ORDINANCE OF 1787 
 
 ND THE WAR OF 1861 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 01 FT OF ^- 
 
 THE BANCROFT LIBRARY- 
 
 Class 
 
I / 
 S?7 
 

 
 The Ordinance of 1787 
 
 AND 
 
 The War of 1861. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered before the New York Commandery 
 
 of the Military Order of the 
 
 I/oyal I/egion 
 
 BY 
 
 WAGBR SWAYNE, 
 
 One of their number. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 Printed by C. G. BURGOYNE. 
 
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 
 
 AND 
 
 THE WAR OF 1861. 
 
 COMMANDER AND COMPANIONS : 
 
 I venture to ask your attention to what seems to ine 
 the direct and impressive connection between the most 
 conspicuous result of that war which brought us into 
 
 *Some time since the committee which has charge of the banquets 
 given by the Commandery impounded me, as it were, and required 
 of me an address on one of those occasions. I related to the Com 
 mandery, ex tempore, the substance of what I have now printed. It 
 had greatly interested me in reviewing the consequences of the 
 war. What I said was received kindly, and a resolution was 
 passed asking me for a copy. I had not written it out, and at the 
 time was not free to do the necessary work. I have since tried 
 to do it with some thoroughness, but I have not much time at my 
 disposal, and there is no pretense to original research. I have felt 
 free to make it much more full than as I spoke it, but as it is 
 done at the request of the Commandery and for their information, 
 I have kept to its original form of an address delivered before 
 them. 
 
 I have reprinted the Ordinance as an appendix to this paper. 
 
 235107 
 
association as soldiers, and the less familiar history of 
 a movement which was set on foot by another company 
 of Associates, of another American army, at the close 
 of the Revolutionary War. 
 
 The fruits of our war are gathered and preserved, so 
 far as its direct effect upon our own Government is 
 concerned, in three short paragraphs which are 
 amendatory of the Federal Constitution. They were 
 adopted soon after the war, and with the express inten 
 tion to make its results secure. 
 
 There have been fifteen amendments to that instru 
 ment since it was adopted on the first Wednesday in 
 March, 1789. The first ten were adopted as one, im 
 mediately after the original indenture, and under cir 
 cumstances which made them really part of the original 
 transaction. Another followed within ten years, and the 
 next one five years later. Then there were sixty years 
 without a change. 
 
 The three amendments which followed the last war 
 are therefore known as the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and 
 Fifteenth. The first of them was adopted in 1865, the 
 next in 1868, and the last in 1870. 
 
 The first of these amendments provides that : 
 
 " Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except 
 as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall 
 have been duly convicted, shall exist within the 
 United States or any place subject to their jurisdic 
 tion." 
 
 The second provides that : 
 
 "All persons born or naturalized in the United 
 States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citi 
 zens of the United States and of the State wherein 
 they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law 
 which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of 
 citizens of the United States, nor shall any State de- 
 
prive any person of life, liberty or property without 
 due process of law, nor deny to any person within its 
 jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." 
 
 The third provides that : 
 
 " The right of the citizens of the United States to vote 
 shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, 
 or by any State, on account of race, color or previous 
 condition of servitude." 
 
 Each of them, in addition, provides that Congress, or 
 " The Congress," as the Constitution designates our 
 National Legislature, may enforce its provisions "by 
 appropriate legislation." 
 
 There are subsidiary sections of the Fourteenth Amend 
 ment, which regulate representation in Congress, pro 
 hibit men from holding office (until pardoned) who 
 having, before the War, taken an oath of office to sup 
 port the Constitution of the United States, were not de 
 terred by that fact from attempting to overthrow that 
 Constitution ; prohibit questioning the validity of the 
 public debt incurred in suppressing the Rebellion ; and 
 prohibit, also, the United -States and every State from 
 paying any debt incurred in aid of the Rebellion. 
 
 All these, however, are of incidental or transient 
 operation. The three clauses : inhibiting slavery ; 
 making all persons born or naturalized in the United 
 States its citizens, and citizens of their respective 
 States ; and then assuring to the citizen the full enjoy 
 ment of all his rights and privileges ; these are the sub 
 stance of these three amendments to the Federal Con 
 stitution, and these three, when grouped together, are 
 perceived to be one. That one is but the ripened 
 growth of the primary enactment, which is itself an 
 adaptation of the corresponding phrase in the event- 
 
6 
 
 fill "Ordinance of 1787," " 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." 
 
 It will be easily remembered that by this Ordinance, 
 enacted by Congress before the present Constitution, 
 the United States assumed jurisdiction over, and estab 
 lished a government for, what was then known as the 
 Northwest Territory, comprising the whole vast area 
 between the Ohio, the Lakes, and the Mississippi, 
 which last was at that time the western boundary of 
 our country. 
 
 Originally applicable to but a limited area, this pre 
 cept of that Ordinance is now made to apply to the 
 whole Union; it is amplified to include all the rights 
 of citizens, and for its honor and security its bene 
 ficiaries are endowed with the right to vote. The 
 War was a purchase of the rights of man ; thes# three 
 amendments are the title deeds, and all their value 
 rests upon this declaration : that THEKE SHALL BE 
 
 NEITHER SLAVERY NOR INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE, EXCEPT 
 FOR CRIME. 
 
 It is a touching fact, when we recall how much it 
 means, that only this should be the fruit of that great war. 
 We personally remember how for four years it kept this 
 country torn apart, and how it gathered and accumu 
 lated and intensified with death and desolation all 
 of those feelings which urge upon the human heart the 
 most vindictive retribution. One of the parties came 
 to be in a position to inflict such retribution. 
 The situation of the other left it nothing but sub 
 mission. The years since have disclosed the scope 
 of what was actually exacted. The historian will find no 
 
list of executions or imprisonments ; no lasting confis 
 cations or disfranchisements ; 110 State impaired in full 
 and equal sovereignty. Nothing, except three short 
 amendments to the Federal Constitution, all securing, 
 even to the vanquished, equal rights. Perhaps it is 
 because of this that since that date this nation has 
 grown so great that even the future of the world seems 
 brighter. 
 
 This precept against slavery stands, moreover, as the 
 final guaranty of individual freedom in this country ; 
 and even beyond this, I cannot but feel that, involved 
 with its history are not only the origin of the late War 
 and the final triumph of the right, but, also, as to very 
 many of us, our own direct and personal relation to the 
 War. 
 
 I have not known till recently, and possibly you do 
 not fully know, how far the officers and soldiers of the 
 devolution were the source and life and strength of 
 that great Ordinance, nor how their lives have by its 
 means become involved with our own lives, nor how far 
 that inscription came from them which is at once the 
 basis of our liberties and the seal of our own military 
 service. 
 
 I begin with the first official record. In a report 
 made in March, 1792, by a Congressional Committee of 
 the House of Representatives, to whom had been re 
 ferred a petition from the " Ohio Company of Asso 
 ciates," the committee says: 
 
 "They find said Ohio Company laid its foundation in 
 an application to the United States in Congress assem 
 bled ; a copy of which marked No. 1 is herewith 
 presented to the House." 
 
 The petition referred to is dated June 16th, 1783, 
 
8 
 
 and is signed by two hundred and eighty-live officers of 
 the CoDtinerital Army. The army was at that time en 
 camped at Newburgh in this State, waiting to be dis 
 charged whenever news should be received that the 
 treaty of peace and independence had been formally 
 concluded. 
 
 Of these signers seven were general officers Knox, 
 Putnam, Stark, Paterson, Hunting-ton, Greaton and 
 Dayton. Besides these, colonels, lieutenant colonels, 
 surgeons, majors, chaplains, paymasters, captains, 
 lieutenants and ensigns were duly represented. One 
 hundred and fifty-five were from Massachusetts, thirty- 
 four from New Hampshire, and forty-six from Con 
 necticut ; making two hundred and thirty-five from the 
 New England States. Thirty-six were from New 
 Jersey, thirteen from Maryland, and one, Captain John 
 Doughty, of the artillery, from our own State of New 
 York. 
 
 To me so much of interest attaches to this petition 
 that I beg leave to present it entire. 
 
 To His EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT, AND HONORABLE 
 DELEGATES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN 
 CONGRESS ASSEMBLED : 
 
 The petition of the subscribers, officers in the conti 
 nental line of the army, humbly showeth : 
 
 " That by a resolution of the Honorable Congress 
 passed September 20th, 1776, and other subsequent 
 resolves, the officers (and soldiers engaged for the war) 
 of the American Army, who shall continue in service 
 till the establishment of peace or in case of their dying 
 in service, their heirs are entitled to receive certain 
 grants of land according to their several grades, to be 
 procured for them at the expense of the United States. 
 
 " That your petitioners are informed that that tract of 
 country bounded north on Lake Erie, east on Penn- 
 
9 
 
 sylvania, southeast and south on the river Ohio, west 
 on a line beginning at that part of the Ohio which 
 lies twenty-four miles west of the River Scioto ; 
 thence running north on a meridian line till it inter 
 sects with the River Miami (Manmee) which falls into 
 Lake Erie ; thence down the middle of that river to the 
 lake is a tract of country not claimed as the property 
 of or in the jurisdiction of any particular State in 
 the Union. That this country is of sufficient extent, 
 the land of such quality and situation, such as may 
 induce Congress to assign and mark it out as a tract or 
 territory suitable to form a distinct government (or 
 colony of the United States), in time to be admitted 
 one of the Confederated States of America. 
 
 " Wherefore your petitioners pray that, whenever 
 the Honorable Congress shall be pleased to procure 
 the aforesaid lands of the natives, they will make pro 
 vision for the location and survey of the lands to which 
 we are entitled within the aforesaid district ; and also 
 for all officers and soldiers who wish to take up their 
 lands in that quarter. 
 
 " That provision also be made for a further grant of 
 lands to such of the army as wish to become ad 
 venturers in the new government, in such quantities 
 and on such conditions of settlement and purchase for 
 public securities as Congress shall judge most for the 
 interest of the intended government, and rendering it 
 of lasting consequence to the American Empire. 
 
 " And your petitioners, as in duty bound, shall ever 
 pray. 
 
 " June 16, 1783." 
 
 We have here a body of officers of the Continental 
 Army, while yet in camp, petitioning Congress " to as- 
 : sign and mark out a tract of territory suitable to 
 " form a distinct government (or colony of the United 
 " States) in time to be admitted one of the Confed- 
 " erated States of America ; " and " to make provision 
 " for the location and survey of the lands to which we 
 " are entitled within the aforesaid district ; and also 
 " for all officers and soldiers who wish to take up their 
 " lands in that quarter ; " and, further, that upon proper 
 
10 
 
 conditions of settlement and purchase, provision also 
 be made for a further grant of lands " to such of the 
 11 army as may wish to become adventurers in the new 
 " government." 
 
 In other words, here is a movement originating with 
 officers of the Continental Army and resulting after 
 wards in their formal organization, which from the first 
 contemplated the distinct and apparently exclusive set 
 tlement of a new State by officers arid soldiers of the 
 Revolutionary War. In the end, they seem to have 
 accomplished more than this, and, as I have suggested, 
 to have left their distinct impression on that war which 
 has associated us. Meantime, however, the earlier his 
 tory of the petition is instructive and pathetic. 
 
 By the terms of confederation of the thirteen 
 colonies, " all charges of war, and all other expenses 
 " that shall be incurred for the common defense or 
 " general welfare, and allowed 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. The taxes for paying 
 
 " that proportion shall be laid and levied by the 
 " authority and direction of the Legislatures of the 
 " several States." * * " 
 
 This method presupposed, and required for its effect 
 ive working, that the Continental Congress be cordially 
 supported by the several Legislatures, and all its requi 
 sitions promptly met. As a matter of fact the Legisla 
 tures did neither. Concerning them, Washington 
 wrote, in 1783, to General Greene at Newburgh : 
 
 " I have written almost incessantly to all the States, 
 urging, in the most forcible terms I could make use of, 
 
11 
 
 the absolute necessity of complying with the requisi 
 tions of Congress in furnishing their contingents of men 
 and money, and am unhappy to say the success of 
 these applications has not been equal to my expecta 
 tions." 
 
 This unsatisfactory condition of affairs may have 
 been caused by jealousy of the centralized power of 
 Congress ; it may have been that popular opinion in 
 the colonies did not, after its first impulse, fully sup 
 port the Revolutionary War ; but it is clear from 
 Washington s writings, and from those of other 
 contemporary witnesses, that the requisitions of Con 
 gress and the obligation which it had incurred were 
 the subject of indifference if not of aversion by the 
 States. Thus, in a letter to Governor Harrison of Vir 
 ginia, Washington writes : 
 
 " How well the States are provided for a continuance 
 of the war, let their acts and policy answer. The army, 
 as usual, is without pay and a great part of the 
 soldiery without shirts and though the patience of 
 them is equally threadbare, the States seem perfectly 
 indifferent to their cries in a word, if one was to 
 hazard for them an opinion on this subject, it would be 
 that the army had contracted such a habit of encounter 
 ing difficulties and distress, and of living without money, 
 that it would be impolitic to introduce other customs 
 into it." 
 
 Perhaps here is an explanation of the fact that with 
 bare and bleeding feet the soldiers of the Continental 
 army crossed the Delaware. In a letter to Hamilton, 
 Washington says that to the defects of the Articles of 
 Confederation, and to " want of power in Congress 
 may justly be ascribed the prolongation of the war, 
 " and consequently the expense of it." He adds : 
 More than half of the perplexities I have experienced 
 
12 
 
 " in the course of my command, and almost the whole 
 " of the difficulties and distress of the army, have had 
 " their origin there." 
 
 The disposition of the States towards Congress, its 
 obligations and its army, did not improve when peace 
 put the objects of the war in possession, and when the 
 possibility of centralized control need no longer be en 
 dured as the alternative of foreign subjugation. A re 
 view of the situation, caustic, but probably just, is 
 found in a letter to James Monroe, which was written 
 from this city by William Grayson, of Virginia, one of 
 the foremost members of Congress, during one of its 
 sessions here : 
 
 " The delegates from the Eastward are for a very 
 strong government, and wish to prostrate all ye State 
 Legislatures, and form a general government out of ye 
 whole, but I don t learn that ye people are with them ; 
 on the contrary, in Massachusetts they think that 
 Government too strong, and are about rebelling again, 
 for ye purpose of making it more democratical. In 
 Connecticut they have rejected ye requisition for ye 
 present year decidedly, and no man there would be 
 elected to ye office of a constable, if he was to declare 
 that he meant to pay a copper towards ye domestic 
 debt. Rhode Island has refused to send members ; ye 
 cry there is for a good government after they have paid 
 their debts in depreciated paper; first, demolish ye 
 Philistines (i. e., their creditors) and then for propriety. 
 N. Hampshire has not paid a shilling since peace, and 
 does not mean to pay one to all eternity. If it was 
 attempted to tax ye people for ye domestic debt, 500 
 Shays would arise in a fortnight. In N. York they pay 
 well, because they can do it by plundering N. Jersey 
 and Connecticut. Jersey will go great lengths from 
 motives of revenge and interest. Pennsylvany will 
 join, provided you let ye sessions of ye Executive of 
 America be fixed in Philadelphia and give her other ad 
 vantages in trade to compensate for ye loss of State 
 power. I shall make no observations on ye Southern 
 States, but I think they will be (perhaps from different 
 
13 
 
 motives) as little disposed to part with efficient power 
 as any in ye Union." 
 
 It was under these circumstances, and as usual, 
 without pay, that the army at Newburgh confronted 
 the close of the war. The country was fairly 
 prosperous ; distress affected only its preservers. The 
 army was not slow to see this. In January, 1783, a 
 committee of officers presented themselves at Phila 
 delphia and complained that 
 
 " shadows have been offered us, while the substance 
 has been gathered by others. Our situation compels 
 us to search for the causes of our extreme poverty. 
 Our distresses are now brought to a point. 
 We have borne all that men can bear ; our property is 
 expended ; our private resources are at an end ; and 
 our friends are wearied out and disgusted with our in 
 cessant applications. * The army entreat that 
 Congress, to convince the world that the independence 
 of America shall not be placed on the ruin of any 
 particular class of her citizens, will point out a mode 
 for immediate redress." 
 
 The testimony of Pickering, their Quarter-Master 
 General, shows that their complaint was in no degree 
 exaggerated : 
 
 " To hear the complaints of the officers and see the 
 miserable condition of the soldiery is really affecting. 
 It deeply penetrates my inmost soul to see men desti 
 tute of clothing who have risked their lives like brave 
 fellows, having large arrears of pay due them and pro 
 digiously pinched for provisions. It is a melancholy 
 scene. * * Those brave and deserving soldiers, 
 
 many of whom have for six years exposed their lives to 
 save their country, who are unhappy enough to have 
 fallen sick, have for a month past been destitute of 
 every comfort of life. The only diet provided for them 
 has been beef and bread, the latter generally SOUR." 
 
14 
 
 Out of tliis situation grew the movement I am at 
 tempting to review. In March, 1783, news was re 
 ceived in camp that, while the treaty of peace was not 
 yet formally signed, it was definitely settled by the 
 preliminary articles, which had been signed, that the 
 territory westward of the colonies and extending to the 
 Mississippi river would be ceded to the United States. 
 
 We have also seen by the petition that soon after the 
 Declaration of Independence, and by other subsequent 
 resolutions, Congress had expressly pledged grants of 
 land to the officers and soldiers of the army, " to be 
 procured at the expense of the United States." The 
 United States, being now about to come into posses 
 sion of this vast territory, the plan at once suggested 
 itself to these expectant grantees to secure from Con 
 gress that their grants might be located together in 
 that part of the territory which would be nearest to 
 their original homes, and then to settle on these lands 
 in a body. To that end they would require for their 
 new homes an established government. Hence, they 
 determined also to ask leave to organize a State. 
 
 Just at this time Pickering writes : 
 
 " BUT A NEW PLAN IS IN CONTEMPLATION NO LESS THAN 
 
 " THE FORMATION OF A NEW STATE WESTWARD OF THE 
 " OHIO. SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL OFFICERS ARE HEARTILY 
 
 " ENGAGED IN IT." 
 
 We have already seen that this project contemplated 
 the settlement of the new State mainly, if not ex 
 clusively, by officers and soldiers of the Continental 
 Army. It seems also to have contemplated that the 
 constitutional provisions, by which its government 
 would be controlled, should be determined in advance 
 by the associates with whom the project originated. 
 
