The promoter of this enterprise undertaken by the Ohio Company was Manasseh Cutler of Ipswich, Massachusetts, a clergyman by profession who had served as a chaplain in the Revolutionary War.
But his interests and activities extended far beyond the bounds of his profession. When the people of his parish were without proper medical advice he applied himself to the study and practice of medicine. At about the same time he took up the study of botany, and because of his describing several hundred species of plants he is regarded as the pioneer botanist of New England.
His next interest seems to have grown out of his Revolutionary associations, for it centered in this project for settlement of the West, and he was appointed the agent of the Ohio Company. It was in this capacity that he had come to New York and made the bargain with Congress which has just been described. Cutler must have been a good lobbyist, for Congress was not an efficient body, and unremitting labor, as well as diplomacy, was required for so large and important a matter. Two things indicate his method of procedure. In the first place he found it politic to drop his own candidate for the governorship of the new territory and to endorse General Arthur St. Clair, then President of Congress. And in the next place he accepted the suggestion of Colonel William Duer for the formation of another company, known as the Scioto Associates, to purchase five million acres of land on similar terms, "but that it should be kept a profound secret."
It was not an accident that Colonel Duer was Secretary of the Board of the Treasury through whom these purchases were made, nor that associated with him in this speculation were "a number of the principal characters in the city." These land deals were completed afterwards, but there is little doubt that there was a direct connection between them and the adoption of the ordinance of government.
The Ordinance of 1787 was so successful in its working and its renown became so great that claims of authorship, even for separate articles, have been filed in the name of almost every person who had the slightest excuse for being considered.
Thousands of pages have been written in eulogy and in dispute, to the helpful clearing up of some points and to the obscuring of others. But the authorship of this or of that clause is of much less importance than the scope of the document as a working plan of government. As such the Ordinance of 1787 owes much to Jefferson's Ordinance of 1784. Under the new ordinance a governor and three judges were to be appointed who, along with their other functions, were to select such laws as they thought best from the statute books of all the States. The second stage in self-government would be reached when the population contained five thousand free men of age; then the people were to have a representative legislature with the usual privilege of making their own laws. Provision was made for dividing the whole region northwest of the Ohio River into three or four or five districts and the final stage of government was reached when any one of these districts had sixty thousand free inhabitants, for it might then establish its own constitution and government and be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States.
The last-named provision for admission into the Union, being in the nature of a promise for the future, was not included in the body of the document providing for the government, but was contained in certain "articles of compact, between the original States and the people and States in the said territory, [which should] forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent."
