s just what might have been expected. The land
on which they were living was not common land: it had been appropriated;
it belonged to them, and it was for them to make laws for it. Such is
the lesson of the short-lived state of Franklin. It was because she
perceived that similar feelings were at work in Kentucky that Virginia
did not venture to loosen her grasp upon that state until it was fully
organized and ready for admission into the Union. It was in no such
partly settled country that Congress could do such a thing as carve out
boundaries and prohibit slavery by an act of national sovereignty. There
remained the magnificent territory north of the Ohio,--an empire in
itself, as large as the German Empire, with the Netherlands thrown
in,--in which the collective wisdom of the American people, as
represented in Congress, might autocratically shape the future; for it
was still a wilderness, watched by frontier garrisons, and save for the
Indians and the trappers and a few sleepy old French towns on the
eastern bank of the Mississippi, there were no signs of human life in
all its vast solitude. Here, where there was nobody to grumble or
secede, Congress, in 1787, proceeded to carry out the work which
Jefferson had outlined three years before.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Ohio company.]

It is interesting to trace the immediate origin of the famous Ordinance
of 1787. At the close of the war General Rufus Putnam, from the mountain
village of Rutland in Massachusetts, sent to Congress an outline of a
plan for colonizing the region between Lake Erie and the Ohio with
veterans of the army, who were well fitted to protect the border against
Indian attacks. The land was to be laid out in townships six miles
square, "with large reservations for the ministry and schools;" and by
selling it to the soldiers at a merely nominal price, the penniless
Congress might obtain an income, and at the same time recognize their
services in the only substantial way that seemed practicable. Washington
strongly favoured the scheme, but, in order to carry it out, it was
necessary to wait until the cession of the territory by the various
claimant states should be completed. After this had been done, a series
of treaties were made with the Six Nations, as overlords, and their
vassal tribes, the Wyandots, Chippewas, Ottawas, Delawares, and
Shawnees, whereby all Indian claims to the lands in question were
forever renounced. The matter was then formall