3 9002 05350

YAI.E UNIV£no,T\

THE PART TAKEN BY ESSEX COUNTY

ORGANIZATION AND SETTLEMENT

NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

Reprinted from Historical Collections Essex Institute, Vol, xxv, 1888,'

SALEM, MASS, :
SALEM PRESS PUBLISHING AND PRINTING CO,
1889,

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Gift of
Ralph W. Neal

Hamilton, Mass ., Aug. 30, 19
Mr. Andrew Keogh, Esq., /fd
Office of the Librarian,
Yale University.
Dear Sir: I am sending herewith agreeable to your request,
for deposition in the Yale archives, two papers
attested by Manesseh Cutler, Yale 1765, and by Mary
Cutler, his wife, who was a Balch of Dedham, Mass.
One of these items is a simple bargain and sale deed
of some land; the other is a covenant of marriage
with a bond attached thereto^f or the performance of
certain related acts, -a simple prenuptial arrangement
such as persisted at the time of the early settlement
bf this country, as I have often seen in ancient
forms. These papers I found among the effects of my
ancestor. Col- Robert Dodge (1743-1823) of Hamilton,
and their doctmienta^y- value -s'esms f-urther^"tb be
enhanced Insomuch^as in addition to the attestation
^mentioned above, the whole of these instruments
themselves seem quite ostensibly to be executed by
Dr. Cutler, and in his handwriting.
I am sending you also a reprint by the Essex
Institute of Salem of "The fart taken by Essex
County Men in the Settlement of the Northwest
Territory", and appended thereto a personal note
from Charles G. Dav/es, Vice President, of interest
upon that sub ject, and the matter of the Cutler
memorabilia. Yours ,

o/fl^^ ^^ ^j^^ ,

wmmmm

NT'S CHAM BER,
WASH I NGTON. August 20, 1926.

. Ralph W. Neal,
South Postal Station,
Boston, Uass.
dear Mr. Neal:
Dntil I received your letter of the 15th, I did not know
I had sent me the very interesting publication of the Easex In-
.tute upon the part taken by ExaM County men in the Settlement of
North West Territory. Arranged as it is with the story
.e up from original quotations, I consider it the best and
it reliable summary of that history which I have seen. I am
.er great obligations to you.
I have so many papers now of Doctor Cutler's, including
ds, his journals and business docunents, that I do not want
deprive you of the copy of the deed your proffer.
Again thanClcing^ou for your kindness and with begt
;ards, Yours ,

THE PART TAKEN BY ESSEX COUNTY

ORGANIZATION AND SETTLEMENT

OF THB

NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

Reprinted from Histomcal Collections Essex Institute, Vol. xxv, 1888, ]

SALEM, MASS. -.
SALKM PRESS PUBLISHING AND PRINTING CO.,
1889.

Cn ao3

THE PAKT TAKEN BY ESSEX COUNTY

ORGANIZATION AND SETTLEMENT OF

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

Of the nine most conspicuous names associated
with the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 and the
settlement of the region of which it was the Magna
Charta, namely, Thomas JeiOferson, Nathan Dane,
Manasseh Cutler, Timothy Pickering, Elbridge
Gerry, Eufus King, Eufus Putnam, Arthur St.
Clair and "Winthrop Sargent, seven — all but those
of Jefferson and St. Clair — belong distinctively to
Essex County. It has been thought well in this
centennial year of the great events which secured
that imperial domain to Freedom and the highest
manhood, to put on record some account of the
several parts borne by these distinguished sons of
Essex, in so beneficent and far-reaching a work.
Accordingly the following selections have been
(3)

4 ESSEX COUNTY AND
brought together, from sources whose high author
ity will challenge the attention of the student of
our history, and they are presented without com
ment, in the chronological order in which they
were given voice. No attempt is made to recon
cile statements in some cases apparently in con
flict, but each stands on the authority of its well
known sponsor, and is suffered to rest as it was
originally made, to be read in the light of such
facts as had at that time been discovered and es
tablished beyond question.
If a comprehensive statement and an exhaustive
bibliography of the whole subject be sought, an
admirable one is at hand in Winsor's Narrative
and Critical History of America, Volume vii.
Appendix One, pages 527 to 562 inclusive. Other
sources of condensed information which may be
named are Dunn's "Indiana" in the American Com
monwealth Series, Chapters v, vi and vii, pages 177
to 293, and Eufus King's "Ohio" in the same series.
Chapter yn, pages 161 to 188, together with Ap
pendix n, pages 404 to 409 of that work. For
partial views of the matter, the student is also re
ferred to an article, prepared in 1853, for a chapter
of the Life of Eufus King, by his son Dr. Charles
King, President of Columbia College, and printed
in Spencer's History of the United States, Vol. n,
pp. 201-9, and in the "New York Tribune" of Feb
ruary 28, 1855, with able editorial comments there
on; also to Nathan Dane's appendix to Volume ix
of his "G-eneral Abridgment of American Law,"

THE NORTHWEST TEBRITOKT.

Note A, and his letter of May 12, 1831, addressed
to John H. Farnham, Secretary of the Historical
Society of Indiana, and printed in the "New York
Tribune" of June 18, 1875; to William P. Poole's
article in Volume cxxn, pp. 229-265, of the "North
American Eeview'' for April, 1876 ; to Peter Force's
account of the Ordinance in Appendix i of the "St.
Clair Papers," reprinted in Volume n. Appendix
D, of the "Life, Journals and Correspondence of
Manasseh Cutler," and to Chapters rv, v, vi, vn,
vni and ix of the work last cited; also to the "St.
Clair Papers," Vol. i. Chapters v and vi, pp. 116-
141; to Bryant's History of the United States,
Vol. IV, pp. 109-115; to Curtis's History of the
Constitution, Vol. i, pp. 291-327; to Bancroft's
History of the Constitution, Vol. ii, pp. 430-9; to
Benton's "Thirty Years' View," Vol. i, pp. 133-6;
to Burnett's "Notes on the Northwest Territory;"
to Major Ephraim Cutler Dawes's paper on the
"Beginnings of the Ohio Company" read at Cincin
nati, June 4, 1881, pp. 1-32; to the "Legislative
History of the Ordinance," by John M. Merriam, in
the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian So
ciety for April, 1888, pp. 303-342; and to a paper
by Frederick D. Stone, Secretary of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, about to appear in their
magazine of History and Biography for the year
1889, Vol. xin.

6 ESSEX COtTNTT AND
TIMOTHY PICKERING.!
[Letter to Samuel Hodgdon, dated, Newburgh, April 7, 1783.]
Respecting the Vermont lands, I have given up the idea.
*»***?#**
But a new plan is in contemplation, — no less than form
ing a new State westward of the Ohio. Some of the prin
cipal officers ofthe army are heartily engaged in it. About
a week since, [/se<] the matter [was set] on foot* and a
plan is digesting for the purpose. Inclosed is a rough
draught of some propositions respecting it which are gen
erally approved of. They are in the hands of General
Huntington and General (Rufus) Putnam for considera
tion, amendment and addition. It would be too tedious
to explain to you in writing all the motives to attempt this
measure, and all the advantages which will probably result
from it. As soon as the plan is well digested, it is in
tended to lay it before an assembly of the officers, and to
learn the inclinations of the soldiers. If it takes, an ap-

»Col. Pickering, H. C. 1763, was born at Salem, July 17, 1745; of a family
which has been prominent in the affairs of Salem since 1637 and has owned with
out a break the old homestead since it was built in 1612. The first American
ancestor contracted on the "4"' day of y» 12" moneth," 1638, with John Endecott,
John Woodbury, William Hathorne and others, representing the town of Salem,
for an enlargement of the first meeting house. Col. Pickering was a conspicuous
civil aud military ofiicer sharing largely in Washington's confidence, and served
in his military family and in his cabinet as Secretary of War and of State and as
Postmaster General. He died Jan. 29, 1829, and lies buried in the Broad st. burial-
ground, in Salem. Col. Pickering's scheme was by no means the first one for set
tling the Ohio country, although broached before the ink was dry on the terms of
peace. At least twenty years before, as early as May, 1763, an association known
as the "Indiana company," of whioh George Plumer Smith of Philadelphia has some
ofthe original papers, was sending agents to England to obtain grants from the
Crown; in 1753, an Ohio company was employing Washington as its surveyor;
and 1744 is not too early a date to assign for the inception of these English designs
upon the Ohio valley. Col. Pickering's portrait is in the Essex Institute.
'In the MS. now In possession ofthe Massachusetts Historical Society and beau
tifully indexed, this sentence was flrst written "I set the matter on foot," and the
words "I set" were afterwards erased, and "was set" Interlined with a caret after
"tbe matter,"

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 7
plication will then be made to Congress for the grant and
all things depending on them. Adieu !
T. Pickering.
Saml. Hodgdon Esq.
P. S. April 8. — This morning a British officer from
Sir Guy Carleton has bro't to H"* Q"'^ the official accounts
of Peace. Lord Surry is to come over ambassador to
the United States. So I will soon shake you by the hand.
But we must first celebrate here this great and happy
event.
Te, Deum, laudamusl T. P.
[Propositions enclosed in the above letter.]
"11. That a constitution for the new State be formed
by the members of the association previous to their com
mencing the settlement, two-thirds ofthe associators pres
ent 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.
¥f: Tic Tp ¥p ^ ¥fr ^ Tf: ^
"15. That, the associators having borne together as
brethren the dangers and calamities of war, and feeling
that mutual friendship which long acquaintance and com
mon sufferings give rise to ; it being also the obvious dic
tate of humanity to supply the wants of the needy, and
alleviate the distresses of the afflicted, — it shall be an in
violable rule to take under the immediate patronage of the
State the wives and children of such associators, who,
having settled there, shall die, or, by cause of wounds or
sickness, be rendered unable to improve their plantations, or

8 ESSEX COUNTY AND
follow their occupations duringthe first twenty-one years.
So that such destitute and distressed families shall receive
such public aids, as, joined with their own reasonable ex
ertions, will maintain them in a manner suitable to the
condition of the heads of them ; especially that the chil
dren when grown up, may be on a footing with other chil
dren, whose parents, at the original formation of the state,
were in similar circumstances with those of the former."

ELBRIDGE GERRY.^
On the 14th of October, 1783, a Committee of the Con
tinental Congress presented a report upon the subject of
Indian affairs and the Western lands. During the discus
sion Mr. Gerry offered the following proposition, which
was " agreed to," although there is no entry showing that
the entire report was adopted. Mr. Gerry moved to
amend so that it would read as follows : " Your Committee
therefore submit it for consideration whether it will not be
wise and necessary, as soon as circumstances shall permit,
to erect a district of the western territory into a distinct
government, as well for doing justice to the army of the
United States who are entitled to lands as a bounty, or
'Born at Marblehead, July 17, 1744; H. C, 1762; Massachusetts Legislature, 1772;
conspicuous in the first Provincial Congress and in the flrst Continental Congress ;
the friend and ally of Samuel Adams, he declared early for Independence of Great
Britain and afterwards enrolled his name amongst the signers of the Declaration.
Of the flfty-six signers he was the thirteenth in order; he was one of five from
Massachusetts and one of eight Harvard graduates. Ae a member of the Federal
Convention for framing the Constitution he objected to proposed extensions of
the powers of the Congress and flnally withheld his assent to the Constitution as
reported . He was in 1797 an envoy to France ; Govei-nor of Massachusetts in 1810 ;
and, in 1812, Vice President of the United States, in which position he died at
Washington, Kovember 23, 1814.
The substantial wooden mansion-house of two and one-half stories in which Mr.
Gerry was born and lived at Marblehead, still stands on Washington near Pickett
street, and opposite the chapel of the "Old North Church." It was once the resi
dence of Capt. WiUiam Blaokler, a hero of the Revolution who commanded the
barge in which Washington was fenled across the Delaware,

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 9
in reward for their services, as for the accommodation of
such as may desire to become purchasers and inhabitants,
and in the interim to appoint a committee to report apian,
consistent with the principles of confederation, for con
necting with the Union by a temporary government the
purchasers and inhabitants of the said district, until their
numbers and circumstances shall entitle them to form a
permanent constitution for themselves, and as citizens of
a free, sovereign, and independent state, to be admitted
to a representation in the Union. Provided, such Con
stitution shall not be incompatible with the republican
principles, which are the basis of the Constitution of the
republican states of the Union."
April 23, 1784. Mr. Gerry offered, and Congress
adopted the following :
" That measures not inconsistent with the principles of
the Confederation, and necessary for the preservation of
peace and good order among the settlers in any of the said
new states, until they assume a temporary government as
aforesaid, may, from time to time, betaken by the United
States in Congress assembled."

THE SALEM MERCURY, NOV. 27, 1787.
[Prom a Letter of M. Sr. Jean De Crevec(edr,' Consul, of France for the
Middle States in America, published in Europe and dated August 26, 1784.]
The Ohio is the grand Artery of that part of America
beyond the mountains ; it is the center where all the wa
ters meet, which on one side run from the Alleghany

1 J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, born in Normandy, 1731, came to New York
in 1754, where he married an American wife, identified himself with the country,
suffered in the Revolutionary War, was honored with the esteem of Washington
and of Franklin, and wrote many letters and books of travel well describing Amer
ican life and conditions. In 1782 he introduced the American potato in Normandy.

