2. That when there were five thousand free white men in the territory, they might elect a legislature and send a delegate to Congress.
3. That slavery should not be permitted in the territory, but that fugitive slaves should be returned.
4. That the territory should in time be cut up into not more than five, or less than three, states.
5. That when the population of each division numbered sixty thousand, it should be admitted into the Union on the same footing as the original states.
OHIO SETTLED.—After the ordinance was passed, Cutler bought five million acres of land north of the Ohio River, and in the winter of 1787-88 a party of young men sent out by the Ohio Company made their way from New England to a branch of the Monongahela River. There they built a great boat, and when the ice broke up, floated down the Ohio to the lands of the Ohio Company, where they erected a few log huts and a fort of hewn timber which they called Campus Martius. The little settlement was called Marietta. [11]
Farther down the Ohio, on land owned by John Cleve Symmes and associates, Columbia and Losantiville, afterward called Cincinnati, were founded in 1788.
STATE BOUNDARIES.—The old charters which led to the conflicting claims to land in the West, caused like disputes in the East. Massachusetts claimed a strip of country embracing western New York, and did not settle the dispute till 1786. [12] A similar dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania was settled in 1782. [13] New York claimed all Vermont as having once been part of New Netherland; but Vermont was really an independent republic. [14] In Kentucky the people were insisting that their country be separated from Virginia and made a state.
TROUBLE WITH SPAIN.—Congress had trouble in trying to secure from foreign nations fair treatment for our commerce, and was involved in a dispute over the navigation of the Mississippi. Spain owned both banks at the mouth of the river, and denied the right of Americans to go in or out without her consent. The Spanish minister who came over in 1785 was ready to make a commercial treaty if the river was closed to navigation for twenty-five years, and the Eastern states were quite ready to agree to it. But the people of Kentucky and Tennessee threatened to leave the Union if cut off from the sea, and no treaty was made with Spain till 1795.
THE WEAKNESS OF THE CONFEDERATION.—The question of trade and commerce with foreign powers and between the states was very serious, and the weakness of Congress in this and other matters soon wrecked the Confederation.
1. In the first place, the Articles of Confederation gave Congress no power to levy taxes of any kind. Money, therefore, could not be obtained to pay the debts of the United States, or the annual cost of government. [15]