the Great Miami.* In this way the Indian title to southern Ohio, and all Ohio to the east of the Cuyahoga, was quieted.

Six days before the signature of the treaty with the Shawnees, Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper, after a careful consultation at the house of Putnam, in Rutland, published in the newspapers of Massachusetts an invitation to form "the Ohio Company" for purchasing and colonizing a large tract of land between the Ohio and Lake Erie. The men chiefly engaged in this enterprise were husbandmen of New England, nurtured in its schools and churches, laborious and methodical, patriots who had been further trained in a seven years' war for freedom. Have these men the creative power to plant a commonwealth? And is a republic the government under which political organization for great ends is the most easy and the most perfect?

To bring the Ohio company into formal existence, all persons in Massachusetts who wished to promote the scheme were invited to meet in their respective counties on Wednesday, the fifteenth day of the next February, and choose delegates to meet in Boston on Wednesday, the first day of March 1786, at ten of the clock, then and there to consider and determine on a general plan of association for the company. On the appointed day and hour, representatives of eight counties of Massachusetts came together; among others, from Worcester county, Rufus Putnam; from Suffolk, Winthrop Sargent; from Essex, Manasseh Cutler, lately a chaplain in the army, then minister at Ipswich; from Middlesex, John Brooks; from Hampshire, Benjamin Tupper. Rufus Putnam was chosen chairman of the meeting, Winthrop Sargent its secretary. On the third of March, Putnam, Cutler, Brooks, Sargent, and Cushing, its regularly appointed committee, reported an association of a thousand shares, each of one thousand dollars in continental certificates, which were then the equivalent of one hundred and twenty-five dollars in gold, with a further liability to pay ten dollars in specie to meet the expenses of the agen cies. Men might join together and subscribe for one share.

A year was allowed for subscription. At its end, on the eighth of March 1787, a meeting of the subscribers was held at Boston, and Samuel Holden Parsons, Rufus Putnam, and *U. S. Statutes at Large, vii., 15, 16-18, 26.

Manasseh Cutler were chosen directors to make application to congress for a purchase of lands adequate to the purposes of the company.

The basis for the acquisition of a vast domain was settled. by the directors, and Parsons repaired to New York to bring the subject before congress. On the ninth of May 1787, the same day on which the act for the government of the North-west was ordered to a third reading on the morrow, the memorial of Samuel Holden Parsons, agent of the associators of the Ohio company, bearing date only of the preceding day, was presented.* It interested every one. For vague hopes of colonization, here stood a body of hardy pioneers; ready to lead the way to the rapid absorption of the domestic debt of the United States; selected from the choicest regiments of the army; capable of selfdefence; the protectors of all who should follow them; men skilled in the labors of the field and of artisans; enterprising and laborious; trained in the severe morality and strict orthodoxy of the New England villages of that day. All was changed. There was the same difference as between sending out recruiting officers and giving marching orders to a regular corps present with music and arms and banners. On the instant the memorial was referred to a committee consisting of Edward Carrington, Rufus King, Nathan Dane, Madison, and Egbert Benson-a great committee: its older members of congress having worthy associates in Carrington and Benson, of whom nothing was spoken but in praise of their faultless integrity and rightness of intention.

On the fourth day of July 1787, for the first time since the eleventh of May, congress had a quorum. There were present from the North, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey; from the South, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, soon to be joined by Delaware. The South had all in its own way. The president of congress being absent, William Grayson of Virginia was elected the temporary president.

* The memorial of Parsons is in his own handwriting. It is contained in vol. xli. of Papers of the Old Congress, vol. viii., 226, of the Memorials. It is indorsed in the handwriting of Roger Alden, "Memorial of Samuel H. Parsons, agent of the associators for the purchase of lands on the Ohio. Read May ninth 1787. Referred to Mr. Carrington, Mr. King, Mr. Dane, Mr. Madison, Mr. Benson. Acted on July 23, 1787. See committee book."

On Friday, the fifth, there was no quorum. In the evening arrived Manasseh Cutler, one of the three agents of the Ohio company, sent to complete the negotiations for western lands. On his way to New York, Cutler had visited Parsons, his fellow-director, and now acted in full concert with him. Carrington gave the new envoy a cordial welcome, introduced him to members on the floor of congress, devoted immediate attention to his proposals, and already, on the tenth of July, his report granting to the Ohio company all that they desired was read in congress.* *

This report, which is entirely in the handwriting of Edward Carrington, assigns as gifts a lot for the maintenance of public schools in every township; another lot for the purpose of religion; and four complete townships, "which shall be good land, and near the centre," for the purpose of a university. The land, apart from the gifts, might be paid for in loan-office certificates reduced to specie value or certificates of liquidated debts of the United States. For bad land, expenses of surveying, and incidental circumstances, the whole allowance was not to exceed one third of a dollar an acre. The price, therefore, was about sixty-six cents and two thirds for every acre, in United States certificates of debt. But as these were then worth only twelve cents on the dollar, the price of land in specie was between eight and nine cents an acre.

