—each, as a rule, centered about a mill, and within two years the colony contained a thousand people. Thousands more floated past Marietta during its first season, most of them bound for Kentucky, but many to establish themselves at points in the Northwest.

99

For many years, migration continued to be by wagon to Pittsburg or Wheeling, and thence by water on hundredLater settle foot rafts carrying cattle and small houses, or on ment somewhat more manageable flatboats seventy feet long perhaps. Such vehicles were steered from rocks and sand bars by long "sweeps." They floated lazily with the current by day, and tied up at the bank at night. Occasionally, long narrow keel boats were used; and these were especially convenient, because, by the brawny arms of seven or eight men, they could be poled up tributary streams, to choice points of settlement. For a time, settlement was hampered by frequent Indian forays. The wars that followed, however, were managed by the Federal government, with regiments of "regulars." In 1790 and 1791, expeditions against the Indians were repulsed disastrously the second costing more than half the American force. But in 1794 General Wayne inflicted a crushing defeat upon the natives; and, the same year, a new treaty with England secured to the United States actual possession of the Northwest posts. This deprived the Indians of all hope of English support,' and they ceased to molest settlement seriously until just before the War of 1812.

The second stage of Territorial government, with a representative legislature, did not begin until 1799. The next

1 American writers used to assume that the early Indian forays were directly fomented by the English officials in the Northwest posts. No doubt the presence of English troops there did have some effect upon Indian hopes. But after a careful examination of recently opened sources of information, Professor Andrew McLaughlin writes: "I am glad to be able to state . . . that England and her ministers can be absolutely acquitted of the charge that they desired to foment war in the West. . . . There was never a time when the orders of the home government did not explicitly direct that war was to be deprecated, and that the Indians were to be encouraged to keep the peace." Report of American Historical Association for 1894, 435 ff.

SETTLEMENT AND ORGANIZATION

259

year Congress divided the district into two "Territories." In 1802 the eastern Territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Ohio. The western district became the Territory of Indiana.

frontier in

The early Western settlements, we have seen, reproduced the simplicity of the first settlements on the Atlantic coast a century and a half before; and the progress of The meanthe new communities was influenced greatly by ing of the the experience of the older ones. But the West- American ern societies did not merely copy Eastern de- history velopment. They did not begin just where the Atlantic seaboard settlements did. They started on a different plane and with greater momentum. The Atlantic frontier had to work upon European germs. Moving westward, each new frontier was more and more American, at the start; and soon the older communities were reacted upon wholesomely by the simplicity and democracy of the West. These considerations give the key to the meaning of the West in American history. Says Frederic J. Turner, the first interpreter of the West in our history:

"American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities. this continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. . . . The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization."

PART V - THE CONSTITUTION AND THE FEDERALISTS

The Articles

ation ratified

CHAPTER XIV

THE "LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP"

THE motion in Congress for Independence, on June 7, 1776, contained also a resolution that a "plan of confederation" be prepared and submitted to the States. A of Confeder- committee was appointed at once to draw up a plan. Not till November, 1777, however, did Congress adopt the Articles of Confederation; and ratification by the States was not secured until 1781 (page 251), when the war was virtually over. From '76 to '81, Congress exercised the powers of a central government. The States had not expressly authorized it to do so, but they acquiesced, informally, because of the supreme necessity. During those years were the States one nation or thirteen? No one at the time thought the Declaration of Independence

Character

of the

union

from 1781 to 1789

binding upon any State because of the action at Philadelphia, but only because of the instructions or ratification by the State itself. Congress had not even advised the States on Independence. It waited for the States to instruct their delegates. Then the vote was taken by States, and the delegates of no State voted for the Declaration until authorized by their own State Assembly. The action at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, amounted to a joint announcement, in order, in Franklin's phrase, that they might all “hang together," so as not to "hang separately." Twenty years afterward, in a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Chase said: "I regard this [the Declaration of July 4, 1776] a declaration not that the united colonies in a collective capacity were independent States, but that