Ohio History Journal

ORATION OF HON. GEORGE F. HOAR.

THERE are doubtless many persons in this audience who

have gathered here as to their Father's house. They salute

their Mother on her birthday with the prayer and the con-

fident hope that the life which now completes its first cen-

tury may be immortal as liberty. If we were here only to

do honor to Marietta-to celebrate the planting of this

famous town, coeval with the Republic, seated by the beau-

tiful river, her annals crowded with memories of illustrious

soldiers and statesmen-this assemblage would be well

justified and accounted for.

But there is far more than this in the occasion. The

states which compose what was once the Northwest Terri-

tory may properly look upon this as their birthday rather

than that upon which they were admitted into the Union.

The company who came to Marietta with Rufus Putnam

April 7, 1788, came to found, not one State, but five, whose

institutions they demanded should be settled, before they

started, by an irrevocable compact. These five children,

born of a great parentage and in a great time, are, as we

count the life of nations, still in earliest youth.  Yet they

already contain within themselves all the resources of a

great empire. Here is the stimulant climate of the tem-

perate zone, where brain and body are at their best. Here

will be a population of more than fifteen millions at

the next census. Here is an area about equal to that of

the Austrian Empire, and larger than that of any other

country in Europe except Russia. Here is a wealth more

than three times that of any country on this continent ex-

cept the Republic of which they are a part-a wealth a

thousand times that of Massachusetts, including Maine, a

hundred years ago; one-third larger than that of Spain;

equal to that of Holland and Belgium and Denmark com-

bined; equal now, I suppose, to that of Italy; already

half as great as that of the vast empire of Russia, with its

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.         17

population of more than a hundred millions, whose posses-

sions cover a sixth part of the habitable globe. Below the

earth are exhaustless stores of iron, and coal, and salt, and

copper. Above, field, and farm, and forest, can easily feed

and clothe and shelter the entire population of Europe, with

her sixty empires, kingdoms and republics.

The yearly product of the manufacture of these five

States is estimated by the best authorities at from twelve

to fifteen hundred millions of dollars. Everything needed

for a perfect workshop in all the mechanic and manufac-

turing arts has nature fashioned and gathered here,

within easy reach, as nowhere else on earth. These states

had, in 1886, forty-one thousand eight hundred and

ninety-three miles of railway; equal, within two hun-

dred miles, to that of Great Britain and France com-

bined; nearly three times that of Austria or Russia, and

about twice that of Germany; while mighty rivers and

mightier lakes already bear along their borders a commerce

rivaling that of the ports of the Old World, to fair cities

and prosperous towns, each one of which has its own won-

derful and fascinating story. And above all this, and better

than all this, man, the noblest growth this soil supplies,

descended of a great race, from which he has inherited the

love of liberty, the sense of duty, the instinct of honor, is

here to relate and celebrate his century of stainless history.

Whatever of these things nature has not given is to be

traced directly to the institutions of civil and religious lib-

erty the wisdom of your fathers established; above all, to

the great Ordinance. As the great jurist and statesman of

Ohio said more than fifty years ago: "The spirit of the

Ordinance of 1787 pervades them all." Here was the first

human government under which absolute civil and re-

ligious liberty has always prevailed. Here no witch was

ever hanged or burned. No heretic was ever molested.

Here no slave was ever born or dwelt. When older states

or nations, where the chains of human bondage have been

broken, shall utter the proud boast, "With a great sum

 

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18   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

obtained I this freedom," each sister of this imperial group

-Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin-may lift

her queenly head with the yet prouder answer, " But I was

free-born."

They were destined, also, to determine the character and

decide the fate of the great Republic of which they are a

part, and, through that, of constitutional liberty on earth.

In saying this I speak with careful consideration of the

meaning of the words. I wish, above all things, on this

occasion, to avoid extravagance. I hope that what is said

here may bear the examination of students of history in

this most skeptical and critical age, and may be recalled on

this spot without a blush, by those who shall come after

us, for many a future centennial.

There is no better instance than this of the effect of

well-ordered liberty on the fortune of a people. Nature is

no respecter of persons in her bounty. The buried race

who built yonder mound dwelt here for ages, under the

same sky, on the bank of the same river, with the same

climate and soil. We know not who they were. Their

institutions and government, their arts and annals have

perished in a deeper oblivion than that which covers the

builders of the Pyramids-which moved Sir Thomas

Browne to his sublimest utterance: " History sinketh be-

neath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazealy

through these deserts, asketh of her, 'Who builded them? '

and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth

not." The Indian and the Frenchman dwelt here, but

could not hold their place. The growth of city and town

and country, the wealth of the soil and the mine, the com-

merce of lake and river, the happiness and virtue of the

fireside, the culture of the college, the three million chil-

dren at school, the statute book on whose page there is no

shame, are due to the great and wise men who gave you,

as your birthday gift, universal liberty, universal suffrage,

equal rights and inviolable faith.

There is no obscurity in the date or in the transaction.

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.        19

History pours upon the event its blazing sunlight. We see

it, in all its relations, more clearly than it was seen by

those who took part in it; more clearly than we behold

the events of our own time. No passion disturbs our

judgment, leading us either to exaggerate or depreciate.

There is room for no feeling in our bosoms to-day but an

honorable pride in our ancestry and an honorable love of

our country. "It is a tale brief and familiar to all; for the

examples by which you may still be happy are to be found,

not abroad, men of Athens, but at home."

History furnishes countless examples in every age of

heroic achievement and of great enterprise, in war and

peace, wisely conducted to successful issue. But the

events which men remember and celebrate, which become

the household words and stirring memories of nations, the

sacred Olympiads by which time is measured, and from

which eras take their date, are those which mark the great

advances of Liberty on to new ground which she has held.

Such, by unanimous consent of the race to which we be-

long, are the enactment of Magna Charta, the compact on

board the Mayflower, the Declaration of Independence,

the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, and

later, in our own day, the Proclamation of Emancipation.

I believe the event which you celebrate is not behind any

of these, whether in good fortune as to time, in the char-

acter of the actors, in the wisdom which guided them, or

in the far-reaching beneficence of the result.

I am speaking to men who know their own history.

I can but repeat-we gather on such occasions but to

repeat - familiar stories -

"Our lips must tell them to our sons,

And they again to theirs."

You know better than I do the miracle of history

which brought the founders of the Northwest to this spot

at the precise time when alone they could bring with

them the institutions which moulded its destiny. A few

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20    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

years earlier or a few years later and the great Ordinance

would have been impossible.

