RUFUS PUTNAM, 
 
 FOUNDER AND FATHER OF OHIO. 
 
 AN ADDEESS 
 
 BY 
 
 / 
 GEORGE F. HOAK, 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF PLACING A TABLET TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 RUFUS PUTNAM. 
 
 UPON HIS DWELLING-HOUSE IN RUTLAND, 
 
 17 SEPTEMBER, A. D. 1898. 
 
 PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 Main Street. 
 
 1898. 
 
R U F U S 1' U T N yV M , 
 
 FOUNDER AND FATHER OF OHIO. 
 
 AN ADDEESS 
 
 BY , 
 
 GEORGE F. flOAK, 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF PLACING A TABLET TO THE 3IEJI0KY OF 
 
 RUFUS PUTNAM. 
 
 
 UPON HIS DWELLING-HOUSE IN RUTLAND, 
 
 17 SEPTEMBER, A. D. 1898. 
 
 '^V V c c :si t c V , ^tt a $ ^ . 
 
 TRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON. 
 
 3 11 Main Street. 
 
 1898. 
 
^ 
 
 \s 
 
 
 F^?^ 
 .??? 
 
 66942 
 
The General Putnam Ilou.se, in Rutland, with the farm con- 
 taining about 150 acres, is now held by George F. Hoar, 
 Elijah B. Stoddard and Burton W. Potter of Worcester, Trus- 
 tees, Avho ex[)ect to turn it over to the Trustees of Public 
 Reservations as soon as the sum of 11,500 has been raised ])y 
 subscription. This is in addition to about |2,<S00, raised 
 ah-eady. 
 
Tablet placed upon the house in Rutland occupied by General 
 RuFUS Putnam, by the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the 
 Revolution, September 17th, 1898. 
 
 HERE 
 
 FROM 1781 TO 1788 
 DWELT 
 
 GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM: 
 
 Soldier of the Old French War 
 
 Engineer of the Works 
 
 WHICH compelled the British Army 
 
 to evacuate boston 
 
 and of the Fortifications of 
 
 West Point 
 
 Founder and Father 
 
 of Ohio. 
 
 IN THIS HOUSE 
 
 He planned and matured 
 
 THE Scheme of the Ohio Company 
 
 AND from it issued the Call for the 
 
 Convention 
 
 which led to its organization. 
 
 Over this Threshold 
 
 He went to lead the Company 
 
 WHICH settled Marietta 
 
 April 7, 1788. 
 
 TO HIM 
 
 under God it is owing 
 
 THAT THE 
 
 GREAT Northwest Territory 
 
 WAS dedicated forever to 
 
 Freedom, Education and Religion 
 
 and that the 
 
 United States of America 
 
 is NOT NOW A 
 
 great Slaveholding Empire. 
 
 Underneath the Tablet these words are inscribed : "Placed by the 
 Massachusetts Society, Sons of the Revolution," with a fac-simile of 
 their seal. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 This Society does well to mark with visible and 
 enduring tablets the spots where great deeds have been 
 performed or great men have been born or dwelt. 
 Whatever Massachusetts has done, whatever she is 
 doing, whatever she is to accomplish hereafter, is largely 
 owing to the ftict that she has kept unbroken the electric 
 current flowing from soul to soul forever and forever, 
 as it was genei-ated now nearly three hundred years ago 
 at Plymouth. Her generations have taken hold of 
 hands. 
 
 The men of Plymouth Rock and of Salem, the men 
 who cleared the forest, the heroes of the Indian and the 
 old French wai'S, the men who imprisoned Andros, the 
 men who fought the Revolution, the men who humbled 
 the power of France at Louisburg and the power of 
 Spain at Martinique and Havana, the men who won our 
 independence and builded our Constitution, the sailors 
 of the great sea fights of the war of 1812, the soldiers 
 who saved the Union, and the men who went with 
 Hobson on the Merrimac, or fought with Dewey at 
 Manila, or under Sampson or before the trenches at 
 Santiago, have been of one temper from the beginning 
 —the old Massachusetts spirit, which we hope may 
 endure and abide until time shall be no more. 
 
 We guard with an att'ectionate reverence even the 
 tombs and burial-places where the dust of our ancestors 
 
6 
 
 has been laid. As the great orator of New England^ 
 said nearly eighty years ago : 
 
 " We naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, 
 though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those we 
 have loved repose. Where the heart has laid down what 
 it loved most, there it is desirons of laying itself down. 
 No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honor- 
 able inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive 
 away the darkness of the tomb, can soften our sense of 
 the i-eality of death and hallow to our feelings the 
 ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness that 
 we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our 
 atlection." 
 
 But, after all, we cherish with greater and more 
 intense reverence the places where those whom we love 
 and honor have dwelt in life, the scenes on which their 
 living eyes gazed and to which the living forms were 
 familiar, especially the scenes where the great heroes 
 and statesmen of the past have dwelt, or the great 
 beneficent actions which have determined the currents 
 of our history have been jjerformed. 
 