10 ESSEX COITNTT AND
mountains, and on the other come from the high land in
the vicinity ot lakes Erie and Michigan.
It has been calculated, that the region watered by those
rivers, comprised between Pittsburgh and the Mississippi,
contains at least 260,000 square miles, equal to 166,920,-
000 acres. It is, without a doubt, the most fertile coun
try, — the most diversified and best watered soil, and that
which offers to agriculture and commerce the most abun
dant and easy resources, of all those that the Europeans
have heretofore discovered and peopled.
It was on the 10th of April, at eight o'clock in the morn
ing, that we quitted the key of Pittsburgh, and gave our
selves up to the current of the Ohio. This navigation
requires neither effort nor labor, but merely the art of
steering well, knowing and avoiding the shoals, etc., and
keeping in the middle of the channel. Without either
sails or oars, we proceeded along at the rate of three to
five railes the hour, according to the disposition of the
winds, and the different windings ofthe river, which almost
throughout preserves a width of from two to three hun
dred fathoms. We were at the beginning of the increase ;
already its waters had risen nine feet at the key ot Pitts
burg, and I never found less than twelve at any time that
I sounded. This sweet and tranquil navigation appeared to me like
an agreeable dream. Every moment presented to me new
perspectives, which were incessantly diversified by the
appearance of the islands, points, and the windings of the
river, without intermission, — changed by this singular
mixture of shores more or less woody ; whence the eye
escaped, from time to time, to observe the great natural
meadows which presented themselves, incessantly embel
lished by promontories of different heights which for a
moment seemed to hide, and then gradually unfolded to the

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 11
eyes of the navigator the bays and rivulets, more or less
extensive, formed by the creeks and inlets, which fall
into the Ohio, What majesty in the mouths of the gi-eat
rivers which we passed ! Their waters seemed to be as
vast and as profound as those of the river upon which we
floated I I never before felt myself so much disposed for
meditation. My imagination involuntarily leaped into
futurity ; the absence of which was not afflicting, because it
appeared to me nigh. I saw those beautiful shores orna
mented with decent houses, covered with harvests and well
cultivated fields ; on the hills exposed to the north, I saw
orchards regularly laid out in squares ; on the others, vine
yard plats, plantations of mulberry trees, locust, etc. I saw
there, also, in the inferior lands the cotton tree, and the
sugar maple, the sap of which had become an object of
commerce. I agree, however, that all those banks did not
appear to me equally proper for culture ; but as they will
probably remain covered by their native forests, it must
add to the beauty, to the variety, of this future spectacle.
What an immense chain of plantations ! What a long
succession of activity, industry, culture and commerce,
is here offered to the Americans !
I consider then, the settling of the lands, which are wa
tered by this river, as one of the finest conquests that could
ever be presented to man ; it will be so much the more
glorious, as it will be legally of the ancient proprietors,
and will not exact a single drop of blood. It is destined
to become the source of force, riches, and the future glory
of the United States.
Towards noon, on the third day, we anchored at the
mouth of the Muskingum, in two fathoms and a half of
water. . . . It is towards one of the principal branches
of the Muskingum, that the great savage village of Tus-
carawa is built ; whence a carriage \j)ortage'] of two miles
2

12 ESSEX COUNTY AND
leads to the river Cayahoga, deep and rather rapid, the
mouth of which, in Lake Erie, forms an excellent harbor
for ships of two hundred tons. This place seems to be
designed for a spot for a town ; and many persons of my
acquaintance have already thought of it. All the travel
lers and hunters have spoken to rae with admiration of the
fertility of the plains and hills watered by the Muskin
gum ; also, of the excellent fountains, salt pits, coal mines
(particularly that of Lamenchicola) of free-stones, etc.,
that they find throughout.

RUFUS KING.i
On the 16th of March, 1785, a motion was made by Mr.
King, seconded by Mr. Ellery, that the following propo
sition be committed :
"That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary ser
vitude in any of the States described in the resolve of
Congress of the 23d of April, 1784, otherwise than in pun
ishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been per
sonally guilty ; and that this regulation shall be an article
of compact, and remain a fundamental principle of the con
stitutions between the thirteen original States and each of
the States described in the said resolve of the 23d of
April 1784."

> Born in Maine, 1755; H. C, 1777; studied law at Newburyport with Theophilus
Parsons ; in General Court from that town in 1783 ; Delegate to Congress in 1784-5-6 ;
member of the Convention sitting at Philadelphia which formed the Constitution,
when the Ordinance was passed at New Tork, July 13th ; was appointed with Gerry,
in 1785, as agents of Massachusetts, for fixing the terms upon which she wonld re
linquish her claim on the Northwest Territory and they seem to have made the ex
clusion of slavery a condition precedent ; Member of Massachusetts Constitutional
Convention, 1788; afterwards United States Senator from New York and then Min
ister to England; died AprU 29, 1827.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 13
RUFUS PUTNAM.i
[Extracts from his journal, printed by Mary Cone : Cleveland : 1886.]
1785, While I was in Boston my election as one of
the surveyors of the lands in the western territory was an
nounced to me, in a letter of May 20, from the secretary
of Congress, and requiring an immediate answer of my ac
ceptance. I was considerably perplexed as to what answer
to return, fori was not only under engageiHent to the state
of Massachusetts, which I could not with honor disregard
without their consent, but surveyors and hands were en
gaged for the season, provisions laid in, and a vessel chart
ered to take us to the eastern country. At the same titiliS,
I was very lothe to relinquish my appointment for the
western country. On a view of the circumstances, I wrote
a letter of acceptance to the secretary of Congress, and a
letter to the Massachusetts delegates in Congress, request
ing their influence that General Tupper might be accepted
as a substitute for me in the western country until I could
attend to the service in person. * * * *
1786. March 1. Delegates from eight counties of the
state met at Boston agreeable to our request, and proceeded
to form articles of agreement. * * * *
1787. Nov. 23. The directors of the Ohio Company
this day appointed me Superintendent of all the business
relating to the commencement of their lands in the territory
• John Putnam, the ancestor of all the New England Putnams, came from Buck
inghamshire, A. D., 1634, and settled in Salem. From him, through his eldest son
Thomas, his grandson Edward, and his great grandson Elisha, aU Salem men, the
last of whom married Susannah Fuller of Danvers and removed to Sutton in 1725,
Rafus Putnam was descended in the fifth generation, having been born, April 9,
1738. He served in the French War, 1757-61, at its close studied surveying, was
colonel, brigadier-general and chief engineer in the army of the revolution ; was the
third of the 288 ofioers of the continental line who memorialized Congress, June
16, 1783, in favor of granting bounty lands north of the Ohio, and addressed Wash
ington on the subject ; was a judge of the Northwest Tei:ritory in 1790-96, and sur
veyor general of the United States from 1796 to 1803,

14 ESSEX COUNTY AND
northwest of the river Ohio. The people to go forward in
companies employed under my direction, were to consist
of four surveyors, twenty-two men to attend them, six boat
builders, four carpenters, one blacksmith and nine com
mon hands, with two wagons, etc, etc. Major Haffield
White! conducted the first party, which started from Dan
vers the first ot December. The other party was appointed
to rendezvous at Hartford, where I met them the first day
of January, 1788. From Hartford I was under the neces
sity of going to New York, and the party moved forward
conducted by Colonel Sproat, January 24. I joined the
party at Lincoln's Inn, near a creek which was hard frozen,
but not sufficient to bear the wagon, and a whole day was
spent in cutting a passage. So great a quantity of snow
fell that day and the following night as to quite block up
the road. It was with much difficulty we got the wagon to
as far as Cooper's, at the foot of Tuscarawas mountain, now
Strasburgh, where we arrived the twenty-ninth. Here we
found that nothing had crossed the mountains. Our only
resource now was to build sleds, and harness our horses
one before the other, and in this manner, with four sleds

1 Haffield White was a native of Danvers. At Concord Fight he commanded the
Danvers Minute Men, and eight were killed. He had joined the army as a young
man in 1755 and had taken an active and honorable part in the " Old French War."
During the Revolutionary War he served as a lieutenant in Hutchinson's Regiment
and as captain in Col. Rufus Putnam's Fifth Massachusetts. He was present at
Trenton and Princeton and at the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga. He was in
Campus Martins (the fort at Marietta, Ohio) during the Indian War of 1790-95. At
its close he lived in Ohio, where he built the first mill erected in the territory.
From the Hamlet Parish, besides Jervis Cutler, there were in Major White's
party, John, Amos and Ebenezer Porter, Nathaniel Sawyer, Isaac and Oliver
Dodge, Josiah Whittredge, WUliam and Edmund Knowlton and David Wallis,
The record of David WaUis shows the stuff of which they were made. Falling
sick with the small-pox on reaching the Muskingum, he withdrewfrom camp and
made his bed beside a faUen tree, where food was brought and left for him. He
got well and walked back to Pittsburgh through an unbroken wilderness with one
companion; there worked at a smelting furnace, saved his wages and finally
walked home to Ipswich. For sketches of some of the pioneers In this enterprise
who marchedfrom Danvers, see a series of papers, signed "A. P. P„" and printed
in the "Danvers Mirror " for June, July and August, 1881.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 15
and the men in front to break the track, we set forward and
reached the Youghiogheny, February 14, where we found
Major White's party, which arrived January 23.
April 1, 1788. Having completed our boats, and laid
in stores, we left Sinoul's ferry, on the Youghiogheny, for
the mouth of the Muskingum, and arrived there on the
seventh, landing on the upper point, where we pitched our
camp among the trees, and in a few days commenced the
survey of the town of Marietta,^ as well as the eight acre
lots, norwas the preparation for a plan of defence neglected.
For, besides the propriety of always guarding against sav
ages I had reason to be cautious. For, from consulting
the several treaties made with the Indians by our Commis
sioners (copies of which I had obtained at the war office
as I had come on) , and other circumstances, I was fully
persuaded that the Indians would not be peaceable very
long, hence the propriety of immediately erecting a cover
for the emigrants who were soon expected. Therefore, the
hands not necessary to attend the surveys were set to work
in clearing the ground, etc., which I fixed on for erecting
the proposed works of defence.
Thus were all hands employed until May 5, when I pro
posed to them that those who inclined should have the lib
erty of planting two acres each on the plain within the town
plat, and make up their time after the first of July (the
date to which they had been engaged in the company's
service) . Most of them accepted the offer, and with what
was done by them and others who came about this time,
we raised about one hundred and thirty acres of good corn,
yielding on an average about thirty bushels per acre. The
season was very fav.orable ; we had no frost until winter.
I had English beans blossom in December.

' Actually so named in honor of Marie Antoinette, at the flrst meeting of the
directors held west of the Alleghanies, July 2, 1788, and a public square tendered
her Ul-staned Majesty. LouisvUle was already named for the King,

16 ESSEX COUNTY AND
Campus Martius was situated on the margin of the first
high ground, a plain sixty chains from the Ohio river and
eight chains from the Muskingum. It consisted of four
block-houses of hewn or sawed timber, two stories high,
erected at the expense of the company. The upper stories
on two sides projected about two feet, with loop holes in
the projection to rake the sides of the lower stories ; two
of the block-houses had two rooms on a floor, and the other
two, three rooms. The block-houses were so planned as
to form bastions of a regular square and flank the curtains
of the work, which was proposed to consist of private
houses, also to be made of hewn or sawed timber, and two
stories high, leaving a clear area of one hundred and forty-
four feet square.

MANASSEH CUTLER.^
[From the diary printed in his Life, Journal and Letters.]
[He was chosen, March 1, 1786, at the "Bunch of Grapes"
Tavern in Boston, one of five to draw up a plan of Asso
ciation, and March 8, 1787, one of three directors.]
iDr. Cutler was born iu Connecticut May 3, 1742, and before entering college
studied medicine; A.B. of Yale, 1766; began a business life in the whaling fleet of
Martha's Vineyard; studied law and was admitted to the bar, 1769; studied theol
ogy and was licensed as a preacher, 1770; ordained at Ipswich Hamlet, 1771;
joined in the pursuit of the British in the "First BuU Run" il-om Lexington to Bos
ton; commissioned as chaplain in the army, 1776; besides a large knowledge of
botany and astronomy, he acquired a sufficient knowledge of medicine to take the
place ofthe village doctor who joined the army as a surgeon, and to be summoned
in consultation and to take part in autopsies. He fltted many young men ior Har
vard CoUege. He was a friend and constant correspondent of Franklin ; LL.D. of
Yale in 1789; member of the Seventh and Eighth Congresses, 1801-5 ; and member
of the American Academy, American Philosophical, Massachusetts Historical
Essex Historical, and many other learned and literary societies. He died in the
pastorate at Hamilton, July28, 1823. The house he lived in Is shown in the picture
on page 182, and his portrait Is in the Essex Institute.
Major Ephraim Cutler Dawes, of Cincinnati, a descendant of Dr. Cutler in
whose possession the original papers remain, writes : The diary for 1786 is lost
Dr, Cutler's diary of his journey to New York and Philadelphia, in 1787 as
printed in "The Life of Manasseh Cutler" was not written each day, but as
shown by the different kinds of ink and difference In pens, indicated by heavier

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 17
1787. June 23. Preparing for a journey to New York.
June 24. Sunday. Exchanged with Mr. Parsons of
Lynn. Rode to Cambridge,
June 25. To Boston. Left Boston for Dedham.
and lighter strokes in forming the letters, was written up at intervals of several
days. He made, however, daily memoranda, and also made notes of each day in
an interleaved almanac.
In the formal journal (see " Life of Manasseh Cutler, Vol. I, p. 236), he writes of
J'ulji 9, 1787, that he spent the morning with Hutchins, attended the meeting of
the Committee before Congress opened, was again withHutchins untilnoon, dined
with Dr. Rogers and other clergymen, again met the Committee, and spent the
evening with Dr. Holten and other members of Congress.
Of the 10th July, he says that he had a conference with the Committee and then
went with Mr. Hazard to visit Dr. Crosby with whom he spent much time in Co
lumbia CoUege. He dined at Col. Duer's and left for Philadelphia in the evening.
The interleaved almanac entries for these dates are :
July 9th " attended Congress. Dined with Dr. Rogers and other clergymen."
July 19th " attended business. Dined with Col. Duer. Went over ferry towards
PhUadelphla." The daily notes appear to have been made daily on loose sheets of paper after
wards sewed together. Jith/ 9th was skipped or lost and is written In between the
12th and 13th with a note " omitted in its proper place."
The record is :
" Monday, July 9. This morn waited on ye Com" at Congress Chamber— wait-
"edonD' Crosby— went to Columbia CoUege— y" D' Is professor of midwifery in
" this CoUege — it is an elegant, large stone building like that at Providence— small
" but good apparatus— smaU library. Dined with D' Rogers, D' Ewing, D' M=
"Courtland, Mr. WUson and another gentleman— very politely entertained. D"-
"Witherspoon came in after dinner and spent a Uttle time. D^ Ewing introduced
" me to D' Rittenhouse. 1 spent y« evening at D' Holtens quarters with delegates
"of Congress."
July 10th is in Its proper place in the notes. The entry Is :
"Tuesday, July 10. In y morn waited on Mr. Dane, Dined with Col Duer in
" company with Mr Osgood of y Board of Treasury, — Maj Sargent — 2 ladies be-
" sides Mrs Duer or Lady Kitty. She is daughter of Lord Starling— one, a French
" lady— La Touche— Set out for Phila " . .
It is quite certain from these extracts that Dr. Cutler's visit to Columbia College
was on July 9 and that he spent the forenoon of July 10 with Nathan Dane. The
printed copy of a proposed ordinance was no doubt handed to Dr. Cutler on his
flrst visic to Congress, July 6. He had ample time to examine and comment upon
it and the forenoon of July 10 to communicate his idea to Mr. Dane.
In writing ont the complete journal at some wayside inn. Dr. Cutler probably did
not notice the omission of .July 9 in its proper place In the notes, but wrote right
along from memory with the result of confusing the Incidents of two successive
days. Many others who have undertaken to write diaries after a few days' inter
val have had the same experience.
It has never seemed to me difficult to determine what Dr. Cutler contributed to
the Ordinance ol 1787.
The Ohio Company originated at the meeting of officers in April, 1783, when
Timothy Pickering submitted his proposition for the formation of a new state an
essential condition of whose constitution was to be the total and irrevocable pro
hibition of slavery. That prohibition was a condition of tbe purchase.

