Ohio History Journal

ORATION OF HON. JOHN RANDOLPH

TUCKER, LL. D.

The last decades of our century bristle with centennial

anniversaries; the landmarks of human progress in the

free institutions of a Christian civilization.

The Old World, with its crowded populations, with its

social orders and castes, and its despotic forms of govern-

ment was stagnant and unhealthful. Commerce reached

forth its bold and eager arms for new fields for human

enterprise and a larger and freer civilization.

Motives of gain mingled with religious fervor to plant

the standard of European polity and the emblem of the

cross on the soil of a new world.

We are near the anniversary of that great 1492, which

turned the world upside down and doubled the domain of

civilized life among men. Columbia opened her doors to

European emigration. The glitter of the precious metals

first fascinated the vulgar; but now millions of men with

teeming golden harvests, and with fields white with their

myriad bales of cotton, and with minerals and forests for

light, heat and all the arts of life, feed a hungry, clothe a

naked, and house a homeless world.

Three centuries ago the Spanish Armada sank under

the storm of God into the British waters in sight of the

reefs of Albion; and left England mistress of the seas.

In 1584 Edmund Spenser dedicated the "Faerie Queen"

to "Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of England,

France, and Ireland and Virginia;" and in the same year

the Virgin Queen gave to Sir Walter Raleigh the charter

to take and possess Virginia in her royal name. Virginia

was rocked in her infant cradle to the sweet song of the

master of English poetry.

But it was reserved for another reign to plant an English

colony securely on American soil. During the memorable

seventeenth century, when the conflict of prerogative and

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.   65

liberty convulsed our mother country, in the month of

May, 1607, when our tide-water region is fragrant with

flowers and is clad in all the beauties of the opening

spring, a few vessels came to anchor in Powhatan River,

and a few hundred English colonists planted the first

seeds of British civilization at Jamestown. Here on

the banks of our Nile rested the ark of American insti-

tutions.

A few years later, in December, 1620, the pilgrim

fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, and raised the standard

of civil polity based on popular compact.

These Colonists brought with them the spirit of British

freedom, exalted in its courage by the bold temper which

inspires and is enhanced by adventurous enterprise.

A new continent, without fixed institutions, without

king, nobility, or ecclesiastical authority, was opened to

the fresh impress of the sons of civilized life, who landed

upon its shores. All the bands of the old and established

society of the mother country were loosened, and the

colonial mind, free from the environment of ancient prej-

udices, was prepared for an order of things more natural,

and, therefore, more true. The scion of the ancient tree

of liberty could better grow unchoked by the weeds of

privilege and prerogative in the soil, and drinking in the

balmy air of this virgin continent.

As Lord Bacon has it, " No tree is so good first set as

by transplanting." Young and bold men -men tired of

old habits, customs, and thoughts, yearning to throw off

the restraints of an ancient and effete social order (as a

religious reformation had shaken the foundations of the

ancient Church), and to find full scope for the enterprises

of life, and to impress themselves upon a new and un-

formed empire-these were the colonists that braved the

rock-bound coasts of New England, and plunged into

the untrodden wilderness of tide-water Virginia. They

panted to be free, and could not be enslaved. They brought

with them also a clear comprehension and vigorous grasp

 

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66    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

of all the fundamental principles of liberty imbedded in

Magna Charta.

These were asserted with emphatic distinctness in

their public acts. As early as 1623, the House of Bur-

gesses of Virginia enacted that no tax could be laid on

any colonist but by the vote of the General Assembly.

In 1636, the year of John Hampden and Ship-money, the

Massachusetts colony made a similar declaration; and

other colonies followed.

In 1651, when the fleet of the English Parliament in-

vaded the waters of the Chesapeake, a treaty was made

between the Commonwealth of England and the colony

of Virginia, which is one of the most striking of the his-

toric memorials of the colonial period.

It provides for the obedience of the colony to the Com-

monwealth of England, but that "this submission and

subscription be acknowledged as a voluntary act, not

forced nor constrained by a conquest upon the country."

It declares that Virginia shall be free from all taxes,

customs, and impositions whatsoever, and none to be im-

posed on them without consent of the Grand Assembly,

and so that neither forts nor castles be erected or garrisons

maintained without their consent." Thus by treaty stipu-

lations in 1651, Virginia established the great principle

on which the American Revolution was based - that taxa-

tion by any other than the representatives of the tax-

paying people was unlawful and contrary to liberty.

I present this action of Virginia and Massachusetts es-

pecially to you, because the men who settled here a cen-

tury ago were the sons of New England, and planted their

feet upon the soil which Virginia gave to the Union. The

principles of freedom I have stated were the inheritance

of Putnam and his followers, and were the fixed law of

the land of Virginia on which they made their homes.

When, therefore, in May, 1764, Samuel Adams and his co-

patriots, and in May, 1765, Patrick Henry and his associates

had denounced taxation without representation as tyranny

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.   67

and against law, they but reasserted a principle as old as

Magna Charta and the precious corner-stone of every

colonial government. It was the canon of the settlement

of 1688, two centuries ago in England, as a result of the

struggle between the people and the House of Stuart,

culminating in the constitutional monarchy under William

and Mary.

