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The Ohio Company and the Meaning of Opportunity in the American West 1786-1795

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The Ohio Company and the Meaning of Opportunity in the American West 1786-1795 History Faculty Publications History 9-1991 The Ohio ompC any and the Meaning of Opportunity in the American West 1786-1795 Timothy J. Shannon Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/histfac Part of the Cultural History Commons, and the United States History Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Shannon, Timothy J. "The Ohio ompC any and the Meaning of Opportunity in the American West, 1786-1795," New England Quarterly, 64 (September 1991): 393-413. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/366349. This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution. Cupola permanent link: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/histfac/7 This open access article is brought to you by The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The uC pola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Ohio ompC any and the Meaning of Opportunity in the American West 1786-1795 Abstract Founded in 1786 by former officers of the Continental Army to promote an orderly expansion of American society westward, the Ohio Company soon succumbed to the desire of many of its investors to make money. The aims of settlement warred with the desire to make a profit through land speculation; eventually the company dissolved, a casualty of its inability to reconcile the varied interests of shareholders and to manage westward development. Keywords Ohio Company, Officers' Petition, Western Expansion, Post-Revolutionary America, Emigration, Articles of Association Disciplines Cultural History | History | United States History This article is available at The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/histfac/7 The Ohio Company and the Meaning of Opportunity in the AmericanWest, 1786-1795 TIMOTHY J. SHANNON HE Ohio Company was on the vergeof collapse in the T autumnof 1791. An Indian war in theNorthwest Terri- torythreatened Marietta, the company'ssettlement at the confluenceof the Muskingumand Ohio Rivers,while a fi- nancial panic in New Yorkdepleted the company'streasury. Those problems,however, paled in comparisonto the inter- nal divisionswracking the company. Eastern and western stockholderswere fightingover the dispositionof company funds,and both sides were levyingaccusations of malfea- sance at the company's officers.Daniel Story,one of the stockholdersliving in Marietta,reported to companysecre- taryWinthrop Sargent that "it appears that the Proprietors in the AtlanticStates are very uneasy, particularly,those in Massachusetts,Connecticut, & Rhode Island; in each of which States they have chosen Agentsto examine into the proceedingsof the Directors and Agents on this side [of] the mountains,to settlewith Congress& obtain a deed for the purchase, divide the funds,& in fact dissolve the Company as soon as may be."' Story'swords revealed just how much the interestsof the Ohio Company'sstockholders had divergedsince its foundinga few years earlier. Once joined in the commonpursuit of purchasingand developing The authorwould like to thankT. H. Breen,Jeffrey P. Brown, AndrewR. L. Cayton, PeterS. Onuf, and RobertH. Wiebe fortheir comments on early drafts of thisessay. 'Daniel Storyto WinthropSargent, 22 October 1791, fromthe microfilmedition of the WinthropSargent Papers, 4 reels (Boston: MassachusettsHistorical Society, 1965), reel2. Quoted by permissionof the MassachusettsHistorical Society, Boston. 393 This content downloaded on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:59:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 394 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY westernlands, theywere now clamoringfor the company's dissolution. As a businessventure, the Ohio Company closelyresem- bled many other eighteenth-centuryland speculations. It raisedcapital and assignedshares through a joint-stockorga- nization and used the political influenceof its investorsto secure a vast land purchasein the trans-AppalachianWest. Like mostother land companies,it operatedon a shoestring: lands could be paid foronly after a quick profitwas realized on theirresale. As historianshave recentlyargued, however, the Ohio Company'sagenda extendedbeyond purely finan- cial motives.Founded in 1786 by a groupof veteranofficers of the ContinentalArmy seeking recompense for their war- time services,the Ohio Company worked closelywith the federal governmentto promote orderlyand nationalistic westernexpansion.2 Yet, as the size and scope of the com- pany's operationsincreased, so too did the varietyof ambi- tions it attemptedto incorporate.Emigrants to the com- pany's purchase pursued the social and economic developmentof theirsettlement, while those investorswho