Look for a moment at the forty-eight men who came here

a hundred years ago to found the first American civil gov-

ernment, whose jurisdiction did not touch tide-water. See

what manner of men they were; in what school they had

been trained; what traditions they had inherited. I think

you must agree that of all the men who ever lived on earth

fit to perform that "ancient, primitive, and heroical work,"

the founding of a state, they were the fittest. Puritanism,

as a distinct, vital, and predominant power, endured less

than a century in England.  It appears early in the reign

of Elizabeth, who came to the throne in 1558, and departs

at the restoration of Charles II, in 1660. But in that brief

time it was the preserver, and may almost be called the cre-

ator, of English freedom. The Puritans created the modern

English House of Commons. That House, when they took

their seats in it, was the feeble and timid instrument of

despotism. When they left it, it was what it has ever since

been, the strongest, freest, most venerable legislative body

the world had ever seen. When they took their seats in it,

it was little more than the register of the King's command.

When they left it, it was the main depository of the na-

tional dignity and the national will. King, and minister,

and prelate, who stood in their way, they brought to the

bar and to the block. In that brief but crowded century

they had made the name of Englishman the highest title

of honor upon earth. A great historian has said " the dread

of their invincible army was on all the inhabitants of the

Island."  He might have added, the dread of their invin-

tible leader was on all the inhabitants of Europe.

Puritanism had not spent itself as a force in England

when it crossed the sea with Bradford and Winthrop.

What a genius for creating the institutions of liberty and

laying deep the foundations of order was in that handful of

men who almost at the same instant framed the first written

constitution that ever existed, and devised the New Eng-

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.       21

land town, that unmatched mechanism of local self-gov-

ernment, which has survived every dynasty in Europe and

existed for two centuries and a half almost without a

change.

The forty-one men who landed from the Mayflower at

Plymouth and the forty-eight men who came down the

Ohio in the Mayflower to Marietta were of the same race

and the same faith. It was one hundred and sixty-eight

years from the planting of the Puritan Commonwealth to

the founding of the great Northwest, destined so soon to

become, and, as it seems, forever to remain, the seat and

center of empire on this continent. But in the meantime

that faith had been broadened, and softened, and liberalized.

The training of the race in that mighty gymnasium had

changed the spirit of English Puritanism into the spirit of

American liberty.

To Americans there is no more delightful and instructive

study than to trace the hand of a divine Providence in that

agelong development of the capacity to take their full and

leading part in the achievement of independence, in build-

ing the states, in laying the foundation of empire in the

little English sect, contending at first only for bare tolera-

tion. See how the Power which planted the coal, whose

subtle chemistry gets ready the iron for the use of the new

race, which dismisses the star on its pathway through the

skies, promising that in a thousand years it shall return

again true to its hour, and keeps his word, gets his children

ready that they shall not fail in the appointed time for the

fulfillment of his high design.

First. The history of the men who founded Ohio and

of their ancestors since they landed at Plymouth and Salem

was essentially a military history. It was a training which

developed, more than any other, the best quality of the in-

dividual soldier, whether for command or for service. There

never was West Point education like that of this military

school. Lord Chatham declared to the House of Lords in

1777: "America has carried you through four wars, and

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22    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

will now carry you to your death. I venture to tell your

Lordships that the American gentry will make officers fit

to command the troops of all the European powers."

To many of them it was a life under arms. Every boy

was a sharp-shooter. The Indian wars, where, as Fisher

Ames said, heroes are not celebrated, but are formed; the

great struggle with France, from whose glory and victory

your fathers were never absent, of which a continent was

the prize; the great wars of William and Mary, and of

Queen Anne; Fort Edward; William Henry; Crown Point;

Martinique; the Havana; twice captured Louisburg, which

they took the second time with its own cannon; Quebec,

where they heard the shout of triumph which filled the

dying ear of Wolfe, and where, at last, the lilies went down

before the lion, never again, but for a brief period in Louis-

iana, to float as an emblem of dominion over any part of

the American continent-these were the school-rooms of

their discipline. Whatever share others may have taken,

the glory of that contest is your fathers' glory that victory

is your fathers' victory. Then came twelve years of hollow

and treacherous truce, and then -the Revolution.

Second. It was not to the school of war alone that God

put these, his master-builders of States. For a century

and a half every man played his part where the most im-

portant functions were those managed most directly by the

people, under a system which, in all domestic affairs, was

self-government in everything but name. They introduced

all the great social changes, which prepared the way for

the Republic, and made it inevitable. As has already been

said, they adopted the first written social compact, and de-

vised the town system. They also abolished primogeni-

ture, which act, Mr. Webster declared, "fixed the future

frame and form of their government." De Tocqueville

says: "The law of descent was the last step of equality.

When the legislator has regulated the law of inheritance

he may rest from his labor. The machine once put in

motion will go on for ages and advance, as if self-guided,

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.       23

toward a given point." They established universal educa-

tion. They incorporated into their State the ancient cus-

toms of Kent, by virtue of which every child was born free

and the power asserted to devise estates free from all feudal

burdens. They also abolished entails.

Third. During the whole time the resources of a skillful

statesmanship were taxed to the utmost to maintain their

free institutions against the power of England, where every

dynasty in turn-Stuart, Cromwell, Hanover-looked jeal-

ously upon the infant Commonwealths. The Massachusetts

charter conferred upon the colony the power only of mak-

ing laws not repugnant to the laws of England, and re-

served a veto to the crown. The Puritan magistrates

shrewdly resisted the desire of their people for a code, and

contrived that these great changes should, as far as might

be, be introduced as customs, so as not to be submitted to

the authorities in England. The Massachusetts Body of

Liberties was sent about from town to town in manuscript,

and was never printed until 1843. There was never a time

when the mighty power of England was not a menace to

our ancestors, from the first settlement throughout the

whole of that long strife, which did not really come to an

end until Jay's treaty and Anthony Wayne's victory on the

Maumee, in 1794.

Fourth. They had a religious belief which held that the

law of God was the supreme practical rule in the conduct

of States. However narrow and bigoted at times in its

application, we find throughout their history a conscien-

tious and reverent endeavor to govern their Commonwealth

by this rule. Thus the theological discussions in which

they delighted, the constant consideration of the relation

of man to his Creator and to the supreme law of duty,

became blended with that of their natural rights and their

rights under the charter and the British Constitution, and

of the true boundary which separates liberty and authority

in the State. So, when the time for Independence came,

they had decided the Revolution in their great debate

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24    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

before a gun was fired. It is said the cannon of the Union

armies in the late war were shotted with the reply to

Hayne. The ammunition of the Continental soldiery in

their earlier war for freedom came from the discussion of

the pulpit and the farmer's fireside.

