seventeenth century. Furthermore,
the Lake Basin was thought less inviting than the Ohio Valley.
On the second line, the situation was very different. In the
French War two practicable roads were built over the moun-
tains : The Braddock Road, cut through from the Upper Po-
tomac in 1755, and the Forbes Road of 1758. These two
roads connected the Ohio with tide-water, one at Philadelphia
and the other at Alexandria. Accordingly, when the advent-
urer or the pioneer had once reached the Monongahela or the
Alleghany, the whole West lay open before him, and he had
but to descend the " beautiful Ohio " to his chosen destination.
Then, in the years just preceding the Revolution, Finley,
Harrod, and Boone had discovered the natural highway lead-
ing from the mountain-gaps near the southern line of Vir-
ginia to the fairest region of Kenf:ucky. Moreover, the rela-
tions of the Ohio Valley to the country east and south were
such that it necessarily received the full streams of popu-
lation which the second and third of these channels soon
began to discharge. In fact, settlers moving west by these
two roads had reached the bank of the Ohio River at points
as distant as the Forks and the mouth of the Kentucky
before the Massachusetts men had thought of an Ohio col-
ony at all.
The five per cent, of the total population of 1790 not found
on the Atlantic Plain was distributed in little islands almost
lost in the wilderness-ocean of the West. Four of these i:i-
lands lay on the border of the new Territory. The first, con-
taining 63,218 people, was in Southwestern Pennsylvania; the
second and third, containing together 55,873, were in Western
Virginia, clustered around Wheeling and the mouth of the
Kanawha ; the fourth was in Kentucky, below the Licking
284
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
River, and contained 73,677 souls. From the close of King
George's War, when the colonies began to awaken to their
Western interests, the Virginians had surpassed all their com-
petitors in Western enterprise ; but they were closely followed
by the Marylanders and Pennsylvanians on the north and
the Carolinians on the south. These causes together explain
the sources of the four clusters of settlements found south of
the Ohio River in 1790. Nearly all of the settlers, excluding
those born on the soil, came from those parts of the country
east of the mountains, south of New York and north of South
Carolina. A man living in 1787, possessing all these facts, and
also observing the great relative disadvantage of New Eng-
land in the Western competition, growing out of her remote-
ness from the scene of operations and of the indisposition of
her orderly population to fall into the channels of emigration,
should have been able to indicate the principal sources o*^ the
population that, in the first period of its histoiy, flowed into
the country beyond the River Ohio. We shall soon find the
facts of history justifying the prophecy that this remark im-
plies.
In one sense the whole Northwest below the head of Lake
Erie was open to the Ohio Company of Associates in 1787,
but, practically, only the Ohio Valley. It made choice of lands
on both sides of the Muskingum, but mainly below that stream.
Three men appear to have controlled the location. In 1785
General Benjamin Tupper, one of the State surveyors under
the land-ordinance of that year, came west as far as Pitts-
burg, where he was stopped by the Indian hostilities then
raging. But he had caught a glimpse of the Western vision,
and he returned to New England, his imagination filled with
pictures of Western possibilities. The same year General Sam-
uel Holden Parsons, a Revolutionary veteran, descended the
Ohio to the Falls ; he, also, returned on fire with Western en-
thusiasm. The reports made to their old comrades in the
East by Tupper and Parsons furnished much of the motive
power that kept the new-colony enterprise moving, as well
divi
flow
the
oft
r'
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 285
as tended to fix its seat on the Ohio rather than on Lake Erie.
Thomas Hutchins, the Geographer of the United States, who
probably had a more definite knowledge of the West than
any other man living at the time, determined its precise loca-
tion. He advised Cutler, to whom he was introduced in
New York, to choose the Muskingum, which he considered
the most favorable location in the West for the purposes of
the company, and his advice was decisive. The choice was
the more fortunate for the reason that Fort Harmar — a fort
large enough to receive a garrison a regiment strong, built at
the confluence of the two streams to protect passengers on the
Ohio, to overawe the Indians, and to furnish armed escorts
for the surveyors at work on the seven ranges — had been com-
pleted in the spring of 1786. The contract, signed by Samuel
Osgood and Arthur Lee, of the Board of Treasury, for the
United States, and by Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sar-
gent for the company, bounded the purchase, east by the sev-
enth range of townships, south by the Ohio, west by the
eighteenth range, and north by an east and west line far
enough back from the Ohio to include 1,500,000 acres of land.
Five hundred thousand dollars was paid at the date of the
contract. The company not being able to pay the second
moiety, further legislation was had, which reduced the quan-
tity of land actually patented, not including reservations, to
1,064,285 acres.'
How well matured were the plans of the Associates is
shown by the fact that the advanced guard of the colony
reached the Youghiogheny, January 23, and the second
division, February 14, 1788. Here they built boats for de-
scending the Ohio on the opening of navigation in the spring.
From the deck of a row-galley, appropriately named the May-
flower, General Rufus Putnam, a hero of two wars and one of
the prominent promoters of the colony, stepped to the bank
of the Muskingum, April 7, 1788. Forty-seven other sons of
I ,
*!' ill
' Andrews : Washington County and the Early Settlement of Ohio, 16-18.
286
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
New England landed at the same time. Felling trees, build-
ing houses, laying out a city, and the erection of a stockade,
called " Campus Martius," began at once. In the course of
the year one hundred and thirty-two men, including fifteen
families, arrived. This was a modest and unpretentious be-
ginning, but, with the pressure of General Putnam's foot on
this new soil, the present order of things in the old North-
west began.
Meantime, the steps necessary to the setting up of the new
government were being taken. On October 5, 1787, Congress
elected General Arthur St. Clair governor, and Winthrop
Sargent secretary, of the new Territory ; afterward Samuel
Holden Parsons, James M. Varnum, and John Cleves
Symmes were chosen judges. St. Clair was a veteran soldier
of both the French and Revolutionary Wars, a trained civilian
and an accomplished gentleman, a sterling patriot, a friend of
Washington, and president of Congress at the passage of the
Ordinance. A Scotchman by birth, he had come out an
officer in one of the British regiments in the time of the
French War ; he was a lieutenant under Wolfe at Quebec ;
and made Western Pennsylvania his home soon after the
coming of peace. We have already met him in that region in
the troublous times that preceded the Revolution. Secretary
Sargent was from Massachusetts, and a man of many abilities
and accomplishments ; soldier, civilian, a member of learned
societies, and a poet. Parsons was from Connecticut, and Var-
num from Rhode Island ; both were distinguished soldiers
and able lawyers. Judge Symmes was Chief Justice of New
Jersey at the time of his appointment. Parsons and Varnum
soon died, and their places were taken by George Turner and
Rufus Putnam.
Independence Day was duly celebrated at the mouth of
the Muskingum ; and the expectant state of the colony, as
well as the grandiose eloquence sometimes indulged in by the
Revolutionary orators, is well illustrated by this extract from
the oration delivered by Judge Varnum :
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 287
"We mutually lament that the absence of his Excellency
will not permit us, upon this joyous occasion, to make those
grateful assurances of sincere attachments, which bind us to
him by the noblest motives that can animate an enlightened
people. May he soon arrive. Thou gently flowing Ohio,
wliose surface, as conscious of thy unequaled majesty, reflecteth
no images but the grandeur of the impending heaven, bear
him, oh, bear him safely to this anxious spot ! And thou,
beautiful, transparent Muskingum, swell at the moment of his
approach, and reflect no objects but of pleasure and delight." '
Governor St. Clair landed at the Muskingum bank, July
9th, and was received with appropriate civic and military
honors; the 15th of the same month, attended by Secretary
Sargent and Judges Parsons and Varnum, he made his public
entry at the bower, in the city, where he was received by
General Putnam, at the head of the citizens, '' with the
most sincere and universal congratulations." The Governor
made a short address; Secretary Sargent read the Ordi-
nance and the commissions of the officers. The Governor
then made a longer address. The citizens applauded, the
concourse broke up, the wheels of government began to re-
volve, and civil life began.
On July 26th the Governor created Washington County,
the oldest county in the Northwest ; and a little later ap-
pointed magistrates and established a Court of Quarter Ses-
sions. The Judiciary was formally inaugurated, September
2d, with impressive ceremonies. A procession marched from
Fort Harmar to one of the block-houses of Campus Martins,
where the judges took their seats on the high bench; Dr.
Manasseh Cutler, who was on a visit to the colony, offered a
T'ting prayer; the commissions of the judges and officers
of the court were read ; and then, with the sheriff's proclama-
tion, "O, yes! a court is open for the administration of even-
handed justice to the poor and the rich, to the guilty and
» St. Clair Papers, I., 139.
288
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
m
!?1
the innocent, without respect of persons ; none to be punished
without trial by their peers, and then in pursuance of the laws
and evidence in the case" — the judicial history of the Territory
began. Paul Fearing was admitted as an attorney, the first
lawyer in the Northwest.
Such, briefly told, is the story of the founding of Marietta,
named for the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, and the institu-
tion of civil government in the Northwest Territory. Not even
the Pilgrim colony of 1620 was made up of better elements.
At the distance of a century, no fitter eulogy upon the men
who constituted it can be given than Washington's: "No col-
ony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices
as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. In-
formation, property, and strength will be its characteristics.
I know many of the settlers personally, and there were never
men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a com-
munity." ' The difference between French and American
colonization in the Northwest is strikingly shown by two
simple facts: On April 7, 1788, the village of Saut Ste Marie
was one hundred and twenty years old ; Marietta will not
have reached a century until April 7, 1888.
Another land-purchase, second only to that of the Ohio
Company, was made in 1787 — the Miami purchase or Symmes
Tract of one million acres, lying on the north bank of the Ohio
between the two Miami Rivers.' Three colonies were planted
in this tract in the year 1788 : Columbia, at the mouth of the
Little Miami ; Losantiville, opposite the mouth of the Lick-
ing River ; and North Bend, at the farthest northern sweep
of the Ohio west of the Kanawha. For a time every one of
these settlements aspired to the leadership ; but the second,
founded December 24, 1788, having been chosen as the seat
of a military post, and also as the county seat of Hamilton
County, rebaptized by St. Clair Cincinnati, a name borrowed
'Sparks: Writings of Washington, IX., 385.
' The tract was not paid for, and only about one-third was patented.
f'
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 289
from the celebrated society of Revolutionary officers of
which he was a prominent member, soon outstripped both its
competitors. Here lived the Governor, and here sat the first
Territorial Legislature. Still, its growth was slow ; and when
Judge Burnet first saw it, in 1796, it gave faint promise of
becoming what it now is in name, and what it long was in
(act, the Queen City of the West. The buildings were few
and poor; the population, including the garrison, was about
six hundred ; and the social habits of the place anything but
commendable.'
Those philosophers who trace all historical phenomena to
physical causes may read a suggestive lesson in the history of
the Miami purchase. The location of North Bend is as favor-
able as that of Cincinnati. It was the home of Judge Symmes,
and the first station of the troops detailed by General Har-
mar to protect the Miami pioneers. Unfortunately, before a
permanent fortification was constructed the commanding of-
ficer of the troops became enamored of the black-eyed wife
of one of the settlers. The jealous husband's removal to
Cincinnati led to the prompt discovery, on the part of the
officer, of the superior military advantages of that location ;
whence resulted not the walls of lofty Rome, but the walls of
fiort Washington and the ascendancy of the town named for
the Cincinnati.
As in the case of the Muskingum colony, a very large
number of the Miami settlers had seen service in the War of
Independence. They were from no single locality, but Middle
States men seem to have predominated — some of the most
prominent from New Jersey. The Virginia Military District,
embracing six thousand five hundred and seventy square
miles of the fairest part of Ohio, became the seat of a third
group of settlements, the founders of which came from Vir-
ginia. These were later, mainly owing to the Indian War,
than the sett'ements of the Ohio and Miami purchases. Gen-
' Burnet ; Kutes on the Settlement of the Northwest Territory, 35 et seq.
19
290
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
eral Nathaniel Massie and Duncan McArthur, afterward Gov-
ernor of Ohio, laid out the town of Chillicothe, soon made
the capital of Ross County, on the west bank of the Scioto, in
1796. These Virginia colonies drew to themselves numbers
of very able men, and they exercised a marked influence upon
the nascent society of the Northwest, and particularly of
Ohio.
The Virginia Military District is often mentioned in con-
nection with the Connecticut Western Reserve, .jeyond the
fact that both were reservations, they have no points of like-
ness and many of unlikeness; Virginia's reservation was condi-
tional and special, Connecticut's absolute and general.
Virginia voted her soldiers upon continental and State es-
tablishment liberal land-bounties. She also set apart for this
purpose the lands bounded by Green River, Cumberland
Mountains, the Tennessee line and Tennessee River, and the
Ohio. In her act and deed of cession of the Northwest, Vir-
ginia stipulated that, in case these lands should prove insuffi-
cient for the purpose, the deficiency should be made up to the
said troops in good lands, to be laid off between the Rivers
Scioto and Little Miami. The Cumberland lands did prove in-
sufificient for the purpose. Congress having been apprised of
this fact, it passed a law in 1790 directing the Secretary of War
to make return to the Governor of Virginia of the names of the
Virginia officers and men entitled to bounty-lands, and the
amount in acres due them. The same act authorized the agents
of the said troops to locate and survey for their use, between the
two rivers, apparently in the old Virginia fashion, such a number
of acres of land as, together with the number already located
on the waters of the Cumberland, would make the amount to
which they were entitled ; these locations and surveys to be
recorded, together with the names of those for whom they
were made, in the office of the Secretary of State. The
President was then directed to issue letters patent for these
lands to the persons entitled to them, for their use or the use
of their heirs, assigns, or legal representatives. The Secretary
MAP ILLUSTRATING LAND SURVEYS IN OHIO,
WITH EARLY POSTS AND SETTLEMENTS.
^dapted/rom Colonel CharUa 'Whittleiiey' > Tract No.61, Jltitem Settna
andJforthtm.OhioJlittoricdlSocitiy,
r the use
secretary
292
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
of State should forward these deeds to the Executive of Vir-
ginia, to be delivered to the proper persons. It will be seen
that the national Government issued the deeds, but did not
make the surveys. It is not surprising, therefore, that Dr.
Andrews should speak of the " no system " surveys of the Vir-
ginia Military District, and that Colonel Whittlesey should
characterize the private surveys as " so loose as to be entirely
useless for geographical purposes." Early in the history of
the locations and surveys a dispute arose as to the Western
boundary of the Virginia District. The United States held
that it should be the Little Miami and a line drawn from the
source of that stream to the source of the Scioto ; Virginia
contended for a straight line drawn from the mouth of the
one river to the source of the other. The first is called
" Roberts's line ; " the second, " Ludlow's line." Roberts's line
was virtually established by a decision of the Supreme Court
in 1824. No question of jurisdiction concerning this District
ever arose between Virginia and the United States. In 1852
Virginia released to the United States all lands in the Dis-
trict not already located, in consideration of Congress having
provided other lands for such of the Virginia claims as were
not yet satisfied. In 1871 Congress ceded such of these lands
as remained unappropriated, amounting to 76,735 acres, ap-
praised at $74,287, to the State of Ohio, and the State, in
turn, ceded them to the State University."
In fulfilment of its promises made in the course of the
war, the national Government set apart a large tract for land-
bounties lying south of Wayne's treaty line, west of the seven
ranges, and east of the Scioto River. This tract, known as
the United States Bounty Lands, embraces about four thou-
sand square miles.
As a separate chapter will be devoted to the Western Re-
serve, it will not be noticed here, beyond the remark that it
was the fourth centre of early colonization within the limits
' Donaldson : The Public Domain, 233, 234.
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 293
of Ohio. Passing by some small tracts dedicated to various
objects, the remaining lands within the present limits of Ohio
were known as " Congress lands," because surveyed and sold
under its authority.
In Indiana and Illinois the French towns were the cen-
tres of the new settlements. Kentucky and Ohio were at
first naturally preferred by emigrants, and the growth of
the two States beyond them was for many years exceed-
ingly slow. Governor Reynolds, who made his home in Illi-
nois in 1800, found in that State a white population of two
thousand persons, one thousand two hundred habitants and
eight hundred Americans.' These people were scattered along
the Mississippi River from Kaskaskia to Cahokia, with a few
about Peoria. Moreover, the emigration to Indiana and Illi-
nois, in the first period, was almost wholly from the South.
They lay not only within the current of emigration that
poured down the Ohio Valley, but also within the stream of
the one which passed through the gaps of the Cumberland
Mountains and swept northwestward across the States of
Tennessee and Kentucky. Many of these emigrants were na-
tive Tennesseeans and Kentuckians. Mr. VVashburne tells us
that the Kentucky emigration was by far the best, and that
the North Carolinians who came to Illinois were mostly
"poor whites."*
In the winter and spring of 1790 Governor St. Clair made
a lengthy visit to the habitants of the Wabash and the Missis-
sippi. Writing to the Secretary of War from Cahokia, May
1st, he tells a moving tale of their condition. " They are the
most ignorant people in the world ;" "there is not a fiitieth
man that can either read or write;" though ignorant, they are
the gentlest and best disposed people that can be imagined ;
the distress at Vincennes and on the Mississippi is extreme.'
In a long and very interesting report to the President, the
' My Own Times, 20.
' St. Clair Papers, II., I36-I4a
Sketch of Edward Coles, 69.
i
294
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Governor describes their situation still more fully. With great
cheerfulness the people had furnished Clark's command with
everything they could spare, "and often with much more than
they could spare with any convenience to themselves ; " " most
of the certificates for these supplies are still in their hands, un-
liquidated and unpaid ; " following the conquest, " a set of men
pretending the authority of Virginia embodied themselves,
and a scene of general depredation and plunder ensued ;" "to
this succeeded three successive and extraordinary inundations
from the Mississippi, which cither swept away their crops or
prevented their being planted ; " all this was followed by the
decline of the Indian trade, hostile Indian incursions, and the
loss of the last corn crop by an untimely frost. That the
terms of the Virginia Cession might be kept, and the public
domain also be protected. Congress had directed surveys of
the Kaskaskia and Vincennes lands to be made at the ex-
pense of the claimants, a charge the Governor found them ill
able to meet.' Father Gibault, who had rendered the Ameri-
can cause such great services in the days of the invasion, laid
before St. Clair a memorial in behalf of his people that
arouses one's pity.
Since 1763, and even since the time of Clark's arrival in
the Illinois, the settlements had materially declined. The
character of the government in the Virginia period is plainly
hinted by St. Clair ; while in the six years following the ces-
sion, although the people kept calling upon Congress for re-
lief, there was no government at all. It was found very diffi-
cult to adjust these decaying French communities — mere
patches of the Middle Ages — to the aggressive life that ulti-
mately overwhelmed them. For example they had, from the
first settlement of the country, enclosed their small farms by
common fences. There was great lack of surveys and rec-
ords, and so of titles. The accumulated difificulties that grew
out of such arrangements were in time referred to the Terri-
' St. Clair Papers, II., 16401 seq.
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 295
torial Legislature for settlement ; and wc can well believe
Judge Burnet when he tells us it was no easy matter to de-
vise a remedy for a case so complex. "A plan, however,
was devised, and made obligatory on all concerned, by an act
which regulated the enclosing and cultivating of common
fields, and which gave general satisfaction." '
The picture of the Detroit liabitants given by Burnet lacks
the elements of picturesque beauty found in the chapters of
Mr. Hubbard referring to a period forty years later. Burnet
presents them as extremely ignorant and strongly supersti-
tious ; treading the footsteps of their fathers, imitative, not
seeming to know that improvements had been made in agri-
culture since Noah planted his vineyard ; raising the same
crops without variation, exhausting fields by poor tillage and
then abandoning them ; throwing the barn and stable litter,
so much needed by the hungry soil, into the river ; and,
withal, conscientiously exact in the performance of their re-
ligious duties, regularly paying their tithes to the priest with
cheerfulness, and constant in attendance at church." No
doubt the man who would form a correct conception of this
French civilization must take the two accounts together.
It is impossible to follow carefully the development of
the majestic civil life that has its springing point in the Mari-
etta settlement. Attention will, however, be drawn to some
of the principal questions that arose in the Territorial period.
The question whether the Old Congress could successfully
manage the Territory, keeping it in due relation to the Con-
federacy and erecting the new States when the time should
come, was happily adjourned by the adoption of the National
Constitution. A brief act passed at the first session of the
first Congress sufificed to effect the necessary adjustments of
the Ordinance to the new government. This act put the Terri-
torial officers, as respects their appointment and commissions,
upon the same footing as the officers provided for by the Con-
' Burnet : Notes, 307.
"^ Ibid., 281 et seq.
296
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
m
1
stitution — nomination by the President and confirmation by
the Senate. Afterward Congress authorized the Governor
and Judges to repeal laws that they had once adopted, a
power that the Ordinance had not conferred.
One of the first duties with which Governor St. Clair was
charged was the negotiation of a treaty of peace with the Ind-
ians. All the Western Indians repudiated the second Treaty
of Fort Stanwix, 1784; and the majority of them the Treaty
of Fort Mcintosh, of the following year. In 1789 St. Clair
concluded the Treaty of Fort Harmar with the Wyandots,
Delawares, and several other tribes, whereby the tribes con-
firmed the Treaty of Fort Mcintosh, and relinquished to the
United States all lands, so far as they had a right to the same,
east, south, and west of these lines : The Cuyahoga and Tusca-
rawas Rivers, and the portage between them from Lake Erie
to the forks above Fort Laurens; a straight line west from
the forks to Loramie's on the Big Miami ; and a line from
Loramie's to the Maumee, and then down the Maumee to
the Lake. But the larger number of the Indians interested
refused to be bound by this agreement. The Indians de-
manded that the whites should retire beyond the Ohio ; and
the long war that had devastated the frontier almost without
cessation since 1755 continued to lengthen out the years.
Harmar's, St. Clair's, and Wayne's invasions of the Indian
country are told in every book of Indian warfare, and do not
fall within the compass of the present work. The power
of the Indians was broken for the time by Wayne's victory
on the Maumee in 1794 ; and, by the Treaty of Fort Green-
ville, entered into in 1795, they relinquished all the lands east
and south of this series of lines : The Cuyahoga and Tus-
carawas Rivers from the Lake to the forks above Fort Laurens;
a straight line drawn from this point to Loramie's ; thence to
Fort Recovery on the Wabash ; and thence southwest to the
Ohio opposite the mouth of the Kentucky River. This vic-
tory gave the Northwest peace until the days when, just be-
fore the War of 18 12, the Indians made, under the leadership of
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 297
Tecumsch and the Prophet, another effort to stay the tide of
invasion. The fondness of the Indians for this noble domain
is shown by the long and determined stand that they made
to retain it ; as the desire of the whites to possess it is, by
their suffering and sacrifices in the long conflict. It is said
that, in the seven years closing with 1790, one thousand five
hundred and twenty men, women, and children, in Kentucky
alone, were massacred by the Indians or carried away into
slavery.'
The Indian War materially retarded population, and also
influenced its distribution. In 1795 Governor St. Clair, who
had given careful attention to the subject, estimated the
population under his jurisdiction at only fifteen thousand
souls. The census-takers of 1800 reported finding, in the
whole Northwest, 51,006 people. Kentucky, however, in-
creased from 73,679 in 1790 to 220,955 in 1800. The geo-
graphical relations of the Territory to the East, to the Middle
States, and to the South rendered a mixed population a fore-
gone conclusion. The New Englanders took the initiative,
making their way across the Hudson and the Delaware, and
through Pennsylvania, to the Forks of the Ohio. For a time
the Indian War almost stopped the flow of emigration from
New England ; and by the time that it began to move age in
the Western Reserve had been thrown upon the market in
part, and thenceforth that region absorbed the larger number
of the New Englanders who made their homes west of New
York. But, even then, the Pennsylvania road by Pittsburg
was preferred by many of the emigrants to the New York
road by Buffalo. Had it not been for the renewed ferocity
with which the war was waged after the Marietta settlement
was made. New England would no doubt have contributed
a much larger relative number to the first population of the
Ohio Valley. It should be mentioned, to the great credit of
the Ohio Company, that it contributed largely of its means
' Cooley : Micliigan, 31.
298
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
to defend the infant settlennents on the Ohio against the Ind-
ians.
The Ordinance of 1787 made the Governor and Judges a
temporary legislature, empowered not to enact laws but to
" adopt and publish such laws of the original States " as they
deemed necessary and fit, etc., reporting them to Congress
from time to time ; said laws to continue in force until the or-
ganization of the general assembly, " unless disapproved by
Congress." This method of legislation was followed in con-
stituting all the territories carved out of the old Northwest
except Wisconsin, organized in 1836, and also in the act of
1790 for the Territory South of the Ohio. Immediately this
legislature set to work to provide a code of laws for the Ter-
ritory, giving its attention, first of all, as was natural, to a mil-
itia law ; but the history of its work will not be followed,
except to point out two or three interesting features.
First, the Governor and Judges did not confine themselves
to adopting and publishing laws of the original States, but
legislated de novo. This course they defen:_jd on the ground
of necessity ; they could not find laws suited to all the wants
of the Territory in the State statute-books. As Congress did
not formally disapprove these laws, with one or two excep-
tions they continued in operation until set aside by the Ter-
ritorial authorities. There being no proper capital, the leg-
islature promulgated laws at various places, as Marietta,
Cincinnati, and Vincennes. In June, 1795, the legislature
took up the problem of a " complete system of statutory juris-
prudence, by adoption from the laws of the original States, in
strict conformity to the provisions of the Ordinance." By
adopting an old Virginia statute of the colonial period
" the common law of England, and all general statutes in aid
of the common law prior to the fourth year of James I.," were
• See Services of the Ohio Company in Defending the United States Frontier
from Invasion, an article by W, P. Cutler, in the Ohio Archsological and His-
torical Quarterly, I., 293 et seq.
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 299
put in force in the Territory. " The other laws of 1795 were
principally derived from the statute-book of Pennsylvania.
The system thus adopted," continues Mr. Chase, whom we
are here following, " was not without many imperfections and
blemishes, but it may be doubted whether any colony at so
early a period after its first establishment ever had one so
good." ' Another difficulty was a difference of opinion be-
tween the Governor and the Judges as to their respective legis-
lative functions. Was the Governor simply one member of the
legislature ? or was he a constituent part of it, having equal
authority with the Judges as a whole ? The Governor vetoed
drafts of laws submitted to him ; the Judges called his attention
to the words " or a majority of them " in the clause of the Or-
dinance relating to the adoption* of laws, and he retorted, with
no little force, that wherever the law-expounders are also the
law-makers, the result is a tyranny. On this issue St. Clair
had his way ; on another one he was less successful.
The Ordinance gave the Governor power to appoint "such
magistrates and other civil officers, in each county or town-
ship, as he should find necessary," thus giving him, by impli-
cation, the power to erect counties. The Governor, therefore,
proceeded to constitute counties. While these counties were
not as large as those that Virginia had bounded on the west
by the South Sea, or even by the Mississippi River, they were
still of truly imperial proportions. Washington County, for
example, reached from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and from the
Pennsylvania line to the Cuyahoga-Tuscarawas line and the
Scioto. St. Clair County embraced all Southern Illinois.
But Wayne County, organized in 1796, was the most exten-
sive of all, including all the territory within the following
limits : North by the international boundary line, east by the
Cuyahoga, the portage-path, and the Tuscarawas ; south by a
line reaching from the forks above Fort Laurens west and
northwest to the head of the Miami of the Ohio ; thence north-
Preliminary Sketch of the History of Ohio, in Statutes of Ohio, I., 26, 27.
300
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
west to the portage between the Miami of the Lake and the
Wabash, where Fort Wayne now is, and thence northwest to
the head of I^ke Michigan ; and west by a line running north
to the international boundary, including all the lands in Wis-
consin draining eastward to the same lake. The original
counties had to be divided into smaller ones, and the General
Assembly, after 1799, claimed the power to make the sub-
division. The Governor denied the Assembly's claim, and
vetoed its bills erecting new counties, the result being a con-
troversy that was finally carried to Congress, and decided
against him. Much of the bitterness of this controversy is
said to have been due to land-speculators, anxious to influ-
ence the erection of counties and the location of county
towns, who found Governor St. Clair standing in their way.
The mingling of elements from all parts of the Atlantic
slope in the new population, and particularly the appoint-
ment of New England and Middle State men in about equal
numbers to Territorial offices, decided the character of the lo-
cal institutions now found in Ohio. Two radically different
types of local government are found in the old States — the
town system and the county system. As the names indicate,
the first assigns the major part of political power to town or
township officers, the second to county officers. These sys-
tems are traceable to England. The founders of New Eng-
land came from towns and cities, and they naturally set up
municipal institutions; the founders of Virginia came from
the English counties, and as naturally set up county institu-
tions. That the one would be more congenial to a civic
democracy, the other to a landed gentry, goes without the
saying. As is well known, Mr. Jefferson strove to introduce
the New England system into Virginia, and made it the sub-
ject of frequent eulogy. '^ These wards, called townships in
New Englanc he said, in 1816, "are the vital principle of
their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest
invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exer-
cise of self-government and for its preservation." Again, in
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 301
1810 he speaks of" the large lubberly division into counties,"
of the Middle, Southern, and Western States "which can
never be assembled," ' Local government in the Middle
States is a compromise of the town and county systems; the
county is more than in New England, and the town more
than in the South. Governor St. Clair was from Pennsyl-
vania, Judge Symmes from New Jersey, General Putnam
from Massachusetts ; and the three established in the Terri-
tory local institutions that are a sort of cross on the com-
promise and town systems."
Very serious evils grew ouf of the first land-policy that
was adopted. The effect of that policy was the sale of
the lands in large tracts to first purchasers, to be resold to
settlers in lots suitable to their convenience. About one-half
the State of Ohio was made up of large blocks of land
ranging from the 1,000,000 acres of the Symmes purchase to
the 4,209,800 acres of the Virginia Military District. In its
undivided form the Virginia District, as well as the United
States Bounty Lands, belonged to a large number of persons ;
but, through the sale and purchase of rights, the lands in both
of them tended to work into the hands of large holders. In
1800 Governor St. Clair called the attention of the legislat-
ure to this state of things. He said in his address that the
lands had generally been held by a few individuals in large
quantities, who had sold them out in small parcels on credit ;
that in some of the counties the majority of the people, un-
able in the midst of the general poverty to meet their engage-
ments, were debtors to the proprietors; and that this state
of things gave creditors a dangerous power over the votes of
debtors. He therefore suggested whether the substitution
of election by ballot for election viva voce would not be " the
best way of guarding against that not improbable evil."'
No attention was paid to this suggestion until the year 1802,
' Jefferson : Works, VII., 13 ; V., 525.
» Andrews : Washington County, 32.
* St Clair Papers, II., 501 et seq.
302
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
when it was adopted in the Ohio Constitution ; but competi-
tion and the inability of the great land-owners to hold their
tracts tended to diminish the danger that the Governor had
pointed out.
But there were practical evils of a serious character con-
nected with the land-system. At first Congress did not it-
self propose to sell lands save in large tracts, like the Ohio
and Symmes purchases. The Land Ordinance of 1785 created
a very complicated machinery for effecting sales. It author-
ized the Loan Commissioners of the several States to sell at
public vendue lands in townships of 23,040 acres, and in sec-
tions of 640 acres, in equal quantities; it made no provision
for land-ofifices in the Western country ; and it fixed the
minimum price at one dollar an acre and the cost of survey, in
specie or its equivalent. Under the Constitution successive
acts of legislation corrected the evils growing out of these
features of the Ordinance of 1785 so effectually as to create
other evils of the opposite character almost equally great.
The survey and sale of half-sections, quarter-sections, and
then of smaller lots were authorized. In 1800 the minimum
price of lands was advanced to $2 an acre on a long credit,
or $1.64 in cash. Land-offices were established and multi-
plied. No doubt the credit system facilitated settlements,
but it led to great abuses and much suffering. In 1820, if
we may trust Judge Burnet, more than half of the men
Northwest of the Ohio River were in debt to the Government ;
and it was feared that an attempt to enforce payment, by a
forfeiture of the land, under the laws of Congress, would pro-
duce resistance, and probably terminate in a civil war. A
similar state of things existed in the Southwest. In response
to a perfect snow-storm of memorials calling for relief, Con-
gress, in 1 82 1, by enacting that purchasers indebted to the
Gover^iment might relinquish lands they could not pay for,
receiving credit on lands not relinquished for moneys actually
paid in, relieved the general distress. That act paid more
than $20,000,000 of debts ; while the sore experience that led
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 303
to it caused Congress to reduce the price of lands to $1.25 an
acre, with payment in advance.'
When Judge Burnet began to practise law in the Territory
the General Court, which consisted of the three judges pro-
vided for by the Ordinance, who received each a salary of $800,
satin four places : Marietta, Cincinnati, Vincennes, and Kas-
kaskia. Soon after, Detroit was included within the circuit.
This court had power to review and to revise the decisions of
all inferior tribunals, but from its own decisions there was no
appeal, not even to the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Judges spent about as much time in the saddle as on the
bench. Court and bar travelled through the wilderness, five
or six together, sometimes seven or eight days on a single
journey, with a pack-horse to transport the supplies that they
could not carry on their own horses or purchase by the way.
When purchasing a horse, one of the first questions was
whether he was a good swimmer." But that was the day
when the mail was a week in going and coming between
Marietta and Zanesville ; when the x ostmaster-General
sometimes filled up mail schedules and contracts with his own
hand ; and when the principal means of transportation on the
Ohio was the " Ark," invented by one Krudger on the Juniata
River — a square, flat-bottomed vessel, forty feet in length by
fifteen in breadth, six feet deep, covered with a roof of thin
boards, accommodated with a fireplace, and carrying from two
hundred to four hundred barrels of flour.'
For a number of years the Territory was not vexed by
party politics ; but in due time men began to divide along the
line separating the two nascent political parties in the old
States. In general, New England men tended to the Federal
party and Southern men to the Republican party, while
Middle State men were divided more equally. The facts of
emigration already pointed out gave the party led by Mr.
'Burnet: Notes, 450-454; Sumner: Andrew Jackson, 184.
'Burnet : Notes, 63-65. " Harris : The Journal of a Tour, etc., 30, 31
304
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Jefferson ? considerable advantage, and the democratizing in-
fluences of tiie time, and particularly of the West, increased
that advantage more and more. In searching for an explana-
tion of the tinal triumph of the Republicans over the Feder-
alists, Mr. Hildreth says the second " had their strength in
those narrow districts where a concentrated population had
produced and contributed to maintain that complexity of in-
stitutions and that reverence for social order which, in pro-
portion as men are brought into contiguity, become more ab-
solutely necessaries of existence." These conditions existed
at the close of the last century in New England, New Jer-
sey, Maryland, Delaware, and tide-water South Carolina;
and here he finds represented " the experience, the pru-
dence, the practical wisdom, the discipline, the conservative
reason and instincts of the country." " The ultra-demo-
cratical ideas of the opposition " — that expressed the country's
wishes, hopes, and especially theories, its passions, sympa-
thies, antipathies, and its impatience of restraint — " pre-
vailed in all that more extensive region in which the dis-
persion of population, and the despotic authority vested in
individuals over families of slaves, kept society in a state
of immaturity, and made legal restraints the more irksome
in proportion as their necessity was the less felt," These
conditions were best represented by Virginia, the head and
front of the Republican party. North Carolina, Georgia,
Tennessee, and Kentucky followed Virginia; and "the rap-
idly increasing backwoods settlements of all these States
constantly added new strength to the opposition." The
decision depended ultimately " on the two great and grow-
ing States of Pennsylvania and New York ; and from the
very fact that they were growing, that both of them had
an extensive backwoods frontier . . . they both inclined
more and more to the Republican side." ' Perhaps these
most suggestive remarks do not accurately state the case be-
' History, V,, 413, 416.
