Mississippi to Spain; but it having been ascertained that Congress, through the influence of Virginia and the other southern states, would not permit this, the convention had no occasion to act upon the subject. In the year 1787 quite a sensation arose in Kentucky, in consequence of a profitable trade having been opened with New Orleans by Genera Wilkinson, who descended thither in June, with a boat load of tobacco and other productions of Kentucky. Previously, all those who ventured down the river within the Spanish settlements had their property seized. The lure was then held out by the Spanish minister, that if Kentucky would declare her independence of the United States, the navigation of the Mississippi should be opened to her; but that never would this privilege be extended while she was a part of the Union, in consequence of existing commercial treaties between Spain and other European powers. In the winter of 1788-9, the notorious Dr. Connolly, a secret British agent from Canada, arrived in Kentucky. His object appeared to be to sound the temper of her people, and ascertain if they were willing to unite with British troops from Canada, and seize upon and hold New Orleans and the Spanish settlements on the Mississippi. He dwelt upon the advantages which it must be to the people of the west to hold and possess the right of navigating the Mississippi; but his overtures were not accepted.

At this time settlements had been commenced within the present limits of Ohio. Before giving a sketch of these, we glance at the western land tlaims.

The claim of the English monarch to the Northwestern Territory was ceded to the United States by the treaty of peace, signed at Paris, September 3, 1783. During the pendency of this negotiation, Mr. Oswald, the British commissioner, proposed the River Ohio as the western boundary of the United States, and but for the indomitable, persevering opposition of John Adams, one of the American commissioners, who insisted upon the Mississippi as the boundary, this proposition would have probably been acceded to.

The states who owned western unappropriated lands under their original charters from British monarchs, with a single exception, ceded them to the United States. In March, 1784, Virginia ceded the soil and jurisdiction of her lands northwest of the Ohio. In September, 1786, Connecticut ceded her claim to the soil and jurisdiction of her western lands, excepting that part of Ohio known as the "Western Reserve," and to that she ceded her jurisdictional claims in 1800. Massachusetts

and New York ceded all their claims. Besides these were the Indian claims, asserted by the right of possession. These have been extinguished by various treaties, from time to time, as the inroads of emigration rendered necessary.

The Indian title to a large part of the territory of Ohio having become extinguished, Congress, before settlements were commenced, found it necessary to pass ordinances for the survey and sale of the lands in the Northwest Territory. In October, 1787, Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sargeant, agents of the New England Ohio Company, made a large purchase of land, bounded south by the Ohio, and west by the Scioto River. Its settlement was commenced at Marietta in the spring

of 1788, which was the first made by the Americans within Ohio. A settlement had been attempted within the limits of Ohio, on the site of Portsmouth, in April, 1785, by four families from Redstone, Pennsyl vania; but difficulties with the Indians compelled its abandonment.

About the time of the settlement of Marietta, Congress appointed General Arthur St. Clair governor, Winthrop Sargeant secretary, and Samuel Holden Parsons, James M. Varnum, and John Cleves Symmes judges in and over the Territory. They organized its government and passed laws, and the governor erected the county of Washington, embracing nearly the whole of the eastern half of the present limits of Ohio.

In November, 1788, the second settlement within the limits of Ohio was commenced at Columbia, on the Ohio, five miles above the site of Cincinnati, and within the purchase and under the auspices of John Cleves Symmes and associates. Shortly after, settlements were commenced at Cincinnati, and at North Bend, sixteen miles below, both within Symmes's purchase. In 1790 another settlement was made at Gallipolis by a colony from France - the name signfying city of the French.

On the 9th of January, 1789, a treaty was concluded at Fort Harmer, at the mouth of the Muskingum, opposite Marietta, by Governor St. Clair, in which the treaty, which had been made four years previous, at Fort M'Intosh, on the site of Beaver, Pennsylvania, was renewed and confirmed. It did not, however, produce the favorable results anticipated. The Indians, the same year, committed numerous murders, which occasioned the alarmed settlers to erect block-houses in each of the new settlements. In June, Major Doughty, with one hundred and forty men, commenced the erection of Fort Washington, on the site of Cincinnati In the course of the summer General Harmer arrived at the fort with three hundred men.