Fifth. There would have been at best but a provincial

and narrow character had New England alone furnished the

theater on which the scene was to be acted. The great

drama of the Revolution brought her people under an in-

fluence to which they owe more than they have always

acknowledged. I mean that of their allies and compatriots

of the other colonies, who were their associates in that

mighty struggle, especially that of Virginia. John Jay

and Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and Gouver-

neur Morris, John Dickinson and Luther Martin were new

and powerful teachers to the little communities, who, with

every faculty of intellect and heart, were studying the

fundamental principles of political science under Otis and

the Adamses. But there now rose upon their sky the great

Virginia constellation. If Virginia were held to the Union

by no other tie she is forever bound to it by that tie, ever

strongest to a generous spirit, the benefits she has conferred

upon it. We shall see how her example of self-denial made

possible the event we celebrate, and how the wisdom of

her statesmen gave the event its character of far-reaching

and perpetual beneficence. The teachers of New England

now brought their pupils from the school where they had so

well learned the principles of natural right and civil liberty

to the great university where they were to take their degree

in the building of states and framing constitutions under

Washington and Jefferson, and Patrick Henry and Madison,

and the Lees and Marshall. Within twelve years before

the settlement at Marietta eleven of the thirteen States

formed their constitutions. The convention that framed the

Constitution of the United States was in session when the

Ordinance of 1787 was passed.

Sixth. This is by no means all. There is something

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.       25

more than the love of liberty-something more than the

habit of successful resistance to oppression and the courage

and power to assert the rights of mankind-needed to fit

men to construct great states on sure foundations. The

generation which was on the stage when the Northwest

was planted had received another lesson. They had been

taught the necessity of strengthening their political insti-

tutions, so that they should afford due security for property

and social order and enable government to exert promptly

the power needed for its own protection, without which it

cannot long endure. Shays' insurrection in Massachusetts

in 1787 was inspired mainly by the desire to prevent the

enforcement of debts by the courts. To it was doubtless

due the clause in the Ordinance of 1787,-inserted also in

the Constitution-forbidding the passage of any law im-

pairing the obligation of contracts. The disrespect with

which the Continenal Congress is sometimes spoken of is

unjust. Its want of vigor was due to the limitation put

upon its powers by the States, and to no want of wisdom

or energy in its members. That body will ever hold a

great place in history-if it had done nothing else-which

declared Independence, which called Washington to the

chief command, which began its labors with the great

state papers which Chatham declared surpassed the master-

pieces of antiquity, and ended them with the Ordinance of

1787. But the States, jealous of all authority but their own

refused to confer on Congress the essential power of tax-

ation and the means to enforce its own resolves. The effect

of this short-sighted jealousy, in increasing and prolonging

the burden of the war and in lowering the national

character with foreign nations after it was over, the people

had learned, to their great cost.

From all this experience there had come to the men

who were on the stage in this country in 1787 an aptness

for the construction of constitutions and great permanent

statutes such as the world never saw before or since.

Their supremacy in this respect is as unchallenged as

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20    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

that of the great authors of the reign of Elizabeth in the

drama.

Governor Stoughton said, in 1668, that "God sifted a

whole nation, that he might send choice grain over into

this wilderness." The quality of the grain continued to

improve under his care. Never did the great Husband-

man choose his seed more carefully than when he planted

Ohio. I do not believe the same number of persons fitted

for the highest duties and responsibilities of war and

peace could ever have been found in a community of the

same size as were among the men who founded Marietta

in the spring of 1788, or who joined them within twelve

months therafter. " Many of our associates," said Var-

num, on the first 4th of July, "are distinguished for

wealth, education, and virtue; and others, for the most

part, are reputable, industrious, well-informed planters,

farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics."  "No colony in

America," said Washington, " was ever settled under such

favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at

the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength

will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers

personally, and there never were men better calculated to

promote the welfare of such a community." "The best

men in Connecticut and Massachusetts," writes Carring-

ton to James Monroe, "a description of men who will fix

the character and politics throughout the whole territory,

and which will probably endure to the latest period of

time." "I know them all," cried Lafayette, when the list

of nearly fifty military officers, who were among the pio-

neers, were read to him in Marietta, in 1825, the tender

memories of forty years thronging his aged bosom-"I

know them all. I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown,

and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave."

Washington andVarnum, as well as Carrington and Lafay-

ette, dwell chiefly, as was Washington's fashion, upon

the personal quality of the men, and not upon their pub-

lic offices or titles. Indeed, to be named with such com-

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.        27

mendation, upon personal knowledge, by the cautious and

conscientious Washington, was to a veteran soldier better

than being knighted on the field of battle. They were

the very best specimens of the New England character

that could be found. They were among the most stead-

fast, constant, liberty-loving men that ever lived. Self-

government had become to them a prime necessity of

life; but it was that self-government, the sublimest thing

in the universe except its Creator, by which a human will

governs itself in obedience to a law higher than its own

desire. They were men of a very sincere and simple

religious faith. The belief in a personal immortality,

that hope's perpetual breath, without which no gift of

noblest origin ever cometh to man or nation, was to them

a living reality. The scene which Burns describes in

the Cotter's Saturday Night, from which he says, " Old

Scotia's grandeur springs," was of nightly occurrence in

the cabins of these soldiers and Indian-fighters.

The little company contained many military officers of

high rank, men who had performed important exploits in

war, friends and associates of Washington and Lafayette,

and statesmen who had been leaders of the people in the

days before the Revolution. If that assembly had been

called, in the Providence of God, to assert the rights of

Englishmen, as did the barons of Magna Charta; or to

make an original social compact, as did the men on board

the Mayflower; or to found towns and create a body of

liberties and customs, as did the men of from 1620 to

1650; or, to state the case between the fundamental rights

of human nature and King George, as did the men of the

Declaration in 1776; or to conduct and lead and plan a

great defensive war, or to fashion a constitution for state or

nation, they would have been equal to the task.

There are many names that rise to the lips to-day.

The settlers are not here; but their children are here. The

men who knew them, or who have heard their story from

the lips of fathers and mothers who knew them, are here.

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28    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

Your hearts are full of their memories.  The stately

figures of illustrious warriors and statesmen, the forms of

sweet and comely matrons, living and real as if you had

seen them yesterday, rise before you now. Varnum, than

whom a courtlier figure never entered the presence of a

Queen-soldier, statesman, scholar, orator,-whom Thomas

Paine, no mean judge, who had heard the greatest Eng-

lish orators in the greatest days of English eloquence, de-

clared the most eloquent man he had ever heard speak;Whip-

ple, gallant seaman as ever trod a deck,-a man whom Far-

ragut or Nelson would have loved as a brother; first of

the glorious procession of American naval heroes; first to

fire an American gun at the flag of England on the sea;

first to unfurl the flag of his own country on the Thames;

first pioneer of the river commerce of the Ohio to the

Gulf; Meigs, hero of Sagg Harbor, of the march, to

Quebec, of the storming of Stony Point,-the Christian

gentleman and soldier, whom the Cherokees named the

White Path, in token of the unfailing kindness and inflex-

ible faith which had conveyed to their darkened minds

some not inadequate conception of the spirit of Him who

is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; Parsons, soldier,

scholar, judge, one of the strongest arms on which Wash-

ington leaned, who first suggested the Continental Con-

gress, from the story of whose life could almost be written

the history of the Northern war; the chivalric and ingen-

ious Devol, said by his biographer to be " the most perfect

figure of a man to be seen amongst a thousand;" the

noble presence of Sproat; the sons of Israel Putnam and

Manasseh Cutler; Fearing, and Greene, and Goodale,

and the Gilmans; Tupper, leader in church and state, -

the veteran of a hundred exploits, who seems, in the qual-

ities of intellect and heart, like a twin brother of Rufus

Putnam; the brave and patriotic, but unfortunate St.