remainedin the East became moreconcerned with specula- tive land and securitiesmarkets. Geographical distance, a changing economy, and fluctuatingpersonal fortunesall contributedto a divergenceof individual intereststhat the Ohio Company struggledto contain. That struggleillus- tratesthe changingperceptions of westernopportunity in post-RevolutionaryAmerica. When the veteran officersof the ContinentalArmy left theirservice, they were at odds with both the Continental Congressand the civilianpopulation. During the war's final yearsofficers had activelylobbied formilitary pensions, and 2See AndrewR. L. Cayton, The FrontierRepublic: Ideologyand Politicsin the Ohio Country,1780-1825 (Kent: Kent State UniversityPress, 1986), pp. 1-80; Pe- terS. Onuf, Statehoodand Union: A Historyof the NorthwestOrdinance (Bloom- ington:Indiana UniversityPress, 1987), pp. 1-66; and AndrewR. L. Cayton and PeterS. Onuf, The Midwestand the Nation: Rethinkingthe Historyof an Ameri- can Region (Bloomington:Indiana UniversityPress, 1990), pp. 1-24. This content downloaded on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:59:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE OHIO COMPANY 395 when theirefforts failed, some had even consideredmutiny.3 Civilians, already strappedby wartimetaxation and suspi- cious of militaryauthority, resented such actions.Rufus Put- nam, one of the Ohio Company'sfounders, noted that in his native Massachusetts"a general prejudice does at present, especiallyamong the lower class of people, prevail against the officersof the army."4The officers'military fraternity, the Societyof the Cincinnati,aroused such universalopposi- tion that several state legislaturesconsidered outlawing it altogether.5Confronted by a population reluctantto share its resourcesand lacking their own, the veteran officers moved quicklyto asserttheir claim to thewestern lands that theyhad helped win fromGreat Britain. Many precedentsexisted for the officers'interest in these westernlands. The Britishgovernment in the Seven Years' War and the UnitedStates government in theRevolutionary War had offeredland bountiesas incentivesfor military ser- vice.6 RufusPutnam, forexample, had previouslybeen in- volvedwith the MilitaryCompany of Adventurers, an enter- priseorganized by Seven Years'War veteransto locate their bountiesin the Florida territory.'On the eve of the Conti- nentalArmy's disbandment in June1783, 288 officersseized the initiativeby petitioningCongress for a grant of land northwestof the Ohio River.In a documentdrafted by Put- 3L. Clinton Hatch, The Administrationof the AmericanRevolutionary Army (New York:Longmans, Green, & Co., 1904), pp. 142-96; CharlesRoyster, A Revo- lutionaryPeople at War: The ContinentalArmy and AmericanCharacter, 1775- 1783 (Chapel Hill: Universityof NorthCarolina Press, 1979), pp. 296-368; and Richard H. Kohn, "The Inside Storyof the NewburghConspiracy: America and the Coup d'Etat," William and Mary Quarterly,3d ser. 27 (April 1970): 187-220. 4RufusPutnam to HenryKnox, 23 October 1783, fromthe microfilmedition of the HenryKnox Papers, 56 reels (Boston: MassachusettsHistorical Society, 1960), 15:96. Quoted by permissionof the MassachusettsHistorical Society. SWallace Evan Davies, "The Society of Cincinnati in New England, 1783- 1800," William and Mary Quarterly,3d ser. 5 (January1948): 5-15. 6RudolfFreund, "MilitaryBounty Lands and the Origins of the Public Do- main," AgriculturalHistory 20 (January1946): 8-18. 7RufusPutnam, The Memoirsof RufusPutnam and CertainOfficial Papers and Correspondence,comp. Rowena Buell (Boston:Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1903), pp. 36-54, 223-32, and S. P. Hildreth,Biographical and HistoricalMemoirs of the Early PioneerSettlers of Ohio (Cincinnati:H. W. Derby, 1852), pp. 88-95. This content downloaded on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:59:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 396 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY nam, TimothyPickering, and JedidiahHuntingdon, they re- quested land and aid for emigratingveterans in exchange fortheir existing bounty claims and futuremilitary service on the frontier.8An attemptto gain securityagainst an un- certainfuture, the Officers'Petition promised rapid settle- ment of its signers'outstanding claims on Congressas well as the chance to join in an organized emigrationwest. As such, the proposal combinedthe officers'speculative inter- ests in western lands with a larger corporate purpose groundedin theircommon military experiences. Dissatisfiedwith Congress'sinaction on the Officers'Peti- tion,Generals Rufus Putnam and BenjaminTupper decided to forma joint-stockcompany. They placed advertisements in the Massachusettsnewspapers "to informall Officersand Soldierswho have served in the late War" of theirplans, and eleven delegates representingeight
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