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO 305
tween the two parties at the close of Mr. Adams's administra-
tion; but there is no question that the rapid growth of the
new settlements, whether in the old States or in the West,
from 1790 on, was a material cause of the final complete an-
nihilation of the Federal party. The democratizing influ-
ences were less strong in the region that soon became Ohio
than in the slave-holding States south of the river ; but they
were strong enough to give the Virginia party a decided as-
cendancy for a full generation. The fact is — and a very im-
portant fact, too — that the political temper of Western soci-
ety, even north of the Ohio, was far more like that of the
South than that of New England.
As soon as the new political yeast began to work, men be-
gan to complain bitterly of the centralization of the govern-
ment provided by the Ordinance, and of the Governor's admin-
istration. St. Clair's sense of justice, eminent public services,
social qualities, and weight of character had made him a pop-
ular ofificer as long as there was no politics in the district ;
but henceforth his popularity continues to wane. He was a
gentleman of the old school, and a Federalist ; his manners
were those of cultivated circles ; he could not be, and did not
wish to be, a Democrat ; he stood stoutly for the dignity and
prerogatives of his ofifice; he did not trim his sails to the
breeze that was now blowing stiffly from Virginia ; he com-
mitted indiscretions of power, and incurred personal enmities,
as a matter of course ; besides, and in consequence of the fore-
going, on the exciting questions now coming to the front, he
took the unpopular side.
In 1798 it was ascertained that the Territory had the five
thousand free male inhabitants that the Ordinance had made
the condition of the second stage of government. That
stage it accordingly entered upon, the following year. The
General Assembly first met for the transaction of business at
Cincinnati, September 24, 1799. The Lower House con-
sisted of twenty-two members representing nine counties.
Seven of the number came from the four counties contain-
20
*:
/
3o6
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ingthe old French settlements in Michigan, Indiana, and IIH-
nois, fifteen from the five Ohio counties. Hamilton County
alone, eleven years old, had the same number of representa-
tives as the four French counties, more than a century old.
Four of the five members of the Council were from Ohio
counties, and one from Vincennes. William Henry Harrison,
who had succeeded Mr. Sargent in the secretaryship, was
chosen delegate to Congress, where he rendered his constit-
uents much good service, particularly in procuring needed
legislation on the subject of lands. The new order of things
was quite different from the old. The Governor was no
longer part of the legislature, but he had an unquestioned
veto that he freely exercised, particularly in legislation relating
to counties. His power was materially strengthened by the
change, and his troubles proportionally increased. Moreover,
the appearance of a legislature and a delegate in Congress
greatly stimulated political activity, and from this time on to
the admission of Ohio to the Union, events became more and
more exciting. Section i of the Ordinance reserved to Con-
gress the right, which it would have had otherwise, since it
was not a s. bject of compact, to divide the Northwest into
two territories whenever circumstances might render it expe-
dient. At the session of 1799- 1800 the House of Represent-
atives referred the subject to a committee, of which Delegate
Harrison was chairman. In a letter to Harrison, dated Feb-
ruary 17, 1800, St. Clair recommended the formation of three
territories, the dividing lines to be the Scioto River, and
a meridian line drawn through the mouth of the Kentucky
River, with Marietta, Cincinnati, and Vincennes as capitals.
This scheme, which was to continue only until the new States
were formed, he supported with many plausible arguments.
The vision of a new State in the eastern part of the Territory
was now rising full-orbed upon the sight of national states-
men and Territorial politicians, and, as in many another simi-
lar case, both statesmen and politicians were anxious that the
State should come into the Union with the right kind of poli-
*■..
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 307
needed
tics. It was objected to St. Clair's scheme that it would
postpone the formation of the State, which was true enough,
and that his purpose was to carve out a territory of which he
could be governor for life, which was absurd. His scheme
(ailed to command the support of Mr. Harrison, who was a
State man, and of Congress, but it did not fail to add to St.
Clair's growing unpopu'arity. On May 7, 1800, an act was ap-
proved constituting all chat part of the Northwest lying west
of the treaty-line of 1795, from the Ohio to Fort Recovery,
and a line drawn from the fort to the international boundary,
a separate territory, to be called Indiana Territory. The act
made Chillicothe and Vincennes the two capitals, until oth-
erwise ordained by the respective legislatures; and said, when-
ever the territory east of the meridian of the mouth of the
Great Miami River should become an independent State,
thenceforth said meridian should be the boundary between
the new territory and such State.
The Virginia colony of Ross County were very influential
in bringing about this legislation. In fact, the original scheme
of the Chillicothe managers was much more extensive, em-
bracing these features: (i) The appointment of William
Henry Harrison as Governor of the Indiana Territory; (2)
the establishment of the permanent seat of government for
the Eastern district at Chillicothe ; and (3) such alterations
in the form of the Territorial Government as should vacate
the offices.' Of course, the programme included the retire-
ment of St. Clair. Harrison did become the governor of the
new territory, and Chillicothe the temporary capital of the
Eastern district ; but, owing to the opposition of the Senate, the
act of May 7th contained an express prohibition of change in
the government of the old Territory other than its limitation
in extent. Henceforth, until its final disappearance from the
map, on February 19, 1803, the name Northwest Territory is
limited to the eastern of the two territories. The striking
• St Clair Papers, I., 236.
.;&..^
3o8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
features of its history are the agitation of the State question
and the growing embarrassments of Governor St. Clair. The
census of 1800 reported a population of 45,916 in the Terri-
tory, thus distributed by counties : Adams, 3,432 ; Hamilton,
14,692; Jefferson, 8,766; Ross, 8,540; Trumbull, 1,302;
Wayne, 3,757.
Toward the close of his long administration there was a
total want of agreement between the Governor and a majority
of the people of the Territory in political ideas and temper.
He was a pronounced Federalist ; they were pronounced Re-
publicans. So extreme was he in his opinions that he wrote
and published a pamphlet in defence of the Alien and Sedition
Laws, which President Adams said was " masterly," written
" in the style and manner of a gentleman, and seasoned with
no more than was useful and agreeable of Attic salt." ' If
seasoned to Adams's taste, it must have been pungent indeed.
At this time the Federalists were taking those extreme meas-
ures which conclusively showed that they did not understand
the popular temper, and the Republicans were seeking to
rescue the country from evils and dangers which they de-
scribed in the most exaggerated language. To this extent,
the strife in the Valley of the Ohio was simply a part of the
bitter political controversy then going on in all the old States.
Then some of the Governor's personal qualities were a source
of criticism. Judge Burnet, who was an admirer of St. Clair,
and a member of the same political party, says he placed too
high an estimate on his own powers of mind, and, although
modest and unassuming in society, very rarely yielded an
opinion that he had once deliberately formed." St. Clair was
a Scotchman and a Federalist, holding a position of great
power and responsibility in a young American democracy
west of the Ohio River. Naturally, he became less yielding
as he grew older, and assaults upon him became more fre-
quent and bitter. But St. Clair's Federalism and obnoxious
' St Clair Papers, I., 234.
' Burnet : Notes, 378-381.
-?i^
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 309
ere was a
personal qualities alone would not have caused the opposition
that he encountered. The question of a new State in the
Eastern district of the Northwest was now coloring — and
deeply coloring — all Territorial questions. Generally speak-
ing, Federalists and Republicans divided on this subject. A
resolution unanimously adopted by a delegate convention of
the County of Washington, held at Marietta in June, itSoi,
expressed the common view of the one party, viz. : " That in
our opinion, it would be highly impolitic, and very injurious
to the inhabitants of this Territory, to enter into a state gov-
ernment at this time." ' The Republican view, as expressed
by a writer in the Scioto Gazette, was that such a change would
be like opening the floodgates to a mill ; wealth would flow
in, improvements would spring up, the streams would " roll
along " food to thousands suffering from want, and arrange-
ments for education would be perfected ; plains covered with
herds and farms with crops would gladden the owners' hearts,
and the government, like the tree of liberty, would extend its
benign branches over the citizens, sheltering them from tyranny
and oppression.* One side objected that a State government
would be costly, that the people could not pay the taxes, and
that it was far better to allow the United States to pay the
expenses of government than to impose them upon the citi-
zens; and the other side replied that the salaries now paid
by Congress to the Governor and Judges amounted to only
$5,500, that a State government would not cost more than
§15,400 per annum, while the people were able to pay taxes
amounting to $27,926.90 for the year 1801. Those were
days of small things, in more senses than one. But beneath
all these petty arguments was the great question of national
politics. The elder Meigs said the Federalists opposed a new
State because it meant three more Republican presidential
electors and two more Republican Senators ; if he had added
that the Republicans favored it for the same reason, as well
'Andrews : Washington County, 27. ' St. Clair Papers, I., 225, 226.
%
I
4
3IO
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
as because there would be a number of State offices to be dis-
tributed among the active politicians, he would then have told
an equal amount of truth about both sides. St. Clair was the
head and front of the Federal party. What Mr. Smith ' calls
the "junto" had plenty of reasons for desiring to break down
the Governor's influence or to drive him from the Territory.
Men of to-day who have been taught by historians that Arthur
St. Clair was a thorough patriot, and by jurists that the Or-
dinance of 1787 was a paragon of political wisdom, would find
it hard to explain the language in which the extreme Repub-
licans of the Territory habitually spoke of both, were they
not also instructed in the capabilities for detraction of heated
political partisans. Thomas Worthington, afterward Govern-
or of Ohio, called St. Clair " Arthur the First," and spoke of
the efforts to thwart him as efforts " to curb a tyrant." Gen-
eral Darlington, speaking of the formation of the new State,
said the people of Adams County " congratulated themselves
on the prospect of having it soon in their power to shake off
the iron fetters of aristocracy and in the downfall of the Tory
party in this Territory." " These " aristocrats " and " Tories"
were Arthur St. Clair and the leading citizens of Marietta.
The writer in the Scioto Gazette, already quoted, speaks of
"the utter impossibility of a government conducive to national
happiness in this enlightened day being administered under"
the Ordinance, " unless by a person more than mortal," adding:
" This government, now so oppressive, was prescribed by the
United States at a time when civil liberty was not so well
understood as at present, and when it could not be contem-
plated but for the government of a few." Judge Symmes, one
of the Governor's most determined foes, declared, " We shall
never have fair play while Arthur and his Knights of the
Round Table sit at the head." ' In some respeccs the best
places to study the clash between the old political regime
' The editor of the St. Clair Papers.
" Andrews : Washington County, 28.
St. Clair Papers, I., 242.
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 3"
and the df mocratizing movement headed by Jefferson are the
new communities of the West.
Postponing the State question to the next chapter,
we shall now rapidly follow St. Clair's fortunes to the
end.
A determined but ineffectual effort was made to induce
President Adams not to reappoint him on the expiration of
his fourth term. No sooner was President Jefferson estab-
lished in the chair than a still more determined efTort was
made to effect his removal. An indictment almost as formi-
dable as the one preferred against George III. by the Conti-
nental Congress was drawn up and forwarded to Washington.
The principal charges contained in this paper, as formulated
by General Massie and revised by General Worthington,
are usurpations of legislative power, the abuse of the veto,
receiving unlawful fees, attemptmg to dismember the Ter-
ritory, to destroy its constitutional boundaries and so to
prevent the formation of a State, endeavoring to influence
the judiciary, obstructing the organization and disciplining of
the militia for the defence of the Territory, and hostility to
the form and substance of republican government.' Frag-
ments of St. Clair's private conversation, taken down and duly
authenticated by afifidavits, were also sent to Washington.
But Mr. Jefferson refused to move until St. Clair, by a char-
acteristic act of indiscretion, himself gave a reasonable pre-
text for so doing. On November ist the convention elected
to frame a constitution for the State of Ohio sat, and on the
3d, in reluctant response to his own request, the Governor
was permitted to address that body. Burnet says the ad-
dress was " sensible and conciliatory ; " but no man read-
ing it now, understanding the temper of the times and
of the convention, would be apt to think it conciliatory.
This is the bolt that answered the Governor's unfortunate
speech :
' St. Clair Papers, II., 566, 567.
J-
:M.
.■*■
312
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
"Department of State,
"Washington, November 12, 1802,
"Arthur St. Clair, Esq.
" Sir : The President observing, in an address lately deliv-
ered by you to the convention held at Chillicothe, an intemper-
ance and indecorum of language toward the Legislature of the
United States, and a disorganizing spirit and tendency of very
evil example, and grossly violating the rules of conduct en-
joined by your public station, determines that your commission
of Governor of the Northwestern Territory shall cease on the
receipt of this notification.
" I am, etc.,
" James Madison." '
And then, as though removal were not punishment enough,
the Secretary of State sent this letter enclosed in one to Sec-
retary Byrd, one of St. Clair's strongest enemies, directing that
officer to assume the duties of the governor's office. Thomas
Jefferson would have shown himself a larger man if he had
overlooked the indiscretion of the Chillicothe speech and per-
mitted the venerable Governor to remain at the head of the
Territory the few weeks yet to elapse before it ceased to exist.
St. Clair now retired to the home that he had made near
Ligonier, Pennsylvania, in the interval between the French
War and the Revolution. He had spent more than a quar-
ter of a century in the continuous service of the country. He
was sixty-eight years old. His private affairs had been sadly
neglected in his devotion to public business. He had in-
curred liabilities for the Government that the Government
now refused to pay. What of his oner considerable fortune
remained was swept away by his creditors. The handsome
" Hermitage " that he had built and furnished in the days of
his prosperity went with the rest, and he spent the remainder
of his days in dignified poverty with his beloved daughter
Louisa in a log-house standing beside the road leading to the
' St. Clair Papers, I., 244-246.
>-!■;- V
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 313
great Territory with which his name will ever be identified.
The tardy pension voted him by Congress passed directly
from the treasury to one of his creditors. Pathetic in the ex-
treme are the glimpses that we have of his last years. Hon.
Lewis Cass, who had known him in happier days, found the
old soldier and civilian in his rude cabin eking out a liveli-
hood by selling supplies to the wagoners on the road, and he
described the scene as " one of the most striking instances
of the mutations which chequer life." Hon. Elisha Whittle-
sey, who visited him in 181 5, was profoundly impressed by
the dignity and benignity of his character. " I never was in
the presence of a man that caused me to feel the same degree
of esteem and veneration. . . . Poverty did not cause
him to lose his self-respect, and were he now living, his per-
sonal appearance would attract universal attention." '
St. Clair died, August 31, 1818, in consequence of being
thrown from a wagon while going to a neighboring village.
To him who is acquainted with St. Clair's history, the name
always suggests a striking example of the ingratitude of men
and of republics.
The independent existence of Indiana Territory began July
4, 1800. At first it included all that part of the old Territory
lying west of the treaty-line of 1795 from the Ohio River to
Fort Recovery, and of the meridian of the fort to the national
limits. The act creating the Territory plainly contemplated
the creation of only three States in the Northwest, for it pro-
vided that, whenever the part of it east of the meridian pass-
ing through the mouth of the Great Miami, from the Ohio to
the territorial line, should be admitted to the Union as an in-
dependent State, ** thenceforth said line shall become and re-
main permanently the boundary-line between such State and
the Indiana Territory." But the Enabling Act for Ohio, 1802,
bounded that State on the north by a due east and west line,
• St. Clair Papers, I., 253.
I .
It '•
"I
■
n
[
i '
li ■ j ,
314
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
from the Miami meridian to the international boundary,
drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, and
added all territory north of such line, as well as between
the meridian and the line of iSoo, to Indiana. Again, in
1804 Louisiana, extending from parallel thirty-three degrees
north to the British dominions, and from the Mississippi
River to the Rocky Mountains, was annexed to Indiana, but
the next year was created an independent territory. The act
of 1800 continued the form of government created by the Or-
dinance of 1787, and guaranteed to the people all the rights
and privileges that the Ordinance secured to them. Vincennes
was the capital, and William Henry Harrison the first gov-
ernor, of the territory. The population was five thousand six
hundred and forty-one. It entered on the second stage of
government in 1805.
Michigan Territory was created January 11, 1805. It was
bounded on the south by the parallel passing through the
southerly extreme of Lake Michigan ; west by a line extend-
ing from the same extreme through the middle of the said
lake to its northern extremity, and thence north to the national
limits; and north and east by the international boundary.
The act creating the Territory continued all the governmental
features of the Ordinance. Detroit was the seat of govern-
ment, and General William Hull, the same who seven years
later surrendered Michigan to the British arms, was appointed
governor. The population reported in 1800 was two thou-
sand seven hundred and fifty-seven. The Territory entered
on the second stage partially in 1823, and fully in 1827.
The next step in this process of territorial evolution was
the creation of the Territory of Illinois. The act of Febru-
ary 3, 1809, separated it from Indiana Territory by the
Wabash River from its mouth to Vincennes, and a due north
line from that point to the territorial line between the United
States and Canada. The form of government was that pre-
scribed in the Ordinance, save in one feature ; a General As-
sembly might be organized whenever satisfactory evidence
TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE RIVER OHIO. 315
should be given to the governor that such was the wish of a
majority of the free-holders, " notwithstandir.g there may not
be therein five thousand free male inhabitants of the age of
twenty-one years and upwards." Ninian Edwards, at the time
of his appointment Chief Justice of Kentucky, was the first
governor; Kaskaskia was the capital; the population, in 1810,
was twelve thousand two hundred and eighty-two. The Ter-
ritory entered on the second stage in 1812. We must now
return to Michigan.
The Enabling Act for Indiana, April 19, 18 16, bounded
that State on the north by an east and west line ten miles
north of the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan. The En-
abling Act for Illinois, April 18, 18 18, made the northern
boundary of that State parallel of latitude 42° 30' north.
The act also attached all that part of the Territory of Illinois
lying north of this line to Michigan. An act, approved June
28, 1834, attached to Michigan all the country extending west
of the Mississippi to the Missouri and White Earth Rivers, and
from the State of Missouri to the national boundary. Thus
at its greatest extent the Territory reached from Lake Huron
and the Detroit River to the Missouri, and from the States
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri to Canada.
The Territory of Wisconsin, created April 20, 1836, con-
tained what was left of the Territory of Michigan after the
State of that name was constituted. It embraced the region
extending from a line drawn through the middle of Lake
Michigan to the Missouri and White . rth Rivers, and from
Illinois and Missouri to the British possessions. A much
greater innovation than that in the case of Illinois was now
made in the form of government. The peculiar features of
the Ordinance of 1787 were all abandoned, and a new and
very elaborate model established, the first of its kind : A gov-
emor, a secretary, judges, etc., appointed by the President
by and with the consent of the Senate ; a legislature, consist-
ing of a council and house of representatives elected by the
qualified electors of the Territory ; and a delegate to the na-
3i6
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
I
tional House of Representatives, elected in the same way,
At the same time, Section 12 enacted that the inhabitants oi
the Territory should be entitled to all the rights secured co
the people of the ^ rritory of the United States Northwest of
the River Ohio by the articles of compact contained in the
Ordinance of 1787, and should be subject to all the conditions
and restrictions in said articles imposed upon the people of
the said Territory. The act approved June 12, 1 838, constitut-
ing the Territory of Iowa, limited Wisconsin on the west by
the Mississippi River and a line drawn from its sources to the
territorial line, but guaranteed to the new Territory all the
rights, privileges, and immunities that the old one had en-
joyed.
Such, in outline, is the history of the first territory, and
the most important territory, that the Government of the
United States ever organized.
Note. — Perhaps as wide a deduction from Article V. of com-
pact of the Ordinance of 178733 could have been dreamed of at
the time is one made in the discussion of the Dakota question.
It has been seriously contended that the compact, reaffirmed
by five successive acts of Congress, guaranteed absolutely and
inviolably " to Dakota the right to found a permanent constitu-
tion and State government whenever said Territory should con-
tain sixty thousand free inhabitants." The guarantee quoted
above from the Wisconsin Act of 1836 is one of the five "suc-
cessive acts." This claim is pressed to the extent of holding
that the people have this right " in their primary and sovereign
capacity," without any enabling act whatever. See " The State .
How it may be Formed from the Territory," Hugh J. Camp-
bell, United States Attorney of Dakota Territory.
XVII.
THE ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN
STATES TO THE UNION.
The " pioneer thought " that Maryland laid before Con-
gress in 1777 was the proposition that the Western territory
should ultimately be divided into new States, to be admitted to
the Union on an equal footing with the original States, under
the superintendence and jurisdiction of Congress. Such was
the promise of the resolution of 1780, such one of the condi-
tions of the Virginia deed of cession of 1784, and, so far as the
Northwest was concerned, such the guarantee of the Ordi-
nance of 1787. Kentucky and Tennessee had already been ad-
mitted, in pursuance of that general line of policy. The pop-
ulation of the Eastern division of the Northwest Territory
had not reached the minimum established in 1787 by many
thousands when, in 1802, the chiefs of the Democratic- Re-
publican party at Washington, as well as in the Territory, de-
cided that the time had come to bring in the State of Ohio.
I. Ohio.
This decision was hastened by a bill passed by the Terri-
torial Legislature at the session beginning November 23, 1801,
declaring the assent of the Territory to the following modi-
fication of the Ordinance respecting the boundaries of the
States when they should be formed : The eastern State to
be bounded on the west by the Scioto River and a line
drawn from the intersection of the river with the Indian
boundary as fixed in 1795 to the western limit of the West-
ern Reserve ; the middle State to be bounded on the west
3X8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
by a line drawn from the lower extremity of George Rogers
Clark's grant at the Falls of the Ohio to the head of Chicago
River, and that river and Lake Michigan ; the third to be
bounded west by the Mississippi.' This was a Federal plan,
and it incurred very serious resistance in the Lower House.
Taking alarm at this move, General Worthington hastened to
Washington, where he succeeded in giving matters a very dif-
ferent shaping.
Soon after the legislature adjourned, in January, 1802, a cen-
sus was taken which found 45,028 persons of both sexes and
all ages in the Territory'. The next step was for the friends of
the measure to petition Congress for admission. The special
committee to which this petition was referred reported favor-
ably thereon. The Houses promptly passed the appropriate
bill, which received the President's approval and became a
law, April 30th. These are the main features of this act : (i)
The inhabitants of the Eastern division of the Territory were
authorized to form a constitution and State government, as-
suming such name as they deemed proper, said State to be
admitted to the Union on the same footing as the origi-
nal States in all respects. (2) The boundaries of the State
should be : East, the Pennsylvania line ; south, the Ohio
River; west, the meridian of the mouth of the Great Miami;
north, a due east and west line drawn through the southern
extreme of Lake Michigan, and the international boundary-
line. Congress, however, reserved the right to annex to this
State that portion of Michigan included within the territorial
lines of 1800 — that is, about one-half the lower peninsula—
or to dispose of it otherwise. (3) All territory included
within the limits of 1800, that these lines did not embrace,
was annexed to Indiana Territory. (4) All male citizens re-
siding in the Territory, having certain prescribed qualifications,
were authorized to choose representatives to form a conven-
tion in designated numbers, county by county, on the second
• Chase : Preliminary Sketch, 3a
^■.^" *■
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 3^9
orge Rogers
1 of Chicago
third to be
federal plan,
Dwer House.
1 hastened to
;rs a very dif-
y, i8o2, acen-
)th sexes and
the friends of
The special
ported favor-
e appropriate
nd became a
this act : (i)
'erritory were
vernment, as-
1 State to be
as the origi-
of the State
h, the Ohio
>reat Miami;
the southern
lal boundaty-
innex to this
the territorial
r peninsula—
ory included
not embrace,
e citizens re-
qualifications,
rm a conven-
n the second
Tuesday of October ensuing. (5) The representatives thus
chosen were authorized to meet in convention at Chillicothe
the first Monday of November, 1802 ; which convention
should determine, by a majority of its whole number, whether
it were now expedient to form a constitution and govern-
ment, and, if so, to form them, but if not, then to provide by
ordinance for calling a second convention for that purpose ;
said constitution, in either case, to be republican and not re-
pugnant to the Ordinance. (6) Until the next census the
new State should be entitled to one member in the House of
Representatives. (7) Three propositions were submitted to
the convention which, if accepted, should bind the United
States : The grant to the State of section No. 16 in every
township for the use of schools, the grant of certain salt-
springs, and the grant of one-twentieth part of the net pro-
ceeds of all lands sold by Congress within the State, to be
applied to building roads connecting the Eastern and the
Western waters ; provided, the State would exempt from
taxation all such lands for the term of five years from the
date of sale.
This was the first " enabling act," so called, ever enacted
by Congress. It was, however, the model of many succeeding
acts of a similar nature. It is, therefore, a curious question,
and one that cannot be very satisfactorily answered, how far
its leading features were due to a statesmanlike study of the
I subject, and how far to political exigencies. The act did not
contain a gleam of what was afterward called " popular sov-
ereignty." The Territorial Legislature was wholly ignored.
Neither the legislature nor the people themselves were asked
to pais upon the question of entering into a State govern-
ment. The sole function of the electors was to vote for
inemb(;rs of the convention, in the manner prescribed by Con-
gress. The opposition did not fail to put these points very
I stronjfly, as the bill was on its way through the House of
j Representatives. Mr. .Griswold, of Connecticut, declared
that the bill " went to a consolidation and destruction of all
320
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
the States ; " that the districting of the Territory and the ap.
portionment of the members was arbitrary and unjust; that
the whole scheme was beyond the power of Congress and an
invasion of popular rights ; and that the next thing would be
a similar dictation to the States already in the Union. In
the Territory, the opponents of the measure said these features
of the bill were due to the fear of the party managers that the
legislature and the people could not be trusted. There is
probably some truth in this charge ; but the framers of the
Ordinance had created a centralized government, and the feel-
ing was still strong, notwithstanding the complaint that West-
ern Democrats made of their " colonial government," that
there was a very wide difTerence between a territory and a
State, even when the time came to frame a constitution.
" Popular sovereignty " was due to that progress of democratic
ideas which the peopling of the West did so much to facili-
tate.
Other objections were strongly urged. Mr. Fearing, the
Territorial delegate, said Congress had exhausted its power
when it consented to the admission of the State before its
population reached sixty thousand. He argued, also, that Con-
gress could not divide the district, admitting part at one time j
and part at another; that the division proposed would throw
Lake Erie out of the State ; and that the great distance of the |
Michigan people from Vincennes would make their annexa-
tion to Indiana exceedingly inconvenient. Mr. Bayard, ofj
Delaware, urged that the population of the State, as bounded,
would not exceed thirty-nine thousand ; that this was a j
smaller number than any State in the Union then had ; and |
that Wayne County should come in with the rest of the dis-
trict, subject to the reserved right of Congress to alter the j
boundary afterward. Mr. Griswold said that not less than
$40,000 would be devoted to roads, a " sum too large to be
withdrawn from the national treasury and devoted to local
objects ; " but Mr. Fearing thought one-half the proceeds of
the lands should be given to build roads within the Territory,
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 321
and a proposition to that effect actually commanded twenty-
live votes. It was also objected that Mr. Gallatin, the Sec-
retary of the Treasury, owned lands that would be benefited
by these improvements. The friends of the bill replied
to these arguments as best they could. Mr. Giles, of Vir-
ginia, made the very just observation that a glance at the map
sufficed to show that the boundary of 1800, running from the
Ohio to the Straits of Mackinaw, was necessarily temporary,
and that the State as bounded by the bill was one of the
most compact and convenient in the Union. An analysis of
the vote in the House of Representatives shows the sources
of the anxiety to bring the State into the Union at an early
day. The 47 affirmative votes came : Twenty-six from the
South, 14 from the Middle States, and 9 from New England ;
the 29 negative votes came : Nine from the South, 5 from the
Middle States, and 15 from New England. Virginia gave 15
votes for and one against the bill ; Massachusetts, 5 for and 5
against; Connecticut, none for and 5 against. This vote is
one of many proofs that, at the opening of the century, the
Middle and Southern States were far more at touch with the
West than New England. The vote of Dr. Manasseh Cut-
ler, then a member of the House from Massachusetts, is reg-
istered in the negative.
The battle fought in the House of Representatives was
fought over again with the same weapons in the Territory.
The exclusion of Wayne County caused the deepest dissatis-
faction to all Federalists, and particularly to the people of
the county, most of whom were Federalists. A letter writ-
ten to Judge Burnet by Mr. Solomon Sibley, of Detroit,
August 2, 1802, puts the case very strongly. Annexation Lo
Indiana will be the " eternal ruin " of the county ; but the
ruin of five thousand people is of little consequence to the
half-dozen political aspirants who have brought things to the
present pass. Thf -elusion of the county was due to Judges
Symmes and Mei^, , and " Sir Thomas," as he calls General
Worthington, who foresaw that its people would be " a dead
21
: ■ . , :fi-
w
322
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
weight against them." ' Politics may have been the cause of
the peculiar grievance of the people of Detroit, which was,
no doubt, a considerable one for a time ; but in the end it
was most fortunate that the five-State plan was ado[)ted
rather than the three-State plan. Still more, the grief of the
Wayne County people was of short duration. The political
character of the population points to the conclusion that
those interested in such questions were few in number ; and
Burnet tells us that the project of a new territory north of
the Ordinance line, having Detroit as a capital, with the ac-
companying ofifices, promised to the leaders of opinion, if they
came out promptly and decidedly in favor of the new State
on the plan proposed by Congress, effectually won these few-
over to the popular side."
The flanks of those who opposed a new State, or favored
bounding it on the west by the Scioto, had been completely
turned. At first they talked about a further effort to post-
pone the issue. A public meeting of citizens of Dayton and
vicinity, held September 26th, unanimously passed a resolution
denouncing the enabling act as a usurpation of power, bearing
a " striking resemblance " to the course of Great Britain in re-
gard to the colonies ; expressing deep sympathy with their
fellow-citizens of Wayne County, and calling upon the Ter-
ritorial Legislature to assert itself by causing a new census
to be taken and by calling a convention to frame a constitu-
tion. But these plans came to nothing. The members of
the convention were duly elected, and on November i, 1802,
they came together in Chillicothe, and organized for business.
In his unfortunate address to the convention. Governor St.
Clair stated, in very strong terms, the ordinary Federalist
objections to the Enabling act. He affirmed that no act of
Congress was necessary to enable the Territory to form a State
government, as the right was secured to them by the Ordi-
nance ; declared that the people of Wayne County had been
• Bumet : Notes, 494 et seq.
» Notes, 337, 338.
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 323
"bartered away like sheep in a market ; " and urged the forma-
tion of a convention for the whole Territory and a demand for
admission to the Union. " If we submit to the degradation
[imposed by the Enabling actj we should be trodden upon,
and, what is worse, we should deserve to be trodden upon." '
The convention had first to decide whether it would itself
form a constitution or call a second convention to do that
work. This could hardly have been a doubtful question, no
matter what the political antecedents of tlie members. The
opposition totally collapsed, Judge Ephraim Cutler, of Mari-
etta, being the only man who voted to refer the matter to a
second convention. The convention proceeded with such ex-
pedition that it adjourned, November 29th, having completed
its task.
Attention can here be drawn to only one feature of the
constitution that the convention framed ; others will be men-
tioned in future connections.
And first, the Chillicothe convention planted the seed of
controversies that affected the boundaries of three States.
The fifth compact of 1787 ordained that there should be not
less than three States, nor more than five, in the territory be-
yond the Ohio ; if three, the lines of division should be the
meridian of the mouth of the Great Miami, and the Wabash
and the meridian of Vincennes, from the Ohio River to the
international line ; if four or five, then the lower States should
be separated from the upper one or ones by the parallel pass-
ing through the southern bend or extreme of Lake Michigan.
North of this parallel the whole subject was left to the discre-
tion of Congress. No legislation could be more binding than
this east and west line ; it was forever unalterable, except by
common consent, ar •' yet it was eventually set aside through-
out its entire length from Lake Erie to the Mississippi River.
The act of 1800 dividing the Territory seems.* o have assumed
that the three-State plan would be followed ; I ut the Enabling
' St. Clair Papers, II., 592 et seq.
324
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Act for Ohio, of two years later, proceeded on the other theory.
That act bounded the new State in the northwest by the line
of 1787, thus reaffirming the Ordinance. But the convention,
and this is the seed planted at Chillicothe, inserted a proviso
in the Constitution of Ohio that, in case the line should be
found not to intersect Lake Erie, or to intersect it east of the
mouth of the Maumee River, then, with the consent of Con-
gress, the boundary should be a straight line running from
the southerly extreme of the Lake to the most northerly cape
of Maumee Bay, from its intersection with the Miami merid-
ian to the intern?*ional boundary-line. Judge Burnet says the
understanding had always been that the Ordinance line would
cross the strait connecting the two lakes between Detroit and
the River Raisin ; but that, while the convention of 1802 was
in progress, an old hunter, familiar with the region, appeared
in Chillicothe, and imparted to some of the members the in-
formation that the head of Lake Michigan was much farther
south than had been supposed.' Whether this hunter's story
was true or not, and whether it was the cause of the boundary-
proviso, as Burnet states, it well illustrates the state of geo-
graphical knowledge touching the Northwest at that time,
and the sources of information upon which men conducting
grave public business were sometimes compelled to draw.
The act of 1803 recognizing Ohio said nof; a word about this
proviso; but the act of 1805 creating the Territory of Michi-
gan reaffirmed the Ordinance line.
Ohio was never, in set terms, admitted to the Union ; but
an act entitled " An Act to provide for the execution of the
laws of the United States within the State of Ohio " was
equivalent to the customary act of admission, and the date of
its approval, February 19, 1803, is the proper date of admission.'
' Burnet : Notes, 360, 361.
