Various

“ If, during the war, the western country was the subject of an occasional estray, light thought, the time was to come when it should be uppermost in the minds of many of the soldiers and practically considered, not as a land in which they must seek to take refuge from a victorious foe, but as one in which they might retrieve the losses they had sustained in repelling the enemy. ”

“ The pioneers found the State covered with large forests, almost without exception requiring the severest labor to remove; and the change, all within a possible lifetime, seems amazing. The world cannot show its parallel, and when one thinks seriously it will be found to be one of the most interesting and important events in the history of man. Peace as well as war has its victories.
We can only live over in stories the life of the pioneers. But theirs was sturdy independence and severe labor, with least encouragement. ”

“ There are but ninety-two years left to 1880 for the pioneers of Ohio; but what a fruition to their work! The solitary settlement has become a mighty nation of three million people, as large as the whole United States in the Revolution, and how much stronger and with what 25an abundance of wealth and comfort—a centre of intelligence and the home of Presidents! ”

“ The inhabitants of said Territory shall always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus and of trial by jury; of a proportionate representation of the people in the legislature, and of judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law. All persons shall be bailable except for capital offences, where the proof shall be evident or the presumption great. All fines shall be moderate, and no unusual or cruel punishment shall be inflicted. No man shall be deprived of his liberty or property but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land ”

“ Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always lie observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights and liberty they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars, authorized by Congress ”

“ It is undoubtedly true that to no one man are the people who have enjoyed and to-day enjoy the benefits of the Ordinance, so much indebted as to Dr. Manasseh Cutler. It was he who directed the battle in its favor; it was he who secured the appointment of his friends, Carrington and Lee, on the committee; who urged the necessity of the adoption of the Ordinance before the land purchase could be made ”

“ The unpublished map of Franquelin of 1688 lays down the Ohio more correctly than it appeared in published maps for sixty years. The discovery was the basis of the French claims to Ohio, and La Salle’s likeness is one of the four great discoverers of America in the Capitol at Washington. But the knowledge gained by La Salle was to be in a great measure lost. The English, stopped by Indians and mountains, were not to settle here. The west and northwest were safer territory for the French. The Iroquois roamed over Ohio, warred with the tribes beyond, even to the Mississippi. ”

“ That the dreaded devastators of the country, when it was occupied by the ancient race, had made their invasions from the northward by way of the great stream, is suggested by the numerous lookout or signal mounds which crown the hills on either side of the valley, occupying the most advantageous points of observation. The Indians who dwelt in the territory included in the boundaries of Ohio had, when the white men first went among them, traditions of oft repeated and sanguinary incursions made from the same direction, and dating back to their earliest occupation of the country. ”

“ From the discovery of the continent in 1494 it was one hundred and seventy-five years to the pioneer discovery of Ohio. In eighty-five years more both France and England set to work in earnest to make good their claims to it. In thirty-four years more England had beaten France, America had beaten England, and the first permanent settlement had been made in Ohio. ”

“ No other branch of knowledge is so neglected as that of history. Many who are familiar with mathematics, philosophy, the sciences, and the languages are almost totally without historical knowledge. Many who do give it attention too often study it inadequately, considering it a dry statement of facts, events and dates. History, when rightly studied, affords information of the greatest profit and rarest interest. ”

“ The people of Ohio, of the farther west, and of the whole country cannot become too familiar with a measure which has received so great praise from such high sources. We publish the Ordinance in full.
An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio: Be it ordained by the United States in Congress assembled, That the said Territory for the purpose of temporary government be one district, subject, however, to be divided into two districts, as future circumstances may, in the opinion of Congress, make it expedient. ”

“ The Iroquois or Six Nations were the foes whose frequent forays, made suddenly, swiftly, and with overwhelming strength, had carried dismay into all the Ohio 42country and caused the weaker tribes to abandon the valley, penetrated the interior and located themselves on the upper waters of the Muskingum, the Scioto, the Miamis, and the tributaries of the lake, where they could live with less fear of molestation. The Six Nations had the rude elements of a confederated republic, and were the only power in this part of North America who deserved the name of government. ”

“ The field is a broad and inviting one. The early annals of every locality possess a peculiar charm for its own people, while they furnish something of interest to the people of every other locality. The conductors of this Magazine invite the aid and co-operation of every person interested in the development and preservation of local history, and shall rely in a special manner upon the friendly offices of Historical and Pioneer Societies. ”