18 ESSEX COUNTY AND
June 26. Went on this morning for Providence.
July 5. About 3 o'clock I arrived at the city by the
road that enters through the Bowery. Put up my horse
at the sign of the Plow and Harrow. Took a walk into
the city.
July 6. At 11 o'clock I was introduced to a number of
members on the floor of Congress Chamber in the City
Hall. Delivered my petition for purchasing lands for the
Ohio Company, g,nd proposed terms and conditions of
purchase. Dined with Mr. Dane.
July 9, Waited this morning very early on Mr. Hutch
ins. He gave me the fullest information of the western
country, from Pennsylvania to Illinois, and advised me,
by all means, to make our location on the Muskingum,
which was decidedly, in his opinion, the best part of the
whole of the western country.
July 10. 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 make remarks and propose amendments, and
which I had taken the liberty to remark upon, and to pro
pose several amendments, I thought this the most favor
able opportunity to go on to Philadelphia, Accordingly,
after I had returned the bill with my observations, I set
out. [Dr. Cutler arrived, July 12 ; returned, July 14-17. J
July 18. Paid my respects this morning to the Presi
dent of Congress, General St. Clair ; attended at the City
Hall on Members of Congress and their committee.
July 19. Called on members of Congress very early
this morning. Was furnished with the Ordinance estab-
The purchase was a,private contract of purchase. Dr. Cutler would have failed
in his duty to his associates if he had not insisted upon a clanse in the Ordinance
protecting it.
Dr. Cutler had insisted upon a grant of land for a university and also that the
school and ministerial sections should be reserved in the Ohio Company pur
chase. These grants would have been of little value without the mandate in the
Ordinance to foster religion aud encourage schools.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 19
lishing a Government in the Western federal Territory.
It is in a degree new modelled. The amendments I pro
posed have all been made except one, and that is better
qualified. There are a number in Congress decidedly op
posed to my terms of negotiation, and some to any con
tract. I must, if possible, bring the opponents over.
Holten,^ I think, may be trusted. Dane must be carefully
watched notwithstanding his professions.
July 25. Mr. Osgood promised to make every exertion
in his power in our favor.
July 26. We now entered into the true spirit of nego
tiations with great bodies ; every machine in the city that
it was possible to set to work we now put in motion.
July 27. At half past three, I was informed that an
Ordinance had passed Congress on the terms stated in our
letter without the least variation, and that the Board of
Treasury was directed to take Order and close the contract.
Sargent and I went immediately to the Board.
Aug. 29. Went to Boston and attended a meeting of
the Ohio Company. Made a report of the purchase of the
land from Congress, which was approved and confirmed.
Oct. 27. Major Sargent and myself signed the Indented
Agreement on parchment in two distinct contracts, . . for
near six millions of acres of land . . the greatest private
Contract ever made in America. Dined with General Knox
— a very large company, all old Continental officers ex
cept myself, — Baron Steuben one of the number-
Dec. 1. Sent to Danvers the men's baggage, who are
going to the Ohio.
Dec. 2. Lord's Day.
1 Dr. Holten was a native of Danvers, born June 9, 1738, and died there Jan, 2,
1816. He was of the third generation of village doctors of his name ; sat in the
Provincial Congress of 1774-5; on the Committee of Correspondence and Safety in
1776; was in the Continental Congress, where he for a time presided, from 1777-83,
and in the Congress of the United States from 1793-5. From 1796 until his death he
wasJudge of Probate for Essex County. See Hanson's Hist. Danvers, pp. 188-194.
3

20

ESSEX COUNTY AND

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.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 21
Twenty men, employed by the company and four or five
on their owu expense, marched at eleven o'clock. This
party is commanded by Major White. Captain Putnam
took the immediate charge of the men, wagons, etc. Jer
vis^ went off in good spirits. He is well fitted for the jour-
ney.2 Jan, 17, 1788. Mr. Haraden and I went to Salem to
get the dimensions of wagons for the western country.
Jan. 28. Went into the woods with a team and carried
a white ash log to the mill for felloes for wagon wheels,
and brought home timber for the body.
Feb. 7. Sent to every man in the parish an invitation
to assist me iu hauling wood. Constitution adopted by
Massachusetts. Feb. 8. Hauled wood from over the Pond. Mr. Plum
mer here from Pittsburg in 19 days. Accounts ofthe ar
rival of Major White and my bon.
March 4. Went to Providence in my chaise to attend
a meetinsr of the Directors and Agents of the Ohio Com-
pany. Mr. Harris in a sulky. Arrived iu Providence
about sunset and lodged at Mr. Hitchcock's.
' Dr. Cutler's second son ; the flrst ofthe party to step ashore at the Muskingum.
' A reminiscence written by Temple Cutler, Esq., Dr. Cutler's youngest son,
of Massachusetts and Ohio, a well-known agricultural writer, gives some additional
particulars of this event: " The little band of pioneers assembled at the house of
Dr. Cutler, in Ipswich, Mass., on the third 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 voUeys were flred,
and the party (one of whom was his son Jervis, aged nineteen) went fonvard,
cheered heartily by the bystanders. Dr. Cutler aceompanied them to Danvers,
where be placed them under command of Major Haffield White and Capt. Ezra
Putnam. He had prepared a large and well-built wagon for their use, which pre
ceded them with their baggage. This wagon, as a protection from cold and stoi-m ,
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 1 was then but six years old, I have a vivid recollection of all these
circumstances, having seen the preparations and heard the conversation relative
to the undertaking. 1 think the weather was pleasant and the sun rose clear. I
know I almost wished 1 could be of the party then starting, for 1 was told we were
all to go as soon as preparation was made for our reception."

22 ' ESSEX COUNTY AND
March 5. A meeting of the Directors and Agents of
the Ohio Company at Rice's Tavern. Made returns of
shares and prepared to draw next morning. Dined with
the company at Rice's.
March 6. The Directors and Agents drew for the eight-
acre lots. Began to draw at 9 in the morning, in the
Council Chamber in the Court House — open doors — and
a great number of people attended. Dined at Mr. John
Brown's ; a most superb entertainment. Completed our
draught between nine and ten at night and wore happy to
find there was no mistake.
March 8. A meeting of the Directors in the forenoon.
Adjourned the meeting of the Directors and Agents to the
Muskingum on the Ohio, Came out of Providence at half
past one, and rode to Dedham in company with Mr. Har
ris. Lodged at Mr. Chickering's.^
June 19. Mr. Prince and I went to Boston together in
my chaise. We dined in Boston and spent the evening at
Mr. Clarke's with Mr. Belknap.
June 20. Purchased a sulky in order to go to the west
ern country. Sent a letter to Mr. Barlow, in London or
France. Spent the evening at Mr. Belknap's.
[Salem Mercury for May 27, 1788.]
'It is faid, that not lefs than 800 famUies have already gone from the New-England
States, to fettle iu the Ohio Country.
[Salern Mereuryfor June 17, 1788.]
On Saturday laft, Mr. Isaac Dodge and Mr, Olivek Dodge arrived at Wen-
ham ft'om the MUSKINGUM, which they left the ISth of May. The party of men in
the fervice of the Ohio Company, under the fuperintendency of Gen. Putnam, ar
rived at the Mufkingum on the 8th of April, without any embarraffment, except
ing the delays which the feverity of the winter ocoafioned in preparing to go down
the Ohio from Pittf burg. The natives who came in were very friendly, and wif bed
to trade with their new vii iters. Gen. Putnam had completed the furveys of the
4000 acres for a city, and one thoufand eight acre lots. A large quantity of ground
was fowed and planted, and the people were beginning to eiect lioufes. The ac
count they give of the country is exceedingly flattering. Proviflons were cheap
and plenty : Flour was purchafed at 6s. per cwt. Thefe men belonged to the
party employed by the Company, but obtained leave to come home, for the pur-
pofe of making provifions for erecting mills. They came on foot, and were only 26
days from Mufkingum to Wenham.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 23
June 27-28. Overhauling my sulky and painting it.
July 1. Making a travelling trunk for the western
coimtry. July 4. Anniversary of American Independence. Went
to Salem. Cadet and Artillery companies turned out and
made a very pretty appearance. This evening received
the very agreeable intelligence of Virginia adopting the
Constitution. July 14. Preparing for my journey westward.
July 16. Commencement at Cambridge. Set out in
the morning, arrived at eleven o'clock, dined in the Hall.
July 18. Dined at the President's, and came home.
July 19. Preparing for my journey.
July 20. I preached at Mr. Swain's. Mr. Swain at
Topsfield, and Mr. Story here. Informed the people of
my intention to set out on my journey. Relinquished my
salary, and they to supply the pulpit.
Monday, July 21, 1788. Set out from Ipswich on a
journey to the Ohio and Muskingum. Mr. Ephm Ken
dall of Ipswich was gone on to Salem, where he, with Mr.
Peter Oliver, joined me on horseback. I set out myself
in a sulky. Made some little stop in Salem. We dined
at Newhall's, in company with Judge Cushing and the At
torney-General, Mr. Paine. We were detained several
hours in Boston. Left the town about sunset, having re
ceived a prodigious number of letters for Muskingum.
Lodged at Major Whiting's in Roxbury. 34 miles. . . .
July 24. Set out late in the morning about 10 o'clock.
Have had considerable business to do. Very showery.
Made a stage at Judge Randall's in Pomfret. Stopped in
Ashford to get Major Oliver's saddle-bags mended. Very
sultry ; frequent and smart showers, but we did not regard
them so much as to put on our loose coats. Dined at

24 ESSEX COUNTY AND
Major Clark's. Lodged at Dunham's in Mansfield. Rode
27 miles.
Friday, July 25. This morning very windy and show
ery. Set out late. Breakfasted at Widow Kimball's,
in Coventry. Went on to Hartford, and dined at Bull's
tavern. Mr. Bull sent for Captain Pratt, a recruiting offi
cer for the Western Country, who gave us the stages from
Bethlehem, and favored me with a letter to Mrs. Butler,
the lady of General Butler, at Carlisle. Exchanged silver
for gold Mr. Pomeroy, broker. Securities 3s 6d. on the
£ but none to sell. Wrote to Mrs. Cutler, per Post. . .
Aug. 13. At this place we agreed to put up our horses
at one dollar per month, oats at 3s. per bushel to feed my
horse two weeks, twice a day 
Aug. 14. This morninor we went down to the Ohio
river, one fourth of a mile, where we had the first sight of
this beautiful river.
Sunday, Aug. 17. This morning rose early. The peo
ple got on board at nine o'clock. Went past Buffalo Creek
before we could get the cattle on board.
Aug. 19. Began to rain about two, and continued to
rain very hard until we landed at Muskingum. Passed
the little Muskingum, 751 miles from Ipswich, a pretty
large creek, and Duck Creek ; the course ofthe Ohio nearly
north-west, having turned gradually and beautifully from
south for four or five miles — fine bottom on each side.
Against Little Muskingum and Duck Creek lies Kerr's
Island, which bows in the same manner as the river, ter
minating about a mile before we landed.
The first appearance was the Fort, which was very pretty.
The state of the air injured our prospect very much. We
landed at The Point, and were very politely received by
the Honorable Judges, General Putnam and our friends.
General Putnam invited me to his lodgings, which is a
marquee. Rained extremely hard in the evening and at night.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 25
DANIEL WEBSTER.i
[First Speech on Foot's Resolution, Jan. 20, 1830,]
The country was to be governed. This, for the pres
ent, it was obvious, must be by some territorial system
of administration. But the soil, also, was to be granted
and settled. Those immense regions, large enough al
most for an empire, were to be appropriated to private
ownership. How was this best to be done? What sys
tem for sale and disposition should be adopted? Two
modes for conducting the sales presented themselves ; the
one a Southern, and the other a Northern mode. It would
be tedious. Sir, here, to run out these different sj'steras
into all their distinctions, and to contrast the opposite re
sults. That which was adopted was the Northern system,
and is that which we now see in successful operation in
all the new States. That which was rejected was the sys
tem of warrants, surveys, entry, and location ; such as pre
vails south of the Ohio. It is not necessary to extend
these remarks into invidious comparisons. This last sys
tem is that which, as has been expressively said, has shin
gled over the country to which it was applied with so many
conflicting titles and claims. Everybody acquainted with
the subject knows how easily it leads to speculation and
litigation, — two great calamities in a new country. From
the system actually established, these evils are banished.
Now, Sir, in effecting this great measure, the first irapor
tant measure on the whole subject, New England acted

¦Born .January 18, 1782, died October 24, 1852. His paternal grandmother was
Susannah Batchelder, descended from Rev. Stephen Bachiler, the flrst minister of
Lynn, settled there in 1632, and the ancestor ofthe Essex County Batchelders. Mr.
Whittier and Mr. Webster are reputed to have derived their very remarkable eyes
from this Susannah Batchelder, who is their common ancestor.