 It is such a man and such a deed that we are here to 
 celebrate today. Many facts illustrating the character 
 of Rufus Putnam and the service he performed for his 
 country have been brought to light for the first time by 
 the researches of recent investigation and the publica- 
 tion of records hitherto little known or explored, 
 especially the archives in the Department of State and 
 the diaries and correspondence of some of his associates. 
 
 Rufus Putnam was one of those men, rare in all gen- 
 erations, perhaps more rare now than formerly, who 
 seem to be almost absolutely without care for self. He 
 seems to have been indiflterent to fame. He had little 
 use for the first personal pronoun in his speech or his 
 wi'itings. He was content to accomplish useful results. 
 
lie was intent upon the goal, not upon the prize. If he 
 could acconii)lisb useful results, he cared nothing for the 
 j)ride or glory of the achievement. 
 
 Among the chief elements of his greatness is his great 
 unconsciousness. So much the more is it the duty of 
 posterity to guard his fame and pay him his due meed 
 of credit and honoi*. To the genius of Rufus Putnam 
 was due the favorable result at three great turning- 
 points in American history. 
 
 It was his skill as an engineer that compelled the 
 evacuation of Boston. It was his skill as an engineer 
 that fortified AVest Point. To him was due the settle- 
 ment of the Ohio Territory and the adoption of the 
 Ordinance of 1787, which dedicated the Northwest 
 forever to freedom, education and religion, and, in the 
 end, saved the United States from becoming a great 
 slaveholding empire. 
 
 The limit of the time at my command compels me to 
 relate these great transactions rapidly. It must be but 
 a sketch, a glance. But I will take time enough to 
 make out my case. 
 
 If the British could have held Boston until sufficient 
 reinforcements could have come over from England, it 
 would have paralyzed the arm of Massachusetts, the 
 State which not only furnished more soldiers to the war 
 than all the Southern States put together, but, what is 
 not so well known, put upon the sea more sailors than 
 the entire number of the whole Continental army put 
 together — a naval power which, before the French alli- 
 ance, raised the rate of marine insurance in England 
 to 28 per cent., and caused the merchants of Great 
 Britain to compel George III. and Lord North to make 
 peace. 
 
 The investment of Boston by the patriotic forces and 
 
the expulsion of the British was one of the most suc- 
 cessful audacities of military history. The British were 
 entrenched on a peninsula only accessible by a single 
 narrow neck of land. They were an army of trained 
 veterans 8,000 strong, supported by a powerful fleet 
 whose seamen brought up the force to 11,000, having 
 in the harbor at their command 120 transports well 
 ])rovisioned, well equipped with ample supplies of ammu- 
 nition and cannon. They were in the best of spirits. 
 The ofiicers and men alike beguiled their time with 
 stage plaj'S, masquerades and other diversions, in com- 
 fortable quarters, without a thought of danger. Lord 
 Howe informed the ministry that there was not the 
 slightest fear of an attack. They had, of course, full 
 command of the harbor, into which vessels were con- 
 stantly bringing provisions in abundance. 
 
 On the other hand, Washington had under his com- 
 mand a band of undisciplined husbandmen, scarcely 
 14,000 in number, with a few cannon which had been 
 captured from the enemy, and a few that had been 
 dragged overland from Lake George. He had at best, 
 as Mr. Bancroft states, only powder enough to supply 
 his few cannon for six or eight days. His men had 
 not been paid since the first of the preceding Decem- 
 ber. The greater pai't of his men were enlisted for 
 but two months. 
 
 The resources of England seemed almost inexhausti- 
 ble, and she had also engaged reinforcements of moi'e 
 than 20,000 German mercenaries. England could wait. 
 Every day increased her strength and courage. Every 
 day diminished the hopes of the patriots. 
 
 Washington must fight at this great disadvantage or 
 the cause of the country seemed hopeless. He had 
 determined, at whatever risk, to march his men across 
 
9 
 
 the ice against Boston, unless some plan for eoniniand- 
 ing the town IVom the neighboring" heights, an aLteni|)t 
 whieh had so signally failed at Bunker Hill, should 
 be found feasible. 
 
 We shall see in a moment what Rufiis Putnam con- 
 tributed to this accomplishment, but for which the 
 strength of Massachusetts must have been subtracted 
 from the cause of independence. You know well what 
 would have become of the cause of independence with- 
 out it. 
 
 AVest Point, after Rufus Putnam fortitied it, was to 
 the war of the Revolution what Vicksburg was to the 
 war of the Rebellion. It prevented the separation of 
 New England from the rest of the country, as Vicks- 
 burg, while it commanded the Mississii)pi, prevented 
 the separation of the States in rebellion in the East and 
 West, 'l^he diiference was that our Vicksburg was 
 never captured. 
 
 I shall speak a little later of the historical results of 
 the settlement of Ohio and the Ordinance of 1787. I 
 will first give a brief sketch of the life of Rufus Put- 
 nam down to the time when he came to this house in 
 Rutland and the time when he left it to found an em- 
 pire in the i^orthwest, carrying with him the fate of 
 America. 
 