Negotiations with the Indians proving unfavorablę, General Harmer marched, in September, 1790, from Cincinnati with thirteen hundred men, less than one fourth of whom were regulars, to attack their towns on the Maumee. He succeeded in burning their towns; but in an engagement with the Indians, part of his troops met with a severe loss. The next year a larger army assembled at Cincinnati, under General St. Clair, composed of about three thousand men. With this force he commenced his march towards the Indian towns on the Maumee. Early in the morning of the 4th of November, 1791, his army, while in camp on what is now the line of Darke and Mercer counties, within three miles of the Indian line, and about seventy north from Cincinnati, were surprised by a large body of Indians, and defeated with terrible slaughter. A third army, under General Anthony Wayne, was organized. On the 20th of August, 1794, they met and completely defeated the Indians, on the Maumee River, about twelve miles south of the site of Toledo. The Indians, at length, becoming convinced of their inability to resist the American arms, sued for peace. On the 3d of August, 1795, General Wayne concluded a treaty at Greenville, sixty miles north of Cincinnati, with eleven of the most powerful northwestern tribes, in grand council

This gave peace to the west, of several years' duration, during which the settlements progressed with great rapidity. Jay's treaty, concluded November 19, 1794, was a most important event to the prosperity of the west. It provided for the withdrawal of all the British troops from the north-western posts. In 1796 the North-western Territory was divided into five counties. Marietta was the seat of justice of Hamilton and Washington counties; Vincennes, of Knox county; Kaskaskia, of St. Clair county; and Detroit, of Wayne county. The settlers, out of the limits of Ohio, were Canadian or Creole French. The head-quarters of the north-west army were removed to Detroit, at which point a fort had been built by De la Motte Cadillac, as early as 1701.

Originally Virginia claimed jurisdiction over a large part of Western Pennsylvania, as being within her dominions; yet it was not until after the close of the revolution that the boundary line was permanently established. Then this tract was divided into two counties-the one, Westmoreland, extending from the mountains west of the Alleghany River, including Pittsburg and all the country between the Kishkeminitas and Youghiogheny; the other, Washington, comprised all south and west of Pittsburg, inclusive of all the country east and west of the Monongahela River. At this period Fort Pitt was a frontier post, around which had sprung up the village of Pittsburg, which was not regularly laid out into a town until 1784. The settlement on the Monongahela at "Redstone Old Fort," or "Fort Burd," as it was originally called, having become an important point of embarkation for western emigrants, was the next year laid off into a town, under the name of Brownsville. Regular forwarding houses were soon established here, by whose lines goods were systematically wagoned over the mountains, thus superseding the slow and tedious mode of transportation by pack-horses, to which the emigrants had previously been obliged to resort.

In July, 1786, “The Pittsburg Gazette," the first newspaper issued in the West, was published; the second being "The Kentucky Gazette," established at Lexington in August of the next year. As late as 1791 the Alleghany River was the frontier limit of the settlements of Pennsylvania, the Indians holding possession of the region round its north-western tributary, with the exception of a few scattering settlements, which were all simultaneously broken up and exterminated in one night, in February of this year, by a band of one hundred and fifty Indians. During the campaigns of Harmer, St. Clair, and Wayne, Pittsburg was the great depot for the armies.

By this time agriculture and manufactures had begun to flourish in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, and an extensive trade was carried on with the settlements on the Ohio and on the Lower Mississippi, with New Orleans and the rich Spanish settlements in its vicinity. Monongahela whisky, horses, cattle, and agricultural and mechanical implements of iron, were the principal articles of export. The Spanish Government soon after much embarrassed this trade by imposing heavy duties.

The first settlements in Tennessee were made in the vicinity of Fort Loudon, on the Little Tennessee, in what is now Monroe county, East

Tennessee, about the year 1758. Forts Loudon and Chissel were bailt at that time by Colonel Byrd, who marched into the Cherokee country with a regiment from Virginia. The next year war broke out with the Cherokees. In 1760 the Cherokees besieged Fort Loudon, into which the settlers had gathered their families, numbering nearly three hundred persons. The latter were obliged to surrender for want of provisions, but, agreeably to the terms of capitulation, were to retreat unmolested beyond the Blue Ridge. When they had proceeded about twenty miles on their route, the savages fell upon them and massacred all but nine, not even sparing the women and children.

At

The only settlements were thus broken up by this war. The next year the celebrated Daniel Boone made an excursion from North Carolina to the waters of the Holstein. In 1766 Colonel James Smith, with five others, traversed a great portion of Middle and West Tennessee. the mouth of the Tennessee Smith's companions left him to make farther explorations in Illinois, while he, in company with a negro lad, returned home through the wilderness, after an absence of eleven months, during which he saw "neither bread, money, women, nor spirituous liquors."

