Part 2 (1/2)

”Land!” was the first cry of the storm-tossed mariners of Columbus. For three centuries the leading fact of American history has been that soon after 1600 a body of Europeans, mostly Englishmen, settled on the edge of the greatest piece of unoccupied agricultural land in the temperate zone, and proceeded to subdue it to the uses of man. For three centuries the chief task of American mankind has been to go up westward against the land and to possess it. Our wars, our independence, our state building, our political democracy, our plasticity with respect to immigration, our mobility of thought, our ardor of initiative, our mildness and our prosperity, all are but incidents or products of this prime historical fact.*

* Lecture by J. Franklin Jameson before the Trustees of the Carnegie Inst.i.tution, at Was.h.i.+ngton, in 1912, printed in the ”History Teacher's Magazine,” vol. IV, 1913, p. 5.

It is seldom that one's attention is so caught and held as by the happy suggestion that American interest in land or rather interest in American land-began with the discovery of the continent. Even a momentary consideration of the subject, however, is sufficient to indicate how important was the desire for land as a motive of colonization. The foundation of European governmental and social organizations had been laid in feudalism-a system of landholding and service. And although European states might have lost their original feudal character, and although new cla.s.ses had arisen, land-holding still remained the basis of social distinction.

One can readily imagine that America would be considered as El Dorado, where one of the rarest commodities as well as one of the most precious possessions was found in almost unlimited quant.i.ties that family estates were sought in America and that to the lower cla.s.ses it seemed as if a heaven were opening on earth. Even though available land appeared to be almost unlimited in quant.i.ty and easy to acquire, it was a possession that was generally increasing in value. Of course wasteful methods of farming wore out some lands, especially in the South; but, taking it by and large throughout the country, with time and increasing density of population the value of the land was increasing. The acquisition of land was a matter of investment or at least of speculation. In fact, the purchase of land was one of the favorite get-rich-quick schemes of the time. George Was.h.i.+ngton was not the only man who invested largely in western lands. A list of those who did would read like a political or social directory of the time. Patrick Henry, James Wilson, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, Chancellor Kent, Henry Knox, and James Monroe were among them.*

* Not all the speculators were able to keep what they acquired.

Fifteen million acres of land in Kentucky were offered for sale in 1800 for nonpayment of taxes. Channing, ”History of the United States,” vol.

IV, p. 91.

It is therefore easy to understand why so much importance attached to the claims of the several States and to the cession of that western land by them to the United States. But something more was necessary. If the land was to attain anything like its real value, settlers must be induced to occupy it. Of course it was possible to let the people go out as they pleased and take up land, and to let the Government collect from them as might be possible at a fixed rate. But experience during colonial days had shown the weakness of such a method, and Congress was apparently determined to keep under its own control the region which it now possessed, to provide for orderly sale, and to permit settlement only so far as it might not endanger the national interests. The method of land sales and the question of government for the western country were recognized as different aspects of the same problem. The Virginia offer of cession forced the necessity of a decision, and no sooner was the Virginia offer framed in an acceptable form, in 1783, than two committees were appointed by Congress to report upon these two questions of land sales and of government.

Thomas Jefferson was made chairman of both these committees. He was then forty years old and one of the most remarkable men in the country. Born on the frontier-his father from the upper middle cla.s.s, his mother ”a Randolph”-he had been trained to an outdoor life; but he was also a prodigy in his studies and entered William and Mary College with advanced standing at the age of eighteen. Many stories are told of his precocity and ability, all of which tend to forecast the later man of catholic tastes, omnivorous interest, and extensive but superficial knowledge; he was a strange combination of natural aristocrat and theoretical democrat, of philosopher and practical politician. After having been a student in the law office of George Wythe, and being a friend of Patrick Henry, Jefferson early espoused the cause of the Revolution, and it was his hand that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He then resigned from Congress to a.s.sist in the organization of government in his own State. For two years and a half he served in the Virginia a.s.sembly and brought about the repeal of the law of entailment, the abolition of primogeniture, the recognition of freedom of conscience, and the encouragement of education. He was Governor of Virginia for two years and then, having declined reelection, returned to Congress in 1783. There, among his other accomplishments, as chairman of the committee, he reported the Treaty of Peace and, as chairman of another committee, devised and persuaded Congress to adopt a national system of coinage which in its essentials is still in use.

