The United States of America Part 2

CHAPTER III

THE CARE OF THE PUBLIC LANDS

Having been entrusted with the responsibility of administering the back lands, Congress immediately entered upon the work of arranging a method for their survey and sale, and of devising a feasible government to be extended over them. The pressing need of securing a revenue from them, together with a realisation that prospective purchasers would require protection both from each other and from the savages, impelled the members to immediate action. Against the many failures with which the old Congress stands charged during the eight years of its national control, the ordinances for the disposition and government of the western lands form a most pleasant and redeeming contrast. The Congress faced an absolutely new task. There were many precedents in history for colonial holding, varying from the policy of Greece, which allowed complete severance of home ties, to that of Spain, which regarded colonies as existing solely for the benefit of the mother country. By adopting the one, the United States must have left the western emigrants to perish. The other was repugnant to a people who had just rebelled against even the moderate colonial system of Great Britain. Equality is the only standard for a republic. Congress had resolved in 1780 that the lands ceded to its jurisdiction should be "disposed of for the common benefit 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." Here was an action almost unprecedented. Instead of holding the outlying region as a colonial possession for the benefit of the older portion, or making it into an Indian hunting-ground as Britain had tried to do, the Confederation of States had voluntarily agreed to erect it into independent States upon perfect equality with themselves. It was a practical application of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, of no taxation without representation, and of the real equality of all portions of the domain. The action was taken for the very practical purpose of a.s.suring the States that if they surrendered their claims to the western lands, their citizens who migrated thither would not lose their rights by changing from State to national sovereignty.

Jefferson is presumed to be the father of the ordinance which first collected these promises into a working model; but not even Jefferson, rejoicing in laying out imaginary states from the new national possession and giving cla.s.sic names to them, could foresee that there was being called into existence a factor most dangerous to his beloved individualism. The people who would remove from the States and settle upon lands purchased from the National Government, would be under national protection, subject to national legislation, and eventually be admitted by the national power to national statehood. Their affection would be gradually won away from their native States to be centred on the Union. Yet the States had not been able to hold the lands individually. Thus was necessity silently making the Union.

The provisions of the Jefferson Ordinance of 1784 for the temporary government of the western territory have been almost lost sight of because, after it had been in operation for three years and little had been accomplished through difficulty of dealing with the Indians in possession of the land, circ.u.mstances arose which brought about a new ordinance superseding the old and changing it in its working details.

Yet the first ordinance embodied the main principles in creating States which have since been followed. The number of people in any given portion of the public lands was to be the determining factor.

Jefferson's ordinance would allow these settlers to establish a temporary government, to adopt the const.i.tution of any one of the thirteen States, and to elect a legislature. When their number should reach twenty thousand, they would be allowed to call a convention and establish a permanent const.i.tution and government. Upon attaining a population of free inhabitants equal to that of the least numerous of the thirteen original States (at this time probably Georgia, whose population was estimated at twenty-five thousand) they would be admitted on equal footing with the other States. Between the establishment of the temporary government and admission to statehood, the prospective state should be allowed a representative in Congress with a right of debating but not of voting. The well-known Ordinance of 1787, which replaced that of 1784, subst.i.tuted for the temporary government to be erected by the settlers a ready-made administration of governor, secretary, and territorial judges, to be sent out by the National Government, and to continue until the free male population should number five thousand, when they were to be allowed to exercise home rule in setting up a territorial government. The standard for statehood was fixed definitely in the later ordinance at sixty thousand free inhabitants.

Jefferson, notwithstanding the supposedly aristocratic training of a Virginia environment, placed no qualification for suffrage or office in his ordinance. The Ordinance of 1787, presumably drafted under democratic New England ideas, placed a qualification of owners.h.i.+p of two hundred acres of land upon a representative in the territorial legislature and of fifty acres upon an elector for a representative.

Here was an ill.u.s.tration of that revertive tendency in the sections which has maintained the national equilibrium. Acc.u.mulated wealth in the North was beginning to overcome the levelling creed of the Puritan, while the economic loss resulting from slave labour in the South was reducing the colonial Cavalier cla.s.s in the planter States. The exceedingly profitable cotton culture had not yet developed in the Gulf States to create the ante-bellum aristocracy of the lower South, nor had the stream of European immigration set in to the Northern States to restore the levelling tendency there.

