When the Ordinance was passed, eighteen delegates were in attendance in Congress, representing eight states — New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia — five of them south of Mason and Dixon's line, yet there was but one dissenting vote, and that came from Abraham Yates, of New York. Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, had expected opposition to the antislavery clause, and he added it almost at the last moment because he found the southern delegates favorably disposed.
But this does not mean that the southerners necessarily believed at that time in excluding slaves from all the western land. The Ordinance did not refer to the land south of the Ohio, and in considering the northwest, the south was in part influenced by political motives, in part by industrial and commercial considerations. Grayson, of Virginia, who was himself an opponent of slavery extension, wrote to Monroe that "the clause respecting slavery was agreed to by the southern members for the purpose of preventing tobacco and indigo from being made on the northwest side of the Ohio, as well as for several other political reasons."
Concerning the authorship of this important document, there has been much discussion. On this interesting question, there seems to have been little comment at the time, for the Ordinance was passed by a moribund Congress, from which most of the talent was already withdrawn. Credit has at times been ascribed to Cutler, and one might expect to find in his detailed journal full information on the whole subject. He took a lively interest in his journey to New York, but he describes in his diary everything but the one thing which we should like to know; he tells of wine dinners, of pleasant companions, of entertaining and well-dressed young women, but of the excellences of this fundamental Ordinance he says nothing at all. He did propose some amendments to the report pending in Congress; he did meet the committee in charge; and he may well have advocated the insertion of the fundamental maxims of liberty, for he well knew the monetary value of having it well understood that certain principles of freedom were to obtain in the western country; but his diary would lead one to think that it was the shrewd bargain for the purchase of land that filled his mind and thoughts.
Nathan Dane, a member of Congress and of the committee, claimed in his later years the credit of the authorship, and his case is fairly clear. He may have been influenced by Cutler; he was surely influenced by other men, for a large part of the Ordinance was a condensation of portions of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780; but he, more than any other man, drafted the Ordinance of 1787, and his name should not be forgotten in the list of makers of the American nation. Credit should also be given to Rufus King, who, though not in Congress when the Ordinance was passed, was at least responsible in part for the most famous clause in it, the clause prohibiting slavery. But of course, when all is said, the credit of authorship cannot be given to two or three men; the significance of the Ordinance lies in the fact that it was the result of a long effort to settle the western question. In many of its essentials, it was — like other great historical documents momentous in human annals — the product of years. It crystallized the principles of colonial organization about which men had been disputing for a generation. Even the slavery clause had been considered and discussed more than once before the summer days of 1787, when Dr. Cutler appeared on the scene and spoke of buying millions of acres of wild land on the Ohio.
Dr. Cutler proved to be a capable and efficient agent. A few days after the passing of the Ordinance, Congress authorized the sale of the western land on terms that were acceptable to the Ohio Company. He was also instrumental in making a purchase for the Scioto Company, a land-grabbing combination that has left a malodorous history behind it. The whole bargain constituted, said Cutler, "the greatest private contract ever made in America."
Preparations were now made on an extensive scale for the settlement of the northwest. Arthur St. Clair was appointed by Congress governor of the new territory, which stretched from the western limits of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi and from the Ohio northward to the international boundary. In the year 1788, a body of New-Englanders made their way over the mountains, and with large flatboats floated down the Ohio and founded the town of Marietta at the mouth of the Muskingum. "No colony in America," said Washington, "was ever settled under such favorable auspices. . . . Information, property, and strength, will be its characteristics."
In the course of the legislation concerning the western territory, two or three important steps were taken that we have not yet referred to. In 1785, Congress passed an ordinance for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the western territory. It contained a number of significant provisions and was the beginning of the admirably complete and simple land system of the United States, providing for the establishment of townships six miles square, each of which should be divided into thirty-six sections one mile square. Moreover, the act provided that the lot number sixteen of every township should be reserved for the maintenance of public schools within the township. This provision was included in the arrangement made with the Ohio Company, and it was also expressly stipulated that the company should set aside two townships for a university and one section in every township for the support of religion. This was the foundation for the broad policy of popular education and the beginning of the free school and university system of the West. Doubtless, we see here the New-England idea, and one that appealed to the business instinct of the men who were forming the new settlement; the formation of townships and the grant of land for public purposes would furnish inducements for "neighborhoods of the same religious sentiments to confederate for the purpose of purchasing and settling together."