Clair, first Governor of the Northwest, President of the

Continental Congress; - the mighty shades of these heroes

and their companions pass before our eyes, beneath the

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.           29

primeval forest, as the shades of the Homeric heroes be-

fore  lysses in the Land of Asphodel.    But no fable

mingles with their story. No mythical legend of encoun-

ter wun monster or dragon or heathen god exaggerates

their heroism. There is no tale of she-wolf nurse, whose

milk blended with the blood of their leader. The foe

whose war-whoop woke the sleep of the cradle on the

banks or the Muskingum needed no epic poet to add to

his terrors. The she-wolf that mingled in your father's

life was a very real animal. These men are in the full

light of history. We can measure them, their strength

and their weakness, with the precision of mathematics.

They are the high-water mark of the American character

thus far. Let their descendants give themselves up to the

spirit of this great patriotic occasion and to the contem-

plation of their virtues, to form a reservoir of heroic

thought and purpose to be ready when occasion comes.

It is said the founders were deceived and did not select

the best place for their setttlement. But it seemed a par-

adise to men from New England. Drowne, in the first

anniversary oration, on the 7th of April, the day which the

founders resolved should be "forever observed as a day of

public festival in the territory of the Ohio Company,"

declared that "then this virgin soil received you first, allur-

ing from your native homes by charms substantial and

inestimable;

"A wilderness of sweets; for Nature here

Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will

Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet,

Wild above rule or art; the gentle gales

Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense

Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole

Those balmy spoils."

The exuberant eloquence of Varnum also failed him.

He, too, could find nothing less than Milton's picture of

Eden to express his transports.

As I have read the story of these brave men-of some

of them for the first time-in the sober pages of Hildreth,

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30    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

the historian of the Pioneers, I could not help applying to

Ohio the proud boast of Pericles concerning Athens:

"Athens alone among her contempories is superior to the

report of her. Of how few Hellenes can it be said, as of

them, that their deeds, when weighed in the balance, have

been found equal to their fame."

But what can be said which shall be adequate to the

worth of him who was the originator, inspirer, leader, and

guide of the Ohio settlement from the time when he first

conceived it in the closing days of the Revolution until

Ohio took her place in the Union as a free State, in the

summer of 1803? Every one of that honorable company

would have felt it as a personal wrong had he been told

that the foremost honors of this occasion would not be

given to Rufus Putnam. Lossing calls him "the Father of

Ohio." Burnet says "he was regarded as their principa

chief and leader." He was chosen the superintendent at

the meeting of the Ohio Company, in Boston, November

21, 1787, "to be obeyed and respected accordingly." The

agents of the Company, when they voted in 1789 "that the

₇th of April be forever observed as a public festival," speak

of it as "the day when General Putnam commenced the

settlement in this country." Harris dedicates the docu-

ments collected in his appendix to Rufus Putnam, "the

founder and father of the State." He was a man after

Washington's own pattern and after Washington's own

heart; of the blood and near kindred of Israel Putnam, the

man who "dared to lead where any man dared to follow."

He was born in Sutton, Massachusetts, April 9, 1730.

Like so many of the ablest men of his time, he was his own

teacher. His passion for knowledge, especially mathe-

matics and engineering, overcame the obstacle of early

poverty. He was a veteran of the old French war, where

his adventures sound like one of Cooper's romances. He

was made Lieutenant-Colonel of a Worcester county regi-

ment at the outbreak of the Revolution and joined the

camp at Cambridge just after the battle of Lexington. His

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.      31

genius as an engineer was soon disclosed. He was, as

Washington expressly and repeatedly certified, the ablest

engineer officer of the war, whether American or French-

man. He was soon called by a council of generals and

field officers to direct the construction of a large part of the

works on which the position of the army besieging Boston

depended. He told Washington he had never read a word

on that branch of science. But the chieftain would take

no denial. He performed his task to the entire satisfaction

of his commander, and was soon ordered to superintend

the defenses of Providence and Newport.

One evening in the winter of 1776 Putnam was invited

to dine at headquarters. Washington detained him after

the company had departed to consult him about an attack

on Boston. The general preferred an entrenchment on

Dorchester Heights, which would compel Howe to attack

him and risk another Bunker Hill engagement with a dif-

ferent result, to marching his own troops over the ice to

storm the town. But the ground was frozen to a great

depth and resisted the pick-axe like solid rock. Putnam

was ordered to consider the matter, and if he could find

any way to execute Washington's plan to report at once.

He himself best tells the story of the accident-we may

almost say the miracle-by which the deliverance of Mas-

sachusetts from the foreign invader, a veteran British army

eleven thousand strong, was wrought by the instrumental-

ity of the millwright's apprentice:

"I left headquarters in company with another gentle-

man, and on our way came by General Heath's. I had no

thoughts of calling until I came against his door, and then

I said, ' Let us call on General Heath,' to which he agreed.

I had no other motive but to pay my respects to the gen-

eral. While there, I cast my eye on a book which lay on

the table, lettered on the back 'Muller's Field Engineer.'

I immediately requested the general to lend it to me. He

denied me. I repeated my request. He again refused,

and told me he never lent his books. I then told him that

• 16
 

32   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

he must recollect that he was one who, at Roxbury, in a

measure compelled me to undertake a business which, at

the time, I confessed I never had read a word about, and

that he must let me have the book. After some more ex-

cuses on his part and close pressing on mine I obtained

the loan of it."

In looking at the table of contents his eye was caught

by the word " chandelier," a new word to him. He read

carefully the description and soon had his plan ready. The

chandeliers were made of stout timbers, ten feet long, into

which were framed posts five feet high and five feet apart,

placed on the ground in parallel lines and the open spaces

filled in with bundles of fascines, strongly picketed together.

thus forming a movable parapet of wood instead of earth,

as heretofore done. The men were immediately set to

work in the adjacent apple orchard and woodlands cutting

and bundling up the fascines and carrying them with the

chandeliers on to the ground selected for the work. They

were put in their place in a single night.

When the sun went down on Boston on the 4th of March

Washington was at Cambridge, and Dorchester Heights as

nature or the husbandman had left them in the autumn.

When Sir William Howe rubbed his eyes on the morning

of the 5th he saw through the heavy mists the entrench-

ments, on which, he said, the rebels had done more work

in a night than his whole army would have done in a

month.   He wrote to Lord Dartmouth that it must have

been the employment of at least twelve thousand men.

