The Beginnings of Government
WITH the spread of settlement in the Ohio country, the newly established Territorial government kept pace with the needs of a fast growing population. At the same time the American colonial policy, as it was set forth in the Government Ordinance of 1787, was undergoing its first practical test. At first sight the Ohio country presented a clear field, with its only inhabitants scattered Indian tribes and the irregular squatters in the Ohio Valley. But it was only a portion of the Northwest Territory which stretched approximately between the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes, and included within its bounds such long-established French settlements as Detroit, Vincennes and those of the Illinois country. The necessity of conciliating these alien communities inevitably complicated the problems of government, at the same time that the long distances involved cut down the time the administrative officers could devote to the Ohio country exclusively. Still another situation which absorbed much attention was the constant conflict with the Indians, to the time of Anthony Wayne's campaign and the Treaty of Greenville.
As usual in American settlements, voluntary agreements for orderly government preceded the establishment of strictly legal forms in the Ohio country. Following the precedent of the Boonesborough Agreement in near-by Kentucky, John Amberson, as early as 1785, issued a notice to the groups of squatters north of the Ohio to elect delegates to a constitutional convention.1 At Marietta, scarcely a month after the arrival of the first pioneers, the official representatives of the Ohio Company imitated the framers of the Mayflower Compact and informally constituted
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