26 ESSEX COUNTY AND
with vigor and effect, and the latest posterity of those
who settled the region northwest of the Ohio will have
reason to remember, with gratitude, her patriotism and
her wisdom. The system adopted was her own system.
She knew, for she had tried and proved its value. It was
the old-fashioned way of surveying lands before the issu
ing of any title papers, and then of inserting accurate and
precise descriptions in the patents or grants, and proceed
ing with regular reference to metes and bounds. This
gives to original titles, derived from governraent, a cer
tain and fixed character ; it cuts up litigation by the roots,
and the settler commences his labor with the assurance
that he has a clear title. It is easy to perceive, but not
easy to measure, the importance of this in a new country.
New England gave this system to the West ; and while itre-
mq,ins, there will be spread over all the West one monument
of her intelligence in matters of government, and her prac
tical good sense.
At the foundation ofthe constitution of these new North
western States lies the celebrated Ordinance of 1787. We
are accustomed. Sir, 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, an
cient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct,
marked, and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787.
That instrument was drawn by Nathan Dane, then and
now a citizen of Massachusetts. It was adopted, as I
think I have understood, without the slightest alteration ;
and certainly it has happened to few men to be the authors
of a political measure of more large and enduring conse
quence. 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

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 27
itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to sus
tain 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 con
stitutions. Under the circumstances then existing, I
look upon this original and seasonable provision as a real
good attained. We see its consequences at this moment,
and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the
Ohio shall flow. It was a great and salutary raeasure of
prevention. Sir, I should fear the rebuke of no intelli
gent gentleman of Kentucky, were I to ask whether, if
such an ordinance could have been applied to his own
State, while it yet was a wilderness, and before Boone had
passed the gap of the Alleghanies, he does not suppose it
would have contributed to the ultimate greatness of that
commonwealth? It is, at any rate, not to be doubted,
that, where it did apply, it has produced an effect not ea
sily to be described or measured, in the growth of the
States, and the extent and increase of their population.
Now, Sir, as Ihave stated, thisgreat raeasure was brought
forward in 1787, by the North. It was sustained, indeed,
by the votes of the South, but it raust have failed without
the cordial support of the New England States. If New
England had been governed by the narrow and selfish views
now ascribed to her, this very measure was, of all others,
the best calculated to thwart her purposes. It was, of all
things, the very raeans of rendering certain a vast erai-
gration from her own population to the West. She looked
to that consequence only to disregard it. She deemed
the re&ulation a most useful one to the States that would
spring up on the territory, and advantageous to the country
at large. She adhered to the principle of it perseveringly,
year after year, until it was finally accomplished.
i

28 ESSEX COUNTY AND

DANIEL WEBSTER.
[Second Speech on Foot's Resolution, Jan. 26, 1830.]
Having had occasion to recur to the Ordinance of 1787,
in order to defend myself against the inferences which the
honorable member has chosen to draw frora my former
observations on that subject, I ara not willing now entirely
to take leave of it without another reraark. It need hardly
be said, that that paper expresses just sentiments on the
great subject of civil and religious liberty. Such senti
ments were coraraon, and abound in all our state papers of
that day. But this Ordinance did that which was not so
common, and which is not even now universal ; that is, it
set forth and declared it to be a high and binding duty of
government itself to support schools and advance the means
of education, on the plain reason that religion, morality,
and knowledge are necessary to good government, and to
the happiness of mankind. One observation further. The
important provision incorporated into the Constitution of
the United States, and into several of those of the States,
and recently, as we have seen, adopted into the reformed
constitution of Virginia, restraining legislative power in
questions of private right, and from impairing the obliga
tion of contracts, is first introduced and established, as far
as I am informed, as matter of express written constitu
tional law, in this Ordinance of 1787. And I must add,
also, in regard to the author of the Ordinance, who has not
had the happiness to attract the gentleman's notice hereto
fore, nor to avoid his sarcasm now, that he was chairman
of that select committee ofthe old Congress, whose report
first expressed the strong sense of that body, that the old
Confederation was not adequate to the exigencies of the

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 29
country, and recommended to the States to send delegates
to the convention which formed the present Constitution.
An attempt has been raade to transfer frora the North
to the South the honor of this exclusion of slavery from
the Northwestern Territory. The journal, without argu
ment or comment, refutes such attempts. The cession
by Virginia was made in March, 1784. On the 19th of
April following, a committee, consisting of Messrs. Jef
ferson, Chase, and Howell, reported a plan for a tempo
rary government of the territory, in which was this article :
"That, after the year 1800, 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 convicted." Mr. Spaight, of North Carolina, moved
to strike out this paragraph. The question was put, ac
cording to the form then practised, "Shall these words
stand as a part of the plan?" New Hampshire, Massa
chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jer
sey, and Pennsylvania, seven States, voted in the affirma
tive; Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, in the nega
tive. North Carolina was divided. As the consent of nine
States was necessary, the words could not stand, and were
struck out accordingly. Mr. Jefferson voted for the clause,
but was overniled by his colleagues.
In March ofthe next year (1785), Mr. King of Massa
chusetts, seconded by Mr. Ellery of Rhode Island, pro
posed the forraerly rejected article, with this addition :
"And that this regulation shall be an article of compact, and
remain a fundamental principle of the constitutions be
tween the thirteen original States, and each of the States
described in the resolve." On this clause, which provided
the adequate and thorough security, the eight Northern
States at that time voted affirmatively, and the four South-

30

ESSEX COUNTY AND

ern States negatively. The votes of nine States were not
yet obtained, and thus the provision was again rejected by
the Southern States. The perseverance of the North held
out, and two years afterwards the object was attained. It
is no derogation from the credit, whatever that may be, of
drawing the Ordinance, that its principles had before been
prepared and discussed, in the form of resolutions. If one
should reason in that way, what would becorae of the distin
guished honor of the author of the Declaration of Inde
pendence ? There is not a sentiraent in that paper which
had not been voted and resolved in the asserablies, and
other popular bodies in the coimtry, over and over again.

DANIEL WEBSTER.
[Speech delivered in the Senate, March 7, 1850.]
The Convention for framing this Constitution assembled
in Philadelphia in May, and sat until September, 1787.
During all that time the Congress of the United States,
was in session at New York. It was a matter of design,
as we know, that the convention should not assemble in
the same city where Congress was holding its sessions.
Almost all the public men of the country, therefore, of
distinction and eminence, were in one or the other of these
two asserablies ; and I think it happened, in some instances,
that the same gentlemen were raerabers of both bodies.
If I mistake not, such was the case with Mr. Rufus Kiiif.
then a member of Congress frora Massachusetts. Now,
at the very time when the Convention in Philadelphia was
framing this Constitution, the Congress in New York was
framing the Ordinance of 1787, for the organization and

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 31
government of the territory northwest of the Ohio. They
passed that Ordinance on the 13th of July, 1787, at New
York, the very month, perhaps the very day, on which
these questions about the importation of slaves and the
character of slavery were debated in the Convention at
Philadelphia. So far as we can now learn, there was a
perfect concurrence of opinion between these two bodies ;
and it resulted in this Ordinance of 1787, excluding sla
very from all the territory over which the Congress ofthe
United States had jurisdiction, and that was all the terri
tory northwest of the Ohio. Three years before, Virginia
and other states had made a cession of that great territory
to the United States ; and a most munificent act it was.
I never reflect upon it without a disposition to do honor
and justice, and justice would be the highest honor, to
Virginia, for the cession of her northwestern territory. I
will say, sir, it is one of her fairest claims to the respect
and gratitude of the country, and that, perhaps, it is only
second to that other claim which belongs to her ; that from
her counsels, and from the intelligence and patriotism of
her leading statesmen, proceeded the first idea put into
practice of the formation of a general constitution of the
United States. The Ordinance of 1787 applied to the
whole territory over which the Congress of the United
States had jurisdiction. It was adopted two years before
the Constitution of the United States went into operation ;
because the Ordinance took effect immediately on its pas
sage, while the Constitution of the United States, having
been framed, was to be sent to the States to be adopted by
their Conventions ; and then a government was to be organ
ized under it. This Ordinance, then, was in operation and
force wheu the Constitution was adopted, and thc govern
ment put in motion, in April, 1789.

32 ESSEX COUNTY AND
DANIEL WEBSTER.
To Edward S. Rand and others.
Citizens op Newburyport, Mass. :
Washington, May 15, 1850.
The Constitution of the United States, in the second
section of the fourth article, declares :
" A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or
other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in
another State, shall, on demand of the executive authority
of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be re
moved to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.
" No person held to service or labor in one State, under
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in conse
quence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged
frora such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on
claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be
due." This provision of the Constitution seems to have met
with little exception or opposition, or none at all, so far
as I know, in Massachusetts. Everybody seems to have
regarded it as necessary and proper. The members of
the convention of that State for adopting the Constitution
were particularly jealous of every article and section which
might in any degree intrench on personal liberty. Every
page of their debates evinces this spirit. And yet I do not
remember that any one of them found the least fault with
this provision. The opponents and deriders of the Con
stitution, of this day, have sharper eyes in discerning dan
gers to liberty than General Thompson, Holder Slocum
and Major Nason had, in 1788 ; to say nothing of John
Hancock, Sarauel Adams and others, friends of the Consti
tution, and among them the verj* eminent men who were

the northwest territory. 33
delegates in that convention frora Newburyport : Rufus
King, Benjamin Greenleaf, Theophilus Parsons and Jon
athan Titcomb.
The latter clause, quoted above, it may be worth while
to remark, was borrowed, in substance from the cele
brated Ordinance of 1787, which was drawn up by that
great raan of your own county, and a conteraporary of
your fathers, Nathan Dane.
Mr, Dane had very venerable New England authority
for the insertion of this provision in the Ordinance which
he prepared. In the year 1643, there was formed a con
federation between the four New England Colonies, Mas
sachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven ;
and in the eighth article of that confederation it is stipu
lated as follows : " It is also agreed, if any servant run
away from his master into any other of these confederate
jurisdictions, that, in such cases, upon the certificate of
one magistrate in the jurisdiction out of which the said ser
vant fled, or upon other due proof, the said servant shall be
delivered, either to his master, or any other that pursues,
and brings such certificate or proof," And in the "Articles
of Agreement" entered into in 1650, between the New Eng
land Colonies and " the delegates of Peter Stuyvesant,
Governor of New Netherland," it was stipulated that "the
same way and course" concerning fugitives should be ob
served between the English Colonies and New Nether
land as had been established in the " Articles of Confed
eration" between the English Colonies themselves.^
'In 1851-2, Robert Bantonl, Jr. of Beverly held the ground that these constitu
tional provisions for the rendition of fugitives from justice, labor and service, were
of like force and import and that none of them contained a grant of power to the
Federal Government, but that aU were to be construed as in the nature of a com
pact between States, a position, which, so far as it relates to fugitives from justice,
was afterwards sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case
of Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Dennison, Governor of Ohio [24 Howard, p. 66],
See Essex Inst. Hist. Coll., Vol. xxr, p. 267.

34 essex county and
Letter from Nathan Dane to Daniel Webster.
Beverly, March 26th, 1830.
Dear Sir :
I have received your second speech on the motion
of Mr. Foot, respecting the public lands, for which I thank
you. You recollect you ascribed to me the formation of
the Ordinance of the Old Congress, of July 13th, 1787.
Since writing you last, I have seen Mr. Benton's speech on
the subject, in the National Intelligencer, of March 6th,
1830, in which, I find, on no authority, he ascribes its
formation in substance to Mr. Jefferson ; that is, that Mr.
Jefferson formed an ordinance in 1784, and he seeras to
infer from that the Ordinance of '87 was taken or copied.
This inference of Benton's has not the least foundation as
thus appears : Mr. Jefferson's resolve, or plan (not ordi
nance), of April 23d, 1784, is contained in two pages and
a half; is a raere incipient plan, in no raanner matured for
practice, as may be seen. The Ordinance of July, 1787,
contains eight pages ; is in itself a complete system, and
finished for practice ; and, what is very material, there
cannot be found in it more than twenty lines taken from
Jefferson's plan, and these worded differently. In fact,
his plan and this Ordinance are totally different, in size,
in style, in form, and in principle. Probably not one per
son in a thousand knows or suspects this essential differ
ence, of those who read, or are told, what Benton has said ;
nor do I see it much noticed in the debates. Ou^ht not
this difference to be made known? Mr. Benton's assertion,
so groundless, extorts from me the above, and the follow
ing exposition, in defence of those who have long ascribed
to me the formation.
I observe Mr. Benton and Mr. Hayne both assert you
failed in your proof of the part you ascribed to me. Does

THE northwest TERRITORY. 35
this part stand as you wish it to remain ? I remember you
once asked me for some account of this Ordinance, and
that I gave you an account in a few words, and referred to
the 7th Vol. of my "Abridgment," chap. 223. If then
I had, in the least, anticipated what has taken place, I should
have given you a rauch fuller account. As, in the endless
debate, you may have an opportunity, in a note or other
wise, to use further evidence, I will state a small portion,
1. As I ara the only member of Congress living who
had any concern in forming or in passing this Ordinance,
no living testimony is to be expected.
2. In theNorth American Review, of July, 1826, pages
1 to 41, is a review of my " General Abridgment," etc.,
of American Law. In page 40, it is said, I "was the
framer of the celebrated Ordinance of Congress, of 1757."
At present, it is enough to add this fact, stated in the
Inaugural Discourse of Judge Story, page 58. Neither
of these, it seems, Mr, Hayne has read ; and he could only
find rae in that aged (and really harmless) Convention,
which so unnecessarily excited fear and alarm, as history
will be able to show.
Generally, when persons have asked me questions re
specting the Ordinance, I have referred to the Ordinance
itself, as evidently being the work of a Massachusetts law
yer on the face of it. I now make the same reference, and
to its style, found in my " Abridgment," etc.
3. When I mention the formation of this Ordinance, it
is proper to explain. It consists of three parts. 1st, The
titles to estates, real and personal, by deed, by will, and
by descent; also personal, by delivery. These titles oc
cupy the first part ofthe Ordinance, not a page, evidently
selected from the laws of Massachusetts, except it omits
the double share of the oldest son. These titles were made
to take root in the first and early settlements, in 400,000
5

36 ESSEX COUNTY AND
square miles. Such titles so taking root, we well know,
are, in their nature, in no small degree j)ermanent ; so, vastly
important. I believe these were the first titles to property ,
completely republican, in Federal America ; being in no
part whatever feudal or monarchical. In my 9th Vol.
chap. 223 continued, titles, etc, in the several States,
may be seen the dregs of feudality, continued to this day,
in a majority of our States. 2d, It consists of the tempo
rary parts that ceased with the territorial condition ; which,
in the age of a nation, soon pass away, and hence are not
important. These parts occupy about four pages. They
designate the officers, their qualifications, appointments,
duties, oaths, etc., and a temporary legislature. Neither
those parts, nor the titles, were in Jefferson's plan, as you
will see. The 3d part, about three pages, consists of the
six fundamental articles qf compact, expressly made per
manent, and to endure forever ; so, the most important aud
valuable part of the Ordinance. These, and the titles to
estates, I have ever considered the parts of the Ordinance
that give it its peculiar character and value ; and never
the temporary parts, of short duration. Hence, whenever
I have written or spoken of its formation, I have mainly re
ferred to these titles and articles ; not to the temporary
parts, in the forming of which, in part„in 1786, Mr. Pinck
ney, myself, andi think Smith, took a part. So little was
done with the Report of 1786, that only a few lines of it
were entered in the Journals. I think the files, if to be
found, will show that Report was re-formed, and tempo
rary parts added to it, by the Committee of '87 ; and that
I then added the titles aud six articles ; five of them be
fore the Report of 1787 was printed, and the sixth article
after, as below.
4. As the slave article has ever principally attracted
the public attention, I have, as you will see, ever been