15 
 
 We are again indebted to Pickering for a record of 
 the 
 
 " PROPOSITIONS FOR SETTLING A NEW STATE, BY SUCH 
 " OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF THE FEDERAL ARMY AS SHALL 
 11 ASSOCIATE FOR THE PURPOSE." 
 
 Aside from such of these propositions as are re 
 peated in the petition under review, I can pause only 
 to notice that one of them which provides that 
 
 " a Constitution for the new State be formed by the 
 members of the association previous to their com 
 mencing the settlement, two-thirds of the associates 
 present at a meeting duly notified for that purpose 
 agreeing therein. THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY 
 FROM THE STATE TO FORM AN ESSENTIAL AND IRREVOCABLE 
 PART OF THE CONSTITUTION." * 
 
 * This was thirteen years before slavery was abolished in New 
 York, and twenty years before New Jersey made provision for its 
 gradual extinction. Vermont had done so as early as 1777, others 
 of the New England States in 1780, or soon after. The original 
 responsibility for the presence of slavery in the remaining States is 
 well illustrated by the history of Virginia in this respect, as sum 
 marized by Professor Miner in his Institutes. Commencing in 1699, 
 the General Assembly, between that time and 1772, passed twent}-- 
 three enactments on that subject, each designed to exclude slaves 
 or make their importation difficult. In 1772 the last of these laws 
 was supplemented by a strong petition to the King not to permit 
 " a trade of great inhumanity and dangerous to the very existence 
 " of His Majesty s American Dominion," in order that a few of his 
 subjects " might reap emolument from this sort of traffic." The 
 King s response was cruel and outrageous. Under his own hand 
 he commanded the Governor, "under pain of his highest dis 
 pleasure, to assent to no law under which the importation of 
 " slaves should be in any respect prohibited or restricted." In this 
 same year the English courts decided that a slave who set his foot on 
 English soil was free, and a year later the Quakers in England began 
 the agitation which ended in the abolition of the slave trade. This 
 action of the King of England is that "inhuman use of his 
 negative " which is referred to in the Virginia Bill of Rights. 
 
16 
 
 This has been well said to be the first known propo 
 sition among men to establish a government whose dis 
 tinctive feature should be universal freedom. It came 
 from those who for freedom had lost all, and we shall 
 find their later history full of this proposition and 
 its outcome, fuller, doubtless, than they themselves 
 contemplated. 
 
 " In the eye of reason and of truth," says Bancroft, 
 " a colony is a better offering than a victory. It is 
 " more fit to cherish the memory of those who founded 
 " a State on the basis of democratic liberty." These 
 men of whom I speak first made their country offer 
 ings of victories, then founded States upon the basis of 
 universal liberty, and afterwards, as it appears to me, 
 controlled the fortune of that war in which we were 
 engaged, and stamped their own inscription upon its 
 result. 
 
 The project to form a new State at once enlisted the 
 warm sympathy of Washington. He wrote a long 
 letter to Theodoric Bland, a member of Congress 
 from Virginia, and asked that Hamilton also be made 
 acquainted with his views. Bland presently intro 
 duced an ordinance, seconded by Hamilton, too long 
 and too elaborate to be read or discussed here, 
 but essentially in accord with the views of the 
 associates ; except that provision was made for the 
 ultimate division of the whole area into States. It was, 
 moreover, conditioned upon the consent of Virginia to 
 a change in the terms upon which that State had 
 offered to surrender to the United States her claims to 
 the entire territory between the Ohio, the Mississippi 
 and the Lakes. 
 
 This was referred to what was called "The Grand 
 
From HARPER S MAGAZINE. Copyright, 1885, by Harper & 
 Brothers. 
 
17 
 
 Committee," and was never afterwards heard from. 
 Doubtless the intercourse between Congress and the 
 army which attended its introduction gave the army to 
 better understand the opposing interests that were in 
 volved. Congress, also, meantime was paying off the 
 army in certificates of money due, " final certificates," 
 as they were called, such as were issued to us under 
 the same name, at the end of our own enlistment. The 
 difference was that these certificates would not be paid 
 at once in full, as ours were. 
 
 They were nominally to be paid in six months, with 
 interest at six per cent. ; but they sold in the market 
 at two and three shillings specie in the pound. Hence 
 we find the petition urging, first, grants in fulfillment of 
 the pledges made by resolutions of Congress, passed at 
 different times during the war ; and, second, provision 
 for farther grants " to such of the army as may wish to 
 become adventurers in the new Government, in such 
 quantities and on such conditions of settlement and 
 purchase with public securities " as Congress should 
 approve. 
 
 The head of this movement, from first to last, as we 
 shall hereafter see, was General Eufus Putnam.* The 
 
 * General Rufus Putnam, a man of strong mind and great char 
 acter, was born in Sutton, Mass., April 9th, 1738. When he was 
 seven years old his father died. For two years thereafter he was 
 under the care of his maternal grandfather, who gave him such 
 opportunities to gain knowledge as he could. He learned to read, 
 and the divine fire of zeal for learning was kindled within him. 
 His stepfather, a rude and illiterate man, did everything in his 
 power to quencli this flame, but without success. The boy was not 
 allowed to go to school, nor to use a candle in the night season, but 
 he taught himself to write, and saved his pennies to buy a spelling- 
 book and an arithmetic, which were more valuable to him than any 
 earthly treasure. 
 
18 
 
 fact that the movement dates from the arrival in camp 
 of news that the northwest territory would be ceded to 
 the colonies, is taken from a memorandum of his own. 
 The propositions for settlement, Pickering writes, " are 
 in the hands of General Rufus Putnam and General 
 Hunting ton." It was Putnam who sent to General 
 Washington the petition, with a long letter detailing 
 the considerations in its favor. We shall see him more 
 and more prominent as the project becomes tangible, 
 until its consummation. This was not to be, however, 
 for four long years. 
 
 When he was sixteen years old he was apprenticed to a mill 
 wright. He worked by day and studied by night as best he could. 
 At the age of nineteen he was free. He immediately enlisted in the 
 army, and was a soldier in the wars against the French until the 
 conclusion of those wars in 17GO. He then resumed his trade as mill 
 wright, giving his leisure time to study, learning much about survey 
 ing and navigation. So when the war of the Revolution broke out 
 he was a mature man, well equipped for usefulness. He was one of 
 the first to take up arms in behalf of his country, becoming lieuten 
 ant-colonel of a Massachusetts regiment. His services as engineer 
 were at once required, and under his direction the fortifications at 
 Roxbury and Sewell s Point were successfully constructed. His 
 genius led to the erection of works on Dorchester Heights, which 
 compelled the evacuation of Boston by the British Army. Soon 
 thereafter he was sent to New York, where, as chief engineer, he 
 was charged with the duty of laying out and overseeing the 
 defensive works which were erected in and around that city. In 
 January, 1778, he was at West Point, superintending the building 
 of fortifications there, in accordance with plans which have not 
 been essentially modified even to this day. Washington thought 
 him to be the ablest engineer officer in the American Army. Dur 
 ing part of the War he fought valiantly at the head of two Massa 
 chusetts regiments, and before its close rose to the rank of 
 Brigadier-G eneral. 
 
 When peace came, he found that the quiet farm life of his New 
 England home was no longer satisfying. Besides, he longed to do 
 something towards bettering the earthly condition of many of his 
 fellow-soldiers, who had lost their all in the revolutionary struggle 
 and were in deep distress. He urged upon Congress that lands 
 
19 
 
 Washington transmitted to Congress the petition, 
 accompanied by Putnam s letter to him, and also himself 
 wrote urging the movement as " the most rational and 
 practical scheme which can be adopted by a great propor 
 tion of the officers and soldiers of our army." Already 
 before the war he had advertised for sale " upwards of 
 twenty thousand acres of land on the Ohio and Great 
 Kanawha," and urged their advantages for settlement. 
 Once at least during the revolution, when his military 
 staff were depressed by foreign news, and the question 
 was put to him, " If this be true, and we are driven 
 
 should be appropriated for their use, in which plea Washington 
 joined with him, doing all in his power. The plea was at last suc 
 cessful. On the 31st of December, 1787, he made the following 
 entry in his journal : Set out from my own house, in Rutland, in 
 the State of Massachusetts, in the service of the Ohio Company, 
 for the mouth of the Muskingum River ; wages to be $40 per month, 
 and expense borne by the company." Of this simple farm house 
 the Hon. George F. Hoar writes truly: "It is a plain wooden 
 dwelling, perhaps a little better than the average of the farmers 
 houses of New England of that day. Yet about which of Europe s 
 palaces do holier memories cling ? Honor and fame, and freedom 
 and empire, and the fate of America went with him as he 
 crossed the threshold." He was the leading spirit of the new 
 colonj , " again and again called to take the helm when storms 
 arose." In the wars with the Indians, and in negotiating terms 
 of peace, his services were invaluable. So great was Washington s 
 personal appreciation of his ability, that without solictation, in 
 1796, he issued to him a commission as Surveyor General of the 
 United States. His character had already won for him the 
 lasting friendship of him who was "first in war, first in 
 peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Gen. Putnam 
 was greatly interested in all that concerned education. He was 
 also a deeply religious man, recognizing in his diary many things 
 " so evidently marked by the hand of an overruling Provi 
 dence." In 1807 he drew the plan of a church, which still stands 
 as a monument of his skill and of his interest in the work on earth 
 of the Divine Saviour of men. He died at his home in Marietta, 
 respected and venerated by all who knew him, on the 4th of 
 May, 1824. 
 
from the Atlantic seaboard, what, then, is to be done ?" 
 he replied : " We will retire to the Valley of the Ohio, 
 and there we will be free." The same thought of set 
 tlement there, and apparently also of purchase of lands 
 by officers and soldiers who should make payment with 
 certificates of money due, is presented again in his 
 farewell address in which he says : 
 
 " The extensive and fertile region of the West will 
 yield a happy asylum to those who are fond of domestic 
 enjoyment and are seeking for personal independence. 
 Nor is it possible to conceive that any one of the 
 United States will prefer a national bankruptcy and a 
 dissolution of the Union to a compliance with the req 
 uisitions of Congress and the payment of its just 
 debts." 
 
 A little later, September 7, 1783, in a letter to James 
 Duane, a member of Congress, he proposed the first 
 definite plan for the establishment of new States west 
 of the Ohio, and with it he suggested measures for a 
 comprehensive policy of dealing with the very serious 
 " Indian question " of those days. 
 
 The officers petition arrived at precisely the wrong 
 time. Five days after its date Congress in Philadel 
 phia was surrounded and put in peril by mutinous 
 unpaid Pennsylvania troops, and forthwith betook itself 
 to Princeton. Until it came here to New York, in 
 January, 1785, it was always a migratory and often a 
 fugitive body from the necessities of war. It was often 
 for long periods without a quorum. 
 
 In addition to the inopportuneness of its presenta 
 tion to Congress, it was also unfortunately true that the 
 petition was inaccurate in stating that the tract whose 
 boundaries it defined was not claimed as the property 
 of or within the jurisdiction of any particular State, 
 
21 
 
 for it was, in fact, all claimed by Virginia, and parts of 
 it also by other States. 
 
 In 1778 General George Eogers Clark,* armed with a 
 commission from Virginia, and literally with nothing 
 else, had, single-handed, raised troops, gathered sup 
 plies and had subdued and kept possession of the Eng 
 lish forts at Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi near St. 
 Louis, Cahokia, and at Vincennes, on the Ohio. 
 
 Upon this fact of possession the American Commis 
 sioners at Paris had successfully asserted that the 
 treaty of peace should cede to the United States the 
 entire territory between the Ohio, the Misisssippi and 
 the Lakes. The position at once taken by Virginia 
 was that the United States comprised and could com 
 prise only the States themselves, so that all lands 
 
 * It is a fact of importance in estimating the character and 
 claims of General Clark on the American people that the Legislature 
 of Virginia did not furnish him with money or other means to ac 
 complish the service they had appointed him to perform. They 
 merely sent him a commission accompanied with power to recruit 
 men and make contracts obligatory on the State. * * * On the 
 credit of that document lie was enabled for some time to raise supplies 
 of provision, clothing, &c., for the sustenance and comfort of his 
 troops, for which he drew on the commonwealth in favor of the 
 persons who had furnished the supplies ; his drafts being accom 
 panied with such vouchers as are usually furnished on similar oc 
 casions. To his astonishment and the surprise of all who knew the 
 facts, these drafts were dishonored, for such reasons as could not 
 but wound the feelings of the gallant chief who had drawn them." 
 He was compelled to impress supplies for the use of his troops, and 
 " the persons whose property was taken b} r force commenced suits 
 and obtained judgments against the general in the courts of the 
 territory, on which portions of his property were attached and 
 sold." The cruel ingratitude of which he w r as the victim drove him 
 to intemperance. His health became infirm. He suffered severely 
 from rheumatism which resulted in paralysis. Notes on the Early 
 Settlement of the Norilnreatern Territory, by Hon. Jacob Burnet, 
 page 81. Also Indiana, by J. P. Dunn, Jr. 
 
22 
 
 within the United States must of necessity belong to 
 some one of the States. For herself, her charter ran 
 " from sea to sea, to the west and northwest." Sir 
 Francis Drake had reported that, standing on a moun 
 tain on the Isthmus of Darien, the Atlantic and Pacific 
 were both within his view. Probably from this fact an 
 impression had grown up in Europe that this strip was 
 comparatively narrow. Hence other early charters ran 
 somewhat in the same way ; and when in 1608 an expe 
 dition under orders direct from England was sent to ex 
 plore the James River, a barge was sent out for Captain 
 Newton which could be easily taken apart, and he and 
 his company were directed " to go up the James River 
 " as far as the falls thereof (where the City of Richmond 
 " is now situated), and from thence they were to proceed 
 " carrying their barge beyond the falls to convey them to 
 " the South Sea, and were ordered not to return without 
 " a lump of gold or the certainty of the said sea." 
 
 This charter of Virginia was not originally granted 
 to Virginia as a colony, but to a corporation styled 
 " The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and 
 Planters of the City of London for the First Colony of 
 Virginia." They were to have : 
 
 " All those lands, countries and territories 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 Comfort all along the 
 sea coast 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 hundred miles along the coast of both 
 seas, of the precinct aforesaid ; to hold the same in free 
 and common socage." 
 
23 
 
 This charter had been taken from the London Com 
 pany in 1624, by a quo warrcuito proceeding instituted 
 by the King. The boundaries, however, on the north 
 and south continued to be those of the colony, and no 
 new western boundary had otherwise than by implica 
 tion been established. Hence, the colony regarded its 
 own area as coextensive with the original grant so far 
 as north and south boundaries were concerned, and to 
 the westward also, till the Spanish boundary was 
 reached. 
 
 Arguing its own right from this basis, fortified by 
 the fact of conquest by the troops of General Clark, 
 Virginia passed a legislative act in October, 1778, 
 reciting that, 
 
 " by a successful expedition of the Virginia militia 
 on the western side of the Ohio River, several of the 
 British posts within the territory of this Commonwealth, 
 in the country adjacent to the .Mississippi River, have 
 been reduced, and the inhabitants have acknowledged 
 themselves citizens thereof and taken the oath of 
 fidelity to the same." 
 
 The same act went on to provide that 
 
 " all citizens of this commonwealth, who are already 
 settled or shall hereafter settle on the western side of 
 the Ohio as aforesaid, shall be included in a distinct 
 county, which shall be called Illinois County." 
 
 Further provision is then made for the protection 
 and development of the country, under the auspices of 
 a county lieutenant or commandant-in-chief, and " for 
 " supplying the said inhabitants, as well as our friendly 
 
 * Laws of Virginia:, Hening s Statutes at Large, Vol. 9, p. 552, 
 Chap. XXI. 
 
24 
 
 " Indians in those parts, with goods and other neces- 
 " saries, either by opening a communication and trade 
 " with New Orleans or otherwise," <fcc. 
 
 This was succeeded by other legislative acts reserv 
 ing specific areas for distribution to Virginia troops, 
 both the militia and her own contingent in the Conti 
 nental Army, and finally, in 1781, by an elaborate sys 
 tem for disposing of other lands to purchasers. 
 
 This provoked the remaining colonies, the State of 
 Maryland especially forwarding to Congress resolu 
 tions that the 
 
 " extensive tract of country which lies to the west 
 ward of the frontiers of the United States had been 
 or might be gained from the King of Great Britain or 
 the native Indians by the blood and treasure of all, and 
 ought, therefore, to be a common estate to be granted 
 out on terms beneficial to all the United States." 
 
 The other States so far sympathized with this view 
 that, after the war was closed, they held aloof, mainly 
 on this ground, from further cementing the union of 
 the States. Meantime, New York, " to promote the 
 general interest and security, and more especially to 
 accelerate the Federal alliance," by an Act of its Legis 
 lature, relinquished all its claim. 
 
 Virginia and Connecticut thereupon did the same, 
 but with conditions, and it was not until 1785, or two 
 years after the petition, that the United States was in a 
 position either to bestow the lands or authorize a plan 
 of government. 
 
 The petition of June 16, 1783, recognizes the neces 
 sity of treaties with the Indians before any attempt at 
 occupation should be made. I cannot here detail the 
 steps by which these difficulties were removed. It was 
 
25 
 
 not until January, 1786, that the last of them was re 
 moved by a treaty with the Wyandottes, Delawares and 
 Shawnees, formally ceding to the United States, except 
 as to certain reservations, all title to the Northwest 
 Territory. 
 
