Beginnings and

character

of the township officers belonged to the members of this tribunal. Rural government was not different in character in the other eight counties created by executive action in the Ohio country before the division of the Territory.

Urban government in Ohio began with a town meeting of the original settlers of Marietta, February 4, 1789, held for the purpose of making some police regugovernment. lations. The second example of urban government is

of urban

Influx of population; new counties and towns.

2

furnished by Losantiville (later Cincinnati), founded in the same year, where "similar measures of self help were resorted to."1 In both cases these measures were taken in the absence of the Territorial officers, who seem to have had the acknowledged right to establish village government. Such selection of officers as might be made by the people of any community must have the permission of the governor and be confirmed by his appointment, as in the case of the French settlement at Gallipolis. In 1790 the people of this colony were advised by St. Clair to choose both civil and military officers, but with the instruction to send the names to him in order that he might appoint them.3

8. THE TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT IN ITS SEcond or LEGISLATIVE PHASE

The progress of the Northwest Territory towards the second or legislative phase of government was hastened by the rapid increase of the population in the Ohio

'Howard, Local Constitutional History of the United States, I., 412.

2

"Wilgus, "Township Government in Ohio," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1894, 404, 406.

country. The English occupation of a number of western posts ceased in 1794, when Jay's treaty was signed between the mother country and the United States. The Indian wars were brought to a close in the following year by the treaty of Greenville, which released about two-thirds of the Ohio region from Indian occupation, leaving the northwestern portion of the future State, together with other outlying territory, in the hands of the red man.' The conclusion of these wars opened the way for the tide of civilization to sweep into the eastern and interior regions of Ohio. The lands between the Great and Little Miami rivers, farther west, known as Symme's Purchase, were first settled at Cincinnati (then Losantiville)2 in the fall of 1788, and in 1790 became the second Ohio county (Hamilton). The population of the Virginia Military District, which lay between the Scioto and Little Miami, and was thrown open to occupation in 1790, spread gradually northward until it became sufficient to constitute the District a county (Adams) in 1798. Chillicothe in the northern section of this region was not established until 1796; and Dayton, another inland city, fifty miles up the Great Miami, was founded in the same year. The sale of lands in the Seven Ranges progressed rapidly after the consummation of the Greenville treaty; and it was at this time also that Connecticut sold her Western Re

1

1 For Wayne's treaty line, established by the treaty of Greenville, see map facing page 19.

2 One of the founders of Cincinnati. a pedantic schoolmaster, compounded the name, Losantiville, of French, Latin, and Greek words. The name signifies "the town (ville) opposite (anti) the mouth (os) of the Licking (L)." Governor St. Clair gave the town its present name in January, 1790: Winsor, The Westward Movement, 315.

The

Territorial legislature.

The first

session.

serve to an association, the Connecticut Land Company, for colonization. Within a few months the first town was founded in the Reserve at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, called Cleveland after its chief founder.

This influx of settlers soon brought up the number of free male inhabitants in the Territory to the number required for the establishment of a general assembly or legislature, and the number of counties increased apace. By 1798 the Northwest Territory was entitled to enter upon its second stage of government. The governor proclaimed an election, in which each county chose one representative to the lower house for every five hundred of its population. The lower house helped to create the upper by nominating ten persons, of whom five were appointed by the President to serve in the legislative council. Of the nine counties voting, five lay within the future bounds of Ohio. Of the twenty-two representatives elected, fifteen, or nearly three-fourths, came from these Ohio counties. Finally, of the five members of the "legislative council" or senate, four were also from Ohio counties. Thus far the people had been governed, as St. Clair himself remarked, "by laws adopted or made by persons in whose appointment they had had no participation." They had grown weary of the autocratic government imposed by the Ordinance; and they greeted with pleasure the day on which the assembly began its first legislative session, September 23, 1799.

Early in the first session two petitions of Virginia veterans were presented to the Territorial House of Representatives praying for the privilege of bringing slaves into the Territory, but the House voted decisively against it. The subject of the subdivision of counties

also engaged the attention of the lower house early in the session. Petitions from the citizens of Hamilton and Adams counties asked for the creation of new counties in their respective districts. The general assembly voted in accordance with the petitions, and St. Clair vetoed their acts. This was the commencement of a long controversy between the legislative and executive branches of the Territorial government, which did not end until, embittered by political disagreements, it was carried into Congress and there decided against the governor.

Ohio

Meantime St. Clair went on erecting new counties. The original He formed the Western Reserve into Trumbull county counties. in July, 1800; he established Clermont and Fairfield in the following December, and Belmont in September, 1801. This completed the nine counties which formed the basis of the State of Ohio.1

the Territory,

For some time, both in Congress and in the Territory, Division of much had been said as to the expediency of dividing the Territory. It was urged that the area included in it was too large for efficient government. The population also was increasing so rapidly that the Territory would soon be entitled under the Ordinance of 1787 to claim Statehood, for which it was obviously unfit. Accordingly on May 7, 1800, an act was signed by the President by which all that part of the Territory lying west of a line drawn from a point on the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Kentucky to Fort Recovery and thence north to the Canadian boundary was constituted the Territory of Indiana.2

1 King, Ohio, 281.

2 Annals of Congress, Sixth Congress, 1498. When Ohio became a State these boundaries were slightly changed.

Second session of the Territorial legislature.

The first

Ohio constitutional convention.

During its second session, the assembly came to the conclusion that Article V of the Ordinance of 1787, which provided for the division of the Northwest Territory into States, required changing, because the proposed States, according to the boundaries laid down, would be "extremely unequal in territory and population, and the eastern State (Ohio) in particular would be too extensive for the purposes of internal government." So the assembly passed an act declaring that, if Congress shoud consent, the Scioto River should be the western boundary of Ohio, instead of the Ordinance line, which was to be drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami to the line between the United States and Canada. Another enactment transferred the seat of government from Chillicothe to Cincinnati.

9. THE FRAMINg of the First CONSTITUTION

The remonstrance called out by these measures did not stop short of direct protest made through two agents sent to Washington for the purpose. The national House of Representatives sustained the boundary arrangements of the Ordinance of 1787, and April 30, 1802, the United States Senate concurred in authorizing a convention of delegates from the proposed eastern State which should frame a constitution and organize a government, if deemed expedient. There was scarcely anybody in the convention who had a doubt about the expediency of the proposed step, and after but little more than three weeks of deliberation, a constitution was adopted, November 29, 1802.

1Laws of the Northwest Territory, 341. Law approved December 21, 1801.