* The date of the admission of Ohio is the subject of much controversy, and
has given rise to a considerable literature. As many as seven dates have been as-
signed, but of these only three are worthy of mention : April 30, 1802, the date
of the enabling act ; November 29, 1802, the date of the adjournment of the
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 325
The act of 1802 assigned the thirty-five members of the
convention to the counties as follows : Trumbull two, Jeffer-
son five, Belmont two, Washington four, Ross five, Fairfield
two, Adams three, Hamilton ten, and Clermont two. The
counties bearing these names in 1802 were much larger than
the counties bearing the same names to-day; but as the
names have remained with the original settlements, a glance
at the map of 1887 will show where the people lived for whom
the constitution was immediately made. Save only the two
from Trumbull County, the thirty-five delegates all came from
the Southern part of the State, and the large majority from a
narrow strip of territory fringing the Ohio River. Excluding
the small beginnings made on the Western Reserve, the Ohio
of 1802 lay within the sweep of the Pennsylvania-Virginia
current of emigration to the West. Of the twelve members
of the convention whose previous history I have been able to
trace, six came from Virginia, two from Massachusetts, and one
tach from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, and Con-
necticut. Still further, thirty-three of the forty-seven men
who represented the State in Congress from 1803 to 1829 came :
Nine from Pennsylvania, six each from Virginia, Connecticut,
and New Jersey, three from New York, and one each from
New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Kentucky. The others
are unknown. Judge Jacob Burnet, who rendered Ohio and
the Northwest most valuable services as a member of the
Territorial Council, as Judge of the Supreme Court, and as
Senator, as well as author of the " Notes," was from New
Jersey. These facts, in connection with those of a similar
nature found in the last chapter, plainly indicate the origin of
the forces that shaped the early destinies of Ohio.
Chillicothe convention ; February 19, 1803, the date of the act of recognition
mentioned above. Dr. I. W. Andrews has proved very conclusively that this
last is the proper date. See " Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio— their Admission into
the Union," in Magazine of American History for October, 1887. Still, the act
of February 19, 1803, after recapitulating the history, says: " Whereby the said
State has become one of the United States of America."
326
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
II. Indiana.
The admission of Indiana was effected so quietly as scarcely
to cause a ripple on the surface of public affairs. In response
to a petition from the Territorial Legislature, Congress passed
the requisite enabling act, which was approved, April 19, 1816.
The second section of this act bounded the State, east, by the
boundary line of Ohio ; south, by the Ohio ; west, by the
middle of the Wabash from its mouth to a point where a due
north line drawn from Vincennes would last touch the north-
western shore of said river, and from thence by said due-north
line; and north, by an east and west line drawn through a point
ten miles north of the southern extreme of Lake Michigan.
The convention was required to ratify these boundaries. This
last line deprived Michigan of a strip of territory ten miles
wide across the whole northern end of Indiana, that had been
solemnly guaranteed to her by the Ordinance of 1787; but I
have not discovered traces of remonstrance then or after-
ward. The act was justified at the time on the ground that
the State should have a lake-frontage, which the line of 1787
would not give. A convention elected in pursuance of this
act sat at Corydon, June 10-29, ^^^ framed a constitution.
Indiana was formally admitted to the Union, December 11,
1 8 16. At the close of the previous year the population was
68,897.' The petition of the legislature praying for admission
said the inhabitants were principally composed of emigrants
from every part of the Union ; but the names of the counties
and the facts of emigration show that a large m.ajority of them
came from the Middle and Southern States.
III. Illinois.
The Enabling Act for Illinois, which bears the date, April
18, 18 1 8, bounded the State on the east by the Indiana line
' Dillon : History of Indiana, 555.
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 32/
as fixed two years before, on the south and west by the Ohio
and Mississippi Rivers, and on the north by the parallel 42°
30' north latitude. This last was a much more serious infrac-
tion of the Ordinance than the Indiana line, and it deserves
more than a passing allusion.
The enabling act, as originally introduced into the House of
Representatives by Mr. Pope, the Territorial delegate, adhered
strictly to the Ordinance line ; but that statesman, thinking
better of the matter, moved, April 3d, the line of 42° 30' as an
amendment. He urged that the State, lying between the
Mississippi Valley and the Lake Basin, and resting upon both,
should be brought into relation with the States ea'>t by way
of the lakes as well as the States south by way of the river ;
said if the mouth of the Chicago River were included within
her limits, the State would be interested in a canal connecting
the two systems of waters and in improving the harbor on the
lake; insisted upon the State's right to a lake-frontage; and
also used an argument that, from 1789 to 1861, was made to
do duty in almost every kind of political emergency. If shut
out from the Northern waters, then, in case of national dis-
ruption, the interests of the State would be to join a Southern
and Western Confederacy ; but if a large portion of it could
be made dependent upon the commerce and navigation of the
Northern Lakes, connected as they were with the Eastern
States, a rival interest would be created to check the wish for
a Western or Southern confederacy ; and her interests would
then be balanced, and her inclinations turned to the North.
This reasoning was convincing to the South and the North
alike, apparently, for the House adopted the amendment
without a division. The consent of the people of Wisconsin
was not asked, or the preference of those living in the district
consulted. As the line of 1787 is in latitude 41° 37' 07.9"
north, the tract of territory that Congress thus generously
gave to Illinois, at the expense of Wisconsin, and in utter
disregard of the Ordinance, is 52' 52.1" of latitude, or a little
more than sixty-one miles, in width, and in length, from the
'i ■•■-.■' i:
328
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
lake to the river; it contains 8,500 square miles of as good
soil as exists in the Northwest, as well as many fine streams
and the sites of such cities as Chicago, Rockford, Freeport,
Galena, and Dixon, not to mention smaller ones.
The Illinois State Convention sat at Kaskaskia, complet-
ing its work, August 26, 1 8 18. The resolution of Congress
declaring the admission of the State to the Union bears the
date, December 3d, of the same year. A severe struggle on
the practical recognition of slavery will be noticed in a future
chapter. The population, which was mostly found in the
Southern part of the State, was less than that required by the
Ordinance. The census of 1810 assigns 12,282, the census of
1820, 55,162, people to Illinois.
IV. Michigan.
We come again to Michigan, the first part of the North-
west visited by civilized men, and the last, except Wisconsin,
to receive a permanent form of government. No other part
of the United States has seen so many changes of national
and local jurisdiction. It has belonged to France, to Eng-
land, and to the United States; from 1796 to 1803 it was
part of the Northwest Territory, from 1803 to 1805 a part of
Indiana, and then an independent territory until its admis-
sion to the Union in 1837. Judge Cooley has appropriately
sketched its history as a " history of governments " ' No
other name of an organized territory east of the Rocky
Mountains has stood so long upon the map. Moreover, the
growth of population was for a long time exceedingly slow.
In explaining this fact. Judge Cooley mentions the late day
at which the Indian titles to the soil were eased, the fur-
trade within the Territory, the false ideas of Michigan geo-
graphy, and the want of roads ; but, plainly, these are only
proximate causes, and merely another way of saying that civ-
I Preface to Michigan, in Commonwealth Series.
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 329
> of as good
fine streams
d, Freeport,
:ia, complet-
of Congress
•n bears the
struggle on
I in a future
mnd in the
uired by the
he census of
the North-
t Wisconsin,
other part
of national
ce, to Eng-
1803 it was
!o5 a part of
1 its admis-
jpropriately
mts"' No
the Rocky
oreover, the
dingly slow.
he late day
^d, the fur-
chigan geo-
se are only
iig that civ-
ilization was slow in taking possession of the beautiful penin-
sula.
Some of the main causes of the early discovery and ex-
ploration of the regions of the Upper Lakes also contributed
to their late development. What were the opportunities of
the French, and what use they made of them, has been shown
in earlier chapters. Beyond discovery, exploration, and a
feeble colonial life that was eventually extinguished, they
did nothing for the Northwest. Had the St. Lawrence fallen
to England that country would not have been so promptly
explored, but it would have been more promptly peopled.
It is easy to conceive a contingency in which the shores of
the Lakes would have become the seats of civilization much
earlier than the banks of the Ohio. As things turned, how-
ever, Michigan drew her emigrants by the northern channel
of emigration, from the Northern part of the Atlantic Plain.
But here she was at a great disadvantage as compared with
Ohio, particularly the Southern part. Emigration moved less
promptly by this channel than by those farther south, and
when it did move it was for many years absorbed by West-
ern New York and Northern Ohio. It was not until the ap-
pearance of steam-boats on the Lakes, in 18 18, the opening
of the Erie Canal in 1825, and the partial filling up of the
inviting fields of emigration farther to the east, that the
period of active settlement in Michigan began. While the
population of Michigan merely doubled from 1800 to 1820,
the population of Ohio increased twelve-fold.
But political development was slow from another cause.
It was many years before the inertia given to the community
by the habitants could be overcome. Mr. Sibley wrote to
Judge Burnet in 1802: "Nothing frightens the Canadians
like taxes. They would prefer to be treated like dogs, and
kenneled under the whip of a tyrant, than contribute to the
support of a free government." In 18 18, under the belief
that the Territory had the requisite population, the question
of entering on the second stage of government provided for
1
330
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
by the Ordinance was submitted to the people, but was lost
by a decided majority, and it was not until 1827 that that end
was fully consummated. Plainly, the old rdgwie had done
its work as thoroughly as Colbert could have desired.
But in time steps forward began to be taken. In 1832
the people, at a popular election, cast a large majority vote
in favor of entering into a State government. In 1834 a cen-
sus showed that between the two lakes and north of the line
of 1787 there was a population of 87,278. Proceeding upon
the theory held by St. Clair and other Federalists in 1802,
that no enabling act was needed, the Territorial Legislature,
January 26, 1835, passed an act calling a convention to
frame a State constitution, and appointing April 4th the day
for the election of delegates. This election was duly held ;
the convention sat in Detroit, May nth to June 29th; the
people ratified the constitution framed, at an election held
November 2d ; President Jackson laid it before Congress in a
special message, December 9th, and the State would, no doubt,
have been promptly admitted had it not encountered a series
of adverse influences that render " the Michigan case " one of
the most remarkable in the history of the admission of new
States. The first and most formidable of these was a boun-
dary-quarrel with Ohio.
The Constitution for Michigan framed at Detroit assumed
in its preamble the boundaries of the Territory as established
in 1805, viz. : The Ordinance line on the south ; a line drawn
through the middle of Lake M' aigan to its northerly extrem-
ity, and a line due north from that point on the west ; and the
international boundary on the north and east. This was
overlapping Indiana as bounded in 18 16, and the provisional
boundary of Ohio adopted in 1802. The Indiana and Illinois
boundaries did not touch the Ohio-Michigan controversy that
we are now to sketch, save as they tended to destroy the au-
thority of the Ordinance.
Between 1802 and 1835 some history was made on the
Northwestern Ohio frontier. In 1817 a Government surveyor
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 331
laid down the boundary in conformity with the Chillicothe
idea, and a little later another ran the line in conformity with
the Michigan idea. These lines are called the " Harris " and
"Fulton" lines, from the names of the two surveyors. In
1812 Amos Spafford, collector of the port of Miami, wrote
to Governor Meigs, saying the fifty families comprising that
settlement desired to have the laws of Ohio extended over
them ; that the few who objected were office-holders under
the Governor of Michigan, who were determined to enforce
the Michigan laws ; that the people regarded this a great usur-
pation, and that he anticipated serious trouble unless the
matter was adjusted. In 1823 Dr. Horatio Conant, of
Fort Meigs, wrote to Ethan Allen Brown, Senator from Ohio,
that the Michigan jurisdiction was extended to the territory
between the Harris and Fulton lines, with the decided appro-
bation of the inhabitants, which " makes it impossible for the
State officers of Ohio to interfere without exciting disturb-
ance." ' The territory was in possession of Michigan all tliis
time ; it had been organized into a township, and roads had
been cut at her expense. The letters of SpafTord and Conant
show that the people sometimes inclined to one side and some-
times to the other; which was not unnatural, considering that
they were settlers in a wilderness who had formed no jurisdic-
tional attachments, and that sometimes their interests seemed
to incline them to Columbus, and then again to Detroit. But
now there came a change. The city of Toledo was founded
in 1832 ; and the inhabitants desired to belong to Ohio and not
to Michigan. Especially were they anxious to secure the full
advantage of the Miami Canal, then in course of construction
from Cincinnati to the mouth of the Maumee. The strip
of disputed land extended from Indiana to Lake Erie, eight
miles wide at one end and five at the other, containing four
hundred and sixty-eight square miles. The land was rich and
243.
The two letters are found in Knapp's History of the Maumee '^'^■'lley, 242,
ii ■
1!
'1
}t':;i
^
332
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
fertile, but the prizes in the contest that opened in 1835 were
the mouth of the Maumee and the young but promising
city of Toledo. Evidently, the Ordinance line did not well
suit territorial relations. It excluded Indiana and Illinois
from Lake Michigan, and cut the people of the Maumee off
from their natural connections. To be sure, these business
arguments have no weight to the mind of a jurist in 1887; but
they had great weight with the forceful people of the North-
west in 1 8 16, 18 18, and 1835. They would naturally demand :
"Why should a line established in ignorance of geography
and in advance of territorial development be suffered to stand
in the way of our convenieiice ? "
In 1835 Governor Lucas brought the boundary-question
before the Ohio Legislature. That body promptly extended
the contiguous Ohio counties over the disputed tract, and
directed the Governor to appoint three commissioners to sur-
vey and re-mark the Harris line. At the end of March, Gov-
ernor Lucas, attended by his staff and the boundary commis-
sioners, arrived at Perrysburg to carry out the directions of
the Legislature. As resistance was expected. General Bell
and some six hundred Ohio militia were called into the field.
These went into camp at the same place. Governor Mason
of Michigan, attended by General Brown at the head of
about one thousand Michigan militia, took possession of
Toledo. At this juncture Richard Rush, of Philadelphia, and
B. C. Howard, of Baltimore, arrived in the tented valley of
the Maumee, sent by President Jackson as messengers of
peace. Their efforts to effect a compromise until Congress
could settle the dispute accomplished nothing more than the
disbanding of the militia. What is variously known as " Gov-
ernor Lucas's War," the " Toledo War," etc., came to a sud-
den end. It was a bloodless war ; it had some serious and
many comic aspects, and long furnished material for merri-
ment in both Ohio and Michigan. The further local inci-
dents of the controversy, such as the attempt of Ohio to run
the Harris line and the seizure of some of the surveying
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 333
party by Michigan officers ; the special session of the Ohio
Legislature, at which it enacted a law to prevent the forcible
abduction of the citizens of Ohio, created Lucas County, ex-
tending to the Harris line, appropriated $300,000 out of
the treasury to carry into effect the laws in relation to the
northern boundary, and authorized the Governor to borrow as
much more on the credit of the State ; the arrest and impris-
onment by Michigan officers of citizens of Ohio ; the excite-
ment in both the State and the Territory ; the disturbed
state of affairs at Toledo — these and other incidents of local
interest must be passed by. The quarrel was settled by poli-
ticians at Washington, and not by militia generals and sheriffs
on the banks of the Maumee.
Strictly speaking, the quarrel was between Ohio and the
United States. The Attorney-General gave President Jack-
son an opinion that, until Congress should change the law,
the land between the Harris and Fulton lines belonged to
Michigan ; and this opinion was properly binding on the
President as long as Mr. Butler continued his law adviser.
But the President was in a strait. A presidential election
would occur the next year, and he was deeply interested in
the candidacy of Martin Van Buren. Indiana and Illinois,
both of which States had profited by the disregard of the line
of 1787, sympathized with Ohio ; and the three States together
had a large number of votes to be given to either the Demo-
cratic or the Whig candidate. Michigan stood alone, only a
territory. John Quincy Adams thus defined the situation :
"Never in the course of my life have I known a controversy
of which all the right was so clearly on one side and all the
power so overwhelmingly on the other; never a case where
the temptation was so intense to take the strongest side and
the duty of taking the weakest was so thankless." ' Very
naturally, the President counselled both sides to keep the
peace, but he was understood to lean to the Ohio side.
' Cooley : Michigan, 219.
334
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
But this was not all the politics involved in the case. The
State of Arkansas also stood at the door of the Union knock-
ing for admission. The administration party was anxious
that both the States be admitted in time to vote at the en-
suing presidential election, for it was expected that both
would be Democratic ; but Michigan was a free State, Arkan-
sas a slave State, and although it was understood that, in this
scale, one would balance the other, there was yet an anxiety
on either side lest the other should get the advantage.
Besides, a State government had been organized. A
member of the House of Representatives, as well as legisla-
tive and executive oflficers, had been elected, and judges had
been appointed. The legislature had met and chosen the
national Senators. President Jackson, displeased at the ac-
tivity of Governor Mason on the boundary-controversy, ap-
pointed a new Territorial governor to succeed him, whom the
people would not receive, and whom they soon joked and
laughed across Lake Michigan into Wisconsin, which was still
a part of Michigan Territory. This was the local situation :
Theoretically, the Territorial government was in force, but
practically, the State government. Obviously, such a state
of things could not long continue in an Anglo-Saxon coun-
try.
Acts for the admission of the two States were finally ap-
proved, June 15, 1836. The one admitted Arkansas uncon-
ditionally, the other Michigan with a very serious condition,
that is hinted by the very title of the law : " An Act to es-
tablish the northern boundary line of the State of Ohio, and
to provide for the admission of the State of Michigan into
the Union," etc. Section i gave the district in dispute to
Ohio ; but Section 2 made Michigan a territorial compensa-
tion in the Upper Peninsula, drawing the line separating her
from Wisconsin through Green Bay, the Menomonee River,
Lake of the Desert, and Montreal River. These arrange-
ments Michigan was required to assent to by a delegate con-
vention elected for that sole purpose, before she could take
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 335
her place in the family of States. A convention that sat at
Ann Arbor on the fourth Monday of September rejected this
overture by a very decided majority, and for a time it seemed
that nothing had been concluded.
But now the politicians came again upon the scene. Ar-
guments in favor of the State's yielding were put in circu-
lation. Political arithmeticians at Washington figured out
how much the five per cent, on the public lands sold within
the State would yield, afifirming that it would all be lost.
The Senators and Representatives were desirous of taking
their seats in Congress. President Jackson and his partisans
exerted a steady pressure on the same side. The edge of dis-
appointment becoming somewhat dulled, the people of the
State, with characteristic American good humor, began to
look on the bright side, and before the end of October Demo-
cratic county conventions were calling for a second State con-
vention to pass upon the terms of admission. The State
Governor replied that there was no time to call a second
convention, and that he had no authority to call one, but
hinted that the Government at Washington might, possibly,
recognize a popular convention. Accordingly, five citizens,
"in the name of the people in their primary capacity," called
a convention to meet in Ann Arbor, December 14th. This
was in pursuance of a scheme worked out ia the Democratic
caucuses. Although the elections of delegates were much
ridiculed, they were still held, and although the convention
was stigmatized as the " frost-bitten convention," it still sat,
and did the work for which it had been called — that is, " as-
sented " to the terms of the act of admission, having no more
authority to do so than the crew of a Detroit schooner or a
lumberman's camp in the Valley of Grand River. Still fur-
ther, and most astounding of all, the two Houses of Congress,
by large majorities, passed an act, approved January 26, 1837,
accepting this convention as meeting the requirements of the
act of admission, and so declared Michigan one of the Unit-
ed States. The electoral vote, however, was not counted.
I .-> r
i
i!
I ;
33<5
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Judge Campbell says the State was recognized when admitted
as having existed since November, 1835.' As one closes the
history of the admission of Michigan, he wonders whether
the people learned to accent the first word in the Territorial
motto : Tandem fit surciiliis arbor.
The Upper Peninsula is about three hundred miles in
length, and from thirty to one hundred and sixty in breadth.
It contains about twenty-two thousand six hundred square
miles of area. It has considerable agricultural resources ; its
copper and iron mines arc among the richest in the world ; its
fisheries are the finest on the Lakes; it contains excellent har-
bors, and it commands the outlets of both Lake Michigan
and Lake Superior ; and yet Michigan was unwilling to ac-
cept this rich peninsula for a few hundred square miles of
corn-lands on the Ohio border. She protested again and
again that she did not wish to extend beyond the boundaries
assigned her in 1805. The tip of the Northern Peninsula she
strove for when Wisconsin sought to wrest it from her, be-
cause of its relations to the two straits, and because of the an-
cient commercial connection between Detroit and the upper
posts ; but she wished nothing more. Mr. Lyon, the Territorial
delegate, said, in 1834, "that for a great part of the year nat-
ure had separated the Upper and Lower peninsulas by im-
passable barriers, and that there never could be any identity of
interest or community of feeling between them." However,
when we remember that the copper mines first became pro-
ductive in historic times in 1845, although they had been
worked by the Mound Builders, and been known to white
men since the days of Brul6 and Joliet, and that the whole
peninsula a half-century ago seemed a sterile waste, we need
not be surprised at Michigan's preference for the mouth of
the Maumee.
' Political History of Michigan, 478.
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 337
V. Wisconsin.
The Ordinance of 1787 left to the discretion of Congress
the question whether the Northwest should be divided into
three, four, or five States. No man, looking at the map, can
doubt that the five-State plan was far better than either of
the others. States extending from the Ohio River to the
national boundary would have been of over-size, as well as
ill-shapen ; while Michigan and Wisconsin are both too large
and too widely separated to constitute one State. These
[acts were perceived as early as 1802 and 1805. Furthermore,
it was perceived at the same time that the Upper Peninsula
belongs geographically to Wisconsin. Accordingly, in 1805
the dividing line between them was drawn from the southern
bend of Lake Michigan through the middle of that lake to its
extremity, that is, the Straits of Mackinaw, where historical
causes turned it due north on the Miami meridian to the
national limit. The addition of Wisconsin to Michigan for
purposes of government, in 18 18, subject to the future dispo-
sition of Congress, confirmed this line. Nor was any other
thought entertained until a territorial compensation to Michi-
gan for the lands that the course of events required her to
surrender to Ohio was proposed. The plan of giving her the
Upper Peninsula appears to have been first suggested by Mr.
Preston, of South Carolina, when the Ohio-Michigan boun-
dary was before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate. He
thought the region beyond the Lake too large for one State,
and he appears to have thought the peninsula an island. Mr.
Preston said in the Sen? e : " Whatever disadvantage may
arise from connecting with Michigan a portion of the country
west or north of the Lake is, we think, not to be weighed
with the inconvenience of subjecting, forever after, to the
jurisdiction of a single State all the inhabitants who may re-
side in the region west and north of the Lake." '
' In preparing this account of the controversy touching the Wisconsin boun-
daries, the author acknowledges his indebtedness to two articles entitled The
aa
338
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Wisconsin, more unwilling to part with the peninsula
than Michigan was to receive it, made a valiant effort for its
retention. The connection of the two regions under the law
of 1818 proved litLie more than nominal, and the people be-
yond the Lake made repeated efforts, beginning as early as
1829, to secure the organization of an independent territory,
called, at different times, " Chippevvau," " Wiskonsan," and
'■' Huron, that should include the whole peninsula to the
very tip. The act of April 20, 1836, creating the Territory,
bounded it on the northeast by the line of the Michigan En-
abling Act. A survey of that line made in 1840 and 1841 dis-
closed the fact that Congress had assumed a state of things that
did not exist, and that the line was an impossible one, Wis-
consin took advantage of this discovery to bring forward her
original claim, pleading the Ordinance of 1787, which did not
touch the issue (since in the northern tier of States everything
was left to the discretion of Congress), and the :;cts of 1805
and 1818, which was more to the purpose; but she expressed
a willingness to accept a "compensation " in the shape of ex-
tensive and valuable internal improvements. The legislative
committee that uttered these views recommended that the
Territory insist upon her " ancient boundaries," to the extent,
if necessary, of forming a "State out of the Utiion," " the sov-
ereign, indt^ dent State of Wiseonsin" and then of appealing
to the Supreme Arbiter of Nations to adjust all difficulties that
might arise. A most belligerent address to Congress, adopted
about the same time, declared that Wisconsin would never
" lose sight of the principle that, whatever may be the sacri-
fice, the integrity of her boundaries must be observed." ' It
is r^^edless, perhaps, to say that this is the familiar voice of
South Carolina in the days before the Civil War. Put this
note of secession, sounded among the woods and lakes of the
Boundaries of Wisconsin, by R. G. Thwaits, in Magazine of Western History,
September and October, 1887.
' Magazine of Western History, VI., 504, 529.
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 339
Northwest, made no impression on the course of events.
Having compelled Michigan to accept what she did not want,
Congress now compelled Wisconsin to surrender what she
wished to retain. The Enabling act approved August 6, 1846,
followed the Menomonee-Montreal line with some slight modi-
fications.' In both the conventions held under it, attempts
were made to win back the ancient northeastern boundary,
but without success.
The act of 1836, creating the Territory of Wisconsin, made
the line 42° 30' the southern boundary. Three years later,
and twenty-one years after the admission of the State of Illi-
nois, the Territorial Legislature adopted resolutions declaring
that Congress had violated the Ordinance of 1787 in fixing
the northern boundary of Illinois, and requesting the people
of the Territory, and also those living between the line of
1787 and parallel 42° 30', to vote at the next general election
upon the question of forming a State government that should
embrace the whole of ancient Wisconsin. Strange to say, this
proposition was received with more favor bv the people of
Northern Illinois than by the people of Wisconsin proper.
Public meetings held in various Illinois towns adoptta reso-
lutions in favor of the Wisconsin claim ; and a convention
held at Rockford, July 6, 1840, declared that the fourteen
northern counties of Illinois belonged to Wisconsin, and rec-
cmmcnded the people to elect delegates to a convention to
be held at Madison in November, for the purpose of adopt-
ing such lawful and constitutional measures as may seem to
be necessary and proper for the early adjustment of the south-
ern boundary.' Public sentiment ran very strong m many
of these counties in favor of the northern claim. But the
boundary was complicated with the formation of a State
government, which the people at the north thought prema-
Western History,
' Mr. 1 .iwaits contends that the seeds of future controversies lie thick along
this li.ie.
' Magazine of Western History, VI., 538, 539.
340
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ture, and the total vote cast in favor of the proposition of
1839 was small. In 1842 the Territorial Governor sent an
official communication to the Governor of Illinois, informing
him that the Illinois jurisdiction over the frontier counties
was " accidental and temporary." The Enabling act of 1846
followed the Illinois line on the south, as it followed the
Michigan line on the northeast, and again Wisconsin sub-
mitted. In the first constitutional convention a vigorous but
unsuccessful attempt was made to secure a clause referring all
disputes as to boundary to the Supreme Court of the United
States, the State to come in with boundaries undetermined.
Here, again, politics intervened ; the failure of this plan is said
to have been due, in part, to the jealousy of the Northern Il-
linois politicians entertained by those of Wisconsin. Nor is
it unlikely that political ambition had something to do with
the fondness of the Illinois counties for a northern State con-
nection.
As Wisconsin was the last of the five Northwestern States
to enter the Union, it was not, perhaps, surprising that her
geographical and historical boundaries should be invaded on
the south and northeast ; but it would appear surprising that
on the farther or northwestern side, she should have suffered
more heavily than on any other side. The explanation con-
sists of facts of geography and of history.
After the rectification of the northwestern boundary by
the treaty of i8i8, the meridian of the north westernmost
point of the Lake of the Woods, from its intersection with
the Mississippi to parallel 49°, was considered the farther
boundary of the Northwest Territory; but the act of 1838,
creating the Territory of Iowa, drew a line due north from
the head-waters or sources of the Mississippi to that parallel,
and this line Wisconsin henceforth called her "ancient boun-
dary " in that quarter. Tlie second of these lines falls some-
what farther to the west than the first one. Again, the
population that planted the early settlements on the upper
waters of the Mississippi reached their destination by ascenf"
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 341
ing the river, and not by an overland journey from Lake
Michigan ; moreover, all their natural connections, industrial,
commercial, political, and social, were with the river valley
rather than with the lake basin. In these circumstances orig-
inated the idea of a " sixth State," to consist either wholly of
territory belonging to the old Northwest, or partly of such
territory and partly of territory acquired of France in 1803.
The Enabling Act for Wisconsin, approved August 6, 1846,
departed from the " ancient boundary," adopting the follow-
ing in its stead : The main channel of the St. Louis River to
die first rapids in the same (above the Indian village, accord-
ing to Nicollet's map) ; thence due south to the main branch
uf the River St. Croix ; thence down the main channel of
said river to the Mississippi. In the debate the extension of
"the ancient boundary " beyond the limits of the original
territor)^, the great size of Wisconsin unless limited, and the
ilusirability of a State that should lie on both sides of the
^reat river and encompass its farther sources, were urged in
favor of this line. In the constitutional convention which sat
at Madison, October 5th, this boundary received far more at-
tention than any other. The people of the St. Croix Valley,
who were left in Wisconsin, wished to go with their neighbors
across the river. At the end of a long contest, by a vote of
49 ayes to 38 nays, the convention adopted a proviso that
would have thrown the basin of the St. Croix into the State
beyond. The principal champion of this measure favored a
State extending from the Mississippi to the Saut Ste. Marie
and Green Bay, to be called " Superior." On March 3, 1847,
Congress assented to this proviso, but a month later the peo-
ple, at a popular election, rejected the constitution on grounds
wholly distinct from boundaries.
In the second constitutional convention, convened at
Madison, December 15, 1847, this ground was all fought over
again with equal pertinacity. The Lake Michigan side of the
State now proved to be stronger than the Mississippi side;
and the convention adopted a proviso that the boundary
342
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
should be drawn from the rapids of the St. Louis southward
to the mouth of the Rum River, which is some twenty miles
above the Falls of St. Anthony, thus giving a large tract that
now bi'ongs to Minnesota, including St. Paul and the eastern
side of Minneapolis, to Wisconsin. This proviso brought out
the full strength of the Upper Mississippi settlements in oppo-
sition. The people of the St. Croix Valley and about Fort
Snelling sent a strong memorial to Washington, urging, among
other things, that " the Chippeway and St. Croix valleys
are closely connected in geographical position with the up-
per Mississippi, while they are widely separated from the
settled posts of Wisconsin, not only by hundreds of miles o[
mostly waste and barren lands, which must remain unculti-
vated for ages, but equally so by a diversity of interests and
character in the population.'" ' This memorial suggested a
line drawn due south from Cheqaumegon Bay, on Lake Su-
perior, to the main Chippeway River, and thence down that
stream to the Mississippi. This memorial, seconded by a
vigorous lobby, defeated the Rum River proviso, but did not
secure the Chippeway line. Wisconsin came into the Union
with the limits of the Enabling act. No man who studies the
geography of the Upper Mississippi, and its material and polit-
ical interests, will question the practical wisdom of the limita-
tion on the western side, whatever he may think of its legal-
ity. He will also be apt to think, with the memorialists of
1848, that the Chippeway would have been abetter boundary
than the St. Croix.
In all, Wisconsin lost about fifty-seven thousand square
miles of territority originally intended for her," but she remains
the third of the Northwestern States in size, falling only
1,490 square miles behind Illinois, and 2,527 square miles be-
hind Michigan.
After a very animated contest, the first Wisconsin Const!-
' Magazine of Western History.
' Viz., 8,500 to Illinois, 22,600 to Michigan, and 26,000 to Minnesota,
o, but did not
consin Const!-
to Minnesota.
ADMISSION OF THE NORTHWESTERN STATES. 343
tution was rejected by a majority of 6,112 votes in a total of
34,450. The people of the Territory, in common with the peo-
ple of the West generally, had suffered many evils from reck-
less and irresponsible banking. These evils, together with the
extreme Democratic opinions relating to banks and paper
money, led the convention to deny all legal authority to
banks. The constitution declared it not lawful for any corpo-
ration, institution, person or persons within the State, to make
or issue paper money, or any evidence of debt intended to
circulate as money ; forbade any corporation to carry on any
of the other functions of banking institutions ; prohibited the
establishment of any branch or agency of a banking institu-
tion existing without the State ; and made it illegal to circu-
late, after 1849, bank-notes of a less denomination than $20.
Deposit, discount, and exchange banking were left wholly to
private enterprise. The convention had presumed too far
upon the popular hostility to banks. The Whigs opposed the
constitution to a man, end many of the Democrats as well.
Serious objections were also made to other features that will
not be particularized. The second convention followed, for
the most part, the paths marked out by its predecessor. But
it empowered the legislature to submit to the voters, at any
general election, the question of " bank or no bank ; " also to
grant bank charters, or to pass a general banking law, pro-
vided a majority of all the votes cast on this subject should
be in favor of banks. This constitution was ratified by a
majority of over 10,000 in a vote of 23,000. Wisconsin was
admitted to the Union May 29, 1848. The State received
its emigration by the great northern current, and accordingly
had to wait until Michigan was partially peopled, as Michigan
had been obliged to wait for Western New York and Northern
Ohio, The population was only 30,945 in 1840, but it made
the astonishing advance to 305,391 in the ten years following.
Minnesota, the half-sister of the five Northwestern States,
was admitted to the Union M^y 11, 1858.
The five noble commonwealths formed out of the Terri-
i|;t
Mj-jii;,ii'Y.i'i't I! ; "
344
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
tory Northwest of the River Ohio, with their twelve or thir-
teen millions of population ; their material, intellectual, and
moral resources ; their vast wealth of achievements and still
vaster wealth of possibilities, are the grandest testimonial to
the Ordinance of 1787, to the men who framed it, and to the
pioneers who laid their foundations.
XVIII.
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
The surprise that historians still continue to express at
the ease and celerity with which the Ordinance of 1787 was
enacted culminates when they come to the sixth article of
compact. A few words touching that article will serve as a
fitting introduction to an account of slavery in the Territory
Northwest of the River Ohio.
At the close of the Revolutionary War slavery existed in
nearly all the States of the Union, but was far stronger in the
South than in the North. In the one section the causes were
already at work that ere long brought about its abolishment ;
in the other, the causes had not yet hegun to operate that, in
the end, practically united all the people in defence of slavery.
In the sense of later controversies, the one section was not
anti-slavery nor the other pro-slavery. The Northern States
tended toward anti-slavery views, but not in the aggressive
spirit of later times ; the Southern States, toward pro-slavery
views, but not with such unanimity as to preclude a great
amount of strong and even fervid anti-slavery sentiment, and
particularly in Virginia. The average opinion South and
North was that slavery could not be violently uprooted ; that
it must be tolerated and protected for the time ; but that it
was an evil the peaceful death of which every real well-wisher
of his country would be glad to hasten. This was the opinion
that declared itself in the slavery compromises of the Con-
stitution, and in the sixth article of compact of the Ordinance
of the same year, which is also a compromise, as anyone must
see the moment he looks at the two clauses of the article bal-
346
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
anced on the word " provided." The long and fierce contest
over the extension of slavery, which did not begin until many
years afterward, gave to that prohibition an importance which
no one dreamed of according to it at the time of its enact-
ment. The fact is, the article was not of the substance of the
Ordinance. It was not even a part ot the original draft, but
was brought forward by Mr. Dane on the second reading.
