Dr. Cutler, by his learning and personal accomplishments, was peculiarly qualified for such a mission. He was graduated twenty-two years before at Yale College. He had studied and taken regular degrees in the three learned professions of law, divinity, and medicine. As a scientist, however, he was best known. He was second, perhaps, to no living American, except Dr. Franklin, in scientific attainments. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston, the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Medical Society, and other similar bodies. In the first volume of the "Memoirs of the American Academy," published in 1785, are four papers of his, on Astronomy, Meteorology, and Botany. These are their titles:

1. Observations of the Transit of Mercury over the Sun, Nov. 12, 1782, at Ipswich.

2. Observations of an Eclipse of the Moon, March 29, 1782, and of an Eclipse of the Sun on the 12th of April following, at Ipswich.

3. Meteorological Observations at Ipswich in 1781, 1782, and 1783.

4. An Account of some Vegetable Productions naturally growing in this part of America, botanically arranged.

His paper on Botany, filling a hundred quarto pages, was the first scientific treatise on and classification of the plants of New England; and the first of the kind in this country. These papers, printed only two years before, gave him, as we see in his journal, a cordial entrée into all the literary and scientific circles in New York and Philadelphia. Harvard College had given him an honorary degree of A. M., and Yale College the degree of LL. D. Later Washington appointed him Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northwestern Territory, which honor he declined. Four years he was a member of Congress from the Essex district of Massachusetts, and a noted speech he there made on the subject of the Judiciary indicates the class of subjects he was competent to treat. The writer has conversed with and has letters from several aged persons who knew him intimately, and took pleasure in describing his characteristics. He was a person of stately and elegant form and courtly manners, and at the same time easy, affable, and

communicative. He was much given to relating anecdotes, and making himself agreeable. His manners particularly impressed the Southern members, with whom he chiefly associated. They had never before seen, they said, such qualities as his in a Northern man. In his mental characteristics he much resembled Dr. Franklin, who was personally one of the most agreeable of men. His favorite topics of conversation, when he had sympathetic listeners, were science and natural history. Like Dr. Franklin, he took delight in the society of beautiful and accomplished women. His journal gives the minutest descriptions of the noted ladies he met in his travels, not omitting to describe their costumes, and the mode of dressing their hair.

His association with Southern members was most likely from motives of policy. He needed their votes. There was then a feeling in Congress, as there has been since, — whether justified or not does not now concern us, that New England did not favor the settlement of the West. The Western interests looked to the South for support rather than to the East. This feeling was manifested in the debate in 1785 concerning the sale and disposition of the Western lands. The bill of 1785, which provided for the admirable system of Western land surveys, was reported by a committee of which a majority were Northern men. The original bill provided that each township a mile square should be sold complete before the next was offered for sale; in other words, that the people should buy clean as they went, or not at all, whatever might be the nature of the surface or character of the soil. New England members were accused of inserting this provision in order to prevent the sale of the lands. Mr. King of Massachusetts was charged, without doubt unjustly, of saying that it was his intention to oppose the formation of new States in the West. It was said that Massachusetts had thirty thousand square miles of territory in the Province of Maine for sale, and it was the policy of her members to turn emigration in that direction. Mr. Madison of Virginia moved to amend this objectionable feature of the bill, and it was done with the support of Southern votes. Virginia, having ceded her claims in the Northwestern Territory to the United States, regarded her

self as the special patron and supporter of its interests. Other States made a similar cession of their real or supposed claims, but those of Virginia were regarded as the most valid.

It was, therefore, Dr. Cutler's policy in furtherance of his Western project, to hold himself somewhat aloof from his New England associates, and to cultivate the friendship of the Southern members. Northern votes he could get when he needed them. Col. Carrington, Richard Henry Lee, and Mr. Grayson, all of Virginia, were, as appears by his journal, his warmest friends and confidential advisers. Dr. Holton, a distinguished member from Massachusetts, said he could not conceive how Dr. Cutler had so soon and so warmly engaged the friendship of members; for since he had been a member of that body he had never known so much attention paid to any one person.