“ The people of these States are intelligent, and take a lively interest in the history of the discoverers of their country, among whom La Salle holds the first place.
Having spent a life of the length usually allotted to man, on the waters of the Ohio, the Upper Mississippi, and the lakes, threading many of the streams on which they floated their canoes, passing over the same trails, 4coasting along the same shores, those intrepid explorers of two centuries since, have often been, in imagination, vividly near to me. ”

“ The subsequent history of Ohio is familiar. That of the Reserve grew out of that ignorance which supposed the continent narrow. King Charles granted in 1660 to Connecticut a tract seventy miles wide and over three thousand long. The money for the Reserve became the school fund of Connecticut, and led by the example, to our admirable system of free schools, so that the ignorance of years ago leads to the wisdom of this.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them as we will.” The error of making the south shore of Lake Erie east and west came to a curious end. ”

“ About the middle of the last century the principal tribes in what is now Ohio were the Delawares, the Shawnees, the Wyandots (called the Hurons by the French) , the Mingoes, an offshoot of the Iroquois; the Chippewas and the Tawas, more commonly called the Ottawas. The Delawares occupied the valleys of the Muskingum and Tuscarawas; the Shawnees, the Scioto valley; and the Miamis, the valleys of the two rivers upon which they left their name; the Wyandots occupied the country about the Sandusky River; the Ottawas had their headquarters in the valleys of the Maumee and Sandusky ”

“ Those who did not fall sick and die returned to their homes. Such was the disastrous end of this project of settlement, which, had it succeeded, might possibly have changed the whole political history of the United States. It seems at least to be within the realm of probability that had a settlement been planted in Mississippi, Massachusetts would not have made the initial settlement in the Ohio country and extended her influence over the territory from which five great States have been created. ”

“ The authorship of this grand charter of rights, vouchsafed to a people who to-day number many millions and are living happily under its benign influence, bears the marks of wisdom the most profound, of statesmanship of the highest order, of foresight akin to inspiration. ”

“ Exercise and fresh air gave appetite. With a roaring fire crackling before the camp, illumining the forest far and wide, the adventurers cooked their supper and ate it with a relish such as the pampered guests in lordly banqueting halls have seldom experienced. ”

“ Cutler, when he arrived in New York and called on the President of Congress to obtain the appointment of a committee to draft and report a system of laws for the Northwest Territory that should be friendly to his terms of purchase, met with a cool reception, and, to quote from Mr. Poole, “he found that 54General St. Clair wanted to be Governor of the Northwest Territory; and Dr. Cutler, representing the interests of the Ohio Company, intended that General Parsons, of Connecticut, should have the office. But he must have General St. Clair’s influence, and found it necessary to pay the price. ”

“ Every page is instinct with broad and philosophic generalization, and the statement of unexpected but most convincing facts and conclusions. Its style is perfect; the reader is delighted by the charm of its steadily flowing narrative, while he is instructed by its revelations of the origins and development of things which have exerted, and continue to exert, a powerful influence upon mankind, and have thus a universal interest and application. ”

“ The governor, judges, legislative council, secretary, and such other officers as Congress shall appoint in the district shall take an oath or affirmation of fidelity, and of office; the governor before the President of Congress, and all other officers before the governor. As soon as legislature shall be formed in the district, the council and house assembled in one room, shall have authority, by joint ballot, to elect a delegate to Congress, who shall have a seat in Congress, with a right of debating, but not of voting, during this temporary government. ”

“ The Delawares, as has been indicated, had their densest population upon the upper Muskingum and Tuscarawas, and they really were in possession of what is now the eastern half of the State from the Ohio to Lake Erie. This tribe, which claimed to be the elder branch of the Lenni-Lenape, has, by tradition and in history and fiction, been accorded a high rank among the savages of North America. ”

“ In importance and value history is excelled by no other story. It does not possess an equal interest for every student, for the very evident reason that every student of history does not evince for it the same degree of fidelity and love. ”

“ Lincoln’s life, though often told, is always new and interesting, and in the hands of Mr. Stoddard is so entertaining, so rich in anecdote and incident, and sparkles with so much humor, that it is invested with a greater charm than ever ”

“ Probably there were not more than three thousand white people in the territory when this treaty was signed, and these were principally wandering French traders; very few of them cultivators of the soil. In 1778 Virginia conquered the northwest from Great Britain, and erected the entire territory into a county, by the name of Illinois. Soon after the close of the War of the Revolution, in the year 1787, the United States established in the same region its first provincial government, and gave it the above title, which in common parlance was known as the “Northwestern Territory.” ”