There is no reason to suppose that Mr. Lee, of Virginia,
changed his views on the subject of slavery in the interval, but
he voted against the prohibition of 1 784, and for the prohibition
of 1787. The Ohio Associates desired the exclusion of slavery
from the region where they proposed to purchase lands, and
probably would have declined to purchase them without it ; '
' This was a point that the New England men always insisted upon. The
" Proposition for settling a new State by such officers and soldiers of the Federal
Army as should associate for that purpose," drawn up by Colonel Timothy
Pickering, early in 1783, which was an important link in the history of the Ohio
Company, when told at length, contained this language : " The total exclusion of
slavery from the State to form an essential and irrevocable part of the Constitu-
tion." The editors of the "Life of Rev. Manasseh Cutler" present convincing
evidence that Dr. Cutler was the author of the sections of the Ordinance of 1787
relating to religion, education, and slavery (I., 342-344). Judge Ephraim Cutler,
mentioned in the text, says his father asked him, in 1804-1805, whether he had
prepared the prohibition of slavery inserted in the Ohio Constitution. On re-
ceiving an affirmative answer, the doctor said it was a singular coincidence, as he
had himself prepared Article VL of the Ordinance, while he was in New Yotk
negotiating the Ohio purchase. The doctor further said he acted in that matter
for associates, friends, and neighbors who would not embark in the enterprise
unless the principles in relation to religion, education, and slavery were unalter-
ably fixed. Dr. Cutler's editors also bring out with much force, as partially ex-
plaining the singular interest that the Virginia members of Congress took in the
Ohio purchase and the Ordinance, that settlements on the further banks of the
Ohio would be a screen for the Virginia and Kentucky settlements on the south
bank against the Indians. They say further: "Virginia, under the leadership
of Washington, had entered upon a wise and comprehensive policy of internal
improvement, designed to secure the trade of the Ohio Valley and the Northwest
to Virginia seaports. Additional value would also be imparted to her bounty-
lands lying between the Scioto and Little Miami. Add to these the personal
sympathy of Washington for the success of his old associates, as well as his own
landed interests in the Ohio Valley, and we find plain business considerations
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
347
but their attitude toward its extension was very different
from that of David Wilmot and Abraham Lincoln. Accord-
ingly, the sixth compact was regarded neither as an anti-
slavery victory nor as a pro-slavery defeat ; it was simply a
feature, though an important one, of the frame of govern-
ment provided for the Northwest. The tremendous conse-
quences flowing from it no man then living was wise enough
to foretell. Still the article was of great immediate advantage
to freedom ; for when the real battl ^ with slavery in the North-
west was joined, it proved a rock of defence that was never
successfully assaulted.
Negro slaves were introduced into the Mississippi Valley
eady in the eighteenth century. Throughout the French
period pecuniary ability and personal desire were the only
limitations on the number of such slaves that a colonist might
own. Accordingly, as the habitants of the Northwest in-
creased in substance and were brought into closer commercial
relations with Louisiana and the West Indies, they imported
them in considerable numbers. The number continued to
grow, both by natural increase and by later importations.
Judge Breese quotes a Jesuit missionary who found r,ioo
whites, 300 blacks, and 60 " red slaves of the savages " in
five Illinois villages in 1 7 50.' But this slavery was of the old
patriarchal rather than the modern commercial type. Breese
gives a pleasing picture of the male slaves working side by
side in the fields with their masters, and of the females going
with their mistresses " in neat aitire " to matins and vespers ;
both " unmindful of the fetters with which a wicked policy
had bound them." ' Monette gives an equally pleasing pict-
ure of the festive enjoyments of the habitants, in which the
slaves freely mingled.' An ordinance of Louis XV,, issued in
that controlled at that time this most important decision. And all evidence
points to Rev. Manasseh Cutler as the agent who carefully, skilfully, and suc-
cessfully conducted these negotiations and brought about their results" (I., 352).
'Early History of Illinois, 194. 'Ibid., 199, 200.
' History of the Valley of the Mississippi, I., 186, 187.
348
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
1724, enjoined that all slaves in the French colonics should
"be educated in the Apostolic Roman Catholic religion, and
be baptized," enjoining their owners to have these matters at-
tended to within a reasonable time, under pain of an arbitrary
fine. ' Negro slaves were relatively numerous in the North-
west in 1763. Governor Reynolds, who says the first impor-
tation was one of five hundred made from San Domingo in
1726, by Philip Renault, to work the mines, reports that
there were 168 slaves in Illinois in 1810, 917 ir 1820, and 746
in 1830.' Negro slaves are also heard of at Green Bay in
Wisconsin.*
The Western Indians were slave-holders. They followed
the ancient and honorable custom of selling captives taken in
war into slavery, often as the alternative of putting them to
death ; and among their best customers, from the early days
of French colonization, were the white men, who often
bought, it must be added, as acts of humanity. So many of
these red slaves belonged to a single tribe that Pawnee, or
" Pani " as the French wrote it, came to be the common word
for slave irrespective of race, thus repeating the history of the
word " Slav " itself.
The transfer of the Northwest to England in no way dis-
turbed the relation of master and slave ; for the capitulation
of 1760 and the treaty of 1763 guaranteed the full protection
of all the property of the people who were transferred.
Moreover, such Englishmen as made their way into the coun-
try enjoyed the same privileges as the old residents, and
some of them promptly improved this opportunity. As a
consequence, the Northwest came to the United States with
a slave dowery ; and although the treaty of 1783 did not
repeat the guarantee of the treaty of 1763, no one thought
that the dowery would in any way be interfered with, for slav-
ery was then, practically, co-extensive with the Union. The
' Dillon : History of Indiana, 32. "^ My Own Times, 28, 132.
' Strong : History of the Territory of Wisconsin, 67.
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
349
Xorthwest was slave territory all through the Virginia period,
reacliiiig from 1778 to 1784; and when that State made her
cession she stipulated, in terms: "That the French and Ca-
nadian inhabitants and other settlers . . . who have
professed themselves citizens of Virginia, shall have their
possessions and titles confirmed to them, and be protected
in the enjoyment of their rights and liberties ; " and this
stipulation, no doubt, included slaves. Furthermore, the
United States Government recognized the existence of slav-
ery in the Territory. The Ordinance of 1784 mentions
"free males of full age" and free inhabitants; and, by al-
lowing the people " to adopt the constitution and laws of
any one of the original States," gave full scope for the con-
tinuance of slavery. It has even been contended that the
expression, " free male inhabitants," found in the great Or-
dinance, assumes tacitly that such slavery as then existed
in the Territory should not be disturbed. And, finally. Jay's
Treaty, negotiated in 1794, in the article providing for the
evacuation of the Western posts on June i, 1796, guaranteed
to all settlers and traders within the precincts or jurisdiction
of the said posts all their property of every kind and pro-
tection therein, which applied to slaves as well as to other
property.
In his very entertaining account of life at Detroit in the
years following the extension of the American authority
over that town. Judge Burnet, after bearing testimony to the
"excellence of their hirelings and domestics," adds : "But
their best servants were the Pawnee Indians, and their de-
scendants, who were held and disposed of as slaves, under the
French and English governments — a species of slavery which
existed to a considerable extent in Upper Canada. . . .
That relation existed when the country was delivered up to
the United States ; though the practice of purchasing Indian
captives as slaves, by the white people, had ceased before the
surrender ; and consequently, the principal part, if not all,
the Indians then in slavery were the descendants of enslaved
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350
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
captives." ' Judge Cooley divides the slaves in the Northwest,
in 1796, "as regards the legal questions affecting their lib-
erty," into three classes: (i) "Those who were in servitude'
to French owners previous to the cession of jurisdiction to
England, and who were still claimed as property in which the
owners were protected under the treaty of cession," 1763. (2)
" Those who were held by British owners at the time of Jay's
treaty and claimed afterward as property under its protec-
tion." (3) " Those who since the Territory had come under
American customs had been brought into it from the States
in which slavery was lawful." '
When the habitants of Vincennes and the Illinois, alarmed
by the sixth article of compact, called upon Governor St.
Clair to explain its meaning, he promptly replied that it was
not retroactive but prospective ; " a declaration of a principle
which was to govern the legislature in all acts respecting
that matter, and the courts of justice in their decisions in
cases arising after the date of the Ordinance." He argued that
had Congress intended to emancipate the slaves in the Terri-
tory, compensation would have been made to their owners.
Congress had " the right to determine that property of that
kind afterwards acquired should not be protected in future,
and that slaves imported into the Territory after that declara-
tion might reclaim their freedom." * This was the theory on
which the various Territorial governments of the Northwest
appear to have been administered. For example, the revenue
laws of the Territory of Illinois levied a tax upon slaves ; and
Congress, that had the power of revising all such laws, in this
case never exercised its power. However, in one instance a
court of law materially limited this ground. The Chief
Justice of the Territory of Michigan, in a case that arose at
Detroit in 1807, held that the sixth article was absolute, save
as modified by Jay's Treaty. These are his words : " A right
• Notes, 283.
• St Clair Papers, I., 205, 206.
• Michigan, 131, 133.
mmm^
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
351
of property in the human species cannot exist in this Territory
except as to persons in the actual possession of British settlers
in the Territory on June I, 1796, and that every other man
coming into this Territory is by the law of the land a freeman,
unless he be a fugitive from lawful labor and service in some
other American State or territory."' Chief Justice Wood-
bridge accordingly refused to return to their owners fugitive
slaves from Canada escaping into Michigan, thereby causing
no little bad blood. In 1807, it may be remarked, the guar-
antee given the French slave-owners by England was more
than forty years old, and had no other than an historical in-
terest.
Under the operation of the Ordinance sudh slavery as
existed in 1787 slowly but surely died out. However, black
slaves were still found in Illinois as late as 1846 or 1847 ; and
men of middle age now living have seen in Detroit an ancient
"Pani" who had been a slave in his earlier life.*
The active and dangerous championship of slavery in the
Northwest did not come from the French inhabitants. The
New England and Middle State emigrants were generally op-
posed to slavery ; but the larger number of the emigrants from
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Kentucky, accustomed to slaves,
and finding in the Ohio Valley physical conditions very sim-
ilar to those they left behind them, not unnaturally desired
its introduction. Accordingly, they united with the slave-
holders already on the ground in a series of attempts per-
manently to break down or temporarily to set aside the inhi-
bition. A petition asking the suspension of Article VI. was
met by an adverse report in the House of Representatives in
May, 1796.
In 1799, oflRcers of the Virginia line, desiring to remove with
their slaves to the Virginia Military District, between the
■ Cooley : Michigan, 137.
' Edwards : History of Illinois, 180^ 184 ; and Campbell : Political History
of Michigan, 246, 347.
352
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Scioto and Miami Rivers, petitioned the Territorial Legislature
for permission to do so ; but the peremptory language of the
Ordinance gave that body no such discretion and the peti-
tion was refused. The granting of the petition would have
brought into the Territory, says Burnet, " a great accession of
wealth, strength, and intelligence ; yet the public feeling, on
the subject of admitting slavery into the Territory, was such,
that the request would have been denied by a unanimous vote
if the legislature had possessed the power of granting it.
They were not only opposed to slavery on the ground of its
being a moral evil, in violation of personal right, but were of
opinion that, whatever might be its immediate advantages
it would ultimately retard the settlement and check the pros-
perity of the Territory, by making labor less reputable and
creating feelings and habits unfriendly to the simplicity and
industry they desired to encourage and perpetuate." * But it
is impossible to harmonize such a unanimous and decided
anti-slavery sentiment as this with the admitted facts of history.
In December, 1802, a delegate convention held at Vin-
cennes, the capital of the new Territory of Indiana, called and
presided over by Governor William Henry Harrison, again
memorialized Congress to set aside the sixth compact ; and in
the following March, John Randolph, as chairman of a special
committee to which the memorial and a letter of the same
tenor from Governor Harrison had been referred, reported it
inexpedient to grant the prayer. The argument of the re-
port is in these words :
"The rapid population of the State of Ohio sufficiently
evinces, in the opinion of your committee, that the labor of
slaves is not necessary to promote the growth and settlement of
colonies in that region ; that this labor, demonstrably the dear-
est of any, can only be employed in the cultivation of products
more valuable than any known to that quarter of the United
States ; that the committee deem it highly dangerous and in-
'Notes, 306, 307.
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
353
expedient to impair a prevision wisely calculated to promote
the happiness and prosperity of the Northwestern country,
and to give strength and security to that extensive frontier.
In the salutary operation of this sagacious and benevolent re-
straint, it is believed that the inhabitants of Indiana will, at no
very distant day, find ample remuneration for a temporary
privation of labor and of emigration."
However, the people of Indiana, refusing to accept Mr.
Randolph's view of the case, continued to call upon Congress
for the suspension of the obnoxious article. In every one of
the years 1804, 1806, 1807, committees of the House of Rep-
resentatives reported favorably to their wishes, but the House,
for some reason now unknown, never acted on the reports.
Governor Harrison and the Indiana Legislature now took
their cause to the Senate, where they encountered an adverse
report from a special committee that ended attempts to induce
the new Congress to undo what the old one, with such so-
lemnity, had done.' But it must not be supposed that the
people of Indiana were unanimous in desiring the introduction
of slavery. The citizens of Clark County, for example, sent
a vigorous counter-memorial to Congress in November, 1807.
These citizens say : " When we take into consideration the
vast emigration into this Territory — and of citizens, too, de-
cidedly opposed to the measure — we feel satisfied that, at all
events. Congress will suspend any legislative act on this sub-
ject until we shall, by the Constitution, be admitted into the
Union, and have a right to adopt such a constitution, in this
respect, aS may comport with the wishes of a majority of the
citizens." '
In 1807 the Indiana Legislature passed an act authorizing
the owners of negroes and mulattoes more than fifteen years
of age to bring them into the Territory, and to have them
bound to service by indenture for such time as the master and
' St. Clair Papers, I., i20-t2a.
• Dillon : History of Indiana, 410-414.
«3
354
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
slave might agree upon. If within thirty days of the time he
was brought into the Territory the slave would not consent to
be indentured, then his owner should have sixty days in which
to remove him into any State where slavery existed. The
law also permitted any person to bring slaves under fifteen
years of age into the Territory, and to hold them to service—
the males until the age of thirty-five, the females until the
age of thirty-two years. Male children, born in the Terri-
tory of a parent of color owing service by indenture, should
serve the master until the age of thirty years, female chil-
dren until the age of twenty-eight years. This act continued
in force until i8io. On the Territorial Statute Book are
also found very repressive acts concerning servants. This act
was continued in force by the Illinois Legislature after the
division of the Territory. In 1814 the same legislature passed
a law providing that slaves might, with consent of their
owners, hire themselves in the Territory for a term not ex-
ceeding one year ; and that such act should not in any way
affect the master's right of property in them in the State or
territory where they belonged. The preamble of this act as-
signs as reasons for its provisions that mills cannot be erected
or other needed improvements made, for want of laborers;
and, particularly, that the manufacture of salt, the supply of
which should be abundant and the price low, cannot be car-
ried on by means of white men. Still further, an act passed
in 18 12 forbade the emigration of free negroes to the Terri-
tory of Illinois under severe penalties ; and enjoined free ne-
groes already there to register themselves and their children
in the office of the Clerk of the County Court, also under
severe penalties.
When one remembers that the Northwest was covered on
two sides by slave territory, from which it was separated only
by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, he appreciates the facil-
ities that such enactments as the foregoing gave for evading
the intent of the sixth compact of the Ordinance. Comment
is not needed to show that the ingenuity here displayed could
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
355
have invented a system of enforced labor not at all inferior to
that devised by some of the Southern States under President
Johnson's reconstruction scheme. Moreover, these enact-
ments explain certain provisions respecting indentures in the
first Constitutions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois that would
otherwise be inexplicable.
The constitutional conventions of the three divisions of
the Territory lying on the Ohio River offered opportunities
(or attacking the integrity of the Ordinance that in two in-
stances were improved.
Judge Burnet's " Notes " and Mr. William Henry Smith's
" Life of St. Clair " do not convey the impression that an
issue was really drawn in the Ohio Convention of 1802. But
Judge Ephraim Cutler's journal conveys that impression very
distinctly. Those favorable to slavery took the ground that,
however it might be with the Territory, the Ordinance could
not bind a State unless the State herself, as a party to a com-
pact, assented to it ; and they accordingly advocated a " mod-
ified form " of servitude. Judge Cutler was a son of Dr.
Manasseh Cutler, was one of the Washington County dele-
gates to frame the constitution, and a member of the com-
mittee charged with framing the bill of rights, of which John
W. Brown was chairman. Cutler's journal gives this account
of proceedings in the committee :
" An exciting subject was of course immediately brought be-
fore the committee, the subject of admitting or excluding slavery.
Mr. Brown produced a section which defined the subject, in ef-
fect, thus : No person shall be held in slavery if a male, after he
is thirty-five years of age ; and if a female, after twenty-five
years of age. I observed to the committee that those who had
elected me to represent them there were desirous of having
this matter clearly understood, and I must move to have the
section laid upon the table until our next meeting, and to avoid
any warmth of feeling, I hoped that each member of the com-
mittee would prepare a section which should express his views
fully on this important subject. The committee met the next
1
"1
w
iMi
Kdvmm\
..£if.Il|l:m[
356
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
morning, and I was called on foi what I had proposed the last
evening. I then read to them the section as it now stands in
the constitution. Mr. Brown observed that what he had intro-
duced was thought by the greatest men in the nation to be, if
established in our constitution, obtaining a great step toward
a general emancipation of slavery, and was, in his opinion,
greatly to be preferred to what I had offered."
The section that Cutler prepared prohibited slavery in the
very words of the Ordinance ; it forbade the holding, as a ser-
vant, under pretence of indenture or otherwise, any male per-
son twenty-one years of age, or female person eighteen years
of age, unless such person had entered into the indenture
while in a state of perfect freedom, and on condition of a bona
fide consideration, received or to be received, for the service;
closing with the clause : " Nor shall any indenture of any
negro or mulatto, hereafter made and executed out of this
State, or, if made in the State, where the term of service ex-
ceeds one year, be of the least validity, except those given in
the case of apprenticeships."
After a sharp discussion in the committee, the section was
adopted by a majority of one, five votes to four. It now
went to the convention, where " several attempts were made
to weaken or obscure the sense of the section on its passage."
In committee of the whole, a material change was introduced.
Cutler was unwell, and so absent at the time. " I went ta |
the convention," he continues, " and moved to strike out the
obnoxious matter and made my objections as forcible as I was
able, and when the vote was called Mr. Milligan changed his
vote and we succeeded in placing it in its original state."
Thus by a majority of only one, first in the committee and
afterward in the convention itself, was the attempt to fasten
a modified slavery upon the State of Ohio defeated.
Judge Cutler understood President Jefferson to be the au-
thor of the proposition which he so effectually opposed, and I
the *' one of the greatest men in the nation " referred to by |
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
357
Mr. Brown. He gives as evidence for this opinion a conver-
sation with Governor Worthington in Washington at the
time Congress passed the law authorizing the convention, in
which Worthington told him that Mr. Jefferson " had ex-
pressed to him that such, or a similar article, might be intro-
duced into the constitution, and he hoped there would not be
any effort made for anything farther for the exclusion of sla-
very, as it would operate against the interests of those who
wished to emigrate from the slave States to Ohio." '
Judge Burnet says " much warmth of feeling " was mani-
fested in the convention on the different propositions which
were offered relating to the people of color then residing in
the Territory, amounting probably to one or two hundred.
These propositions, found in the "Journal of the Convention,"
were finally abandoned, in the fear that the feeling excited by
them might defeat the object for which the convention was
called. The judge says : " A few of the members were dis-
posed to declare them citizens, to the full extent of that
term ; while others contended against allowing them any
other privilege than the protection of the laws, and exemp-
tion from taxes and militia duty. Propositions were made
to declare them ineligible to any office, civil or military ; also
' The facts stated above in regard to the Ohio Convention are drawn from A
Funeral Discourse on the occasion of the death of Hon. Ephraim Cutler, de-
livered at Warren, Washington County, O., July 24, 1853, by Professor E. B.
Andrews of Marietta College, Marietta, O., 1854. In this discourse Professor
Andrews also calls Governor Morrow as a witness that Mr, Jefferson favored the
admission of slavery, for a limited period, into Ohio. The editors of the " Life
of Rev. Manasseh Cutler" say: "This effort was supported by Jefferson's
favorite theory of States rights. The advocates of the measure claimed that, as
soon as the State assumed its own autonomy and became a sovereign among
others, it had the right to decide upon the profusions of an ordinance which was
the act of only one party, the general government. The central and southern
portions of the State then had a majority of the population, and the labor of
slaves would have suited the interests of their fertile valleys, while the political
prospects of the new and rising ' States' rights democracy would have been ad-
vanced by holding out such a premium for emigration from Virginia and Ken-
lucky " (L, 348).
358
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
to exclude them from being examined as witnesses in courts
of justice against white persons." ' Colored men were ex-
cluded from the basis of representation and from the suffrage.
The sentiments of hostility to negroes that appeared in the
Convention afterward ripened in the infamous " Black Laws "
of Ohio, the last vestiges of which were not swept from the
statute-book until 1887.
There was a decided change of sentiment on the slavery
question in Indiana between the years 1807 and 1816. At
least, I have not been able to find evidence of a slavery con-
troversy in the constitutional convention. The constitution
prohibited slavery in the words of Article VI, of the compacts
of 1787, and coupled with it this clause : "Nor shall any in-
denture of any negro or mulatto, hereafter made and executed
out of the bounds of the State, be of any validity within the
State."
In no one of the three States bordering the Ohio was
there such a determined effort made to nullify the sixth com-
pact as in Illinois. This was partly due to the geographical
position of the State, and partly to the character of the popu-
lation. The lower part of the State projects, wedge-like, inio
what was then slave territory. It was as well adapted to
slave labor as Kentucky on the one side or Missouri on the
other. Its commercial connections, in 18 18, were with the
down-the-river country. Here was the stronghold of slavery
in the day of French domination. Here came the first emi-
grants in the new regime. Long before the New Englanders
and Middle State men had reached the Central and Northern
parts of the State, Kentuckians, Tennesseeans, Carolinians,
and Virginians made their way by the Ohio and its affluents
into this new " Egypt." Nearly all these people were accus-
tomed to slavery ; many of them were " poor whites," and
were intensely eager to acquire that badge of distinction in
the States from which they came, the ownership of slaves ;
> Notes, 3S4, 3.55-
■T
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
359
many of them, too, were very ignorant, and nearly all were
strongly prejudiced against the " Yankees," as they called all
people from the free States. In a word, early Illinois was
homogeneous with Kentucky or Tennessee in many features,
including devotion to slavery. No attempt was made in the
convention that framed the constitution of 1818 to abrogate
the Ordinance in terms, but the provisions now to be men-
tioned subverted its substance.
In room of a prohibition of slavery we find the following :
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall hereafter be
introduced into this State, otherwise than for the punishment
of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted;"
a plain, practical recognition of the slavery already existing.
The Ohio clauses in regard to indentures were copied word for
word. Slaves holden in other States should not be hired to
labor in Illinois save in the salt-works tract near Shawneetown ;
nor hired for a longer time than one year, or after the year
1825. The last of the three sections devoted to the subject
legalized the contracts and indentures already existing in virt-
ue of the laws of Illinois Territory, but provided that the
children hereafter born of such indentured persons, negroes or
mulattoes, should become free, the males at the age of twenty-
one, the females at the age of eighteen years.
When the resolution declaring the admission of Illinois to
the Union was on its passage through the House of Repre-
sentatives, Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, opposed its adop-
tion on the ground that it contravened the sixth article of the
Ordinance. He felt himself constrained to come to the con-
clusion that the sections of the constitution described above
embraced a complete recognition of existing slavery, if not
providing for its future introduction and toleration. He con-
trasted the Illinois and the Indiana Constitutions, to the dis-
advantage of the former. Thirty-four votes were registered
in the House against the resolution.
But the real battle in Illinois followed the constitution.
In 1822 Edward Coles was elected Governor of Illinois over
>f .
m
■
y
36o
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
three competitors. There were no proper political parties or
issues in the State at the time, and elections turned largely on
local questions and personal preferences ; there was a strong
tendency to divide along the slavery-line, but this line was
not so tightly drawn as to prevent two pro-slavery candidates
from entering the field. Coles was well understood to be an
anti-slavery man. The pro-slavery candidates together had
5,302 votes, to 3,332 for all others, and Coles was elected by
a plurality of only 50. In his speech to the legislature the
Governor spoke of the existence of slavery in the State as a
violation of the Ordinance of 1787, and strongly recommended
its abolition. He also advised a general revisal of the Black
Code of the State. These recommendations led to action
very different from what the Governor desired.
Up to this point the pro-slavery men had proceeded upon
the theory that the Ordinance must be formally observed
until the State was fairly in the Union. They now invented
a new theory, or perhaps extended the old one. As devel-
oped by a committee of the legislature, this theory was " that
the people of Illinois have now the same right to alter their
constitution as the people of the State of Virginia, or any
other of the original States, and may make any disposition of
negro slaves they choose, without any breach of faith or vio-
lation of compact, ordinances, or acts of Congress." ' The
slave-owners in the State held their slaves by the various
titles that have been described. In 1818 these had been
thought sufficient ; but now the Governor's bold challenge,
and the increase of the " Yankee " population, began to shake
their confidence and drive them to the conclusion that noth-
ing short of a constitution sanctioning slavery would make
them perfectly safe. Accordingly, the pro-slavery men in the
legislature, by resorting to the most flagrant breaches of
parliamentary law and of common justice, carried a proposi-
tion, by the requisite two-thirds vote of both Houses, to sub-
i Washburne : Sketch of Edward Coles, 6&
■"-r
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
301
mit the question of a constitutional convention to the people.
This proposition was adopted at the winter session, 1822-23;
but, fortunately, it could not be voted on until August, 1824.
We can glance at only two or three features of the remarka-
ble contest that now followed.
The men who passed through this struggle could hardly
find, in after years, language strong enough to describe its
violence and bitterness. " Men, women, and children entered
the arena of party warfare and strife ;" " families and neigh-
borhoods were so divided and furious and bitter against one
another, that it seemed a regular civil war might be the re-
sult ; " " many personal combats were indulged in ; " " the
press teemed with publications;" "stump orators were in-
voked;" "the pulpit thundered;" "old friendships were
sundered ; " " threats of personal violence were frequent ; "
"pistols and dirks were in great demand ;" " the whole peo-
ple, for the space of months, did scarcely anything but read
newspapers, handbills, and pamphlets, quarrel, wrarigle, and
argue with each other whenever they met together to hear
the violent harangues of their orators" — these are excerpts
from the accounts that have come down to us. On the pro-
slavery side, especially, the campaign was marked by violence,
passion, appeals to ignorance and subterfuge, partially re-
lieved by those half-true arguments that have so often done
duty in defence of slavery. The social and industrial condi-
tion of the State gave that side a great advantage.
"The times were hard. The farmer could find no market
for his abundant crops. Manufactures languished, improve-
ments were at a standstill, and the mechanic was without work.
The country was cursed by a fluctuating and irredeemable
paper currency, which had driven all real money out of circu-
lation. The flow of emigration to the State had in a great
measure ceased, but a great emigration passed through the
State to Missouri. Great numbers of well-to-do emigrants
from the slave States, taking with them their slaves, were then
leaving their homes to find new ones west of the Mississippi.
[ ,;■;
vm
,k, /;.'. j
*m
362
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
When passing through Illinois to their destination, with their
well equipped emigrant wagons, drawn by splendid horses, with
their retinue of slaves, and with all the lordly airs of that class
of slave-holders, they avowed that their only reason for not set-
tling in Illinois was that they could not hold their slaves. This
fact had a very great influence, particularly in that part of the
State through which the emigration passed, and people de-
nounced the unwise provision of the constitution prohibiting
slavery, and thus preventing a great influx of population, to
add to the wealth of the State." '
From the first, the propagandists fought a losing battle.
When the end was finally reached, the vote stood : For a con-
vention, 4,950; against a convention, 6,822 — being a majority
of 1,872 in a total vote of 11,772. In view of this large ma-
jority, the subsequent political history of Illinois for thirty
years is very remarkable. The State passed almost at once
into the hands of a powerful aud violent pro-slavery party, and
thus remained until the repeal of ^h^ Missouri Compromise
brought about a new combination of political forces. But the
attempt to enthrone slavery in the ciitadel of the State Con-
stitution was not renewed.
Generally speaking, the leading free-State men in this ex-
traordinary contest were from the North, the slave-State men
from the South. The one shining exception on the free-State
side was the incomparable leader, Edward Coles. Born in Albe-
marle County, Va., in 1784, Governor Coles was one of those
gentlemen of cultivation and fortune of whom the Old Do-
minion, in the last century, produced so many, who profoundly
believed American slavery to be an economical mistake, a po-
litical evil, and a moral wrong. He belonged to the Virginia
school of politics, and saw much public service before remov-
ing to the West. Popular in his manners, calm in his judg-
ment and temper, strong in his political and social connec-
tions, able and polished in his addresses to his fellow-citizens,
• WashLume : Sketch of Edward Coles, 132, 133,
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
363
on, with their
d liorses, with
s of that class
Dn for not set-
r slaves. This
lat part of the
id people de-
)n prohibiting
population, to
nen in this ex-
ave-State men
the free-State
Born in Albe-
is one of those
the Old Do-
ho profoundly
mistake, a po-
o the Virginia
before remov-
in his judg-
social connec-
'ellow-citizens,
easy in his fortune, which he freely used for the public good,
making his appeal to the popular reason and conscience rather
than to ignorance and passion, the governor of the State, and
residing at the capital, where he could make his influence
felt — he was the very leader who was needed. To him has
always been adjudged the honor of defeating the scheme to
make Illinois a slave State. But the further fact must be
told, that this statesman and benefactor was the object of an
unrelenting persecution from the day that he communicated
his views on slavery to the legislature until, shaking the Illi-
nois dust from his feet, he removed to Philadelphia, in 1833.
Mr. Coles removed from Virginia to Illinois, because he would
not longer consent to live in a .slave State. He emancipated
his slaves, because he would not longer consent to be the
owner of property in man. He took his negroes with him to
his new home, taking good care to make suitable provision
for their material well-being. In executing this benevolent
purpose, he failed to conform to the terms of a law, that had
never been published and the existence of which was not
commonly known, regulating the residence of free negroes in
the State. For this offence he was harassed with litigation,
and adjudged to pay a fine of $2,000, which, however, was
finally remitted. All in all, it does not seem extravagant to
say that Mr. Coles's arrival in the State, in 18 19, was more
important in its results than the arrival of any other man since
Clark summoned Kaskaskia to surrender in 1778.
The slavery struggle in the Northwestern States was
watched with keen interest by statesmen at a distance. Al-
bert Gallatin wrote to his Genevan friend Badollet, who had
become a citizen of that State : " If you have had a share in
preventing the establishment of slavery in Indiana, you will
have done more to that part of the country at least than com-
monly falls to the share of man." ' And W. H. Crawford of
Georgia, himself a slave-holder, cheered the heart of Gov-
33-
' Cooley : Michigan, 135.
364
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
i
ernor Coles in the Illinois contest with the words : " Is it pos-
sible that your convention is intended to introduce slavery
into the State ? I acknowledge, if I were a citizen, I should
oppose it with great earnestness ; where it has ever been intro-
duced it is extremely difficult to get rid of and ought to be
treated with great delicacy." ' Other reasons for calling a
convention were assigned in the controversy, but slavery was
the only real issue.
The attentive reader of the preceding history will not
fail to see several places where events might easily have taken
some other direction. Nor will he fail to ask, " With what
final results ?" What if Ohio had formed a slave-State con-
stitution in 1802 ? What if Illinois had actually made the
proposed change in 1824? What would Congress and the
Supreme Court, possibly, have done with the hard questions
that would have arisen in such a contingency ? And if one
or both of those States had become slave States, what then ?
What would have happened if slave- State men had been in a
majority in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois no one can do more
than conjecture. Fortunately, at the decisive tests the free-
State men were in the majority. Moreover, the Ordinance
helped to create that majority as well as to protect it against
assault. Governor Reynolds, who had lived in Illinois since
1800 and who was a slave-State man in 1824, although he
afterward rejoiced at his own defeat, said, in 1855: "This
Act of Congress was the great sheet-anchor that secured the
States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois from slavery. I never
had any doubt but slavery would now exist in Illinois, if it
had not been prevented by this famous Ordinance." * Never,
perhaps, in the history of political controversy was the advan-
tage of winning th^ ictory before the battle was fought more
happily illustrated.
In the sixty-two years follov/ing the adoption of the Na-
tional Constitution, eighteen new States were brought into
Washburne : Sketch of Governor Coles, 131.
' My Own Times.
^!^:
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
365
the American Union — nine free and nine slave States. Not
only were the numbers of free and slave States equal, but in
several instances one of each kind came in together, or nearly
so, as though they had been born t\\ ins. It has long been
the habit, at least in the Northern States, to attribute these
so-called "double births" to the management of statesmen,
and particularly Southern statesmen, determined to perpetu-
ate the balance of freedom and slavery in the Senate and, as
far as possible, in the electoral colleges and in the House of
Representatives. It is true that, from the first, there were
men who were interested, on general principles, in preserving
this balance ; true that the Slave Power, after it came upon
the scene with distinct ideas and purposes of its own, had no
greater interest in any political subject than in this one ; also
true that, when it became demonstrably apparent, as it did
about 1850, that this balance could not be maintained, the more
ultra- Southerners began to take new interest in the idea of an
independent slave republic. But it is important to observe
that the coming of the Slave Power upon the scene with such
ideas and purposes was later than the majority of men, prone
to carry too far backward the facts with which they are per-
sonally familiar, suppose. To fix definitely its arrival may
bedifficult, or impossible. Certainly, the annexation neither of
Louisiana nor of Florida, although the South profited by both,
was a Southern measure. Everything considered, the fittest
lime to fix upon is the demand for the annexation of Texas.
But that annexation was as largely the result of Manifest
Destiny as of slavery aggression. It is also important to ob-
serve that, until the Northern States, like the " frozen North "
in the first centuries, burst their barriers, and poured their
floods of population into the Lake Basin and the upper parts
of the Mississippi Valley, which followed the opening of the
great thoroughfares to the West, of which the Erie Canal was
the first, the West and the South were much more homoge-
neous in thought, in temper, and in manners than the West
and New England ; and, even after that flow began in large
366
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
volume, the terms "East" and "West" had more political
significance than the terms " North " and " South." What
was really Western, or, at most. Southern- Western, sentiment
has often been taken for the distinct and peculiar sentiment
of the South. It is really worth remembering that, when dis-
union was first heard of, the dividing line proposed ran along
the Alleghany Mountains. Witness the letter written by
Washington to Governor Harrison in 1784, already quoted
from.
The creation of the new free and slave States was due to
causes far more powerful than state-craft. In 1787 the At-
lantic Plain and the West marched together from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Northern Lakes. The northern half of the
Plain was free, the southern half slav , soil. The Southern
population was inferior in numbers to the Northern popula-
tion, but it had the advantage of position. As a whole, it
was much nearer to the West. Two of the four channels
of Western emigration headed within the limits of the South,
A third channel, and for a time the most important of all, be-
longed to the South in common with the North. As a con-
sequence, the two kinds of population, taking a term of years
together, reached the Western country in about equal num-
bers, moving mainly along parallels of latitude. Still further,
the line separating free-labor and slave-labor productions, the
economical and political consequences of which Professor J.