On the ninth of July, Richard Henry Lee took his seat in congress. His presence formed an era. On that same day the report for framing a western government, which was to have had its third reading on the tenth of May, was referred to a new committee of seven, composed of Edward Carrington

*The business of congress was done with closed doors and with rigid secrecy. Hence some slight misconceptions in the journal of Cutler. N. A. Review, liii., 334, etc. He says that on July sixth a committee was appointed to consider his proposal. The committee was appointed not on July sixth, but on the ninth of May, and was not changed. Its report is to be found in vol. v. of the Reports of Committees, and in Old Papers of Congress, xix., 27. The report is in the handwriting of Edward Carrington, and by his own hand is indorsed: "Report of Committee on Memorial of S. H. Parsons." Mr. Thomson's hand indorses further: 66 Report of Mr. Carrington, Mr. King, Mr. Dane, Mr. Madison, Mr. Benson. Read July 10th, 1787. Order of the day for the eleventh." On what day it was presented is not recorded.

In the Journals of Congress, iv., 751, for the 11th of July, mention is made

and Dane, Richard Henry Lee, Kean of South Carolina, and Melancthon Smith of New York. There were then in congress five southern states to three of the North; on the committee two northern men to three from the South, of whom the two ablest were Virginians.

The committee, animated by the presence of Lee, went to its work in good earnest. Dane, who had been actively employed on the colonial government for more than a year, and for about ten months had served on the committee which had the subject in charge, acted the part of scribe. Like Smith and Lee, he had opposed a federal convention for the reform of the constitution. The three agreed very well together. though Dane secretly harbored the wish of finding in the West an ally for "eastern politics." They were pressed for time, and found it necessary finally to adopt the best system they could get. At first they took up the plan reported by Monroe; but new ideas were started; and they worked with so much industry that on the eleventh of July their report of an ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States north-west of the river Ohio was read for its first time in congress.

The ordinance imbodied the best parts of the work of their predecessors. For the beginning they made the whole northwestern territory one district, of which all the officers appointed by congress were to take an oath of fidelity as well as of office. Jefferson, in his ordinance for the sale of lands, had taken care for the equal descent of real estate, as well as other property, to children of both sexes. This was adopted and expressed in the forms of the laws of Massachusetts. The rule of Jefferson was followed in requiring no property qualification for an elector; but was not extended, as Jefferson had done, to the officers to be elected.

The committee then proceeded to establish articles of compact, not to be repealed except by the consent of the original states and the people and states in the territory. Among these,

that the report of a committee touching the temporary government for the western territory had been referred to the committee. I find an indorsement in the State Department on one of the papers that the day on which that reference was made was July ninth.

as in Massachusetts and Virginia, were freedom of religious worship and of religious thought; and various articles from the usual bills of rights of the states.

The next clause bears in every word the impress of the mind of Richard Henry Lee. "No law ought ever to be made in said territory that shall in any manner whatever interfere with or conflict with private contracts or engagements, bona fide and without fraud previously formed." This regulation related particularly to the abuse of paper money.*

The third article recognised, like the constitution of Massachusetts, and like the letter of Rufus Putnam of 1783,+ that religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, and declared that schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The utmost good faith was enjoined toward the Indians; their lands and property, their rights and liberty, were ordered to be protected by laws founded in justice and humanity; so that peace and friendship with them might ever be preserved.

The new states, by compact which neither party alone could change, became, and were forever to remain, a part of the United States of America. The waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between them, according to the successful motion of Grayson and King, were made common highways and forever free. The whole territory was divided into three states only, the population required for the admission of any one of them to the union was fixed at sixty thousand; but both these clauses were subject to the future judgment of congress. The prayer of the Ohio

"Cette disposition porte particulièrement sur l'abus du papier monnaie." Otto to Montmorin, successor of Vergennes at Versailles, 20 July 1787. R. H. Lee to George Mason, Chantilly, 15 May 1787. Life of Richard Henry Lee, ii., 71-73. Lee hated paper money, and therefore had entreated his friends in the convention at Philadelphia to take from the states the right of issuing it. Moreover, he piqued himself upon the originality of his suggestion: "a proposition that I have not heard mentioned." Compare Lee to Washington, in Sparks's Letters to Washington, iv., 174. More than forty-two years later Dane claimed for himself "originality" in regard to the clause against impairing contracts [Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 1867 to 1869, p. 479], but contemporary evidence points to R. H. Lee as one with whom he must at least divide the honor.

The proposals presented by Cutler are in the handwriting of Parsons.