We have thus seen what preparations were made for building new commonwealths north of the Ohio: before settlements were made an elaborate plan of colonial organization was devised, providing for temporary government and for ultimate admission into the Union; a definite grant of territory was secured from Congress, and in accordance with well-matured arrangements a body of settlers left their eastern homes and moved over the mountains to form new settlements. The early method of building up the southwest was much different from this: there was no waiting for Congressional authority; the extension of the border depended on independent enterprise. A few bold hunters and restless adventurers pushed on into the wilderness with the instinct of the hopeful, land-loving, adventurous American frontiersman, and built palisades and clustering log-houses in the forests of Tennessee and Kentucky. The movement was spontaneous and natural, and did not rest on a prearranged system or harmonize with any logical notion of colonial establishment. The pioneer, relying on his rifle as his title-deed, moved with his companions on into the unoccupied forests, prepared to hew his way to comfort and prosperity, and to build up civil government as the needs disclosed themselves.
The topography of the country influenced in considerable measure the history of state-making south of the Ohio. While the framers of the ordinances in Congress were marking out states by parallels and meridians, the western settler was feeling the inevitable force of geography. There was a movement to form a new state in the western portion of Pennsylvania and Virginia, a movement that was, in part, made good nearly a century later by the division of the Old Dominion. At an early day, the settlers in this region, "separated by a vast, extensive and almost impassible Tract of Mountains, by Nature itself formed and pointed out as a Boundary between this Country and those below it," sought to be established as "a sister colony and fourteenth province of the American Confederacy." There was, as we shall see, a movement to establish an independent state in what is now eastern Tennessee but was then western North Carolina, a section separated from the older state by the Appalachian range and different in its make-up from the lower land of western Tennessee. The frontiersman who turned his face to the great "western world," to use his own phrase, must have felt, even without words, that the west, separated by the mountain chain from the Atlantic basin, could not long remain subservient to the older commonwealths of the coast. And yet at the same time, he felt the unity of the great valley. In the coming years, in spite of strong objections to restraint and in spite of an independent and buoyant spirit, the western man was on the whole loyal to the Union and national in his sympathies.
The settlement of the Southwest began even before the Revolution. The region was not won simply by the bold diplomacy of our commissioners at Paris. While the war was in progress, little bands of settlers, heedless of peril and careless of privation, were step by step moving on into the western wilderness, building homes by the side of the rivers that flowed westward and southward to the gulf. In all the negotiations, bickerings, and conspiracies that occupied the minds of so many men — Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Englishmen alike — for the twenty-five years that ensued between the French treaty of alliance in 1778 and the treaty of 1803, which brought us Louisiana, one fact could not be neglected: the western pioneer with his rifle and his powderhorn had built blockhouses and palisades in the heart of the Mississippi Valley. The perils that were encountered, the sufferings that were borne by these winners of the West, form an essential and vital part of American history.
One is at a loss to understand the restless energy with which these rough woodsmen pushed forward to make new homes in the solitudes of Kentucky and Tennessee. For years together, the Indians were hostile; every little settlement had its tale of horror, of men murdered at their work, of children carried into captivity, of the plowman shot in the field or the harvestman as he stored his grain, of sudden attack and spirited defence, of scalping and torture, of ceaseless, hourly, unremitting danger. And yet, in spite of suffering and disaster, men who had seen their homes burned, their children murdered before their eyes, went on quietly with their work. Clearing was added to clearing; houses were built farther in the wilderness; little communities of self-reliant men and women sprang into existence in the primeval forests of the great valley. These woodsmen were the vanguard of English civilization; these men of the "back country" were in the forefront of American achievement.
Soon after the treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768), by which the Iroquois gave up their claim to lands between the Tennessee and the Ohio, Daniel Boone was on his way 'My quest of the country of Kentucke"; and in 1770 a settlement was made on the Watauga, a head-water of the Tennessee River, under the leadership of James Robertson, a man of rare force of character and boundless energy. In 1772, he was joined by John Sevier, who was "well fitted for this wilderness work," strong yet jovial, at once an Indian fighter, a statesman, and a gentleman. These two men were the founders of Tennessee. Their settlement was in the attractive upland valley bounded on the west by the Cumberland Mountains, on the east by the ridge of the Alleghenies, which separated them from the parent state. In their isolation, the settlers soon needed a government, and they proceeded to form one. One can find no more striking fact in American history, nor one more typical, than the simple ease with which these frontiersmen on the banks of the western waters, on the threshold of the central valley of the continent, finding themselves beyond the reach of eastern law, formed an association and exercised the rights and privileges of self-government. Under their articles of association, the settlers seem to have lived until taken under the government of North Carolina soon after the outbreak of the Revolution (1776). The land, however, did not belong naturally to the coast but to the Mississippi region, and in later years became part of Tennessee.