 Simultaneously with this treaty (January 25, 1786) 
 General Eufus Putnam and Colonel Benjamin Tup- 
 per, also a signer of the petition, published in the 
 newspapers of Boston a call headed " INFORMATION," 
 addressed to " all officers and soldiers who have 
 " served in the late war, and who are, by a late 
 " ordinance of the Honorable Congress, to receive 
 " certain tracts of land in the Ohio country, and also 
 " all other good citizens who wish to become adven- 
 " turers in that delightful region," to hold a meeting in 
 each county on Wednesday, the fifteenth of February, 
 to choose a delegate or delegates " to meet at the 
 " Bunch of Grapes Tavern* in Boston on Wednesday the 
 
 * The Bunch of Grapes Tavern was situated at the corner of 
 King, now State street, and Mackerel Lane, in Boston. It ac 
 quired celebrity previous to the Revolution under the management 
 of Francis Holmes. "It is quite safe to assume," says Mr. Edwin 
 L. Bymer in the Atlantic Monthly, " that Holmes kept a house both 
 of good order and abundant cheer ; else, be sure, the Hon. Samuel 
 Sewall had not so much affected it. Nothing would have tempted 
 that staunch old Puritan to frequent an inn of ill or indefinite re 
 pute. The fact that in 1728 the Bunch of Grapes was chosen as the 
 lodging place of Governor William Burnet shows that it had already 
 attained the first rank among the hostelries of the town." In 1735 
 the first Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons in America 
 was organized here. The earliest benevolent association in Boston, 
 and one of the oldest in America, the Scots Charitable Society, held 
 its meetings during 1767 and 1768 at the Bunch of Grapes. A 
 tradition is also current that the first meeting for the organization of 
 Trinity Church, Boston, was held at the Bunch of Grapes. The 
 Boston Massacre took place almost before its very door, and after 
 the evacuation of Boston by the British : Washington was a guest 
 
26 
 
 " first day of March, next," in order to form " an asso- 
 " elation, by the name of THE OHIO COMPANY, of all such 
 " as wish to become purchasers, <fcc., in that country, 
 " who reside in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
 " only, or to extend to the inhabitants of other States, 
 " as may be agreed on." It will be recalled that in 1792 
 a Congressional Committee reported that this " OHIO 
 COMPANY " " laid its foundation " in the petition signed at 
 Newburgh for a new State west of the Ohio. This was 
 less than nine years from the date of the petition and 
 less than five years after the company was organized. 
 Numerous signers of the petition were at the time in 
 Congress and in Federal official place, so that personal 
 knowledge on the subject was abundant. 
 
 Forty-seven signers of the petition became members 
 of the company when organized. To these should be 
 added several persons who were sons of deceased 
 signers, and several other persons who were signers of 
 the petition and became settlers with the rest, but did 
 not become members of the company. Probably they 
 had sold their certificates and were without other means 
 of acquiring an interest. The plan adopted as the basis 
 of this organization was a purchase of lands in bulk, the 
 purchase money to be subscribed in shares, subscriptions 
 payable in " final certificates," as the original petition 
 had contemplated. The call found favor, and the dele 
 gates met March 8th, 1786, at the Bunch of Grapes 
 
 at this tavern. The Sons of Freedom gave an entertainment in 
 honor of Gen. Stark in 1877, and, at a late period, Lafayette was a 
 visitor at the Bunch of Grapes. The first meeting for the organiza 
 tion of the Ohio Company was held at this hostelry, and, " on the 
 whole, it may perhaps be considered the most memorable event 
 connected with its history." Atlantic Monthly for December, 1889. 
 
27 
 
 Tavern as proposed. General Rufus Putnam was elected 
 chairman of the meeting. A committee, composed of 
 himself, General Samuel H. Parsons and Rev. Manasseh 
 Cutler, was appointed to receive such subscriptions, 
 payable in public securities, and which securities, when 
 received, should be applied to the purchase from Congress 
 of a quantity of land west of the Ohio, upon which the 
 subscribers were to settle. One year was allowed for 
 procuring subscriptions, and on March 8th, 1787, the 
 association reconvened, this time at Brackett s Tavern*, 
 Boston. The subscriptions were considered enough to 
 warrant the undertaking. The company was then 
 formally organized as the Ohio Company of Associates. + 
 General Eufus Putnam, General Samuel H. Parsons 
 and Eev. Manasseh Cutler were elected directors. 
 
 * Brackett s Tavern, or Cromwell s Head, was in School street, 
 Boston. " It was kept by Anthony Brackett in 1760, by his widow 
 from 1764 to 1768, and later by Joshua Brackett. Its repute was 
 good, for we find the Marquis Chastellux alighting there in 1782, 
 before paying his respects to M. de Yaudreuil, commander of the 
 French fleet that was to carry away Rochambeau s army." After 
 Braddock s defeat in 1756, Lieut. Col. Washington visited Boston, 
 and was a guest at the Cromwell s Head. Old Landmark* of Boston, 
 by S. A. Drake. 
 
 t u Among the many distinguished men who were members of 
 the Ohio Company, but who never became actual settlers, were 
 Hamilton and Dexter, the first and third Secretaries of the Treas 
 ury ; Henry Knox, the first Secretary of War : three Governors of 
 Massachusetts, of whom one was also a Vice-President of the 
 United States ; a Governor of Rhode Island and a Governor of 
 Connecticut ; a United States Senator from Connecticut, a Post 
 master-General under the Continental Congress, an Associate 
 Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and a President of 
 Harvard College." (From a paper read before the Ohio Society of 
 New York by John Q. Mitchell.) 
 
 More than a hundred officers of the Revolutionary Army were 
 also members of the company. 
 
28 
 
 Gen. James M. Varnuin was subsequently added to 
 their number. Major Wiiithrop Sargeant was appointed 
 secretary. General Parsons was empowered to proceed 
 at once to New York and there negotiate with Congress 
 for the purchase of the lands. 
 
 General Parsons differed seriously, and perhaps 
 wisely, from the majority of the associates as to what 
 lands it was best to purchase, if they could purchase at 
 all* He preferred the Valley of the Scioto, for its rich 
 and level bottoms. They preferred the Valley of the 
 Muskingum, for its several navigable streams and for 
 the long front on the Ohio which the bend in that 
 river gave. The difference between the associates and 
 General Parsons led to the transfer of his mission, 
 quite early in the summer, to the Rev. Dr. Cutler. 
 This gentleman had been an army chaplain in the 
 Revolutionary War, and at the time of his appointment 
 to succeed General Parsons was a Congregational 
 
 *The lamented General William T. Sherman was often present at 
 the banquets of the New York Commandery, and was so on the 
 evening when this address was delivered. He was warmly inter 
 ested in the subject, having passed his boyhood and youth among 
 the immediate descendants of these revolutionary pioneers, and 
 having also married into the family of one of them, the Hon. 
 Thomas Ewing, who was the first Secretary of the Interior, and 
 was, perhaps, the ablest jurist and most, eminent citizen who ever 
 grew up in Ohio. General Sherman wrote to me in this connection 
 a letter, from which I extract the following : 
 
 " Mr. Swing s knowledge surpassed all others, and I am sure he 
 told me that the bargain of the old Revolutionary soldiers with 
 Uncle Sam was a hard one and their selection of land a poor one. 
 < * * * Q ur Revolutionary citizens drove a hard bargain with 
 the heroes whom they did not pay when peace was secured. 
 * * * In war, as in shipwreck, the passengers cry aloud : 
 Save our lives and we freely give you all our worldly goods ! 
 but the firm land once under foot they exclaim : You got your 
 pay and you ought to be content ! " 
 
29 
 
 clergyman preaching at Ipswich, Mass. He drove 
 in a sulky from Ipswich to New York, arriving at the 
 latter place July 5, 1787, and in his diary says : 
 
 "About three o clock I arrived at the citv by the 
 road that enters the Bowery. Put up my horse at the 
 sign of the Plow and Harrow, in the Bowery." 
 
 The day after his arrival he writes : 
 
 " At eleven o clock I was introduced to a number of 
 members on the floor of Congress chamber in the City 
 Hall, by Colonel Carrington, member for Virginia." 
 
 This City Hall stood on the corner of Wall and 
 Nassau streets, the site of the present sub-treasury of 
 the United States. The city authorities had tendered 
 it to the Congress convened under the Articles of Con 
 federation, by whom it was occupied, until they in 
 turn were succeeded by the Congress assembled under 
 the present Constitution. A statue of Washington now 
 designates the spot where he was first inaugurated, on 
 the balcony of the Hall, April 30, 1789. To rne the 
 site of this Hall has another and a peculiar interest 
 from the fact that it was here also that the Ordinance 
 of 1787 was enacted. 
 
 Let me now trace briefly the connection between the 
 Petition and the Ordinance. We have seen that, at 
 the first inception of the project, and in advance of the 
 petition, Washington wrote to Theodoric Bland, who 
 introduced in Congress an ordinance apparently de 
 signed to carry out the views of the petitioners, but 
 that facts then existing made the project at the time 
 impracticable. In September, 1783, General Knox 
 wrote to General Washington : 
 
 " I am daily solicited for information respecting the 
 
30 
 
 progress of the officers petition for a new State west 
 ward of the Ohio. * * * 
 
 11 Were the prayer of the petition to be granted, the 
 officers in a few years would make the finest settlement 
 on the frontier, and form a strong barrier against the 
 barbarian. * * * 
 
 " Congress have evinced so much wisdom and mag 
 nanimity in their conduct, that it cannot be doubted 
 that they will make the most substantial arrangements 
 for future exigencies consistent with their revenue and 
 their nicest economies." 
 
 During the same month, as I have said, Washington 
 wrote to James Duane, a member of Congress from 
 New York, proposing " the first definite plan for the 
 formation of new States in the West," and also outlin 
 ing a broad scheme of policy for dealing with the 
 Indian question, thus dealing at once with the two 
 points most essential to the wish of the petitioners. 
 In the same month Congress accepted the cession from 
 Virginia, with a single condition precedent, which was 
 eventually approved of by that State. 
 
 April 5, 1784, General Rufus Putnam wrote to Wash 
 ington again : 
 
 " You are sensible of the necessity, as well as the 
 possibility, of both officers and soldiers fixing them 
 selves in business somewhere as soon as possible, as 
 many of them are unable to lie longer on their oars, 
 waiting the decision of Congress on our petition, and, 
 therefore, must unavoidably settle themselves in some 
 other quarter which, when done, the idea of removing 
 to the Ohio country will probably be at an end with 
 respect to most of them. Besides, the Commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts have come to a resolution to sell their 
 eastern country for public securities, and should their 
 plan be formed and propositions be made public before 
 we hear anything from Congress respecting our petition 
 and the terms on which the lands petitioned for are to 
 be obtained, it will undoubtedly be much against 
 us by greatly lessening the number of Ohio asso 
 ciates." " 
 
31 
 
 In reply to this Washington wrote, June 2d, 1784 : 
 
 " I could not answer your favor of the 5th of April 
 from Philadelphia, because General Knox, having mis 
 laid, only presented the letter to me in the moment of 
 my departure from that place. The sentiments of es 
 teem and friendship which breathe in it are exceedingly 
 pleasing and flattering to me, and you may rest assured 
 they are reciprocal. 
 
 " I wish it was in my power to give you a more favor 
 able account of the officers petition for lands on the 
 Ohio and its waters, than I am about to do. As to 
 this matter and information respecting the establish 
 ment for peace, were my inquiries, as I went through 
 Annapolis, solely directed, but could not learn that 
 anything decisive had been done in either. * * * 
 Surely, if justice and gratitude to the army and gen 
 eral policy to the Union were to govern in this case, 
 there would not be the smallest interruption in grant 
 ing its request. * At Princetown, before Con 
 gress left that place, I exerted every power I was 
 master of, and dwelt upon the argument you have 
 used, to show the propriety of a speedy decision. 
 Every member with whom I conversed acquiesced in 
 the reasonableness of the petition. All yielded or 
 seemed to yield to the policy of it, but plead the 
 want of cession of the land to act upon : this is made 
 and accepted, and yet matters, as far as they have come 
 to my knowledge, remain in statu quo" 
 
 It did befall, however, that, on the 19th day of April, 
 Mr. Jefferson of Virginia, Mr. Chase of Maryland, and 
 Mr. Hovvell of Virginia, "a committee appointed to 
 prepars a plan for the temporary government of the 
 Western territory," reported a substitute for the Bland 
 ordinance of the preceding year, and which, largely 
 amended, presently became a law. Its controlling fea 
 ture was the following provision : 
 
 " Provided. That both the temporary and permanent 
 governments be established 011 these principles as their 
 basis : 
 
32 
 
 " 1. That they shall forever remain a part of the 
 United States of America. 
 
 " 2. That, in their persons, property and territory, 
 they shall be subject to the Government of the United 
 States in Congress assembled, and to the Articles of 
 Confederation, in all those cases in which the original 
 States shall be so subject. 
 
 " 3. That they shall be subject to pay a part of the 
 Federal debts, contracted or to be contracted, to be 
 apportioned on them by Congress, according to the 
 same common rule and measure by which apportion 
 ments thereof shall be made on the other States. 
 
 " 4. That their respective governments shall be in 
 republican forms, and shall admit no person to be a 
 citizen who holds any hereditary title. 
 
 " 5. THAT, AFTER THE YEAR 1800 OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 ERA, THERE SHALL BE NEITHER SLAVERY NOR INVOLUNTARY 
 SERVITUDE IN ANY OF THE SAID STATES, OTHERWISE THAN 
 IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL 
 HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED TO HAVE BEEN PERSONALLY 
 
 GUILTY." 
 
 This is the first appearance of these immortal words 
 which have now^ such transcendent associations.* 
 
 The designation " involuntary servitude " is not, as 
 here used, a mere synonym of " slavery." It was meant 
 to preclude the enforcement of contracts to serve for a 
 
 * Jefferson was undoubtedly their author. The original draft of 
 this ordinance, on file in the Department of State, is entirely in Jef 
 ferson s handwriting. His views in regard to slavery are forcibly ex 
 pressed in his Notes on Virginia. He says : " Can the liberties of a 
 nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm 
 basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are 
 the gift of God ; that they are not to be violated but with His wrath. 
 Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just ; 
 that His justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, 
 nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of for 
 tune, an exchange of situation is among possible events, that it may 
 become probable by supernatural influence ! The Almighty has no 
 attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest." He 
 hoped that a way " was preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, 
 for a total emancipation." 
 
33 
 
 term of years, or for life, and was of large practical 
 value in that sense.* 
 
 * An Act of the Territory of Indiana, passed September 17th, 
 1807, and continued in Illinois after that Territory was made sepa 
 rate from Indiana, provided as follows : 
 
 Sec. 1. "It shall and may be lawful for any person, being the 
 owner or possessor of any negroes or mulattoes of and above the 
 age of fifteen years, and owing labor and service as slaves in any 
 of the States or Territories of the United States, or for any citizen 
 of the said States or Territories purchasing the same, to bring the 
 said negroes and mulattoes into this Territory." Sec. 2. "The 
 owner or possessor of any negroes or mulattoes, as aforesaid, and 
 bringing the same into this Territory, shall, within thirty days after 
 such removal, go with the same before the Clerk of the Court of 
 Common Pleas of the proper county, and in the presence of said 
 Clerk, the said owner or possessor shall determine and agree, to 
 and with his or her negro or mulatto, upon the term of years which the 
 said negro or mulatto will and shall serve his or her said owner or 
 possessor, and the said clerk is hereby authorized and required to 
 make a record thereof, in a book which he shall keep for that pur 
 pose." Sec. 3. "If any negro or mulatto, removed into this Terri 
 tory, as aforesaid, shall refuse to serve his or her owner, as afore 
 said, it shall and may be lawful for such person, within sixty days 
 thereafter, to remove the said negro or mulatto to any place which 
 by the laws of the United States or Territory, from whence such 
 owner or possessor may, or shall be authorized to remove the 
 same " (.>). 
 
 Repeated litigations were had under this act, and it was uni 
 formly held invalid, because in conflict with the prohibition of the 
 ordinance. Something of the same kind was attempted in some of 
 the Southern States immediately after the war. 
 
 Probably the idea was suggested to Mr. Jefferson by the custom 
 at that time prevalent in this country with shipmasters and mer 
 chants, of bringing over white immigrants under contracts to serve 
 for a term of years, in lieu of the payment of passage money. 
 This, in its turn, is now to some extent reproduced among us by 
 Italian padrones and others. 
 
 " Conditional servitude under indentures or covenants had from 
 the first existed in Virginia. Once, at least, James sent over con 
 victs, and once, at least, the City of London a hundred homeless 
 children from its streets. The servant stood to his master m the 
 relation of a debtor bound to discharge by his labor the costs of 
 emigration. White servants came to be a usual article of merchan 
 dise. They were sold in England to be transported, and in Vir 
 ginia were to be purchased on shipboard." Bancroft s History of 
 the United States, Vol. /., p. 1,15. 
 
34 
 
 That intending settlers might rely upon these provis 
 ions as irrevocable, this forerunner of the ordinance 
 went on to provide : 
 
 " That all the preceding articles shall be formed into 
 a charter of compact ; shall be duly executed by the 
 President of the United States in Congress assembled, 
 under his hand and the seal of the United States ; shall 
 be promulgated and shall stand as fundamental condi 
 tions between the thirteen original States and these 
 newly described, unalterable but by the joint consent 
 of the United States, in Congress assembled, and of the 
 particular State within which such alteration is pro 
 posed to be made." 
 
 This feature is fully preserved in the subsequent Or 
 dinance of 1787. 
 
 This toleration of slavery until 1800 the committee 
 reported in deference to the situation of the old French 
 families, and perhaps some others, who already had 
 slaves within the territory, and were protected there in 
 holding them by treaty stipulations/ 
 
 Even this prospective exclusion was struck out in 
 Committee of the Whole, on motion of Mr. Spaight, of 
 South Carolina. Thus modified, the ordinance passed 
 Congress and became a law April 23d, 1784. 
 
 The men who had fought so many years for a free 
 country, and who proposed to make the total exclusion 
 of slavery an essential and irrevocable feature of the 
 
 * At Vincennes, on the Ohio, at this time, and at Cahokia, on 
 the Mississippi, nearly opposite St. Louis ; at Kaskasia, thirty miles 
 southeast of St. Louis, and at Detroit there were small French settle 
 ments. These, with a few families who claimed Virginia citizen 
 ship, made up in all about three thousand people other than the 
 Indians in the whole of that vast area. Even these were not citizens 
 of the United States : and the majority of them gradually removed 
 across the Ohio to " Louisiana," or to Canada, taking their slaves 
 with them. 
 

35 
 
 Constitution of the State they were to found, had no 
 use for a grant of governmental powers from which the 
 power to exclude slavery was entirely withdrawn. The 
 ordinance of April 23d, 1784, fell flat, and no attempt 
 of any kind was ever made to set up under it an actual 
 government. It was a dead letter on the statute 
 book until it was replaced by the renowned Ordinance 
 of 1787, in wliich the total exclusion of slavery was 
 made an essential and irrevocable feature. 
 