The two ordinances were alike in precluding the separation of any part of the territory from the United States, requiring the inhabitants to pay a portion of the national debt, and forbidding new States, to interfere with the sale of or to tax the national public lands within their limits.

Two provisions in Jefferson's first draft of the Ordinance of 1784 were struck out by the Congress before adoption. One, which forbade granting of t.i.tles of n.o.bility, was eliminated because, as Jefferson wrote to Madison, "it was thought an improper place to encounter them."

The contest against the introduction of aristocracy was unlikely to be precipitated in the backwoods bordering the Ohio River. Yet the provision would have been in keeping with the spirit of the times.

Congress had recently rejected a proposition made to Was.h.i.+ngton by the Polish Order of Knights of Divine Providence that their order should be officially extended to the United States. The other eliminated provision, forbidding slavery and involuntary servitude in the territory after the year 1800 except as a punishment for crime, is important not only as the first attempted restriction of the slavery system by the National Government, but also as furnis.h.i.+ng an interesting comparison with the later sentiment on this unfortunate controversy which affected every phase of United States history for a century.

When he incorporated this provision in his draft of the ordinance, Jefferson was but little in advance of the opinion of the day on the effects of employing slave labour. Never until its death was the system so near dissolution as in the organising days between the birth of the republic and the invention of the cotton-gin. State after State in forming its const.i.tution, or by special enactment, arranged for immediate abolition or gradual emanc.i.p.ation. Even in slaveholding Virginia and North Carolina, few could be found to defend the system from an economic standpoint, although they had to admit the necessity of its use in the rice swamps of South Carolina and Georgia.

Lafayette was urging Was.h.i.+ngton to employ his recently acquired leisure in transforming slaves into free tenants. "Such an example as yours,"

he wrote from Cadiz, "might render it a general practice."

"Would to G.o.d a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country," replied the Virginia farmer, "but I despair of seeing it. To set the slaves afloat at once would, I really believe, be productive of much inconvenience and mischief, but by degrees it certainly might and a.s.suredly ought to be effected; and that too by legislative authority."

At the same time he put himself on record as determined never to add another to the number of his slaves by purchase. A pet.i.tion for emanc.i.p.ation had just been introduced into the Virginia House of Delegates and was "rejected without dissent; but not without an avowed patronage of its principles by sundry respectable members," as Madison informed Was.h.i.+ngton. "A motion was made to throw it under the table, which was treated with as much indignation on one side as the pet.i.tion itself was on the other."

Jefferson had been disappointed at an earlier time because no emanc.i.p.ation provision had been incorporated in the Const.i.tution of Virginia.

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!" he wrote in this connection, "who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself in vindication of his own liberty and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him thro' his trial and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."

An interesting commentary on the industrial progress of the country is afforded by comparing these early views of Southern statesmen upon the slavery system with those held by a later generation.

Public sentiment in Virginia was not ready to follow the champions of individual freedom to the emanc.i.p.ation point, and it refused as strenuously to be coerced as it did in later years. When the Quakers of Philadelphia attempted to secure by law the freedom of a body-servant whom a neighbour of Was.h.i.+ngton had taken with him on a visit to that city, the General wrote to his friend, Robert Morris, the wealthy merchant of Philadelphia, "If the practice of this society, of which Mr. Dalby speaks, is not discountenanced, none of those whose _misfortune_ it is to have slaves as attendants, will visit the city if they can possibly avoid it."

However, the clause which was struck from the Ordinance of 1784 was not intended to abolish slavery where it already existed, but to prevent the extension of the system to new territory. It was the forerunner of a similar controversy which attended every addition to the national territory as the people spread westwardly, and which eventually became a strong factor in precipitating the Civil War. The motion to cast out was made by Spaight, of North Carolina, but Williamson, his colleague, voted to retain the clause and thus divided the State. Jefferson was outvoted by his two colleagues who favoured no restriction on the people desiring to migrate to the new lands. Maryland and South Carolina were the only Southern States unanimously against the clause. Six States north of the Mason and Dixon line voted to retain the clause.

Jefferson took the defeat sorely.

"Seven States being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively," he said, "it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the State which was divided or of one of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country."