Mark the epochs of the centuries: America discovered

in 1492; Virginia's birth-song written by Spenser in 1584,

the prelude to English colonization in America; the Eng-

lish Constitution established in 1688; our own in 1788;

and we to-day celebrate them all on the natal day of the

inheritance of the Northwest, under the donation of the

Old Dominion, by the Pilgrim pioneers from New Eng-

land. The pendulum of history swings in centuries -in

the slow but sure progress of the human race to a higher

and nobler civilization.

When the British Government asserted, in the Grenville

act, the power to tax the colonies, it made a fatal issue

with them upon a principle which was too sacred and fun-

damental to be surrendered; and a conflict of arms was in-

evitable. When power invades liberty, resistance to the

wrong is a duty to God, and the forces of government

must be challenged by the people with all the armed force

they can command. The special matter of taxation was

the occasion of revolution, but the time had come when

taxation by a foreign power was regarded only as a symp-

tom of a more general and chronic disease--namely, the

subjection of the welfare of any people to the will and

control of another nation.

Self-government-independence of alien control in all

things-was the need of the American colonies, which

was illustrated in the matter of taxation, but which was

equally important in all their relations, domestic and

foreign.

No people can be governed by another, alien in sym-

pathy and with no community of interest, without misgov-

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68    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

ernment and tyranny. Hence the view of the statesmen

of the period broadened into a deep conviction, that longer

dependence on the British crown was virtual servitude,

and that independence was essential to liberty, develop-

ment and progress.

The Continental Congress of thirteen colonies met Sep-

tember 5, 1774. Two years of futile efforts to patch up

the breach which tyranny had made in public confidence

and in popular affection passed away, and the declaration of

complete and final separation was unitedly made on the

famous ₄th of July, 1776. The loose and inorganic league

between the colonies represented by Congress, whose pow-

ers were held under a tenancy at the will of each colony,

made its efforts to conduct the war pitiably inefficient-

and they would have resulted in failure but for the impulses

of popular patriotism; the masterful genius of a majes-

tic leader - that hero of equal mind in the shock of defeat

as amid the shouts of victory,- and the generous co-oper-

ation of a great and noble ally. Congress proposed in 1777

to the colonies a plan of organic union under the articles

of confederation, which, however, were never adopted by

all the States until March 1, 1781, and by their express

terms were wholly inoperative until all had consented to

them.

A brief view of the colonial condition is now necessary,

as well to appreciate the obstacles to this organic union

as to show the relation of all these historic references to

the event we celebrate to-day.

Prior to the seven years' war between Great Britain and

France, which ended in 1763, the three powers of Great

Britain, France and Spain held possession of all the terri-

tory now included in the United States and Canada.

France owned Canada and Louisiana, which covered a

claim to the region west of the Mississippi to the Pacific.

Spain owned Florida; and Great Britain held the whole

region to the Mississippi, and with a claim beyond to the

Pacific, which conflicted with that of France.

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.    69

By the treaty of Paris, in 1763, between Great Britain,

France, and Spain, France ceded Canada, and Spain ceded

Florida to Great Britain; and the boundary fixed between

Great Britain and France was the Mississippi River, ad

filum aquae, from its source to the Iberville, thence through

that river and the lakes of Maurepas and Pontchartrain to

the sea.

The effect of this treaty upon colonial rights, especially

in Virginia, can now be readily understood.

By the charters to Virginia of 1606, 1609 and 1611, she

claimed from Point Comfort two hundred miles north,

which would bring it to about the fortieth parallel, and

the same distance south upon the Atlantic coast, and

backward, west and northwest to the sea-that is, the

Pacific.

By the treaty of 1651 between the Commonwealth of

England and Virginia, already referred to, it is provided

" that Virginia shall have and enjoy the ancient bounds

and limits granted by the charters of the former King."

The terms "West and Northwest" were always held to

include, beyond the fortieth parallel, and to embrace Mich-

igan, Wisconsin, and all the portions of Ohio, Indiana and

Illinois north of that parallel.

These bounds and limits, fixed by the three charters

and confirmed by the treaty with the Commonwealth of

England, made Virginia, in the extent of her domain, an

empire in herself. But the treaty of Paris (1763) made

her western boundary the middle of the Mississippi down-

to 360 30', her southern parallel, after the grant to the

Carolinas had been made, which she recognized and ceded.

by her constitution of June 29, 1776.

When by that constitution, on the 29th of June, 1776,

Virginia assumed to be a free and independent State, she

rightfully asserted her jurisdictional claim to the bound-

aries fixed by the charters and modified by the treaty of

Paris of 1763.

This splendid domain, which embraces what are now

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70    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

eight States of the Union, containing 350,000 square miles,

with a present population of 15,000,000, was the rightful

empire of Virginia with which she entered the league of

1774 and the confederation of 1781.