 Years afterwards, the Ohio Company s famous agent, 
 Kev. Manasseh Cutler,* in explaining to his son Judge 
 
 *Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D., was a remarkable man. He 
 was a clergyman, but lie was a great deal more : a lawyer, a phy 
 sician, an educator, a politician, a man of affairs, a farmer, and a 
 scientist ; and in all of these callings he did good work. He was 
 born in Killingly, Conn., on May 30, 1742 ; graduated from Yale 
 College in 1765, and admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1767. 
 Being attracted to the work of the Christian ministry, he studied 
 theology, and in 1771 was ordained as pastor of a Congregational 
 society in Ipswich Hamlet, since 1793 known as the town of Ham 
 ilton, Mass. He remained with this society until his death, a 
 period of more than half a century. When the Revolutionary War 
 began he stirred his townsmen with rousing words, and soon there 
 after was appointed Chaplain in the Army. Towards the close of 
 the war he studied medicine, that he might minister alike to the 
 bodily and the spiritual needs of his flock. The cause of his inter 
 est in the Ohio Company is explained by the following memoran 
 dum, preserved in his handwriting : 
 
 " At this meeting by ye desire of Major Sargent, I attended. I 
 had suffered exceedingly in ye war, and after it was over, by paper 
 money and ye high price of articles of living, my salary small and 
 family large, for several years I thought ye people had not done me 
 justice, and I meditated leaving them. Purchasing lands in a new 
 country appeared to be ye only thing I could do to secure a living 
 to myself and family in that unsettled state of public affairs. I 
 had long before entertained a high opinion of ye lauds in ye western 
 country, which was a particular inducement to attend this meeting. 
 The representations and plans of ye country gave a still more 
 favorable idea, and I determined to join ye association, but without 
 ye most distant thought of taking an active part." 
 
 McMaster, in his history of the people of the United States, 
 writes of Cutler at this period: "He had been bred first to the 
 
30 
 
 Epliraim Cutler, how it came that " the prohibition of 
 " slavery and the recognition of religion, morality and 
 
 bar and then to the ministry, but his true calling was politics. He 
 was clear of head, sound of judgment, of great push and energy, 
 and in the pursuit of his aims not over careful of the means used. 
 He was chosen, therefore, to go before Congress and purchase the 
 land, and the choice could not have fallen on a better man." 
 
 The words of Senator Hoar, spoken at the Marietta Centennial, 
 are even more " fitly chosen." " Manasseh Cutler was probably 
 the fittest man on the Continent, except Franklin, for a mission of 
 delicate diplomacy. Putnam was a man after Washington s pat 
 tern and after Washington s own heart. Cutler was a man after 
 Franklin s pattern and after Franklin s own heart. He was the 
 most learned naturalist in America, as Franklin was the greatest 
 master in physical science. He was a man of consummate prudence 
 in speech and conduct ; of courtly manners ; a favorite in the draw 
 ing-room and in the camp, with a wide circle of friends and corre- 
 pondents among the most famous men of his time. During his 
 brief service in Congress he made a speech on the Judicial system, 
 in 1803, which shows his profound mastery of constitutional princi 
 ples. It fell to his lot in 1787 to conduct a negotiation second only 
 in importance in the history of his Country to that which Franklin 
 conducted with France in 1778. Never was embassador crowned 
 with success more rapid or more complete." 
 
 In 1788 Cutler made a journey to the West. He was nearly a 
 month on his way from his home in Massachusetts, traveling in a 
 sulky to the new settlement on the Ohio. He had considered the 
 matter of a permanent residence at Marietta and decided against 
 it ; but his interest in the new country was very great. It was in 
 teresting to him as a naturalist, as a patriot and as a religious man. 
 The National grants of land for educational and religious purposes 
 were obtained through his foresight and earnest solicitation. With 
 him also the establishment of a university was "a first object," and 
 " lay with great weight on his mind." 
 
 From 1801 until 1805 he was a member of Congress, declining 
 re-election. 
 
 He was a member of many scientific bodies, and was also a cor 
 respondent of learned men in all parts of the world. An early taste 
 for astronomy, and especially for botany, remained with him as long 
 as he lived. The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred 
 upon him, in 1791, by Yale College. 
 
 " Patriotism glowed in his heart; whether at home or abroad 
 his mind was intent on projecting great and good plans, consulting 
 the benefit of generations to come." 
 
 He died at his home in Hamilton, Mass., on the 28th of July, 
 1823. 
 
37 
 
 " knowledge as foundations of civil government were 
 " incorporated into tlie Ordinance, said, I was acting 
 " for associates, friends and neighbors, who would not 
 " embark in the enterprise unless these principles were 
 " unalterably fixed. " 
 
 In June, 1785, while Congress was still deliberating, 
 we find Pickering writing about the " plan " to Eufus 
 King, afterwards a distinguished citizen of New York, 
 United States Senator, and Minister to England, 
 but who was at that time a member of Congress 
 from Massachusetts. It will be remembered that 
 the draft which Mr. Jefferson reported proposed the 
 exclusion of slavery only from and after the year 
 1800, while the total exclusion of slaverv was the 
 purpose of the petitioners of 1783. Hence, early 
 in 1785, Pickering writes to King a long letter, from 
 which the following is condensed : 
 
 " I should have objected .to the period (A. D. 1800) 
 proposed for the exclusion of slavery, for the admis 
 sion of it for a single day or an hour ought to have 
 been forbidden. It is infinitely easier to prevent the 
 evil at first than to eradicate or check it at any future 
 time. For God s sake, let one more effort be made to 
 prevent so terrible a calamity." 
 
 To this Mr. King replied as follows : 
 
 "NEW YORK, 15th April, 1785. 
 
 The best return in my power to make you for your 
 ingenious communication on the mode of disposing of 
 the Western Territory, is to enclose for your examina 
 tion the form of an ordinance reported to Congress 
 on the subject. You will find thereby that your ideas 
 have had weight with the committee who reported this 
 ordinance, and I have only to add that I shall hold 
 myself particularly obliged by your further communi 
 cations on the subject. 
 
 " I likewise enclose you the report of a committee 
 on a motion for the exclusion of slaverv from the new 
 
38 
 
 States. Your ideas on this unjustifiable practice are 
 so just that it would be impossible to differ from them." 
 
 Mr. King here refers to the fact that at his instance 
 the Congress had, in Committee of the Whole, adopted 
 the following as a clause to be reported for enactment 
 as an amendment to the ordinance as at that time in 
 force : 
 
 " That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary 
 servitude in any of the States described in the resolve 
 of Congress of the 23d of April, 1784, otherwise than 
 in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall 
 have been personally guilty ; and that this regulation 
 shall be an article of compact and remain a funda 
 mental principle of the Constitution between the thir 
 teen original States, and each of the States described 
 in the said resolve of the 23d of April, 1784." 
 
 This was, however, never taken up for final action, 
 and never became a law. About this time Pickering 
 bought land in Pennsylvania and settled there. He 
 does not figure afterwards as one of the associates. 
 
 A principal cause of this dilatory course was the 
 fact that the deeds of cession, by Virginia and Massa 
 chusetts, stipulated that the new States in the North 
 west Territory should not exceed in area one hundred 
 and fifty miles square, and the terms of this require 
 ment had by resolution of Congress been accepted. 
 
 In Congress and out of it there existed a strenuous 
 feeling that this limitatation was unwise and would 
 prove most unfortunate. The most active exponent of 
 this feeling w r as James Monroe, who had been at the 
 pains to personally visit the Northwest Territory, 
 after which, January 19th, 1786, he wrote to Thomas 
 Jefferson the following complimentary description of 
 the present States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois : 
 
39 
 
 " A great part of the territory is miserably poor, 
 especially that near Lakes Michigan and Erie ; and that 
 upon the Mississippi and Illinois consists of extensive 
 plains which have not had from appearances and will 
 not have a single bush on them for ages. The dis 
 tricts, therefore, within which these fall, will, perhaps, 
 never contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to 
 entitle them to membership in the Confederacy, and in 
 the meantime the people in them will be governed by 
 the resolutions of Congress, in which they will not be 
 represented." 
 
 This feeling led Monroe to take such action in Con 
 gress that, on his motion, that body, March 24, 1786, 
 resolved : 
 
 " That it be and hereby is recommended to the 
 Legislature of Virginia to take into consideration their 
 act of cession and revise the same so far as to empower 
 the United States in Congress assembled to make such 
 a division of the territory of the United States lying 
 northerly and westerly of the River Ohio into distinct 
 Republican States, not more than five nor less than 
 three as the situation of that country and future cir 
 cumstances may require." 
 
 It is not to be overlooked, however, that other causes 
 were in force, contributing at least to defer an active 
 movement to restore the Anti-Slavery clause. The pe 
 tition itself asks only that " whenever the Honorable 
 " Congress shall be pleased to procure the aforesaid 
 " lands of the natives, they will make provision for the 
 " location and survey of the lands ; " and that then the 
 grants requested may be made. 
 
 No further attempt was made to amend the ordinance 
 of 1784 until April 26, 1787, when a committee com 
 posed of Mr. Johnson, of Connecticut ; Mr. Pinckney, 
 of South Carolina ; Mr. Smith, of New York ; Mr. 
 Dane, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Henry, of Maryland, 
 reported to Congress what was doubtless that ordi- 
 
40 
 
 nance in an amended form. It was essentially differ 
 ent from the Ordinance of 1787, and it contained no 
 provision Avhatever on the subject of slavery. On May 
 10, 1787, it was ordered to a third reading, and from 
 that time remained unmolested until July 6, when, as 
 we have seen, the agent of the Ohio Company of Asso 
 ciates appeared upon the floor. The " total exclusion 
 of slavery " as " essential and irrevocable " was now, 
 from whatever cause, at once to reappear. Nine days 
 after Dr. Cutler s arrival Richard Henry Lee wrote to 
 Washington, enclosing a copy of the Ordinance of 1787, 
 and saying : " I have the honor to enclose to you a copy 
 " of an ordinance that we have just passed in Congress 
 " for establishing a temporary government beyond the 
 " Ohio as a measure preparatory to a sale of lands." 
 
 The Ohio Company s application for a sale of land 
 having been the immediate occasion for the passage of 
 the Ordinance, it is worth while to look into their share 
 in securing the important result that it should embrace 
 the anti-slavery proviso which it finally included, and 
 which has proved its vital clause. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that at the time the Ordi 
 nance was passed by the Congress sitting in New 
 York, there was also in session, in Philadelphia, 
 the convention which framed the Constitution of the 
 United States. The qualification of the anti-slavery 
 clause in the Ordinance, providing for the reclamation 
 of fugitive slaves, is in harmony with the corresponding 
 provision of the Constitution of the United States, and 
 the two were cotemporaneously adopted. Many mem 
 bers of Congress, indeed two of the five members of 
 the committee to whom at an earlier date had been 
 referred the original memorial of the Ohio Company 
 
41 
 
 presented by General Parsons, were also members of the 
 Constitutional Convention. One of these was Eufus 
 King, on whose motion the provision as to fugitive 
 slaves was inserted in the Constitution, and the same 
 whom we recall as having at Pickering s instance re 
 ported to Congress in 1785 an anti-slavery amendment 
 to the resolutions of 1784. Under these circumstances 
 any evidence tending to show that the concurrent posi 
 tion of these two bodies and the incorporation with the 
 Ordinance of the anti-slavery proviso was the result of 
 an agreement between persons who were members of 
 both Congress and the Convention is strongly corrob 
 orated by the circumstances of the case. 
 
 The other member of the committee of five, to whom 
 was referred the original memorial of the Ohio Com 
 pany, was James Madison, afterward President of the 
 United States. His situation certainly enabled him to 
 be well informed. His private secretary, while Presi 
 dent, was Edward Coles of Virginia, afterwards Gover 
 nor of Illinois, a man of great worth and force of 
 character. In an address before the Pennsylvania His 
 torical Society in 1857, on the history of the Ordinance, 
 Gov. Coles says : 
 
 " This brings to my recollection what I was told by 
 Mr. Madison, and which I do not remember ever to 
 have seen in print. The old Congress held its sessions 
 in 178V in New York, while at the same time the con 
 vention which framed the Constitution of the United 
 States held its sessions in Philadelphia. Many in 
 dividuals were members of both bodies, and thus were 
 enabled to know what was passing in each both sitting 
 with closed doors and in secret sessions. The dis 
 tracting question of slavery was agitating and retard 
 ing the labors of both, and led to conferences and in 
 tercommunications of the members, which resulted in a 
 compromise by which the northern or anti-slavery por- 
 
42 
 
 tion of the country agreed to incorporate into the ordi 
 nance and constitution the provisions to restore fugi 
 tive slaves ; and this mutual and concurrent action was 
 the cause of the similarity of the provision contained 
 in both, and had its influence in creating the great 
 unanimity by which the ordinance passed, and also in 
 making the Constitution the more acceptable to the 
 slave holders." 
 
 A compromise upon the basis that the Ordinance 
 should provide that fugitive slaves found within the 
 territory should be returned carried with it, of course, a 
 reciprocal agreement that slavery itself should be ex 
 cluded by the Ordinance. 
 
 In harmony at least with such an agreement, Con 
 gress, after the adoption of the Constitution, applied to 
 the territory south of the Ohio and east of the Mis 
 sissippi a substantial re-enactment of the Ordinance of 
 1787, but without the anti-slavery provision. 
 
 The anti-slavery proviso, however, was not in the 
 Ordinance (as reported by the committee). It was 
 moved, as an amendment, by Nathan Dane of Massa 
 chusetts, and was unanimously carried. The Ordinance 
 was thereupon adopted, with one dissenting vote. Mr. 
 Dane was the secretary of the committee. In a letter 
 to Rufus King, written three days after the passage of 
 the Ordinance, he gives the following account of the 
 passage of the amendment : 
 
 "We have been employed about several objects, the 
 principal of which have been the Government enclosed 
 (the ordinance) and the Ohio purchase ; former, you 
 will see, is completed, and the latter will probably be 
 completed to-morrow. We tried one day to patch up 
 
 M s system of W. government started new ideas 
 
 and committed the whole to Carrington, Dane, R. H. 
 Lee, Smith and Kean. We met several times, and at 
 last agreed on some principles at least Lee, Smith and 
 myself. We found ourselves rather pressed. The Ohio 
 
43 
 
 Company appeared to purchase a large tract of Federal 
 lands about six or seven millions of acres and we 
 wanted to abolish the old system and get a better one 
 for the government of the country, and we finally found 
 it necessary to adopt the best system we could get. 
 All agreed finally to the enclosed plan, except A. Yates. 
 He appeared in this case, as in most others, not to un 
 derstand the subject at all. When I drew 
 the ordinance (which passed, a few words excepted, as 
 I originally formed it) I had no idea the States would 
 agree to the sixth article, prohibiting slavery, as only 
 Massachusetts, of the Eastern States, was present, and 
 therefore omitted it in the draft ; but, finding the House 
 favorably disposed on this subject, after we had com 
 pleted the other parts, I moved the article, which was* 
 agreed to without opposition." 
 
 Mr. Dane is here writing to his colleague from Mas 
 sachusetts, who had been a member of the Committee, 
 about that feature of the Committee s report which 
 would naturally most interest Mr. King. He explains 
 that they " had agreed on some principles," but that 
 in drawing the report, he had at first omitted this 
 feature, having no idea that Congress would accept it. 
 Afterwards, finding himself mistaken as to the dispo 
 sition of the House, he moved it as an amendment 
 and it was unanimously adopted. 
 
 At the time, of which he speaks, Lee and Carrington 
 were both present in Congress. Lee certainly knew 
 what had been agreed on in Committee. Carrington 
 
 *The original of the committee s reports is preserved in the 
 Library of Congress. One leaf, printed on both sides, contains the 
 whole. Slight alterations, in manuscript, have been identified as in 
 Grayson s handwriting. The report as printed does not include the 
 sixth article, prohibiting slavery and providing for the return of 
 fugitive slaves. There is, however, on the second page, pasted to 
 the edges of the leaf, a piece of foolscap paper on which the sixth 
 article is written out in full, in the handwriting of Nathan Dane. 
 
44 
 
 certainly, and probably Lee, were warmly in favor of the 
 exclusion of slavery, and both of them doubtless were 
 familiar with the agreement which Madison afterwards 
 related to Governor Coles. Their presence makes it 
 not hard to account for Mr. Dane s being suddenly 
 better informed, and for his motion to restore to the 
 report what he had omitted from it. 
 
 While these suggestions tend to show that the con 
 trolling influence which determined the presence and 
 complexion of the anti-slavery proviso moved upon a 
 broader plane than the mere views or influence of the 
 Ohio Company, it is well to remember that the com 
 pany s application was nevertheless the immediate oc 
 casion of the passage of the Ordinance. Passed as a 
 measure preparatory to a sale to them, their views and 
 wishes naturally entered into the deliberations by 
 which it was framed. When these are traced out, we 
 are permitted to -feel that the larger and control 
 ling influence Avhich I have mentioned allowed itself 
 to be led by, and to give its sanction to the initiative of 
 the company. Dr. Cutler, their agent, has left behind 
 him a dian r at once comprehensive and specific. On 
 the 25th of June he w 7 as in Boston preparing to set out 
 for New York. Among the events of that day, he chron 
 icles : " Conversed with General Putnam. Keceived 
 " letters. Settled the principles on w T hich I am to con- 
 " tract with Congress for lands for account of the Ohio 
 " Company." Dr. Cutler s reference long afterwards, 
 in conversation with his son, to these same " principles," 
 has been related already. Having arrived at New 
 York, and as we have seen, been introduced to a num 
 ber of members on the floor by Colonel Carrington 
 of Virginia, he writes: "Delivered my petition for 
 
45 
 
 " purchasing lands for the Ohio Company, and pro- 
 " posed terms and conditions of purchase. A com- 
 " mittee was appointed to agree on terms of negotia- 
 " tion, and report to Congress." Doubtless what is 
 here mainly referred to is conditions of price, pay 
 ments, location, subdivisions and the like ; but the 
 record fully discloses that this committee was also 
 formally charged with the reporting of an Ordinance 
 for Government as a preparatory measure, and that the 
 " principles " were fully considered between the com 
 mittee and the company s agent. 
 
 Gray son was at that time Chairman pro tempore of 
 Congress. The committee appointed by him consisted 
 of Carrington, Dane, K. H. Lee, Kean of South Caro 
 lina, and Smith of New York. Of Gray SOD, and of 
 this committee, Cutler writes : " Grayson, Carrington 
 " and Lee are certainly my warm advocates." Car 
 rington was afterwards a shareholder in the Ohio Com 
 pany. To this committee, July 9, was referred the 
 Ordinance which on May 10th had been ordered to a 
 third reading, but had not since been taken up. Cutler 
 now writes under date of July 10th : 
 
 " As Congress was now engaged in settling the form 
 of government for the Federal Territory, for which a 
 bill had been prepared and a copy sent to me, with 
 leave to remark upon and to propose amendments, and 
 which I had taken the liberty to remark upon and to 
 propose several amendments, I thought this the most 
 favorable opportunity to go on to Philadelphia. Ac 
 cordingly, after I had returned the bill with my obser 
 vations, I set out at 7 o clock and crossed North Kiver 
 to Panlus Hook." 
 
