Seventeen millions of acres on the northern bank of the Ohio were now in possession of the United States, in consequence of the already mentioned treaties with the Six Nations. These formerly powerful and warlike tribes now retained but a small hold upon the lands which had once been their own. They were beginning, like their more feeble eastern brethren, to pass away from before the white man. The entire Mohawk nation emigrated in a body into Canada, and other Indian nations followed their example.
The pressure of war being removed from the eastern states, their restless and adventurous sons now went forth to explore and establish peaceable settlements, with all the amenities of domestic life and civilisation, in the wilderness. The State of New York located her disbanded soldiers on the land-bounties which she had promised them, upon such western lands as she retained after resigning her larger claims to the Union; Pennsylvania followed this example. Occupation was thus given to the unemployed, and a source of vast wealth opened to the impoverished. In July of this same busy year, the Ohio Company was formed, for the settlement of portions of this great territory, with the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, Winthrop Sargeant, and other citizens of New England, at its head.
In September, the Kentuckians, now holding their fourth convention at Danville, once more applied to congress for admission into the Union; but though they had now advanced so far as to have a spokesman in congress, in the person of one of the Virginian delegates, a Kentucky lawyer, and were possessed of a newspaper, the “Kentucky Gazette,” printed and published at Lexington, they were again unsuccessful in their application.
General St. Clair was elected governor of the new territory north-west of the Ohio, and thither flowed the great tide of emigration from the New England states, which had hitherto poured into Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. All New England was now astir with the movement westward, and again we have chronicles of migration and early settlement, as in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. Quaint and beautiful are the details which exist of these movements. The plans were drawn in Boston, and at Providence in Rhode Island, of great cities to be erected on the banks of rivers flowing as yet through the wilderness; the intending emigrants met to draw lots for their future homes in these cities, each “town-lot to be ninety feet front and 180 feet in depth;” the centre street of the city to be 150 feet wide. As in the old times, “the Mayflower” set sail with the pioneer settlers; and on the 7th of April, 1788, General Rufus Putnam, the leader of this party, landed at the mouth of the Muskinghum, opposite Fort Harmer. Nothing can be pleasanter than the records of these early Ohio settlements. Captain Pipes, the chief of the Delawares, with about seventy of his tribe, came down for the purpose of trading with the garrison of Fort Harmer, shook hands with the new-comers, and welcomed them cordially to the shores of the Muskinghum, on the head waters of which river they themselves resided. The settlers arriving from the stern climate of New England, where they had left frost and snow, were struck by the contrast presented by the vegetation of their new home. The pea-vines, say they, and buffalo-clover, with various other plants, were nearly knee high, and afforded a rich pasture for their hungry horses. The trees had commenced putting forth their foliage, the birds warbled a welcome song from their branches, and all nature smiled at the approach of the strangers.
On these auspicious shores the settlers immediately commenced felling trees for their log-houses, and for the clearing of the land; while General Putnam resided in a tent which they had brought with them. In five days they had cleared and sown several acres of land. A month later one of the settlers wrote—“This country for fertility of soil and pleasantness of situation exceeds all our expectations. The climate is exceedingly healthy; not a man sick since we have been here. We have started twenty buffaloes in a drove. Deer as plenty as sheep in other places. Beaver and other animals abundant. I have known one man to catch twenty or thirty in one or two nights. Turkeys are innumerable; they come within a few rods of us in the fields. We have already planted a field of 150 acres of corn.” In July, another writer says—“The corn has grown nine inches in twenty-four hours for two or three days past.”
