General Putnam's Letter to Washington.

11

taken in promoting the petition is well known, and therefore needs no apology when I inform you that the signers expect that I will pursue measures to have it laid before Congress; under these circumstances I beg leave to put the petition into your Excellency's hands, and ask with the greatest assurance your patronage of it." He suggests a chain of forts, say twenty miles. apart, extending from the Ohio to the Lake by the Scioto or Muskingum. His letter concludes thus: "The petitioners conceive that sound policy dictates the measure, and that Congress ought to lose no time in establishing some such chains of forts as has been hinted at, and in procuring the tract of country petitioned for, of the natives; for the moment this is done, and agreeable terms offered to the settlers, many of the petitioners are determined, not only to become adventurers, but actually to remove themselves to this country; and. there is not the least doubt but other valuable citizens will follow their example, and the probability is that the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio will be filled with inhabitants, and the faithful subjects of these United States so established on the waters of the Ohio and the lakes, as to banish forever the idea of our Western territory falling under the dominion of any European power, the frontiers of the old states will be effectually secured from savage alarms, and the new will have little to fear from their insults."

In this letter General Putnam speaks of townships six miles square, with reservations for the ministry and schools-probably the first suggestion of the kind. General Washington immediately transmits this petition, with a copy of General Putnam's letter, to the President of Congress, accompanying it with an earnest letter.

In April, 1784, General Putnam writes again to Washington, who in his reply expresses great regret at the inaction of Congress. He says, for surely if justice and gratitude to the army, and general policy of the Union were to govern in this case, there would not be the smallest interruption in granting its request."

In January, 1786, Generals Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper issued a call for a meeting of officers and soldiers and others to form an Ohio Company. The meeting was held in Boston, March 1st, delegates being present from eight counties. General Putnam was the president of the meeting and Major Winthrop Sargent, clerk. A committee was appointed to prepare articles of association, and the Ohio Company of Associates was duly organized. The object was to raise a fund in continental certificates, for the sole purpose of buying western lands in the Western Territory and making a settlement.

The fund was not to exceed a million dollars in continental specie certificates, exclusive of one year's interest, each share to consist of one thousand dollars in certificates and one year's interest; and ten dollars in gold or silver. This interest and the gold and silver were to be used for incidental charges, expenses of agents, &c. No person was to hold more than five shares. An agent represented twenty shares.

The officers were to be five directors, a treasurer, and a secretary, to be appointed by the agents. The directors were to have sole control of the Company's fund, and the lands purchased were to be divided by lot as the agents should direct.

1. This autograph letter of General Washington, dated 2d June, 1784, is among the Putnam papers in the library of Marietta College, presented by Hon. William R. Putnam, grandson of General Rufus Putnam.

The Ohio Company's Purchase.

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Three directors were appointed in March, 1787: General Samuel H. Parsons, General Rufus Putnam and Reverend Doctor Manasseh Cutler. Major Winthrop Sargent, was made secretary. At a meeting in August, General James M. Varnum, of Rhode Island, was elected a director, and Richard Platt, of New York, treasurer. Doctor Cutler was employed to purchase of Congress land for the Company in the "Great Western Territory of the Union," and in July, 1787, went for that purpose to New York, where the Continental Congress was then in session.

The year 1787 was an eventful year. The present Constitution of the United States was framed, the ordinance for the government of the Territory North-west of the River Ohio was enacted, and the purchase of land was made by the Ohio Company. The North American Review for April of this year says: "The ordinance of 1787, and the Ohio purchase were parts of one and the same transaction. The purchase would not have been made without the ordinance, and the ordinance could not have been enacted except as an essential condition of the purchase."

The contract was made for 1,500,000 acres, Congress passing an act to that effect July 27th, acceding to the terms proposed by Doctor Cutler; the ordinance for the Territory having been passed on the 13th of the month.

This is the place to speak particularly of two men in connection with this settlement. Many of the early settlers were eminent men. No other settlement of modern times can show so many-but two were especially prominent, General Rufus Putnam and Doctor Manasseh Cutler.

General Putnam early conceived the idea of an organized emigration to the West. He wrote to Washington in 1783, and again in 1784; he had previously, in 1773, explored West Florida with reference to grants from the British Government for those who had served in the French War. He presided at the meeting called to form the Ohio Company, and was chairman of the committee to draft the articles of association. He was one of the three directors first appointed, and after the purchase he was appointed Superintendent of all the business of the company relating to the settlement of the lands. He was at once appointed a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, very soon was made one of the three Judges of the Territory, and later became the Surveyor-General of the United States. Before coming to Ohio he had risen from the position of a common soldier to the rank of Brigadier-General. He had the confidence of Washington. In every position in which he was placed he succeeded. By the force of his character, by his integrity, his energy, he accomplished whatever he undertook. It is impossible to study the history of those times and the part he acted without being impressed with the solidity and excellence of his character, intellectual and executive, moral and religious. In a community of able men, many of them highly educated, General Putnam was from the first the leading man.

Doctor Cutler was not among the pioneers, though his children were; his connection and agency were especially in the purchase of the land, and in framing the ordinance of 1787. He was a highly cultivated man, a graduate of Yale College, and a member of divers philosophical societies. At that time he was pastor of a church in Eastern Massachusetts. He was at the meeting, March

The Ordinance of 1787.

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1st, 1786, was placed on the committee to draft articles, all the others being military men, and was made a director with General Putnam and General Parsons. He was appointed to purchase the land, and while making the negotiation the ordinance of 1787 was enacted.

An ordinance for the North-west Territory had been reported in. Congress in March, 1784, by a committee of which Mr. Jefferson was chairman. It prohibited slavery after 1800, but this restricting clause was stricken out. It was passed April 23d, and remained on the statute book till repealed by the ordinance of 1787. Various efforts had been made to improve it, but without success.

Dr. Cutler reached New York July 5th. On the 9th a new committee on the ordinance was appointed. On the IIth the ordinance was reported, and on the 13th it was passed, with but one vote against it. No act of legislation by any legislative body in the United States has been more highly praised than this. Mr. Webster says: "We are accustomed to praise the law-givers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787."

Judge Timothy Walker says: "It approaches as near to absolute perfection as anything to be found in the legislation of mankind."

For this immortal ordinance we are largely, perhaps chiefly, indebted to Dr Cutler. The evidence of his agency in it has been recently re-examined and presented by a writer in the North American Review, and it seems to be unanswerable. This ordinance was