 Not more is certainly known as to the scope of these 
 amendments than has been already stated, except that 
 
46 
 
 Dr. Cutler left among his papers a copy of the Ordi 
 nance, printed on a sheet on the margin of which is 
 written, " that Mr. Dane requested Dr. Cutler to sug- 
 " gest such provisions as he deemed advisable, and 
 " that at Dr. Cutler s instance was inserted what relates 
 " to religion, education and slavery."* 
 
 Three days later the Ordinance was enacted. Dr. 
 Cutler did not see it until July 19th on his return 
 from Philadelphia. He then writes : 
 
 " July 19th. Called on members of Congress very 
 early in the morning, and was furnished with the 
 ordinance establishing a government in the Western 
 Federal Territory. It is. in a degree, new modeled. 
 The amendments 1 proposed have (dl been made except 
 one, and that is better qualified. It was that we should 
 not be subject to continental taxation, unless we were 
 entitled to a full representation in Congress. This 
 could not be fully obtained ; for it was considered in 
 Congress as offering a premium to emigrants. They 
 
 * Temple Cutler, of Hamilton, Mass., writing September 29, 
 1849, to Judge Cutler, of Ohio (botli sons of Dr. Cutler), and speak 
 ing of the interest in New England on the subject of the Ordinance 
 of 1787, says: " Hon. Daniel Webster is now convinced that the 
 man whose foresight suggested some of its articles was our 
 father." 
 
 Judge Ephraim Cutler, on November 24th, 1849, wrote as fol 
 lows : I visited my father at Washington during the last session 
 he attended Congress. In his boarding-house he occupied a room 
 with the reverend gentleman who represented Hampshire and the 
 Connecticut counties, whose name I have forgotten. We were in 
 conversation relative to the political concerns of Ohio, the ruling 
 parties and the effects of the (Ohio) Constitution in the promotion 
 of the general interest ; when he observed that he was informed 
 that I had prepared that portion of the Ohio Constitution which 
 contained the part of the Ordinance of July, 1787, which prohibited 
 slavery, he wished to know if it was a fact. On my assuring him 
 it was, he observed that he thought it a singular coincidence, as he 
 himself had prepared that part of the Ordinance while he was in 
 New York negotiating the purchase of the lands for the Ohio Com 
 pany." 
 
47 
 
 have granted us representation, with the right of 
 debating, but not of voting, upon our being first 
 subject to taxation." 
 
 It is not easy to reconcile this language, and the fact 
 that he evidently found nothing in the Ordinance by 
 which he was surprised, with any other hypothesis 
 than that the anti-slavery amendment was one of those 
 which he had himself proposed. 
 
 Even the action of Congress, making the Ordinance 
 a law, declaring its provisions also to be articles of 
 compact, was insufficient of itself. What it still needed 
 was life, the power that grasps and that assimilates. 
 That power came from the men who bore into the 
 wilderness this Ark of a New Covenant, and set up 
 there their Temple of New Institutions in which it was 
 enshrined. From that spot, and by their aid, it grasped 
 and held and fashioned all those germs of great new 
 Commonwealths, which afterwards grew up within the 
 area of its jurisdiction and have given to it results of 
 transcendent value. 
 
 I must here ask you to distinguish between two 
 matters to which Dr. Cutler s efforts were directed. 
 One was the settlement of terms and negotiation of a 
 purchase of the lands which the Ohio Company desired 
 to obtain. The other was the enactment by Congress 
 of an Ordinance which should provide a plan of govern 
 ment acceptable to the Associates, and which should 
 take the place of those provided by the Ordinance or 
 resolutions of 1784, the one which on that day had be 
 come a law, minus that anti-slavery feature which Mr. 
 Jefferson had originally incorporated with it. The Or 
 dinance of 1787 was this substitute, and as we here 
 
48 
 
 see was adopted " as a measure preparatory to a sale 
 of lands." 
 
 This preparatory measure, an indispensable prereq 
 uisite, being achieved, Dr. Cutler indefatigably pushed 
 his negotiation with Congress for a purchase of public 
 lands, and on July 23d a resolution passed approving 
 a sale to the associates of a tract comprising about five 
 millions of acres * in the southwest portion of the tract 
 described in the petition of 1783, and being in extent 
 about one-fourth of that tract. It was not, however, 
 until July 27th that what he regarded as of vital im 
 portance in the terms of purchase was by a subsequent 
 resolution adjusted to his liking. The precise bounda 
 ries were as follows : 
 
 Bounded by the Ohio from the mouth of the Scioto 
 to the intersection of the western boundary of the 
 seventh range of township, now surveying ; thence by 
 the said boundary to the northern boundary of the 
 tenth township from the Ohio ; thence by a due west 
 line to the Scioto ; thence by the Scioto to the be 
 ginning. 
 
 That is to say, beginning at Portsmouth on the Ohio, 
 thence up that stream to a short distance above Mari- 
 
 * The Ohio Company s first application, presented by Dr. Cutler 
 on July 6th, was for the purchase of one and a half million acres, 
 and the purchase as first passed, July 19th, contemplated no more 
 than that. But, on July 20th, Col. Duer, Secretary to the Treasury 
 Board, made a secret proposition to Dr. Cutler to enlarge the con 
 tract and take in another company, offering him generous condi 
 tions to accomplish the business for them. This resulted in a con 
 tract for " near 5,000,000 of acres of land, amounting to three mil 
 lions 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 principal characters in America are concerned " 
 (Cutler s Life, &c., I., 295, 305). 
 
49 
 
 etta ; thence north about half way to Lake Erie ; thence 
 west to a point somewhat northwest from Columbus ; 
 thence southeast to Portsmouth again. 
 
 Of the whole tract it was understood that the Ohio 
 Company of Associates would purchase for itself one 
 and a half million acres. The rest it was understood 
 would be taken by " some of the principal characters 
 of America who had become interested in the scheme." 
 Without this concession to "some of the principal 
 characters in America," says Dr. Cutler, Congress 
 would not have approved the sale. The resolution of 
 July 23d fixed the purchase price at " one dollar an 
 acre, payable in specie, loan office certificates reduced 
 to specie value, or certificates of liquidated debts of the 
 United States " at par. These last were the " final 
 certificates " paid to the officers at Newburgh in 1783. 
 At the time the sale was authorized they were worth 
 but a few shillings in the pound. Their actual value, 
 with abatements and donations authorized by the reso 
 lution, reduced the cost of the lands, in current funds, 
 to about ten cents an acre. Hence, the interest in the 
 scheme of " some of the principal characters in 
 America." Suffice it to say that these last soon tired 
 of their bargain and did not complete their purchase.* 
 
 * What the} r did do has, I think, been fairly told in Howe s 
 " Historical Collections of Ohio : " 
 
 " A contract was made for a purchase Of a part of the lands in 
 cluded in the Ohio Company s purchases. Plots and descriptions 
 of the land contracted for were, however, made out, and Joel 
 Barlow was sent as an agent to Europe to make sales for the benefit 
 of the company, and sales were effected of parts thereof to com 
 panies and individuals in France. On February 19th, 1791, two 
 hundred and eighteen of these purchasers left Havre de Grace in 
 France and arrived in Alexander, D. C., on the 3d of May follow- 
 
50 
 
 After the passage of this Second Ordinance, the Asso 
 ciates were allowed three months in which to prepare 
 for the first payment on their lands, and on the 27th of 
 October their contract was finally closed, covering one 
 and a half million acres. They paid down in " final cer 
 tificates " five hundred thousand dollars. For this they 
 received immediate possession (with power to improve 
 and cultivate) of seven hundred and fifty thousand 
 acres. They were to pay as much more within one 
 month of the completion of the survey, and there 
 upon to have a clear title to the whole. The price 
 per acre was determined by the rate paid at the 
 purchase of the land. Congress had authorized the 
 Board of Treasury to sell at one dollar per acre sub 
 ject to a reduction of one-third for bad lands. The 
 Board of Treasury, upon this authority, sold to the 
 Ohio Company a million and a half acres of land for 
 one million dollars. It was also agreed that within 
 the tract, and in addition to it, two entire townships 
 of six miles square should be reserved for the estab 
 lishment of a University ; for common school purposes, 
 section No. 16 (640 acres), in each township ; "for the 
 purposes of religion," section No. 29 in each township ; 
 and, to be subject to future disposition by the United 
 
 ing. During their passage two were added to their number. On 
 their arrival they were told that the Scioto Company owned no land. 
 The agent insisted that they did, and promised to secure to them 
 good titles thereto. * * * When they arrived at Marietta about 
 fifty of them landed. The rest of the company proceeded to Galli- 
 apolis, which was laid out about that time, and were assured by the 
 agent that the place lay within their purchase. Every effort to 
 secure titles to the lands they had purchased having failed, an ap 
 plication was made to Congress, and in June, 1798, a grant was 
 made to them of a tract of land on the Ohio above the mouth of the 
 Scioto River, which is called the French Grant. " 
 Here is material for a romance. 
 
51 
 
 States in each township, sections Nos. 8, 11 ami 26. 
 In negotiating their contract, the agents of the Ohio, 
 Company had expressly stipulated that the University 
 lands should be included in the same conveyance with 
 the very first tract which the company should pay for ; 
 " for to fix it in the centre of the proposed purchase 
 " might too long defer the establishment." 
 
 Their agent having thus completed the purchase, 
 and secured for them the plan of government they 
 wished, the " Ohio Company," as they had now come to 
 be called, held further meetings at Brackett s Tavern, 
 Boston, on the 21st and 23d of November, 1787. At 
 the first was adopted a plan for starting a town at 
 the mouth of the Muskingum, and for allotment of 
 town lots and lands in severalty. At the second, the 
 engineers and boat builders were directed to proceed 
 to the headwaters of the Ohio, and there during 
 the winter build boats in which the settlers in a 
 body might in the spring descend the Ohio to the 
 mouth of the Muskingum. The next meeting was 
 held at Rice s Tavern, Providence, Khode Island. 
 At that meeting the Rev. Dr. Cutler, Col. May and 
 Major HafiBeld White were appointed a committee 
 " to consider and report upon the expediency of 
 employing some suitable person as a public teacher 
 at the settlement now making by the Ohio Company." 
 They reported in favor of the measure, and the Rev. 
 Daniel Story was appointed. The engineers and 
 boat builders, twenty-two men, started from Danvers, 
 Mass., in December, 1787, under charge of Major 
 Haffield White.* They arrived quite late in January, 
 
 * One detachment of the party came to Danvers from Ipswich 
 in a body. Dr. Cutler himself supervised Iheir departure, and one 
 
52 
 
 1788, at Surarell s Ferry, on the Yougliioghenj, about 
 thirty miles above Pittsburgh. 
 
 Meantime, in the same month, the rest of the party 
 met at Hartford, and on January 1st, 1788, began their 
 march, in charge of General Rufus Putnam, as Director 
 General of the Expedition. The second in command 
 was Col. Ebenezer Sproat, who was also one of the 
 
 of his sons was among them, Jervis Cutler. Another son, Temple 
 Cutler, has left a graphic account of the departure. Dr. Cutler s 
 diary has this entry: 
 
 " Mon., Dec. 3. This morning a part of the men going to the 
 Ohio met here two hours before day. I went on with them to 
 Danvers. The whole joined at Major White s. Twenty men, 
 employed by the company, and four or five on their own expense, 
 marched at eleven o clock. This party is commanded by Major 
 White [Haffleld White, a native of Dauvers]. Captain Putnam 
 took the immediate charge of the men, wagons, &c. Jervis went 
 off in good spirits. He is well fitted for the journey." 
 
 The reminiscence of Temple Cutler, Dr. Cutler s youngest son, 
 is as follows : 
 
 " The little band of pioneers assembled at the house of Dr. 
 Cutler, in Ipswich, Mass., on the 3d day of December, 1787, and 
 there took an early breakfast. About the dawn of day they 
 paraded in front of the house, and, after a short address from him, 
 full of good advice and hearty wishes for their happiness and 
 prosperity, the men being armed, three volleys were fired, and the 
 party (one of whom was his son Jervis, aged 19) went forward, 
 cheered heartily by the bystanders. Dr. Cutler accompanied them 
 to Danvers, where he placed them under command of Major 
 Haffield White and Captain Ezra Putnam, He had prepared a 
 large and well-built wagon for their use, which preceded them 
 with their baggage. This wagon, as a protection from cold and 
 storm, was covered with black canvas, and on the sides was an 
 inscription in white letters, I think, in these words, For the Ohio 
 at the Muskingum^ which Dr. Cutler painted with his own hand. 
 Although I was then but six years old, I have a vivid recollection 
 of all these circumstances, having seen the preparations and heard 
 the conversations relative to this undertaking. I think the 
 weather was pleasant and the sun rose clear. I know I almost 
 wished I could be of the party then starting, for I was told we 
 w r ere all to go as soon as preparation w r as made for our reception." 
 Life of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, Vol. L, pp. 329, 330. 
 
53 
 
 signers of the petition of 1783. The snow in the 
 Alleghenies was so deep that they built sleds for the 
 transportation of their baggage. They had marched in 
 winter time before perhaps they had crossed the 
 Delaware with Washington ; and they pushed on. 
 About the middle of February they joined the boat- 
 builders at Sumrell s Ferry. 
 
 Just at this time, February 7th, 1788, Washington 
 wrote to Lafayette that 
 
 " the spirit of emigration to the western country is 
 very predominant. Congress have sold in the year past 
 a pretty large quantity of land on the Ohio for public 
 securities, and thereby diminished the domestic debt 
 considerably. Many of your military acquaintances, 
 such as Generals Parsons, Varnum and Putnam ; 
 Colonels Tucker, Sproat and Sherman, with many 
 more, propose to settle." 
 
 June 19th, 1788, he wrote to Eichard Henderson : 
 
 " No colony in America was ever settled under such 
 favorable auspices as that which has just commenced 
 at Muskingum. Information, property and strength 
 will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers 
 personally, and there never were men better calculated 
 to promote the welfare of such a community." 
 
 Mr. Cutler says that when Lafayette, in 1825, arrived 
 at Marietta, he inquired, " Who were the first adven 
 turers to settle here ? " 
 
 On being told, he said : " I knew them well. I saw 
 them fight the battles of their country at Rhode Island, 
 Brandywine, Yorktown and many other places. They 
 were the bravest of the brave. Better men never lived." 
 
 By the last of March the boats deemed necessary were 
 completed. They were, a large boat forty-five feet 
 long and twelve feet wide, a flat boat and three canoes. 
 
54 
 
 The large boat was roofed over and made bullet-proof, 
 as a refuge from the Indians if need be. For some 
 years afterwards it served a useful purpose for safe 
 transportation to and from the mouth of the Mus- 
 kirigum. To this largest boat, the barge, was given the 
 name " Union Galley." It seems a dull mind s eye 
 that does riot see that as the true freight of the orig 
 inal " Mayflower " was the " Compact " adopted in 
 her cabin " for our better ordering and preservation to 
 " enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, 
 " from time to time," so, of this "Union Galley," pro 
 phetically named, as we shall hereafter see, the true 
 burden which she bore was the Ordinance of 1787, 
 with its " Articles of Compact," and chief among them 
 that there should be " neither slavery nor involuntary 
 servitude except for crime." As to each of these in 
 cidents, the things that were not seen have proved to 
 be the things that are eternal. 
 
 The party left Sumrell s Ferry on April 1st," 1788, 
 and went down the Ohio some fifty men in all. 
 Meeting with no interruption, they arrived on April 
 7th at the mouth of the Muskingum. They at once 
 commenced building a block house, and laying out 
 a town. They called the settlement Marietta, in honor 
 of Marie Antoinette, and in memory of her sympathy 
 extended to them in the Revolution. In July they 
 were joined by the officers provided for by the Ordi 
 nance of 1787, who had been appointed by Con 
 gress in New York, October 5, 1787. They were 
 the Governor, General St. Clair, who had been 
 President of the Continental Congress; the Sec- 
 
 * April 2d is the date commonly given. Gen. Putnam s diary is 
 authority for April 1st. 
 
55 
 
 retary, Major Sargent; and Generals Parsons and 
 Varimm, two of the three Judges. The third Judge, 
 Major John Armstrong, had declined his appoint 
 ment. On July 18th the Government of the Northwest 
 Territory was inaugurated by the proclamation of the 
 Governor. It will be observed that all of these ap 
 pointees were ex-officers of the Continental Army. 
 
 It is interesting to look back at these four or five 
 men assuming thus in the name of the United States, 
 authority over a territory which extended from Penn 
 sylvania and Virginia to the Mississippi Kiver, and from 
 the Ohio to the Lakes. They were without troops, 
 treasury or legislature ; they could scarcely have main 
 tained a single bailiff. The whole region was in con 
 trol of great tribes of Indians who were unsubdued. 
 
 There could scarcely be said even to be then any 
 United States. The present Constitution had not 
 been fully ratified by the States, and the Articles of 
 Confederation which were in force were but a rope of 
 sand. The Federal Government had not been able 
 even to pay these very men their dues for services in 
 war. Their faith was all that they and their associates 
 had. It proved, as faith so often does, to be enough, 
 when coupled with endeavor. 
 
 From this beginning of established government the 
 progress of settlement was rapid. In August, 1788, the 
 colony at Marietta was increased by the arrival of eight 
 families. It now numbered one hundred and thirty- 
 two men, besides some women and children. In Octo 
 ber John Cleves Symm.es purchased from the United 
 States a million acres fronting on the Ohio, between 
 the Little and Great Miami rivers. Thjs gentleman 
 had been Chief-Justice of New Jersey, and was after- 
 
56 
 
 wards appointed by Congress one of the Judges of 
 the Northwest Territory vice John Armstrong, who 
 declined. Three settlements were made upon this 
 tract in the winter of 1788 and 1789, one of them being 
 the first beginnings of the City of Cincinnati. The 
 Ohio River was the highway of these travelers and 
 their vehicles were flatboats. In the year 1796, one 
 thousand of these "broad-horns," as they were called, 
 passed down the river to what is now Ohio and In 
 diana.* 
 
 The number of these settlers grew until, in 1803, de 
 spite a dreadful Indian war lasting from 1790 until 1795, 
 the eastern division of the Northwest Territory was in 
 readiness to be, and was, admitted, as a State. There 
 
 *Flint, himself a pioneer, in his " Indian Wars of the West," thus 
 speaks of early emigration : 
 
 " The writer of this distinctly remembers the wagon that car 
 ried out a number of adventurers from the Counties of Essex and 
 Middlesex in Massachusetts, on the second emigration to the woods 
 of Ohio. He remembers the black canvas covering of the wagon ; 
 the white and large lettering in capitals To Marietta on the Ohio ! 
 He remembers the food which, even then, the thought of such a 
 distant expedition furnished to his imagination. Some twenty emi 
 grants accompanied the wagon." 
 