His own effective force, including seamen, was but about

eleven thousand. Washington had but fourteen thousand

fit for duty. "Some of our officers," said the Annual

Register--I suppose Edmund Burke was the writer-

"acknowledged that the expedition with which these

works were thrown up, with their sudden and unexpected

appearance, recalled to their minds the wonderful stories

of enchantment and invisible agency which are so fre-

quent in the Eastern Romances." Howe was a man of



• 17
 

Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.       33

spirit.  He took the prompt resolution to attempt to dis-

lodge the Americans the next night before their works

were made impregnable. Earl Percy, who had learned

something of Yankee quality at Bunker Hill and Lexing-

ton, was to command the assault. But the Power that

dispersed the Armada baffled all the plans of the British

general. There came "a dreadful storm at night," which

made it impossible to cross the bay until the American

works were perfected.

We take no leaf from the pure chaplet of Washington's

fame when we say that the success of the first great mili-

tary operation of the Revolution was due to Rufus Putnam.

The Americans, under Israel Putnam, marched into Bos-

ton, drums beating and colors flying. The veteran British

army, aided by a strong naval force, soldier and sailor,

Englishman and Tory, sick and well, bag and baggage,

got out of Boston before the strategy of Washington, the

engineering of Putnam, and the courage of the despised

and untried yeomen, from whose leaders they withheld

the usual titles of military respect. "It resembled," said

Burke, "more the emigration of a nation than the break-

ing up of a camp."

But it is no part of our task to-day to narrate the mili-

tary service of General Putnam, although that includes

the fortification of West Point, an important part in the

capture of Burgoyne, and an able plan, made at the request

of Washington, for putting the army on a peace establish-

ment and for a chain of fortified military posts along the

entire frontier. We have to do only with the entrench-

ments constructed under the command of this great

engineer for the constitutional fortress of American liberty.

Putnam removed his family to Rutland, Worcester

county, Massachusetts, early in 1780. His house is yet

standing, about ten miles from the birthplace of the grand-

father of President Garfield. He returned himself to

Rutland when the war was over. He had the noble pub-

lic spirit of his day to which no duty seemed trifling or

 

Vol. 11-3

• 18
 

34    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

obscure. For five years he tilled his farm and accepted

and performed the public offices to which his neighbors

called him. He was representative to the General Court,

selectman, constable, tax collector, and committee to lay

out school lots for the town; state surveyor, commissioner

to treat with the Penobscot Indians, and volunteer in put-

ting down Shays' rebellion. He was one of the founders

and first trustees of Leicester Academy and, with his

family of eight children, gave from his modest means a

hundred pounds toward its endowment.

But he had larger plans in mind. The town constable

of Rutland was planning an empire. His chief counsellor

in his design was his old leader and friend, George Wash-

ington. Washington had been interested in the settlement

of the Northwest, and in connecting it with the Atlantic

by land and water routes, almost from boyhood. His

brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, were members of the

first Ohio Company, in 1748. He was himself a large

land-owner on the Ohio and the Kanawha.

Before the army broke up a petition of two hundred and

eighty-eight officers, of which Putnam was the chief pro-

moter, was sent by him to Washington, to be forwarded to

Congress, for a grant of lands north and northwest of the

River Ohio to the veterans of the army in redemption of

the pledges of Congress; and, further, for sales to such

officers and soldiers as might choose to become purchasers.

on a system which would effectually prevent the monopoly

of large tracts. A year later Putnam renews his urgent

application to Washington for aid in his project, to which

he says he has given much time since he left the army.

He asks the general to recommend to him some member

of Congress with whom he can directly correspond, as he

does not like even to hint these things to the delegates

from Massachusetts, though worthy men. She is forming

plans to sell her eastern lands. Washington answers

that he has exerted every power with Congress that he

is master of, and had dwelt upon Putnam's argument

• 19
 

Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.      35

for a speedy decision, but Congress had adjourned with-

out action.

In 1785 Congress appointed General Putnam one of the

surveyors of northwestern lands. He says, in his letter

accepting the office, that "a wish to promote emigration

from among my friends into that country, and not the

wages stipulated, is my principal motive." He was com-

pelled by his engagements with Massachusetts to devolve

the duty upon General Tupper as a substitute. Tupper

could not get below Pittsburgh in the season of 1785. He

came back to Massachusetts in the winter with such

knowledge of the country as he had gained, and reported

to Putnam at Rutland, on the ₉th of January, 1786. The

two veterans sat up together all night. At day-break they

had completed a call for a convention to form a company.

It was to all officers and soldiers of the late war, and all

other good citizens residing in Massachusetts, who might

wish to become purchasers of lands in the Ohio country.

It was to extend afterward to the inhabitants of other

States "as might be agreed on." The convention was

held at the Bunch of Grapes, in Boston, March 1, 1786;

chose a committee, of which Putnam was chairman, to

draft a plan for their organization, and so the Ohio Com-

pany was begun. The year was spent in obtaining the

names of the associates. They were men of property and

character, carefully selected, who meant to become actual

residents in the new country. They were men to whom

the education, religion, freedom, private and public faith,

which they incorporated in the fundamental compact of

Ohio, were the primal necessaries of life. In 1787 the di-

rectors appointed Putnam superintendent of their affairs.

In the winter everything was ready. Putnam went out from

his simple house in Rutland to dwell no more in his

native Massachusetts. It is a plain wooden dwelling, per-

haps a little better than the average of the farmer's houses

of New England of that day. Yet about which of Europe's

palaces do holier memories cling? Honor, and Fame, and

• 20
 

36    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

Freedom, and Empire, and the Fate of America went with

him as he crossed the threshold. The rest of his life is, in

large part, the history of Marietta and of Ohio for more

than thirty years. "The impress of his character," says

his biographer, "is strongly marked on the population of

Marietta, on their buildings, institutions and manners."

The wise and brave men who settled Marietta would

have left an enduring mark, under whatever circum-

stances, on any community to which they had belonged.

But their colony was founded at the precise and only time

when they could have secured the constitution which has

given the Northwest its character and enabled it, at last,

to establish in the whole country the principles of freedom

which inspired alike the company of the first and second

Mayflower. The glory of the Northwest is the Ordinance

of 1787. What share of that glory belongs to the men

who founded the Northwest? Were your fathers the arch-

itects and designers, as well as the builders, of their State?

Was the constitutional liberty, which they enjoyed them-

selves and left to their children, their own conception and

aspiration, or was it conferred by the Continental Congress?

"A gift of that which is not to be given,

By all the blended powers of earth and Heaven."

What was it that applied the spur to the halting Con-

gress whose action the whole power of Washington had

failed to overcome ? The researches of historical scholars

have, within a few years, opened to us for the first time

this most interesting chapter of American history.

The firmness and foresight of Maryland forbade her

delegates to ratify the articles of confederation until the

claims of individual States to the lands north and west of

the Ohio River were abandoned for the common benefit.