 Rufus Putnam was born in Sutton, in this county, on 
 the 9th of April (O. S.), 1738. He came of a race of 
 Worcester and Essex County yeomen, distinguished in 
 every generation, so far as w^e know their history, for 
 public spirit, simplicity, integrity and common sense. 
 
 He was cousin, with a single remove, of Genei-al 
 Israel Putnam, the man " who dared to lead where any 
 man dai-ed to follow." He was, I think, the gi-and- 
 nephew of eJoseph Putnam, father of Isi'ael, another 
 
10 
 
 hei'o of the old Putnam breed, who defied another hor- 
 rible she-wolf, the witchcraft delusion, at the height of 
 its power in the very den where it was born, 
 
 Elisha Putnam, father of Rufus, died when the son 
 was seven years old. General Putnam's account of his 
 family says his father was a much respected citizen, 
 town clerk, a deacon in the church, and representative 
 from Sutton in the General Court. He died June 10, 
 1745. 
 
 His mother married again. The step-father seems to 
 have cared little for the child. He was illiterate himself 
 and des})ised learning. The little boy, as he tells us in 
 a pathetic diary written late in life, had no chance to go 
 to school, and little opportunity for learning at home. 
 No books were furnished him, and he had little time to 
 use books, if he had them. 
 
 Captain Sadler, the step-father, kept a tavern. Rufus 
 got a few pennies by waiting upon guests and blacking 
 their boots, with which he bought j^owder, and with the 
 help of an old gun killed some partridges, which he 
 sold and with the proceeds bought a spelling-book and 
 an arithmetic. Fi-om these he learned what he could, 
 and got as far as the rule of three in arithmetic. But 
 the miserly step-fiither would not allow him the light of 
 a tallow candle in the long winter evenings and I'idi- 
 culed his aspirations for learning. 
 
 In March, 1754, Putnam was apprenticed to Daniel 
 Mathews, of Brookfield. He was then nearly sixteen 
 years old. Mathews was a millwright. Putnam never 
 attended school but three days after he was nine years 
 old. 
 
 His em])loyer, more generous than had been the step- 
 father, gave him the use of candles for the long winter 
 evenings. He studied arithmetic, geography and his- 
 
n 
 
 toi'y. He extended his knowledge of mathematics and 
 engineering, for wliieli he had a natural aptness. His 
 physical frame grew as I'apidly as his mind. When he 
 was eighteen years old he had the foil vigor and stature 
 of a man six feet high. He was renowned Ibi- his great 
 strength and activity in all athletic exercises. 
 
 It was to those winter evenings in North Brookfield 
 and the studies by the light of the tallow candle that 
 his country owed the ablest engineer officer of the 
 Revolution, and the wise, farsighted intellect that 
 decided the fate of America. 
 
 I have, in my time, known many men famous in war, 
 in statesmanship, in science, in the professions and in 
 business. If I were asked to declare the secret of their 
 success, I should attribute it, in general, not to any 
 sup<^riority of natural genius, but to the use they made, 
 in youth, after the ordinary day's work was over, of the 
 hours which other men throw away, or devote to idle- 
 ness or rest. 
 
 Putnam enlisted in the old French war at the age of 
 nineteen. His adventures in that war sound like one 
 of Cooper's romances. He saved enough of his bounty 
 and pay to buy a small faiin. He married in April, 
 17G1, Elizabeth, daughter of William Ayers of Brook- 
 field, who died shortly afterward. January 10, 1765, 
 he married again Persis Rice of Westboro, who was the 
 mother of his children. 
 
 He was~made Lieutenant-Colonel of a Worcester 
 County regiment at the outbreak of the llevolution, and 
 joined the camp at Cambridge just after the battle of 
 April 11). His genius as an engineer was soon dis- 
 closed. He was, as Washington expressly and i-epeat- 
 edly certified, the ablest engineer officer of the war, 
 whether American or Frenchman. 
 
12 
 
 He was soon called by a Council of general and 
 field officei-s to direct the construction of a laige part 
 of the works on which the position of the army besieg- 
 ing Boston depended. He told Washington he had 
 never read a word on that branch of science. Bnt the 
 chieftain Avould take no denial. He performed his task 
 to the entire satisfaction of his commander, and was 
 soon ordered to superintend the defences of Providence 
 and Newport. 
 
 One evening in the winter of 1775-76 Putnam was 
 invited to dine at headqnarters. Washington detained 
 him after the company had de])arted to consult him 
 about an attack on Boston. The Genei-al pi-eferred an 
 iutrenchment on Dorchester Heights, which would com- 
 pel Howe to attack him and risk another Bunker Hill 
 engagement with a diiferent result, to marching his own 
 troops over the ice to storm the town. But the ground 
 was frozen to a great depth and resisted the pickaxe 
 like solid rock. 
 
 Putnam was ordered to consider the matter, and if he 
 could find any Avay to execute Washington's plan to 
 i-eport at once. He himself best tells the story of the 
 accident — we may almost say the miracle — by which the 
 deliverance of Massachusetts fi'om the foreign invader, 
 a veteran British army, eleven thousand strong, was 
 wrought by the instrumentality of the millwright's 
 a])prentice. 
 