It is easy to criticize Jefferson and to pick flaws in the things that he said as well as in the things that he did, but practically every one admits that he was closely in touch with the course of events and understood the temper of his contemporaries. In this period of transition from the old order to the new, he seems to have expressed the genius of American inst.i.tutions better than almost any other man of his generation. He possessed a quality that enabled him, in the Declaration of Independence, to give voice to the hopes and aspirations of a rising nationality and that enabled him in his own State to bring about so many reforms.

Just how much actual influence Thomas Jefferson had in the framing of the American land policy is not clear. Although the draft of the committee report in 1784 is in Jefferson's handwriting, it is altogether probable that more credit is to be given to Thomas Hutchins, the Geographer of the United States, and to William Grayson of Virginia, especially for the final form which the measure took; for Jefferson retired from the chairmans.h.i.+p and had already gone to Europe when the Land Ordinance was adopted by Congress in 1785. This ordinance has been superseded by later enactments, to which references are usually made; but the original ordinance is one of the great pieces of American legislation, for it contained the fundamentals of the American land system which, with the modifications experience has introduced, has proved to be permanently workable and which has been envied and in several instances copied by other countries. Like almost all successful inst.i.tutions of that sort, the Land Ordinance of 1785 was not an immediate creation but was a development out of former practices and customs and was in the nature of a compromise. Its essential features were the method of survey and the process for the sale of land. New England, with its town system, had in the course of its expansion been accustomed to proceed in an orderly method but on a relatively small scale. The South, on the other hand, had granted lands on a larger scale and had permitted individual selection in a haphazard manner. The plan which Congress adopted was that of the New England survey with the Southern method of extensive holdings. The system is repellent in its rectangular orderliness, but it made the process of recording t.i.tles easy and complete, and it was capable of indefinite expansion. These were matters of cardinal importance, for in the course of one hundred and forty years the United States was to have under its control nearly two thousand million acres of land.

The primary feature of the land policy was the orderly survey in advance of sale. In the next place the towns.h.i.+p was taken as the unit, and its size was fixed at six miles square. Provision was then made for the sale of towns.h.i.+ps alternately entire and by sections of one mile square, or 640 acres each. In every towns.h.i.+p a section was reserved for educational purposes; that is, the land was to be disposed of and the proceeds used for the development of public schools in that region. And, finally, the United States reserved four sections in the center of each towns.h.i.+p to be disposed of at a later time. It was expected that a great increase in the value of the land would result, and it was proposed that the Government should reap a part of the profits.

It is evident that the primary purpose of the public land policy as first developed was to acquire revenue for the Government; but it was also evident that there was a distinct purpose of encouraging settlement. The two were not incompatible, but the greater interest of the Government was in obtaining a return for the property.

The other committee of which Jefferson was chairman made its report of a plan for the government of the western territory upon the very day that the Virginia cession was finally accepted, March 1, 1784; and with some important modifications Jefferson's ordinance, or the Ordinance of 1784 as it was commonly called, was ultimately adopted. In this case Jefferson rendered a service similar to that of framing the Declaration of Independence. His plan was somewhat theoretical and visionary, but largely practical, and it was constructive work of a high order, displaying not so much originality as sympathetic appreciation of what had already been done and an instinctive forecast of future development. Jefferson seemed to be able to gather up ideas, some conscious and some latent in men's minds, and to express them in a form that was generally acceptable.