New York set the example. The cession of Virginia was

the most marked instance of a large and generous self-

denial. It not only gave to the United States a resource

for a large payment on the public debt and a large pro-

vision for veteran soldiers, but gave the country its first

• 21
 

Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.      37

strictly common and national interest and the first subject

for the exercise of an authority wholly national.

The necessity was felt for an early provision for a survey

and sale of the territory and for the government of the

political bodies to be established there. These two sub-

jects were, in the main, kept distinct. Various plans were

reported from time to time. Ten committees were ap-

pointed on the frame of government and three on the

schemes for survey and sale. Fourteen different reports

were made at different times; but from September 6, 1780,

when the resolution passed asking the States to cede their

lands, until July 6, 1787, when Manasseh Cutler, the envoy

of the Ohio Company, came to the door, every plan adopted

and every plan proposed, except a motion of Rufus King,

which he himself abandoned, we now see would have been

fraught with mischief if it had become and continued law.

March 1, 1784, the day Virginia's deed of cession was de-

livered, Jefferson reported from a committee of which he

was chairman an ordinance which divided the territory

into ten States, each to be admitted into the Union when

its population equaled that of the smallest existing State.

He thought, as he declared to Monroe, that if great States

were established beyond the mountains they would sepa-

rate themselves from the confederacy and become its

enemies. His ordinance, when reported, contained a pro-

vision excluding slavery after 1800. This was stricken

out by the Congress.  It is manifest, from subsequent

events, that, under it, the territory would have been occu-

pied by settlers from the South, with their slaves. It

would have been impossible to exclude the institution of

slavery if it had once got footing. With or without his

proviso, the scheme of Mr. Jefferson would have resulted

in dividing the territory into ten small slave-holding

States. They would have come into the Union with their

twenty votes in the Senate. Their weight would have

inclined the scale irresistibly.  The American Union

would have been a great slave-holding empire. This pro-

• 22
 

38    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

posal, so amended, became law April 23, 1784, and con-

tinued in force until repealed by the Ordinance of 1787.

It contained no republican security except a provision

that the government of the States should be republican.

March 16, 1785, Rufus King, at the suggestion of Tim-

othy Pickering, offered a resolve that there should be no

slavery in any of the States described in the resolve of

1784. This was sent to a committee of which he was

chairman. He reported it back, so amended as to conform

to Jefferson's plan for postponing the prohibition of slavery

until after 1800, and with a clause providing for the sur-

render of fugitive slaves: but it was never acted on.

May 7, 1784, Jefferson reported an ordinance for ascer-

taining the mode of locating and disposing of the public

lands. This was recommitted, amended, and finally adopted.

Congress rejected the proposition to reserve lands for re-

ligious purposes, but retained a provision for schools. It

contained also a clause that the lands should pass in de-

scent and dower, according to the custom of gavelkind,

until the temporary government was established.

In 1786 a new committee was raised to report a new plan

for the government of the territory. This committee made

a report, which provided that no State should be admitted

from the Western territory until it had a population equal

to one-thirteenth of the population of the original States

at the preceding census. This would have kept out Ohio

till 1820, Indiana till 1850, Illinois till 1860, Michigan till

1880, and Wisconsin till after 1890. The seventh Con-

gress expired while this report was pending. It was re-

vived in the eighth. The clause which would have so

long postponed the admission of the States was probably

stricken out, though this is not quite certain. But there

was little of value in the whole scheme. It contained no

barrier against slavery.

This was the state of things when Manasseh Cutler

came into the chamber on the morning of July 6, 1787,

bearing with him the fate of the Northwest. He had left

• 23
 

Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.       39

Boston on the evening of June 25, where on that day he

records in his diary- -

"I conversed with General Putnam, and settled the

principles on which I am to contract with Congress for

lands on account of the Ohio Company."

He was probably the fittest man on the continent, ex-

cept Franklin, for a mission of delicate diplomacy. It was

said just now that Putnam was a man after Washington's

pattern, and after Washington's own heart. Cutler was a

man after Franklin's pattern, and after Franklin's own

heart. He was the most learned naturalist in America, as

Franklin was the greatest master in physical science. He

was a man of consummate prudence in speech and con-

duct; of courtly manners; a favorite in the drawing-room

and in the camp; with a wide circle of friends and corre-

spondents among the most famous men of his time. Dur-

ing his brief service in Congress he made a speech on the

judicial system, in 1803, which shows his profound mas-

tery of constitutional principles.

It now fell to his lot to conduct a negotiation second

only in importance in the history of his country to that

which Franklin conducted with France in 1778. Never

was ambassador crowned with success more rapid or more

complete.

On the ₉th of July the pending ordinance was com-

mitted to a new committee-

Edward Carrington, of Virginia;

Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts;

Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia;

John Kean, of South Carolina;

Melancthon Smith, of New York.

They sent a copy of the ordinance which had come over

from the last Congress, to Dr. Cutler, that he might make

remarks and prepare amendments. He returned the ordi-

nance, with his remarks and amendments, on the loth.

The ordinance was newly modeled and all Cutler's amend-

ments inserted, except one relating to taxation, "and that,"

• 24
 

40    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

he says, "was better qualified."  It was reported to Con-

gress on the 11th. The clause prohibiting slavery, which

had not been included because Mr. Dane "had no idea the

States would agree to it," was, on Dane's motion, inserted

as an amendment, and on the 13th the greatest and most

important legislative act in American history passed

unanimously, save a single vote. But one day intervened

between the day of the appointment of the committee and

that of their report.  Cutler returned the copy of the old

ordinance with his proposed amendments on one day.

The next, the committee reported the finished plan. But

two days more elapsed before its final passage.

The measure providing for the terms of the sale to the

Ohio Company was passed on the 27th of the same July.

Cutler was master of the situation during the whole

negotiation. When some of his conditions were rejected

he " paid his respects to all the members of Congress in

the city, and informed them of his intention to depart that

day, and, if his terms were not acceded to, to turn his

attention to some other part of the country." They urged

him " to tarry till the next day and they would put by all

other business to complete the contract." He records in

his diary that Congress " came to the terms stated in our

letter without the least variation."