I am aware that questions were made as to the title of

Virginia to this domain; but they originated in a natural

jealousy of her stake in the success of the revolution and

of her preponderant power in the counsels of the Union,

had she retained it.

But all question of her title was at rest when, with just

and magnanimous hand, she gave to all an equal share

with herself in this inheritance which was all her own.

Jealousy was suppressed and the cavils of her rivals

were silenced when, with a self-abnegation as rare as it

was noble, she surrendered all to thee Union and afterwards

sealed the Ordinance of 1787, which excluded her own

people with their slaves from the territory she gave for

the benefit of others.

Much was said at one time as to the title claimed by

some parties and companies and even States under pur-

chase from the Indians. That pretension never availed at

any time, but met with signal condemnation in the mas-

terly and unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court in

Johnson vs. McIntosh, (8th Wheaton, 543,) where it is

established as a part of the American polity, that the

European race by discovery and conquest hold the pre-

eminent right of pre-emption of the Indian title, which

excludes the right of any one, without the consent of the

sovereign power, to gain any title from the Indians as

against the sovereign of the territory.

But the title of Virginia stands on a higher ground than

her chartered grant. Her statesmanship conceived what

her military genius achieved, the conquest of the territory

for herself in order that with free hand and heart she

might give it to the Union.

Some time after the treaty of Paris (1763), France ceded

Louisiana to Spain, and thus placed Spain in the posses-

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.   71

sion of the mouths of the Mississippi River, and of the

west bank of that river to the middle thereof in its whole

length, with a claim by Spain (never sound under inter-

national law) thereby to shut this outlet to the Gulf

against all the people inhabiting the country on its east

bank, and on its northern tributaries, the Ohio River and

others.

The obstruction of the Allegheny mountains to com-

merce between the Western territory and the Atlantic

seaboard, with only the natural outlet of the Mississippi

for the products of the Western settlements, made this

claim of occlusion of the Mississippi by a European

power one of the gravest questions for American states-

manship at that period; and Virginia, with her claim to

the Mississippi River, including Kentucky south of the

Ohio River and this Northwestern Territory north of that

river, saw very clearly its importance, and therefore urged

with persistent vigor the recognition of the free naviga-

tion of the Mississippi to the public seas. One other

view of the situation is most important. If the United

States could not secure to the Western people a free Mis-

sissippi navigation, the temptation of private interest

might seduce the people of the West to abandon their

Eastern allies, and seek the protection of that European

power which could open the Mississippi to their com-

merce-a suggestion which threatened the Union itself.

Spain had, early in the Revolution, declined to join

France in aiding the American colonies, and urged, as

a precondition to joining any alliance with the United

States, that the latter should renounce the free navigation

of the Mississippi, and limit their western boundary

to the Allegheny mountains. Virginia instructed her

delegates in Congress, in November, 1779, to obtain in

the then pending negotiations with Spain the free nav-

igation of the Mississippi to the seas, with easements

on the shore and at the mouth for the Western com-

merce. This condition of affairs will explain the pre-

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72    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

vious sagacious action of Virginia, to which I will now

call attention.

George Rogers Clarke was born near Monticello, Albe-

marle county, Va., in 1752. With slight education (as

appears from his letters), he became a practical surveyor,

and after campaigning a short time against the Indians in

Virginia, he went to Kentucky in 1775, from which he, as

its delegate, came to the convention of Virginia, at Wil-

liamsburg, in 1776, and urged upon the authorities the

creation of the new county of Kentucky and a supply of

ammunition for its defense. "A country not worth de-

fending is not worth claiming," was his laconic appeal.

Patrick Henry, the first Governor of Virginia, as sagac-

ious and prophetic as a statesman as he was a master of

eloquence, seconded his plans; and Clarke started back

with five hundred pounds of powder, which he carried by

land to the Monongahela, and thence to a point near

Maysville, Ky. He repelled the Indians from that vicin-

ity, and sent spies into Illinois, and on their return early

in 1777 hastened back to Virginia to lay his plans before

the authorities for the conquest of Illinois.

An act was passed authorizing the Governor and Coun-

cil to organize an expedition " to march and attack any of

our Western enemies." (9 Henn. Stat., 375.)

Governor Henry placed a band of a few hundred men

under this dauntless projector of the enterprise. With it

he crossed the Allegheny and descended the Ohio in frail

boats to Corn Island, near Louisville, where he erected

block houses, drilled his men and planted corn. On the

24th of June, 1778, while the sun was in eclipse, he went

down the river, landed at the old Fort Massac, marched

six days across the wilderness and appeared before Kas-

kaskia, and took it on the ₄th of July, 1778; and then

pushed on and captured all the other British posts on the

river. And thus by a blow, without serious loss, he planted

the standard of American authority on the bank of the

great Father of Waters.

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.   73

The English Governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, was

alarmed, and on December 16, 1778, retook Vincennes on

the Wabash. Clarke accepted the issue thus tendered in

brief words: " I must take Hamilton or he will take me."

