western settlement were still too great.

Disappointed in the sales under the Land Ordinance, Congress was
persuaded to consider the alternative course of selling large tracts to
companies. The collapse of national credit left the public domain almost
the only available source of revenue. Early in 1787 the Ohio Company
offered to purchase a tract of land between the Ohio and Muskingum
Rivers. The promoters of this company had been interested in an earlier
project of army officers for the founding of a military colony beyond
the Ohio. Organized at Boston in March, 1786, with a nominal capital of
one million dollars, it had within a year raised one fourth of that
amount and sent first General Samuel Parsons and then the Reverend
Manasseh Cutler to secure the desired grant from Congress. The labors of
this astute divine at the seat of government form an interesting chapter
in the evolution of American legislative methods. By devices well known
to the modern lobbyist he not only secured the grant of land, but also
took a hand in the shaping of a new ordinance for the Northwest
Territory. In order to secure the grant to his associates, he had to
resort to log-rolling and agree to procure for a group of land
speculators an option to lands on the Scioto River. The grant to the
Ohio Company contained a million and a half acres; that to the Scioto
Company, five million acres. But while the one paid down half a million
dollars, the other made no payment, expecting to dispose of their
"rights" before the first payment was due. In the following year a third
grant of a million acres on the Great and Little Miami Rivers in Ohio
was made to John Cleve Symmes.

From these sales Congress expected to realize over three and a half
million dollars in public securities and at the same time to satisfy
military bounty warrants amounting to about eight hundred thousand
acres. The actual amount realized was less than six hundred thousand
dollars. The Scioto Company succeeded in disposing of rights to about
three million acres to a company organized in France, which in turn
sold them to unsuspecting royalist emigrants. Neither company ever
secured a clear title to these lands, and Congress had eventually to
come to the relief of the unhappy French settlers with a donation of
twenty-four thousand acres. Unforeseen circumstances prevented either
the Ohio Company or Symmes from complying with the conditions of sale;
and in both cases Congress cons