To Madison he reported, "South Carolina, Maryland, and! Virginia! voted against it. N. Carolina was divided as would have been Virginia had not one of its delegates been sick in bed." The absent member was young James Monroe, serving his first term in Congress.

The close vote, of which Jefferson complains, well ill.u.s.trates the evils of voting by States in Congress. Seven affirmative State votes were necessary to retain the anti-slavery clause. Only eleven States were represented. One of these had but one delegate and his vote was cast out by the rule requiring a State to be represented by at least two delegates to partic.i.p.ate in a vote. Of the ten States remaining, seven must have at least two delegates of an affirmative mind from each to retain the clause. Six of these States voted solidly to keep the restriction, but the seventh State could not be secured, as Jefferson stated. Considered by our present method of voting, sixteen of the twenty-three delegates present voted affirmatively and seven negatively; yet the motion was lost and the clause struck out. Rarely has the power of a minority been so great. The individual may be allowed to hide the ma.s.s by being held too close to the vision.

However, the defeat of Jefferson's plan of excluding slavery from the territory after the year 1800 must be considered fortunate by all in sympathy with the general purpose. By it, slavery would have been permitted in the western country for sixteen years. The large influx of migration into the territory within that period, especially from the Southern States, would have established the system too thoroughly to be eradicated. The difficulty with which slavery was permanently kept out, although expressly prohibited by the Ordinance of 1787, is a proof of this a.s.sertion. The clearing of the way for the later prohibitive action by striking out the clause tended to the ultimate good. On the other hand, it is pointed out that the Jefferson ordinance provided only for "a temporary government of the western territory"

and covered "so much of the territory ceded or to be ceded by the individual States to the United States as is already purchased or shall be purchased of the Indian inhabitants and offered for sale by Congress." Eulogists of Jefferson argue, consequently, that if his restricting clause had been allowed to remain it would have prohibited slavery in all the land west of the thirteen States, both north and south, after the year 1800, and thus the entire slavery system would have died through non-extension. But it must be remembered that the only land thus far ceded lay north of the Ohio and immediately west of the free States. It is not conceivable that such a restriction would have been permitted to hold south of the Ohio and west of the slaveholding States, directly in the line of migration. Indeed, when the time did arrive to create a government south of the Ohio, interference with slavery was distinctly prohibited. It is true, also, that Jefferson's ordinance as adopted solemnly declared its articles a charter of compact to stand as unalterable const.i.tutions both before and after the sale of any part of the vacant land; but that a new ordinance should supersede it after three years, simply because a proposed purchaser demanded some additional guarantees, is a proof that none of its provisions could have withstood the pressure of slave territorial expansion.

However, at the time, there seemed small prospect that the National Government would ever be required to make regulations for any territory south of the Ohio. Congress had sent out appeal after appeal to North Carolina, citing the action of the other States, and begging her to yield her claim to what is now the State of Tennessee. But she resisted until 1790. South Carolina retained control of a long, narrow strip, south of the present Tennessee and extending to the Mississippi, until 1787. Georgia, claiming almost the whole of the present States of Alabama and Mississippi, remained deaf likewise to the entreaties of Congress until 1802. Virginia, having yielded so much of her original claim as lay north of the Ohio, was disposed to retain her claim to the Kentucky country. Jefferson wished to yield all lying west of the mouth of the Kanawha. Was.h.i.+ngton approved of this limit, seeing, as he said, "the impolicy of this State's grasping at more territory than they are competent to the government of." This liberal sentiment was never sufficiently general to be effective. Thus it came about that the Southwestern territory, which Congress ultimately created from all land ceded south of the Ohio, was never more than a temporary and pa.s.sing arrangement compared with the North-west territory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING THE PROPOSED WESTERN STATES. From Morse's "American Gazetteer". The five States here outlined in the North-west Territory, with slightly changed boundaries, are to be found on the map at present.]

After much study, Congress drew up the Ordinance of 1785 for the survey and sale of such land as might be given to its care. The details of this important arrangement in the story of the American people ill.u.s.trate the advantages arising from inst.i.tuting new governments at a stroke. The rectangular system of land surveys, like the decimal system of money, was devised and not inherited. Each has proved a blessing in its simplicity. The divisions of the land upon an even-number basis, the progressive numbering of the divisions, the elasticity of the system, and the subdivisions arranged to accommodate small purchasers, have conduced by their simplicity and adaptability to speedy disposition and settlement of the national domain and have minimised later litigation and discord. Since the history of the American people has been influenced so extensively and persistently by the disposal and peopling of the public lands, the simple survey system may be counted among the valuable parts of the national machinery.