With about 170 ragged, but brave heroes, he, in mid-

winter, crossed the country with scanty food supplies,

waded rivers, and appeared with his unerring rifles before

Vincennes, and on the 2₄th of February, 1779, captured

the governor and garrison. In the meantime, by act of

her Assembly, Virginia had organized the county of Illinois,

embracing all the territory between the Ohio and Missis-

sippi Rivers, which included this city of Marietta, (9 Hen.,

St. at Large, 552). A resolution was passed thanking Lieu-

tenant Colonel George Rogers Clarke and his body of Vir-

ginia militia for reducing " the British posts in the western

part of this Commonwealth on the River Mississippi and

its branches; whereby great advantages may accrue to the

common cause of America, as well as to this Common-

wealth."

This romantic chapter in the revolutionary war I pre-

sent not only for its historic interest, but because it settled

the question of our Western boundary; and pushed it be-

yond the Alleghenies to the Mississippi river. All glory

to the Virginia militia and the military genius of their

heroic leader, who, under direction of Virginia statesman-

ship, broke the machinations of a diplomacy which would

have made your anniversary impossible, and given up the

valley of the Mississippi to a European power!

I am tempted to give you a letter written by this re-

markable man to the Governor of Virginia from Kaskaskia

on the 3d of February, 1779, when he had determined on

this last adventurous enterprise. Its orthography is de-

fective, but he made his mark! in deeds, not words.

After describing the attack on St. Vincent " by the

famous Hair Buyer, General Henry Hamilton, Esq., Lieu-

tenant Governor of Detroit," he says that he had " every

peace of intelligence " he desired from a Spanish gentle-

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74    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

man who had "escaped from Mr. Hamilton." And then,

after stating the forces and the cannon and so forth, that

Hamilton had, he quaintly adds, "has no suspition of a

Visit from the americans-this was Mr. Hamilton's cir-

cumstances when Mr. Vigo left him." He says that hav-

ing no expectation of any reinforcements, "I shall be

obliged to give up the country to Mr. Hamilton without a

turn of fortune in my favor;" and then adds, "I am re-

solved to take advantage of his present situation and

risque the whole in a single battle! I shall set out in a

few days with all the force I can raise," " amounting on

the whole to only one hundred and seventy men," a part

of whom were to go "on board a small galley, which is to

take her station ten leagues below St. Vincent. If I am

defeated, she is to join Colonel Rogers on the Missis-

sippi." "I shall march across by land myself, with the

rest of my boys; the principal persons that follow me on

this forlorn hope is Captains Jos. Bowman, John Will-

iams, Edward Worthing, Richard McCarty and Francis

Charlovielle, Lts. Richard Brashear, William Kellar, Abm.

Chaplin, John Jerault and John Bayley, and several other

brave subalterns. You must be sensible of the feeling

that I have for those brave officers and soldiers that are

determined to share my fate, let it be what it will. I

know the case is desperate; but, sir, we must either quit

the country or attact Mr. Hamilton. No time is to be

lost. If I was shoar of reinforcements I should not at-

tempt it. Who knows what fortune will do for us? Great

things have been effected by a few men well conducted.

Perhaps we may be fortunate. We have this consolation,

that our cause is just, and that our country will be grate-

ful, and not condemn our conduct in case we fall through;

if so, this country, as well as Kentucky, is lost."

Can we wonder that, in the lexicon of that youth of

twenty-six years -this Hannibal of the West, as John

Randolph called him,-there was no such word as fail!

And that because he did not, we are here to-day to cele-

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.        75

 

brate the settlement, one hundred years ago, upon this

soil, a part of that county of Illinois rescued forever from

British control by the gallant men whom Clarke led to

victory in 1779!

But at that moment the organic Union was not yet

formed.  Some of the States insisted, and Maryland most

obdurately, that all the States should make cessions of

their territory to the Union. And there were many acts

of an inimical character done by Congress and some of

the States to the title and   claim  of Virginia.  Some

of these were based on the counter claims of States under

purchase from the Indian nations, and some by certain

corporations under like purchases.  It would be useless

to revive the memory or to discuss the merits of these

claims.

In September (6), 1780, Congress recommended to the

several States to make liberal cessions to the United

States of a portion of their claims for the common benefit

of the Union. In response to this, the States made ces-

sions; and Virginia, on the 2nd of January, 1781, did yield

"all right, title and claim which the said Commonwealth

had to the territory northwest of the river of Ohio," sub-

ject to certain conditions. The State of Maryland, which

had delayed until this was done to agree to the articles,

now acceded to the articles of confederation, March 1,

1781, and thus the organic Union of the thirteen States

was for the first time established.

A long and angry conflict of opinion continued in Con-

gress for several years as to the acceptance of the pro-

posed cession of Virginia, in which a jealous doubt of her

claim was manifested, but on which she stoutly and indig-

nantly insisted. A reference to these is unnecessary.

