NIANS GAVE US

--_A topographical description of the country north of the Ohio at the
close of the Revolutionary War._

In the early councils of the Republic the stalwart sons of Virginia
exercised a preponderating influence. As men of broad national
conceptions, who were unafraid to strike a decisive blow in the
interests of freedom, they were unexcelled. Saratoga had already been
won, but at the back door of the newborn states was a line of British
posts in the valleys of the Wabash and Mississippi and at Detroit, that
stood ready to pour forth a horde of naked savages on the frontier
settlements of the west and bring murder and destruction to the aid of
England's cause. In December, 1777, George Rogers Clark came from
Kentucky. He laid before Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, a bold
plan for the reduction of these posts and the removal of the red menace.
Into his councils the governor called George Wythe, George Mason and
Thomas Jefferson. An expedition was then and there set on foot that gave
the nation its first federal domain for the erection of new republican
states. With a lot of worthless paper money in his pocket, and about one
hundred and seventy-five hunting shirt men from Virginia and Kentucky,
Clark marched across the prairies of southern Illinois, and captured
Kaskaskia. Later he took Vincennes. Thus by the cool enterprise and
daring of this brave man, he laid the foundation for the subsequent
negotiations of 1783, that gave the northwest territory to the United
States of America.

The country thus conquered covered more than two hundred and forty-four
thousand square miles of the earth's surface, and comprised what are now
the states of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Within
its confines were boundless plains and prairies filled with grass;
immense forests of oak, hickory, walnut, pine, beech and fir; enormous
hidden treasures of coal, iron and copper. Add to all these natural
resources, a fertile soil, a temperate climate, and unlimited facilities
for commerce and trade, and no field was ever presented to the hand and
genius of man, better adapted to form the homes and habitations of a
free and enterprising people. This was known and appreciated by the
noble minds of Washington and Jefferson, even at that day, and they
above all other men of their times, saw most clearly the great vision of
the future.

At the close of the revolution, however, only a few scattered posts,
s