 "I left the headquarters in company with another 
 gentleman, and on our way came to General Heath's. I 
 had no thoughts of calling until I came against his 
 dooi", and then I said, ' Let us call on General Heath,' 
 to which he agreed. I had no other motive but to pay 
 my respects to the General. While there I cast my 
 eye on a book which lay on the table, lettered on the 
 back, 'Muller's Field Engineer.' I immediately re- 
 
13 
 
 quested the General to lend it to me. lie denied me. 
 I repeated my i-eqnest. He ag-ain i-efused, and told me 
 he never lent his books. I told him that he must 
 recollect that he was one, who, at Koxbury, in a measure 
 compelled me to undertake a business, which, at the 
 time, I confessed I had never read a word about, and 
 that he must let me have the book. After some more 
 excuses on his jjart and close pressing on mine I 
 obtained the loan of it." 
 
 In looking at the table of contents his eye was caught 
 by the woi-d " chandelier," a new word to him. He read 
 carefully the description and saw its importance at a 
 glance. The chandeliers were made of stout timbers, 
 ten feet long, into which were framed posts five feet 
 high and five feet apart, placed on the ground in par- 
 allel lines and the open spaces filled in with bundles of 
 fascines, strongly picketed together, thus forming a 
 movable parapet of wood instead of earth, as theretofore 
 done. 
 
 Putnam soon had his plan ready. The men were im- 
 mediately set to work in the adjacent apple orchard and 
 woodlands, cutting and bundling up the fascines and 
 carrying them with the chandeliers on to the ground 
 selected for the work. They were put in their place in 
 a single night. 
 
 When the sun went down on Boston on the 4th of 
 March Washington was at Cambridge, and Uoi'chestei' 
 Heights as nature or the husbandman had left them in 
 the autumn. When Sir William Howe rubbed his eyes 
 on the morning of the 5th, he saw through the heavy 
 mists the intrenchments, on which, he said, the rebels 
 had done more work in a night than his whole army 
 would have done in a month. He wrote to Lord Dart- 
 mouth that it must have been the employment of at least 
 12,000 men. His own effective force, including seamen. 
 
14 
 
 was but about 11,000. Washington had but 14,000 fit 
 for duty. 
 
 " Some of our officers," said the Annual Register — 
 Edmund Burke was the writer — "acknowledged that the 
 expedition with which these works were thrown up, 
 with their sudden and unexpected appearance, recalled 
 to their minds the wonderful stories of enchantment and 
 invisible agency which are so frequent in the Eastern 
 romances." 
 
 Howe was a man of spirit. He took the prompt 
 resolution to attempt to dislodge the Americans the next 
 night, before the works were made impregnable. Earl 
 Percy, who had learned something of the Yankee quality 
 at Bunker Hill and Lexington, was to command the 
 assault. But the power that dispersed the Armada 
 baffled ail the plans of the British general. There came 
 "a dreadful storm at night," which made it impossible to 
 cross the bay until the American works were perfected. 
 
 We take no leaf from the pure chaplet of Washing- 
 ton's fame when we say that the success of the first great 
 military operation of the Revolution was due to Rufus 
 Putnam. The Americans under Israel Putnam marched 
 into Boston, drums beating and colors flying. The 
 vetei'an British army, aided by a strong naval force, 
 soldier and sailor, Englishman and Tory, sick and well, 
 bag and baggage, got out of Boston before the strategy 
 of Washington, the engineering of Putnam, and the 
 courage of the despised and untried yeomen, from whose 
 leaders they Avithheld the usual titles of military respect. 
 "It resembled," said Burke, "more the emigration of a 
 nation than the breaking up of a camp." 
 
 The history of the founding of Ohio and of the Ordi- 
 nance of 1787 has been bi'ought to light lately, chiefly 
 from researches in the Department of State, the pub- 
 lication of the diaries of Manasseh Cutler, the coi'- 
 
1.-; 
 
 respondcnce of Timothy Pickering and the papers of 
 Kiifus King. 
 
 This is a tit occasion to tell the story of Putnam's 
 share in these great transactions. April 7, 1783, 
 Timothy Pickering, Quartei-master-General in the armies 
 of the United States, afterward Secretary of War, 
 Secretary of State, Seci'etary of the Treasury, Kei)re- 
 sentative in Congress and Senator, writes a letter to Mr. 
 Hodgdon, in which is the following passage: 
 
 " A new plan is in contemplation, no less than forming 
 a new State westward of the Ohio. About a week since 
 the matter was set on foot and a plan is digesting for the 
 piu'pose. Enclosed is a rough draft of some proposi- 
 tions respecting it. They are in the hands of General 
 Huntington and General Putnam for consideration, 
 amendment and addition." 
 
 'I'he eleventh article of this draft enclosed in Pick- 
 ering's letter contains this sentence : " The total exclu- 
 sion of slavery from the State to form an essential and 
 irrevocable part of the Constitution." General Hunt- 
 ington is not, so far as I know, heard of again in the 
 transaction, but Putnam is found pressing the scheme 
 thenceforth until its final accomplishment. April 14, 
 1783, Pickering again writes to Hodgdon. He says: 
 " General Putnam is warmly engaged in the new- 
 planned settlement on the Ohio." 
 