THB NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 37
careful to give Mr. Jefferson and Mr, Kjng their full credit
in regard to it. I find in the Missouri contest, ten years
ago, the slave-owners in Congress condemned the six ar
ticles generally ; and Mr. Pinckney, one ofthe comraittee of
1786, added, they were an atterapt to establish a compact,
where none could exist, for want of proper parties. This
objection, and also the one stating the Ordinance was
an usurpation, led rae to add pages 442, beginning remarks,
to page 450, in which I labored much to prove it was no
usurpation, and that the articles of compact were valid.
They may be referred to, as in them may be seen the style
of the ordinance, though written thirty-four years after
that was. Slave-owners will not claim as Mr. Pinckney's
work what he condemned. Careful to give Mr. J. and
Mr. K. full credit in pages 443, 446, Vol. 7th, I noticed
Mr. Jefierson's plan of '84 and gave him credit for his at
tempt to exclude slavery after the year 1800. I may now
add, he left it to take root about seventeen years ; so his
exclusion was far short of the sixth article in the Ordi
nance. Page 446, I noticed the motion (Mr. King's) of
March 16, 1785, and admitted it to be a motion to ex
clude slavery, as fully as in the sixth article. I now think
I admitted too much. He moved to exclude slavery only
frora the States described in the Resolve of Congress of
April 23, 1784, Jefferson's Resolve, and to be added to it.
It was very doubtful whether the word States, in that Re
solve, included any more territory than the individual States
ceded ; and whether the word States included preceding
territorial condition. Some thought his motion meant only
future exclusion, as did Mr. Jefferson's plan clearly : there
fore, in forming the Ordinance of '87, all about States in
his plan was excluded, as was nearly all his plan, as in
spection will prove, and that Ordinance made, in a few
plain words, to include " the territory ofthe United States

38 ESSEX COUNTY AND
north-west of the river Ohio,"— all made, for the purposes
of temporary government, one district ; and the sixth ar
ticle excludes slavery forever from "the said territory." One
part of my claim to the slave article I now, for the
first time, state. In April, 1820 (Missouri contest) , search
was made for the original manuscript of the Ordinance of
'87. Daniel Bent's answer was, "that no written draft
could be found;" but there was found, attached to the
printed Ordinance, in my handwriting, the sixth article,
as it now is, — that is, the slave article. So this article
was made a part of the Ordinance solely by the care of
him, who, says Mr. Benton, no more formed the Ordinance
of '87 than he did. I have Bent's certificate, etc.
5. In pages 389, 390, Sect. 3, Vol. 7th, I mention the
Ordinance of '87 was framed, mainly, from the laws of
Massachusetts. This appears on the face of it ; meaning the
titles to estates, and nearly all the six articles, the perma
nent and important parts of it, and some other parts ; and,
in order to take the credit of it to Massachusetts, I added,
"this Ordinance (formed by the author, etc.) was framed,"
etc. I then had no idea it was ever claimed as the draft
of any other person. Mr. Jefferson I never thought of.
In the Missouri contest, Mr, Grayson was mentioned as
the author ; but, as he never was ou any committee in the
case, nor wrote a word of it, the mention of him was
deemed an idle affair. We say, and properly, Mr. Jeffer
son was the author of the Declaration of Independence (or
formed it, as you observe) ; yet he no more than collected
the important parts, and put them together. If any law
yer will critically examine the laws and constitutions of the
several States, as they were in 1787, he will find the titles,
six articles, etc., were not to be found anywhere else so
well as in Massachusetts, and by one who, in '87, had been
engaged several years in revising her laws. See N. A.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 39
Review, July, 1826, pages 40, 41. I have never claimed
originality, except in regard to the clause against impair
ing contracts, and perhaps the Indian article, part of the
third article, including, also, religion, morality, knowledge,
schools, etc.
6. The style of the Ordinance. Since the year 1782,
books and records show my writings, especially in the
forms of statutes. My law-writings have been extensively
published ; and often, on important subjects, the first draft
has been reduced half, or more. This process naturally
ends in a studied, compressed style, rather hard. Had I
room, I could refer to numerous parts of my writings,
published, and not published, to show this st3'le ; and this
is the style of the Ordinance, courteously denominated,
in the discourse mentioned, "a sententious skilfulness of
expression." But, in a letter already long, only a few cases
can be referred to. I go back to 1785, and refer to ray
statement of the great land titles in Maine, published by
the legislature in a pamphlet; some statutes revised on
subjects of importance, from 1782 to 1801 ; my Rules and
Cases and Notes, in the American precedents, etc. ; my
defence of Harvard University against the claims of West
Boston Bridge, not published, but to be found, no doubt,
in the files of the University ; my argument in Kilham v.
Ward, el al., II, Vol. Mass. Reports ; Introduction of my
Abridgment ; Summary view of executory estates, chap.
114, art. 31; State rights and sovereignty, chap. 143,
especially chap. 187, and this chapter continued in the
(Supplement) Vol. 9th, though written forty-two years
after the Ordinance was. It is believed, in these and other
cases, the style of the Ordinance can be found.
I am surprised Senators Benton and Hayne attempt to
place Mr. Jefferson's fame, in any part, on his meagre, in
adequate plan of '84. If his exalted reputation rests on

40 ESSEX COUNTY AND
no better foundation than this, will it be immortal? I
can account for their bold assertions, only on the supposi
tion they had never read his plan.
Thus far I have felt it a duty to state the above facts and
matters in the more durable forra of writing, for several
reasons : one, for the defence of ray most respectable and
best friends, who long have publicly ascribed to me the
formation of this Ordinance; and, especially for your de
fence, who have generously and ably repelled the attacks
and sneers, which have mainly produced this letter. I
will only add that, in the years 1784, '85, '86, and '87,
the Eastern members in the Old Congress really thought
they were preparing the North-Western Territory princi
pally for New England settlers, and to them the third aud
sixth articles of compact more especially had reference ;
therefore, when North Carolina ceded her western terri
tory, and requested this Ordinance to be extended to it,
except the slave article, that exception had my full assent,
because slavery had taken root in it, and it was then prob
able it would be settled principally by slave-owners.
If Mr. Hayne had been as careful to read all the H.
Convention did, as he seems to have been to spy out mat
ter of accusation, he would, I think, have seen its liberal
ity towards slave-owners, in proposing they yield their
slave-votes, solely on the ground of their own generosity
not on any claim of right whatever ; and if he and Mr.
Benton had better noticed the two plans of surveys and
sales of the Public Lands, they would, I think, have hid
the southern one under the table, — a plan but a little bet
ter than that of Mr. Jefferson. So, had Mr. Hayne thought
a little more of Congress's exercise of unlimited power to
make new states at pleasure on any purchased territory
he never would, I believe, have reproached that Conven
tion for proposing to restrain such unlimited, tremendous

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 41
power. If Mr. H. can properly advocate, as he does,
such unlimited power, why may not others advocate povver
in Congress to make roads and canals, a power fiir less
unlimited f Yours sincerely, N. Dane.^
Hon. Daniel Webster.

NATHAN DANE.
[Appendix to Dane's general abridgment of American law, note A, 1830.]
On the whole if there be any praise or any blame in this
ordinance ; especially in the titles to property and in the

'Nathan Dane, whose ancestor John Dane settled at Ipswich in 1638. was bom
Dec. 27, 1752, in the honse still well preserved and for many years the Safford home
stead, but now the property of Henry Wilson, whioh stands near the line between
Hamilton and Ipswich, just easterly of the winding avenue leading to the Appleton
farm and between that and the old stage road. A good picture of the house may
be found in the Memoir of Deacon Daniel Safford, who was born there in 1792, and
it stood in the Ipswich Hamlet parish untU the setting off of HamUton from Ipswich
in 1793, when the line of the new town was moved a little farther west than that of
the Hamlet had been, leaving the old homestead In the town of Ipswich, H. C,
1778; LL.D., 1816; studied law in Salem, and taught school in Beverly until 1782,
when he began practice In Beverly, and was a member of the General Court in
1782-3-4, a delegate in Congress for 1785-6-7; In the Massachusetts Senate In 1790-
4-6-8 ; twice on committees for the revision of state laws in 1795 and 1812, and mem
ber of the Constitutional Convention of 1820. He founded the Dane Law School In
1829, and died at Beverly, Feb. 16, 183,?, in a brick house still standing opposite the
"Old South" meetinghouse. For more than flfty years, said Judge Story in his In
augural discourse as Dane Professor of l,.aw, Mr. Dane had daily devoted double
Lord Coke's allotment of six hours to the pursuit of politics and jurisprudence.
Jndge Story adds, "to him belongs the glory of the formation of the celebrated
Ordinance of 1787, which constitutes the fundamental law of the states, northwest
of the Ohio. It is a monument of political wisdom and sententious skilfulness of
expression." See Story's Inaugural Discourse, as Dane Professor (1829) pp. 6,5-9;
Quincy's History Harvard University, Vol. n, pp. 374-8; N. E. Hist. Geneal. Reg.,
Vol. vin, pp. 147-8; Stone's Hist, Beverly, pp. 136-49; American Jurist and Law
Mag., Vol. XIV, pp. 62-76; Essex Inst. Hist. Coll., Vol. rv, p. 279; Memoir in Mass,
Hist. Society Proceedings, Vol. n, pp. 6-10.
Mr. Dane, without any doubt, introduced the Ordinance passed in 1787. Such is
the uthority of Bancroft in his Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln (delivered before
Congref'S, Feb. 12, 1866) and elsewhere. The Ordinance exists in his handwriting,
on the flies of Congress, and was reported by him to Congress, although he was

42 ESSEX COUNTY AND
permanent parts, so the most important, it belongs to
Massachusetts ; as one of her members formed it and furn
ished the matter with the exceptions following. First, he
was assisted in the committee of '86 in the temporary or
ganization almost solely by Mr. C. Pinckney, who did so
little he felt himself at liberty to condemn this ordinance
in that debate. Secondly, the author took from Mr. Jef
ferson's resolve of '84 in substance the said six provisions
in the fourth article of corapact as above stated. Thirdly,
he took the words of the slave article from Mr. King's

second In the list of members of the committee charged with the matter, for the
apparent reason that the chairman of the committee was not in sympathy with the
measure. Cutler seems to have distrusted hira. His integrity needs no vindication,
Mr. Dane had already made large investments in the Eastern land enterprise and
was Interested In and committed to the building up of the Province of Maine.
Some of his relatives had gone there and domiciled themselves and several leading
offlcers of the Revolutionary Army, such as Generals Knox and Lincoln, had ac
quired land there. Massachusetts sentiment was enlisted and could not brook the
desertion of the Eastern enterprise for any other. The following order, now on
the flies of the Essex Institute, bears witness to these transactions, Boston, June 8, 1786.
Sir: please to deliver to Rufus Putnam, Esq', or his order, the Whale boat I
bought of yoa— I shall be at Salem Court next (week ?) when I will make payment.
Your Humble Servant.
Nathan Dane.
To M'. Joshua Ward, Salem,
near the old Court house.

Salem, 13 June, 1786.; Reo* the above boat, Rufus Putnam,
Rufus Putnam's Journal also iUustrates and the history of Massachusetts sup
ports the statement. If, under these circumstances, the cautious mind of the
acute and sagacious jurist. Instinctively careful to weigh both sides of every ques
tion, may have wavered at times under the impression that he might be jeopard
izing his Interests In Maine in behalf of a distant and doubtful Western venture,
posterity will perhaps be able to speak of his vacillation a little more charitably
than Dr. Cutler could. It Is fair moreover to remember that Dr, Cutler wae noth
ing if not a Federalist, and was amongst the most ardent advocates of the new
Federal Constitution, while Mr. Dane had distrusted some of its concessions and
had, at the period of its adoption, yielded a halting support, if not actually enrolled
himself amongst the distinguished company of its opponents In Massachusetts.
The portrait of Nathan Dane, a copy of that belonging to the Dane Law School
at Cambridge, is at the Essex Institute,

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 43
motion made in 1785, and extended its operation, as to
time and extent of territory, as is above mentioned. As
to matter, his invention furnished the provisions respect
ing impairing contracts and the Indian security and some
other smaller matters ; the residue, no doubt, he selected
from existing laws, etc.
In regard to the matter of this note, it is a portion of
American law properly and conveniently placed in this
appendix. The particular form of this note is in answer to
many requests, lately raade by members of Congress and
others, to be informed respecting the formation, the de
tail and authorship of this ordinance, which in forty years
has so often restrained insolvent acts, stop-laws and other
improper legislation impairing contracts.

SALMON PORTLAND CHASE.^
[Preliminary Sketch prefixed to the Statutes of Ohio, 1832.]
The framer, and to some most important provisions the
author, of this great fundamental law destined to exert a
mighty and enduring influence upon the happiness and
prosperity of millions, was Nathan Dane of Massachu
setts. To him in an especial manner are the people of
the northwestern states indebted for the restriction upon
legislative interference with private contracts, which in
every fluctuation of fortune has been the safeguard of pub
lic morals aud of individual rights. It was adopted after

1 Born 1808 ; died 1873 ; of the sixth generation in descent from Aquila Chase, who
was settled in 1640, and whose descendants for a century remained, at the mouth of
the Merrimao; made the flrst compilation of the Laws of Ohio; was governor of
Ohio; United States Senator; Secretary of the Treasury; and Chief Justice of the
United States.

44 ESSEX COUNTY AND
discussion, without the slightest alteration and with but
one dissenting voice.^
Never probably in the history of the world did a meas
ure of legislation so accurately fulfil 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 settlement and govern
ment 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.
Who can estimate the benefits which have flowed from
the interdiction by that instrument, of slavery and of leg
islative interference with private contracts. One conse
quence is that the soil of Ohio bears none but freemen,
another that a stern and honorable regard to private rights
and public morals characterizes her legislation. The spirit
of the Ordinance of 1787 pervades them all.
The settlement of Marietta was made before the arrival
of the governor and judges within the territory. The
Ohio company had secured within their boundaries not
quite a million of acres. In this district two entire town
ships were granted for a University, and sections sixteen
and twenty-nine in each township were reserved for the
support of the schools and religion. The settlers exhib
ited great energy and perseverance in overcoming the va
rious difficulties of their situation. Among them were
men of high character and extensive influence. General
Rufus Putnam, a meritorious officer of the Revolutionary
Army, and Dr. Manasseh Cutler, a clergyman of strong
intellect and large attainments, were leading members of

>See Dane's General Abridgmient of American Law, Vol. ix; Appendix, Note A.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 45
the company ; Robert Oliver and Winthrop Sargent^ also
are names well known in the early history of the country.

