Washington, a year before, laid out on paper two states, which closely resembled the Ohio and Michigan of today. The present five states differ somewhat from the plan of 1787, the southern tier of states having encroached on the northern for the sake of certain harbors on the great lakes.

The passage of the Ordinance of 1787 caused a sudden and great emigration from the eastern states into the new territory, and the growth of the great West, which has formed so momentous a chapter in the history of the country, began. Within a year following the organization of the territory, twenty thousand people became settlers upon the banks of the Ohio. The first settlement was made at Marietta (so named in honor of Marie Antoinette) April 7, 1788, by General Rufus Putnam and a company from Massachusetts — the Ohio Company was formed at a convention held at the Bunch of Grapes, in Boston, March 1, 1786-who came down the river from the neighborhood of Pittsburgh on a boat named the Mayflower. "Forever honored be Marietta as another Plymouth.'

The men who first settled the Northwest Territory and who set the seal of their character and institutions upon it were of the best men of New England. "Look for a moment," said Mr. Hoar, in his oration at the Marietta Centennial, "at the forty-eight men who came here a hundred years ago to found the first American civil government whose jurisdiction did not touch tide-water. See what manner of men they were; in what school they had been trained; what traditions they had inherited. I think you must agree that of all the men who ever lived on earth fit to perform that ancient, primitive and heroical work,' the founding of a State, they were the fittest." The thorough and detailed passage upon the personal and political character of the founders of the Northwest, in Mr. Hoar's oration, is deserving of special study. "No colony in America," said Washington, who was deeply interested in the development of the West, and who was the warm personal friend of Putnam, “was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the 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."

General Rufus Putnam was the great leader in this work of colonizing the West. "To Nathan Dane belongs the immortal honor of having been the draughtsman of the statute [the Ordinance of 1787] and of moving the anti-slavery amendment." To Manasseh Cutler-lately a chaplain in the army and in 1787 minister at Ipswich-who was chiefly instrumental in securing the passage of the act in the shape it finally took, and who was one of the leaders in promoting the settlement at Marietta which immediately followed, belongs no less credit.

The Ordinance of 1787 is properly pronounced "the greatest and most important legislative act in American history." "The disrespect with which the Continental Congress is sometimes spoken of," says Mr. Hoar, "is most unjust. Its want of vigor was due to the limitation put upon its powers by the states, and to no want of wisdom or energy in its members. That body will ever hold a great place in history—if it had done nothing else— which declared independence, which called Washington to the chief command, which began its labors with the great state papers which Chatham declared surpassed the masterpieces of antiquity, and ended them with the Ordinance of 1787."

The most notable article in the Ordinance of 1787 was that which forever prohibited slavery from the Northwest. "Here," says Mr. Hoar, was the first human government under which absolute civil and religious liberty has always prevailed. Here no witch was ever hanged or burned.

Here no heretic was ever molested. Here no slave was ever born or dwelt. When older states or nations, where the chains of human bondage have been broken, shall utter the proud boast, With a great sum obtained I this freedom,' each sister of this imperial group-Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin - may lift her queenly head with the yet prouder answer, 'But I was free-born.'' The importance of this anti-slavery article of the Ordinance, in view of the course of our national history during the century that has followed, cannot be overestimated. "It fixed forever," said Webster, "the character of the population in the vast regions northwest of the Ohio by excluding from them involuntary servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to sustain any other than freemen. It laid the interdict against personal servitude in original compact, not only deeper than all local law, but deeper, also, than all local constitutions." Jefferson had worked with the greatest earnestness to secure the insertion of a clause in the Ordinance of 1784, prohibiting slavery in the Northwest, and the clause was lost by only a single vote. The voice of a single individual," said Jefferson, “would have prevented this abominable crime. Heaven will not always be silent; the friends of the rights of human nature will in the end prevail.' The Ordinance of 1787 secured what Jefferson had labored for. "Thomas Jefferson," says Bancroft, "first summoned Congress to prohibit slavery in all the territory of the United States; Rufus King lifted up the measure when it lay almost lifeless on the ground, and suggested the immediate instead of the prospective prohibition; a Congress composed of five southern states, to one from New England, and two from the middle states, headed by William Grayson, supported by Richard Henry Lee, and using Nathan Dane as scribe, carried the measure to the goal in the amended form in which King had caused it to be referred to a committee; and, as Jefferson had proposed, placed it under the sanction of an irrevocable compact."

