the innocent, without respect of persons; none to be punished without trial by their peers, and then in pursuance of the laws and evidence in the case"-the judicial history of the Territory began. Paul Fearing was admitted as an attorney, the first lawyer in the Northwest.

Such, briefly told, is the story of the founding of Marietta, named for the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, and the institution of civil government in the Northwest Territory. Not even the Pilgrim colony of 1620 was made up of better elements. At the distance of a century, no fitter eulogy upon the men who constituted it can be given than Washington's: “No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there were never men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community."1 One difference between French and American colonization in the Northwest is strikingly shown by the fact that on April 7, 1798, when Marietta was founded, the village at Saut Ste. Marie was one hundred and twenty years old.

Another land-purchase, second only to that of the Ohio Company, was made in 1787-the Miami purchase or Symmes Tract of one million acres, lying on the north bank of the Ohio between the two Miami Rivers. Three colonies were planted in this tract in the year 1788: Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami; Losantiville, opposite the mouth of the Licking River; and North Bend, at the farthest northern sweep of the Ohio west of the Kanawha. For a time every one of these settlements aspired to the leadership; but the second, founded December 24, 1788, having been chosen as the seat of a military post, and also as the county seat of Hamilton County, rebaptized by St. Clair Cincinnati, a name borrowed

1 Sparks: Writings of Washington, IX., 385.

2 The tract was not fully paid for, and only about one-third of it was patented.

from the celebrated society of Revolutionary officers of which he was a prominent member, soon outstripped both its competitors. Here lived the Governor, and here sat the first Territorial Legislature. Still, its growth was slow; and when Judge Burnet first saw it, in 1796, it gave faint promise of becoming what it now is in name, and what it long was in fact, the Queen City of the West. The buildings were few and poor; the population, including the garrison, was about six hundred; and the social habits of the place anything but commendable.'

Those philosophers who trace all historical phenomena to physical causes may read a suggestive lesson in the history of the Miami purchase. The location of North Bend is as favorable as that of Cincinnati. It was the home of Judge Symmes, and the first station of the troops detailed by General Harmar to protect the Miami pioneers. Unfortunately, before a permanent fortification was constructed the commanding officer of the troops became enamored of the black-eyed wife of one of the settlers. The jealous husband's removal to Cincinnati led to the prompt discovery, on the part of the officer, of the superior military advantages of that location; whence resulted not the walls of lofty Rome, but the walls of Fort Washington and the ascendancy of the town named for the Cincinnati.

As in the case of the Muskingum colony, a very large number of the Miami settlers had seen service in the War of Independence. They were from no single locality, but Middle States men seem to have predominated-some of the most prominent from New Jersey. The Virginia Military District, embracing six thousand five hundred and seventy square miles of the fairest part of Ohio, became the seat of a third group of settlements, the founders of which came from Virginia. These were later, mainly owing to the Indian War, than the settlements of the Ohio and Miami purchases. Gen

1 Burnet: Notes on the Settlement of the Northwest Territory, 35 et seq.

eral Nathaniel Massie and Duncan McArthur, afterward Governor of Ohio, laid out the town of Chillicothe, soon made the capital of Ross County, on the west bank of the Scioto, in 1796. These Virginia colonies drew to themselves numbers of very able men, and they exercised a marked influence upon the nascent society of the Northwest, and particularly of Ohio.

The Virginia Military District is often mentioned in connection with the Connecticut Western Reserve. Beyond the fact that both were reservations, they have no points of likeness and many of unlikeness; Virginia's reservation was conditional and special, Connecticut's absolute and general.

Virginia voted her soldiers upon Continental and State establishment liberal land-bounties. She also set apart for this purpose the lands bounded by Green River, Cumberland Mountains, the Tennessee line and Tennessee River, and the Ohio. In her act and deed of cession of the Northwest, Virginia stipulated that, in case these lands should prove insufficient for the purpose, the deficiency should be made up to the said troops in good lands, to be laid off between the Rivers Scioto and Little Miami. The Cumberland lands did prove insufficient for the purpose. Congress having been apprised of this fact, it passed a law in 1790 directing the Secretary of War to make return to the Governor of Virginia of the names of the Virginia officers and men entitled to bounty-lands, and the amount in acres due them. The same act authorized the agents of the said troops to locate and survey for their use, between the two rivers, apparently in the old Virginia fashion, such a number of acres of land as, together with the number already located on the waters of the Cumberland, would make the amount to which they were entitled; these locations and surveys to be recorded, together with the names of those for whom they were made, in the office of the Secretary of State. The President was then directed to issue letters patent for these lands to the persons entitled to them, for their use or the use of their heirs, assigns, or legal representatives. The Secretary

Wayne's treaty line and the Geographer's line do not really meet, but nearly so. This, however, was purely accidental; neither line has any historical connection with the other.

All the divisions marked on this map are explained in the text, except the Congress lands. These are so called simply because they were surveyed and sold in the ordinary way, pursuant to the land legislation of Congress. The Seven ranges, the Ohio purchase, and the Symmes' tract, like the Congress lands, were surveyed into six-mile townships; the Military bounty lands, like the Western Reserve, into five-mile townships; the Virginia military district, not according to any system whatever.1

This map is reproduced from The History and Civil Government of Ohio, by B. A. and M. L. Hinsdale, published by the Werner School Book Company.

of State should forward these deeds to the Executive of Virginia, to be delivered to the proper persons. It will be seen that the National Government issued the deeds, but did not make the surveys. It is not surprising, therefore, that Dr. Andrews should speak of the "no system " surveys of the Virginia Military District, and that Colonel Whittlesey should characterize the private surveys as "so loose as to be entirely useless for geographical purposes." Early in the history of the locations and surveys a dispute arose as to the Western boundary of the Virginia District. The United States held that it should be the Little Miami and a line drawn from the source of that stream to the source of the Scioto; Virginia contended for a straight line drawn from the mouth of the one river to the source of the other. The first is called "Roberts's line; " the second, "Ludlow's line." Roberts's line was virtually established by a decision of the Supreme Court in 1824. No question of jurisdiction concerning this District ever arose between Virginia and the United States. In 1852 Virginia released to the United States all lands in the District not already located, in consideration of Congress having provided other lands for such of the Virginia claims as were not yet satisfied. In 1871 Congress ceded such of these lands as remained unappropriated, amounting to 76,735 acres, appraised at $74,287, to the State of Ohio, and the State, in turn, ceded them to the State University.'

In fulfilment of its promises made in the course of the war, the National Government set apart a large tract for landbounties lying south of Wayne's treaty line, west of the seven ranges, and east of the Scioto River. This tract, known as the United States Bounty Lands, embraces about four thousand square miles.

As a separate chapter will be devoted to the Western Reserve, it will not be noticed here, beyond the remark that it was the fourth centre of early colonization within the limits

1 Donaldson: The Public Domain, 233, 234.

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