Other explorations soon succeeded, and permanent settlements were first made in 1768 and '69, by emigrants from Virginia and North Carolina, who were scattered along the branches of the Holstein, French, Broad, and Watauga. The jurisdiction of North Carolina was in 1777 extended over the western district, which was organized as the county of Washington, and extending nominally westward to the Mississippi. Soon after, some of the more daring picneers made a settlement at Bledsoe's station, in Middle Tennessee, in the heart of the Chickasaw nation, and separated several hundred miles, by the usual traveled route, from their kinsmen on the Holstein. A number of French traders had previously established a trading post and erected a few cabins at the "Bluff" near the site of Nashville. To the same vicinity Colonel James Robertson, in the fall of 1780, emigrated with forty families from North Carolina, who were driven from their homes by the marauding incursions of Tarleton's cavalry, and established "Robertson's Station," which formed the nucleus around which gathered the settlements on the Cumberland. The Cherokees having commenced hostilities upon the frontier inhabitants about the commencement of the year 1781, Colonel Campbell, of Virginia, with seven hundred mounted riflemen, invaded their country and defeated them. At the close of the revolution, settlers moved in in large numbers from Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Nashville was laid out in the summer of 1784, and named from General Francis Nash, who fell at Brandywine.

The people of this district, in common with those of Kentucky, and on the Upper Ohio, were deeply interested in the navigation of the Mississippi, and under the tempting offers of the Spanish governor of Louisiana, many were lured to emigrate to West Florida, and become subjects of the Spanish king.

North Carolina having ceded her claims to her western lands, Congress, in May, 1790, erected this into a territory under the name of the "Southwestern Territory," according to the provisions of the ordinance of 1787, excepting the article prohibiting slavery.

The territorial government was organized with a legislature, a legisla tive council, with William Blount as their first governor. Knoxville was made the seat of government. A fort was erected to intimidate the Indians, by the United States, in the Indian country, on the site of Kingston. From this period until the final overthrow of the northwestern Indians by Wayne, this territory suffered from the hostilities of the Creeks and Cherokees, who were secretly supplied with arms and ammunition by the Spanish agents, with the hope that they would exterminate the Cumberland settlements. In 1795 the territory contained a population of seventy-seven thousand two hundred and sixty-two, of whom about ten thousand were slaves. On the first of June, 1796, it was admitted into the Union as the State of Tennessee.

By the treaty of October 27, 1795, with Spain, the old sore, the right of navigating the Mississippi, was closed, that power ceding to the United States the right of free navigation.

The Territory of Mississippi was organized in 1798, and Winthrop Sargeant appointed governor. By the ordinance of 1787, the people of the Northwest Territory were entitled to elect representatives to a ter ritorial legislature whenever it contained five thousand males of full age. Before the close of the year 1798, the territory had this number, and members to a territorial legislature were soon after chosen. In the year 1799 William H. Harrison was chosen the first delegate to Congress from the Northwest Territory. In 1800 the Territory of Indiana was formed, and the next year William H. Harrison appointed governor. This territory comprised the present States of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which vast country then had less than six thousand whites, and those mainly of French origin. On the 30th of April, 1802, Congress passed an act authorizing a convention to form a constitution for Ohio. This convention met at Chillicothe in the succeeding November; and on the 29th of that month a constitution of state government was ratified and signed, by which act Ohio became one of the states of the Federal Union. In October, 1802, the whole western country was thrown into a ferment by the suspension of the American right of depositing goods and produce at New Orleans, guaranteed by the treaty of 1795 with Spain. The whole commerce of the west was struck at in a vital point, and the treaty evidently violated. On the 25th of February, 1803, the port was opened to provisions, on paying a duty, and in April following, by orders of the King of Spain, the right of deposit was restored.

We have seen that Louisiana was ceded to Spain in 1763, and by a secret article in the treaty of St. Ildefonso, concluded in 1800, that power ceded it back to France. Napoleon, however, wished to keep this cession secret until he should have-as he hoped to do-reduced St. Domingo to submission. Failing in this, he was rendered indifferent to his new acquisition. In January, 1803, he sent out Laussat as prefect of the colony, which was the first intimation that the inhabitants had of the transfer, which gave them great joy.

On being informed of this retrocession, President Jefferson had dis patched instructions to Robert Livingston, the American minister at