The city, which was laid out according to the great plan already formed, and including within its area the remains of an ancient fortified town, somewhat similar to those since discovered in Central America, and which were here carefully preserved, received the name of Marietta. This name was an abbreviation of Marie Antoinette, the name of the young queen of France, and was intended as a mark of respect to that sovereign, in consequence of the attention and kindness with which she had treated Franklin when at the court of Louis XVI., and of the interest which she had taken in the American struggle. The leaders of this settlement were principally old soldiers, and it was natural in them to remember with gratitude the kind offices which this young and beautiful woman had rendered to their cause; nor is their veneration for the classics less distinguishable. There was the “Capitolium” of the city, and the “Via Sacra,” while the garrison, with block-houses at the corners, was called “Campus Martius,” “as if,” says the historian, “in anticipation of the Indian war, which soon commenced, and continued for five years, during which time it was strictly a military camp.” Every feature of the infant colony bore the stamp of sylvan prosperity; the early regulations for the government were written out and posted on the smooth trunk of a large beech-tree. The 4th of July, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, was celebrated by “a sumptuous dinner, eaten under a bowery which stretched along the banks of the Muskinghum.” The table, we are informed, was supplied with venison, buffalo and roast-pigs, with a variety of fish. Among the latter was a pike weighing 100 pounds, which was caught at the mouth of the Muskinghum, by Judge Gilbert Devoll and his son Gilbert, and the tail of which dragged on the ground when suspended upon a pole between the shoulders of two tall men. On this occasion an oration was made by one of the judges, the first political oration ever made in Ohio.
On the 9th of July, General St. Clair arrived as governor of the colony, and was received in “the bowery” with Arcadian honours, and the firing of fourteen guns. So rapid was the progress of this settlement, that before the end of the summer the city-lots, with their streets and open public spaces, covered an area extending one mile on the Ohio River, and one mile and 120 perches on the Muskinghum. A substantial bridge was built over the creek which falls into the Muskinghum, in the southern part of the city, called, with their love of classical history, “Tiber Creek,” and three other bridges were also built over smaller streams. A road was cut through the forest to the Campus Martius, and the clearing and planting of land went on vigorously. Again and again wrote the settlers of the prosperity and plenty which surrounded them; the harvest was cut in the autumn, and in some cases yielded 104 bushels of ears to the acre, some of these ears yielding a pint and a half of shelled corn each. “As for beans, turnips, pumpkins, squashes, cabbages, melons, cucumbers, etc., they are,” says the exultant writer, “the very finest in flavour I ever tasted, and the great production is truly surprising.” The district of Marietta was called Washington county.
Emigration and colonisation was now the order of the day. It supplied the want of employment and excitement caused by the cessation of the war, and was a healthy outlet for the energies of the people. Among other emigrants who went out to the western settlements of New York was Daniel Shays, who had been included in a bill just passed of general pardon and indemnity for all concerned in the late insurrection. Shays lived to be very old, supported in his latter days by his pension as a revolutionary soldier. In October, John Symmes, one of the judges of Marietta, purchased a large tract of land between the great and little Miami rivers, and in the following month the first settlement within that purchase, and the second within Ohio, was commenced at Columbia at the mouth of the little Miami, five miles above the site of the present Cincinnati. All went on prosperously; towns were laid out, forests cleared, roads opened, mills and bridges built, and population flocked in. Nor was this alone the case on the Ohio. Within twelve months, more than 10,000 emigrants passed through Marietta on their way to Kentucky and other parts of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The West, the “great West,” the boast of the American, was putting forth its vast attractions and luring tens of thousands even then.
At the close of 1787, it was doubtful what would be the fate of the Federal Constitution in the States. It was received with distrust and jealousy by a great body of the people, who feared that the extensive powers given by the new Constitution to the federal government would place them under oppressions as grievous as those of the mother-country, which they had just shaken off. On the other hand, it was supported by the wealthy portion of the community, by the public creditors and merchants, the former of whom saw in it their only chance of payment, while the latter hoped everything from the extension and regulation of commerce. In the midst of this doubt and uncertainty, an able series of articles appeared in a New York paper, written by Hamilton, Madison and Jay, advocating the new constitution, and these so completely meeting all objections, helped greatly to settle the question.
Delaware was the first state to adopt the Constitution, on December 7th; five days later Pennsylvania followed the example; and soon after New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut. Massachusetts weighed and deliberated, with able men on either side, the friends of the Union looking anxiously on, well knowing that on the decision of that important state would depend the decision of others; and at length, on February 7th, the new Constitution was ratified by her, the majority in its favour being nineteen. Maryland gave in her adhesion in April, South Carolina in May, and in June New Hampshire. The Constitution was earnestly advocated and opposed by the different parties in the conventions of Virginia and New York, but both ratified it, the one in June, the other in July.