The Ordinance of 1784, the original of the Ordinance of 1787, was drawn up by Jefferson himself, as chairman of the committee of three, of which Chase of Maryland and Howell of Rhode Island were the other members, which had been appointed by Congress to prepare a plan for the temporary government of the territory. The draught of the committee's report, in Jefferson's own handwriting, is still preserved in the archives of the State Department at Washington. "It is as completely Jefferson's own work," remarks Bancroft, "as the Declaration of Independence.' The text of this important paper may be found in Randall's Life of Jefferson, vol. i, p. 396, and elsewhere, and should be compared with the Ordinance of 1787. Jefferson's anti-slavery article was as follows: "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 punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personal guilty.' The ordinance, shorn of this proscription of slavery, was adopted April 23, 1784, and remained in force three years, being superseded by the Ordinance of 1787.

See Hon. George F. Hoar's oration at the Marietta Centennial, April 7, 1888; Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. vi, chap. vi, on "The Colonial System of the United States "; the Life, Journals and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler, especially the hundred pages giving the diary of his journey to New York and Philadelphia in 1787, on his mission to secure the passage of the Ohio bill; and, for its account of the early settlers and their life, Hildreth's Pioneer History. The course of lectures at Madison, Wisconsin, for the spring of 1888, in the line of the Old South lectures in Boston, was devoted to the history of the Northwest Territory from the

earliest times down to its final division into states, the special subjects being as follows: The Discovery of the Northwest; French Occupation of the Northwest; The Ordinance of 1787; The Division of the Northwest into States; Commonwealth Builders of the Northwest; The Position of the Northwest in General History.

"We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; 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."— Daniel Webster.

"The Ordinance of 1787 belongs with the Declaration of Independence 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-strongest, richest, freest, happiest of the nations of the earth-from the stormy coast of New England, from the luxuriant regions of the Gulf, from the lakes, from the prairie and the plain, from the Golden Gate, from far Alaska- he will admire the evidences of its grandeur and the monuments of its historic glory. He will find there rich libraries and vast museums and great cabinets, which show the product of that matchless inventive genius of America, which has multiplied a thousand fold the wealth and comfort of human life. He will see the simple and modest portal through which the great line of the Republic's chief magistrates have passed at the call of their country to assume an honor surpassing that of emperors and kings, and through which they have returned, in obedience to her laws, to take their place again as equals in the ranks of their fellow-citizens. He will stand by the matchless obelisk which, loftiest of human structures, is itself but the imperfect type of the loftiest of human characters. He will gaze upon the marble splendors of the capitol, in whose chambers are enacted the statutes under which the people of a continent dwell together in peace, and the judgments are rendered which keep the forces of state and nation alike within their appointed bounds. He will look upon the record of great wars and the statues of great commanders. But if he knew his country's history, and considered wisely the sources of her glory, there is nothing in all these which will so stir his heart as two faded and time-soiled papers, whose characters were traced by the hand of the fathers a hundred years ago. They are the 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. - George F. Hoar.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.
With Bibliographical and Historical Notes and Outlines for Study.
PREPARED BY EDWIN D. MEAD.

This Manual is published by the Directors of the Old South Studies in History and Politics, for the use of schools and of such clubs, classes and individual students as may wish to make a careful study of the Constitution and its history. The societies of young men and women now happily being

organized everywhere in America for historical and political study can do nothing better to begin with than to make themselves thoroughly familiar with the Constitution. It is especially with such societies in view that the table of topics for study, which follows the very full bibliographical notes in this manual, has been prepared. A copy of the manual will be sent to any address on receipt of twenty-five cents; one hundred copies, fifteen dollars. Address Directors of Old South Studies, Old South Meeting House, or D. C. Heath & Co., 5 Somerset street, Boston.

OLD SOUTH LEAFLETS, GENERAL SERIES.

No. 1. Constitution of the United States 2. Articles of Confederation. 3. Declaration of Independence. 4. Washington's Farewell Address. 5. Magna Charta. 6. Vane's "Healing Question." 7. Charter of Massachusetts Bay, 1629. 8. Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1638. 9. Franklin's Plan of Union, 1754. 10. Washington's Inaugurals. II. Lincoln's Inaugurals and Emancipation Proclamation. 12. The Federalist, Nos. I and 2. 13. The Ordinance of 1787.-etc. Price, five cents per copy; one hundred copies, three dollars. Directors of Old South Studies, Old South Meeting House, Boston.

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We, the people of the State of Ohio, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and promote our common welfare, do establish this constitution.

Sam. A

ARTICLE I.

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BILL OF RIGHTS.

SECTION 1. All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and seeking and obtaining happiness and safety.

SEC. 2. All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform, or abolish the same whenever they may deem it necessary; and no special privileges or immunities shall ever be granted that may not be altered, revoked, or repealed by the general assembly.

SEC. 3. The people have a right to assemble together in a peaceable manner to consult for their common good, to instruct their representatives, and to petition the general assembly for the redress of grievances.

SEC. 4. The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security; but standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be kept up; and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power.

SEC. 5. The right of trial by jury shall be inviolate.

SEC. 6. There shall be no slavery in this State, nor involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment of crime.

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SEC. 7. All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or

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