 Later, a petition signed by 288 officers in the Conti- 
 nental Army is presented to Congress, praying for the 
 location and survey of the Western lands. This peti- 
 tion, in which Putnam heads the list of Massachusetts 
 signers, is forwarded by him to Washington. A year 
 later Putnam writes to Washington again, renewing his 
 urgent application to him for aid in his project. He 
 says the j)art he has taken in promoting the [)etition is 
 
IG 
 
 well known. He has given much time to it since he 
 left the army. 
 
 He specially urges the adoption of the New England 
 township system. He asks the General to recommend 
 to him some member of Congress with whom he can 
 directly cori'espond, as he does not like even to hint 
 these things to the delegates from Massachusetts, 
 though worthy men, as Massachusetts is forming plans 
 to sell her own eastern lands. Washington answers 
 that he has exerted every power with Congress that he 
 is master of, and has dwelt upon Putnam's argument for 
 speedy decision, but that Congress has adjourned 
 without action. 
 
 In 1785 Congress appointed General Putnam one of 
 the surveyors of the northwestern lands. Putnam 
 accepted the office. He says in his letter of acceptance: 
 " A wish to promote immigration from among my 
 friends into that country, and not the wages stipulated, 
 is my principal motive." 
 
 Putnam, however, had made some engagements which 
 made it impossible for him to go in person to Ohio 
 and make the survey. His friend. General Tupper, 
 undertook the duty. Tupper could not get below 
 Pittsburg in the season of 1785. He came back to 
 Massachusetts with such knowledge of the country 
 as he could get from inquiry, and reported to Putnam 
 at Rutland in this house on the 9th of January, 
 178G. 
 
 The two veterans sat up together all night. At day- 
 break they had completed a call for the convention to 
 form a company. It was addressed to all officers and 
 soldiers of the late war, and all other good citizens 
 residing in Massachusetts who might wish to become 
 purchasers of lands in the Ohio country. The invitation 
 
17 
 
 was to extend afterward to inlial)itaiit.s of otlier States 
 " as might be agreed on." 
 
 This eonvention was eom})osed of delegates iVom tlie 
 various counties in Massachusetts, met at the Bunch of 
 Grapes in Boston, Mai'ch 1, 1786, and chose a conunittee, 
 of whicli Putnam was chaii'man, to di'aft a phm for the 
 organization. This organization constituted the Ohio 
 Company, of which Putnam, General Samuel H. Parsons 
 and Rev. Manasseh Cutler were chosen directors. Early 
 in 1787 the directors appointed Putnam superintendent 
 of all their affairs, and in the winter of 1786-87 the 
 organization was completed and the associates selected. 
 
 It remained only to get the grant of the lands. There 
 had been various schemes in Congress from March 1, 
 1784, for the organization of the Northwest territory. 
 Jefterson reported one on the first day of March in that 
 year, which contained a provision excluding slavery after 
 1800. The subsequent history proves beyond a question 
 that a toleration of slavery until that time would have 
 ended in making the whole territory slaveholding. 
 
 But even that limited and ineffective prohibition was 
 stricken out by the Congress. March 16, 1785, Rufus 
 King of Massachusetts offered a resolve that there 
 should be no slavery in this territory. It was sent to a 
 conunittee of which he was chairman and amended by 
 postponing the prohibition of slavery till 1800, and with 
 a clause providing for the surrender of fugitive slaves. 
 That was never acted upon and died in committee. 
 
 In 1786 a new committee w^as i-aised to pro})ose a })lan 
 for the governmciut of the tei-ritory. They made a report 
 which contained no prohibition of slavery whatever. 
 That rei)ort also remained without action until the end 
 of the Congress. 
 
 When Putnam had got his plan for the company I'eady 
 
18 
 
 and secured his associates, he sent General Parsons to 
 Congress to secure the grant of the lands and the pas- 
 sage of an ordinance for the government of the territory. 
 But Parsons returned having accomplished absolutely 
 nothing. 
 
 Putnam was not discouraged. He met Manasseh 
 Cutler, the other director, in Boston, June 25, 1787, 
 and it was agreed that Cutler should renew the attempt 
 in which Jeiferson and Rufus King and Parsons and 
 Washington and several committees of the Continental 
 Congress had so conspicuously failed. 
 
 Manasseh Cutler records in his diary : " I conversed 
 with General Putnam and settled the principles on which 
 I am to contract with Congress for lands on account of 
 the Ohio Company." 
 
 Cutler reached Kew York, where Congress was in 
 session, on the 6th of July, and was introduced into their 
 chamber. He explained his scheme to the members of 
 Congress. In three days a new committee was ap- 
 pointed, the ordinance, which had expired with the last 
 session, brought forward and committed. A copy of 
 the ordinance was sent to Cutler, that he might make 
 remarks and prepare amendments. 
 