The ground of objection to her title seems, as I have

already said, to have been judicially settled by the judg-

ment in Johnson vs. McIntosh (8th Wheaton) by a unani-

mous court. Finally, on the 13th of September, 1783, a

report was adopted in Congress to accept the cession of

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76    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

Virginia upon six conditions named by her in the original

proposal of January 2, 1781, two of her conditions being

declared to be unnecessary.

Accordingly, Virginia, by an act passed December 20,

1783, agreed to cede her territory upon the conditions in-

dicated by Congress, and authorized her delegates to exe-

cute a deed for the same to the United States.

Finally, upon the 1st of March, 1784, Virginia, by her

delegates in Congress, tendered her deed of cession accord-

ing to the said act of December 20, 1783. In opposition a

petition of Colonel George Morgan, agent for New Jersey,

and on behalf of the Indiana Company, was presented.

A motion to refer it was lost, as also a motion to appoint

a court to determine the respective rights of said com-

pany and of Virginia.

Congress then, by solemn vote, agreed to accept the

deed, which was on the said 1st of March, 1784, executed,

delivered and filed, signed by Thomas Jefferson, Samuel

Hardy, Arthur Lee and James Monroe, the delegates of

Virginia.

The conditions imposed in this cession were that States

(not less than 100, nor more than 150 miles square) should

be formed out of the territory, which should be distinct

republican States, "having the same rights of sovereignty,

freedom and independence as the other States," and to be

admitted members of the Federal Union;" that the ex-

penses of Virginia in subduing British posts and for the

defense or in acquiring any part of said territory should

be reimbursed by the United States; that the citizens of

Virginia in Kaskaskia, St. Vincent and other places be

confirmed in their titles; that 150,000 acres be granted

George Rogers Clarke and his men who marched with

him to reduce Kaskaskia and St. Vincent; that so much

land be allowed between the Scioto and Miami Rivers

for Virginia troops as shall be sufficient for the purpose,

and that all other lands in the territory be " considered a

common fund for the use and benefit of such of the United

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.   77

States as have become or shall become members of the

Confederation or Federal alliance of said States, Virginia

inclusive, according to their respective proportions in the

general charge and expenditure, and shall be faithfully and

bona fide disposed of for that purpose, and for no other use

or purpose whatsoever."1

By the treaty of peace, 1783, Florida was ceded by Great

Britain to Spain, and France having previously ceded

Louisiana to Spain, the latter power owned both banks

of the Mississippi at its mouth, and the free navigation of

the Mississippi became a grave question for our infant

diplomacy. If the occlusion of the Mississippi by Spain

was submitted to, the Western country would have been

shut in by the Allegheny range from the Atlantic sea-

board, and from the sea by Spain, with the key to the

Gulf in her hands.

I remember when a young man, before the Allegheny

mountains were tunneled for railways, that the difference

between the price of flour at Baltimore and Wheeling was

two dollars, and that as you descended the Ohio River the

difference decreased. That is, the free navigation of the

Mississippi, the outlet for the West, was its best hope to

reach the markets of the world. What a hopeless condi-

tion, had the door to the outer world been locked by an

alien power!

I can say, with pride in the statesmen of Virginia,

fortified by the generous tribute of Senator Hoar in his

oration this morning, that they led persistently in the

demand for a free Mississippi. Other States seemed at

times to think their commercial interests might be ben-

efited by shutting the Mississippi, and obtaining a monop-

oly of Western trade through their territories to the

Atlantic. But all such thoughts finally gave way to the

resolutions of Congress, September 16, 1786, "that the free

navigation of the River Mississippi is a clear and essen-

1 A very full history of these matters may be found in Report 457 to the

House of Representatives, the first session of the Twenty-eighth Congress.

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78    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

tial right of the United States, and that the same ought

to be considered and supported as such."

Despite the cession of Louisiana to France by Spain in

1801, American statesmanship triumphed in the assurance

of free access to the markets of the world through that

great estuary by the splendid acquisition of Louisiana

under the administration of Mr. Jefferson.

And so, from the day that the mountain heights of

Monticello stood as sentinel guards over the cradled in-

fancy of George Rogers Clarke and Thomas Jefferson,

Providence had decreed that the one should conquer by

prowess in arms, and the other by a wise diplomacy, the

open water highway for the products of the West to the

markets of the world.

Nor is this all that I claim for the State which gave

this territory, where, one hundred years ago, your

Pilgrim fathers founded the seat of Northwestern civili-

zation.

In 1784 I find that Virginia, by an act of her Assembly,

granted to James Rumsey, of Shepherdstown (now in

West Virginia), the exclusive right to navigate her rivers

by boats constructed to move up stream. James Rumsey

built a boat which moved up stream by the power of steam

before 1790. And the young feet of my venerable mother

trod the deck of that wrecked and rude barge before the

year of 1800.