Surveys were to be made by the "geographer" of the United States, a.s.sisted by a surveyor from each of the States. One-seventh of all lands surveyed was to be reserved for the land bounties promised to those who had served in the Continental army. An old handbill, frequently reproduced, shows that among the inducements to enlistment held out during the darkest period of the war were "Ease, affluence, and a good farm." The certificates issued to the soldiers at the close of the war in lieu of money were made receivable in payment for public land. A share in all gold, silver, lead, and copper mines was retained by the National Government. Lot number sixteen in every towns.h.i.+p was reserved for the maintenance of public schools. A provision for setting aside the section adjoining it for the support of religion was struck out, nor could a motion prevail to preserve it for "charitable uses."

The votes on this question seemed to be governed purely by individual opinion. The delegates from Virginia, whose Legislature had just dealt the Established Church in that State its death-blow, voted to retain the reservation of land for religious purposes, much like the old church glebe lands. But the separation of Church and State had become too complete to enter upon a scheme so suggestive of establishment.

For three years the Ordinance of 1784 awaited the migration of settlers to the territory who would be protected by it, and, at the same time, put it into effect. Thomas Hutchins, the national "geographer," and his a.s.sistants from the several States, laid off seven ranges of towns.h.i.+ps, in the eastern part of the present State of Ohio, according to the land Ordinance of 1785, before rumours of hostile Indians drove them back. The Secretary of War was instructed to draw by lot enough of the surveyed land to satisfy such bounty land certificates as might be presented and to advertise the remainder for sale. United States troops were employed to drive out the "squatters" on the public lands, to burn their cabins, and destroy their crops. But not an acre was sold in those three years, not a certificate of national indebtedness redeemed, and not a s.h.i.+lling received from the land sales for the needy treasury.

The Jefferson ordinance had been intended for such western lands as might from time to time be given to the National Government. But no land south of the Ohio was surrendered. Congress, therefore, determined to cast aside the old ordinance, and to form the portion yielded into a specific territory, with a new ordinance which would allow more leeway in forming the States and give Congress more control over the domain from its incipience. Accordingly, Johnson, of Maryland, offered a new ordinance in the spring of 1786, which pa.s.sed to a second reading.

With the exception of the reforms noted above, it closely resembled the old ordinance. But in July following, after an interregnum of no quorum, the Congress pa.s.sed, by an almost unanimous vote and after a consideration of only a few days, an entirely new law governing the territory north-west of the Ohio. It was the famous Ordinance of 1787.

Its sudden transformation, inexplicable to early investigators and solved only by later research, was the result of a business transaction connected with the bounty certificates given to the Revolutionary soldiers.

During the progress of the war, it had been necessary to secure enlistment by offering bounty lands. The desire to realise on these promises was shared by officers and privates alike. Doubtless around many a camp-fire, as the war drew to a close, the value of these land certificates was discussed, and plans made for "a.s.sociating" to form colonies in the "back lands" to which the soldiers were winning both right and t.i.tle. The danger-line in the future would be along the frontier, where the newly won empire must be guarded from invasion both from British Canada and the Spanish Floridas, and where the advancing line of pioneers must be protected from hostile Indians. Bands of these "a.s.sociators" were organised to obtain their allotments in the new country and to settle upon them. They would "plant a brave, a hardy, and respectable race of people as our advanced post," wrote Was.h.i.+ngton in presenting the project to Congress. "A settlement formed by such men would give security to our frontiers; the very name of it would awe the Indians."

One body of men, styling themselves "The Ohio Company of a.s.sociators,"

composed of ex-Revolutionary officers and privates residing in and about Boston, sent a botanist-parson, the Reverend Mana.s.seh Cutler, to the Congress in the summer of 1787, to urge a proposition they had advanced for the purchase of a large tract on the Ohio River. These "adventurers," as they styled themselves, were desirous of driving a good bargain in a low price for the land and also of gaining certain guarantees from Congress which would give them as much personal liberty and protection in the new home and under the National Government as they enjoyed in their present residences under their State Governments.