 The older States looked with ill-favor on this emigration. They 
 were as yet but sparsely settled, and besides had lands within their 
 own limits to sell. The criticism they experienced induced the 
 emigrants to justify themselves by coloring their reports of their 
 experience. A contest sprang up and families differed among 
 themselves as to the wisdom of those members who joined the 
 movement. 
 
 Judge TIMOTHY WALKEE, in his address delivered at Cincinnati, 
 in 1837, narrates his recollection of those times. He says : 
 
 " The powerful engine of caricature was set in motion. I have a 
 distinct recollection of a picture I saw in boyhood, prefixed to an 
 anti-moving to Ohio pamphlet, in which a stout, ruddy, well- 
 dressed man on a sleek, fat horse, with a label, I am going to 
 Ohio, meets a pale and ghastly skeleton of a man, scarcely half 
 dressed, on the wreck of what was once a horse, already bespoken 
 by the more politic crowd, with a label, I have been to Ohio. " 
 
57 
 
 were not wanting those who made a struggle to remove, 
 even at that date, the inhibition against slavery.* Con 
 gress, however, had recognized that the provisions of 
 the Ordinance were a contract with the people who 
 had settled there. Hence the Enabling Act required 
 that the Constitution of the State be not repugnant 
 to those provisions. The struggle for a constitu 
 tion free from this restriction, on the part of the 
 Virginia and Kentucky immigrants, was, nevertheless, 
 sharp enough to bring to its front some of the men of 
 the Newburgh camp and their descendants. Foremost 
 among them was Judge Ephraim Cutler, one of the first 
 colonists, and son of that Manasseh Cutler by whose 
 immediate agency, as it appears to me, the anti-slavery 
 provision in the ordinance was inserted. The spirit 
 of the Ordinance and of its Revolutionary sponsors 
 triumphed, and the proviso that "there shall be neither 
 " slavery nor involuntary servitude except in punish - 
 " ment of crime," became part of the first Constitution 
 of Ohio.* 
 
 * " 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 Cut 
 ler s journal conveys that impression very distinctly. Those favor 
 able to slaves 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 compact, assented to it ; and they accord 
 ingly advocated a modified form of servitude. Judge Cutler (a 
 son of Dr. Manasseh Cutler) was one of the Washington County 
 delegates to frame the Constitution, and a member of the committee 
 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, immedi 
 ately brought before the committee, the subject of admitting or ex 
 cluding slaves, Mr. Brown produced a section which defined the 
 subject, in effect, thus : No person shall be held in slavery, if a 
 
58 
 
 Jefferson was then President, and it may have given 
 him pleasure to see this precept of his pen take on 
 in this way a new permanence and power. 
 
 In the meantime, May 7, 1800, an Act of Congress 
 had established a new territory, Indiana, comprising 
 
 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 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 committee would pre 
 pare a section which should express his views fully on this impor 
 tant subject. The committee met the next morning, and I was 
 called on for 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 introduced was thought by the greatest 
 men in the nation to be, if established in our Constitution, obtain 
 ing a great step towards 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 servant, 
 under pretense of indenture or otherwise, any male person 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 per 
 fect freedom, and on condition of a liona-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 this State, where the term 
 of service exceeds 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 to the Convention, he con 
 tinues, 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 afterwards in the Convention itself, was the at 
 tempt to fasten a modified slavery upon the State of Ohio de 
 feated." Hinsdale s " The Old Northwest." 
 
59 
 
 the whole Northwest Territory, outside of the limits 
 of Ohio, then slight!}* larger than at present. 
 
 The Enabling Act provided for a government in all 
 respects similar " to that provided by the Ordinance of 
 " Congress passed on the thirteenth day of July, one 
 " thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven." 
 
 Possibly this establishment of a new territory was 
 brought about in part by efforts of the old slave-holding 
 element, which was there already when the Ordinance 
 passed, particularly at Vincennes, where many slaves 
 were held. Certain it is that that element immediately 
 besought Congress to remove the anti-slavery provis 
 ion, and five times in four years their petitions to that 
 body were refused. 
 
 The most formidable of these originated with General 
 William Henry Harrison/- afterwards President of the 
 
 * William Henry Harrison was born within the present limits of 
 Virginia, at Berkeley, Charles City Co., Feb. 9, 1773. He joined 
 the army in 1792, and became captain in 1795. June 1, 1798, he 
 resigned his commission in the army and was at once appointed 
 by President John Adams, Secretary of the Northwest Territory, 
 under Gen. Arthur St. Clair as Governor. In October, 1799, Har 
 rison resigned this position to take his seat, for a single year of 
 service, as territorial delegate in Congress. During the session of 
 Congress for this year part of the Northwest Territory was formed 
 into the Territory of Indiana, including the present States of 
 Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, and Harrison was made 
 its Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs. To this post he 
 was reappointed successively by both Jefferson and Madison. In 
 1805 he organized at Vincennes the Legislature of the Territory. 
 He was the son-in-law of John Cleves Symmes. the founder of 
 Cincinnati and the settlements in that vicinity. It was in connec 
 tion with his ever memorable campaign for the Presidency, in 
 1840, that the name Buckeye came into general use, as applied to 
 the State of Ohio and to its -most distinguished citizen. The first 
 application of this word to anything except the buckeye tree was 
 made by the Indians who were greatly impressed by the bearing of 
 Col. Ebenezer Sproat who acted as High Sheriff at the opening of 
 
60 
 
 United States. At that time, and for some years after 
 wards, he was Governor of the Territory, and the peti 
 tion bore the endorsement not only of himself as Gov 
 ernor, but also of the Legislative Council. It was pre 
 pared and forwarded in the winter of 1802-3, and set 
 forth urgently the advantages which would accrue to 
 the territory from immigration from, the older States if 
 the intending settlers were not deterred by the neces 
 sity of first disposing of their slaves. The petition was 
 referred to a committee, at the head of which was John 
 Randolph of Virginia. He reported from this com 
 mittee, March 2, 1803, the following resolution : 
 
 " Resolved, That it is inexpedient to suspend for a 
 limited time the operation of the Sixth Article of Com- 
 
 the first court held in the Northwest Territory in 1788 at Marietta, 
 O. He marched at the head of the procession with drawn sword. 
 So imposing was he in stature, and so striking his dignity, that the 
 Indians cried out " Hetuck," or " Big Buckeye." In 1840 a Demo 
 cratic newspaper declared that Gen. Harrison was " better fitted to 
 sit in a log-cabin and drink hard cider than to rule in the White 
 House." This expression was generally resented, and so began the 
 log-cabin and hard-cider campaign. Log-cabins sprang up all over 
 the State and country, and were even carried in political proces 
 sions. The first of these, which became a model for many others, 
 was built of buckeye logs. It was filled, roof and all, with enthusi 
 astic Buckeye boys, who sang lustily : 
 
 O what, tell me what, is to be your cabin s fate ? 
 We ll wheel it to the Capitol, and place it there elate 
 For a token and a sign of the Bonnie Buckeye State." 
 
 The campaign was intensely exciting, and the buckeye figured 
 in it largely. Myriads of men shouted for Gen Harrison : 
 
 ; Hurrah for the father of the Great West, 
 For the Buckeye who follows the plow." 
 
 Gen. Harrison was indeed a " Big Buckeye." His " Big Buck 
 eye " grandson now worthily fills the Presidential chair, which he 
 himself filled for a period all too brief. 
 
61 
 
 pact between the original States and the people and 
 States west of the Ohio." 
 
 The report reads further : 
 
 " That the rapid population of the State of Ohio 
 sufficiently evinced 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, demonstrable the dearest of any, can only 
 be employed to advantage 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 inexpedient to impair a provision wisely 
 calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of 
 the northwestern country, and to give strength and se 
 curity to that extensive frontier. In the salutary opera 
 tion of this sagacious and benevolent restraint it is be 
 lieved that the inhabitants of Indiana will, at no distant 
 day, find ample remuneration for a temporary privation 
 of labor and of emigration." 
 
 The illustration was significant and the prediction 
 just. Thirty years later Chief- Justice Chase, in his 
 preface to the Kevised Statutes of Ohio, thus elo 
 quently referred to the scope of the Ordinance of 1787 
 and to its actual operation : 
 
 " By the ordinance of 1785, Congress had executed 
 in part the great national trust confided to it, by pro 
 viding for the disposal of the public lands for the 
 common good, and by prescribing the manner and 
 terms of sale. And by that of 1787 provision was made 
 for successful forms of territorial government, adapted 
 to successive steps of advancement in the settlement 
 of the Western country. It comprehended an intelli 
 gible system of law on the descent and conveyance 
 of real property and the transfer of personal goods. 
 It also contained five articles of compact between the 
 original States and the people and States of the terri 
 tory, establishing certain great fundamental principles 
 of governmental duty and private right as the basis of 
 all future constitutions and legislation, unalterable 
 and indestructible except by that final and common 
 
62 
 
 ruin which, as it has overtaken all former systems of 
 human polity, may yet overwhelm our American Union. 
 " Never, probably, in the history of the world did a 
 measure of legislation so accurately fulfill and yet so 
 mightily exceed the anticipations of the legislators. 
 The ordinance has been well described as having been 
 a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night in the set 
 tlement and government of the Northwestern States. 
 When the settlers went into the wilderness they found 
 the law already there. It was impressed upon the 
 soil itself, while it yet bore up nothing but the forest. 
 The purchaser of land became by that act a party to 
 the compact and bound by its perpetual covenants, 
 so far as its conditions did not conflict with the terms 
 
 of the cessions of the States. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 " This remarkable instrument was the last gift of the 
 Congress of the old confederation to the country, and 
 it was a fit consummation of their glorious labors. At 
 the time of its promulgation the Federal Constitution 
 was under discussion in the convention, and in a few 
 months, upon the organization of the new national 
 Government, that Congress was dissolved, never again 
 to reassemble. Some, and indeed most, of the prin 
 ciples established by the articles of compact are to be 
 found in the plan of 1784 and in the various English 
 and American bills of rights. Others, however, and 
 these not the least important, are original. Of this 
 number are the clauses in relation to contracts, to 
 slavery, and to the Indians. On the whole, these 
 articles contain what they profess to contain, the true 
 theory of American liberty. The great principles pro 
 mulgated by it are wholly, purely, American. They 
 are, indeed, the genuine principles of freedom unadul 
 terated by that compromise with circumstances, the 
 effects of which are visible in the Constitution and 
 history of the Union." 
 
 Five years after this, in an address delivered on the 
 semi-centennial of the Ordinance, Judge Timothy 
 Walker eulogizes the wonderful fact that in spite of 
 the great interests and wide areas which for Half a cen 
 tury it had controlled, not one of them all had ever 
 
63 
 
 made necessary an amendment of tlie Ordinance. Judge 
 Walker, speaking at Cincinnati in 1837, said : 
 
 " Upon the surpassing excellence of this ordinance 
 no language of panegyric would be extravagant. It ap 
 proaches as nearly to absolute perfection as anything 
 to be found in the legislation of mankind ; for after the 
 experience of fifty years it would, perhaps, be impossi 
 ble to alter without marring it. In short, it is one of 
 those matchless specimens of sagacious forecast which 
 even the reckless spirit of innovation would not ven 
 ture to assail. The emigrant knew beforehand that 
 this was a land of the highest political as well as na 
 tional promise, and under the auspices of another 
 Moses he journeyed with confidence towards his new 
 Canaan." 
 
 Earlier than either of these, in the speech to which 
 Hayne replied and which was followed by the wonder 
 ful " Reply to Hayne," Webster had said : 
 
 " We are accustomed to praise the lawyers of an 
 tiquity ; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and 
 Lycurgus ; but I doubt whether one single law of any 
 lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of 
 more distinct, marked and lasting character than the 
 Ordinance of 1787. We see its consequences at this 
 moment, and we shall never cease to see them, per 
 haps, while the Ohio shall flow." 
 
 Senator George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, brought 
 his admirable and eloquent oration at the Marietta Cen 
 tennial to this conclusion : 
 
 11 We stand by the graves of great soldiers of the 
 War of Independence. This is the centennial of the 
 State within whose borders were born Grant, and Sher 
 man, and Sheridan, and Garfield. The men of the 
 He volution fought that the principles of the Ordinance 
 of 1787 might become living realities. The great cap 
 tains of the late war fought that the compact might be 
 kept and forever remain unalterable. The five States 
 of the Northwest sent nearly a million soldiers into the 
 war for the Union. * * * It is this that makes the 
 
64 
 
 birthday of Ohio another birthday of the nation itself. 
 Forever honored be Marietta as another Plymouth. 
 The Ordinance belongs with the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence and the Constitution. It is one of the three 
 title-deeds of American constitutional liberty. As the 
 American youth for uncounted centuries shall visit the 
 capital of his country, * * * he will admire the 
 evidences of its grandeur and the monuments of its 
 historic glory, * * * but if he know his country s 
 history and consider wisely the sources of her glory, 
 nothing will so stir his heart as two fading and time- 
 soiled papers, whos^e characters were traced by the 
 hands of the fathers a hundred years ago. They are 
 original records of the acts which devoted this nation 
 forever to equality, to education, to religion, and to 
 liberty. One is the Declaration of Independence, the 
 other the Ordinance of 1787." 
 
 The last report on one of these Indiana petitions for 
 removal of the anti-slavery prohibition of the Ordi 
 nance was made to the Senate in November, 1807, by 
 Mr. Franklin, of North Carolina, upon a petition from 
 the Legislative Council and House of Representatives. 
 The report was adverse and was concurred in by the 
 Senate without a dissenting vote. 
 
 This virtually ended the conflict. The eastern 
 portion of the Indiana Territory rilled up rapidly 
 with settlers from Ohio and the North, and when, in 
 1816, that eastern portion came to be the State, its 
 constitution bore the seal of the great Ordinance that 
 there should be " neither slavery nor involuntary servi- 
 " tude, except for crime." 
 
 In Illinois there was the same struggle, with more 
 peril as to the result. 
 
 The pro-slavery element in that portion of the North 
 west Territory was even stronger and more violent 
 than it had been in Indiana. In spite of the provision of 
 the enabling act that the new constitution should con- 
 
65 
 
 form to the requirements of the Ordinance of 1787, 
 this element made strenuous efforts, in the campaign 
 for the election of delegates to the convention, and 
 afterwards in that body, to secure a constitution that 
 did not inhibit slavery. It failed ; and in 1818, once 
 more came into being a new State, having the old 
 certificate of lineage, in a constitution which provided 
 that within its boundaries there should be "neither 
 " slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime." 
 
 Once in the Union as a State, the State of Illinois 
 was as free to amend its constitution with regard to 
 slavery as was any other State. The slave power was 
 not slow to take advantage of this liberty, and in 1824 
 a tremendous effort was made to secure a new Constitu 
 tional Convention with that end in view. The rival 
 candidates for Governor were nominated on that issue. 
 The struggle was intense, but the call for a convention 
 was defeated. This result was largely due to Edward 
 Coles, whom I have already mentioned. He was the 
 anti-slavery candidate for Governor, and was elected. 
 
 Thirty years afterwards in 1856 in his " History 
 of the Ordinance of 1787," he refers to his own part in 
 that struggle as his consolation in old age, at the same 
 time that with prophetic foreboding, referring to the 
 Ordinance, he says : " Since its principles were repudi- 
 " ated in 1854 we have had nothing but contention, 
 " riots and threats, if not the awful realities of civil 
 " war."* 
 
 * He died in 1868, having first lived through the storm of those 
 realities to see the same repudiated principles, in their time-hon 
 ored phrases, restored and made applicable to the whole United 
 States. He was a Virginian, who had set his own slaves free, and 
 had given to each head of a family 160 acres of land. 
 
66 
 
 The subject matter of those apprehensions, which he 
 thus expressed, is part of that later history of the 
 Ordinance which most concerns ourselves. In 1837 its 
 illustrious phrase was stamped upon the Constitution 
 of Michigan, and in 1848 upon that of Wisconsin. 
 The five States of the Northwest Territory were thus 
 all made bright with freedom, like the five points of a 
 star, and the whole area made radiant with the welfare 
 of a free people. 
 
 Long before this the Ordinance itself had entered on 
 a new career. 
 
 From the first beginning of a feeling of opposition 
 between the States upon the slavery question, that 
 feeling took the form of jealousy over the relative 
 number of the slave and free States which should be 
 admitted into the Union and should thus give to one 
 side or the other a preponderance in Congress. 
 
 The province of Congress to control the slavery 
 question in the Territories was deter mined by the fact 
 that in law the slavery question is a question of prop 
 erty right. A person who is a slave is, in the contem 
 plation of the law, the property of some one else. In 
 the States, the care and province of the State include 
 all rights of person and of property ; the province of 
 the Federal Government includes all interstate and in 
 ternational relations. In the Territories, however, the 
 province of the Federal Government includes, also, the 
 rights of person and of property, hence Congress con 
 trolled there the question of the right to property in 
 slaves. 
 
 For a time this question was easily disposed of. 
 East of the Mississippi the settlers in territory not 
 included in the States generally held slaves, while in 
 
67 
 
 the territory north of the Ohio there were none. By 
 tacit agreement new States were admitted from alter 
 nate sides of the river. In this way came in Louisiana 
 (1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois 
 (1818), Alabama (1819), and Maine (1820). The terri 
 tory east of the Mississippi thus exhausted, Missouri 
 the same year came knocking at the door. This raised 
 a stormy question. What of the whole vast territory 
 west of the Mississippi ? That was settled by the 
 famous " Missouri Compromise/ an Act of Congress 
 approved March 6, 1820, entitled : " An Act * * * 
 to Prohibit Slavery in Certain Territories," which in 
 its eighth section applies the language of the Ordi 
 nance of 1787 to the territory westward of the Missis 
 sippi : 
 
 " That iii all that territory ceded by France to the 
 United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies 
 north of 36 30 north latitude not included within the 
 limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery 
 and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in punishment 
 of crimes iv hereof the parties shall have been duly con 
 victed, shall be and is hereby forever prohibited : Pro 
 vided always that any person escaping into the same 
 from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any 
 State or Territory of the United States, such fugitive 
 may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person 
 claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." 
 