E. Cairnes so clearly pointed out in his " Slave Power," di-
vides the West, as it divides the East, into two nearly equal
parts. In this respect, therefore, freedom and slavery had
about equal advantages. A still further consideration is, that
the cotton-gin and other mechanical inventions enormously
increased the demand for cotton about the time that the new
lands were laid open to settlement. He who considers all
these things, in connection with the facts of Western geography,
must see that the expansion of the areas of freedom and of sla-
very in the United States was due to natural causes, and par-
ticularly that the organization and admission of States accord-
SLAVERY IN THE NORTHWEST.
367
tes was due to
k 1787 the At-
)m the Gulf of
:rn half of the
The Southern
irthern popula-
As a whole, it
four channels
;s of the South.
irtant of all, be-
-th. As a con-
a term of yea5
ut equal num-
Still further,
roductions, the
ich Professor].
ive Power," di-
^o nearly equal
id slavery had
leration is, that
)ns enormously
le that the new
o considers all
tern geography,
;dom and of sla-
:auses, and par-
f States accord-
ing to programme, were as much beyond the ken and power of
statesmen as the regulation of the tides and eclipses is beyond
the power of natural philosophers. There were cases when
the admission of States was hastened or retarded somewhat
by political management growing out of slavery. But the
"balance" theory is wholly at variance with the facts pertain-
ing to the admission of the earlier States. For example,
Kentucky came into the Union in 1792, and Tennessee in
1796, each having a population of seventy-five thousand or
more. Ohio was admitted in 1803, Indiana in 18 16, and Illi-
nois in 1818, each with a population of about forty-five thou-
sand.' The reconciliation of the case of Ohio with the
"balance" theorj', m particular, would require *he reversal of
all the most important facts connected with its admission.
'The population of Kentucky in 1790 was 73,677; of Tennessee, in 1790,
35,691 ; in 1800, 105,602 ; Ohio, including Michigan, in 1800, 45,365 ; of Indi-
ana, in 1810, 24,520 ; in 1820, 147,178; of Illinois, in 1820, 55,162.
1 .i
m
,
~l;i|
!":!iil
%
XIX.
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
One effect of the release and cession of Western lands
that Connecticut made, September 14, 1786, was to leave her
in possession of the territory bounded north by the line of
42° 2', or, rather, the international line, east by the western
boundary of Pennsylvania, south by the forty-first parallel,
and west by a line parallel with the eastern boundary and dis-
tant from it one hundred and twenty miles — supposed, at the
time, to be equal in extent to the Susquehanna tract given to
Pennsylvania, 1782. Connecticut's claim included both the
soil and the jurisdiction. If the territory belonged to her at
all, it belonged to her in a sense as full and absolute as any
town or county within her present limits. This territory
Connecticut was said " to reserve," and it soon came to be
called " The Connecticut Western Reserve," " The Western
Reserve," etc. These names were popular in their origin, but
they were not long in making their way into legal and histori-
cal documents. The disposition to be made of these lands
became at once an interesting State question.
In October, 1786, a month after the cession, the General
Assembly determined to offer the lands lying east of the
Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas Rivers for sale. It accordingly di-
rected that they be surveyed into townships six miles square,
fixed terms of sale, dedicated five hundred acres in everj'
township to the support of schools and the same quantity to
the support of the Gospel, promised two hundred and forty
acres, in fee simple, in every township, to the first minister
who should settle in it, and guaranteed peace and good order
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
369
'0 '^he settlers under the jurisdiction of the State until it
should res'gn its jurisdiction to Congress and local govern-
ment be established. Beyond the Salt-springs Tract of 24,000
acres, lying in the Mahoming Valley, sold to General S. H.
Parsons, which was not surveyed or settled until many years
afterward, nothing was done in pursuance of this legislation.
On May 11, 1792, the General Assembly quit-claimed to
the inhabitants of several Connecticut towns who had lost
property in consequence of the incursions into the State made
by the British troops in the Revolution, or their legal repre-
sentatives when they were dead, and to their heirs and assigns,
forever, 500,000 acres lying across the western end of the Re-
serve, bounded north by the lake shore, said lands to be di-
vided among the grantees in proportion to their respective
losses as found and reported by a committee previously ap-
pointed by the assembly. The total number of sufferers, as
reported, was 1,870, and the aggregate losses, ;^i6i,548 iis.
6)^d. The grant was of the soil only. These lands are known
in Connecticut history as ** The Sufferers' Lands," in Ohio
history as " The Fire Lands." In 1796 the Sufferers were in-
corporated in Connecticut, and in 1803 in Ohio, under the
title, "The Proprietors of the Half-million Acres of Land lying
south of Lake Erie." In due time the lands were surveyed
into one hundred and twenty tracts, each tract being one-
fourth of a township, or about four thousand acres.' Next,
the share-holders were arranged in "classifications," i, 2, 3, 4,
etc., up to 120; each " classification" footing up one one-hun-
dred and twentieth part of the whole stock, or ;^ 1,343 7s.
The tracts of land were now apportioned to the " classifica-
tions " by lot, and a careful registration made of the results.
Nothing remained for the share-holders making up a " classifi-
cation " to do, but to dispose of the tract of land that they had
drawn, in any manner agreeable to themselves : To sell it in an
' There were also some broken tracts that were subdivided, and then added
to the 120 to " equalize " them.
370
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
undivided form, to divide it among themselves by agreement,
or to resort to the courts for proceedings in partition. Con-
necticut gave no deed to the Fire Lands other than the a:t of
the legislature making the appropriation ; and this act, the
•' classifications," and the record of " drawings," all recorded
and made legal evidence by the State, are the ultimate title.
An abstract of title, therefore, in Huron or Erie County, 0.,
always begins with a statement of the historical circumstances
now recounted. The drawings of the Fire Lands were made
November 9, 1808, and their settlement began soon after.
In May, 1793, the Connecticut Assembly offered the re-
maining part of the Reserve for sale ; and in October follow-
ing it enacted that the moneys received should be a perpet-
ual fund, the interest of which should be appropriated to the
several ecclesiastical societies or churches of all denominations
in the State, to be by them applied to the support of their re-
spective ministers and schools of education. This legislation
caused a profound agitation throughout the State that finally
led to its repeal.
In May, 1795, the General Assembly the third time of-
fered the lands for sale. It fixed terms and conditions, ap-
pointed a committee to negotiate the sale, and set apart the
proceeds as a perpetual fund, the interest of which should be
appropriated to the support of schools.' In the September
i
' The Connecticut School Fund, which amounts to something more than two
million dollars, consists wholly of the proceeds of those lands and of capitalized
interest. Hon. C. D. Hine, the Secretary of the State Board of Education,
questions the current opinion that this fund has promoted the cause of public
education. He says :
"The School Fund derived from the sale of Western lands yielded an income
last year of $ 120, 855, which amounts to 80 cents for each person of the school-age.
The average expense of educating each of these persons throughout the State is
$10.31, so that the fund now furnishes about eight per cent, of the total cost,
In those towns and cities where the people insist upon good schools, no reliance
is placed upon these permanent funds. Indeed, the history of our State shows
conclusively that at the time when the fund was most productive, yielding f I.40
or $1.50 for each person of the school-age, and when towns depended upon it,
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
371
y agreement,
tition. Con-
lan the a:t of
this act, the
' all recorded
iltimate title.
e County, 0.,
circumstances
ds were made
loon after,
iffered the re-
ictober foUow-
d be a perpet-
priated to the
denominations
lort of their re-
'his legislation
ate that finally
third time of-
conditions, ap-
i set apart the
lich should be
he September
ling more than two
and of capitalized
jard of Education,
the cause of public
yielded an income
n of the school-age.
jughout the State is
of the total cost.
schools, no reliance
of our Stale shows
tive, yielding $1.4"
depended upon it,
following this legislation the committee sold the lands in a
body, without survey or measurement, to thirty-five purchas-
ers, who severally agreed to pay stipulated sums that, together,
made up twelve hundred thousand dollars, the price of the
tract agreed upon. The committee made as many deeds as
there were purchasers. The deed granted to the purchaser,
in behalf of the State of Connecticut, and to his heirs forever,
all right, title, and interest, "juridical and territorial," in and to
a certain number of twelve hundred-thousandths of the lands
described, to be held by the said purchaser as tenant in com-
mon of said whole tract or territory with the other purchas-
ers, and not in severalty. The number of undivided shares
that each purchaser received was the same as the number of
dollars that he had agreed to pay toward the purchase-money.
The term " purchaser " is here used in the legal sense ; the
number of persons interested in the purchase being much
larger than the number of purchasers. The sale was made on
credit ; the purchasers at the time gave their bonds for the
amount of the several contracts, with personal security, but
afterward they gave mortgages on the lands.
Such are some of the more important facts pertaining to
the largest land-sale, so far as the quantity of land sold is
concerned, ever made in the State of Ohio. It was a large
transaction of any kind for the time. Moreover, it was fol-
as they generally did, for the support of their schools, the schools themselves
were poor and short. In fact, this was the darkest period of our educational ex-
perience. A very striking deterioration took place as soon as the fund became
productive and the income began to be distributed. Before that period schools
had been maintained at least six months, and at most nearly the whole year,
according to the size of the district. After, and not long after, this new source
of income was opened, the usual length of schools was reduced to only three
months, or just the time that this fund would maintain the schools. The sums
which came as gratuities relieved the people of responsibility and deadened their
interest, until the schools were continued only so long as the charity lasted. Hap-
pily, the danger from this direction is passed and cannot return. The fund has
probably reached its greatest productiveness, and the per capita will constantly
decrease. The public schools must draw their sustenance from the people who
are directly or indirectly benefited by them." — The Nation, No. 1076.
372
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
lowed at once by events of far more than a temporary or local
interest.
The purchasers of the Reserve, most of them belonging
to Connecticut, but some to Massachusetts and New York,
were men desirous of trying their fortunes in Western lands.
Oliver Phelps, perhaps the greatest land-speculator of the
time, was at their head. September 5, 1795, they adopted
articles of agreement and association, constituting themselves
the Connecticut Land Company. The company was never
incorporated, but was what is called to-day a "syndicate."
They divided the stock into four hundred shares of $3,000
each. They determined to survey the lands into townships
of five miles square. They appointed seven directors and
three trustees, with defined powers and functions. In April,
1796, the company adopted a very elaborate method of par-
titioning the lands. Six townships should be offered for sale
for the benefit of the company as such. Four townships should
be surveyed into four hundred tracts of one hundred and
sixty acres each, to be distributed among the share-holders
by lot. The remaining lands should be divided into " equal-
ized " parcels, to be distributed in the same way : (i) A cer-
tain number of the best townships should be set apart as
standard townships ; (2) certain other townships and parts
of townships should be cut up into tracts, to be added (3) to
the remaining townships to equalize them with the best ones.
In the spring of the same year the directors sent out the
first party of surveyors, consisting, all told, of fifty persons.
The party assembled at Schenectady, and ascended the Mo-
hawk to Fort Stanwix, whence most of them passed, with the
boats and stores, over the portage to Wood Creek, and then
down that str-jam, Oneida Lake, and Oswego River to Lake
Ontario ; but some made their way by Canandaigua, then the
Western outpost of civilization on that route, to Buffalo
Creek. The British garrison holding Fort Oswego caused
those who went by that route some inconvenience, calling
out from one of the surveyors the observation : " Such are
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
373
the effects of allowing the British Government to exist on
the continent of America."' At Buffalo the agent bought
of the Indians their remaining claim to the lands east of the
Cuyahoga River for ;^500, New York currency in trade, two
beef cattle, and one hundred gallons of whiskey. From
Buffalo the surveyors made their way westward along the
south shore of the lake, reaching the mouth of Conneaut
Creek, where they fixed their base of operations, July 4th.
Here their first act was to celebrate the twentieth anniversary
of American Independence, which they did with much enthu-
siasm. Two of the toasts ran thus :
" May the Port of Independence [as they christened the
place], and the fifty sons and daughters who have entered it
this day, be successful and prosperous." " May these sons and
daughters multiply in sixteen years sixteen times fifty." '
The settlement of the Western Reserve properly dates
from this celebration. General Moses Cleaveland, the agent
in charge, with a few companions, soon moved on to the west,
reaching the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, July 22d, from
which day there have always been white men on the site of
the city that takes its name from him.*
The western boundary of Pennsylvania, as run ten years
before, and the parallel forty-one degrees north, now run for
the first time, were the base-lines of the survey.* The courses
' Whittlesey : Early History of Cleveland, 174.
' Whittlesey : Early History of Cleveland, 182. In i8lo the population of
the Reserve was 16,092.
' " It was in 1830 that a newspaper called The Cleveland Advertiser was estab-
lished. In preparing to issue the first number, the editor discovered that the
heading was too long to fit the form, and so, in order to adjust it, he dropped
out the letter 'a' in the first syllable of the word 'Cleaveland,' and made it
read 'Cleveland.' The public at once accepted this change in orthography." —
Rite : Sketches of Western Life, 23.
* The western boundary of Pennsylvania has an interesting history. As early
as the troubles with Virginia, the question arose, "From what point on the Del-
aware shall the five degrees of longitude be measured ? " A glance at the map
will show that different answers to this question would materially aSect the
State's westward extension. Messrs. Tilghman aiid Allen, the Pennsylvania
374
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
north and south were called " ranges ; " east and west, " town-
ships." Cleveland is in No. 7 in range 12; that is, the
seventh township counting from the southern boundary, and
the twelfth counting from the eastern one. It was several
years before the surveys were finished. The lands and other
property of the company were drawn in four drafts— in 1798,
1802, 1807, and 1809. The trustees, to whom all the lands
had been deeded by the share-holders, in trust, in 1 795, made
the deeds ; and with the last draft the company was dis-
solved, having been in existence fourteen years.
As a land-speculation, the purchase of the Reserve was
unfortunate. In 1795 the ideas concerning the southern
shore of Lake Erie, dating from the old French days, had not
been corrected ; and the company supposed they were buy-
ing 4,ooo,cxX) acres of land. The survey proved that they
had bought less than 3,cxx),ooo acres.' Instead of thirty
commissioners sent to Williamsburg in 1774, proposed that Mason and Dixon's
line be run to a point five degrees from the river, and that from this point a
series of zigzag lines be run northward, " similar to the courses of the Delaware."
Lord Dunmore replied that the Crown could not have intended such a boundary
as this, because it was so "very inconvenient," The agreement of 1779 provided
that Mason and Dixon's line should be run west five degrees from the river, and
that a meridian line drawm from this point should be the western boundary of
Pennsylvania. This meridian line was run in 1785 and 1786, Andrew Ellicott
being the chief engineer. The line between Ohio and Pennsylvania was re-nir.
and re-marked by a joint State commission, beginning in 1878. Virginia really
fought the batt' ■ of Ohio against Pennsylvania, If the "zigzag" plan had been
adopted, or if a meridian boundary had been run five degrees west of the west-
ernmost point of the Delaware, Ohio would have shown very differently upon
the map from what it does. The survey of parallel forty-one degrees was not
completed till 1806. The line departs slightly from the true parallel as it runs
westward ; but the Surveyor-General advised in 1810 that it be not disturbed.
See Chapman : The French in the Alleghany Valley, 197 et seq. Report of the
joint commission appointed by the States of Pennsylvania and Ohio to ascertain
and re-mark the boundary-line between said States. Whittlesey : Western Re-
serve Historical Society, Tract No. 61. Historical Collections of the Mahoning
Valley, L, 517 et seq.
' The precise quantity of land in the purchase is matter of dispute. Perhaps
2,837,109 acres is the best estimate. The same authority makes the whole Re-
serve consist of 3,333,699 acres. Whittlesey, 258, 259.
i west, " town-
; that is, the
boundary, and
It was several
inds and other
Irafts— in 1798,
d all the lands
, in 1795, made
ipany was dis-
>•
le Reserve was
; the southern
I days, had not
:hey were buy-
jved that they
jtead of thirty
Mason and Dixon's
It from this point a
ss of the Delaware,"
led such a boundary
ent of 1779 provided
from the river, and
ivestem boundary of
86, Andrew Ellicott
isylvania was re-nir.
I78. Virginia really
;zag " plan had been
;es west of the west-
rery differently upon
jne degrees was not
e parallel as it nns
it be not disturbed.
seq. Report of the
id Ohio to ascertain
:lesey : Western Re-
jns of the Mahoning
af dispute. Perhaps
makes the whole Re-
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
375
cents an acre, they had paid more than forty cents. The ex-
penses of the survey were much heavier than the company
anticipated. And, finally, a jurisdictional question, having its
origin in the charter of 1662, caused them much vexation and
pecuniary loss, and even threatened to deprive them of the
property altogether.
The troubles of the Land Company began almost with its
existence. It will be remembered that the State had sold to
the company the juridical and territorial right, as well as the
soil, of the tract. For a State to alienate the jurisdiction of
one-half its territory to a company of land-speculators that
never rose to the dignity of a body corporate and politic was
certainly a remarkable proceeding. Whether the subject at-
tracted much attention at the time, and, if so, what was the
current theory of jurisdiction, are questions very difficult to
answer. Colonel Charles Whittlesey, who studied the early
history of the Western Reserve with great care, and who was
himself a part of that history, remarks, touching this feature
of the transaction : " So little was known at this time of the
respective powers of the State and of the United States, un-
der the Constitution of 1787, that many of the parties thought
the Land Company had received political authority, and
could found here a new State. They imagined themselves,
like William Penn, to be proprietors, coupled with the rights
of self-government." He says, also, that both parties to the
transaction " imagined that the deed of Connecticut conveyed
powers of civil government to the company, and that the
grantees might organize a new State ;" but adds that "the
United States objected to this mode of setting up States."
Whittlesey also speaks as though the establishment of a new
State by the company was, at one time, a settled purpose.
New Connecticut was to be governed from Hartford, as New
England had been by the Council of Plymouth, in England.'
' Early History of Cleveland, 167, 168 ; Early Civil Jurisdiction on the South
Shore of Lake Erie, 4.
i
576
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
A new State was certainly in the air in 1796. The second of
the Leasts drunk, in ** several pails of grog," at the Conneaut
celebration of the Fourth of July was : " The State of New
Connecticut." But what part the company expected to play in
establishing the new State is not very clear. If it ever im-
agined itself clothed with juridical and territorial powers, it
soon dismissed such a thought.
By i8(X> as many as twenty or thirty settlements had been
begun on the Reserve. The census of that year reports a
population of 1,302 souls. These facts point to a society,
young and small, indeed, but active and growing, transacting
the business incident to their condition, and accustomed,
withal, to the forms and machinery of legal government.
Lands were bought and sold ; contracts relating to personal
services were entered into ; marriages were solemnized in vari-
ous places. But there was no government whatever ; no laws
or records, no magistrates or police. The people were thor-
oughly trained in civil obedience ; they were orderly and fully
competent to govern themselves ; and yet, in those three or
four years, the need of civil institutions began to be severely
felt. The lack of records, in particular, was a source of much
embarrassment.
It is impossible to state whether the relation of the Con-
necticut Reserve to the Territory Northwest of the River
Ohio was considered in 1787 or not; but Governor St. Clair
included all that part of it lying east of the Cuyahoga River
in Washington County, organized July 26, 1/88. In 1796116
included the whole Reserve in Wayne County, the county
seat of which was Detroit. Once more, July 29, 1797, he in-
cluded the eastern part in Jefferson County. St. Clair pro-
ceeded upon the theory that his jurisdiction extended over
lands that had not been ceded to the United States, as well
as over lands that had been ceded ; and perhaps this was the
natural view for him to take, since the Ordinance of 1787
made no discrimination. But it was a view that necessarily
brought on a collision with the Reserve settlers. The erec-
■wr
I I
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
377
irce of much
tion of Jef?erson County coincided with the arrival of settlers
on the soil, and so became rhe occasion of the collision.
General Parsons caused his deed of the Salt-springs Tract
to be recorded at Marietta. Some of those who bought parts
of the tract from him did the same. A few deeds were also
recorded at Steubenville, the county seat of Jefferson County.
But the people of the Reserve, with practical unanimity, de-
nied the Territorial jurisdiction. The Jefferson County au-
thorities sent an agent to inquire into the matter of taxation ;
but the settlers laughed at him, and he returned to Steuben-
ville no richer and no wiser than he came. The laughter
showered upon the unfortunate tax-gatherer signified much
more than the familiar disposition to avoid the payment of
taxes. No further attempt was made to extend the Territo-
rial jurisdiction over the Reserve until some very important
legislation had been enacted in Philadelphia and in Hartford.
The settlers resisted the authority of the Territory, and so
of the United States, in the name of the State of Connecticut.
Ostensibly, they were defending the right and dignity of that
ancient commonwealth. But the State herself was indiffer-
ent to the controversy. She even refused to assert her juris-
diction when the Land Company importuned her to do so.
Having divested herself of the territory, she apparently took
little further interest in the subject.
On January 27, 1797, only a few days after the first
oarty of surveyors returned from the Reserve, the stock-
holders of the company, at a meeting held in Hartford, in-
structed the directors and trustees to make application to
the General Assembly at the next ensuing session for an
act erecting the Western Reserve into an entire and distinct
county, " with proper and suitable laws, to regulate the in-
ternal policy of said territory for a limited term of time, and
the same to be administered at the sole expense of proprie-
tors." ' Presumably, such an application was made, but the
' The quotations from the proceedings of the stock-holders are made from
Tiie Book of Drafts, in the records of Trumbull County, Ohio.
378
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
General Assembly took no such action. It did not care to
repeat, upon a more distant field, the Westmoreland experi-
ment. This was the first of several distinct calls that the
Land Company made upon the State to exercise the juridical
and territorial right that she had formally laid aside.
In October, 1797, the stock-holders gave the directors and
trustees " full authority to pursue such measures as they
deemed best calculated to procure legal and practical govern-
ment over the territory belonging to the company." A new
tack was now taken. The Connecticut Assembly passed an
act authorizing its Senators in Congress to execute, in the
name of the State, a deed releasing to the United States the
jurisdiction of the Reserve. On January 12, 1798, Mr. Tracy
moved, in the Senate, the appointment of a committee to take
into consideration the acceptance of such a cession. At the
next session of Congress the Senate, after mature deliberation,
passed a bill to that effect, but the House of Representatives
postponed it, and the measure fell.
Meantime the company was calling for help more and
more loudly. On January 22, 1798, the stock-holders voted
that if Congress should agree to accept from the company
their juridical right to the Western Reserve, then application
should be made to Governor St. Clair to erect all that part of
it to which the Indian title had been extinguished into an
entire and distinct county in the Northwest Territory. At
the next meeting, held in October, 1798, the stock-holders in-
structed the directors to appoint an agent " to proceed on
Philadelphia " to facilitate the acceptance of the jurisdiction.
They voted, also, that in case the application to Congress
should fail, then the directors should " pursue the petition of
the company now pending before the General Assembly of
the State, at their next session." In May, 1799, the stock-
holders spoke again, and more distinctly than ever.
" Voted, that the trustees and directors be authorized, and
they are hereby requested, to make out and lay before the
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
379
General Assembly of the State, now in session, a statement in
writing of the measures taken by the Company before Con-
gress at their last session in endeavoring to obtain an accept-
ance of the cession of the jurisdiction of the Western Reserve.
Also a statement of the sums of money actually expended by
the Company in surveying lands, cutting roads, and erecting
mills. Also the probable sums disbursed by individuals in
making improvements in different parts of the Reserve the last
and present years. Also state the difficulty of making any
sales of the lands by the proprietors and enforcing a payment
of sales already made arising from the want of government in
and over the territory."
And at still another meeting the directors were instructed
to represent to the assembly the ill success of the application
to Congress, the continued embarrassed situation of the stock-
holders' property, the difficulty of raising money out of the
land, and to pray the assembly to extend government over
the territory until Congress should accept the cession of juris-
diction, or to grant such other relief as they should think
proper.
Nothing could mark the desperation of the Land Com-
pany's situation more distinctly than these votes. The stock-
holders fly from the assembly to Congress, and from Con-
gress to the assembly. Men desiring Western lands would
hesitate to purchase in a district where there was no govern-
ment, and particularly where the right to govern was in dis-
pute. Men owning lands would hesitate to sell so long as
payment could not be enforced. But all this time there was
an authority standing ready to extend itself, at a moment's
notice, over the Reserve. All that the Land Company and
the settlers had to do was to let their wants be known to
Governor St. Clair, Connecticut did not restrain them in
the least. Perhaps the company and the settlers would have
applied to him for relief had it not been for a question that
is never for a moment admitted into the minutes of the com-
pany's proceedings, but that the man attempting to write the
I ■
380
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
civil history of the Western Reserve must bring into the fore-
ground, viz., the insufficiency of the Connecticut title to the
soil and its relation to the jurisdiction.
The history of the Northwestern cessions need not be
again recited at length. But it is important to observe that
the validity of all the Western land-claims had been by many
denied ; that the lands ceded and the lands reserved by Con-
necticut had all been claimed by New York and Virginia;
that the acceptance of the partial cession made by Connecti-
cut in 1786 had been strongly opposed in Congress, on the
ground that such acceptance would be a guarantee of the reser-
vation ; and that, in consequence, a cloud rested on the title
to the Reserve. The situation was perfectly understood at
the time the sale and purchase were made. The State only
quit-claimed to the Land Company her own right and title
to the territory, and received a consideration from the com-
pany that was graduated with reference to the title. The
change of owners excited new doubts rather than allayed old
ones. The survey of the lands, the inflow of population, and
the attempt to embrace the Reserve in the Territorial jurisdic-
tion kept the subject before men's minds. Thus, the original
doubt as to the title tended to cast a shadow on every land-
transaction within the district. These facts do not appear in
the minutes of the stock-holders' meetings ; but the question
whether the company could make valid titles caused as much
difficulty in making sales of lands as the want of a govern-
ment to protect society and to enforce contracts. Further-
more, Connecticut held the soil before 1 795 by the same title
that she held the jurisdiction ; and if the jurisdiction was in
the United States after 1786, then the ownership of the soil
was there too. Accordingly, the extension of the Territorial
Government over the Reserve was a real, though not an in-
tended, menace to the Connecticut title that the company
and the settlers alike could do no less than resist. The com-
pany's situation was, therefore, much more serious than the
resolutions quoted above imply. It needed to have the ques-
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
381
tion of ownership settled as much as it needed to have a gov-
ernment established.
What the terms of the Senate bill of 1798-99 were is
known only inferentially. The title shows that it authorized
the acceptance by the United States, from the State of Con-
necticut, of a cession of the jurisdiction over the Reserve. It
must also have contained a cession by the United States to
the State of Connecticut of the soil of the Reserve. Without
such a guarantee, the position of the company as to titles
would have been weakened rather than strengthened, and
perhaps subverted altogether.
On February 18, i8(X), Mr. Brace, of Connecticut, offered
in the House of Representatives a resolution creating a com-
mittee to take into consideration the expediency of accepting
the cession of jurisdiction. A few days later such a com-
mittee was appointed, with John Marshall, of Virginia, soon
afterward made Chief Justice of the United States, as chair-
man. Marshall's report covers five of the ample pages of the
"State Papers." ' More than three-fourths of this report is a
mere transcript of one made to the Senate the year before by
Mr. Reed ; but, since it had Marshall's approval and was the
basis of the subsequent action of Congress, it is the most
authoritative paper ever devoted to the discussion of Con-
necticut's title to the lands within her charter-limits west of
Pennsylvania. It recites the history of the charters from 1606
to 1664 ; considers the controversy between England and
France, closed by the treaty of 1763 ; mentions the Quebec
Act; recounts the boundary-disputes between Connecticut and
New York, and Connecticut and Pennsylvania ; relates the
history of the cessions, followed by the acts of the Connecticut
Legislature pertaining to the Reserve, and the sale to the Land
Company. The company have paid Sicx),ooo of interest on
the purchase-money, and expended $80,000 on the survey and
various improvements. Thirty-five settlements have been
> Public Lands, I., 94.
'i'Si,i'^;l|ijil
382
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
made, containing a population of about a thousand people.
The dilemma of the company is stated in a single sentence :
" As the purchasers of the land commonly called the Connecti-
cut Reserve hold their title under the State of Connecticut,
they cannot submit to the government established by the
United States in the Northwestern Territory, without endan-
gering their titles, and the jurisdiction of Connecticut could
not be extended over them without much inconvenience."
The report closes with the declaration that, in the opinion of
the committee, the offer of the jurisdiction ought to be ac-
cepted on the terms and conditions specified in the accom-
panying bill. The aim tinoughout is to establish the validity
of the Connecticut title. Connecticut is seized of the juris-
diction ; she could set up a government on the Reserve if she
chose to do so; it is far better to merge the jurisdiction in
the Northwest Territory — such is the logic of the report.
The bill as passed authorized the President, in the name
and in behalf of the United States, to execute and deliver to
the Governor of Connecticut letters patent whereby the right,
title, interest, and estate of the United States to the territory
commonly called the Western Reserve should be released and
conveyed to the said Governor and his successors in oflfice,
" for the purpose of quieting the grantees and purchasers under
said State of Connecticut, and confirming their titles to the
soil of the said tract of land ; " provided, however, that Con-
necticut should, within eight months from the passage of the
act, by a legislative act, renounce forever all territorial and
jurisdictional claims whatever to the soil and jurisdiction of
any and all lands lying westward, southwestward, and north-
westward of the eastern line of the State of New York, as
ascertained by the agreement of 1733 between New York
and Connecticut, excepting from such renunciation only the
Western Reserve ; provided, further, that the State of Con-
necticut should also, within eight months, execute and de-
liver to the President a deed expressly releasing to the United
States the jurisdictional claim of the said State of Connecti-
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
383
cut to the Reserve ; provided, also, that this act shall not " be
construed to pledge the United States for extinguishment of
the Indian title to the said lands, or further than merely to pass
the title of the United States thereto." Another proviso
was added, on motion of Mr. Gallatin, that the act should
not be construed in any manner to question the conclusive
settlement of the dispute between Pennsylvania and Con-
necticut by the Federal Court at Trenton in 1782.
This bill was vehemently opposed in both Houses of Con-
gress. Mr. Cooper, of New York, first moved to postpone it
until the next session, and then to amend it in such a way as
to make it obnoxious to the Pennsylvania members. Mr.
Elmendorf, of the same State, also moved an amendment in
the spirit of obstruction. Mr. Marshall made a lengthy speech
in favor of the bill and against the Elmendorf amendment.
Mr. Randolph and Mr. Nicholas, both of Virginia, made long
speeches against the "principle of the bill." Elmendorf ar-
gued at great length against the validity of Connecticut's
claim to the lands, and Mr. Bird, of New York, and Mr. Ran-
dolph followed on the same side. The bill passed the House
—ayes, 54 ; nays, 36. In the Senate an amendment to make
the execution and delivery of the letters patent contingent
upon a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States
affirming the validity of the Connecticut claim, was lost — ayes,
10; nays, 15. The bill passed the Senate — ayes, 15; nays,
10. President Adams's approval, given April 28, 1800, made
the bill a law.
, The questions arise : " Why such a determined opposition
to this measure ? " " What objection could be urged against
a bill that seems so reasonable and so necessary ? " Not a
scrap of the speeches made on either side has been preserved,
and the entries in the " Journals " and the " Annals " are al-
ways brief, and often obscure. At the same time, there is no
difficulty in reading between the lines the general grounds
of objection.
■ There was r j reason why the surrender and acceptance
384
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
of the jurisdiction should provoke opposition ; nor did it. It
was the release and conveyance to Connecticut of the right,
title, interest, and estate of the United States that made all
the trouble. Marshall's report was written to establish the
validity of Connecticut's claim, and the bill proposed, virt-
ually, to guarantee that claim. It could be argued, in oppo-
sition, that the lands in question belonged to the United
States: (i) Because the British Crown had ceded them in
1783 ; or (2) because New York had ceded them in 1781 ; or
(3) because Virginia had ceded them in 1784. A certain
temptation to deny the Connecticut title, and to hold that the
lands were a part of the national domain, arose from their
commercial value. Then an objector might argue that, since
the cession and the reservation of 1786 were final, and since
both the soil and the jurisdiction belonged to Connecticut,
Congress had nothing to do with the matter ; and that the
State, the Land Company, and the settlers must get out of
their troubles the best way they could. It could also be ob-
jected that the passing of a title from the Nation to the State
was unnecessary, because if Connecticut owned the jurisdic-
tion she also owned the soil. Marshall's report and the ac-
companying bill were not logically consistent. The more
cogently Marshall reasoned to show the validity of the Con-
necticut title, the more conclusively did he prove that it was
unnecessary for Congress to release the soil. If the United
States owned the soil she also owned the jurisdiction, and
if Connecticut owned the jurisdiction she, or those to whom
she had released it, also owned the soil. The Land Com-
pany's resolutions speak of surrendering the jurisdiction and
of the establishment of government; the quieting act pro-
poses to surrender the title of the United States to the soil
on certain terms and conditions, one of which is the sur-
render of jurisdiction. Moreover, Congress, by releasing its
right and title to Connecticut, would, by implication, deny
that either New York or Virginia had ceded the Resei-ve, and
so deny that either of them had any right or title to it pre-
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
385
nor did it. It
vious to its cession. Furthermore, since New York's title was
later than Connecticut's, this, in effect, would be holding that
New York's whole Western claim, from the Lakes to the
Cumberland Mountains, had been baseless. New York and
Virginia had now no more pecuniary interest in the question
at issue than any other States, but they would naturally re-
sent any action on the part of Congress that threatened to
invalidate their historical position. A denial of New York's
claim to the Western Reserve would be a denial of her claim
to all the Western lands whatsoever. Moreover, such denial
would really extend as far east as the Delaware River, for
that river was the eastern boundary of the original Western
claims of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Such denials could
indeed no longer have any practical bearing, since these points
of controversy had been adjusted, but it would still be a re-
flection upon New York's original title that her representa-
tives would be apt to repel. Then the guarantee of the Re-
serve to Connecticut would be very galling to Virginia; for
the Old Congress had stubbornly refused to guarantee her
claims southeast of the Ohio River. And, finally, the bill was
based on a new principle ; hitherto Congress had never, in a
single instance, strengthened the Western title of a State
growing out of the old charters.
Within the compass of the foregoing remarks, no doubt,
the objections to the quieting act of 1800 lay."
' The quieting act had been anticipated. On the day that Congress accepted
the Connecticut cession, Mr. Wilson, of Pennsylvania, made a motion, that was
lost, declaring that Congress could not accept it, since to do so would be a ratifi-
cation of the part not ceded but reserved, and closing with this resolution, which
once more stirs the embers of old controversies :
^* Resolved, . . . that when the State of Connecticut shall cede and re-
lease to the United States, and to the States of New York and Pennsylvania,
respectively, all the claim of the said State of Connecticut to jurisdiction and
property of territory westward of the eastern boundary of the State of New York,
the United States in Congress assembled will thereupon grant, release and con-
firm to the State of Connecticut, the property, but not the jurisdiction of the ter-
ritory and tract or land described as follows " [then describing the reservation].