GEORGE BAILEY LORING.^
[Address at Marietta, April 7, 1883.J
The growth of the ordinance to perfection was slow. In
1784, Jefferson, as I have already said, having on March
1st of that year, in connection with his associates, Monroe,
Arthur Lee and Hardy,' given a deed by which they ceded
"tothe United States all claim to the territory northwest of
the Ohio," presented, as chairman of a committee, a plan for
the government of this territory. In his ordinance he pro
vided that "after the year 1800 of the Christian era there
shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude" in any
of the new states carved out of this acquisition of empire
to the Republic. This provision he hedged about with all
j)ossible constitutional protection which could bind Con
gress. This section of the ordinance, however, was lost.
The votes of South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia were
against it ; North Carolina was divided ; the four eastern
states. New York and Pennsylvania were for it. The de
feat was a source of great mortification and distress to Jef-
1 Winthrop Sargent, the ancestor of a distinguished Massachusetts family, was
born at Gloucester, of an old Essex County stock. May 1, 1753 ; H. C, 1771 ; a ship
master in 1771; naval agent at Gloucester, 1775-6; served honorably as captain of
artniery and on staff duty with the rank of major in the Revolution. He was
employed by Congress in the Northwest Territory as a government surveyor in
1786, and on the organization of It became secretary of the Ohio Company, and
then secretary of the Territory, and removed thither in 1788, but resigned in ten
years. He was St. Clair's Adjutant General in 1791 and was badly wounded in
that disastrous Indian campaign; but served his successor, General Wayne,
in 1794, in the same capacity, and was acting governor of the Territory in 1798 and
1801. He died June 3, 1820.
2 Born at North Andover, No v. 8, 1817 ; H. C. 1838 ; Member of Congiess, 1877-80 ;
United States Commissioner of Agriculture, 1881-4.
' Representing the State of Virginia.

46 ESSEX COUNTY AND
ferson. He never forgot it. He denounced bitterly those
who voted against the proposition of freedom, and in 1786,
in referring to it, he said, "the friends of human nature will
in the end prevail ; heaven will not always be silent." And
they did prevail. This ordinance, "shorn of its proscription
of slavery," was adopted, it is true ; but it remained in force
but three years, and died when the great ordinance of '87
became a law. In 1785, Timothy Pickering, whose career
in the Continental Army, in Cabinet, in House, and in Sen
ate, stands among the foremost of his time for ability, in
tegrity and courage, induced Rufus King, then in Congress,
to propose once raore the exclusion of slavery from the ter
ritories. Mr. King's resolution, offered March 16, 1785,
went to the Committee of the Whole and was never heard
of afterward. On April 26, 1787, a coramittee consisting
of Mr. Johnson of Connecticut, Mr. Pinckney of South
Carolina, Mr. Smith of New York, Mr. Dane of Massachu
setts and Mr. Henry of Maryland, reported an ordinance
which was never voted on and which contained none of the
sanctity of contracts, none of the sacredness of private
property, none of the provisions for education, religion and
morality, none of the principles of freedom to be found iu
the ordinance as it now stands in all its immortal glory.
Meanwhile the Ohio Company had been organized in
Boston. In January, 1786, Rufus Putnam and Benjamin
Tupper issued a call fbr a meeting of organization and the
Association comraenced its work. The proposition to pur
chase 1,500,000 acres of land at one dollar an acre was,
in those days of bankruptcy and poverty, startling. That
it should not have been entirely successful is not surpris
ing. But half the sum proposed was raised and Congress
from time to time passed acts relieving the embarrassed
corapany, which secured iu the end nearly a million acres
of land in three patents issued to Rufus Putnam, Man-

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 47
asseh Cutler, Robert Oliver and Griffin Greene in trust
for the Ohio Company.
Insecuringthe contract for 1,500,000 acres of land in the
Northwest, which was provided for by act of Congress
July 27, 1787, and in the passage ofthe ordinance for the
territory on the 13th of the same month, the controlling
mind was evidently that of Manasseh Cutler. He had two
objects in view : first, the settlement of the new territories
of the United States, for the benefit of those men in the
Eastern States who had been irapoverished by the war of
the Revolution ; and, second, the foundation of new states
there on the best system of governraent known to the states
already in the confederation.
He was a careful and able student of public affairs. His
scholarship at Yale was high. His mind grasped the proc
esses required and the facts revealed by scientific inves
tigation, and the problems involved in political and theo
logical discussion with equal facility and power. He
exerted a comraanding influence wherever he went. Cora
raencing life on the high seas, he educated himself for the
bar and practised for a short time in the courts of Massa
chusetts. Turning his attention then to the study of di
vinity, he took charge of a pulpit in Hamilton, Massachu
setts, and enrolled his name with that long list of New
England clergymen who in that early period exerted a
most poweiful influence in the colonies, who called around
theraselves the cultivated raen of the times, took part in
all momentous endeavors, and who sent into every walk
iu life sons whom they had educated in the colleges out of
their narrow incomes, and who performed raost valuable
service as merchants, jurists, physicians, statesmen, di
vines. As chaplain in the Continental Army, as raember
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as nego
tiator for the purchase of this great temtory, as adviser.

48 ESSEX COUNTY AND
pioneer, law-giver, for these opening states, he has left an
example which will always be admired, an influence which
will always be felt. His pulpit was but twenty miles from
Boston. Is it not reasonable to suppose that he listened
to the high debate on the great issues of the hour by Sam
uel Adams, John Quincy and John Adams ; to the mas
terly arguraent of Jaraes Otis on the Writs of Assistance ;
to the voice of the people heard in those defiant town-
meetings whose resolves foreshadowed the Declaration of
Independence, and reached the ear of its immortal author?
He had ridden on horseback from his home in Hamilton to
meet the retreating British soldiery as they fled from Lex
ington and Concord, before the fire of the " embattled far-
mers." He heard the guns at Bunker Hill, mourned
for Warren as for a friend, carried comfort and encourage
ment into the patriot army during the trials ofthe war. He
was surrounded by great men, who always turned to him
for advice and counsel. Timothy Pickering, the noble
Roman of the War, was his neighbor. General Glover was
one of his early companions. Elbridge Gerry, the young
and fearless patriot, was the legal adviser of his people.
The home of Nathan Dane was within a few miles of his
own. Samuel Osgood, Chairman of the Board of Treasury
ofthe United States, with whom he made the contract for
the purchase of these lands, was a citizen of the county of
Essex,^ in which this distinguished group resided, and where
Cutler had his home. Is it surprising that when Rufus
Putnam organized his association for the settlement of

' Samuel Osgood was a native of Andover, where his family had flourished since
1645. Born, Feb. 14, 1748; H. C, 1770; died August 12, 1813. He was a member of
the Piovlnolal Congress for 1776-80, ofthe Continental Congress for 1781-4, a mem
ber of the Board of Treasury in 1786-1789, and flrst commissioner, and, between
the organization ofthe present government and 1801, was the flrst Postmaster Gen
eral of the United States. He served in the Revolutionary army as au aid to Gen
eral Ward and as a commissary.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 49
Ohio, he should have sought the aid and advice of Cutler,
whose energy and capacity were well known through all
the eastern colonies ? Is it surprising that when he had
enlisted in the work the burden should have fallen on his
shoulders ? At his touch the enterprise was filled with
new life. The attention of Congress was at once arrested
and turned to this important measure of multiplying the
states in the confederacy as it was developing into a re
public. The ordinance which Jefferson and King had failed
to carry, and which was incomplete enough as it came frora
their hands, took shape at once and coramended itself to
Congress. With his contract in one hand and his ordi
nance in the other, he appealed to every sentiraent of pa
triotism, interest and humanity as each presented itself
among the legislators with whom he was forced to deal.
In his proposition there was an extension of country, an
absorption of colonial securities, opportunities for specu
lation, the increase of free territory on the value of which
the ablest statesmen, north and south, agreed ; and he ap
plied each one of these motives as necessity required. Of
his ability to fulfil his contract no man had a doubt. Nor
could any member of Congress be surprised at the demand
he would make, that the fundamental law of the territory
should conform to the highest and most humane law of
the land. The ordinance which satisfied hira and his as
sociates secures religious freedom to all ; prohibits legisla
tive interference with private contracts, secures the benefit
of the writ of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and of common
law in judicial proceedings, forbids the infliction of cruel
and unnecessary punishment; declares that as religion,
morality and knowledge are necessary to good government
and the happiness of mankind, schools and means of in
struction shall ever be encouraged ; provides that the ter
ritories shall remain forever a part of the United States ;

50 ESSEX COUNTY AND
makes the navigable waters free forever to all citizens of
the United States ; provides for a division of the territory
into States, and their admission into the Union with re
publican governments ; and declares that neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the territory.
Many of the provisions were drafted from the constitution
of Massachusetts of 1780. That the views contained in
this ordinance occupied the mind of Cutler at that time
there can be no doubt. He was engaged in establishing a
republican government over a vast extent of territory
which he felt would one day, not very remote, forra a most
important and influential portion of the United States.
He was not to be satisfied with compromises ; and he
knew moreover from the propositions made in the past, in
regard to the ordinance, that compromises were not ne
cessary to success. He had also ascertained the personal
interest in Congress with regard to the occupation of the
lands along the fertile valleys of Ohio, and he estimated
the strength of his cause accordingly. Everything con
nected with the enterprise he was engaged in roused all
his powers, his skill, his wisdora, his adroitness, his faith
in republican government ; and he summoned them all in
his work. In the task of framing and presenting this or
dinance to Congress he had a most important and power
ful ally on the committee to whom the matter was referred.
Nathan Dane represented his district in Congress, was his
neighbor and friend in Essex County, Massachusetts, and
had been all his life under the same social and civil influ
ences as had operated to mould his own views and develop
his own character. A calm, conservative, dispassionate,
able and accomplished lawyer, Nathan Dane had not given
his mind to the construction of governraeutal policies or to
the reforming of abuses. He had large experience in the
Legislature of Massachusetts and afterwards a short time

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 51

in the Continental Congress, While Cutler was engaged
in rousing the people to resist all acts of oppression and
"rushing to the fray" at the sound ofthe first gun and ex
horting his flock from the pulpit and surveying the heavens
and exploring the earth to discover the laws of nature,
considering the unoccupied lands of the West as a home
for the swarms which were obliged to leave the eastern
hive, and exercising his diplomacy in purchasing those
lands and his wisdom in advising the emigrants, and his
love of adventure by a solitary journey through the wilder
ness to the home of their adoption, Dane was a scholar of
high reputation at Harvard College, a diligent student of
law in the quiet and cultivated town of Salem, a lawyer in
the elegant repose of Beverly, a good legislator, a learned
expounder of the law, possessed of "great good sense and
a sound judgment, faithful to all his duties," and enjoying
universal confidence in his "industry, discretion and in
tegrity." Cutler was fortunate in having such an advocate
on the floor of Congress, and Dane was fortunate in hav
ing such a cause and such a client. A proposition, which
in the hands of Jefferson and King had failed as an appar
ent abstraction, became a vital issue when presented as one
of the indispensable terms of a contract betvveen a large-
minded practical philanthropist, and the government of a
rising republic, called upon to decide the question of free
dom at the very threshold of its existence. Dr. Cutler
presented himself at the doors of Congress with the terms
of purchase in one hand and the terms of settlement in
the other, and both were accepted. An unsuccessful
measure which on two previous occasions Dane had ac
quiesced in as a member of the Committees reporting it to
Congress, became suddenly under Cutler's force a national
necessity. And when the measure was adopted and passed
into the great body of American law. Cutler won eternal
7

52 ESSEX COUNTY AND
gratitude and immortal honor as the founder of free insti
tutions in the Northwest Territory, and Dane secured the
high distinction of having brought the measure to a suc
cessful consummation. Upon the great cluster ot states
whose proud and prosperous career was opened by these
two statesmen there rest obligations to their memory which
should never be forgotten. And I feel confident that you
who enjoy the blessings they secured as your inheritance
from a most worthy ancestry, will allow me to congratu
late myself and my fellow citizens, that for our own state
of Massachusetts, for our own county of Essex, for the
district which I formerly had the honor to represent in
Congress, Manasseh Cutler and Nathan Dane, whose deeds
are our deeds and whose ashes repose iu the soil we love
so well, have established a noble and imperishable record
in the history of our country aud of mankind.
Ninety-five years have passed away since these events
which I have briefly laid before you, occurred, and the first
step was taken in the work of occupying the Northwest
Territory. The covered wagon on whose canvas top Ma
nasseh Cutler had inscribed "To Marietta on the Ohio,"
and in which he sent forward the seed whose imperial har
vest now lies before us, had stood for days at the road
side in Hamilton for inspection by the curious for miles
around, and had traversed the long and weary way hither
with its sacred freight. The dark waters of the Mus-
kiugum, concealed from view by the heavy overhanging
forests, had been divided by the keel of the Mayflower,^
and the germ of the colony had been planted on its banks.
Cutler had made his solitary journey to bless and encour-
»At Simrall's, Sinoul's or Sumrell's Ferry on the Ohio, thirty mUes above Pitts
burgh, a flat-bottomed boat had been built, which was called the "Mayflower," and
in this Major White's party which arrived at the River, Jan, 23, and Gen. Putnam's
which reached it Feb. 14, both embarked and made their way to the mouth of the
Muskingum.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 53
age the enterprise and had returned to his home in Ham
ilton. The experiment of organizing a state here had
fairly begun. At that day this settlement on the Mus
kingum formed a part only of the widespread and scattered
colonial organization out of which was to spring the Amer
ican Reiiublic.

ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY.i
[From the New Englander and Yale Review for April, 1887, Art. ii.]
The close ofthe war of the Revolution left many able-
bodied men unemployed. The manufactures of New Eng
land were in their infancy, the supply of agricultural labor
greatly exceeded the deraand, and there were large num
bers of men in early or middle life, capable of enterprise
or of fruitful industry, but with no field or opportunity for
the lucrative use of brain or hand. At the same time, the
disbanded army had been paid in paper of a constantly
depreciating value, and not unlikely to become utterly
worthless, as it seeraed beyond hope that the loose con
federation, hardly a government, should fund its debt or
take measures for its speedy payment. Meanwhile the
confederation possessed a vast domain, including millions
upon millions of acres of the most productive land, on or
within easy reach of navigable rivers. If such lands were
purchased with the paper which many regarded as irre-

>Bom at Beverly, March 19, 1811, In a house now standing on Cabot Street,
nearly opposite Washington,— H, C, 1826; Tutor, Plummer professor, preacher to
the University and twice acting President, 1826-81 ; D,D. of Harvard, 1852; pastor of
the South Church at Portsmouth, N. H., 1833-60; editor of the North American Re
view, 18.52-Bl; S.T.D.; LL.D.; A.A.S.; the Peabody family has been domiciled in
Essex County since 1635.