With all his personal accomplishments and the spiritual graces of a New England clergyman, he had a large share of worldly wisdom. His journal furnishes evidence that the arts of the lobbyist were not invented in our day. In his business with Congress he regarded success as a duty. He found it difficult to enlist the interest of General St. Clair, the President of Congress, in his scheme. He found, also, that General St. Clair wanted to be Governor of the Northwestern Territory; and Dr. Cutler, representing the interests of the Ohio Company, intended that General Parsons of Connecticut should have that office. But he must have General St. Clair's influence, and found it necessary to pay the price. From the moment he communicated this decision, General St. Clair was warmly engaged in his interests, and the General was the first Governor of the Territory. In a letter written some years later to Mr. W. B. Giles of Virginia, General St. Clair said: "The office of Governor was in a great measure forced upon me." *

Mr. Dane was the representative of the Essex District in Massachusetts, where Dr. Cutler resided; he was born in Ipswich, where the Doctor was the settled minister. The latter, however, did not rely on Mr. Dane for making the acquaintance of the members of Congress. He brought letters of introduction

* Dillon's History of Indiana, p. 213.

from President Willard of Harvard College, Governor Bowdoin, and other eminent citizens of Massachusetts. He gives an inventory of these letters, forty-two in number, which includes the names of Carrington, Lee, and Smith, three of the five members who reported the Ordinance of 1787. On the morning of the 6th of July - he had arrived in New York the evening before the first person we find him in company with was Colonel Carrington, who was introducing him to the members on the floor of Congress, just before the session of the day began. He then delivered his petition for the purchase of land in the Northwest Territory. He dined that day with Mr. Dane and Mr. Milliken, Comptroller of the Treasury, and spent the evening with several members of Congress. The next day he made the acquaintance of Mr. Hutchins, Geographer of the United States, and consulted with him about the location of the purchase; dined with General Knox, Secretary of War; and took tea with Rev. Dr. Rogers, in company with Dr. Ewing, Dr. Witherspoon, and several other noted clergymen. Dr. Rogers was very urgent that Dr. Cutler should preach for him the next day; but he declined on account of fatigue. On Monday he dined with Sir John Temple, the British ConsulGeneral, with a large company of gentlemen connected with the government. Mr. Dane and Dr. Holton were also invited, as Massachusetts representatives, out of respect to Dr. Cutler, as Sir John graciously informed him. This series of attentions was kept up during his stay in New York, and serves to illustrate the respect which was felt for his attainments and character. These social occasions, instead of interfering with his business, gave him the best opportunities for explaining his project and urging his suit. The sale of the public lands, he claimed, would absorb the floating debt of the country, which was fatal to the public credit. The sale of land to actual settlers was the most feasible, and indeed the only path out of the financial and business prostration under which the country was then laboring. The purchase he proposed would result in an immediate and immense emigration to the West of the most enterprising and patriotic men of the Northern States, and especially from New England, who would, without expense to the government, form a barrier of defence from the British on the

north, and Indian tribes in the territory. At dinner-table with the heads of departments, the Board of the Treasury, and the leaders of public sentiment in Congress, he dwelt upon and enforced these arguments. His was the first proposal made for the purchase of the public lands. If his scheme of purchase failed, other propositions for Western settlement, he said, would fail also. His statements made a deep impression upon the heads of the government and upon the Southern members of Congress, whose influence he especially desired. They promised him their co-operation and their votes. Other parties now appeared before Congress with similar proposals of purchase for private speculation. Seeing that Dr. Cutler had more influence with Congress than they could bring to bear, they secretly placed their proposals in his hands; and he bought about five and a half million acres, of which only a million and half were for his own company.

It was during these negotiations that the Ordinance of 1787 for the organization and government of the Northwestern Territory was drawn and passed. This, in fact, was the preliminary question to be settled; for unless the organic laws of the territory were fixed on an irrepealable basis, which harmonized with the moral, social, and political convictions of parties who were proposing to purchase, the lands would have no commercial value to them. Dr. Cutler represented Massachusetts men, who had, in their Constitution of 1780, abolished slavery, established public schools for general education, and framed the most advanced code of laws concerning the liberties and natural rights of man, civil jurisprudence, and public polity, which the world had then seen. No plan of emigration could have succeeded unless the New England man had felt that he was taking his laws and institutions with him to his Western home. The draft of an Ordinance, which had been before Congress for several months, had come down to the 9th of July in the bald and rudimentary condition in which we have seen it was offered for the third reading on the 10th of May.

Congress now awoke to the business of framing an instrument which would be satisfactory to the party proposing to purchase these lands. The interest of Southern members had been awakened and their prejudices allayed by the bland man