25
386
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
ili
The geographical distribution of the opposition to this
act throws light upon its animus. The attacks upon the bill
in the House of Representatives were made by Bird, Cooper,
and Elmendorf, of New York ; and by John Nicholas and
John Randolph, of Virginia. Of New York's ten votes eight
were thrown against the bill, and none for it. Of the twelve
Virginia votes the bill received but three. Pennsylvania gave
ten of her twelve votes for the bill, and none against it. But
Pennsylvania had never been a claimant State, and had no
State dignity to uphold. It might, perhaps, be expected that
Massachusetts would be disinclined to see the seal of con-
gressional approval set on the Connecticut claim, but she had
never claimed the Reserve, or any part of it, as both the
other States had done. Many of her people were seeking
homes on the Reserve, some members of the Land Company
were Massachusetts men, and she would naturally be in-
fluenced more or less by good neighborhood. Massachusetts
gave fourteen votes for the bill. In the Senate, not a vote
for the measure came from either New York or Virginia.
Finally, it is not impossible that there was a partisan
animus in the opposition ; Connecticut was strongly Federalist
in politics, while most of the opposition belonged to the Jef-
fersonian school.
The General Assembly of Connecticut promptly complied
with the conditions of the quieting act. It passed an act re-
nouncing the State's claims to all lands lying west of the
boundary-line between Connecticut and New York as agreed
upon in 1733, except the Reserve, both soil and jurisdiction,
and authorizing and directing the Governor of the State to
execute and deliver to the President of the United States a
deed conveying to the United States the jurisdiction of the
Reserve. On May 30, 1800, Governor Trumbull performed
this duty, and soon after President Adams executed and de-
livered letters patent releasing all the right, claim, and inter-
est of the United States to the soil. The renunciation of
the State's claim to all lands west of the line of 1733, except
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
387
the Reserve, was a surrender of the " Gore " to New York,
and it brought to a sudden end the suits that holders of the
Ward and Halsey titles had brought in the Circuit Court of
the United States to eject the occupants with New York
titles. Such was the solution of the last puzzle growing out
of the from-sea-to-sea charters.
The longer one looks into the situation of the Connecti-
cut Land Company from 1797 to 1800 the more trying he
sees it to have been. The interest was running on their obli-
gations, but they could not effect sales, or could effect but
few. Then, when the subject was finally brought forward in
Congress, there was abundant opportunity for constitutional
metaphysics and legal hair-splitting. Logically inconsistent
as were the two principles of the quieting act, and reversing
as that act did the policy of the Old Congress, it gave the
State of Connecticut, tl. : Land Company, and the people of
the Reserve, a happy escape from difificulties that were already
serious, and that threatened grave disaster. The act is a good
example of the Anglo-Saxon habit of disregarding logical re-
finements and legal technicalities and of pursuing the direct
common-sense road to a just end. It could have been suc-
cessfully defended on broad grounds of public policy. The
foremost champion of the act was John Marshall ; and when
we recall that he was a Virginian, and that he had great in-
fluence in the House of Representatives, particularly on legal
questions, it does not seem too much to say that the Western
Reserve is indebted to him for the institution of civil govern-
ment and for a perfect system of land-titles. At all events,
Marshall's name is connected with its history in an interest-
ing way.
On July 10, 1800, Governor St. Clair issued a proclama-
tion constituting the whole Reserve a county, with the name
of Trumbull. Rather, he bounded the county on the north
by the parallel 42° 2' north latitude, which was carrying it
some distance beyond the international boundary-line and in-
vading the British dominions. Next, the Governor appointed
388 THE OLD NORTHWEST.
a probate judge and justices of the quorum for the new coun-
ty. The first Court of Quarter Sessions sat at Warren, the
county scat, on the fourth Monday of August, i8oo, at which
time the county was organized. The first election was held
at the same place on the second Tuesday of October, when
the electors of the county, by thirty-eight votes out of forty,
two, chose a representative in the Territorial Legislature.
Civil government on the Western Reserve was at last estal>
lished. The first act in the long series leading to its estab-
lishment was performed at Whitehall, in 1662, by the third
Stuart ; the last act, at Warren, O., in 1800, by the forty-two
backwoods electors.
The development of the Western Reserve has been as
gratifying as' its beginning was discouraging. Its area is
about five thousand square miles, its population about six
hundred thousand souls. It is a trifle larger than Connecti-
cut, but has a somewhat smaller population.' No other five
thousand square miles of territory in the United States, lying
in a body outside of New England, ever had, to begin with,
so pure a New England population. No similar territory
west of the Alleghany Mountains has so impressed the brain
and conscience of the country. No other district gives so fine
an opportunity to study the development of the New Eng-
land character under Western conditions. In externals, the
colonists, a majority of whom came from Connecticut, repro-
duced New England in Northeastern Ohio. It has long been
remarked that, in some respects, the Western Reserve is
more New England than New England herself. Mr. John
Fiske found the illustration that he wanted of an early feat-
ure of English life in Euclid Avenue, Cleveland." There is
also an undeniable continuity of intellectual and moral life.
But the southern shore of Lake Erie is not the northern
• The population of the Reserve in 1880 was 536,832 ; of Connecticut, 622,700.
* American Political Ideas, 22.
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
389
shore of Long Island Sound ; New Connecticut is not a re-
production of Old Connecticut.
The position of Connecticut in history is a most honor-
able one, quite disproportionate to her territorial area, or to the
numbers of her population. Far should it be from a man of
Connecticut descent to speak slightingly of the commonwealth
of his fathers. But the Connecticut of 1796 was dominated
by class influences and ideas; a heavy mass of 2)olitical and
religious dogma rested upon society ; an inveterate conserva-
tism fettered both the actions and the thoughts of men. The
church and the town were but different sides of the same
thing. The town was a close corporation ; and the man who
did not belong to it, either by birth or formal naturalization,
could be a resident of it only on sufferance. The yearly in-
auguration of the governor is said to have been " an occasion
of solemn import and unusual magnificence." Connecticut
Federalism was the most ironclad variety anywhere to be
found, unless in Delaware. In 1804 the General Court im-
peached several justices of the peace who had the temerity to
attend a Jeffersonian convention in New Haven. Mechanics
were accounted " vulgar ; " farming was the " respectable "
calling ; " leading men " had an extraordinary influence ; and
"old families" were the pride and the weakness of their re-
spective localities. The militia captain and the deacon were
local magnates. Congregationalism was an established re-
ligion; and how restive the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the
Sandemanians, the Methodists, and other dissenting churches,
and men of no church, were, under its reign, a glance through
a file of old Connecticut newspapers will show. For years
I the General Assembly refused to charter Episcopalian and
Methodist colleges. President Quincy paints this picture of
a Sabbath morning in Andover, Mass. :
af Connecticut, 622,70a
" The whole space before the meeting house was filled with
[awaiting, respectful, and expecting multitude. At the mo-
ment of service, the pastor issued from his mansion, with Bible
Jl' • ■■■! '!'!|
■'11)1
m
390
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
and manuscript sermon under his arm, with his wife leaning
on one arm, flanked by his negro man on his side, as his wife
was by her negro woman, the little negroes being distributed,
according to their sex, by the side of their respective parents.
Then followed every other member of the family according to
age and rank, making often, with family visitants, somewhat
of a formidable procession. As soon as it appeared, the con-
gregation, as if led by one spirit, began to move towards the
door of the church, and before the procession reached it all
were in their places. As soon as the pastor entered, the whole
congregation rose and stood until he was in the pulpit and his
family were seated. At the close of the service the congrega-
tion stood until he and his family had left the church. Fore-
noon and afternoon the same course of proceeding was had." '
Of course, such magnificence as this was unusual ; but the
passage well marks the awful consequence with which the
New England mind, in that period, invested the parson. All
the conservatism of Connecticut rallied around the venerable
charter of 1662, holding it as sacred as the Trojans ever held
the Palladium ; and the party which broke down the charter
and set up the constitution of 1818 were called "The Tolera-
tionists."
It is plain that at the close of the last century Connecti-
cut had shelled over. While a desire to break through this
shell was the motive that sent many a man and family to the
West, the whole emigration still brought much of the old
conservatism and dogma to Ohio. But these people had not
been long in their new home before they began to feel the
throbbings of a new life, and they soon began to do things
that in their old home they would never have dreamed of
doing. As early as 1832, President Storrs and his assistants
in the faculty of Western Reserve College were preaching
and lecturing against slavery, at Hudson. Those sermons
and lectures were the real beginning of anti-slavery propa-
• North American Review, No. CCL., 13, 14.
THE CONNECTICUT WESTERN RESERVE.
391
gandism in Northern Ohio. How much the anti-slavery
men of the East counted upon Storrs's co-operation is shown
by Whittier's pathetic elegy written on Storrs's too early death.
Early in its history, the name of Oberlin became synonymous
with Abolitionism throughout the country. Giddings upheld
anti-slavery principles in Congress when there was none but
John Quincy Adams to support him. Full fifty years ago
the Reserve had a more definite anti-slavery character than
any other equal extent of territory in the United States. A
liberalizing tendency may also be traced in religion. The
Calvinistic rigidity of the churches was softened. The new
theology sounded out from Oberlin, while that seat of learn-
ing was still hidden in the woods, was even more hateful to
New England orthodoxy than the new theology sounded out
from Andover is to-day. Dissenting bodies, as they would
have been in Connecticut — Baptists, Methodists, and Disciples
—gained a foothold and multiplied in numbers. And the
same in education. Men on whom the awful shadow of Yale
and Harvard had fallen, begun at Oberlin the first collegiate
co-education experiment tried in the world. Both at Oberlin
and at Hudson the finality of the old educational rubrics was
denied, and new studies were introduced into the curricula.
The common school, the academy, the college, the church,
the newspaper, the debating society, and the platform stimu-
lated the mental and moral life of the people to the utmort.
The Reserve came to have a character all its own. Men
with ** new ideas " hastened to it as to a seed-bed. Men with
" reforms " and *' causes " to advocate found a willing audi-
ence. Later years have brought new elements; but to-day
the mail clerks on the Lake Shore Railroad are compelled to
quicken their motions the moment they enter its borders from
either east or west. Adapting the language that General J.
D. Cox once used, there are in Northeastern Ohio the straits
in a great moral Gulf Stream. Between Lake Erie and the
Ohio, from Pittsburg to Chicago, has been compressed a hu-
man tide fed by the overflow of New England, the Middle
i
■ 1 ii
I' .1
392
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
States, and Europe. Beyond Lake Michigan this stream
widens out, fan-like, northwest and southwest, from Mani-
toba to the Arkansas River ; and breaks over the ridges of
the Rocky Mountains in streams that reach the Pacific Coast.
Wherever it has gone this stream has carried the thought-
seeds gathered from the banks of the straits through which
it rushes." But the Reserve has been conservative as well
as radical. Since Elisha Whittlesey took his seat, in 1828,
the Nineteenth Ohio Congressional District has been repre-
sented in Congress by but five men. In 1872 the greatest of
these five men, in addressing the convention that had just
nominated him for the sixth time, said for more than half a
century the people of the district had held and expressed
bold and independent opinions on all public questions, yet
they had never asked their representative to be the mere echo
of the party voice. They supported and defended their rep-
resentative in maintaining an independent position in the
National Legislature, and whenever he acted with honest and
intelligent courage in the interests of truth, they generously
sustained him even when he differed from them in minor
matters of opinion and policy.* The old charge of " 'isms "
and " extravagance " cannot be wholly denied ; but, on the
whole, the plain people, while throwing much of the New
England ballast overboard, and crowding their canvas, have
held the rudder so true as to avoid dangerous extremes. The
historian finds small occasion to defend them on the ground
that somewhat of folly and fanaticism always attend a peo-
ple's emancipation.
• The Oberlin Jubilee, 290, 291.
' Garfield : Works, H., 30, 31.
fs
i
a
I this stream
, from Mani-
the ridges of
Pacific Coast,
the thought-
hrough which
native as well
seat, in 1828,
,s been repre-
he greatest of
that had just
e than half a
,nd expressed
questions, yet
the mere echo
ied their rep-
)sition in the
th honest and
ey generously
lem in minor
^^ ^.^<^'^^"*-^ -^ -^■^-":^^'^:^
^'
ii'.: II
XX.
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
Charles Sumner once gathered, in a celebrated article,
[some of the happier prophecies concerning America.' He
might have made a similar collection of the less happy ones,
that would have been quite as instructive and more curious.
Had he done so, he might have come upon some of the fol-
I lowing about the Great West.
Few of Dr. Franklin's contemporaries had his grasp of the
[Western question. But even Franklin's prescience was not
equal to his subject. He saw that east of the Mississippi
and south of the Lake and the St. Lawrence there was room
enough for a hundred millions of people; "but this must
take some centuries to fulfil." When the question of fixing
a permanent seat of government was under discussion in
Congress, in 1789, much was said of the centre of population.
Mr. Goodhue, of Massachusetts, said he believed this centre
"would not vary considerably for ages yet to come, because
he supposed it would constantly increase more toward the
Eastern and manufacturing States than toward the Southern
and agricultural ones," not taking the West into account at
all. At that time the centre of population was twenty-five
miles east of Baltimore; and little did the men who took
part in that debate dream that it would move steadily west-
ward along the thirty-ninth parallel at the nearly uniform
rate of five miles a year, and that, in a century, it would be
much nearer the Mississippi River than the Alleghany Moun-
I tains. Fisher Ames said, in the same debate, that when " the
• Prophetic Voices about America, the Atlantic Monthly, XX., 275.
394
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
almost immeasurable wilderness " of the Ohio would be set-
tled, or how it could possibly be governed, was " past calcu-
lation ; " that it was " romantic " to make the decision of the
capital question turn upon that circumstance; and that it
would be near a century before the people of that region
would be considerable. In 1825 Mr. Dickerson, of New Jer-
sey, discussing in the Senate the occupation of Oregon, said
the territory could never be a State in the Union, and went
into an elaborate calculation to prove the physical impossi-
bility of a man's representing the Valley of the Columbia in
Congress, since he would be the whole year, travelling at the
rate of thirty miles a day, making the overland journey to
Washington and back ; and affirmed that it would be more
expeditious to double Cape Horn or to pass through the
Arctic Ocean. " It is true," he added, " this passage is not yet
discovered, except upon our maps, but it will be as soon as
Oregon shall be a State." If any man had a large conception
of the West, it was Henry Clay, yet Mr. Clay said, in 1832 :
" We may anticipate that long, if not centuries, after the
present day, the representatives of our children's children
may be deliberating in the halls of Congress on laws relating
to the public lands." Even men who have lived in an age
of wonders often think that wonders will cease with them.
Defending the Treaty of Washington, in 1846, Daniel Webster
said : " We have heard a vast deal lately of the commercial
value of the River Columbia and its occupation ; but I will un-
dertake to say that for all purposes of human use the St. Johns
is worth a hundred times as much as the Columbia is, or ever
will be." We wonder at such feeble prophecies ; but, although
we have seen the progress that so far outran the highest antic-
ipations of our fathers — a progress each decade of which has
been a new morn risen on high noon — our own visions of the
next century may fall as far short of the reality. The possibil-
ities of the United States, and particularly of the Great West,
under a free and stable government, in an age of stupendous ma-
terial development, defied the forecast of the wisest statesmen.
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
395
would be set-
iS " past calcu-
iecision of the
;; and that it
of that region
n, of New Jer-
)f Oregon, said
nion, and went
lysical impossi-
le Columbia in
ravelling at the
and journey to
would be more
ss through the
issage is not yet
il be as soon as
large conception
y said, in 1 832 :
;uries, after the
Idren's children
on laws relating
lived in an age
:ase with them.
Daniel Webster
the commercial
; but I will un-
ise the St. Johns
imbia is, or ever
but, although
le highest antic-
e of which has
n visions of the
The possibil-
the Great West,
stupendous ma-
/isest statesmen.
1
Table Showing the Population of the Northwestern States, the Per
Cent, of Increase, their Rank among the States of the Union,
AND THE Number of People to a Square Mile, for the Census
Years 1800-1880.
1800.
Population ,
Per cent, of increase
Rank
Number per square mile . . ,
18 10.
Population
Per cent, of increase
Rank
Number per square mile. .
1820.
Population
Per cent, of increase
Rink
Number per square mile. . ,
J830.
Population
Per cent, of increase
Rank
Number per square mile . . .
1840.
Population
Per cent, of increase
Rank
Number per square mile . .
1850.
Population
Per cent, of increase
Rank
Number per square mile . .
i860.
Population
I Per cent, of increase
I Rank
Number per square mile, . .
1870.
Population
Per cent, of increase
Rank
Number per square mile . , .
Ohio.
42,161
1880.
Population
Per cent, of increase
Rank
Number per square mile. .
Papulation
i887.«
18
I.I
230,760
408.6
S-7
581,295
151.9
5
M-3
937,903
61.3
4
'3
i|5«9,467
62
3
37-3
1,980,329
30.3
3
48.6
a.339.511
18.1
3
57-4
2,665,260
13.9
3
65.3
3,198,062
19.9
3
78.5
3,600,000
Indi-
ana.
3.S17
21
34,520
339.6
31
•7
197,178
502.2
18
4'
343,03"
133
13
9.6
685,866
99.9
10
18. 1
988,416
44.1
7
a7-5
i.35o,4a8
36.6
Illinois.
a.457
37-6
1,680,637
a4-4
6
47
1,978,301
17.7
6
55- «
3,300,000
13,382
34
.3
SS.«6a
3491
34
I
157,445
185.4
30
3.8
476. >83
303.4
14
8.5
851,470
78.8
II
15.3
I,7«»i95i
loi
4
30.6
aiS39.89i
48.3
4
45-3
3,077,871
31. 1
4
SS
3,350,000
Michi-
gan.
3,757
4,763
25
8,765
84
37
3'.639
360.9
37
.6
313,367
570.9
23
3-7
397.654
87.3
30
6.9
749. » 13
88.3
16
J3
i,l84,oS|
13
ao.6
1.636,937
38.3
9
38.5
3,000,000
Wiscon-I Total of
five States.
"5
30.945
30S.39«
886.8
04
S.6
775.881
«54
»5
14.3
1,054,670
35-9
»S
19.3
i.3>S.497
34.7
16
34.3
1,650,000
51.007
373,334
843,400
1,470,018
3,934,738
4,533,360
6,936,884
9, "4, 517
11,206,668
13,800,000
Total,
United
Sates.
5,308,483
7,289,884
9,633,823
12,866,020
17.069.453
23.191,867
31.443.331
38,588,371
50,155.783
60,603,000
> Fisher : The Essentials of Geography for the School Year 1887-^8.
. '' ^"*- '> -'^ "^7^
^M:\\
396
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
North America is the marvel of human progress ; the old
Northwest the marvel of North America. No other region
of equal size ever made such progress in one hundred years.
The theme requires a volume ; nothing more can here be done
than to state the results that have been reached in some prin-
cipal lines of development. Population comes first.
One of the interesting features of this table is the great
strides with which Ohio made her way to the third rank
among the States in the Union.
The population of the five States in 1880 consisted of
5,758,244 males, and 5,453,464 females. Ohio had the largest
proportion of females, 98,152 to 100,000 males; and Michigan
the smallest, 89,821 — the ratio in the whole country being
96,544 to 100,000. The native population was 9,290,038 ; the
foreign-born, 1,916,630. The foreign-born to 100,000 natives
were, in Ohio, 14,089; Indiana, 7,860; Illinois, 23,396; Mich-
igan, 31,119; Wisconsin, 44,584. The ratio in the United
States was 15,368 foreign-born to 100,000 natives. In Mich-
igan the greater number of the foreign-born were British
Americans, of whom this State had a larger proportion than
any other in the Union. The large foreign element in Illinois
and Wisconsin is principally due to the attraction of their ag-
ricultural advantages for German and Scandinavian emigrants.
The census-maps showing in five degrees of density the dis-
tribution of the population of the United States at the census-
years, illustrates in a striking manner what has been said in
previous chapters concerning Western emigration and develop-
ment, and particularly concerning the early superior advan-
tages of the Ohio Valley as compared with the Lake region.
In 1790 the island of color lying in Southwestern Pennsylva-
nia extends its edge across the Ohio River below Pittsburg,
Pin-points of color appear at the mouth of the Muskingum,
on the Wabash, and in the Illinois. In 1800 the patches of
color on the white surface have increased in size, and some
of them have deepened. Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Conneaut,
Cleveland, and Detroit appear. In 1810 two-thirds of Ohio is
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
$97
colored, some of the color representing a population of from
eighteen to forty-five and some from six to eighteen, but the
larger part from two to six to the square mile. The Vin-
cennes settlements extend to the Ohio River, and a belt of
population appears along the eastern line of Indiana, one-
half the length of the State. The Illinois population has ex-
tended over a larger area, both up and down the river and
back from it. A stroke of color extends along the western
side of the Detroit River, and specks appear at Mackinaw, at
the Saut, at Green Bay, and at the mouth of the Wisconsin,
in 1820 all of Ohio but the northwestern quarter, the southern
third of Indiana, the southern fourth of Illinois are settled
more or less densely. A line of light color curves around the
head of Lake Erie from the mouth of the Cuyahoga to the
head of Lake St. Clair. In 1830 a white patch, of consider-
able size, appears in Northwestern Ohio. The northern third
of Indiana is white, with a colored island at Fort Wayne. In
Illinois the settlements have extended north from the Ohio
and east from the Mississippi, covering about one-half the
State. A red spot appears in the Northwest, in the region of
the lead mines, and crosses the boundary into Wisconsin. The
Detroit settlements have grown in every direction, and a con-
siderable population has appeared in the southwestern part of
Michigan, extending into Northern Indiana. In 1840 not a
white spot is left in Ohio. Nearly all Indiana and Illinois
are colored. Michigan and Wisconsin are crossed by varying
bands of color as high as the latitude of Port Huron and
Madison. Beginnings have been made at the head of Lake
Superior, and in the Valley of the St. Croix. From 1840 to
1850 the northern frontier of these two States is slightly
crowded back ; the density of the old population increases ;
and beginnings are made in the great lumber and mining re-
gions of the North, particularly on the southern shore of Lake
Superior. A similar description will apply to i860 and to 1870.
The map of 1880 shows the whole of the Northwest inhabited,
except a small interior island in the northern part of the lower
1
i
,■
mi'
Xy. :: I
llii
I ill llii
398
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
peninsula of Michigan, about one-half of the upper peninsula,
and a large tract in Northern Wisconsin. To each of these
two States is assigned an unsettled area of 10,200 square miles.
The census of 1880 reported an urban population of
2,689,081, and a rural population of 8,516,880 souls; the first
found in 158 centres of 4,000 people and upward. The per
cents, of the urban to the total population ranged from seven-
teen in Indiana to twenty-eight in Ohio. Eighteen of the
one hundred principal cities of the Union were within the
five States, and ten more upon their immediate borders.
In i860 Mr. Seward called Chicago "the last and most
wonderful of all the marvellous creations of civilization in |
North America." What would he say of Chicago in 1887 ?
Table Showing the Number of People Employed in the Different |
Gainful Occupations.
Agriculture.
Professional
and Personal
Services.
Trade and
Transporta-
tion.
Manufactures
and Mechani-
cal and Mi'.ting
Industries.
Total.
397,495
331,240
436,371
240,319
195,901
350,371
137,281
229,467
143,249
97,494
104,315
56,432
128,372
54.723
37,550
242,294
110,127
205,570
'30,913
86,510
635,080
999.780
569,304
4'7,«5
Wisconsin
Total
1,601,326
857,862
381,392
775,4'4
3,615,994
Agriculture leads the column of the Northwe.stern in-
dustries. The following table will show the total number of
farms in the five States, their aggregate size, their value, the
value of farm-products, the value of live stock, the value of
farms per acre, and the per cent, of the States' area in farms :
Number
of
Farms.
Total Acre-
age in
I'arms.
Per
Cent, of
Area in
Farms.
94
88.9
88.4
37.6
44J
Value of
Farms.
Value
per
Acre.
Value of
Products.
Value of Live
Stock.
Ohio
Indiana
Illinois
Michif^n....
Wisconsin.. .
247,189
194,013
255-74«
154,008
134,32s
24,529,226
20,420,983
31,673,645
13,807,240
1S,353."8
$1,127,497,353
635,236,111
',009,594,580
499,103,181
357,709,507
$46.37
31.11
3' 56
36.15
23 30
•'56,777,'S2
114,707,082
203,980,137
91,159,858
72,779,496
$103,707,730
71.068,785
I32,437,7««
55,720>"3
46,508.643
Total
985,273
105,784,213
•3,629,140,732
♦639,403,725
$409,443,033
■- '■
. ■' J.
■>>..
f..:^
." '^ ■'
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
399
pper peninsula,
I each of these
DO square miles,
population of
souls; the first
vard. The per
jed from seven-
Eighteen of the
rere within the
e borders.
: last and most
f civilization in
cage in 1887 ?
[N THE Different I
ufactures
Mechani-
d Mi'.iing
ustries.
Total.
12.294
0,127
>5,570
|o,9«3
16, 510
994.475
635,080
999.780
569,304
417.453
'5.414
3.615.994
orthwestern in-
total number of
their value, the
ck, the value of
* area in farms :
^alue of
roducts.
Value of Live
Stock,
i6.777.'S2
4,707,08a
13,980,137
)i, 159,858
P2,779.496
$103,707,730
71.068,78s
I32,437,;6«
S5.720.''3
46,5o8.«43
(9,403,725
$409,443,033
No other States in the Union have so large per cents, of
I area in farms as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Ohio surpasses
all the other States in the amount of capital invested in
[arms, and Illinois all others in farm-products and in live
I stock.
This table will show the capital invested in manufactures,
[the value of manufactured products, the aggregate wealth of
the States, the wealth per capita, and the taxation for State
purposes, all for the year 1 080 :
Capital in-
vested in
Manufact-
ures
Ohio $188,939,614
Indiana 1 65,742,963
Illinois .
I Michigan . .
Wisconsin.
140,652,066
92,930,959
73,821,802
Total $563,087,403
Value of Pro-
ducts.
$436,208,390
148,006,411
414,864,673
150,715,025
138,335,480
$1,278,109,79
Total Wealth.
$3,301,000,000
1,499,000,000
3,092,000,000
1,370,000,000
969,000,000
$10,331,000,000
Wealth per
Capita.
Taxation.
$1,033 19
$25,756,658
752 73
•2,343.630
1,004 59
34,586,018
836 93
8.627,949
636 60
7,588,335
$78,963,580
On no line of progress has the human race made greater
strides than in means of travel and transportation ; and the
whole sweep of this progress, from the most primitive to the
most improved methods, can be studied in the history of the
old Northwest.
The men who first entered it from the East followed the
paths that the deer and the buffalo had made, called by the
hunters " streets " or " buffalo-roads." Next the white man
followed the Indians' trail, which, marked and widened by
the axe, became the "trace." The trader who followed the
waters borrowed of the Indian his canoe, or of the Frenchman
his bateau ; the trader who kept to the land introduced the
pack-saddle and the train of pack-horses. When the day
came to move passengers in numbers and freight in quantities,
the "keel-boat" and the "ark" appeared. The movement
of passengers and freight was mostly westward, owing as
well to the current of the streams as to the necessities of
emigration. Boatmen who descended to New Orleans com-
■"%.
'y^-l-i-^k:
•^.
m
m
'Mr
■'9m
40O
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
monly broke up their craft and sold them for lumber; those
who came from the Upper Ohio returning by sea to Baltimore
or Alexandria and thence over the mountains ; those who came
from below the Muskingum marching homeward through the
wilderness by Natchez and Nashville in companies of fifteen
or twenty. Then came steam-boats, the first of which on the
Ohio appeared in 1811, and on the Northern Lakes in i8i8.
On land regular roads and wheeled vehicles succeeded the
"trace "and the pack-saddle, and in due time came canals
and railroads. In 1788 Dr. Manasseh Cutler did twenty-
nine days of hard travelling in reaching Marietta from Ham-
ilton, Mass. We read that "on January 11, 1794, a line
of two keel-boats, with bullet-proof covers and port-holes,
and provided with cannon and small arms, was established
between Cincinnati and Pittsburg, each making a trip once in
four weeks." Mr. Carnegie tells us that in 1884 the trade of
the same river was valued at $800,000,000, and that trans-
portation upon it is the cheapest in the world — coal, coke, and
other bulky articles being transported at the rate of one-
twentieth of a cent per ton per mile.' The colossal propor-
tions to which land travel and transportation have grown are
shown by the following statistics of railroads in 1886 :
Miles of railroad
Eng;ines and cars
Capital stock . . .
Cost
Bonded debt . . .
Passengers car-
ried
Tons of freight
moved ■
Gross earnings.
Ohio.
9,246
99,087
386,440,877
703,011,783
1338,010,901
a4i099i*4o
57, 59a. US
$71,196,610
Indiana.
5.641
39.908
fl47.65a,448
4378,883,884
$167,045,609
7,446.993
20,531,625
$33.547,»89
Illinois,
14,708
89,169
1332,735.395
1638,501,557
>33o. 737.889
30,564,80:
40,939,396
$97,685,889
Michigan.
5.201
26,480
995.9i6.5«8
$203,826,163
Wisconsin.
7,084
28,416
$93,162,661
$240,143,885
$95,300,654 $147,500,000
8,116,614
'5.873.494
$»7."4,9"
6,160,601
9.«4i.46!
$28,174,270
Total.
41,880 I
383,o&) I
11,054,897,889 I
|2,o63,86i,}91 1
(1,078,635,068
76,408,158
144,068,12; I
$a57.7'8,9>3
The canal around the Saut Rapids, at the foot of which
St. Lusson stood in 1671 when he took possession of the
Northwestern lakes and rivers, islands and countries, in the
' Triumphant Democracy, 309.
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
401
name of the Redoubtable Monarch Louis XIV., of France,
has become one of the great commercial thoroughfares of the
world. In 1886, 7,428 passages of vessels of all descriptions
were made through this canal, conveying 4,527,759 tons of
freight. In the table of this commerce we find such items as
these: 1,009,999 tons of coal; 1,759,365 barrels of flour;
18,991,485 bushels of wheat ; 38,627 tons of copper ; 2,087,809
tons of iron ore; 138,688,000 feet of lumber. This tonnage,
which al^eady surpasses that of the Suez Canal for the num-
ber of days per year that the two are open to navigation, in
connection with the undeveloped capabilities of the country
beyond Lake Superior, stretching to the Pacific Ocean, mocks
one's power to predict the extent and value of the future
commerce of this artificial water-way. Nor is this all. When
the Cascade Mountains have been tunnelled, New York, by
this Northwestern route, wil. be brought within ten thousand
five hundred miles of Canton, China, which is only one-half
the distance, by the Isthmus of Suez or the Cape of Good
Hope ; while the English and Dutch commercial cities are
distant not less than eighteen thousand miles.
The Ordinance of 1787 declared : " Religion, morality, and
knowledge being necessary to good government and the
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education
shall forever be encouraged." The moral significance of
statistics is commonly lost ; nevertheless, some figures will
help us to understand how Congress and the Northwest have
kept this educational compact.
The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided that, wherever it
operated, " there shall be reserved from sale the lot No. 16 of
every township for the maintenance of common schools within
the said township." From that day the policy of setting
apart for this purpose one thirty-sixth part of the land in
every new State has been uniformly followed. Besides,
other large grants have been made, from time to time, for ed-
ucational purposes. These educational land-grants would be
a very prominent feature of any adequate history of education
26
" ' 1,1:
lilt.
ii ji.il' ii i
402
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
in the Northwest. Here attention can be drawn to only two
or three points.
The total amount of the grants under the Ordinance of
1785 is 4,865,917, of which 4,293,989 acres were sold previous
to 1884. In addition to these grants, or?-half of the five per
cent, of the sales of public lands in Illinois, that the State was
entitled to in accordance with the policy inaugurated in 1802
of giving the State five per cent, of such sales for some pur-
pose, was devoted to schools, and in Wisconsin the whole of
it was so devoted. In 1884 the aggregate school funds of the
five States arising from these two sources, principal and capi-
talized interest, was $16,418,477, which yielded a yearly in-
come of $1,406,801.
The five States received from the Agricultural and Me-
chanical College grant of 1863, 1,980,000 acres of land and
land-scrip. In 1884 the present funds, resulting from the sale
of 1,800,862 acres of these lands, was $1,864,514, which pro-
duced a yearly income of $108,172.
Previous to the same year, the National Government had
patented to the five States, under the legislation of Congress,
11,461,000 acres of swamp lands, of which Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois appropriated the whole, and Michigan and Wisconsin
fifty per cent, to education. The appropriations have pro-
duced educational funds amounting to $2,541,1 15.
Ninety-three thousand three hundred and thirty-six acres
of saline lands dedicated to education have produced $327,986.
The University lands, amounting to 345,716 acres, yielding
a total fund of $1,136,245 and an annual income of $78,801,
closes the list of educational land-grants in the old Northwest.
Here are educational endowments amounting to more
than twenty million acres of lands.' The practical manage-
ment of these enormous endowments by the States has been
marked by short-sightedness and wastefulness fully propor-
' These statistics are given on the authority of Prof. George W. Knight : His-
tory and Management of Land Grants for Education in the Northwest Territory,
170-172.
^M>-
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
403
tional to the 1 iberality of Congress in making them. The an-
nual funds arising from these endowments are but a small per
cent, of the vast sums that the Northwestern people raise by
taxation for educational purposes ; but they have still served
a noble educational purpose in the past, and will be of consid-
erable value in years to come.
The following table exhibits the more important public-
school statistics for the school-year 1884-85 :
Ohio.
Indiana.
Illinois.
Michigan.
Wiscon'n.
TouL
Number of schooUyouth. . .
Number enrolled in schools
Public-school houses
Number of teachers
Expenditures for Public
Schools
1.09S.469
774,660
13,674
34,638
$10,094,000
$37,970,000
$3,534,000
722,851
501. M3
9,664
'3i3"
$4,660,000
$13,619,000
$9,339,000
1,077,303
738.787
13,076
30,619
$10,199,000
$33,340,000
$9,450,000
595.687
4". 954
7.«64
15,358
$4,739,000
$11,367,000
$3,839,000
544.976
3",7i8
io|866
$3,300,000
$6,133,000
$4,646,000
4,036,385
•,748,261
84.783
$33,983,000
$81,338,000
$30,808,000
Value of public - scliui.
property
School Fund
From the report of the National Commissioner of Educa-
tion for the same year these items concerning superior instruc-
tion have been gathered :
Colleges and universities reporting
Instructors in them
Students
Value of buildings, grounds, and apparatus.
Productive funds
Value of college-property reported. .
90
889
8.594
$9,588,000
8,091,000
$17,679,000
The number of newspapers and periodicals published in
the five States the year of the last census, with the aggregate
circulation per issue, was as follows :
Newspapers and
Periodicals.
Circulation.
Ohio. . . . . .....
774
467
1,017
464
340
3.093.93>
661,111
Illinois
Michigan
2.431.875
630,974
436,576
Total
3,063
7,333,867
*'
^'
;■■;■■ ..■,,
W
; %
r:U
i? •>«..«
404
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
The school-master has been abroad in the Northwest since
1788; but that he still has plenty of work to do is shown by
this exhibit of the number of persons in 1880, ten years of age
or more, unable to write :
Chip
Indiana . . . .