54 ESSEX COUNTY AND
deemable, and settled by supernumeraries of eastern in
dustry, the consequences would be the relieving of the
glut of the labor market, the furnishing of fit scope for the
ambition and the vigorous enterprise of men who else
would do little more than vegetate, the liquidation of a
considerable portion of the public debt, and the increased
market value of the remaining portion. It was with such
views that, on March 1, 1786, a company was organized
in Boston, called the Ohio Company, for the purchase and
settlement of land in what was then known indefinitely as
the Territory Northwest of the Ohio. The stock of the
company was to consist of one thousand shares, each share
represented by one thousand dollars in government paper
and ten dollars in coin, — the coin to defray the expenses
incident to the purchase and location of the land. The
company consisted wholly, or chiefly, of men who had been
connected with the array, prominent among whora was Gen
eral, afterward Governor John Brooks, General Putnam,
General, afterward Judge, Samuel Holden Parsons, aud
Dr, Cutler were chosen directors ; Dr, Cutler was made
agent for the purchase. The reasons for choosing him
were perfectly obvious. It was supposed, and rightly,
that very difficult and delicate negotiations would be ne
cessary with the members of Congress, then remarkable
for the careful nursing of the interests of their several
States, rather than for cherishinsr the well-beino- and
growth of the nation as a whole. Dr. Cutler could carry
with him a reputation already established. Franklin had
procured the republishing of his botanical paper in the
Columbian Magazine of Philadelphia; and it may be
doubted whether, in the then infancy of advanced liberal
culture in this country, there was any American, Franklin
alone excepted, who had more than Dr. Cutler of the pres
tige of superior learning and science, which is never with-

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 55
out influence among intelligent men. He had also had
larger and more varied experience of life than any other
man who could have gone from Massachusetts, belonging
as he did to agriculture, commerce, maritime enterprise,
the army, and all three of the (so-called) learned profes
sions. He was remarkable, too, for personal presence,
address and manners, so that he appeared in society of
every type with blended dignity and grace, and had in his
conversational power an ease, fluency, and affluence, cor
responding to the diversity of his pursuits and attain
ments. The memorial of the company had been sent to Congress
shortly after its formation, and Congress had at intervals
made languid attempts to frame an ordinance for the gov
ernment of the almost mythical region which it was pro
posed to colonize. On the Sth of July, 1787, Dr. Cutler
drove into New York, where Congress was assembled.
It may illustrate the difference between that time and this
to say that he accoraplishedhis journey with commendable
dispatch, being only twelve days on the road, aud that he
travelled in his own sulky, — a vehicle probably unknown
by name to some of my younger readers, — a two-wheeled
one-horse chaise, wide enough only for a single person, —
in my boyhood much used by physicians and ministers on
their professional rounds. Dr. Cutler carried no less than
forty-two letters of introduction, from the Governor of
Massachusetts, the President of Harvard College, and other
distinguished men. He was received most cordially, and
his stay in New York was a round of hospitalities and at
tentions from members of Congress, officers of the govern
ment and leading citizens. He seems to have had an
instinctive knowledge, and to the best possible purpose,
of the art, which, if always plied with equal unselfishness
and honesty, would not have been stigmatized under the

56 ESSEX COUNTY AND
narae of lobbying. He wisely sought first the acquaint
ance and furtherance of the Virginia delegates, who were
likely to favor the settlement of a region in part conter
minous with their own territory, on a frontier open to in
cursions from Indian tribes. Ou the other hand, he did
not anticipate sympathy with his enterprise from the Mas
sachusetts delegation, as Massachusetts owned in Maine a
vast area of land, improvable, as it has shown itself to be,
but then less inviting to emigrants than the West, were
the alternative left to their free choice ; while these Maine
lands and the possibility that the Ohio company might
transmute itself into a Maine Company were skilfully em
ployed by Dr. Cutler to facilitate and expedite his nego
tiations with southern members.
Ou the 9th of July the Ordinance for the Government
of the Northwest Territory, which had beeu dragging on
for many months, without taking shape, was referred to a
new committee for a new draft. The chairman of that
committee was Carrington of Virginia, whose acquaint
ance Dr. Cutler had sought and made on the morning after
his arrival, and who was unceasingly assiduous in intro
ducing him to men of authority and influence. Another
member of the coramittee was Mr. Dane of Beverly, Mas
sachusetts, who was born in Dr. Cutler's parish, was his
intimate and life-long friend, and by ten years his junior.
A draft was reported without containing a word with ref
erence to slavery. After its first reading it was submitted
to Dr. Cutler by the committee, aud returned by him on
the afternoon of July 10. His friend Dane, on the 12th,
proposed the clause prohibiting slavery forever in the ter
ritory. That Mr. Dane favored this policy with his whole
heart and soul, no one who knew him could doubt. He
was the raan to adopt such a suggestion and to make it
genuinely his own. But that he originated it he never

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 57
cLiimed. His relation to Dr, Cutler renders it intrinsically
probable that his action in this behalf was the result of
conference with his pastor, senior, and friend. It was
distinctly understood in Dr. Cutler's family that this anti-
slavery provision was due to his influence as was also
a declaration of principle which proved fruitful of endur
ing benefit, — "Religion, morality and knowledge being
necessary to good government and the happiness of man
kind, schools and the means of education shall forever be
encouraged." There is, indeed, at this moment, in the
hands of Dr, Cutler's descendants a printed copy ofthe or
dinance of 1787, with a meraorandum in the margin, stat
ing that Mr. Dane asked Dr, Cutler to suggest such
provisions as he deemed advisable, and that at his instance
was inserted what relates to religion, education, and sla
very. Dr. Cutler's son Ephraim, who was brought up by
his grandparents and never lived with his father, and who
himself prepared the portion of the constitution of Ohio
which contained the anti-slavery clause of the Ordinance
of 1787, gives in a letter the time and place when and
where his father told him that he was the author of that
clause. The ordinance was passed on the 13th of July by
the unanimous vote of the eight States then represented,
and by the affirmative vote of seventeen out of eighteen
members present, Mr. Yates of New York, who was often
in a minority of one, casting the only negative vote.
It must be remembered that under the terras of the Con
federation each State cast a single vote, and a majority of
the States, seven out of thirteen, was necessary for the pas
sage of any measure. Legislation was sometimes delayed
by the lack of representation from a sufficient number of
States to secure a needed majority.
At the time of the passage of this Ordinance the States
represented were Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey,

58 ESSEX COUNTY AND
Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Geor
gia. At that time Virginia and Delaware were virtually
anti-slavery States, had State anti-slavery societies, and
continued to be opposed to slavery till the stimulus given
to the cultivation of cotton by the invention of the cotton-
gin opened for them a lucrative market for the slaves raised,
but not needed, on their owu soil. As for the Carolinas
and Georgia, they had at their command at the South such
immense areas of unoccupied territory, that it was their
policy to limit rather than to extend the scope of emigra
tion for their own citizens.
But the anti-slavery provision was passed at the latest
possible moment. The Confederation was expiring. The
Constitutional Convention was already in session in Phil
adelphia, In that Convention the interests of slavery, pres
ent and prospective, were jealously watched, and iu the
new Constitution carefully guarded. The time was not far
distant when slavery would have encroached on the North
western Territory. There is no geographical reason why
Ohio, Illinois anS Indiana might not have been slave states
as well as Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi, As I can
not but read our history, Manasseh Cutler was the prov
idential man who set impassable metes and bounds to the
slave power. But for him, American history would have
taken its course in widely different channels. The free
states would have raade hardly a show of counterpoise to
the slave states. A paltry northeastern fragment of the
country might have remained, or rather become, free soil ;
but, if so, it would have been sloughed off into a petty and
moribund republic, or else would have been retained as a
legitimate and desirable hunting ground for such fugitives
as could not escape through it to Canada.
The purchase was yet to be made. A law for the sur
vey and sale of lands, iu 1785, provided that one section in

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 59
every township should be reserved for the support of
schools. Dr. Cutler demanded for his proposed purchase
the additional reservation of one section in every township
for an educated ministry, and of two entire townships for
the establishment and maintenance of a university. These
terms were not readily agreed to ; but he strenuously in
sisted on them, repeatedly threatened to go home without
completing the purchase, and was as often detained by the
importunity of friends who were laboring in his behalf in
Congress, and who gradually won over all the recalcitrant
members but one, thus producing a unanimous vote of the
States in favor of the sale on his terms. He was largely
aided in this result by the confidence in the resources of
the Ohio region and in the success of settlements there
which he inspired from his thorough knowledge of every
thing that could be known in the premises without explo
ration in his own person. Those interested in a private
speculation, who afterward took the name of the Scioto
Company, joined him in the purchase, and the two com
panies together bought five millions of acres, of which Dr.
Cutler for the Ohio Company took a million and a half, at
two- thirds of a dollar per acre, in governraent paper, which
was then worth not more than twelve per cent, as currency,
so that the land was procured for about eight cents per acre
in its cost to the purchasers, yet in obligations which two or
three years afterward, when the Constitution of the United
States was adopted and established, were worth nearly
their face, and to the government were worth their full face
in the amount of debt which they cancelled in advance.
This was a masterly achievement and, so far as Dr. Cutler
knew at the time, on the part of Congress the result of
foreseeing patriotism ; and yet it subsequently appeared to
have savored overmuch of that charitj'^ which begins at
home, which has never since failed of large representation 8

60 ESSEX COUNTY AND
in our public counsels. The agent of the Scioto Company,
as it was subsequently called, was Winthrop Sargent, who
alone appeared with Dr. Cutler in the purchase. He had
been in the preceding year appointed surveyor of the North
west Territory, and he had an indisputable right to pur
chase the land which he had surveyed and explored. But
it afterward appeared that three of the eighteen members
of Congress were interested in the purchase, namely, Duer
of New York and Lee of Virginia, who did more than any
other raen to proraote and facilitate the sale, and General St.
Clair, of Pennsylvania, who was then President of Congress,
and afterward Governor of the new territory.^ I can see
no reason to doubt that the sale to both the Ohio and the
Scioto company was in itself eminently wise, — that it has
tened the settlement of the territory, invited settlers of a
superior type, and secured benefits of inestimable and en
during worth to the states embraced in the Northwest Ter
ritory. The sale ought to have been made ; but none of
the sellers ought to have been among the buyers.
While the ordinance for the government of the territory
was pending. Dr. Cutler, after returning the draft to the
committee with his amendments, went to Philadelphia, and
spent a week there in pleasant intercourse with scientific
friends between whom and hiinself there had been such
communication as the slow and costly mail service of that
day would permit, but no face-to-face converse. • A special
interest was given to his visit by the Constitutional Con-

> Arthur St. Clair was a Scotchman, and came to America in 1758 with the Six
tieth Regiment of Foot in whioh hewas an ensign. Earned a commission at Lou
isburg and Quebec, and married a niece of Governor Bowdoin of Massachusetts,
Settled in Pennsylvania and held civil and military offices until the Revolution
when he became distinguished and reached the rank of Major General. He was
present at Trenton and at Princeton. Elected to Congress in 1785 and Its president
in 1787. Governor ofthe North west Territory, 1788-1802. He died poor In 1818. He
gave Its name to the city of Cincinnati. Upon his controversies aud dlflcultles,
political, flnancial and militai-y It is not necessary to enter here.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 61
vention, which held, indeed, its sessions with closed doors,
but which, when not in session, added very largely to the
best society of the city. Dr. Cutler took tea and spent the
evening with Dr. Franklin, and his description of Frank
lin's appearance, library, tea-table, and household in his
old age, is the most vivid and truthlike home-and-life-
picture of the sage that we can find in his entire biography.^
To his great delight, Franklin spent two hours with him in
examining the huge volume, too heavy to be lifted without
difficulty, of Linnseus's great botanical work, with col
ored plates, in which he says that three months' study
would have been too little for hira. He visited Bartram's
botanical garden, inherited, as I suppose, by his son. Dr.
Rush informed him that he was the only person named for
the charge of a botanical garden about to be established in
Philadelphia, and for a lectureship or professorship of bot
any in the University, and, but for his love of his sacred
calling, he 'undoubtedly would have easily suffered him
self to be transplanted into what for a scientific raan was
then by far the most congenial soil on this side of the At
lantic. Arrangements were at once made for colonizing the Ohio
Company's purchase under the superintendence of General
Putnam, and the first party , forty-seven in number, reached
its destination in Aprilof the following year (1788). Mean
while, Dr. Cutler's next work was to prepare a pamphlet
designed to encourage emigration, which was printed at
Salem in the latter part of 1787, and was shortly afterward
translated into French to stimulate French iraraigratiou into
our western territory.^ I cannot find an English copy of
this pamphlet ; but I have on my table, as I write, a copy
' Life, Journals and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler, Vol. ii, p. 363.
'The pamphlet is given in full in the Life, Journals and Correspondence of
Manasseh Cutler, Vol. ii. Appendix 0, pp. 393-406.

62 ESSEX COUNTY AND
of the translation, printed in Paris. It has the unqualified
endorsement of Thomas Hutchins, the official geographer
ofthe United States, who says : "The statements correspond
perfectly to my own observations during ten years resi
dence in that country." The pamphlet is entitled, "De
scription ofthe Soil, Productions, etc., of that portion of
the United States lying between Pennsylvania, the rivers
Ohio and Scioto, and Lake Erie." The description is re
markable for its geographical accuracy and precision, and i
its literally authentic and unexaggerated statement of the
capacity of the soil and of the advantages offered for access
to raarkets. There is but one word of promise in the pam
phlet, which has not been more than fulfilled, and that one
word, I am inclined to think, was substituted by the French
translator for another more sober and reasonable. It is
said : "It will not be twenty years before there will be more
inhabitants about the western than about the eastern rivers
of the United States." I find this statement repeatedly
quoted with the word fifty instead of twenty. It is added :
"The government will undoubtedly sooner or later reserve
or purchase a place suitable for a national capital, which
will be in the centre of population."
Dr. Cutler published, also, in the sarae year a ten-page
pamphlet entitled " Explanation of the map which deline
ates that part of the Federal Lands, comprised between
Pennsylvania westline, the rivers Ohio and Scioto, and
Lake Erie." In this occurred the prophetic words, as
strange as true, bearing concurrent date with the first pre-
Fulton experiments of Fitch and Rumsey, which were gen
erally regarded as chimerical and of no hopeful issue •?¦ "It
is worthy of observation that in all probability steamboats
will be found to do infinite service in all our extensive

> See Hist. Coll. Essex Inst., Vol. xxiv, pp. 259-271.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 63
river navigation." In 1788 Dr. Cutler went out with a
second party of emigrants.^ He started in his sulky, and
somewhere on the eastern acclivity of the Alleghanies,
finding the road too rough and steep for wheels, took to
the saddle, and rode till he came to the Ohio, about
eighteen miles above Wheeling. The rest of the way was
by water, and Dr. Cutler having had a hint of the possi
bility of substituting a screw for oars, though I can find
no evidence that the experiment had ever been raade, or
dered and superintended, during his halt on the banks of
the Ohio, the construction, as he says, of a " screw, with
short blades, placed in the stern of a boat, which we turned
with a crank," the first screw propeller ever made. He
adds : "It succeeded to admiration, and 1 think it a very
useful discovery." He and his companions landed at the
site where the previous party had erected their log-huts,
and gave to the embryo city the name of Marietta. This
was the earliest settlement in what is now the State of
Ohio. The name was in honor of Marie Antoinette, and
though I find no documentary evidence to the point, put
ting together this name and the translation into French of
Dr. Cutler's pamphlet, I am disposed to think that the
name was designed as an additional attraction to French
immigrants. To close the narrative of Dr. Cutler's connection with
Ohio, though in advance of chronological order, I would
say that Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, the oldest col
lege in the northwest, was founded in 1804, on the en
dowment of two townships, then valuable property, for
which, with a view to this destination. Dr. Cutler had
stipulated in his purchase. Dr. Cutler drew up the act
of incorporation for this university, arranged its curricu-
' See Life, Journals and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler, Vol. i, p. 408,
Vol. II, p. 63.