Cutler, provided with forty-two letters of introduction to members of Congress and prominent citizens of New York city, reached the seat of government in due time. "At 11 o'clock," he wrote in his private journal, "I was introduced to a number of members on the floor of Congress Chamber, in the City Hall, by Colonel Carrington, member from Virginia. Delivered my pet.i.tion for purchasing lands for the Ohio Company, and proposed terms and conditions of purchase." Fortunately there was a quorum in Congress, the first in nearly two months. A few days later, Cutler was sent a copy of the Johnson ordinance then pending. To this he proposed "several amendments." Three days afterward, the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, for the government of that portion of the territory north-west of the Ohio, was completed and adopted to Cutler's satisfaction. "It is in a degree remodelled," he wrote in his journal. "The amendments I proposed have all been made except one, and that is better qualified."

Nevertheless it took a week more of haggling and lobbying before acceptable terms of sale could be agreed upon. Another company composed of "princ.i.p.al characters" in the city had to be taken into the deal in a "profound secret." Arthur St. Clair, the president of the Congress, had to be accepted by the a.s.sociators as the governor of the territory, in order to gain his support. Cutler had to finesse by threatening to buy from some of the States which had land for sale within their borders. It is unfortunate for those who believe that our fathers were actuated entirely by disinterested motives and utterly devoid of political guile that the parson lobbyist kept such a candid diary. Day by day the business proceeded, Cutler even making a side visit to Philadelphia while his leaven was working. At last even "that stubborn mule of a Kearney," as the disgusted agent called him, was "left alone,"

a sufficient number of votes was secured, and Cutler was receiving congratulations on the prospects of the Ohio Company.

"By this Ordinance," he wrote, "we obtained the grant of near 5,000,000 of acres of land, amounting to three millions and a half of dollars; one million and a half of acres for the Ohio Company and the remainder for a private speculation in which many of the princ.i.p.al characters in America are concerned."

The importance of this transaction lies not only in the fact that it was the first sale of public lands in the United States, but that the government established for the territory formed many precedents for later Territories and States. Some of its provisions deserve a close examination. The changes made in the Johnson ordinance to satisfy the Ohio Company are found chiefly in the appended six articles of the Ordinance of 1787. These formed a guarantee that citizens in the territory deprived of the protection of their States would have the same personal rights which they enjoyed before leaving the States. The United States, later destined to become a protector, was feared lest it might be an oppressor. Such individual rights as _habeas corpus_, trial by jury, freedom of conscience, possession of property, and similar birthrights of Englishmen, had been secured in the States by incorporating them in the various State Const.i.tutions under the general name of "declaration of rights" or "bill of rights." Without such specific t.i.tle, they were placed in the Ordinance of 1787. The sixth article, no doubt also demanded by Cutler, incorporated the very wording of Jefferson's rejected anti-slavery clause of three years before, except making it immediate instead of after 1800. The New England a.s.sociators were unwilling to offer their free labour in compet.i.tion with slave labour in their new home. The idea was general. "The total exclusion of slavery from the State" had been a prominent provision in a transitory a.s.sociation in Connecticut four years before.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATHAN DANE'S DRAFT OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CLAUSE IN THE ORDINANCE OF 1787. The authors.h.i.+p of this article of the Ordinance has been in much dispute. Benton attributed it to a similar provision, drafted by Jefferson, which was struck out of the Ordinance of 1784.

Northern men gave the credit to Nathan Dane, a Ma.s.sachusetts jurist, who was in Congress in 1787. During the sectional feeling aroused over the admission of Missouri in 1820, a dispute arose in Congress over the respective claims of Jefferson and of Dane. Of this, Dane himself said: "In April, 1820, search was made for the original ma.n.u.script of the Ordinance of 1787. Daniel Bent's answer was 'that no written draft could be found'; but there was found attached to the printed Ordinance in my handwriting the sixth article, as it now is, that is, the slave article." The original is now in the Library of Congress, Ma.n.u.script Division. The signature of Chas. Thomson, Jr., calls attention to the faithful secretary of the Continental Congress during its entire existence.]