 The next day, the 10th, the ordinance was newly 
 modelled. It was reported to Congress on the 11th. 
 But it did not include the clause prohibiting slavery be- 
 cause, as Nathan Dane, who reported it, said, he had no 
 idea the States would agree to it. But Dane moved it 
 as an amendment. It was inserted and passed unani- 
 mously, save the single vote of Abram Yates. 
 
 During the two or three days that this ordinance was 
 pending the committee proposed to reject some of Cut- 
 ler's amendments; he does not specify which. "There- 
 upon he paid his respects to all the members of Congi*ess 
 
19 
 
 in the city, inforincd them of his intention to dejiart that 
 day, and if his terms were not acceded to, to tnrn his 
 attention to some other part of the conntry." 
 
 They nrged him, as he says, to " tarry till the next 
 day, and they would put by all other business to com- 
 l)lete the contract." He records further in his diary 
 that " Congress came to the terms stated in our letter 
 without the least variation." 
 
 Why was it that Congress came in three days to 
 terms which the intluence of Washington and of Jeffei- 
 son had failed to accomplish for more than four years? 
 Putnam and Cutler were masters of the situation. The 
 Ohio Company might well dictate its own terms, even in 
 dealing with the far-sighted statesmen of 1787. 
 
 The purchase and settlement of this large body of the 
 public lands removed from their minds several subjects 
 of deepest anxiety. It afforded a provision for the 
 veterans of the war. It extinguished a considerable 
 portion of the public debt. It largely increased the 
 value of the rest of the public domain. It placed the 
 shield of a settlement of veteran soldiers between the 
 frontiers of ISTew York, Pennsylvania and Virginia and 
 the most dangerous and powerful Indian tril^es on the 
 continent. 
 
 It secured to American occupation a territory on 
 which England, France and Spain were still gazing with 
 eager and longing eyes; in which England, in violation 
 of treaty obligation, still held on to her military posts, 
 hoping that the feeble band of our union would break in 
 pieces. It removed a fear, never absent from the minds 
 of the public men of that da3% that the Western settlers 
 would form a new confederacy and seek an alliance with 
 the power that held the outlet of the Mississii)pi. 
 
 The strength of this last apprehension is shown in 
 
20 
 
 the confidential coiTespondence of Washington. He 
 twice refers to it in his farewell address, — once when he 
 warns the West against " an apostate and unnatural 
 connection with any foreig-n power"; and again, when he 
 urges them, " henceforth to be deaf to those advisers, if 
 such there are, who would sever them from their breth- 
 ren and connect them with aliens." 
 
 Cutler returned to Massachusetts successful and in 
 ti'iumph. He was not himself one of the first settlers 
 ill Ohio, but his sons represented him. 
 
 Putnam led his company down the Ohio River to 
 Marietta on board a galley appropriately' named the 
 Mayflower, giving new honor and fragrance to the 
 name. He landed with his little company of forty-eight 
 men April 7, 1788. 
 
 There is no question that but for this clause in the 
 Ordinance that territory, if it had remained a part of the 
 country, would have been slave territory. It Avould 
 have been settled from Virginia and Kentucky. As it 
 was, it was saved to freedom as by fire. The people of 
 Indiana repeatedly petitioned Congress to be relieved 
 from the clause prohibiting the introduction of slavery. 
 A majority of the people of Illinois was pro-slavery, 
 and the recognition of slavery in the first constitution 
 of that State was only prevented by the dexterity and 
 sagacity of Governor Coles. 
 
 When Ohio was admitted in 1802, the convention that 
 framed her Constitution contained a large number of 
 the friends of slavery. Rufus Putnam, himself a meni- 
 Ijer of the convention, called up late at night the son of 
 Manasseh Cutler, also a member of the convention, from 
 a sick bed, told him of the danger, and the two patriots 
 repaired to the chamber just in time to save the estab- 
 lishment of slavery, which was lost by a single vote. 
 
21 
 
 Now, in the li<^ht of this history, if Rufus Putnam l3e 
 not entitled to the credit of the Ordinance of 1787, and 
 of having saved this country from becoming a great 
 slaveholding empire, then WeUington is not entitled to 
 the credit of Waterloo, or Washington to the ci-edit of 
 YorktoAvn, or Grant to the credit of Api)omattox. 
 
 Putnam is the first person known to have in his pos- 
 session five years before this enactment the plan for the 
 organization of the Ohio Company, in which the total 
 exclusion of slavery from the State was to form an 
 essential and irrevocable part of the Constitution. Then 
 for the next four or five years he is found, and found 
 alone, pressing that scheme upon the consideration of 
 Washington, and through him upon a reluctant Con- 
 gress. 
 
 He accepts the ofHce of surveyor, only that he may 
 promote this scheme. Not able to go himself, he re- 
 ceives from General Tupper in this house the informa- 
 tion gained by him at Pittsburg. In this house is 
 formed the plan of the Ohio Company, and from it he 
 issued the call for its first convention. He is made 
 chairman of the committee to draw up a perfected 
 scheme. He is made by that company the general direc- 
 tor of its affairs. 
 