Illinois
Michigan . .
Wisconsin . .
Total
'31,847
110,761
'45,397
63.723
55,558
507,286
The educational influence and results of opening the ter-
ritory northwest of the Ohio River to civilization may be
treated in a narrower and in a broader way. The narrow-
er treatment would embrace school-lands, school-laws, and
school-systems, with all that these imply ; the broader treat-
ment would deal with the general forces and conditions that
have wrought out the peculiar character of the Northwestern
people, and, through them, have acted upon the national life.
But no better example of the broadening and liberalizing in-
fluence of the Northwest can be given than that furnished by
the history of education in the specific sense. Here, as else-
where, it has much crudeness and shallowness to answer for.
The "fresh-water college" and the American "university"
have had a rank growth. Perhaps, too, the Northwest has
not always looked with sufficient reverence upon the old ed-
ucational rubrics. But if she had not been free from an undue
conservatism, she would never have done what she has for
education, either directly at home or by reaction upon the
East. The best contributions of the five States to educational
progress are these : The flexibility of their educational sys-
tems, and their adaptation to existing conditions ; the extent
to which they have carried the public-school superintendency ;
the prominence that they have accorded to the State Univer-
sity ; the range and scope that they have given to the prin-
ciple of election in higher education ; the measurable adjust-
ment of the high school to the college ; the readiness with
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
405
rthwest since
is shown by
I years of age
131*847
145,397
63.723
55,558
507,286
;ning the ter-
ition may be
The narrow-
ool-laws, and
broader treat-
)nditions that
Northwestern
; national life.
beralizing in-
furnished by
Here, as else-
to answer for.
" university"
orthwest has
n the old ed-
rom an undue
she has for
ion upon the
o educational
cational sys-
the extent
jrintendency ;
State Univer-
to the prin-
urable adjust-
adiness with
which the coeducation of the sexes has been taken up and de-
veloped ; and the faith, energy, and enthusiasm of teachers.
We have heard a great deal about what the East has done for
the West, as respects education and other matters ; the time
has come for drawing attention to what the West has done for
the East. Particular attention may be drawn to the coeduca-
tion of the sexes. In the five States are 95 institutions that
rank as colleges ; 68 of these admit women to their halls. Of
the 27 non-coeducational colleges, 21 are Protestant and 6
Roman Catholic. In this respect the new Northwest follows
the example of the old Northwest. Forty-one coeducation
and 17 non-coeducation colleges are found in the States of Min-
nesota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, California, and
Oregon. Besides, the largest, the most flourishing, and the
most influential colleges throw open their doors to men and
to women on equal terms.
The influence of the country beyond the Alleghany Moun-
tains on the population that occupies it, its reaction on the
Atlantic Plain, and its effect on the national life, character, and
government are themes demanding fuller investigation than
they have ever received. Here originated many of the crude
theories and vicious arts that blot our history and disfigure
our civilization. The West perfected, if she did not invent,
" wild-cat " banking ; she crowned the " spoils system " king
of politics ; she brought forth " manifest destiny ; " she fur-
nished the forces and the conditions that have produced Mor-
monism. Mr. Levermore says a full revelation of the con-
nection between the growth of a State banking system in the
West and sundry prevalent financial doctrines about the pow-
ers of Congress is essential to a satisfactory constitutional
history of the United States ; ' and Professor W. G. Sumner
points out with great clearness the vast influence on national
politics of certain Western financial views in the old day of
the United States Bank.' What a change had taken place
' The Republic of New Haven, Introduction.
' Andrew Jackson, in Statesmen Series 119 et seq.
ill
1:' ' 1
[ 1
406
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
in the country when General Jackson, the first Western Presi-
dent, ascended the President's chair in 1829. That the Amer-
lean system was not shattered to pieces by the admission to
it of the West, before 1840, is proof of its elasticity and power
second only to the Civil War. But the West has also con-
tributed incomparably valuable elements to American civili-
zation. Mention may be made of her all-abounding vitality,
her inexhaustible spirits, her unconquerable courage, her
largeness of views, her freedom from tradition, her power of
initiative, her unfailing faith in the Republic, and her confi-
dence in her own destiny. As a group, these topics cannot
be here considered ; but this work may fitly close with a
rapid view of the trend of political thought in the old North-
west.
There are two colonial periods in the history of the United
States. The first saw the English colonies established on the
Atlantic slope between the Kennebec and Savannah Rivers ;
the second saw the American colonies in the Mississippi Val-
ley. The first planting was mainly the work of the seven-
teenth century ; the second began before the Revolutionary
War, but its success was not assured until at Paris, in 1782,
the American Commissioners thwarted the purpose of the
three powers to shut us up between the Appalachian Mountains
and the Atlantic Ocean, and secured the Mississippi River as
our western boundary. It is no exaggeration to say that the
immediate effect of the first planting on the Englishman was
small, compared with the immediate effect of the second on
the American. For example, in the period that lies before
the Revolution constitutional monarchy was developed into
conservative republicanism, while in the period since the
Revolution conservative republicanism has been developed
into democracy. How thoroughly English the fathers of the
Revolution were, in political ideas and temper, is conclusively
shown by all their constructive political work, including the
Ordinance of 1787.
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
407
In some respects this is the most interesting document
that the Revolutionary era produced. All the constitutions of
that era, and particularly the National Constitution, were
largely the result of compromise ; but the framers of the Ordi-
nance legislated for the wilderness, and so were not compelled
to consult facts accomplished; they were free to put into their
work their best ideas of what a charter of free government
should be. And no man can read the Ordinance without see-
ing that the men who drafted it shrank from conclusions that
are commonly accepted now ; witness, for example, the provi-
sions relating to the qualifications of the governor, the repre-
sentative, and especially the elector. But these rules express
the average republicanism of 1787. Similar rules are found in
many of the State constitutions, and they stand as landmarks
from which we may measure how far the American people have
marched on the democratic road in a century. In fact, the in-
terval between the constitutional monarchy of 1690 and the
federal republicanism of 1 790 is less than the interval between
the federal republicanism of 1787 and the democracy of 1887.
The progress of democratic ideas is well illustrated by the
study of constitutional provisions relating to the suffrage, to
the powers assigned to the legislative and executive branches
of government, to the appointment and tenure of the judges,
and to the length of official terms.
In 1787 most of the States conditioned the elective fran-
chise upon a property qualification. Notwithstanding the
sore experience of the colonies with *he veto power, as
wielded by the colonial governors and the Crown, the States
still left that important power in the hands of their governors.
In twelve of the States the judges held office during good be-
havior, and in all of them they were appointed — in one by
the governor alone, in one by the council alone, in five by the
legislature, and in the others by the governor by and with the
consent of a confirming body.' These are the facts commonly
> Hitchcock : American State Constitutions, 48. %- ^ > ' i
t . ,
m
4o8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
—,.l
referred to by the Jeffersonian politicians when, a few years
later, they denounce the " monarchical " ideas and tendencies
of the Federalists.
The Constitutions of Kentucky, 1792, and Tennessee, 1796,
mark a distinct advance of democratical opinions. The first
one gave the suffrage to all free male citizens twenty-one years
of age having a two years residence in the State ; the second,
to every freeman of the same age having a six months resi-
dence. The first imposed no property qualification upon of-
fice-holders ; the second required that members of the as-
sembly should own freeholds of two hundred acres each, and
the governor a freehold of five hundred acres. The Ken-
tucky judges were appointed by the governor, to hold office
during good behavior; the Tennessee judges, by the legislat-
ure, for seven years. In Kentucky members of the House
of Representatives were chosen annually by the qualified
electors; the senators and governor every four years, by
electors chosen by the people ; the senators to be " men of
the most wisdom, experience, and virtue above twenty-seven
years of age." In Tennessee the same officers were chosen
every two years at the popular elections. The Governor of
Kentucky was clothed with the veto power, but the Gov-
ernor of Tennessee was not so clothed. Neither of these
constitutions was submitted to the people for their approval.
Mr. Jeflerson pronounced the Constitution of Tennessee
" the most republican yet framed in America." He must
have been equally well satisfied with that of Ohio. This
constitution permitted all white male inhabitants, twenty-one
years of age, who had resided in the State one year preced-
ing, and who also paid or were charged with a State or
county tax, to vote at all elections. No property qualification
was required of officers. The judges were chosen by the leg-
islature on joint ballot of the two houses, " to hold their offices
for the term of seven years if so long they behaved well."
The secretary of state, the auditor, and treasurer, as well as
the superior militia officers, were also appointed by the as-
A CENTURY *0F PROGRESS.
409
a few years
1 tendencies
lessee, 1796,
;. The first
ity-one years
the second,
months resi-
ion upon of-
s of the as-
res each, and
The Ken-
o hold office
' the legislat-
if the House
the qualified
ur years, by
be "men of
twenty-seven
were chosen
Governor of
ut the Gov-
her of these
ir approval,
f Tennessee
He must
Ohio. This
, twenty-one
year preced-
a State or
qualification
by the leg-
their offices
aved well."
r, as well as
by the as-
sembly. The governor had no veto, but he might tempora-
rily fill vacancies in the offices, regularly filled by the legislat-
ure, occurring in the recesses of that body. Members of the
legislature and the governor were elected for two years by
the people. The common explanation of the extreme limita-
tion of the executive power and of the unusual powers given
to the General Assembly is found in the frequent collisions
that occurred between Governor St. Clair and the Territorial
Legislature. This was no doubt one cause of the limitation ;
but it is probable that the Jeffersonian theory of government
was a more potent cause.' The Chief Magistrate of Ohio has
always been an officer of dignity rather than of power.
The Constitution of Ohio was not submitted to the peo-
ple. A resolution making provision for such submission was
lost by a decided vote — ayes, 7 ; nays, 27. Sometimes this
refusal has been ascribed to the supposed fear of the leaders
of the convention that the people would not approve the con-
stitution that had been framed, and sometimes to an undue
anxiety to get the new government in motion. At that time,
however, the practice of submitting constitutions to the peo-
ple for their approval had not become thoroughly established.
The Federalists of the State thought the failure to submit a
serious grievance ; and it is certainly true that the State was
brought into the Union in a manner little in accord with
those democratical principles which the State party so loudly
proclaimed. ^
The Constitutions of Indiana, 1816; of Michigan, 1837;
and of Wisconsin, 1848, conferred the suffrage upon white
' This is Mr. J. C Hamilton's explanation. Commenting upon the great
political change that occurred in i8oo, he says: "The Constitution of Ohio
shows the democratical opinions prevalent on the Western frontier. It reduced
the executive power almost to a nonentity, elevating and enlarging that of the leg-
islature, giving to it the election of the judges to hold office for a short term of
years, thus destroying their independence, and that of all the other officers, with
the exception of sheriffs and coroners, who, with the governor, were to be chosen
by the suffrages of all the people, residents for a year, and who had been charged
with a tax." — Life of Alexander Hamilton, VIL, 60a.
m-
f4^
'^■^.^'!bi
G]
4IO
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
male citizens, twenty-one years of age, having a short residence
in the State; that of Illinois, 1818, upon all white male in-
habitants similarly qualified. No property-qualification was
imposed upon office-holders in any one of them. Michigan
and Wisconsin gave their governors the veto ; Indiana and
Illinois did not ; Indiana and Michigan made the judges' ten-
ure seven years ; Illinois and Wisconsin made it good behav-
ior. In Indiana the superior judges were appointed by the
governor, with the Senate's approval, the inferior ones by the
legislature ; in Michigan, the superior judges were appointed
as in Indiana, but the inferior ones were elected by the peo-
ple. In Illinois all judges were appointed by the governor,
with the consent of the Senate. By 1848 the tide in favor
of an elective judiciary had attained its full volume, and we
are not surprised to find, therefore, the Constitution of Wis-
consin providing that all judges should be chosen by the
qualified electors of their several circuits or counties. In
Indiana the governor's term was made three years ; in Illinois,
four; in Michigan and Wisconsin, two. The Constitutions of
the first two States were not submitted to the people ; those
of the last two were submitted.
Another gauge of the trend of political opinion in the
Northwest is furnished by the history of political parties.
The overthrow of the Federal party and the admission of
Ohio to the Union came practically at the same time. But
even if the Federalists could have maintained themselves in
the old States, there is not the smallest probability that they
could have imposed their ideas upon a single one of the
Northwestern States. Three things that run into one an-
other, and are yet separable, are contemporaneous with the
colonization of the Northwest: The establishment of the
American Republic, the increased energy of the democratiz-
ing movement considered as a tone of thought or stream of
tendency, and the organization of the Democratic-Republican
party. These causes, together with the powerful democratical
stimulus of backwoods life, were more than sufficient to es-
::■;. .„.. v^
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
411
tablish the party of Jefferson in the States of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois. The people of these States favored the acquisi-
tion of Louisiana and the War of 1812, and were opposed to
a national bank. Ohio was so strongly Democratic, and the
legislature was so all-powerful, that in 18 10 some of the judges
who had declared State laws unconstitutional were impeached,
and in 1820 an attempt was made to nullify the law charter-
ing the United States Bank. Ohio voted for all the Demo-
cratic-Republican Presidents : Jefferson, Madison, and Mon-
roe. Clay received the electoral vote in 1824, but Adams
received the State's vote in the House of Representatives.
From this time on Mr. Clay had a numerous and ardent fol-
lowing in the State. This was due partly to growing inter-
est in a protective tariff and in internal improvements, partly
to Mr. Clay's political history and personal character, and
partly to the fact that he was a Western man. General Jack-
son carried the State in 1828 and in 1832 ; Harrison, in 1836
and 1840; Clay, in 1844.; Cass, in 1848; and Pierce, in 1852.
From 1828 to 1856 the governors were about equally divided
between the two parties. In Indiana the Democratic-Repub-
lican and Democratic parties elected the presidential electors
from i8i6to i86o, save in 1836 and 1840, when the Whigs car-
ried the State. Illinois gave her electoral votes to the same
parties down to i860, but her vote in the House of Repre-
sentatives was cast for Adams in 1824. Michigan's electoral
vote was cast for Van Buren in 1836, but was not counted;
for Harrison in 1840, and for the Democratic candidates in
1844, in 1848, and in 1852.
In 1848 the five States all voted for General Cass, giving
him an aggregate plurality over Taylor of 37,707; in 1852
they all voted for General Pierce, giving him an aggregate
plurality over Scott of 66,216. The Democratic pluralities
had much more than kept pace with the growth of popula-
tion. The national Democratic party felt proud and confix
dent in the strength of its position in 1852; but political in-
sight could then discern, what history soon proved to be the
^16
'■::r* ■"?;■-
412
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
fact, that only an occasion was wanting to effect a combina-
tion of elements that would drive that party from power. A
large majority of Northern Whigs were at heart opposed to
the further extension of slavery. The Democratic party in
the North also contained a large anti-slavery element. Then
there was the Liberty party, or Free-soilers, who gave Birney
62,300 votes in 1844; Van Buren, 291,263 in 1848 ; and Hale,
155,825 in 1852. In the Northwest Birney's vote was 17,358;
Van Buren's, 80,035 ; and Hale's, 64,619. Nor did the falling
off in the Free-soil vote from 1848 to 1852 indicate a decline
of the party strength ; a large part of Van Buren's vote rep-
resented Democratic disaffection rather than anti-slavery prin-
ciple. Obviously, here were the elements of a formidable
new political party, if they could be united.
Their overwhelming defeat in 1852 convinced Northern
Whigs that the usefulness of the Whig organization was a
thing of the past. Their great victory of the same year made
the Democrats more blind and confident than ever ; and two
years later they repealed the Missouri Compromise, thereby
reopening the question of slavery north of 36° 30' beyond
the State of Missouri. This act brought the anti-slavery ele-
ments of the North together in a new political organization
with a rapidity and success unexampled in the history of the
country.
An anti-Nebraska convention held in Michigan in June,
1854, baptized the new party Republican. In Wisconsin the
new party was organized with equal promptness. Since that
time neither one of these States has ever failed to elect Re-
publican presidential electors. Michigan gave Fremont 71,762
votes; Buchanan, 52,136; Wisconsin gave them 66,090 and
52,843, respectively. However, the great change of the vote
from 1852 in both of these States was not wholly due to change
of opinion, but partly to emigration. The Republicans of
Ohio elected Mr. Chase governor in 1855, and since that year
they have never failed to return a Republican electoral college.
Fremont received 187,497 votes; Buchanan, 170,874. In
T^.^:
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
413
Indiana and Illinois the elements that coalesced in the Re-
publican party were weaker than in the other Northwestern
States. The old national pike has been aptly called " a sort
of Mason and Dixon's line, " since it formerly separated the
Republican counties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois from the
Democratic counties. South of this line the two States were
fully settled in 1850; north of it there were still unsettled
tracts of territory. Population was also more dense South
than North. Besides, the Southern-born population of Indi-
ana was twenty per cent, of the whole population; the South-
ern-born population of Illinois sixteen per cent, of the whole.
The two States, respectively, gave Buchanan 118,670 and
105,348 votes, and Fr6mont 94,375 and 96,189 votes. In
the years following 1856 the Republican party increased in
strength throughout the country. In the two States, besides
changes of opinion, emigration told powerfully on the Repub-
lican side. By 1870 the Southern-born population of Indiana
had fallen to ten per cent., of Illinois to nine per cent., of the
whole. In i860 both States gave Lincoln large majorities
over Douglas ; and since that year they have uniformly re-
turned Republican electors, except that Indiana gave her vote
to Mr. Tilden in 1876 and Mr. Cleveland in 1884. Space will
not be taken to enumerate the Republican leaders that the
Northwest has furnished ; but it is a noteworthy fact that
four of the party's six presidential candidates, and all the suc-
cessful ones, have been Northwestern men. The Northwest
decided the constitutional contest between freedom and sla-
very. Mr. Seward said, at Madison, Wisconsin, in i860 : " It
seems almost as if it was providential that these new States
of the Northwest, the State of Michigan, the State of Wis-
consin, the State of Iowa, the State of Ohio, founded on this
reservation for freedom that had been made in the year 1787,
matured just in the critical moment to interpose, to rally the
free States of the Atlantic coast, to call them back to their
ancient principles, to n e them to sustain them in the con-
test at the Capitol, and to send their noble and true sons and
l|li!
t;:.!:
414
THE OLD NOR'^HWEST.
daughters to the plains of Kansas, to defend, at the peril of
their homes, and even their lives, if need were, the precious
soil which had been abandoned by the Government to slavery,
from the intrusion of that, the greatest evil that has ever be-
fallen our land." '
In the United States political changes are quite as rapid
and extreme as any others. The history of the last thirty
years is full of the profoundest lessons for the statesman and
the moralist. Externally the political situation, after the pres-
idential election of 1852, was exceedingly deceptive. No po-
litical party ever felt more confidence in its position than the
Democratic party in 1853. No political party was ever more
thoroughly divided and broken than the same party eight
years later. No political party ever accomplished its orig-
inal object more quickly and effectually than the Republican
party after 1861. So completely was that object secured,
and everything logically involved in it ; so entirely have its
original aspirations become matters of history; so different
are the specific party doctrines in 1887 from what they were
in 1857, that it is not superfluous to state that the original
Republican platform contained but one " plank " on which
all the members of the party stood. This was the declaration
of the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in the
territories. It was the sixth compact of 1787 become apo-
litical creed. This creed the Northwest embraced with the
more alacrity because her own history and daily life were evi-
dence of its truth and value.
The Northwest opposed secession with much more una-
nimity than she opposed the spread of slavery. In all the
Northwestern States there was more or less opposition or in-
difference to the Union cause ; in those that extended to the
Ohio River, and particularly in Indiana and Illinois, by rea-
son of their large Southern-born population, there was some
actual disloyalty and overt treason ; but no other part of the
"Works, IV., 325.
-'?=t--
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
415
Union has greater reason for thinking of the part it played
in the great contest with satisfaction and pride. The Presi-
dent, the great finance and war ministers, the foremost gen-
erals, were Northwestern men ; while she furnished one-third
of the total physical force that suppressed the Rebellion.'
The Northwest has shared to the full Western faith in the
West. What this is is best shown on a background of Eastern
narrowness and jealousy. That the annexation of Louisiana
in 1803 was in the line of providence will hardly be denied
to-day by any man who believes in providence at all ; but it
was vigorously opposed at the time, on the ground that it
would subtract from the weight and influence of the old
States, particularly New England. Josiah Quincy avowed
the sentiment of great numbers of Eastern people when in
181 1 he declared, on the floor of the House of Representa-
tives, that the admission of the Territory of Orleans as a
State to the Union would be its dissolution ; that it would
free the States from their moral obligations to each other ;
and that it would, in that event, be the duty of some States,
as it would be the right of all, definitely to prepare for a sep-
aration, amicably if they could, violently if they must. Dan-
iel Webster was a man too large to share the small views of
his Eastern neighbors ; but Daniel Webster did say in the
'Table Showing Number of Men called for by the President of the
United States, and Furnished by the Northwestern States, dur-
ing the War of the Rebellion. (This table is compiled from Phisterer :
Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States, 10.)
Ohio
Indiana
Illinois
Michigan
Wisconsin
Total
Total for the United States,
Quota.
306,333
199,788
»44,496
951O07
iog,o8o
954.693
2,763,670
Total Fur-
nished.
313,180
196,363
359,091
87,364
9«.337
947,326
2,859,132
Number re-
duced to
Three Years'
Standard.
240,514
'53.576
aM.133
80,111
79,260
767.594
3,330,37a
>^, *
.,-.^ \
•!^
4i6
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
Senate, in 1846, that the St. Johns was worth a hundred times
as much as the Columbia was or ever would be. The speech
of the Revolution was continental ; there was the " Continen-
tal Congress," the " Continental Money," the " Continental
Army;" but the ideas cf the Revolution were not continen-
tal. It is one of the achievements of the West to have taught
the East the continental lesson.
Her geographical position and relations have always caused
the Northwest to take a deep interest in the territorial ex-
pansion and integrity of the Union, and particularly in the
use and ownership of the Mississippi River. First and last,
that river has presen ,ed five distinct questions to the Ameri-
can people.
The question of 1782 was : " Shall the United States ex-
tend to the Mississippi, or shall the country beyond the
mountains be left to England or Spain, or to the two powers
together?" The answer given to this question was the
boundaries of 1783.
The second question was : " Shall the United States, and
particularly the West, be allowed that use and benefit of the
river to which their position fairly entitles them, or shall
Spain be suffered to exclude them from its waters ? " This
question first arose when Mr. Jay was sent to the Spanish
Court to negotiate a treaty of alliance. Nothing was con-
cluded at Madrid or at Paris touching this question ; so far
from it, the concession by England of the independence of the
States, with their rightful boundaries, led at once to new
complications. As these were a sequel to the discussions at
Madrid and Paris, they will be traced somewhat at length.
The treaty of 1763 made a line running along the middle
of the Mississippi from its source to the River Iberville, and
thence along the middle of the Iberville, and Lakes Maurepas
and Pontchartrain, the boundary between the possessions of
England and Spain. England immediately divided Florida
into two provinces, separated by the Appalachicola River.
On the north their boundaries were, at first, the thirty-first
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
417
parallel of north latitude from the Mississippi to the Appa-
lachicola, thence down that river to its junction with the Flint,
thence by a straight line to the head of the St. Marys River,
and thence by the St. Marys to the ocean. But the next
year, she carried West Florida one hundred and ten miles
farther north, making the northern boundary of that province
a due east and west line extending from the mouth of the
Yazoo to the Appalachicola. The northern boundary of
Florida, as established in 1763, became the southern boundary
of the United States in 1783. But by a treaty signed the
same day as the American treaty of 1783, England ceded the
Floridas to Spain, mentioning no boundaries whatever. An
immediate conflict between the United States and Spain was
the result. The United States claimed down to the thirty-
first parallel ; Spain claimed the Floridas, with ihe boundaries
that they had when England ceded them. In other words,
the block of land lying north of parallel 31° and south of an
east and west line running through the mouth of the Yazoo,
between the Mississippi and the Appalachicola, was in dispute.
The United States certainly had a good title, and Spain could
say much in defence of hers. Moreover, it must be remem-
bered that Spain had captured the British posts in West
Florida, and was in possession of them at the close of the war.
Instead of surrendering the territory that she held falling
within the limits of the United States, Spain began to
strengthen herself in West Florida, building new forts and re-
enforcing old ones. She controlled the river as far as the
mouth of the Ohio on both sides, and beyond that point on
the west side. She made treaties with the Indians residing
in the district, they recognizing the Spanish title and agreeing
to defend it. For the time, the Republic was no more able to
drive the Spanish garrisons from the Southwest than she was
to drive the British garrisons from the Northwest. So the
issue was left to diplomacy and the logic of events. And,
however it might be with diplomacy, the logic of events
worked more and more on the American side.
27
r !
m: '■
4i8
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
The preliminary treaty of 1782 between the United States
and His Britannic Majesty contained a secret article to the
effect " that in case Great Britain, at the conclusion of the
present war, shall recover or be put in possession of West
Florida, the line of north boundary between the said province
and the United States shall be a line drawn from the mouth
of the River Yazoo, where it unites with the Mississippi, due
east to the River Appalachicola." As Great Britain did not
" recover," and was not " put in possession of " West Florida,
this article fell ; but its existence soon became known to His
Catholic Majesty and gave him mortal offence. Again the
treaty of 1783, by an article which was not secret, declared
that " the navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source
to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects
of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States." This
provision seems strange, to say the least. Great Britain, ac-
cording to the terms of the two treaties, no longer touched the
Mississippi at a single point, although the sources of that river
were supposed to be within her territories; moreover, from
the thirty-first parallel to the Gulf the river lay wholly within
the Spanish possessions. How, then, since it is a rule of
public law that the owner of the mouth of a river controls it,
granting ingress and egress as he sees fit, could the two powers
agree to such a stipulation ? No answer to this question is
apparent, except this, that the treaty merely ceded the right
of navigation so far as the United States were concerned.
Finally, His Catholic Majesty saw very clearly that an Amer-
ican republic, in the free use of the Mississippi River, fore-
boded disaster to the Floridas, to Louisiana, and to Mexico.
All in all, it was most natural that he should be offended at
the American treaty, that he should discover every day a new
reason why the States should have been confined to the Atlan-
tic shore, and that he should stoutly maintain his ri<,fht to the
territory lying below the Yazoo. From 1784 onward the
Mississippi River was a " burning question " in our politics.
No man can do justice to it who does not encompass the social,
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
419
industrial, and political life of the nascent society then form-
ing in the valleys of the streams flowing into the Mississippi
on its eastern side.
All through the Revolution, and still more afterward,
population west of the mountains was increasing. Scattered
through the valleys of the Ohio and of the streams falling
into it ; cut off from the east by the high mountain-wall that
had so long been a barrier to emigration ; bound to the old
States by feeble ties ; having no means but the Mississippi
of reaching the markets of the world with their constantly
increasing products ; bold, hardy, adventurous, with plenty of
lawless and reckless characters — it is not strange that this
population chafed and grew restive under the restraints which
the King of Spain imposed upon the great river. The na-
tional authority was too weak either to expel the Spaniard
from the disputed district or to compel, at New Orleans,
commercial concessions. This, however, the West could but
poorly understand. Again, those States that did not run
over the mountains evinced an almost total inability to un-
derstand this nascent society, its commercial necessities, and
the drift of its political tendencies. In fact, large numbers of
people in these States looked askance upon the growing
West, and cared little or nothing whether it had any outlet
to the world or not. The hesitation of Congress to admit
Kentucky to the Union, and the breakdown of the State of
Franklin, added to the growing irritation. It was a time of
upheavals in both worlds ; Revolution was in the air, and the
peculiar conditions of Western life invited reckless and des-
perate schemers. Minister Genet fomented Western hatred
of the Spaniard ; George Rogers Clark organized a formi-
dable expedition to descend the river, and seize its mouth ;
and Senator Blount, of Tennessee, was expelled from the
United States Senate because he tried to induce England to
send an army from Canada, by Lake Michigan and the Missis-
sippi, to Louisiana and the Floridas. Boatloads of Kentucky
products were confiscated and the boats broken up ; but, gen-
420 THE OLD NORTHWEST.
crally, a trade more or less open, more or less clandestine, was
carried on. The times were rife with intrigue, rascality, and
corruption. James Wilkinson, who moved to Kentucky in
1784, found there a home that gave full scope to his remark-
able talents for speculation and intrigue. Spanish agents
constantly travelled on various errands through the Valley of
the Ohio. American speculators and informers as constantly
visited New Orleans. At one time there seemed a probabil-
ity that the Western people would detach themselves from
the States and form a union with the Spaniards, and at an-
other there was a probability that they would secede from the
Union, swallow up the Spaniards in the Southwest, and
create a Mississippi Valley nation. Indian wars in the West-
ern country, a discontented and almost rebellious popula-
tion in the valley, the whiskey-insurrection in Pennsylvania,
England refusing to carry out her treaty-stipulations, France
fomenting domestic troubles and trying to commit the United
States to a foreign war, and England and Spain trying to de-
tach the West, first from the Confederacy and afterward from
the Union — surely the Republic was sorely vexed. Then it
was that the first disunion scheme was broached, antedating
Aaron Burr's plans as well as nullification and secession :
namely, a scheme to divide the country by a north and south
line drawn along the Alleghany Mountains. How imminent
separation was, at least an attempt at separation, was not ap-
preciated at the time; ' nor has history yet done full justice to
' "I need not remark to you, Sir, that the flanks and rear of the United States
are possessed by other powers, and formidable ones too ; nor how necessary it is
to apply the ament of interest to bind all parts of the Union together by indissoluble
bonds, especially that part of it which lies immediately west of us, with the Mid-
dle States. For what ties, let me ask, should we have upon those people ? How
entirely unconnected with them shall we be, and what troubles may we not ap-
prehend, if the Spaniards on their right, and Great Britain on their left, instead
of throwing s'.umbling-blocks in their way, as they now do, should hold out lines
for their trade and alliance? What, when they get strength, which will be sooner
than most people conceive (from the emigration of foreigners, who will have no
particular predilection towards us, as well as from the removal of our own citi-
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
421
idestine, was
-ascality, and
Kentucky in
his remark-
»anish agents
the Valley of
as constantly
;d a probabil-
mselves from
Is, and at an-
cede from the
uthwest, and
i in the VVest-
lious popula-
Pennsylvania,
ations, France
lit the United
1 trying to de-
fterward from
:ed. Then it
d, antedating
nd secession :
rth and south
[ow imminent
n, was not ap-
fuU justice to
I the United States
low necessary it is
her by indissoluble
us, with the Mid-
ose people ? How
;s may we not np-
their left, instead
juld hold out lines
lich will be sooner
who will have no
pi of our own citi-
the subject. It is pertinent to remark that, had the New
England Federalists, who had small sympathy with the West,
had their way, it is not improbable that the West would have
been lost ; not, indeed, through formal excision, but through
failure to strengthen its connections with the Union. Cer-
tain it is that the Virginia statesmen of the Republican school,
who understood the Western problem much better than the
New Englanders, on account of their closer connection with
the Western people, then rendered the cause of American
union and nationality an invaluable service.
Almost always the history of the Mississippi question has
been written from what may be called a Kentucky stand-
point. Great stress has been laid on the unreasonable and
arbitrary course taken by the Spaniard ; small allowance has
been made for his fears, rights, and jealousies. Spain was
weak, torpid, almost effete ; but the Mississippi controversy
touched her, as Mr. McMaster has well stated, on the one
point which still remained exquisitely sensitive. " Whoever
touched her there, touched her to the quick. Her treasury
might be empty, her finances might be in frightful disorder,
her army a rabble, her ships lie rotting at the docks. A
horde of pirates might exact from her a yeady tribute, com-
petition might drive her merchants from the sea, and she
might in European politics exert far less influence than the
single city of Amsterdam, or the little State of Denmark,
All this could be borne. But the slightest encroachment on
her American domains had more than once proved sufficient
to rouse her from her lethargy and to strengthen her feeble
nerves." ' Hence the alarm with which she viewed the
zens), will be the consequence of their having formed close connections with both
or either of those powers, in a commercial way ? It needs not, in my opinion,
the gift of prophecy to foretell. The Western States (I speak now from my own
observation) stand, as it were, upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn
them any way." — Washington to Governor Harrison of Va., in 1784. Writings,
IX., 6a, 63.
' History of the People 01 the United States, I., 37a. ■?•,-
■•\f
m
1!!'
mi
m'i\
422
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
growth of the Western settlements; her attempt, in 1782, to
confine the States to the Atlantic shore ; her determination
to hold the territory between the mouth of the Yazoo and
the thirty-first parallel ; and the feeble-forcible policy that
she pursued to the very last in reference to the Mississippi,
sometimes threatening and sometimes wheedling her terrible
neighbors to the north. It must be remembered, too, that
the people of New Orleans were French, and that the Span-
ish Governor ruled over foreigners. Mr. Cable has told the
story from the stand-point of New Orleans. How " the Span-
ish occupation never became more than a conquest ; " how,
in 1793, whe.i Spain and France were at war, the governor
" found he was only holding a town of the enemy ; " how the
Creole sang " The Marseillaise " in the theatre ; how the city
was fortified against its own inhabitants, as well as an outside
foe ; how, again, " the enemy looked for from without was
the pioneers of Kentucky and Georgia ; " how '* Spain in-
trigued. Congress menaced, and oppressions, concessions, de-
ceptions and corruptions lengthened out the years ; " how
there came to the governor " commissioners from the State of
Georgia demanding liberty to extend her boundary to the
Mississippi, as granted in the Treaty of Paris ; " how " Or-
leens," as the Westerners called it, was " to Spain the key to
her possessions," " to the West the only possible breathing-
hole of its commerce ; " how, by 1786, " the flatboat fleets that
came floating out of the Ohio and Cumberland, seeking on
the lower Mississippi a market ai.J port for their hay and
bacon and flour and corn, began to be challenged from the
banks, halted, seized and confiscated ; " how *' the exasperated
Kentuckians openly threatened and even planned to descend
in flatboats full of long rifles instead of bread stuffs, and make
an end of controversy by the capture of New Orleans ; " how
the security of the city was thought essential to the security
of all Louisiana, the Floridas, and even Mexico ; and how the
authorities sometimes received the pioneers who swarmed
down to their border, not as invaders but as emigrants, yield-
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
423
)t, in 1782, to
letermination
le Yazoo and
e policy that
e Mississippi,
g her terrible
;red, too, that
lat the Span-
has told the
w " the Span-
quest ; " how,
the governor
ly ; " how the
how the city
as an outside
without was
w " Spain in-
jncessions, de-
years ; " how
n the State of
indary to the
' how " Or-
lin the key to
Die breathing-
oat fleets that
id, seeking on
heir hay and
ged from the
le exasperated
ed to descend
affs, and make
'rleans;" how
the security
and how the
who swarmed
igrants, yield-
ing allegiance to Spain, and sometimes did their utmost to
foment a revolt against Congress and the secession of the
West — all this, and much more, has Mr. Cable told in his
own admirable manner.'