It is a matter of deep interest, further, to read the letters

of George Washington and his cotemporaries in this de-

cade a century ago, urging the water lines to the eastern

base of our mountain ranges, and up the waters of the

Potomac and the James; that thus they might approxi-

mate the navigable waters on the western slope, and bring

by waterways the products of the West to our Eastern

ports. The idea was in their prophetic minds. Its reali-

zation awaited the inventive genius of those who have made

ironways a substitute for water, and who make the predic-

tion true, that every valley shall be filled and every moun-

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.   79

tain be laid low, for the march of man to his highest

destiny under the Providence and blessing of God.

The title and security of the domain for American col-

onization having been thus placed by the donation of Vir-

ginia under the charge of the organic Union, formed by

the Articles of Confederation, the materialistic view of the

question may be dismissed.

The question remaining for Congress was the settlement

and government of the territory.  As early as June 5,

1783, and before the final acceptance by Congress of the

deed from Virginia, Theoderick Bland, seconded by Alex-

ander Hamilton, proposed an ordinance in Congress for

the regulation of the territory ceded by Virginia; it was

referred to a committee, but was not acted on. On the

day the deed was executed by Virginia, March 1, 1784, Mr.

Jefferson reported from a committee a plan for the govern-

ment of all the Western Territory from the southern

boundary of the United States at 31^° latitude, to the Lake

of the Woods. This ordinance, in Jefferson's handwriting,

provided for a temporary government until the population

increased to 20,000 inhabitants, when they might institute

a permanent government with a member in Congress to

debate, but not to vote. And when the population in-

creased to that of the least populous State of the Union,

then to be admitted into the Union.

Five articles were added:

First-The new States to remain forever as members of

the Union.

Second -To have the same relation to the Union as the

original States.

Third-To bear their proportion of burdens.

Fourth-To have republican forms of government.

Fifth-Slavery shall not exist in said Territories after

1800.

This did not abolish slavery, but forbade its existence

prospectively, and had it been adopted would have forbid

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80    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

den it beyond a north and south line running along the

the western boundaries of the then States of the Union.

This fifth article was struck out of the report because

not adopted by Congress, the vote being six States for it

and three against it, one State not voting, and one divid-

ed. The ordinance was then adopted, with the exception

of that article, and continued in force for about three

years.

Meantime the movement for a Federal Convention, to

revise the articles of confederation, resulted in its meet-

ing in May, 1787, in Philadelphia. During the session

of that Convention, Congress had under consideration the

ordinance for the government of the Northwestern terri-

tory. A company called the Ohio Company had been

organized upon a plan projected in Massachusetts by a

number of resolute men (many of whom had been heroes

of the Revolution) as early as March, 1786. Rufus Put-

nam, Winthrop Sargent, Manasseh Cutler, John Brooks,

and Benj. Tupper were principals in the movement. In

March, 1787, a meeting of the subscribers was held in

Boston, and Putnam, Cutler, and Samuel Holden Parsons

were elected directors to apply to Congress for a purchase

of land in the Northwest.

It is of interest to state that Washington warmly sec-

onded the movement of Putnam and others, who were his

trusted associates in the army, and that La Fayette spoke

of them and their plans with French enthusiasm.

On the day, May 9, 1787, the ordinance for the North

west territory was ordered to its third reading, Parsons

presented the memorial of the Ohio Company. It was

referred to a committee composed of Edward Carrington,

Virginia; Rufus King and Nathan Dane, Massachusetts;

Madison, Virginia, and Benson, New York. Cutler arrived

on July 5, and placed himself in immediate communica-

tion with Carrington, chairman of the committee. A

report was made on July 10, allowing the purchase by the

company.



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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.   81

The ordinance for the government of the Territory was

referred to a new committee-Edward Carrington, of

Virginia, as chairman, Nathan Dane and others. This

ordinance in its new form, and without any clause as to

slavery, was reported on the 11th of July, 1787, and Con-

gress proceeded to consider it. On its second reading,

Dane (Mr. Bancroft thinks at the instance of Grayson, of

Virginia, and others) moved the clause forbidding slavery

and providing for the surrender of fugitive slaves, which

was adopted by the votes of Georgia, South Carolina, North

Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and

Massachusetts-all the States then present-Pennsyl-

vania, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and

Maryland absent. There was but one member-Mr.Yates,

of New York -who voted in the negative. Immediately

thereafter the purchase by the Ohio Company was perfect-

ed. Thus the ordinance to govern the Territory and the

scheme for its colonization at this place were almost cotem-

poraneous, and stood related as cause and result.

Of that celebrated Ordinance of July 13, 1787, some

observations are appropriate to this occasion.

The ordinance may be summarized thus:

1. Equality of heirship to a decedent between his chil-

dren and kindred of both sexes. This was according, as

well to Massachusetts law, as to that of Virginia in her

legislation under the lead of Jefferson in 1776-7, but there

was a saving to the citizens of Virginia in Illinois of their

laws and customs relative to this matter.

2. A government was provided of Governor, Secretary,

and Judges, to be appointed by Congress, with power to

adopt such laws of the original States as may be necessary

and best suited to the circumstances, subject to the ap-

proval of Congress.