It is interesting to find in the Articles of Confederation (Article XI) that, ”Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and ent.i.tled to all the advantages of this Union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.” The real importance of this article lay in the suggestion of an enlargement of the Confederation. The Confederation was never intended to be a union of only thirteen States. Before the cession of their western claims it seemed to be inevitable that some of the States should be broken up into several units. At the very time that the formation of the Confederation was under discussion Vermont issued a declaration of independence from New York and New Hamps.h.i.+re, with the expectation of being admitted into the Union. It was impolitic to recognize the appeal at that time, but it seems to have been generally understood that sooner or later Vermont would come in as a full-fledged State.

It might have been a revolutionary suggestion by Maryland, when the cession of western lands was under discussion, that Congress should have sole power to fix the western boundaries of the States, but her further proposal was not even regarded as radical, that Congress should ”lay out the land beyond the boundaries so ascertained into separate and independent states.” It seems to have been taken as a matter of course in the procedure of Congress and was accepted by the States. But the idea was one thing; its carrying out was quite another. Here was a great extent of western territory which would be valuable only as it could be sold to prospective settlers. One of the first things these settlers would demand was protection-protection against the Indians, possibly also against the British and the Spanish, and protection in their ordinary civil life. The former was a detail of military organization and was in due time provided by the establishment of military forts and garrisons; the latter was the problem which Jefferson's committee was attempting to solve.

The Ordinance of 1784 disregarded the natural physical features of the western country and, by degrees of lat.i.tude and meridians of longitude, arbitrarily divided the public domain into rectangular districts, to the first of which the following names were applied: Sylvania, Michigania, Cherronesus, a.s.senisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Was.h.i.+ngton, Polypotamia, Pelisipia. The amus.e.m.e.nt which this absurd and thoroughly Jeffersonian nomenclature is bound to cause ought not to detract from the really important features of the Ordinance. In each of the districts into which the country was divided the settlers might be authorized by Congress, for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng a temporary government, to adopt the const.i.tution and laws of any one of the original States. When any such area should have twenty thousand free inhabitants it might receive authority from Congress to establish a permanent const.i.tution and government and should be ent.i.tled to a representative in Congress with the right of debating but not of voting. And finally, when the inhabitants of any one of these districts should equal in number those of the least populous of the thirteen original States, their delegates should be admitted into Congress on an equal footing.

Jefferson's ordinance, though adopted, was never put into operation. Various explanations have been offered for this failure to give it a fair trial. It has been said that Jefferson himself was to blame. In the original draft of his ordinance Jefferson had provided for the abolition of slavery in the new States after the year 1800, and when Congress refused to accept this clause Jefferson, in a manner quite characteristic, seemed to lose all interest in the plan. There were, however, other objections, for there were those who felt that it was somewhat indefinite to promise admission into the Confederation of certain sections of the country as soon as their population should equal in number that of the least populous of the original States. If the original States should increase in population to any extent, the new States might never be admitted. But on the other hand, if from any cause the population of one of the smaller States should suddenly decrease, might not the resulting influx of new States prove dangerous?

But the real reason why the ordinance remained a dead letter was that, while it fixed the limits within which local governments might act, it left the creation of those governments wholly to the future. At Vincennes, for example, the ordinance made no change in the political habits of the people. ”The local government bowled along merrily under this system. There was the greatest abundance of government, for the more the United States neglected them the more authority their officials a.s.sumed.”* Nor could the ordinance operate until settlers became numerous. It was partly, indeed, to hasten settlement that the Ordinance of 1785 for the survey and sale of the public lands was pa.s.sed.**

* Jacob Piat Dunn, Jr., ”Indiana: A Redemption from Slavery,”

1888.

** Although the machinery was set in motion, by the appointment of men and the beginning of work, it was not until 1789 that the survey of the first seven ranges of towns.h.i.+ps was completed and the land offered for sale.