 At its meeting in Boston, November 21, 1787, he is 
 chosen superintendent, " to be obeyed and respected 
 accordingly." He sends Cutler to Congress, first hav- 
 ing agreed with him in Boston upon the principles upon 
 which the company will make the purchase, is there 
 any doubt that among those principles Avas the inexora- 
 ble condition of the exclusion of slavery, which was in 
 his hands and upon which he had determined from the 
 beginning? 
 
 He leads the company to Marietta. On the first anni- 
 
22 
 
 versary of the settlement of Marietta, in 1789, the 
 company voted that the 7th of April be forever observed 
 as a public festival, being, as they say, " the day 
 when General Putnam commenced the settlement in this 
 country." 
 
 All the contemporary histories of Ohio assign him this 
 credit. Lossing calls him the father of Ohio. Burnet 
 says, " He was regarded as their principal chief and 
 leader." Harris dedicates the documents collected in his 
 appendix to Rufus Putnam, the " founder and father of 
 the State." 
 
 And at last, that the great drama might end as it 
 began, his vote saved the State from the imposition of 
 slavery by its constitutional convention in 1802. His 
 vote — his single vote and his summons to the son of his 
 old friend, Manasseh Cutler — secured the majority of 
 one which saved the State from the imposition of slavery 
 in 1802. 
 
 Suppose those five States, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, 
 Indiana, Wisconsin, which were formed from the Ohio 
 territory, had been settled from Virginia, each of them 
 another Missouri or another Kentucky? What think 
 you would have been our condition today? A few 
 States, perhaps, on our eastern and northern border 
 without slavery, but subjected forever, if the Union had 
 lasted, to the slaveholding rule of which we had experi- 
 ence, even as it was, for the generation before the 
 breaking out of the rebellion. If there be, in the annals 
 of this republic, save Washington and Lincoln alone, a 
 benefactor whose deeds surpass those of Rufus Putnam, 
 I have read American history in vain. 
 
 Washington said of Rufus Putnam that he was the 
 best engineer in the army, whether French or Ameri- 
 can. At the end of the war he directed Putnam to 
 
23 
 
 report a comi)i'ehcnsive plan for foi'tifying the whole 
 country. I have seen General Putnam's elaborate 
 scheme, I think among his papers at Marietta College, 
 or in the archives at Washington. It was never 
 executed, in s]iite of earnest appeals of some of our 
 al)lest statesmen in every generation from Washington 
 to Jackson and Tilden and Eugene Hale. 
 
 It remains a monument of that national improvidence 
 of which we have shown so many conspicuous examples, 
 especially in the matter of preparation for defence and 
 for war, and which, during the last few months, has even 
 dimmed the glories of Manila and Santiago. 
 
 To be a great engineer is to be a great soldier. To 
 be a great engineer w^ith only such advantages of educa- 
 tion as Rufus Putnam enjoyed is to be a man of con- 
 summate genius. But to have been the trusted friend 
 of Washington; to have conceived as by a flash of in- 
 spiration the works which with an inferior force com- 
 pelled England to evacuate a fortified town and to quit 
 Massachusetts forever; to have constructed the very 
 fortress and citadel of our strength and defence in the 
 war of the Revolution; to have been in Lord Bacon's 
 front rank of sovereign honor; to have founded a mighty 
 State, herself the mother of mighty States; to have 
 planned, constructed and made impregnable the very 
 citadel and fortress of liberty on this continent; to have 
 turned the mighty stream of current and empire from 
 the channel of slavery into the channel of freedom, there 
 to flow forever and forever, — if this be not greatness, 
 then there is no greatness among the living or the dead. 
 
 I must not leave your opinion of the value of the great 
 work of Rufus Putnam to depend upon my testimony 
 alone. Daniel Webster declared in his reply to Ilayne: 
 " We are accustouied to praise the lawgivers ol" anti- 
 
24 
 
 quity; 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. 
 
 " It fixed forever 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 free men. It laid the interdict 
 against personal servitude in original compact not only 
 deeper than all local law, but deeper, also, than all local 
 constitutions." 
 
 Mr. Webster added : " We see the consequences of 
 the ordinance at this moment, and we shall never cease 
 to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow." 
 
 Judge Walker, the eminent Jurist of Ohio, declares: 
 " Upon the surpassing excellence of this ordinance no 
 language of panegyric would be extravagant. The 
 Romans would have imagined some divine Egeria for 
 its author. It approaches 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 impossible to alter without marring it. In short, it 
 is one of those matchless specimens of sagacious fore- 
 cast which even the reckless spirit of innovation would 
 not venture to assail. The emigrant knew beforehand, 
 that this was a land of the highest ])olitical as well as 
 natural promise; and under the auspices of another 
 Moses, he journeyed with confidence toward his new 
 Canaan." 
 
 Judge Story says : " The ordinance is remarkable for 
 its masterly display of the fundamental principles of 
 civil and religious liberty." 
 