3. When there shall be five thousand free male inhab-

itants, a Legislature is authorized. The Legislature is to

be composed of Governor, Legislative Council, and As-

sembly.

 

Vol. II-6

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82    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

4. The legislative power is limited by the provisions

and principles declared in the ordinance.

5. As fundamental articles of compact between the

original States and the people and States in said territory,

unalterable but by common consent, six were ordained in

substance as follows:

First-Religious freedom, and civil rights not to be

dependent on religious belief; a principle embodied in

Jefferson's immortal act for religious freedom, passed in

Virginia on the 16th of December, 1785; and engraven on

his tomb, by his direction, as one of his three titles to the

remembrance of mankind.

Second-Habeas corpus and jury trial, proportionate

representation in the Legislature, and judicial procedure

according to the common law; deprivation of life, property

or liberty only by the judgment of peers or law of the land;

just compensation to be allowed for private property taken

for public use; and no power by law to interfere with or

affect private contracts.

Third -As religion, morality and knowledge are neces-

sary for good government and the happiness of mankind,

schools shall be encouraged. Good faith to the Indians is

enjoined, and legal protection to them and their rights.

Fourth--The States formed from said Territory to

remain forever a part of this Confederacy of the United

States of America-to bear their proper share of public

burdens-to lay no tax on the lands of the Union, nor

interfere with the disposal of the soil of the United States,

and the navigable rivers leading into the Mississippi and

St. Lawrence to be common highways, forever free to all

the people of all the States.

Fifth -Three at least, at most five, States to be formed

out of the Territory, as "soon as Virginia shall alter her

act of cession and consent to the same "-and each of

them to be admitted when it shall have sixty thousand

free inhabitants, on an equal footing with the original

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.     83

States in all respects whatever, provided its Constitution

be republican and consistent with the ordinance.

Sixth-" There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary

servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the pun-

ishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly

convicted; provided always, that any person escaping into

the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed

in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be

lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming

his or her labor or service as aforesaid."

This ordinance, which for the validity of the fifth article

was in its terms conditioned on the consent of the grantor,

Virginia-and upon that of no other State-was a clear and

complete recognition by Congress of the justice of the

title of Virginia, and her supreme right to insist on the

original conditions in her grant, unless she waived them.

And the terms of this fifth article described the territory

as to which Virginia's consent was asked, as extending

from the Ohio to the northern boundary between the

United States and Canada, thus embracing what is now

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. And

this was done by the votes of Massachusetts, New Jersey

and New York, the only States who had ever contested the

claim of Virginia previously. This is a virtual estoppel of

all the States to a denial of Virginia's claim. Accordingly,

Virginia, by her act passed December 30, 1788, declared

her assent to and ratification and confirmation of "the

said article" (being the fifth) "of compact between the

original States and the people and States in the said terri-

tory."

I am free to say that in my judgment not only that act

ratified and confirmed the fifth article as to the number of

the States to be formed out of the territory, but by con-

firming it as "an article of compact between the original

States and the people and States in said territory"-of

which compact Article Sixth, forbidding slavery, was a part

-she must be deemed to have consented to the exclusion

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84    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

of slavery from the territory she had previously granted to

the Union.

She could have done it herself before her grant. And

when her grantee did it with her privity and by her vote

in Congress, and she consented to another article of a com-

pact without dissent from this anti-slavery clause, she must

be held to have assented to the latter, and is estopped to

dissent thereafter. Nor was such exclusion contrary to

her well-defined policy. She had, in her colonial history,

protested against the slave trade, and, in the preamble to

her constitution of June 29, 1776, written by Mr. Jefferson,

had, in nervous and emphatic terms, arraigned George III

for " prompting our negroes to rise in arms among us, those

very negroes, whom by an inhuman use of his negative, he

hath refused us permission to exclude by law." And in

the following month (August 25, 1787), in the Federal con-

vention, after her son George Mason had denounced it as

"this infernal traffic," she voted to put an end to the slave

trade in 1800, which was postponed to 1808 by the votes of

the New England States (New Hampshire, Massachusetts

and Connecticut), and Maryland, North and South Caro-

lina and Georgia.

And while she voted against the Jefferson clause in 1784,

which forbade the extension of slavery into the territory

south as well as north of the Ohio River, she was willing,

from climatic as well as other reasons, to forbid its exten-

sion into the territory north of that river.

