MARIETTA COLLEGE HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS EDITED BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT VOLUME III THE MARIETTA HISTORICAL COMMISSION (Created "by the Trustees of Marietta College, February, 1916) CHARTER MEMBERS EDWY R. BROWN FRANCIS H. DEWEY JOHN MILLS A. GEORGE BULLOCK ARTHUR F. ESTABROOK WILLIAM W. MILLS MARY C. BULLOCK CHARLES A. HANIJA WILLIAM P. PALMER . CHARLES 8. DANA* HARRY B. HOYT BENJAMIN B. PUTNAM BEMAN G. DAWES' JOHN KAISER EDWIN F. ROREBECK MARIETTA COLLEGE CHARLES G. DAWES BENJ. F. STRECKER EDWARD E. MACTAGGART RUFUS C. DAWES PETER G. THOMSON SUSTAINING MEMBERS M. J. AVERBECK JULIA E. HICKOK WILLIS A. BAILEY JAMES F. HOVEY HOMER C. BAYLESS GEORGE H. HOWISON* GEORGE C. BEST KARL G. KAISER CHARLES H. BOSWORTH THOMAS H. KELLEY WILLIAM W. BOYD JESSE V. MCMILLEN EDWARD H. BRENAN MARIETTA PUBLIC LIBRARY J. LAWRENCE BUELL EDWARD A. MERYDITH ROWENA BUELL CLARENCE C MIDDLESWART WARREN BURNS EDWARD C MOORE H. G. CHAMBERLAIN CHARLES PENROSE J. PLUMER COLE BEMAN A. PLUMER JOHN DANA THEODORE F. DAVIS * HORACE PORTER HENRY M. DAWES DANIEL J. RYAN LEE S. DEVOL JOHN E. SATER WILLIAM W. DOLLISON HARVEY E. SMITH CHARLES P. DYAR HARRY P. WARRENER ISAAC C ELSTON, JR. ASA WILSON WATERS AARON A. FERRIS GEORGE WHITE EDWARD B. FOLLETT WALTER A. WINDSOR SEYMOUR J. HATHAWAY GEORGE M. WITHINGTON EDITORIAL COMMITTEWILLIAM EH . WOLFE ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT, CHAIRMAN Professor of American History, Marietta College GEORGE JORDAN BLAZIER, SECRETARY AND TREASURER Librarian, Marietta College * Deceased OHIO COMPANY SERIES VOLUME III OHIO IN THE TIME OF THE CONFEDERATION (Marietta (College Historical Collections, Volume 3 OHIO IN THE TIME OF THE CONFEDERATION* EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT Professor of American History, Marietta College; Chairman Marietta Historical Commission;' Lecturer, National War Work Council, Y. M. C. A. of the United States PUBLISHED BY THE MARIETTA HISTORICAL COMMISSION MARIETTA, OHIO 1918 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION : A TERRITORY IN THE MAKING PART ONE: THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1784 PART TWO : OHIO IN THE Papers of the Con­ tinental Congress PART THREE : JOURNAL OF JOHN MATTHEWS ILLUSTRATIONS A MAP OF THE OHIO COMPANY PURCHASE 20 (From a plate loaned by the Western Reserve His­ torical Society) A FRENCH PLAN OF THE LANDS OF THE OHIO AND "SCIOTO" COMPANIES 100 (From a plate loaned by the Western Reserve His­ torical Society) MARTIN'S MAP OF OHIO SURVEYS 180 (By permission of the author) INTRODUCTION A Territory in the Making This volume, chronologically, should have been the first in the present Series. There was a pro­ priety, however, in permitting the original rec­ ords of the Ohio Company to have the right of way, as being the most important and significant document to be issued under these auspices. The purpose of this book is to fill a want, felt by the editor and many colleagues who conduct classes on the history of the West, in the shape of a volume giving the documentary materials in convenient form which any class or reader must study in order to understand the ideas and ideals which slowly crystallized into our first Territory — the "Territory North West of the River Ohio." This growth is not sensed by a study of the ordinances and land laws of 1784, 1785, and 1787 alone, even when supplemented by the ex­ cellent writings of Adams, Hinsdale, Turner, Alden, Alvord, Barrett, Treat, or Thwaites and Kellogg. In order to make the volume fully serve the time-saving purpose suggested, the editor has been emboldened to devote a number of pages to reprints of documents not easily to be secured in the average library and not always xii Introduction orderly arranged in the students' perspective when once in hand. Following the pages of reprints of theories and plans of trans-Ohio colonization and State- making, the reader will find the most important documents in the Papers of the Continental Con­ gress which relate to the Ohio region in this pre- territorial period, mostly relating to Thomas Hutchins's activities in surveying the Seven Ranges, with tangible sidelights on the irrepress­ ible character of the squatter movement across the Ohio River. Taking a hint from the satisfaction expressed by many charter and sustaining members of the Commission in the value to the non-professional of an introduction which links the documents presented into an understandable whole, the edi­ tor will briefly sketch the story contained in the material here published. With it as a guide, student, as well as general reader, will find, it is hoped, a completer interest in the documents themselves. To succeed in this respect were better than to satisfy the formulae of the scien­ tific critic. One might loosely describe the growth of the territory north