25 
 
 Chief Justice Chase, in his sketch of the liistoiy of 
 the " Statutes of Ohio," said: "Never, probably, in the 
 history of the world, did a measure of legislation so 
 accurately fulfil and yet so mightily exceed the anticipa- 
 tions of the legislators. The ordinance has well been 
 described as having been a pillar of cloud by day and 
 of fire by night, in the settlement and government of 
 the northwestern States." 
 
 During the years he lived in Rutland* he gave himself 
 without stint to the service of the town. ]^o work was 
 too humble for him if it were a duty or a service. He 
 had the noble public spirit of his day. For five years 
 he tilled this farm, and seems to have done everything 
 his neighbors asked of him. 
 
 He was representative to the General Court, select- 
 man, constable, tax collector, on a committee to lay out 
 school lands, committee to make repairs of school-house, 
 State surveyor, commissioner to treat with the Penob- 
 scot Indians, volunteer in putting down the Shays rebel- 
 lion, on the committee to settle with Jabez Fairbanks. 
 He was one of the founders and first trustees of the 
 Leicester Academy, and, with his family of eight chil- 
 dren, gave from his slender means £100 towards its 
 endowment. 
 
 The rest of his life is, in large part, the history of 
 Marietta for more than thirty years. " The impression 
 of his character," says the historian, " is strongly 
 marked in the history of Marietta, in their buildings, 
 institutions and manners." 
 
 Now this seems to me to be a good, honest, old- 
 fashioned American story. It is a Massachusetts story. 
 It is a Worcester County story, although we by no 
 means pretend to a monopoly of such things in Massa- 
 chusetts or in Worcester County. We have got over 
 
26 
 
 wondering at them. The boy went to school but three 
 days after he was nine years old. That has happened 
 before to many a boy who became a great man, from 
 Ulysses to Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 A Worcester County farm in those days was a pretty 
 good school. It was a pretty good school, both for the 
 intellect and the heart. The boy learned the secrets of 
 the forest and the field, the names and habits of bird 
 and beast. He could take care of himself anywhere. 
 He became an expert woodsman and sharpshooter. 
 
 He heard high topics discussed in the church — I beg 
 your pardon — in the meeting-house. The talk by the 
 blacksmith's forge and the tavern fire, and the rude 
 drafting-board of the millwright, when the great politi- 
 cal contest with England was pending, was of the 
 true boundary between liberty and authority in the 
 government of the State, and between men's free will 
 and God's foreknowledge and omnipotence in the 
 government of the universe. 
 
 The moral quality of our great English race, too, 
 came out in that simple life of plain Hving and high 
 thinking. Every day brought to those frugal house- 
 holds its lesson of affection, of self-sacrifice. 
 
 " Love had be found in huts where poor men he : 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 
 
 The old French war, with its adventures and escapes 
 through the forests, was better for him than a West 
 Point education. But above all were the love of coun- 
 tiy, the sense of duty, the instinct of honor, glowing as 
 bright in the bosom of the country boy as in that of a 
 Bayard or a Sidney. And so, when his country needed 
 him and his God called him, he was ready. 
 
27 
 
 My friends, I do not know what you tliink about it. 
 But for myself, as a son of Massachusetts, I would 
 rather possess among her historic monuments this simple 
 dwelling of this Rutland farmer, when I think of what 
 it stands for, all it has contained, all the memories that 
 cluster around it, than to have the palace of the Tui- 
 leries. 
 
 As Edward Everett said of Mount Vernon : " The 
 porter's lodge, or the dog kennel of the palace, erected 
 by the gratitude of England to the victor of Blenheim, 
 could not have been built for its entire cost." 
 
 Her Majesty's master of hounds, or the keeper of the 
 queen's mews, or the purveyor of the royal kitchen, I 
 dare say, would disdain it as a dwelling-place. Cer- 
 tainly there were columns, there were carvings in the 
 famous French palace built from the plunder of foreign 
 capitals and the spoils of groaning peasants and subject 
 peoples, as a symbol of the glory of France and the 
 military genius of her monarchs, which cost more than 
 the whole of this simple structure. But at least an 
 angry people will never tear it down as the symbol of 
 their own degradation and oppression. 
 
 Three days at school after you were nine years old; 
 bootblack and blacksmith's assistant at Sutton; mill- 
 wright's apprentice of Brookfield; town constable of 
 Rutland; friend of Washington ; deliverer under Wash- 
 ington of Massachusetts from the foreign invader; 
 builder of our stronghold and citadel at West Point; 
 engineer of the great constitutional fortress of Ameri- 
 can liberty; faithful over a few things, ruler over many 
 things, — we come today to your dwelling as to a 
 shrine. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten. It must not be forgotten, 
 unless Mount Vernon is to be forgotten. There is 
 
28 
 
 nothing left but a few stones of the cellar wall of Put- 
 nam's birthplace, as there is nothing left but a few 
 bricks of the birthplace of Washington. But this 
 house is still to be seen as Mount Yernon is still to 
 be seen. It can be preserved at a slight cost for 
 many centuries to come. This reverent, affectionate 
 task is well worthy the piety and patriotism of our 
 generation. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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