From this narrative I think it must be clear that the

plan which Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler settled in

Boston was the substance of the Ordinance of 1787. I do

not mean to imply that the detail or the language of the

great statute was theirs. But I cannot doubt that they

demanded a constitution, with its unassailable guaranties

for civil liberty, such as Massachusetts had enjoyed since

1780, and such as Virginia had enjoyed since 1776, instead

of the meagre provision for a government to be changed

at the will of Congress or of temporary popular majorities,

which was all Congress had hitherto proposed, and this

constitution secured by an irrevocable compact, and that

this demand was an inflexible condition of their dealing

• 25
 

Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.       41

with Congress at all. Cutler, with consummate wisdom,

addressed himself, on his arrival, to the representatives of

Virginia. Jefferson had gone to France in July, 1784, but

the weight of his great influence remained. King was in

Philadelphia, where the Constitutional Convention was

sitting. It was Carrington, of Virginia, who brought

Cutler on to the floor. Richard Henry Lee had voted

against King's motion to commit his anti-slavery proviso,

but the first mover of the Declaration of Independence

needed little converting to cause him to favor anything

that made for freedom. William Grayson, of Virginia,

early and late, earnestly supported the prohibition of

slavery, and,.when broken in health, he attended the Vir-

ginia Legislature in 1788, to secure her consent to the

departure from the condition of her deed of cession, which

the Ordinance of 1787 effected. Some of the amendments

upon the original ordinance now preserved are in his hand-

writing. To Nathan Dane belongs the immortal honor of

having been the draftsman of the statute and the mover

of the anti-slavery amendment. His monument has been

erected, in imperishable granite, by the greatest of Ameri-

can architects, among the massive columns of the great

argument in reply to Hayne. But the legislative leader-

ship was Virginia's. From her came the great weight of

Washington, in whose heart the scheme of Rufus Putnam

for the colonization of the West occupied a place second

only to that of the Union itself. Hers was the great influ-

ence of Jefferson, burning with the desire that his country

in her first great act of national legislation should make

the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence a reality.

From her came Carrington, chairman of the committee;

Lee, its foremost member; and Grayson, then in the chair

of the Congress, who, Mr. Bancroft says, "gave, more than

any other man in Congress, efficient attention to the terri-

torial question, and whose record against slavery is clearer

than that of any other Southern man who was present in

1787."

• 26
 

42    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

And let us remember with gratitude, on this anniver-

sary, that when, in 1824, the plan to call a convention in

Illinois to sanction the establishment of slavery there was

defeated by a majority of sixteen hundred votes, it was to

Governor Edward Coles, a son of Virginia, the old friend

of Jefferson and Madison, that the result was largely due;

and when, in 1803, the convention of the Indiana Terri-

tory petitioned Congress for the repeal of the sixth clause

of the Ordinance of 1787, it was a Virginian voice, through

the lips of John Randolph, whose name and blood are so

honorably represented here to-day, that denied the

request.

The Ohio Company might well dictate its own terms,

even in dealing with the far-sighted statesmen of 1787.

The purchase and settlement of this large body of the

public lands removed from their minds several subjects of

deepest anxiety. It afforded a provision for the veterans

of the war. It extinguished a considerable portion of the

public debt. It largely increased the value of the rest of

the public domain. It placed the shield of a settlement

of veteran soldiers between the frontiers of New York,

Pennsylvania, and Virginia and the most dangerous and

powerful Indian tribes on the Continent. It secured to

American occupation a territory on which England, France,

and Spain were still gazing with eager and longing eyes-

in which England, in violation of treaty obligation, still

held on to her military posts, hoping that the feeble band

of our Union would break in pieces. It removed a fear,

never absent from the minds of the public men of that

day, that the western settlers would form a new confeder-

acy and seek an alliance with the power that held the out-

let of the Mississippi. The strength of this last apprehen-

sion is shown in the confidential correspondence of Wash-

ington. He twice refers to it in his farewell address-

once where he warns the West against "an apostate and

unnatural connection with any foreign power," and again,

where he urges them "henceforth to be deaf to those ad-

• 27
 

Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.       43

visets, if such there are, who would sever them from their

brethren and connect them with aliens."

Congress had nowhere else to look for these vital advan-

tages if the scheme of Putnam and his associates Railed.

They, on the other hand, would buy all the land they

wanted of New York or Massachusetts on their own terms.

It is no wonder, then, that the Congress which in seven

years had got no further than the Jefferson statute of 1784,

and which had struck out of it the anti-slavery proviso,

came in four days to the adoption of the Ordinance of '87

with but one dissenting vote.

It will not be expected that I should undertake, within

the limits of this discourse, to dwell in detail upon the pro-

visions of the Ordinance of 1787 and the benefit they have

conferred upon the region over which they have extended.

Known throughout this country wherever American his-

tory is known, wherever men value constitutional liberty,

they are familiar as household words to the men who are

assembled here. They are, in some important respects,

distinguished above all the other great enactments which

lie at the foundation of human societies. If there be any-

thing for which Daniel Webster is distinguished among

great orators, it is the discretion and moderation of his

speech. He never sought to create an impression or give

an emphasis by overstatement. It was well said of him

by another native of New England, whose fame as a great

public teacher equals his own: " His weight was like the

falling of a planet; his discretion, the return of its due and

perfect curve." Mr. Webster declared, in a well-known

passage: " We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers 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."

The founders of the Northwest and the framers of the

Ordinance meant to put its great securities beyond the

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44    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

reach of any fickleness or change in popular sentiment

unless by a revolution which should upheave the founda-

tions of social order itself. They made the six articles

" Articles of compact between the original States and the

people and States in the said Territory, to forever remain

unalterable unless by common consent." They were to

have the force which the philosophers of that day at-

tributed to the original social compact, to which they

ascribed the origin of all human society. Three parties,

the original States, the new States, and the people, made

the compact. This compact was to attend these commun-

ities forever, unalterable save by the consent of all three,

under whatever new constitutional arrangements they

might come. There is the highest contemporary authority

for the opinion that these articles would never be affected

by ordinary constitutional changes in the States. "It

fixed forever," said Mr. Webster, "the character of the

population in the vast regions northwest of the Ohio by

excluding from them involuntary servitude. It impressed

on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapac-

ity to sustain any other than freemen. It laid the inter-

dict against personal servitude in original compact, not

only deeper than all local law, but deeper, also, than all

local constitutions" These great and perpetual blessings

your fathers found awaiting them when they took posses-

sion of their new homes, beneficent as the sky, or the

climate, or the soil, or the river, to endure so long as the

sky shall send down its influence or the Ohio continue

to flow.

While a portion of the second article reaffirms the great

securities which are of English origin, and are found in

Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, the larger part are

originally and exclusively American. The student of con-

stitutional law will find there all he will need for an ample

and complete understanding of the difference between the

genius of the limited monarchism  of England and the

genius of American liberty.

• 29
 

Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.      45

For the first time in history the Ordinance of 1787 ex-

tended that domain from which all human government is

absolutely excluded by forbidding any law interfering with

the obligation of good faith between man and man. This

provision, adopted afterward in substance in the Constitu-

tion of the United States, and thereby made binding as a

restraint upon every State, is the security upon which rests

at last all commerce, all trade, all safety in the dealings of

men with each other. To-day its impregnable shield is

over the dealing of sixty millions of people with each

other and with mankind.