Sometimes the port of New Orleans was open, sometimes
closed ; and sometimes, as Mr. Cable says, '* neither closed nor
open," by which he means that it was legally closed but
practically open, at least to preferred traders who were in col-
lusion with the Spanish authorities. In 1785-86 Mr. Jay,
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, conducted a long and
tedious negotiation with Gardoqui, the Spanish minister,
touching the issues between the two countries. But the ne-
gotiation came to nothing beyond alarming and angering the
West, since Mr. Jay, as well as several States voting in Con-
gress, had declared a willingness, for the sake of peace and
amity, to yield the claim to the free use of the Mississippi for
a term of years. In 1793, when the Creole was singing "The
Marseillaise," Spain conceded to the United States open com-
merce with her colonies, and then, as soon as the song ceased,
she withdrew the concession. Governor Carondplet wrote :
" Since my taking possession of the government, tl is province
has not ceased to be threatened by the ambitious designs of
the Americans." Evidently, fear of the gaunt Kentuckian was
again in the ascendant. But, finally, the two powers con-
cluded at Madrid, in October, 1795, a treaty intended to com-
pose all their difficulties.
Article 2 of this treaty confirmed the boundary given to
the United States by England in 1783. The same article
provided for the withdrawal of any troops, garrisons, or settle-
ments that either party might have within the territory of the
other party, said withdrawal to be made within six months
after the ratification of the treaty, and sooner, if possible.
Article 3 made provision for a commission to survey and mark
the boundary from the Mississippi to the sea. Article 4 de-
;ti^:f
iii;>
• The Creoles of Louisiana, XVL, XVIL
i
424
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
clared the middle of the channel of the Mississippi the west-
ern boundary of the States, from their northern boundary to
the thirty-first parallel of north latitude. Article 4 also de-
clared : "And His Catholic Majesty has likewise agreed that
the navigation of the said river, in its whole breadth from its
source to the ocean, shall be free only to his subjects and the
citizens of the United States, unless he should extend this
privilege to the subjects of other powers by special conven-
tion." Article 22 permitted the citizens of the United States,
for three years, to deposit their merchandise in the port of
New Orleans, and reship the same without other duty or
charge than a fair price for storage, and declared that His Cath-
olic Majesty would either extend this right of deposit beyond
the three years or would assign the Americans some other
place of deposit on the bank of the river.
Perhaps the United States fondly expected that the Treaty
of Madrid would end all troubles. Far from it. The con-
cessions that it contained were extorted from Spain by fears
growing out of the state of Continental affairs, and there is
only too much reason to think that she regarded them only
as diplomatic manoeuvres, to serve a temporary purpose.
Certain it is that Spanish procrastination and intrigue delayed
carrying into effect the promise in regard to withdrawing
troops and garrisons; and it was not until March, 1798, that
the Spanish Governor stealthily abandoned rather than for-
mally surrendered the territory above the thirty-first parallel.
Then, on the expiration of the three years, the Spanish In-
tendant at New Orleans denied the longer right of deposit at
that port, and failed to designate, as the Treaty of Madrid pro-
vided, an " equivalent establishment." This act set the West
all in a ferment again, and war between the two nations
seemed imminent. Alarmed at the prospect of war, Spain
reopened the port, but only to close it again in 1802, just as
Louisiana was slipping from the hand of His Catholic Majesty
into the hand of First Consul Bonaparte.
Such was the answer to the second Mississippi question.
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
42 s
The third question was : " Shall the United States or
France own and control the mouth of the river ? " It really
involved the ownership of the Western half of the great valley.
The natural boundary of the United States in 1783 was the
Mississippi ; they could not safely stop short of that limit —
they need not extend beyond it; but in 1803 it was as important
for them to control the river absolutely as it had been for them
twenty years before to extend to its middle line. In 1800
Spain, having been in possession for thirty-seven years, agreed
to retrocede Louisiana to France ; and this agreement, as soon
as known on this side of the ocean, brought the new question
immediately to the front. In April, 1802, President Jefferson
wrote to Robert R. Livingston, the American minister at
Paris : " There is on the globe one single spot the possessor of
which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans,
through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory
must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long
yield more than one-half of our whole produce, and contain
more than half our inhabitants.'" In February, 1803, he wrote
to M. Dupont : " The suspension of the right of deposit at
New Orleans, ceded to us by our treaty with Spain, threw our
whole country into such a ferment as immediately threatened
its peace. This, however, was believed to be the act of the In-
tendant unauthorized by his government. But it showed the
necessity of making effectual arrangements to secure the peace
of the two countries against the indiscreet acts of subordinate
agents. . . . The occlusion of the Mississippi is a state of
things in which we cannot exist. ... Our circumstances
are so imperious as to admit of no delay as to our course, and
the use of the Mississippi so indispensable that we cannot
hesitate one moment to hazard our existence for its mainten-
ance " * How urgent the case was is apparent from the rapid
growth of population on what were then called " the Western
waters," the boundless capabilities of the country that they
' Works, rV., 432.
Works, IV., 457-
';Im;
426
THE OLD NORTHWEST.
occupied, and their absolute dependence upon the Mississippi
as a means of reaching the markets of the world. Exclusive
of Western Pennsylvania, the over-mountain population was
166,641 in 1790, 469,397 in 1800, and 1,162,939 in 1810.
What was less than five per cent, of the total population of
the Union grew in twenty years to be more than sixteen per
cent. The annexation of Louisiana by purchase in 1803 was
the answer that the Republic made to the third Mississippi
question. It reunited, politically and historically, the great
valley, divided since 1763. Mr. Madison in 1802 said "the
Mississippi was everything to the Western people; the Hud-
son, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable streams
of the Atlantic States formed into one stream."
The transfer of Louisiana to the United States filled the
Court of Spain with fresh alarm and anger. It confirmed the
worst fears that she had entertained in 1782; it removed the
screen heretofore interposed between the United States and
Mexico ; and it immediately gave rise to the fourth question ;
*' Shall the United States reap all the advantages naturally
flowing from the purchase — shall the act of 1803 stand in its
full integrity ? " Practically, it assumed the form : " What
are the extent and boundaries of the purchase ? " The treaty
answered : " The colony or province of Louisiana with the
same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that
it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be
after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and
other States." ' History alone could tell what this language
meant, and the two powers could not agree as to her answer.
After a long controversy that more than once threatened to
involve them in war, in 18 19 they came to an agreement.
Florida became a possession of the United States by purchase,
thus ending the dispute as to the eastern extension of Louisi-
ana ; and the Sabine, the Red River, the one-hundredth me-
' Spain was still in actual possession of the province when the treaty was
signed. She delivered it to France, November 30, 1803, and France to the
United States a month later.
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS.
427
Mississippi
Exclusive
Uation was
5 in 1 8 10.
pulation of
sixteen per
n 1803 was
Mississippi
', the great
said "the
.; the Hud-
ble streams
:s filled the
nfirmed the
smoved the
States and
h question :
's naturally
stand in its
: "What
The treaty
la with the
n, and that
should be
Spain and
is language
ler answer.
eatened to
agreement.
y purchase,
1 of Louisi-
dredth me-
the treaty was
France to the
ridian, the Arkansas, and the forty-second parallel of North
latitude were made the boundary between the United States
and Mexico, thus practically excluding the Spaniard from the
Mississippi Valley.
The fifth and last Mississippi question came with the Civil
War. " Shall the Father of Waters flow all the way from his
remotest sources to the sea through the territory of the
United States, or shall he, below latitude 36° 30", roll his
floods through a foreign country ? " This question involved
all that had gone before it. The Southern leaders thought
the river so indispensable to the Northwest that, threatened
with its loss, it would rather cleave to the South and
part company with the East. These leaders did not mis-
calculate the estimate that the people of the Northwest set
upon the river. But they wofully miscalculated the terms
upon which they were willing to possess it. How thoroughly
the Northwestern people comprehended the issue, and the
means by which it must be reached, is shown by the heroic
part which they sustained in the long and arduous effort to
reopen the Mississippi after it had been closed by the Con-
federacy. Still, the Northwestern troops have not the exclu-
sive glory of winning back to the Union this great national
highway. President Lincoln thus distributed the honor of
this glorious achievement in August, 1863 : " The Father of
Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great
Northwest for it ; nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred
miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jer-
sey hewing their way right and left. The sunny South, too,
in more colors than one also lent a helping hand. On the
spot, their part of the history was jotted down in black and
white. The job was a great national one, and let none be
slighted who bore an honorable part in it." ' The mainte-
nance of the Union was the answer to the last Mississippi
question.
' Raymond : Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, 442.
!;i;lil
iliii,'
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INDEX.
^ries. Boston,
tical History of
82.
Chicago, 1882.
;5. Diplomatic
Dn, 1829.
I, 1886.
nsin from 1836
antic Monthly,
merican States-
ine of Western
eries. Boston.
; of Ohio State
lond, 1886.
Michigan Pio-
; United States
1882.
. 1833.
io. CJeveland,
Northern Ohio
ica. Boston.
Acadia cerlcd to England, 66
Adams, John, 167
Adams, J. Q., opinion on Ohio and
Michigan boundary question, 333
Admission of Northwestern States, 317
Aix-la-Chapelle, terms of treaty of, 57
Albany Congress, 125, 201
Alleghany Valley, first occupied by
French, 47
Allen, 107
Allen, Ethan, 116
Amendments on land questions, 206
Anglo-French war, character of, 55
Anti-slavery views, in Ohio, 390
Aranda, Count de, negotiations with Jay,
Ark, The, 303
Arkansas, influence of, on admission of
Michigan, 334
Articles of Confederation, 222
Arthur the First, 310
Augusta County, Va., 104
Aylion, explorer and settler, 6
Baltimore, Lord, 78
Banks, hostility to, in Wisconsin, 343
Berkeley, Lord John, buys New Jersey,
95
Bienville, report on Ohio 'Valley, 6i
Bird, Captain, 158
Blanca, Count Florida, 172
Boone, Daniel, 265
Boundary lines, difficulty of defining, 20
disputes between Connecticut and
New York, 94
of the United States, 121, 180, 165,
187
Brandt, 115
British, Government, Western land pol-
icy of, 120
occupation of West after the Revo-
lution, 184
Brule, Etienne, discovers copper, 25
Bunch of Grapes, 268
Burke, Edmund, on America, 145
Butler, 115
28
Butler, Captain Zebulon, in Wyoming
Valley, 112
Cabot, John, discovers America, 12
Cabot, Sebastian, visits America, 12
Cadillac, La Motte, 47
Cahokia, 293
Campus Martins, 286
Canad.a, taken by Cartier, 10
ceded to England, 66
Pamphlet, 127
Franklin's view concerning, 128
proposed cession to U. S., 169
refugees, lands reserved for, 259
Cape Breton Island ceded to England, 66
Carroll, Daniel, 222
Carolina grant, 80
Carteret, Sir George, 95
Cartier, James, 9
Centre of population, 393
Cessions, Maryland's influence upon, 216
by New York, 229, 237
by Virginia, 244
by Massachusetts, 246
by Connecticut, 247
dangers of, to the Republic, 251
Champlain, Samuel de, 10, 22, 23
Charles I., grant to Lord Baltimore, 78
Charles II., grant of Carolina, 80
chatters Connecticut Co., 87
charters Rhode Island, 88
grants New England to Duke of
York, 92
Charter, to Sir Walter Raleigh, 71
to Lord Baltimore, 78
to Carolina, 80
to Connecticut Company, 87
to Rhode Island, 88
to Penn, 98
Chase, Chief Justice, on claims of Unit-
ed States to Western lands, 250
Chicago, 398
Chippewas cede lands, 256
Choate, Rufus, on colonial boundaries,
90
Christian Indians, 259
434
INDEX.
i
Church lands, 276
("incinnati, Society of, 288
Cincinnati, early name of, 28S
Clark, George Rogers, the conquest of
country west o. .heOliio, 153, 183
instructions from Patrick Henry,
154
Clarendon, Earl of, sells Plyniouth
giant, 82
Cleaveland, General Moses, 373
Coeducation in Northwest, 405
Colbert represses Canadian political
life, 52
Coles, Edward, influence on Black Laws
of Illinois, 360, 363
Colonial periods, 406
Colonics, French and English, contrast-
ed, 38, 39
extent of the Thirteen in 1776, 164
College statistics in Northwest, 403
Color line in Ohio Constitution, 357
Columbia, 288
Columbia River, Webster's view of, 394
Committee on Northwestern land claims,
224, 226
Conception River, 31
Confederacy, fear of Western and
Southern, governs northern boun-
dary of Illinois, 327
Confederation, articles of, 207
Congress, land policy of, 205, 219
Connecticut, how originally constituted,
Company chartered, 87
and New Haven consolidated, 88
disputes with Massachusetts, 89
disputes with New York, 94
quarrel with William Penn, no
Westward emigration, H2
in Pennsylvania, 114
claim to Western la, ids, 199
cedes her Western lands to Con-
gress, 247
Western Reserve, 368
School Fund of, 370
Land Company, 372
resigns jurisdiction of Western Re-
serve, 378
influence on Western Reserve, 388
Connolly, Dr. John, 106, 152
Continental Army at close of Revolu-
tion, 267
Coronada explores Mississippi Valley, 7
Coureurs des bois, i.f., French bush-
rangers, character of. 41
Court in early territorial days, 303
Culpepper, Lord, 79
Currituck River, 80
Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, 268, 275, 346
Crawford, Colonel William, 198
C'lawford, W. II., on slavery, 363
Croghan, report of, 48, 49
Crozat, Anthony, 51
Dakota construction of Ordinance of
1787, 316
Delaware, bought by Penn, 99
Company, 112
becomes indejiendent, 103
Delawares cede lands, 256
De Narvaez, expedition of, 7
Denonville, Governor of Canada in
1685, 40
De Soto, 7
De Tret, Fort, 47
Detroit, founded, 27
Straits occupied by French, 42
population in 1765, 48
in the Revolution, 150
importance of, 156
De Vaca, 7
Dickerson on State of Oregon, 394
Dinwiddle, Governor, 104
Dixon, of Mason and Dixon, 103
Dongan gains Western land for New
York, 41
Duane, 221
Du Lhut, 36, 42
Dunmore, Governor, controversy with
Penn, 107
ignores Quebec Act, 144
Duquesne seizes northeast branches of
the Ohio, 61
Dutch, trading posts in New York, 39
discoveries, 90
claims ignored by the English, 91
Early representatives of Ohio, 325
Education in Northwest, 402-404
Educational features of Ordinance of
1787, 401
Edwards, Ninian, Governor of Illinois
Territory, 315
Electors, qualifications of, in Northwest
Territory, 270
Elizabeth, Queen, 71
Elliot, 150
Emigration, j atlis of Western, 329
Enabling Act, 319, 321
England's claim to Nortii America, 12
yields Western posts, 185
English, on the Atlantic plain, I2
INDEX.
435
268, 275, 346
Ham, 198
slavery, 363
. 49
of Ordinance of
'enn, 99
ent, 103
256
lof, 7
of Canada in
y French, 42
1,48
3
Oregon, 394
104
Dixon, 103
1 land for New
controversy witli
ct, 144
east branches of
1 New York, 39
the English, 91
of Ohio, 325
5t, 402-404
of Ordinance of
rernor of Illinois
of, in Northwest
Vestern, 329
r
rth America, 12
sts, 185
ic plain, 12
English, treaties with Indians, 60
Entails, erasure of, 269
Erie, City founded, 47
Lake, discovered, 26
Fairfax, Lord, 79
Fallen Timbers, victory of, 184
Father Marquette, 30
Fearing, Paul, first lawyer in North-
west, 288
Federal, character of the United States,
theory of Government, 25 1
Federalist views on admission of Ohio,
308, 309
Fire Lands, allotment of the, 369
Five Nations, 57
Five State Plan, 321
Florida, ceded to England, 68
East and West constituted, 121
boundary dispute, 417
purchased, 426
Floyd, 221
Fort, Cr^vecoeur, 35
Duquesne built, 62
Harmar built, 285
Le Boeuf, 61
Mcintosh, 256
Stanwix, 134, 256
St. Louis, 43
Venango, 61
Franklin, Benjamin, his plan for set-
tling Western colonies, 126
the Canada Pamphlet, 127
reply to Lord Hillsborough, 135
arguments for the Grand Company,
136
Commissioner to Paris in 1779, 169
demands Mississippi for Western
limits of the United States, 174
outwits the French minister, 181
Franquelin, 51
French, in Valley of the St. Lawrence, 9
discoverers in the Northwest, 21
settlements kindly disposed toward
Americans, 159
settlers, their character, 52, 161
alliance, 162, 177
French and Indian War, 62, 65, 66, 68
Fror.tenac, Count, sends Joliet to dis-
cover the Mississippi, 30
policy of, 46
Fulton and Harris lines, 331
Fur Trade, 40
Galissoniere, 161
Galin^e, first map of the Lakes, 27
! Galvez, 173
(jates, grant from James I., 72
Georgia founded, 81
Genesee Valley surrendered to Massa-
chusetts, 119
Gerard, 172
Gibault, Father Pierre, 155
Girty Brothers, 150
Gist, Christopher, 58
Gladstone, description of West, 186
Gore, The, n8
Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 85
Grand Company, 133
Grayson, arguments for Western Re-
serve, 248
CJriffin, Tiie, 32
Grosselliers visits country beyond Lake
Superior, 26
Guadaloupe preferred to Canada, 130
Habitants, history of, from 1763 to
Revolution, 150
Hakluyt, Richard, 119
Ilaldman, General, 184
Ilalsey and Ward, 118
Hamilton, Governor, adopts Indian
warfare, 149
civil and military head of North-
west, 150
Hanson, John, 222
Harris and Fulton lines, 331
Harrison, William Henry, delegate to
Congress, 306
Governor of Indiana, 314
Heights of Abraham, 69
Hennepin with La Salle, 34
Henry, Patrick, instructions to Clark,
154
views on Detroit, 158
Hillsborough, objections to the Walpole
Company, 134
Hopton's grant, 79
Hudson Bay restored to England, 56
Hudson, Henry, 90
Hull, William, Governor of Michigan
Territory, 314
Huron, Lake, discovered, 23, 24
Ilutchins, Thomas, author of United
States plan of survey, 262
Illinois, separated from Louisiana, 52
County, 159
River sei:ed by Spain, 174
Couiity claims, 229
settlement of, under Virginia rule,
293. 294
V
I
43(5
INDEX.
Illinois as a territory, 314, 315
admitted as a State, 315, 328
northern State boundary, 327
dispute with Wisconsin, 330
slavery regulations in, 354
character of immigrants, 358
census of 1 880, 396
Indeperidcnce, Port of, 373
Indentures of slaves in Indiana and Illi-
nois, 354 , , r ,
Indian, position in I'reneh plan (if col-
onization, 22
land titles, 59
allies of the I'^nglish, 149
in War of the Revolution, 184
treaties, 256
slaveholders, 348
slaves, 349
Indiana, claim, 229 ; settlement of, 293
Territory formed, 307
admitted as a State, 326
prohibits slavery, 358
census of 1880, 396
Industries of Western settlements, 50
Ingles-Draper setdement, 58
Iowa Territory, 340
Iroquois, destroy the Hurons, 24
influence on our national history,
convey their lands in trust to Eng-
land, 39
cede Western land to New York, 41
cede land formerly of the Hurons
to England, 46
conquests claimed by England, 65
title to Ohio lands, 137
Jackson's position in regard to Ohio
boundary, 333
Jamestown founded, 6, 12
James I., grant to Sir Thomas Gates
and Sir George Somers, 72
Jay, John, envoy to Madrid, 171, 174
treats with Count de Aranda, 175
saves the West to his country, 182
his treaty, 184, 190
Jefferson, Thomas, views on Virginia
land claims, 234
plan of government for Western
territories, 266
views on town systems, 300
Jesuit College at Kaskaskia, 50
Johnson, Sir William, negotiations with
Six Nations, 132
Johnston, Alexander, on provisions for
new States, 223
Joliet, explores Lake Erie, 26
discovers the Mississippi River, 31
Kai.m, 129
Kaskaskia, population of, 48
surrenders to Americans, 154
Kentucky, land litigation in, 261
King George's War, 57
King, Rufus, 190
King William's War, 46, 56
Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, 17
Kirk, David, 56
La Clede founds St. Louis, 151
Lake Erie, how reached in 1796, 282
Lake of the Woods controversy settled,
190, 191
Land, cessions, Madison's views upon,
231-234
litigation, causes of, 260
Ordinance of 1785, 255, 263
policy in Ohio, 301
system of the Government, 302
Langlade, Captain de, 152
Lansdowne, Marquis of, 182
La Salle, meets Joliet near Grand River,
30
schemes of, 32, 43
explores Lower Nlichigan, 34
builds Fort Cr^vecoeur, 35
takes possession of mouth of the
Mississippi, 35
establishes Fort St. Louis, 43
deaih of, 43
Le Caron, missionary to the Hurons, 23
Livingston, Robert R., gains Louisiana,
190
views on importance of New Orleans
to the United States, 425
London Company, 72, 77, 190
Long Island attached to New York, 93
Lomax, opinion on Virginia Western
claims, 196
Losantiville, now Cincinnati, 288
Louisiana, the first geographical, 51
reserved by France, 67
invites settlers, 151
ceded to the United States, 190
annexation of, 426
annexed to Indiana, 314
Louisville, 171
Lucas's, Governor, war, 332
Lucke Island, 80
Ludlow's line, 292
McArthur, Duncan, 290
INDEX.
437
oil's views u])')!!,
McComas, opinion on Virginia Western
claims, 195
McDougal, 221
McGee, 150
Madison, James, gives rule for terri-
torial limits, 165
letter to Pendleton, 231
letters on land cessions, 231-234
on admission of Vermont, 237
on acceptance of Northwestern ces-
sions, 238
on revenue plan, 238
on policy of land companies, 243
Maine, bought by Massachusetts, 85, 93
Marietta, 276, 286
Marquette, Father, 30, 31, 32
Marshall, John, views on Western land
titles, 252
influence on government of West-
ern Reserve, 381, 387
Maryland, named, 78
disputes concerning boundaries of,
100, 102, 103
resistance to Articles of Confedera-
tion, 213
remonstrates with Virginia, 214
ratifies Articles of Confederation,
220
Mason and Dixon, 103
Mason, Captain John, grant in New
England bounded, 84
Mass first celebrated in Canada, 23
Massachusetts, Bay Colony, 83, 85
disputes with Connecticut, 89
disputes with New York, 94
surrenders Western claims to New
York, 118
claim to Western land, 199
cedes her Western land to Con-
gress, 246
Massie, General Nathaniel, lays out
Chillicothe, 290
" Mer Douce" discovered, 23
Miami Purchase, 288, 289
Michigan, Lake, discovered, 25
Territory, 314, 315
influence of habitants on, 328
Constitution formed, 330
boundary quarrel with Ohio, 330
controversy over admission of, as a
State, 335
Upper Peninsular, objections to,
336 ; resources of, 336
census of 1880, 396
Michilimacinac, mission of, 38
Minnesota admitted, 343
Mississippi River, discovered by De
Soto, 7
by Joliet and Marquette, 31
taken possession of by La Salle, 35
called St. Louis River, 51
natural western boundary after the
Revolution, 169
control of the navigation on, 418
navigation fixed by treaty, 423
Mississippi Valley, why abandoned by
Spain, 8
French occupation planned, 32
Missouri River, called St. Philip, 51
Mohawk Valley, its important part in
American history, 4, 15
Monroe gains Louisiana, 190
Montcalm, principles represented by, 68
Morgan, George, memorial for Western
land claimants, 212
Morgan, Colonel George, 242
Nantucket, 92
National capital, location of, 393
Neutrality belt of Indian Territory pro-
posed between United States and
Canada, 145
New Albion, 95
New Ceaserea, 95
New Connecticut, 97, 375
New England, 13, 16, 85
New Hampshire Grant, 84
annexed to Massachusetts, 85
becomes Royal Colony, 85
becomes independent, 85
boundary difficulties, 86
Grants, 96
New Haven Colony, 87, 88, IIO
New Jersey bounded, 95
objections to Articles of Confeder-
ation, 207
New Netherlands, its limits, 90, 92
Newport, Captain, portable bnige of, 14
New Scotland, Lordship and Barony of,
82
Newspaper statistics in Northwest, 403
New York possibly a part of New Eng-
land, 9 1
western claims of, 198
plan to promote adoptions of Arti-
cles of Confederation, 216
cession accepted, 229, 237
Niagara, Fort, built, 47
Nicolet, Jean, discovers Lake Michigan,
25
North Bend, 288
438
INDEX.
Northwest Territory wrested from
France, 55
in Revolution, 147
land claims, 192
lands the means of defraying war
expenses, 230
First General Assembly of, 305
boundary of Ohio, how fixed, 324
Nova Scotia ceded to England, 66
refuses lands reserved for, 259
Oberlin, 391
Oglethorpe, James, 81
Ohio, first maps of, 28, 291
Company formed, 58
River, difficulty of fortifying, 60
Company of Associates, 267
Purchase, 275
University, endowment, 276, 292
Valley, how related to country east
and south, 283
Indians in, 296
admission as State, 267, 306, 318,
322, 324
First Constitutional Convention,
325
anti-slavery discussion in, 355
population in census of 1880, 396
trade of, 400
Constitution of, 408
Old National Pike, 413
Ontario, Lake, discovered, 24
Ordinance governing western territory,
terms of, 269
of 1787, 315, 364
Oswald, British Commissioner, 169, 179
Ottawa River, 27
Ottawas cede lands, 256
Ouabache River, 52
Pan Handle, 109
Pani, 348
Parallel of 36" 30', 80
Parsons, General S. H., 269, 284, 286,
369
Parties, growth of, in Northwest, 304
Pemaquid, 93
Penn, William, charter, 98
buys Delaware, 99
quarrel with Connecticut, 1 10
Pennamite and Yankee war, ill, 116
Pennsylvania, disputes concerning boun-
daries, 99, loi, 102, 103, 109,
373
Perry's victory, 185
PickawUlany, 59
Pierce, John, 82
Pitt, William, policy, 63
Pittsburgh surveyed, 105
Plonden, Sir Edmund, 95
Plan of Union, 125, 126
Plough and the Harrow, 269
Plunket, Colonel, 114
Plymouth Colony, boundaries of, 83
Company, 72, 75
Council, 84, 85
Political parties in Canada, 52
parties in Northwest, 406, 410, 414
Pontiacs conspiracy, 148
Popular Sovereignty ignored in Ena-
bling Act, 320
Population, of New France and British
Colonics in 1754, 69
of United States in 1787, 282
of Western Tcrritt)ry in 1800, 297
of Western Reserve, 395
Portages, 46
Pownall, Governor Thomas, 264
Presque Isle, 47
Products of Northwest, 399
Providence Plantation, 88
Pro-slavery arguments in Illinois, 358,
361
Public Domain not a source of revenue.',
211, 264
Public Land System, 302
Public school, statistics for, 403
Purre, Don Eugenio, 173
Putnam, General Rufus, leads colony to
the Muskingum, 285
Quebec established, 10
boundaries of, in 1763, 12 1
Act, 141
Queen Anne's War, 56
Quincy, Josiah, on secession of Eastern
States, 415
Radisson visits Superior country, 26
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 71
Randolph, John, on slavery in Indiana,
352
Rayneval's conciliatory line, I76, 177
Report of Committee on Western Boun-
daries, 166
Republican Party, its birth, 412, 414
views on admission of Ohio, 301
Resolutions of Albany Congress, 1754,
122, 201
R; venue plans in connection with land
claims, 238
Rhode Island settlements, 88
INDEX.
439
3
'S
>
', 269
idaries of, 83
ada, 52
St, 406, 410, 414
8
jnored in Ena-
ince and British
., 69
I 1787, 2S2
ry in 1800, 297
'i, 395
>mas, 264
399
88
in Illinois, 358,
)urce of revenue,
02
1 for, 403
73
, leads colony to
285
3
763, 121
:ssion of Eastern
or country, 26
t
ivery in Indiana,
line, 176, 177
n Western Boun-
)irth, 412, 414
n of Ohio, 301
Congress, 1754,
lection with land
Its, 88
River of the Holy Spirit, 6
St. Louis, 51
Roberts's Line, 292
Robertson, James, 265
Rockford, Boundary Convention at, 339
Ross County, influence on division of
Nortiiwest Territory, 307
Roswell, Sir Henry, 83
Roving Patent granted the Pilgrims, 82
Rutledge Committee, 239, 240
Ryswick, treaty of, 46, 156
Saffory and WooDWARn, 89
Sante Claire Lake, origin of name, 33
Sante Esjirite, mission of, 29
Salt Springs, 377
Saltonstall, no
Saydys, administration of, 77
Sargent, Winthrop, 286
Saut, Saint Marie, 26, 29, 38, 401
School, provisions in land, 259, 262
fund of Connecticut, 370
Schuyler, Philip, 217
Secession in the Northwest, 414
of Eastern States advocated, 415
Seven Cities of Cibola, 7
Seven Years' War, 66
Sevier, John, 265
Seward on political influence of North-
west, 413
Shaler, Professor, disadvantages of
French colonists, 51
Shclburne, Earl of, 178, 182
Sioux, first discovered, 26
Six Nations, first discovered, 26
aid England, 39
their territory claimed by Virginia
and New York, 198
treaty with, 256
Slavery, in ordinance of 1787, 272
views of, at close of Revolution, 345
in Northwest, 345, 347, 348, 349,
3SI. 352. 355- 365
Soldiers furnished by the Northwest,
Somers' Grant from James I., 72
Southampton, administration of Lon-
don Company, 77
Spain, in the Gulf of Mexico, 6
in French and Indian Wars, 68
claims the Mississippi River, 170
refuses to receive Mr. Jay, 172
seizes post St. Joseph, 173
disputes Florida boundary, 417
opposes treaty of 1783, 418
views on Louisiana question, 421
Spain withdraws from Louisiana, 424
excluded from Mississippi Valley,
426
Spotswood, Governor, 16, 17
Starved Rock, 43
St. Augustine, key to Spanish posses-
sions, 9
St. Clair, Arthur, 106
appointed Governor of Marietta,
286
treats with Indians for Ohio, 296
waning popularity, 305
indictment against, 311
last years, 313
explains anti-slavery clause of ordi-
nance of 1787, 350
conflict with Western Reserve, 376
County, 299
Lake, origin of name, 33
St. Croix Valley, 342
Steamboats on Ohio and Lakes, 400
Steuben, Baron, 1S4
Stirling, Earl of, grant of New England,
82
St. Jerome River, 52
St. Joseph, Fort, 42, 173
St. Lawrence, 9, H
St. Louis, 43, 151
St. Philip's River, 51
Strachy assists Oswald, 178
Stuart, negotiations with Cherokees,
132
Sufferers' Lands, 369
Suffrage in Northwest, 408
Superior State proposed, 341
Surveys, methods, 257, 260
Susquehanna an outlet of Lake Erie, 26
Company, m
Symmes, John Clives, 286
Purchase, 288
'^-act, 288
Tecumseh, 185
Tilghman, 107
Titles to Land, 70, 380, 382
Toledo War, 332
City, 3V
Tonty, 35
Township, size decreed, 258
Territorial claims, 19, 167, 280
Territory of Northwest, 280, 281
Transportation in Northwest, 399
Treaty of Ghent, 185
Greenville, 184
Paris, 182, 187
Trent, William, 213
440
INDEX.
Trenton Decision, Ii6
Tupper, Cieneral Henjamin, 284
Turner, George, 286
Trumbull County organized, 387
Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut, 117
United States wrests Northwest from
England, 162
original boundaries, 186
jurisdiction on western rivers, 384
Utrecht, treaty of, 56
Van Buren's election, 333
Vandalia, 133
memorial, 213
grant, 229
Varnum, James M., 286
Venango, I'ort, 61
views on Spain's demands, 176
Vermont, in War of Independence, 97
influence on land questions, 235
admission to the Union, 235
Verazzano, 9
Vincennes, 44, 155
Vincent's I'ort, 44
Vinton, Samuel F., on Ohio and Vir-
ginia boundaries, 193
Virginia, early map of, 13
treaty with Iroquois, 59
ceded to Raleigh, 71
ceded to Gates and Somers, 72
named, 72
boundaries in 1609, 73
governors commissioned, 77
resists Lord Baltimore's grant, 79
releases Maryland, Pennsylvania,
North and South Carolina, no,
192
organizes Illinois County, 158
claims to Ohio, 194
western counties of, 197
prepares to sell western lands, 212
denies jurisdiction of Congress, 215
cessions not recommended, 228
terms of cession, 243
vote on ordinance of 1787, 277
military district of, 290
Wabash County Claims, 229
Walker, Dr. Thomas, 58
Walpole Colony, 133, 134, 139
War, French and Indian, 62
War Claims settled by land, 258
Ward and Halsey Titles, 1 18, 387
Warren, Ohio, First Court sits at, 388
Washington, George, on Western settle-
ments, 266
on separation of Western States,
I 420
I against the Walpole grant, 140
Washington County, Ohio, created, 287,
I 299
Water-ways of the continent, 2, 3
Wayne, General, 184
Wayne, County, 299, 321
Webster, Ashburton Treaty, 191
on Columbia Kiver, 394
Western Colonial bouniiaries, 124
government decided upon, 269
prophecies, 393
question, three phases of, 148
territory, government of, 266
Western Reserve, mistaken area of, 28
description of, 117, 247
what might have been, 186
possibility of falling to England,
189
government of, 266
how different from Virginia Military
District, 290
sale of, 371
need of a government, 379
land titles, 380, 382
made into Trumbull County, 387
character of settlers in, 388
Whig Party in Northwest, 412
Whitfield, Rev. George, 126
Whittlesey, Colonel Charles, on West-
ern Reserve Land Company, 375
Wilderness Road, 15
Williams, Roger, 188
Windsor planted, 87
Wisconsin Territory, 315
contends for Upper Peninsula, 338
threatens to form an independent
State, 338
boundary dispute with Illinois, 339
boundaries fixed by Congress, 341
admitted as a State, 343
population of, 343
Woodward and Saffary, 89
Wolfe, principles represented by, 68
Wyandots cede land, 256
Wyoming Valley Massacre, I12, 115
Wyonoak Creek, 80
Xavier, St. Francis, mission founded,
44
York, Duke of, 82
1 Western settle-
Western States,
le grant, 140
liio, created, 287,
tinent, 2, 3
reaty, 191
ver, 394
ularies, 124
;d upon, 269
ases of, 148
ent of, 266
iken area of, 28
',247
)een, 186
ing to England,
6
"Virginia Military
icnt, 379
?2
ill County, 387
rs in, 388
est, 412
;, 126
harles, on West-
id Company, 375
IS
:r Peninsula, 338
an independent
with Illinois, 339
)y Congress, 341
e, 343
', 89
jsented by, 68
=56
acre, 112, 115
mission founded,