 This meant that it had been agreed upon in Congress 
 that the line of the southern boundary of the North 
 west Territory should be prolonged due west to the 
 Pacific, and that new States, free and slave alternately 
 from north and south of that line, should be admitted 
 as before. Upon the passage of this act John Quincy 
 Adams wrote to his wife : 
 
 " If the Union must be dissolved, the slavery question 
 
68 
 
 is precisely the question on which it ought to break. 
 For the present, however, that question is laid to sleep." 
 
 It was supposed, and correctly, on both sides, that 
 the Territories, when they became States, would adopt 
 or exclude slavery in accordance, in each instance, with 
 their territorial condition. Hence it was that, on the 
 adoption of this Compromise, Mr. Adams regarded the 
 question as " laid to sleep." If there was sleep, how 
 ever, it was troubled sleep, not rest. Florida and Iowa 
 and Arkansas and Oregon, it is true, came in respect 
 ively without contention. The acquisition of Texas and 
 Mexico s territorial concessions tended to disturb the 
 equilibrium by greatly enlarging the territory south of 
 the dividing line. California was a cause of contest, 
 involved with which also were the applications of New 
 Mexico and Utah for territorial governments. 
 
 In 1854 these troubles culminated in the passage 
 through Congress and approval by the President of 
 the " Kansas-Nebraska bill," by which the Congress of 
 the United States for the first time withdrew the pro 
 tection of the Ordinance from territory which the flag 
 with its inscription had once covered. The repeal was 
 in these words : 
 
 " The eighth section of the act preparatory to the 
 admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 
 sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which, being in 
 consistent with the principle of non-intervention by 
 Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as 
 recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and 
 fifty, commonly called the compromise measures, is 
 hereby declared inoperative and void." 
 
 I was a student in Yale College at the time. I re 
 member that the church bells in New Haven were tolled 
 as for a funeral when the act of repeal was passed. My 
 
69 
 
 father and mother were Virginians. They set their 
 slaves free when they were married, and began life in a 
 free State, but my early associations and my relatives 
 were largely in the South. I was provoked by what 
 seemed to me so much uncalled-for and jealous feeling. 
 To-day those bells sound in my memory as the pro 
 phetic knell, I need not tell you of how many or of 
 whom. Nor need I here trace out for you how the 
 breaking out of the war arose from that repeal. 
 
 It is better to turn from these memories to the 
 more pleasing contemplation of the majesty with which 
 at the outbreak of the war, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
 Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas and Nebraska, as so 
 many children of the Ordinance, each bearing on its 
 Constitution the inscription that there should be 
 " neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except for 
 crime," came to the rescue of the Union. More than 
 a million soldiers enlisted on the side of freedom from 
 these seven States. The influence of the Ordinance in 
 fixing the character of those States has been made plain 
 to you. Perhaps their soldiers turned the scale ; there 
 were enough of them for that. In view of the repealing 
 Act of 1854, it was the very poetry of justice, when the 
 victory came, to go back to the Ordinance of 1787 ; 
 to take those words which, in the Kansas and 
 Nebraska Act, it was decreed, should be " inopera 
 tive and void," and to declare of those words that 
 throughout the United States, and in all places under 
 their jurisdiction, they should be forever in full force. 
 
 The circumstances which attended this transaction 
 deserve notice. On March 6th, 1862, a special message 
 of President Lincoln had urged upon Congress the adop 
 tion of a joint resolution pledging the co-operation of 
 
70 
 
 the United States, by both pecuniary aid and appro 
 priate legislation, " with an} State which may adopt 
 the gradual abolishment of slavery," the special idea 
 iu this being that the acceptance of it by the border 
 States would cut off from the South all hope that these 
 States Avould ever join in demanding the preservation 
 of slaverj . This suggestion the Senate had adopted 
 by a vote of 32 to 10. Other like proposals had 
 been brought forward and considered in that body. 
 There had been also some propositions in the House. 
 No legislation, however, was perfected, and the full 
 weight of the situation was left to be devolved upon 
 the President, so far as concerned the question of 
 slavery in the States. An Act of Congress, approved 
 June L9th, 1862, enacted that from that date in any 
 Territory in the United States, there should be neither 
 slavery nor involuntary servitude except for crime. A 
 month later, July 19th, the President approved another 
 act, which authorized the enlistment of colored men as 
 soldiers, and provided that no fugitive slave should be 
 surrendered by any person in the military or naval ser 
 vice ; but that all slaves of rebels corning into the pos 
 session or under the protection of the Government 
 should be free. This march of events was quickened 
 by the national success of September 17th, in the battle 
 of Antietam, and on the 22d of that month President 
 Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The 
 United States was now fully and finally committed to 
 the principle embodied in the Ordinance, and there re 
 mained only to fix that policy forever by embedding it 
 in the organic law. 
 
 On December 14th, 1863, in the second week of the 
 First Session of the Thirtj -eighth Congress, directly after 
 
71 
 
 the Speaker had announced the Standing Committees 
 and during the call of States for bills on leave and joint 
 resolutions, both Mr. Stevens and Mr. Ashley having 
 introduced bills for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave 
 Act, there followed the motion of which the following 
 is the record : 
 
 " MR. ASHLEY also introduced a bill to provide for 
 the submission to the several States of a proposition to 
 amend the National Constitution prohibiting Slavery, 
 or involuntary servitude in all of the States and Terri 
 tories now owned or which may be hereafter acquired 
 by the United States."* 
 
 MK. ASHLEY further introduced a joint resolution to 
 authorize the enlistment of colored citizens in the re 
 bellious districts ; Mr. Lovejoy brought in a very rad 
 ical bill for giving effect to the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence in the matter of the rights of colored per 
 sons ; and Mr. Arnold proposed a measure in aid of 
 the execution of President Lincoln s Proclamation of 
 Emancipation. To these proposals Mr. "Wilson added 
 one for a joint resolution providing for the adop 
 tion by the States of an amendment to the Constitution 
 declaring that " Slavery, being incompatible with a free 
 Government, is forever prohibited in the United States ; 
 and involuntary servitude shall be permitted only as a 
 punishment for crime." 
 
 Both Mr. Ashley s proposal and Mr. Wilson s were 
 referred to the Judiciary Committee. No action was 
 taken thereon before a joint resolution came from the 
 Senate, which became through the action of the House 
 the Amendment for Universal Liberty everywhere in 
 the United States. 
 
 * Congreuwnal Globe, 1st Sess. 38th Congress, page 19. 
 
72 
 
 The initiation in the Senate of this grand completion 
 of liberty in America was due to John B. Henderson, a 
 Senator of Missouri, who was at every stage of the 
 great struggle conspicuous for the courage, sagacity 
 and unwavering confidence with which he accepted, 
 on behalf of the most important of the border States, 
 whatever the new progress of the nation into light 
 and liberty required. It was on the llth of January, 
 1864, that Mr. Henderson introduced in the Senate a 
 joint resolution providing for an amendment, of which 
 Article I. was to be : 
 
 " Slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a pun 
 ishment for crime, shall not exist in the United States."" 
 
 MR. SUMNER also introduced, February 8th, a resolu 
 tion providing for a constitutional amendment declaring 
 that, " Everywhere within the limits of the United 
 States, and of each State or Territory thereof, all per 
 sons are equal before the -law, so that no person can 
 hold another as a slave." 
 
 On February 10th, 1864, Mr. Trumbull, from the 
 Judiciary Committee of the Senate, to which these 
 propositions had been referred, reported adversely upon 
 Mr. Surnner s, but returned Mr. Henderson s, altered to 
 read in its chief section : 
 
 " Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except 
 as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall 
 have been duly convicted, shall exist within the 
 United States, or any place subject to their juris 
 diction." 
 
 The identical paper upon which Mr. Henderson had 
 written his resolution was returned by the Judiciary 
 
 * Congressional Globe, 1st Sess. 38th Congress, page 145. 
 
73 
 
 Committee to the Senate, with the altered wording of 
 the chief section. To this had been also added the 
 second section as it now stands.* 
 
 The question of the resolution thus reported came 
 up in the Senate on the 28th of March, and on April 
 8th, after a vigorous debate, and fierce opposition, the 
 resolution was adopted by a vote of 38 to 6. 
 
 Mr. Suniner objected in the debate to the retention 
 of the language of the Ordinance of 1787, and in reply 
 to him Mr. Howard of Michigan protested that he pre 
 ferred 
 
 "to go back to the good old Anglo-Saxon language em 
 ployed by our fathers in the Ordinance of 1787, an ex 
 pression which has been adjudicated upon repeatedly, 
 which is perfectly well understood both by the public 
 and by judicial tribunals ; a phrase, I may say further, 
 which is peculiarly near and dear to the people of the 
 northwestern territory, from whose soil slavery was ex 
 cluded by it." 
 
 The resolution thus adopted by the Senate came up 
 in the House on May 31st, 1864, and excited there, along 
 with zealous and powerful support, the most rancorous 
 opposition, with the result, on coming to a vote, June 
 
 * As to this second section, Mr. Henderson writes me: 
 " Judge Trumbull, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
 thought it advisable, before reporting the 13th Amendment, to give 
 express power to Congress to carry out the amendment. This 
 suggestion came out of the difficulties of construction as to the 
 powers of Congress touching certain provisions of the Constitution 
 as originally framed. And after consultation with me, he added, 
 before reporting back, the words giving Congress express power to 
 enforce the Amendment. We both agreed that these words did 
 not add to nor detract from the meaning or force of the amendment 
 as originally drawn, but thought it better to insert them in order to 
 exclude all possibility of adverse argument as to the power of Con 
 gress to enforce by legislation the express words of the Amend 
 ment." 
 
74 
 
 15th, of 93 in its favor, to 65 against, and 23 not voting ; 
 a victory which fell short of the two-thirds requisite 
 for initiating an amendment to the Constitution. Mr. 
 Ashley, not to lose what had been gained by the 
 action of the Senate, and having changed his vote 
 to the negative for the purpose, moved a reconsidera 
 tion of the vote of the House, and, pending action upon 
 this, the session came to an end. 
 
 The second session of the 38th Congress began Dec. 
 5th, 1864, and in his annual message President Lincoln, 
 after stating that an " attempted march of 300 miles 
 directly through the insurgent region " was in course 
 of execution by General Sherman, urged consideration 
 and adoption of the Henderson joint resolution upon 
 the grounds which he thus presented : 
 
 " Important movements have occurred during the 
 year to the effect of moulding society for durability in 
 the Union. Although short of complete success it is 
 much in the right direction that 12,000 citizens in each 
 of the States of Arkansas and Louisiana have organized 
 loyal State governments with free constitutions, and are 
 earnestly struggling to maintain and administer them. 
 The movements in the same direction more extensive 
 though less definite in Missouri. Kentucky and Ten 
 nessee should not be overlooked. But Maryland pre 
 sents the example of complete success. Maryland is 
 secure to liberty and union for all the future. The 
 genius of rebellion will no more claim Maryland. 
 Like another foul spirit, being driven out, it may seek 
 to tear her, but it will woo her no more. 
 
 " At the last session of Congress, a proposed amend 
 ment of the Constitution abolishing slavery throughout 
 the United States passed the Senate, but failed for 
 lack of the requisite two-thirds vote in the House of 
 Representatives. Although the present is the same 
 Congress and nearly the same members, and without 
 questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who 
 stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the re 
 consideration and passage of the measure at the pies- 
 
75 
 
 ent session. Of course, the abstract question is not 
 changed, but an intervening election shows almost cer 
 tainly that the next Congress will pass the measure if 
 this does not. Hence, there is only a question of time 
 as to when the proposed amendment will go to the 
 States for their action. And as it is to so go, at all 
 events, may we not agree that the sooner the better V 
 It is not claimed that the election has imposed a duty 
 on members to change their views or their votes any 
 further than, as an additional element to be considered, 
 their judgment may be affected by it. It is the voice 
 of the people now, for the first time, heard upon the 
 question. In a great national crisis like ours, unanimity 
 of action among those seeking a common end is very 
 desirable almost indispensable. And yet no approach 
 to such unanimity is attainable unless some deference 
 shall be paid to the will of the majority simply because 
 it is the will of the majority. In this case, the com 
 mon end is the maintenance of the Union ; and among 
 the means to secure that end, such will, through the 
 election, is most clearly declared in favor of such con 
 stitutional amendment." 
 
 On January 6th, 1865, Mr. Ashley called up his 
 motion to reconsider the vote upon the Henderson 
 resolution. In the debate which followed not a few 
 former opponents were supporters of the measure,* 
 although the opposition was still determined and 
 bitter, and on the 28th of January the motion for 
 
 * The following nine Representatives changed on this vote from 
 opponents to supporters : 
 
 Augustus C. Baldwin, Michigan ; 
 Alexander H. Coffroth, Pennsylvania ; 
 Archibald McAllister, Pennsylvania ; 
 James E. English, Connecticut : 
 Anson Herrick, New York : 
 William Radford, New York ; 
 John B. Steele, New York : 
 Austin A. King, Missouri ; 
 James S. Rollins. Missouri. 
 
76 
 
 reconsideration was carried, and the final passage of 
 the Henderson resolution accomplished, by a vote 
 of 119 in its favor to 56 against, and 8 not voting.* 
 
 * Of this vote Gov. Ashley has well said : "If the vote is ana 
 lyzed, it will be seen that of the 119 votes recorded for the amend 
 ment thirteen (13) were by men from the border States, and eleven 
 (11) were by Democrats from the free States. If but three (3) out 
 of the twenty-four (24) who voted with us had voted against the 
 amendment it would have failed. If but four (4) of the eight (8) 
 members who were absent had appeared and voted against, it 
 would have been lost. Had all the Northern Democrats who sup 
 ported the amendment voted against, it would have been defeated 
 by twenty-six (26) votes. Had all the border-State men who voted 
 for it voted against, it would have failed by thirty-two (32) votes. 
 
 1 If the border-State men and Northern Democrats who voted 
 for the amendment had voted against, it would have failed by sixty- 
 five (65) votes. 
 
 " Mr. Lincoln was especially delighted at the vote which the 
 amendment received from the border slave States, and frequently 
 congratulated me on that result. 
 
 " Bancroft, the historian, has drawn with a graphic pen the 
 character of many of the able and illustrious men of the Revolution 
 which achieved our independence. In writing of George Mason, of 
 Virginia, he said : His sincerity made him wise and bold, modest 
 und unchanging, with a scorn for anything mean and cowardly, as 
 illustrated in his unselfish attachment to human freedom. And 
 these identical qualities of head and heart were pre-eminently con 
 spicuous in all the border statesmen who voted for the Thirteenth 
 Amendment. 
 
 " It would be difficult in any age or country to find grander or 
 more unselfish and patriotic men than Henry Winter Davis and 
 Governor Francis Thomas, of Maryland, or James S. Rollins, Frank 
 P. Blair and Governor King, of Missouri, or George H. Yeaman, of 
 Kentucky, or N. P. Smithers, of Delaware. And not less worthy of 
 mention, for their unchanging fidelity to principle, are all the North 
 ern Democrats who voted for the amendment, prominent among 
 whom I may name Governor English, of Connecticut, Judge Homer 
 A. Nelson and Moses S. Odell, of New York, Archibald McAllister, 
 of Pennsylvania, Wells A. Hutching, of Ohio, and A. C. Baldwin, of 
 Michigan. 
 
 " Of the twenty -four (24) border-State and Northern men who 
 made up this majority, which enabled us to win this victory, all had 
 defied their party discipline, and had deliberately and with unfalter 
 ing faith marched to their political death. These are the men whom 
 
77 
 
 The educating influence of the war had effected this 
 great change. The widest interest and the most in 
 tense feeling had watched and waited for the seal of 
 the final affirmative of the House upon the Senate s 
 proposition, which was inspired by the noblest sen- 
 
 our future historians will honor, and to whom this nation owes a 
 debt of eternal gratitude." 
 
 One of these men, thus worthy of lasting honor, was the Hon. 
 George H. Yeaman, of Kentucky. At the risk of transgressing 
 somewhat the privacy of personal correspondence I venture to give 
 the following extract from a descriptive letter which, some time 
 ago, he wrote to me at my request : 
 
 " The Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States had 
 been introduced, and was approaching a vote in 1865. My first res 
 olution was not to dodge, but to face the responsibility. There was 
 still a strong Union element in my district, but I believed that the 
 changes had been such that, on a full vote, the Southern Sympa 
 thizers (which was then the name) would outnumber them, and I 
 knew that those then ready for actual Emancipation were only a 
 small minority. My table was groaning under piles of letters from 
 friends and Unionists none from opponents only two or three 
 letters suggesting that as slavery was inevitably doomed, why not 
 let it go now and be done with it. The great majority contained 
 earnest warnings against making a mistake, being too far in ad 
 vance of the people, and against spoiling what they felt were un 
 usually promising political prospects. 
 
 " Now, you see the strain. In a small way a slaveholder (no 
 real pecuniary interest imperiled) representing a slave-holding and 
 abolition-hating community, elected on the platform of the 
 Constitution as it is, the Union as it was, knowing perfectly well 
 what was right and what ought to be done, knowing that away 
 down in the bottom of my heart I had always been against the 
 institution, because I knew it was wrong ; yet with a fair prospect 
 of coming back to Congress if I voted against the amendment. 
 
 "This narration would not be truthful if I were to say that I did 
 not hesitate. I claim no such credit. I was troubled, I thought 
 much, and I felt much. There seemed to be an idea in the 
 House that I was doubtful and was suffering a pretty severe 
 ordeal. I must do opponents of the Amendment the justice 
 to say that not one of them approached me to talk it over. 
 Only one, Henry Winter Davis, came from the friends of the 
 Amendment. His manner was delicate, discreet and so extremely 
 
78 
 
 tirnents of humanity. A great audience crowded 
 the galleries and every place of access. The Senators, 
 members of the Cabinet and Judges of the Supreme 
 Court were on the floor of the House also to watch the 
 issue of the roll call. When the Speaker announced 
 the result, less than one- third against and more than 
 
 deferential, while earnest, that it convinced me he had read 
 my thoughts in my countenance. He talked very much as 
 he would to a friend in sorrow. I gently put him off with the as 
 surance that I was considering the matter with all the care and 
 earnestness a man could give to any question. Just because he 
 had walked across the House to talk to me about it my pride pre 
 vented me from telling him that I had already found that I could 
 not keep the peace witli my own conscience, could not preserve my 
 own self-respect, without voting in the affirmative. If I had 
 frankly committed myself then it would have saved the next 
 struggle. 
 