The century contest over slavery in the United States made that factor so prominent in national history that it overshadows matters of equal importance in many transactions. The anti-slavery provision of the Ordinance of 1787 has been extravagantly praised ever since the oratory of Daniel Webster first called general attention to it. Sectional partisans have exhausted logic in trying to trace the authors.h.i.+p to Jefferson, a Southern man, or to Dane, a Northern man. The North has credited it to the persistence of New England; the South, pointing to the five Southern affirmative votes out of the eight, has attributed it to the indulgence of their section. In recognising this first anti-slavery action of the National Government, Northern orators have overlooked an attendant clause, the first national fugitive slave law.

It paved the way for a similar provision in the Const.i.tution and led to the obnoxious slave rendition laws of later years. In praising the indulgence of the South, the eulogists of that section have failed to consider the price the New England a.s.sociators paid in this first slavery compromise of the nation.

When the blinding pa.s.sion of the slavery question is eliminated from a consideration of this ordinance some other beneficent provisions, added through the desire to satisfy the New England purchasers, begin to appear. They are taken largely from the "bill of rights" placed in the first const.i.tution of the State of Virginia by George Mason, and copied in many of the later const.i.tutions, including that of the United States. They seek to guarantee the rights of the individual against the encroachments of the Government; to embody the principles which the English barons secured at Runnymede; to secure the inheritances left to the English-speaking people by Hampden and Pym. Although many of the early State Const.i.tutions contained a guarantee of religious freedom, _habeas corpus_, trial by jury, rights to property, and regard for contracts, as has just been stated, these principles had not been expressed in the Articles of Confederation and the General Government was not bound in any manner to grant them in the western territory.

But their incorporation in the ordinance gave a.s.surance that their benefits were not to be confined to the original States.

Equally important is the clause providing for equal division of the property of people dying intestate. This first legislation of the National Government on the subject of real property dealt a death-blow to primogeniture, and to the last of the inherited feudal customs of the Middle Ages. It prevented the acc.u.mulation of large estates, and insured the individual owners.h.i.+p of thousands of homes. No system of foreign landlordism was possible under it. The people were to become their own lords paramount of all socage lands. Quit-rents were to be converted into bank accounts. The individual t.i.tle derived from the National Government involves all the elements necessary for a transfer of the soil. Indeed, this principle of the Ordinance of 1787 not only became a pattern for future State Const.i.tutions, but reacted in similar provisions for those already created.

Another clause of the ordinance has often been the subject of eulogy.

"Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged." Yet this is simply the statement of a principle and precisely such a principle as would be held by the New England a.s.sociators where learning had been almost a fetich and where education at the public expense had its inception in the guise of charity schools.

The principle only is expressed here, since the land ordinance of two years before promised an endowment for public education as long as enough land remained to lay out a county. The a.s.sociators carried out this principle in their own tract by donating lands for a university and for the support of the gospel.

Immediately following the bargain of Dr. Cutler with Congress, the a.s.sociators prepared to migrate _en ma.s.se_ to their purchase. What the hardy spirits among the country people of the South Atlantic States had been able to accomplish by individual initiative and sheer endurance, the town-dwellers of the North Atlantic States did more systematically and rapidly by concerted action. Organisation and government protection saved the Ohio a.s.sociators from such experiments of colonisation as had frequently led to Indian captivities and abandoned settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky. The project of a line of forts along the frontier settlements, conceived during the Indian and Revolutionary wars, a.s.sumed shape after the first sale of public lands had really been consummated. Forts McIntosh, Steuben, Was.h.i.+ngton, Harmar, Vincennes and Ma.s.sac, were speedily erected or garrisoned, thus guarding the length of the Ohio River, the pathway to the North-west. By subsequent Indian treaties, additional reservations were secured and forts scattered throughout the territory at portages and along the river highways. Under this protection, the Ohio Company sent out its band of artificers to erect dwellings and a stockade for the first settlement. Scarcely a year was allowed to elapse after the purchase until Marietta was founded on the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum by the veterans of the Revolutionary War and their friends.

It was 170 miles down the Ohio beyond the outpost of civilisation at Pittsburg. Similar settlements were speedily founded on other purchases and on the military lands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. CUTLER'S CHURCH AND PARSONAGE AT IPSWICH HAMLET, 1787.