The Watauga settlers, though separated by miles of forest from their neighbors east of the mountains, were not altogether cut off from the older regions, but ere long settlements were made in the heart of the more distant wilderness. Following Boone's trace, the famous Wilderness Road over Cumberland Gap and on into the north and west, hardy, courageous woodsmen with their families made their way to found new homes in Kentucky. In 1775, Boonesborough was established, a lonely island in the great forest, two hundred miles from the eastern settlements. Blockhouses were likewise built and land was cleared at Nashborough, now Nashville, on the broad bend of the Cumberland (1780). Here again, the foundation of government was not, as at the north, a document drawn up in the older settlements by legislative authority; the settlers took nothing with them but their courage and a determination to build houses in the wilderness. When they needed laws for protection, as a "temporary method of restraining the licentious," they drew up a compact, not intending to establish an independent state, but, till recognized and cared for by Carolina, to supply for themselves "the blessings flowing from a just and equitable government."
Thus before the end of the Revolution permanent settlements were established beyond the mountains, although as yet no separate state was formed, for the eastern states still claimed dominion; there was everywhere in these western settlements strong self-reliance and democratic self-government. It could be only a short time before independent commonwealths would be established.
The most famous movement for the establishment of a separate state was made by the settlers near the headwaters of the Tennessee shortly after the Revolution was ended. Separated from North Carolina by the mountains, this region, as we have said, had a geographic individuality of its own. In 1784, North Carolina ceded its western lands to Congress, with a proviso, however, that until Congress accepted the cession, the sovereignty should remain in the state, and two years were allowed for the acceptance of the cession. North Carolina had, for some time, taken no tender interest in the transmontane settlements. With that complaisant superiority which often marks the man who has stayed at home when speaking of those who have had the enterprise to move, some of the men of the old state had declared the pioneers were nothing but the " off-scourings of the earth" and "fugitives from justice."
The westerners felt themselves abandoned, but were not accustomed to shedding tears because left to their own devices. They probably supposed that Congress had practically assured them statehood by passing the Ordinance of 1784, and they proceeded to organize a state. "If we should be so happy," they said, "as to have a separate government, vast numbers from different quarters, with a little encouragement from the public, would fill up our frontier, which would strengthen us, improve agriculture, perfect manufactures, encourage literature, and everything truly laudable. The seat of government being among ourselves, would evidently tend, not only to keep a circulating mediimi in gold and silver among us, but draw it from many individuals living in other states, who claim large quantities of lands that would lie in the bounds of the new state." This simple statement, full of quaint economy and charged with the enthusiasm and idealism of the frontiersmen, brings before us much that was characteristic of the hopeful West. No wonder, with such a prospect of monetary and literary improvement, they did not hesitate to establish an independent commonwealth.
Before final action was taken, North Carolina withdrew her act of cession. Despite this, and though persistence meant rebellion, the western men drew up a constitution modelled after that of the parent state (1785), and, adopting the name of Franklin, sought recognition from the Congress of the Confederation. One of their first acts was to provide for taxes and to show, if not the need of literature and all things laudable, at least the primitive condition of society and the absence of gold and silver, whose presence was so much desired. Taxes were made payable in otter, deer, and beaver skins, in well-cured bacon, in clean tallow, in distilled rye whiskey, in good peach or apple brandy, and in like useful and cheering commodities. North Carolina protested against this separate organization; Congress, of course, did nothing; and Franklin led a troubled life for about four years, giving up its pretence of independence in 1788.
In Kentucky, then a district of Virginia, there was, throughout this time, considerable restlessness and discontent. Some of the settlers, with Wilkinson at their head, were engaged in some sort of mysterious intrigue, disreputable at the best, with the Spanish authorities in New Orleans. Others desired a separation from Virginia and admission into the Union as a state. Nothing definite was accomplished, however, before the end of the period of the Confederation. June 1, 1792, Kentucky entered the Union.
Despite this restlessness of the frontiersmen and despite the plottings of ambitious schemers like the unspeakable Wilkinson, the story of early western settlements is a story of American achievement. During the Revolutionary era, the American people had expanded and laid the foundations for new commonwealths in the valley of the Mississippi, which offered homes for countless thousands; the Congress of the Confederation had at last become possessed of property, and, incorrigibly incompetent in all other directions, succeeded in drawing up a wise and noble plan for colonial expansion. The settlers themselves, who were now pouring over the mountains, were showing remarkable political sagacity. Rough, uncouth, lawless, as many of the adventurers were, the great body of them were home-seekers, bent on improving their fortunes, and they gave evidence withal of a native instinct for government and order. Unlovely as was the raw frontier in some of its aspects, there was no danger that these enterprising pioneers would found hopeless, forlorn settlements in the wilderness; the history of American achievement in the Mississippi Valley was to be different from the French or Spanish. Only when the importance of this movement is grasped do we see how much the Americans accomplished in the eventful years from 1774 to 1788: they won their independence from Britain, began with astounding courage and zeal the occupation of the "western world," worked out the principles of territorial organization, and, almost without knowing it themselves, prepared the outlines of a system which assured the facile extension of their power from the Atlantic coast across the continent.