I have described very imperfectly the education, extend-

ing over two centuries, which fitted your fathers for the

great drama to be enacted here. Equally wonderful is the

series of events which kept the soil of the Ohio territory

untouched until they were ready to occupy it. France, in

1755, rejected an offer made her by England that Eng-

land would give up all her claim west of a line from the

mouth of French Creek twenty leagues up that stream

toward Lake Erie and from the same points direct to the

last mountains of Virginia which should descend toward

the ocean. France was to retain Canada and her settle-

ments on the Illinois and Wabash. If this offer had been

accepted, the French, who always so skillfully managed

the Indians, would have filled the territory with their

colonies, and, under whatever sovereignty it had ultimately

come, would have impressed their character and institu-

tions on it forever. King George, too, in 1763, at the close

of the French war, forbade his governors in America " to

grant any warrants of survey or patents for any lands be-

yond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall

into the Atlantic ocean from the west or northwest." This

shut out the people of Virginia, with their slaves, from all

the territory that now forms Ohio.

Again, the controversies between the States as to title

prevented its settlement during the Revolution. The fear

of Indian hostilities prevented its settlement during the

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46    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

period Mr. Jefferson's ordinance of 1784 was in force,

The votes of the Southern States defeated Mr. Jefferson's

proviso, under which slavery would surely have gained a

footing, and so left the way open for the total exclusion

of slavery three years later.

We are not here to celebrate an accident. What oc-

curred here was premeditated, designed, foreseen.  If

there be in the universe a power which ordains the course

of history, we cannot fail to see in the settlement of Ohio

an occasion when the human will was working in har-

mony with its own. The events move onward to a

dramatic completeness. Rufus Putnam lived to see the

little colony, for whose protection against the savage he

had built what he described as the strongest fortification

in the United States, grow to nearly a million of people,

and become one of the most powerful States in the con-

federacy. The men who came here had earned the right to

the enjoyment of liberty and peace, and they enjoyed the

liberty and peace they had earned. The men who had help-

ed win the war of the Revolution did not leave the churches

and schools of New England to tread over again the thorny

path from barbarism to civilization, or from despotism to

self-government. When the appointed hour had come, and

"God uncovered the land

That he hid of old time in the west,

As the sculptor uncovers the statue

When he has wrought his best,"

then, and not till then, the man also was at hand.

It is one of the most fortunate circumstances of our

history that the vote in the Continental Congress was

substantially unanimous. Without the accompaniment

of the Ordinance the Constitution of the United States

itself would have lost half its value. It was fitting that

the whole country should share in the honor of that act

which, in a later generation, was to determine the fate of

the whole country.

We would not forget to-day the brave men and noble

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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.      47

women who represented Connecticut and Rhode Island

and New Hampshire in the band of pioneers. Among

them were Parsons, and Meigs, and Varnum, and Greene,

and Devol, and True, and Barker, and the Gilmans.

Connecticut made, a little later, her own special and im-

portant contribution to the settlement of Ohio.  But

Virginia and Massachusetts have the right to claim and

to receive a peculiar share of the honor which belongs to

this occasion. They may well clasp each other's hands

anew as they survey the glory of their work.  These

two States- the two oldest of the sisterhood -the State

which framed the first written constitution, and the

State whose founders framed the compact on the May-

flower; the State which produced Washington, and the

State which summoned him to his high command;

the State whose son drafted the Declaration of Independ-

ence, and the State which furnished its leading advocate

on the floor; the mother of John Marshall and the mother

of the President who appointed him; the State which

gave the general, and the State which furnished the larg-

est number of soldiers to the Revolution; the State which

gave the territory of the northwest, and the State

which gave its first settlers -may well delight to remem-

ber that they share between them the honor of the

authorship of the Ordinance of 1787. When the reunited

country shall erect its monument at Marietta, let it bear

on one side the names of the founders of Ohio, on the

other the names of Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee, and

Carrington, and Grayson, side by side with those of Nathan

Dane, and Rufus King, and Manasseh Cutler, beneath the

supreme name of Washington. Representatives of Vir-

ginia and Massachusetts, themselves in some sense repre-

sentatives of the two sections of the country which so lately

stood against each other in arms, they will bear witness

that the estrangements of four years have not obliterated

the common and tender memories of two centuries.

This, also, is one of the great events in the world's his-

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48    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

tory which marks an advance of Liberty on the new

ground which she has held. We would not undervalue

military achievements. Such a paradox, ridiculous any-

where, would be doubly unbecoming here. We stand by

the graves of great soldiers of the war of Independence.

This is the centennial of the State within whose borders

were born Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan, and Gar-

field. The men of the Revolution fought that the princi-

ples of the Ordinance of 1787 might become living realities.

The great captains of the later war fought that the compact

might be kept and forever remain unalterable. The five

States of the Northwest sent nearly a million soldiers into

the war for the Union, every one of them ready to die to

maintain inviolate the fourth article, which declares: "The

said territory and the States which may be formed therein

shall forever remain a part of this confederacy of the

United States of America, subject to the Articles of Con-

federation, and to such alterations therein as shall be con-

stitutionally made, and to all the acts and ordinances of

the United States in Congress assembled conformable

thereto." These purposes inspired them when they drew

their swords. They laid down their swords when these

purposes were accomplished.

It is this that makes the birthday of Ohio another birth-

day of the nation itself. Forever honored be Marietta as

another Plymouth. The Ordinance belongs with the Dec-

laration of Independence and the Constitution. It is one

of the three title deeds of American constitutional lib-

erty. As the American youth for uncounted centuries

shall visit the capital of his country--strongest, richest,

freest, happiest of the nations of the earth-from the

stormy coast of New England, from the luxuriant regions

of the Gulf, from the Lakes, from the prairie and the

plain, from the Golden Gate, from far Alaska-he will

admire the evidences of its grandeur and the monuments

of its historic glory. He will find there rich libraries and

vast museums, and great cabinets which show the product



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Oration of Hon. George F. Hoar.          49

 

of that matchless inventive genius of America, which has

multiplied a thousand fold the wealth and comfort of human

life. He will see the simple and modest portal through

which the great line of the Republic's chief magistrates

have passed at the call of their country to assume an

honor surpassing that of emperors and kings, and through

which they have returned, in obedience to her laws, to

take their place again as equals in the ranks of their

fellow-citizens. He will stand by the matchless obelisk

which, loftiest of human structures, is itself but the im-

perfect type of the loftiest of human characters. He will

gaze upon the marble splendors of the Capitol, in whose

chambers are enacted the statutes under which the people

of a continent dwell together in peace, and the judgments

are rendered which keep the forces of states and nation

alike within their appointed bounds. He will look upon

the records of great wars and the statues of great com-

manders.   But, if he know   his country's history, and

consider wisely the sources of her glory, there is nothing

in all these which will so stir his heart as two fading and time-

soiled papers, whose characters were traced by the hands

of the fathers a hundred years ago. They are original

records of the acts which devoted this nation forever to

equality, to education, to religion, and to liberty. One is

the Declaration of Independence, the other the Ordinance

of 1787.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vol. 11-4

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