And now the domain for free colonization under law, and

with the inspiration of religion and education, is ready for

the adventurous emigrants. The Old Dominion has

granted it--the Union has accepted it--and the sturdy

sons of Massachusetts, under Rufus Putnam, with her

polity, civil and religious, braving the wilderness and the

winter, land and plant their feet upon the spot where we

stand to-day. Six States only on the ₇th of April, 1788,

had ratified the new Federal Constitution proposed by the

Federal Convention, September 17, 1787.  You took pos-

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.  85

session under the Articles of Confederation you hold now

under the Constitution of 1789. You pioneered the North-

west, and others followed. The forty-eight immortals at

Marietta a century ago are succeeded by fifteen millions of

people from every section of the Union in the Territory

covered by the Ordinance of 1787. The poverty of the

unsheltered and hungry group of that day must be honored

in the memories of that mighty mass of millions who now

fill the land, they took into possession, with palaces and

institutions of learning; with churches of the ever-living

God; with teeming harvests of the earth and mines of

inestimable wealth, and factories filled with the busy hum

of manual industry; and above all, with the intelligent

love of liberty and law and religion under the Constitution

of our fathers, to be consecrated by our devoted lives and

defended to the death against all who would prostitute its

sacred provisions to the purposes of private gain, to the

behests of ignoble factions or for the promotion of base

and selfish ambition.

For to you and to me, and to all within the broad limits

of this great Union, the inheritors of the constitutional

liberties of our fathers, come the solemn questions to-day:

What will we do with it? Shall we waste or save our

heritage ? Shall the motive influence of our life be the

mere expansion of national power, and the accretion of

national wealth ? and shall we pervert all we have inher-

ited or acquired to an effeminate luxury, to a sordid

ambition for riches or power, or to the destruction of our

free institutions ? Let us rather take our inspirations from

the hardy, simple, heroic and devoted men who, fearing

God feared nothing else; who erected here and everywhere

in our land altars to the true God, founded schools for their

children, established institutions of law and liberty, and

consecrated homes of economy and industry, of a pure

morality, of genuine and exalted piety.

Our duty is plain, as our danger is great. Our danger is

in one word, irreverence-irreverence to the simple vir-

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86    Ohio Archeaological and Historical Quarterly.

tues and exalted honor of our fathers, irreverence to God,

irreverence to the constitution ordained by them under the

Divine guidance, and in the conservation of which we have

become a mighty power on the earth. Our duty is vener-

ation for all that is noble and great and pure, for God and

His religion, for our fathers, who, in sincere and simple

faith, feared nothing but to do wrong by disobedience to

the Divine commands. And what we specially need, as

citizens of this great Republic of republics, is to study

with earnest diligence the principles of our free institu-

tions; to hold him an enemy of the country who derides

fidelity to the Constitution, and trifles with his solemn

obligation to uphold it; who would use the power of the

government to promote personal or party ends; who stirs

up the bitterness of buried strifes, and engenders sectional

or class conflicts among the people of the Union; and

who does not hold it to be his best and noblest civil duty

to uphold and defend the Constitution in all its integrity

against all the temptations to its violation by the corrupt-

ing influences which surround us.

The time has come, in this period when centennial anni-

versaries summon us to look at the genesis of our being as

a people, to examine and study the general principles in

the development of which a century has passed, and to

mark wherein we have departed from the law of our or-

ganic life. That law is this: That a written constitution

is the supreme law for government and for men, unchange-

able by either, except in the mode it has ordained-supreme

in the conscience of President, Governor, legislator, judge

and citizen- not a constitution of growth and evolution

from the exigencies of an advancing civilization, by the

sophistries of ingenious men, or in obedience to their ca-

price or corrupt desires or greedy avarice; not a law one

thing to-day, another to-morrow; but, to apply a well

known passage: Omnes genies et omni tempore, una lex, et

sempiterna et immutabilis.

It is to this solemn duty I venture to call the sons of

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Oration of Hon. John Randolph Tucker.    87

New England and Virginia, and of all the States, here and

elsewhere, now and always. Let the descendants of the

sturdy men, who, here and elsewhere, laid this foundation

stone - this elect, tried and precious corner stone for our

free institutions, the absolute supremacy of a written con-

stitution-bring us back to a higher and more healthful

atmosphere of thought and feeling. Let us make this

Union so strong under the faithful observance of the Con-

stitution which made and conserves it as our greatest

blessing; so strong in the affections and devotion of the

people that not only none shall be able to destroy it who

would, but that none would do so even if they were able.

Believe me, the bond of reverential love is stronger than

that of force, and I think the South would say to-day that,

though she could not dissolve the Union when she would,

she now would not if she could.

The decree has gone forth-THAT THE STATES CAN-

NOT DESTROY THE UNION! AND THE UNION MUST NOT

DESTROY THE STATES !

I congratulate the people of Ohio, and especially the

descendants of the Pilgrims, whose heroic fortitude planted

this colony a century ago, on this auspicious anniversary.

Let a review of the past purify and stimulate us to follow

the noble example of our ancestors; and, with hearty rev-

erence for the God of our fathers, and veneration for the

constitutional work of their hands, may we transmit

the inheritance we have received to our posterity, so that,

in the centuries to come, and to the remotest generations,

this great Federal Constitution may be a light to the

world, and secure the blessings of a free and Christian

civilization to this American Union of self-governed States

forever. To such a union, under such a constitution, let

us swear eternal fidelity, and pray, with united hearts,

Esto perpetua !

• 24