e Territory had been
extinguished by treaties with the leading tribes, despite which the red
men contested the advancing settlers with untiring ferocity. Flatboats
were attacked on their way down the Ohio, and the families massacred;
blockhouses were assailed, and the smoke of the settlers' burning cabins
lit the skies at night. The pioneer path to the fertile region was
crimsoned by the blood of those who hewed their way through the western
wilderness.

Until formed into States, the region was known as _The Northwestern
Territory_. In 1788, Rufus Putnam, of Massachusetts, at the head of
forty pioneers, founded the settlement of Marietta, and within the same
year 20,000 people erected their homes in the region that had been
visited by Daniel Boone and others nearly twenty years before.

No sooner had the ninth State ratified the Constitution than the
Congress of the Confederation named March 4, 1789, as the day on which,
in the city of New York, the new government should go into effect.

The time had come for the selection of the first President of the United
States, and it need not be said that the name of only one
man--WASHINGTON--was in people's thoughts. So overmastering was the
personality of that great man that he was the only one mentioned, and
what is most significant of all, not a politician or leader in the
country had the effrontery to hint that he had placed himself "in the
hands of his friends" in the race for the presidency. Had he done so, he
would have been buffeted into eternal obscurity.

Whatever may be said of the ingratitude of republics, it can never be
charged that the United States was ungrateful to Washington. The people
appreciated his worth from the first, and there was no honor they would
not have gladly paid him.

THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

The date of the 4th of March was fixed without special reason for
launching the new government, and it has been the rule ever since,
though it often falls upon the most stormy and unpleasant day of the
whole year. Some of the States were so slow in sending their
representatives to New York, that more than a month passed before a
quorum of both houses appeared. When the electoral vote for the
President was counted, it was found that every one of the sixty-nine had
been cast for Washington. The law was that the person receiving the next
highest number became Vice-President. This vote was: John Adams, of
Massachusetts, 34; John Jay, of New Yo