and west of the Ohio River in terms of evolution, as sub-organic, organic, and super-organic. Of the middle and latter period many students have developed treatises, on the Introduction xiii ordinances, the creation of States, and the mani­ fold problems of statehood. Of the nebulous primary era, we have had the international phases of territorial and land colonization pro­ jects made clearer by several writers, particu­ larly Alden and Alvord. There is need and room for more adequate treatment of the purely American schemes and theories for the coloniza­ tion and government of what is commonly known as the "Old Northwest." There is a double importance in emphasizing them because, while they show the aims and ideals of individuals and reflect the spirit of the times, they came to some­ thing— they created ordinances and founded Commonwealths. There is an Old Testament history of the West and a New Testament, and the break between the two was greater—meas­ ured in everything save years — than the biblical parallel will show. The documentary material of England's imperial designs relating to the West does not contain the seeds of the New Dis­ pensation— the theories of Deane and Paine and Pelatiah Webster, of Bland, Putnam, Pickering, Howell, Washington, and Jefferson. The Que­ bec Act with its extension "of the same absolute rule" (as the author of the Declaration of Inde­ pendence phrased it) was of Malachi; the plan of Deane's federated, self-governed State at the con­ fluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, is of St. Matthew. xiv Introduction It was for Silas Deane of Groton, Connecti­ cut, secret agent for the Continental Congress in France, first to offer suggestions concerning the use of western territory as a national asset. Al­ ready, as outlined elsewhere,1 Congress, in Sep­ tember, 1776, had made its offer of bounty lands to men and officers who would enlist in the ser­ vice ; while it is not so stated it is clear that in the back of their heads the members of the Congress contemplated fulfilling this promise by granting land in the "Old Northwest"—thus mortgaging for public benefit a conquest it was hoped their armies would make. In December of the same year Deane wrote the Secret Committee from Paris outlining the first definite plan to charge this war bill to western lands. The plan as here­ in outlined in detail,2 called for the grant of a tract of twenty-five million acres at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi, in the present State of Illinois, to a company of Americans and Euro- i These Collections, i, xv; the act of Congress read: "That Con­ gress make provision for granting lands, in the following propor­ tions: to the officers and soldiers who shall so engage in the service, and continue therein to the close of the war, or until discharged by Congress, and to the representatives of such officers and soldiers aB shall be slain by the enemy. "Such lands to be provided by the United States, and whatever expense shall be necessary to procure such lands, the said expense shall be paid and borne by the states in the same proportion as the other expenses of the wnr, viz. To a colonel, 500 acres; to a lieuten­ ant colonel, 450; to a major, 400; to a captain, 300; to a lieutenant, 200; to an ensign, 150; each non-commissioned officer and soldier, 100." — Journals of the Continental Congress (1906), v, 763. 2 Doc. i. Introduction xv peans. One-fifth of every "settlement" should be reserved by the Congress for sale by the na­ tional government; the company should engage to place a certain number of inhabitants on the land within seven years and regulate civil gov­ ernment, taking the advice of Congress in such measures, and thus "form a distinct State Con­ federated with and under the general regulations of the United States General of America." Deane estimated that a company could be formed in Europe with a capital stock of one hundred thousand pounds to establish the State on the Mississippi as outlined. The scheme is an in­ teresting medley of ancient and modern ideas, the retaining of "one-fifth part of all lands, mines, etc." harking back to Columbus and Cabot, and the plan allowing "the company" to "form a distinct State" bespeaks the new consti­ tutional era of a decade later, the clause permit­ ting the inhabitants to have "a voice in Con­ gress '' as soon as they are'' called on to contribute" to public expenses is a plain putting in practice the doctrine of the Declaration of In­ dependence. The reservations for the national government forecast the "Congress Lands" of the later ordinances. The obvious obstruction in the path of carry­ ing out any plan like Deane's (aside from the detail of ending European claim of sovereignty by winning the war) was the need of having the xvi Introduction several States claiming western land relinquish those claims.