gave a sufficient cohesion to the colonies to carry them through the struggle. The body politic, while wrestling with the dreadful fever of war put forth its whole strength to resist and to expel the hated enemy. And not until the fever was gone did it realize how wasted was the frame, how exhausted and almost extinguised the vital spark. In convalescence each member had time to consider how its strength had been drawn on to keep alive the others, to reflect how much better would it be if it had only taken thought of itself; and there was danger that impatience would take the place of fortitude, and unreasonable selfishness of generous sacrifice. But in nothing will this people appear greater to future ages than in their triumphant victories in the time of peace. They indeed gave to the world "the highest example of true glory; victorious over their enemies, they were victorious over themselves." Moreover, one of the greatest dangers to be apprehended from a protracted war, waged though it be to secure the liberty of a people, is, that the desire for victory will outlast the purpose for which it was sought. Vengeance, the lust of conquest, the brutish pride of force, are spirits more easily called up than laid. The English people beheaded a monarch and exiled his family for attempting to govern without parliament; and yet this done, they submitted to the government of a soldier who ruled by an army. Now the American people, coming safely through this terrible ordeal of war, had yet a most clear conception of the great principles of freedom, and for themselves and their prosperity fixed its enjoyment to be as immutable as the most solemn laws, constitutions and compacts can secure. And in the healing of domestic differences, they showed a generosity of spirit and a sacri fice of narrow advantage which were only equalled by the wisdom with which they contrived that good will should be preserved. It is an exhibition of this far-seeing and clear vision, combined with noble and generous purpose, that I desire to make the subject of this address. It consists in the cession of the Northwest territory and the ordinance for its government. The time is appropriate because the deed of cession of Virginia bears date March 1784. The place is a fit one because this Commonwealth took by far the most important part in the great transaction. The occasion is a proper one, because by that cession, and by the establishment of this seat of learning, the people who dwell within her borders challenge the applause of all the generations that shall inhabit this land. In the contemplation of this great action we find Virginia filling all the noble prophecy of Cranmer. "Wherever the bright sun of Heaven shall shine Shall be and make new nations! she shall flourish And like a mountain cedar reach her branches To all the plains about her. Her children's children shall see this and bless Heaven. The charter of Virginia granted May 23rd, 1609, by James I fixed the boundaries thus: "From the point of land called Cape or Point Comfort all along the sea coast to the northward two hundred miles and from the said point of Cape Comfort all along the sea coast to the southward two hundred miles, and all that space and circuit lying from the sea coast of the precinct aforesaid up into the land throughout from sea to sea west and northwest." From sea to sea, from This was indeed a royal grant. the Bay of Chesapeake west across great mountains and mighty rivers, piercing deep forests, bounding over broad prairies, "with a sunbeam stretching stride" to the bright waters that compass the Golden Horn, and northward to the great inland seas, to the Geysers of the Yellowstone. To such a grant there are but two limits. The king cannot give what he does not own, but here he is most prodigal. He can take away a part of what he owns and gives, and here he is again prodigal. And so like another Trent we find that royalty "comes cranking in" and “cuts me a huge half moon, a monstrous cantle out." According to Mr. Madison, the northern boundary of Virginia crossed the Delaware River above Newcastle and continuing a west-northwest course, came out of the western boundary of Pennsylvania at almost the beginning of the 42nd degree north latitude. This includes all of Delaware and Maryland and half of Pennsylvania. But the catholicism of one Charles and the debts of another fixed the Potomac as Virginia's northern boundary, and left to her only the territory south of the river and west and northwest of Pennsylvania. Down to the treaty of peace between France and England in 1763, the territory northwest of the Ohio was a part of New France. The seven year's war, 1756-1763, was remarkable for two great national duels that were in progress at the same time. England and France were pitted against each other throughout the world. Frederick was bounding hither and thither from one side to another of the little kingdom of Prussia, like a hunted tiger, tearing with tooth and claw the dogs of war that poured in upon him from Austria, Russia and France. It is difficult to say which of the two Protestant powers, Prussia or England, achieved most. There was of course a great difference; one was contending for life, the other for a world. Each won the prize for which it struggled. Two great events in the world's contest decided it. In 1757 Clive halts on the banks of the Indian Rubicon and at a council of war votes with the majority against a battle. But an hour alone communing with his own great spirit, and with Nature, and all is changed. The river is passed, and Plassey lays Bengal at the feet of England. In 1759 half a world from India, Wolfe espies the narrow path that lends from the St. Lawrence up the steep mountain side to the heights of Abraham. The next morning he is victorious, dying at the moment when he has wrested Canada from the French. If it would be difficult to determine what England would have been without her great empire of India, how impossible to conceive the full consequence to this Republic of the ownership by our French ally of the territory northwest of the Ohio. But when the war opened the same flag was flying on the St. Lawrence, the Potomac, the Mississippi and the Ohio. Down to the year 1778, nothing had been done to reduce this.part of America to the possession of any of the colonies. Every effort of the Confederated States seemed to be needed to overcome the British armies within the regular settlements. To ask men or money for such distant enterprises as the conquest of Illinois would have been considered as evidence of madness. The Romans ostentatiously bought and sold among each other the land on which Hannibal was camped. But this was the very center of the domain of the Republic. To the contrary the territory northwest of the Ohio had been hardly explored. It was occupied by a few thousand French settlers, by tribes of hostile Indians, and guarded by four or five British posts. Let us suppose, however, that nothing had been done towards its reduction, that the negotiations for the final treaty of peace had found it in the same condition it was upon the breaking out of the The map of America would have been strangely and most disastrously altered. There can be no doubt that Britian would have scoffed at the idea of including it war. within the boundary of the United States. Our only claim would have rested upon the fact that it was embraced in the magniloquent charters of the Stuarts. But, as has been noticed, their prodigal expressions had not stood the least in the way when there were favorites to reward or creditors to silence. The House of Hanover had as little respect for the honor as for the geography of a dynasty upon whose ruins it was built. So that instead of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes we should have had for boundaries the Alleghanies and the Ohio. the First Consul brought Louisiana to the market, Great Britain would have been an eager and a powerful bidder for the great domain that lies on the farther bank of our noblest river. Whether George Rogers Clarke saw these things in the light of such mighty consequences, we do not know. To him is due the honor and renown of such bold and vigorous action as prevented them. Born in the County of Albemarle in 1753, we find him at the age of twenty-three among the settlers beyond the mountains, anxious to learn their condition' and wants and devising methods by which they should receive recognition as part and parcel of their native commonwealth. Returning home again by his influence Virginia erects the County of Kentucky. In the loneliness of his journeyings across the great mountain ranges, in the silence of his musings as day by day and night by night the mighty flow of the Ohio carries him into deeper and still deeper wildernesses, his thoughts take on the complexion which belongs to a genius born to great enterprises, and borrow strength from the contemplation of nature's calm and resistless power. Above the mountain tops, reflected back again in the broad bosom of the silent river, he sees the star of Virginia's empire rise. And so it was to rise, not as one star, but as many stars. And she with simple |