64 ESSEX COUNTY AND
lura, and nominated its professors. His stipulation, too,
undoubtedly led to similar endowments for colleges in all
the northwestern States. In 1795 Washington appointed
Dr. Cutler Judge of the Supreme Court of the already
populous Northwestern Territory ; but judicial honors were
of no more avail than scientific position in withdrawing
him from the profession which was his preferred work and
chief joy. Three of his sons were prominent citizens of
Ohio. His eldest son, Ephraim, was a meraber of the
Territorial and of the State Legislature, and of the con
vention that framed the Constitution of Ohio, and a Judge
ofthe Court of Common Pleas ; and he also bore the chief
part in organizing the judiciary department and the com
mon-school system of the State. His second son, Jervis,
wrote an elaborate Topographical Description of the States
and Territories on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, illus
trated with engravings by his own hand. His grandson,
William, the son of Ephraim, was a member of Congress
from Ohio. In 1791 Dr. Cutler received the degree of
Doctor of Laws frora Yale College. In 1800 he was chosen
Representative to Congress from Essex County, and served
in two successive Congresses. I find but one speech of his
on record, and that is on a then pending Judiciary Bill,
which, as was doubtless intended on one side as well as ap
prehended on the other, would impair the independence
of the judiciary, by making it in some measure subservient
to the legislative department. I have read that speech
with admiration. Not only does it seem to me pertinent
and eminently wise, but with slight verbal alterations it
might serve at the present day as a plea for an independ
ent judiciary with a tenure of office contingent only on life
or good behavior. It is the argument of a statesman
rather than of a politician, addressed to reason and not to
prejudice, and adapted not to persuade, but to convince.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 65
No reader of it would suspect, except from his disclaimer
of experience in public affairs, that he was not an adept in
their management, of long self-training and abundant
practice. At different periods of his life in his rural parish. Dr.
Cutler was elected to membership of the Philadelphia and
ofthe New England Linnsean Societies, of the American
Antiquarian Society, and of the Massachusetts Agricultu
ral Society, while, in recognition of his professional stand
ing, he was raade President of the Bible Society of Salera
and its vicinity, which preceded the formation ofthe Amer
ican Bible Society, held a very conspicuous place araong
the religious charities of its tirae, and notably introduced
to the knowledge of the great world the late Dr. Wayland ,
who delivered at one of its anniversaries and published
nnder its auspices his world-famous sermon on the Moral
Dignity of the Missionary Enterprise.
In his favorite department of botany I doubt whether
Dr. Cutler's name has a permanent place. In a scientific
exploration of Mount Washington in company with Pro
fessor Peck, he discovered, among other previously unclas
sified plants, a Salix which had provisionally, but, so far as
I can find, did not retain, the name of Salix cutleri, and
there was a genus that bore his name, but I can find no
vestige of it in the present nomenclature.
In the intervals and after the close of his public life,
Dr. Cutler received pupils as boarders in his house, —
boys fitting for college, young men preparing themselves
in mathematics or the science of navigation for mercantile
or maritime life, and sometimes students in theology ; and
such was his reputation as a teacher that pupils from France
and frora the West Indies were not unfrequently consigned
to his care,^
>See Life, Journals and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler, Vol. I, pp. 88-91,
Vol, II, pp. 364-7, n.

66 ESSEX COUNTY AND
At the same time his professional duties were faithfully
and lovingly discharged, and he exercised a large and gen
erous hospitality. His parish was small, and imposed less
than the amount of parochial service that fell to many of
his brethren ; but he maintained an intimate, affectionate
and beneficent intercourse with all the families of his lit
tle flock, and his labor in their behalf was crowned by
several seasons of special religious awakening with consid
erable accessions to the church. His sermons were well
written, and impressively delivered, and he was heard with
interest in all the pulpits of his neighborhood. In the lat
ter part of his life he was afflicted with asthma, lightly at
first — but very severely toward the close. For the last
year or two he could not reach the church nor ascend the
pulpit without assistance, nor stand to perform the ser
vice. But he continued to preach in an arm-chair until
within a few months of his death. He died in 1823, at
the age of eighty-one, and in the fifty-second year of his
pastorate. In political opinion and action Dr. Cutler was a loyal
member of the Federalist party, and had the inflexibility
which was at once its merit and its ruin.
In theology he belonged to the Trinitarian portion of
the Congregational body, and this undoubtedly from strong
conviction, as he survived for several years the division
of that body, and left in the more liberal wing almost all
his most intimate friends. Dr. Dane, Pr. Fisher, Dr. Bow-
ditch, Rev. Dr. Prince of Salem, more eminent in science
than in theology, and Rev. Dr. Abbot of Beverly, with
whom he had been specially associated in the interchange
of hospitality and of clerical offices. I was in my early
boyhood when he died, but I well remember how univer
sally he was honored and revered and how general was
the feeling that in the region round about his home he had
left no superior, hardly an equal.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 67
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR.i
[Oration delivered at the Centennial Celebration at Marietta, April 7, 18S8,]
The necessity was felt for an early provision for a sur
vey and sale of the territory and for the government of the
political bodies to be established there. These two subjects
were in the main kept distinct. Various plans were reported
from time to time. Ten committees were appointed on the
frame of government and three on the schemes for survey
and sale. Fourteen different reports were made at different
times ; but from September 6, 1780, when the resolution
passed asking the states to cede their lands, until July 6,
1787, when Manasseh Cutler, the envoy of the Ohio Cora
pany, came to the door, every plan adopted and every
plan proposed, except a motion of Rufus King, which he
himself abandoned, we now see would have been fraught
with mischief, if it had become and continued law.
March 1, 1784, the day Virginia's deed of cession was
delivered, Jefferson reported from a committee of which
he was chairman an ordinance which divided the territory
into ten states, each to be adraitted into the Union when
its population equaled that of the sraallest existing state.
He thought, as he declared to Monroe, that if great states
were established beyond the mountains, they would sep
arate themselves from the Confederacy and become its ene
mies. His ordinance, when reported, contained a provision
excluding slavery after 1800. This was stricken out by
the Congress. It is manifest, frora subsequent events,
that, under it, the territory would have been occupied

'Bom in Concord, Mass., Aug. 29, 1826; H. C, 1846; State Legislature, 1852-7;
Representative in Congress, 1869-77; U. S. Senator since 1877; Presidentof the Am
erican Antiquarian Society and LL.D. of Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and
Amherst. His maternal grandmother was a Prescott of Salem,
9

68 ESSEX COUNTY AND
by settlers from the South, with their slaves. It would
have been impossible to exclude the institution of slavery
if it had once got footing. With or without his proviso,
the scheme of Mr. Jefferson would have resulted in divid
ing the territory into ten small slave-holding states. They
would have come into the Union with their twenty votes
in the Senate. Their weight would have inclined the scale
irresistibly. The American Union would have been a great
slave-holding empire. This proposal, so amended, be
came law April 23, 1784, and continued in force until
repealed by the Ordinance of 1787. It contained no re
publican security, except a provision that the government
of the states should be republican.
March 16, 1785, Rufus King, at the suggestion of Tim
othy Pickering, offered a resolve that there should be no
slavery in any of the states described in the resolve of 1784.
This was sent to a committee of which he was the chairman.
He reported it back, so amended as to conform to Jeffer
son's plan for postponing the prohibition of slavery until
after 1800, and with a clause providing for the surrender
of fugitive slaves ; but it was never acted on.
May 7, 1784, Jefferson reported an ordinance for ascer
taining the mode of locating and disposing of the public
lands. This was recomraitted, amended and finally adopted.
Congress rejected the proposition to reserve lands for re
ligious purposes, but retained a provision for schools. It
contained also a clause that the lands should pass in de
scent and dower, according to the custom of gavel-kind
until the temporary government was established.
In 1786, a new committee was raised to report a new
plan for the government of the territory. This Committee
made a report, which provided that no state should be ad
mitted from the Western territory, until it had a population
equal to one-thirteenth of the population of the original

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 69
states at the preceding census. This would have kept out
Ohio till 1820, Indiana till 1850, Illinois till 1860, Michi
gan till 1880 and Wisconsin till after 1890. The Seventh
Congress expired while this report was pending. It was
revived in the Eighth. The clause which would have so
long postponed the admission of the states was probably
stricken out, though this is not quite certain. But there
was little of value in the whole scheme. It contained no
barrier against slavery.
This was the state of things when Manasseh Cutler came
into the chamber on the morning of July 6, 1787, bearing
with him the fate of the Northwest. He had left Boston
on the evening of June 25, where, on that day, he records
in his diary — 'I conversed with General Putnam, and set
tled the principles on which I am to contract with Congress
for lands on account of the Ohio Company.'
He was probably the fittest man on the continent, except
Franklin, for a mission of delicate diplomacy. It was said
just now that 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 raaster in physical science. He was a man
of consummate prudence in speech and conduct ; of courtly
manners ; a favorite in the drawing-room and in the camp ;
with a wide circle of friends and correspondents among
the most famous men of his time. During his brief service
in Congress, he made a speech on the judicial systera, in
1803, which shows his profound mastery of constitutional
principles. It now fell to his lot to conduct a negotiation second only
iu iraportance in the history of his country to that which
Franklin conducted with France in 1778. Never was

70 ESSEX COUNTY AND
ambassador crowned with success more rapid or more
complete. On the 9th of July, the pending ordinance was
committed to a new committee, Edward Carrington of Vir
ginia; Nathan Dane of Massachusetts; Richard Henry
Lee of Virginia ; John Kean of South Carolina ; Melanc-
thon Sraith of New York. They sent a copy of the ordi
nance, which had come over from the last Congress, to Dr.
Cutler, that he might make reraarks and prepare amend
ments. He returned the ordinance, with his remarks and
amendments, on the 10th. The ordinance was newly
modeled and all Cutler's amendments inserted, except one
relating to taxation, 'and that,' he says, 'was better quali
fied.' It was reported to Congress on the llth. The
clause prohibiting slavery, which had not been included
because Mr, Dane 'had no idea the States would agree to
it,' was, on Dane's motion, inserted as an amendment, and
on the 13th the greatest and most important legislative
act in American history passed unanimously, save a single
vote. But one day intervened between the day of the ap
pointment of the comraittee and that of their report.
Cutler returned the copy of the old ordinance with his
proposed amendments on one day. The next, the com
mittee reported the finished plan. But two days more
elapsed before its final passage.
The raeasure providing for the terras of sale to the Ohio
Company was passed on the 27th of the same July. Cut
ler was master of the situation during the whole negotia-
tion. When some of his conditions were rejected he 'paid
his respects to all the members of Congress in the city, and
informed them of his intention to depart that day, and if
his terms were not acceded to, to turn his attention to some
other part of the country.' They urged him 'to tarry till
the next day and they would put by all other business to

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 71
complete the contract.' He records in his diary that Con
gress 'came to the terras stated in our letter without the
least variation.'
Frora this narrative I think it must be clear that the plan
which Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler settled in Bos
ton was the substance of the Ordinance of 1787. I do not
mean to imply that the detail or the language of the great
statute was theirs. But I cannot doubt that they demanded
a constitution with its unassailable guaranties for civil lib
erty, such as Massachusetts had enjoyed since 1780, and
such as Virginia had enjoyed since 1776, instead of the
meagre provision for a government to be changed at the
will of Congress or of temporary popular majorities, which
was all Congress had hitherto proposed, and this constitu
tion secured by an irrevocable corapact, and that this de
mand was an inflexible condition of their dealing with
Congress at all. Cutler, with consummate wisdom, ad
dressed hiinself on his arrival, to the representatives of
Virginia. Jefferson had gone to France in July, 1784,
but the weight of his great influence remained. King was
in Philadelphia, where the Constitutional Convention was
sitting. It was Carrington, of Virginia, who brought Cut
ler on to the floor. Richard Henry Lee had voted against
King's motion to commit his anti-slavery proviso, but the
first mover of the Declaration of Independence needed
little converting to cause him to favor anything that made
for freedora. Williara Grayson, of Virginia, early and
late, earnestly supported the prohibition of slavery, and,
when broken in health, he attended the Virginia Legisla
ture in 1788, to secure her consent to the departure frora
the condition of her deed of cession which the Ordinance
of 1787 effected. Some of the amendments upon the
original ordinance now preserved are in his hand-writing.
To Nathan Dane belongs the immortal honor of having

72 ESSEX COUNTY AND THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.
been the draftsman of the statute and the mover of the
anti-slavery amendment. His monument has been erected,
in imperishable granite, by the greatest of American archi
tects, among the massive columns of the great arguraent
in reply to Hayne. But the legislative leadership was
Virginia's. From her carae the great weight of Washing
ton, in whose heart the scheme of Rufus Putnam for the
colonization of the West occupied a place second only to
that of the Union itself. Hers was the great influence of
Jefferson, burning with the desire that his country, in her
first great act of national legislation, should make the doc
trines of the Declaration of Independence a reality. From
her carae Carrington, chairman of the Coramittee ; Lee, its
foremost raember ; and Grayson, then in the chair of the
Congress, who, Mr. Bancroft says, "gave, more than any
other man in Congress, efficient attention to the territorial
question, and whose record against slavery is clearer than
that of any other southern man who was presentin 1787."

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