 "Doubt, hesitation, came again. It was positively painful. 
 Walking the floor of my room at midnight, light and thoughts and 
 resolution seemed to come as volunteers ; and some of the thoughts 
 were not very pleasant. One silent, unspoken soliloquy was as fol 
 lows : What are you hesitating about ? You know what is right. 
 You know what you ought to do. You are discussing and weigh 
 ing questions of expediency, questions personal to yourself. You 
 are not really thinking about the question of freedom or slavery. 
 You are a moral, a political coward. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that I felt as if I heard those very 
 words. The die was cast ; in another moment the Rubicon was 
 passed. I stopped walking and stood still. With hand raised 
 toward Heaven, I literally and verbally swore a political oath, that 
 I would emancipate myself first, and then do what I could to 
 emancipate other slaves. 
 
 " The rough material for my speech was soon put in form. The 
 vote came soon after it was delivered. As soon as the count was 
 announced there was a great uproar. Coif ax ran across and threw 
 his arms around my neck. Next day brought a manly and earnest 
 letter of congratulation from Judge Holt, the first of dozens and 
 hundreds. Mr. Seward afterwards conferred with me about going 
 to Frankfort to get the amendment ratified by the Kentucky Legis 
 lature. I told him it was no use, it could not be done. 
 
 " At the next election, August, 1865, I was beaten by only seven 
 or eight hundred majority, showing that the people are sometimes 
 better prepared for a forward move than is supposed." 
 
79 
 
 two-thirds for, there was an uproar of delight. When 
 this had lessened, Mr. Ingersoll, of Illinois, said : " In 
 honor of this immortal and sublime event I move that 
 the House do now adjourn." This commemorative 
 motion passed with delighted approval. The requisite 
 acceptance of the proposed amendment by the several 
 States, and the official announcement of this fact by 
 the Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, De 
 cember 18th, 1865, fixed the Thirteenth Amendment 
 in the Constitution, there to remain forever as the 
 transplanted jewel of the Ordinance of 1787. 
 
 Let these events drop out now that have intervened, 
 that we may see how close those men of 76 have come 
 to us, and the part that they have played in our own 
 lives. In a most real sense the men from the States 
 which are within what was the Northwest Territory 
 were soldiers of the Ordinance of 1787. More than a 
 million soldiers came from those five great States, 
 besides all those from Kansas and Nebraska, and from 
 Oregon and California. We were among those soldiers, 
 or else they were our comrades. So far as that million 
 and more of men may have turned the scale of war, it 
 was the Ordinance that gave to their lives that result. 
 To whatever extent the Ordinance did that, to that 
 extent our lives have been directly influenced by those 
 men of 76 who were the Ordinance. The Ordinance 
 itself was not a living force, and could not be till its 
 articles of compact were put on as armor by those 
 heroes of the Revolution. They carried its flag into 
 the wilderness, and there they won new fields ; and 
 they are buried there. That was not, even for us, the 
 last of them, I think. We read that when our Lord 
 was crucified, the bodies of the saints that slept arose 
 
80 
 
 and went into the city. So (reverently) it seems to me 
 that when Secession stretched upon its cross of war 
 the Love of Freedom in this land of ours, those Revo 
 lutionary heroes came again, not to our sight as such, 
 but as a million soldiers from those States from which 
 they had excluded slavery ; and in that guise they 
 marched and fought with us, until there came upon 
 the earth a new and risen Liberty that builds a broader 
 and a higher peace. 
 
 Deep into its corner stone is cut the precept of the 
 Ordinance, that THERE SHALL BE NEITHER SLAVERY NOR 
 
 INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR 
 CRIME. 
 
81 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE ORDINANCE OF 1787. 
 (THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS, JULY 13TH, 1787). 
 
 AN ORDINANCE for the Government of the Terri 
 tory of the United States Northwest of 
 the River Ohio. 
 
 SECTION 1. Be it ordained by the United States in 
 Congress assembled, That the said territory, for the 
 purpose of temporary government, be one district, sub 
 ject, however, to be divided into two districts, as future 
 circumstances may, in the opinion of Congress, make it 
 expedient. 
 
 SEC. 2. Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, 
 That the estates both of resident and non-resident pro 
 prietors in the said territory, dying intestate, shall de 
 scend to and be distributed among their children and the 
 descendants of a deceased child in equal parts, the de 
 scendants of a deceased child or grandchild to take the 
 share of their deceased parent in equal parts among 
 them ; and where there shall be no children or descend 
 ants, then in equal parts to the next of kin, in equal de 
 gree ; and among collaterals, the children of a deceased 
 brother or sister of the intestate shall have, in equal parts 
 among them their deceased parent s share ; and there 
 shall, in no case, be a distinction between kindred of the 
 whole and half blood ; saving in all cases to the widow 
 of the intestate, her third part of the real estate 
 
82 
 
 for life, and one-third part of the personal estate ; 
 and this law relative to descents and dower shall re 
 main in full force until altered by the Legislature 
 of the district. And until the Governor and Judges 
 shall adopt laws as hereinafter mentioned, estates 
 in the said territory may be devised or bequeathed by 
 wills in writing, signed and sealed by him or her in 
 whom the estate may be (being of full age), and at 
 tested by three witnesses ; and real estates may be 
 conveyed by lease and release, or bargain and sale, 
 signed, sealed, and delivered by the person, being of 
 full age, in whom the estate may be, and attested by 
 two witnesses, provided such wills be duly proved, 
 and such conveyances be acknowledged, or the execu 
 tion thereof duly proved, and be recorded within one 
 year after proper magistrates, courts, and registers 
 shall be appointed for that purpose ; and personal prop 
 erty may be transferred by delivery, saving, however, 
 to the French and Canadian inhabitants, and other set 
 tlers of the Kaskaskies, Saint Vincents, and the neigh 
 boring villages, who have heretofore professed them 
 selves citizens of Virginia, their laws and customs now 
 in force among them, relative to the descent and con 
 veyance of property. 
 
 SEC. 3. Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, 
 that there shall be appointed, from time to time, by 
 Congress, a Governor, whose commission shall continue 
 in force for the term of three years, unless sooner re 
 voked by Congress ; he shall reside in the district, and 
 have a freehold estate therein, in one thousand acres 
 of land, while in the exercise of his office. 
 
 SEC. 4. There shall be appointed from time to time, 
 by Congress, a secretary, whose commission shall con 
 tinue in force for four years, unless sooner revoked ; 
 he shall reside in the district, and have a freehold es 
 tate therein, in five hundred acres of land, while in the 
 exercise of his office. It shall be his duty to keep and 
 preserve the acts and laws passed by the Legislature, and 
 
83 
 
 the public records of the district, and the proceedings of 
 the Governor in his executive department, and transmit 
 authentic copies of such acts and proceedings every six 
 months to the Secretary of Congress. There shall also 
 be appointed a court, to consist of three Judges, any 
 two of whom to form a court, who shall have a com 
 mon law jurisdiction, and reside in the district, and 
 have each therein a freehold estate, in five hundred 
 acres of land, while in the exercise of their offices ; and 
 their commissions shall continue in force during good 
 behavior. 
 
 SEC. 5. The Governor and Judges, or a majority of 
 them, shall adopt and publish in the district such laws 
 of the original States, criminal and civil, as may be 
 necessary and best suited to the circumstances of the 
 district, and report them to Congress from time to time, 
 which laws shall be in force in the district until the 
 organization of the General Assembly therein, unless 
 disapproved of by Congress, but afterwards the Legis 
 lature shall have authority to alter them as they shall 
 think fit. 
 
 SEC. 6. The Governor, for the time being, shall be 
 commander-in-chief of the militia, appoint and com 
 mission all officers in the same below the rank of gen 
 eral officers ; all general officers shall be appointed and 
 commissioned by Congress. 
 
 SEC. 7. Previous to the organization of the General 
 Assembly the Governor shall appoint such magistrates 
 and other civil officers, in each county or township, as 
 he shall find necessary for the preservation of the 
 peace and good order in the same. After the General 
 Assembly shall be organized the powers and duties of 
 magistrates and other civil officers shall be regulated 
 and defined by the said Assembly ; but all magistrates 
 and other civil officers, not herein otherwise directed, 
 shall, during the continuance of this temporary govern 
 ment, be appointed by the Governor. 
 
 SEC. 8. For the prevention of crimes and injuries, the 
 
84 
 
 laws to be adopted or made shall have force in all parts 
 of the district, and for the execution of process, crim 
 inal and civil, the Governor shall make proper divisions 
 thereof; and he shall proceed, from time to time, as 
 circumstances may require, to lay out the parts of the 
 district in which the Indian titles shall have been ex 
 tinguished, into counties and townships, subject, how 
 ever, to such alterations as may thereafter be made by 
 the Legislature. 
 
 SEC. 9. So soon as there shall be five thousand free 
 male inhabitants of full age in the district, upon giving 
 proof thereof to the Governor, they shall receive author 
 ity, with time and place, to elect representatives from 
 their counties or townships to represent them in the 
 General Assembly ; Provided, That for every five hun 
 dred free male inhabitants there shall be one represen 
 tative, and so on, progressively, with the number of 
 free male inhabitants, shall the right of representation 
 increase, until the number of representatives shall 
 amount to twenty-five : after which the number and 
 proportion of representatives shall be regulated by the 
 Legislature : Provided, That no person be eligible or 
 qualified to act as a representative unless he shall have 
 been a citizen of one of the United States three years 
 and be a resident in the district or unless he shall have 
 resided in the district three years, and in either case 
 shall likewise hold in his own right, in fee simpJe, two 
 hundred acres of land within the same ; Provided also, 
 That a freehold in fifty 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 necessary to 
 qualify a man as an elector of a representative. 
 
 SEC. 10. The representatives thus elected shall serve 
 for the term of two years, and in case of the death of a 
 representative or removal from office the Governor shall 
 issue a writ to the county or township for which he was 
 
85 
 
 a member to elect another in his stead to serve for the 
 residue of the term. 
 
 SEC. 11. The General Assembly, or Legislature, shall 
 consist of the Governor, Legislative Council and a 
 House of Representatives. The Legislative Council 
 shall consist of five members, to continue in office five 
 years, unless sooner removed by Congress ; any three 
 of whom to be a quorum ; and the members of the 
 Council shall be nominated and appointed in the fol 
 lowing manner, to wit : As soon as Representatives 
 shall be elected the Governor shall appoint a time and 
 place for them to meet together, and when met they 
 shall nominate ten persons, resident in the district, and 
 each possessed of a freehold in five hundred acres of 
 land, and return their names to Congress, five of whom 
 Congress shall appoint and commission to serve as 
 aforesaid ; and whenever a vacancy shall happen in the 
 Council, by death or removal from office, the House of 
 Representatives shall nominate two persons, qualified 
 as aforesaid, for each vacancy, and return their names 
 to Congress, one of whom Congress shall appoint and 
 commission for the residue of the term ; and every five 
 years, four months at least before the expiration of the 
 time of service of the members of the Council, the said 
 House shall nominate ten persons, qualified as afore 
 said, and return their names to Congress, five of whom 
 Congress shall appoint and commission to serve as 
 members of the Council five years unless sooner re 
 moved. And the Governor, Legislative Council and 
 House of Representatives shall have authority to 
 make laws in all cases for the good government 
 of the district, not repugnant to the principles 
 and articles in this ordinance established and de 
 clared. And all bills having passed by a majority 
 in the House, and by a majority in the Council, shall be 
 referred to the Governor for his assent ; but no bill or 
 legislative act whatever shall be of any force without 
 his assent. The Governor shall have power to con- 
 
86 
 
 vene, prorogue, and dissolve the General Assembly 
 when, in his opinion, it shall be expedient. 
 
 SEC. 12. The Governor, Judges, Legislative Council, 
 Secretary, and such other officers as Congress shall 
 appoint in the district shall take an oath or affirmation 
 of fidelity and of office ; the Governor before the 
 President of Congress, and all other officers before the 
 Governor. As soon as a legislature shall be formed in 
 the district, the Council and House assembled, in one 
 room, shall have authority, by joint ballot, to elect a 
 delegate to Congress, who shall have a seat in Congress, 
 with a right of debating, but not of voting, during this 
 temporary government. 
 
 SEC. 13. And for extending the fundamental princi 
 ples of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis 
 whereon these republics, their laws and constitutions, 
 are erected ; to fix and establish those principles as the 
 basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments, which 
 forever hereafter shall be formed in the said territory; 
 to provide, also, for the establishment of States, and 
 permanent government therein, and for their admission 
 to a share in the Federal councils on an equal footing 
 with the original States, at as early periods as may be 
 consistent with the general interest. 
 
 SEC. 14. It is hereby ordained and declared by the 
 authority aforesaid that the following articles shall be 
 considered as articles of compact between the original 
 States and the people and States in the said Territory, 
 and forever remain unalterable, unless by common con 
 sent, to wit : 
 
 AKTICLE I. 
 
 No person demeaning himself in a peaceable and 
 orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of 
 his mode of worship or religions sentiments in the said 
 Territory. 
 
87 
 ARTICLE II. 
 
 The inhabitants of the said Territory shall always 
 be entitled to the benefits of the writs of habeas corpus, 
 and of the trial by jury ; of a proportionate representa 
 tion of the people in the Legislature, and of judicial 
 proceedings according to the course of the common 
 law. All persons shall be bailable unless for capital 
 offenses where the proof shall be evident or the pre 
 sumption great. All fines shall be moderate, and no 
 cruel or unusual punishments shall be inflicted. No 
 man shall be deprived of his liberty or property but by 
 the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land ;*and 
 should the public exigencies make it necessary for the 
 common preservation to take any person s propert} r , or 
 to demand his particular services, full compensation 
 shall be made for the same. And, in the just preserva 
 tion of rights and property, it is understood and de 
 clared 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 engage 
 ments, bona ftde, and without fraud previously formed. 
 
 ARTICLE III. 
 
 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 utmost good faith shall always be observed towards 
 the Indians ; their lands and property shall never be 
 taken from them without their consent ; and in their 
 property, rights and liberty they never shall be invaded 
 or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized 
 by Congress ; but laws founded in justice and humanity 
 shall, from time to time, be made for preventing wrongs 
 being done to them, and for preserving peace and 
 friendship with them. 
 
88 
 AETICLE IV. 
 
 The said Territory, and the States which may be 
 formed therein, shall forever remain a part of this Con 
 federacy of the United States of America, subject to 
 the Articles of Confederation, and to such alterations 
 therein as shall be constitutionally made ; and to all 
 the acts and ordinances of the United States in Con 
 gress assembled, conformable thereto. The inhabi 
 tants and settlers in the said Territory shall be sub 
 ject to pay a part of the Federal debts, contracted 
 or to be contracted, and a proportional part of the 
 expenses of government to be apportioned on them 
 by Congress, according to the same common rule and 
 measure by which apportionments thereof shall be 
 made on the other States ; and the taxes for paying 
 their proportion shall be laid and levied by the au 
 thority and direction of the Legislatures of the dis 
 trict, or districts, or new States, as in the original 
 States, within the time agreed upon by the United 
 States in Congress assembled. The Legislatures of 
 those districts, or new States, shall never interfere 
 with the primary disposal of the soil by the United 
 States in Congress assembled, nor with any regula 
 tions Congress may find necessary for securing the 
 title in such soil to the l>ona fide, purchasers. No tax 
 shall be imposed on lands the property of the United 
 States ; and in no case shall non-resident proprietors be 
 taxed higher than residents. The navigable waters 
 leading into the Mississippi and Saint Lawrence, and 
 the carrying places between the same, shall be common 
 highways, and forever free, as well to the inhabitants 
 of the said territory as to the citizens of the United 
 States, and those of any other States that may be ad 
 mitted into the confederacy, without any tax, impost, or 
 duty therefor. 
 
89 
 
 * 
 
 ARTICLE V. 
 
 There shall be formed in the said Territory not less 
 than three nor more than five States ; and the bound 
 aries of the States, as soon as Virginia shall alter her 
 act of cession and consent to the same, shall become 
 fixed and established as follows, to wit : The Western 
 State in the said territory shall be bounded by the 
 Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash Rivers, a direct 
 line drawn from the Wabash and Post Vincents, due 
 north, to the territorial line between the United 
 States and Canada, and by the said territorial line 
 to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi. The 
 Middle State shall be bounded by the said diiect line, 
 the Wabash from Post Vincents to the Ohio, by the 
 Ohio, by a direct line drawn due north from the mouth 
 of the Great Miami to the said territorial line, and by 
 the said territorial line. The Eastern State shall be 
 bounded by the last-mentioned direct line, the Ohio, 
 Pennsylvania, and the said territorial line. Provided, 
 however, and it is further understood and declared, 
 that the boundaries of these three States shall be 
 subject so far to be altered, that, if Congress shall 
 hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to 
 form one or two States in that part of the said territory 
 which lies north of an east and west line drawn through 
 the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan. And 
 whenever any of the said States shall have sixty thou 
 sand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be 
 admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the 
 United States, on an equal footing with the original 
 States in all respects whatever ; and shall be at liberty 
 to form a permanent constitution and State govern 
 ment. Provided the constitution and government so to 
 be formed shall be republican, and in conformity to the 
 principles contained in these articles, and, so far as it 
 can be consistent with the general interest of the Con 
 federacy, such admission shall be allowed at an earlier 
 
90 
 
 period, and when there may be a less number of free 
 inhabitants in the State than sixty thousand. 
 
 ARTICLE VI. 
 
 There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servi 
 tude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punish 
 ment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly 
 convicted. 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. 
 
 Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid that the 
 resolutions of the 23d of April, 1784, relative to the 
 subject of this ordinance, be and the same are hereby 
 repealed and declared null and void. 
 
 Done by the United States in Congress assembled, 
 the 13th day of July, in the year of our Lord, 1787, and 
 of their sovereignty and independence the twelfth. 
 
 [1301] 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 LD 21-100W-12, 43 (8796s) 
 
YC 5CS50 
 
 235107