1800, but this clause failed to pass Congress. If it could have been adopted and enforced, the westward march of slavery would have been stopped at the bounds of the original states, and the sectional controversy over its expansion which ended in Civil War could not have occurred.

The Ordinance of 1784 was prospective in its operation and never went into effect. At the time of its enactment the cessions had not yet been completed, and only two or three of the proposed states had any inhabitants. Before the conditions contemplated by the Ordinance of 1784 came about, the Ordinance of 1787 superseded it.

In the meantime, however, Congress enacted the Land Ordinance of 1785, which dealt with the other phase of the task undertaken by its pledge to the states. It set out the plan by which the lands were to be disposed of, providing first of all for a system of surveys which has become known as the "rectangular," or "rectilinear" system.

By this method a "base line" is first laid out running due east and west. North and south across the base line, at intervals of six miles, meridians are marked off. Then lines parallel to the base line, six miles apart, mark off the surveyed area into blocks containing thirty-six square miles. Each of these blocks is called a "township," and each tier of townships between meridians is called a "range." The subdivisions of the township, each containing one square mile, are called "sections." Each section can be subdivided into halves and quarters, each quarter into quarters, and so on indefinitely.

The plan provided an admirably accurate system, in contrast with the "indiscriminate locations" which had been permitted by Virginia and some other colonies, and which had resulted in endless litigation. In part it was based on New England precedents, although the origin of some of its features is obscure. The system worked so well that it was applied to new areas from time to time as the settlement of the West advanced, until it covered the whole of the public lands. The ordinance provided for a first survey to contain seven ranges, along a base line running due west from the point where the Ohio River crosses the boundary of Pennsylvania.

Besides the survey system, the Ordinance laid down the terms

Township on enlarged scale

showing sections and subdivisions

@= Section, 640 Acres; b = Half-Section, 320 Acres;

c = Quarter-Section, 160 Acres; d= Half Quarter-Section, 80 Acres ;

e = Quarter Quarter-Section, 40 Acres.

121

E

and conditions on which lands were to be sold. Following an old practice of the New England colonies when laying out new towns, section sixteen in each township was reserved for the support of schools. The remaining lands of the seven ranges were to be sold at auction to the highest bidder, for cash, in plots of not less than one section. The minimum price was fixed at one dollar per acre, but with competitive bidding the actual selling price was expected to average considerably more. It was provided at first that an auction should be held in each state, and to each was assigned for this purpose a proportionate share of the tract to be sold.

This plan of sales was a departure from the land systems of colonial days. In many of the provinces it became customary to grant lands on such easy terms as to make them practically free. This was due especially to the desire to promote settlement on the frontiers as a means of defense against the Indians. Such service was worth more than the money which might be obtained by selling lands. Lands were also sold, and speculators had become active in nearly every colony, buying great tracts on special terms for resale. Often, however, they received the grants on condition that they colonize them within a specified time with a certain number of settlers.

After the Revolution the straitened circumstances of the public treasury and the burden of the war debt compelled Congress to deal with the public lands as a source of revenue, and for a time easy methods of acquisition found no regular place in its system. The terms prescribed by the Ordinance of 1785 shut out the poor men who would naturally become the actual settlers, for in those days the minimum sum required to purchase a section, $640, was a considerable fortune. It was expected by some congressmen that groups of settlers would buy whole townships, like the New England groups which formed new towns. This did not occur, and speculators were the chief buyers at the land auctions.

Land sold slowly under the Ordinance, and Congress showed a willingness to make better terms than the Ordinance offered in special contracts with companies which wished to buy large tracts. As early as 1783 some officers of the continental army, whose arrears of pay Congress was unable to meet, had formed a

plan to accept lands in the Ohio Valley in lieu of money, and to make a settlement there. The project led to the formation of The Ohio Company of Associates, consisting of New England veterans. In 1787 this company sent an agent, Manasseh Cutler,

LAND PURCHASES, RESERVATIONS, AND SURVEYS IN OHIO.

to make a contract with Congress. He proposed to purchase a tract of a million and a half acres on the Muskingum for a million dollars, to be paid in the certificates of indebtedness held by the members, then worth about twelve cents on the dollar.

Cutler procured his contract in the face of considerable opposition, by coupling with it a speculative scheme in which some members of Congress were interested. This latter was the Scioto

The

Company, which asked an option on several million acres. Scioto Company had a brief and disreputable career, but it aided the sounder Ohio Company to get fairly started.

In 1788 another organization, known from its promoter as the Symmes Company, and composed of New Jersey and Pennsylvania soldiers and speculators, obtained a contract for the purchase on similar terms of the lands between the Big and Little Miami rivers. Thus by 1788 three groups were ready to begin settlements in the Ohio country, on the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami rivers.

A part of the plan of Congress in dealing with the Northwest was not to permit settlement before surveys were finished, and not to make surveys until the Indian title had been extinguished. To prepare the way for settlement, Congress sent out agents immediately after the peace with England to make treaties with the tribes.

The Indians showed the greatest reluctance to negotiate. The British fur-trading interest, much discontented over the terms of the peace which assigned the fur-bearing Northwest to the United States, had persuaded the government to find excuses for delaying the surrender of the border posts situated on the American side of the boundary.1 Holding these posts, officials advised the Indians to refuse to cede lands north of the Ohio, and to make that river the permanent boundary between their lands and the American settlements. In short, notwithstanding the treaty, Britain sought to perpetuate her old plan of closing the Northwest to settlement, in the interest of the Indian trade.

With great difficulty the agents of Congress obtained several treaties, the last of which, signed in 1788 at Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum, opened a large part of southern and eastern Ohio for white settlement. The Indians, however, refused to abide by the treaties, claiming that the chiefs had signed without authority, and Congress found the situation little changed for all its efforts. When the survey of the seven ranges was begun, the Indians prepared to take the war path, and the survey had to be abandoned for awhile.

This was the situation when the first contingent of the Ohio Company came from the East. Crossing the mountains of

1 Cf. the complaints about non-payment of debts and treatment of Loyalists.