In the meantime efforts were being made by Congress to improve the unsatisfactory ordinance for the government of the West. Committees were appointed, reports were made, and at intervals of weeks or months the subject was considered. Some amendments were actually adopted, but Congress, notoriously inefficient, hesitated to undertake a fundamental revision of the ordinance. Then, suddenly, in July, 1787, after a brief period of adjournment, Congress took up this subject and within a week adopted the now famous Ordinance of 1787.

The stimulus which aroused Congress to activity seems to have come from the Ohio Company. From the very beginning of the public domain there was a strong sentiment in favor of using western land for settlement by Revolutionary soldiers. Some of these lands had been offered as bounties to encourage enlistment, and after the war the project of soldiers' settlement in the West was vigorously agitated. The Ohio Company of a.s.sociates was made up of veterans of the Revolution, who were looking for homes in the West, and of other persons who were willing to support a worthy cause by a subscription which might turn out to be a good investment. The company wished to buy land in the West, and Congress had land which it wished to sell. Under such circ.u.mstances it was easy to strike a bargain. The land, as we have seen, was roughly estimated at one dollar an acre; but, as the company wished to purchase a million acres, it demanded and obtained wholesale rates of two-thirds of the usual price. It also obtained the privilege of paying at least a portion in certificates of Revolutionary indebtedness, some of which were worth about twelve and a half cents on the dollar. Only a little calculation is required to show that a large quant.i.ty of land was therefore sold at about eight or nine cents an acre. It was in connection with this land sale that the Ordinance of 1787 was adopted.

The promoter of this enterprise undertaken by the Ohio Company was Mana.s.seh Cutler of Ipswich, Ma.s.sachusetts, a clergyman by profession who had served as a chaplain in the Revolutionary War. But his interests and activities extended far beyond the bounds of his profession. When the people of his parish were without proper medical advice he applied himself to the study and practice of medicine. At about the same time he took up the study of botany, and because of his describing several hundred species of plants he is regarded as the pioneer botanist of New England. His next interest seems to have grown out of his Revolutionary a.s.sociations, for it centered in this project for settlement of the West, and he was appointed the agent of the Ohio Company. It was in this capacity that he had come to New York and made the bargain with Congress which has just been described. Cutler must have been a good lobbyist, for Congress was not an efficient body, and unremitting labor, as well as diplomacy, was required for so large and important a matter. Two things indicate his method of procedure. In the first place he found it politic to drop his own candidate for the governors.h.i.+p of the new territory and to endorse General Arthur St. Clair, then President of Congress. And in the next place he accepted the suggestion of Colonel William Duer for the formation of another company, known as the Scioto a.s.sociates, to purchase five million acres of land on similar terms, ”but that it should be kept a profound secret.” It was not an accident that Colonel Duer was Secretary of the Board of the Treasury through whom these purchases were made, nor that a.s.sociated with him in this speculation were ”a number of the princ.i.p.al characters in the city.” These land deals were completed afterwards, but there is little doubt that there was a direct connection between them and the adoption of the ordinance of government.

The Ordinance of 1787 was so successful in its working and its renown became so great that claims of authors.h.i.+p, even for separate articles, have been filed in the name of almost every person who had the slightest excuse for being considered. Thousands of pages have been written in eulogy and in dispute, to the helpful clearing up of some points and to the obscuring of others. But the authors.h.i.+p of this or of that clause is of much less importance than the scope of the doc.u.ment as a working plan of government. As such the Ordinance of 1787 owes much to Jefferson's Ordinance of 1784. Under the new ordinance a governor and three judges were to be appointed who, along with their other functions, were to select such laws as they thought best from the statute books of all the States. The second stage in self-government would be reached when the population contained five thousand free men of age; then the people were to have a representative legislature with the usual privilege of making their own laws. Provision was made for dividing the whole region northwest of the Ohio River into three or four or five districts and the final stage of government was reached when any one of these districts had sixty thousand free inhabitants, for it might then establish its own const.i.tution and government and be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States.