NATHANIEL MASSIE TO THOMAS WORTHINGTON.

FALLS OF PAINT CREEK, December 8, 1802.

I have little or nothing to say on the subject of our propositions; but, at all events, endeavor to secure to the State the Salt Licks. I could wish that you would endeavor to know the situation of the port of Orleans. I make no doubt but the Execu

tive, before this, has had full information on the subject. I am told the inhabitants of Kentucky are very uneasy, and that the legis lature of Kentucky is about to, or before this time has, drawn up a memorial to the Executive of the General Government. As it will affect our country in the same manner, if not to the same extent, as it does that State, we ought not to be remiss on the subject. I have taken the liberty of mentioning it to Mr. Giles, and also to Captain Fowler. I am in hopes that the shutting of the port is only intended to give the two nations time and leisure, without being interrupted, to settle the necessary arrangements attending such business. Should, however, this not be the case, and that it is done for the purpose of setting aside our treaty with Spain, I assure you the consequences will be serious, as I am sure the inhabitants will never submit for the navigation of that river to be stopped, and they must have a place of deposit near the mouth. Let me hear from you shortly. Direct to Brown's Cross Roads, Ross county.'

ARTHUR ST. CLAIR TO JAMES MADISON.

CINCINNATI, December 21, 1802. Sir:-Your letter of the 22d November," notifying me that the President had determined that upon the receipt of that letter my commission of Governor of the North-western Territory should cease, was delivered to me by Mr. Secretary Byrd on the 14th day of this month. I request you, sir, to present my humble thanks to the President for that favor, as he has thereby discharged me from an office I was heartily tired of, about six weeks sooner than I had

1MS. Worthington Papers.

2 For the letter of the Secretary of State to Governor St. Clair, notifying him of his removal as Governor, on account of "an intemperance of language" in his remarks to the constitutional convention respecting Congress, and the authority to Mr. Byrd to discharge the functions of Governor, see Vol. I., pp. 244–246.

determined to rid myself of it, as he may have observed from an address, not to the convention, but to the people, on the 8th instant. I can not, however, agree with the President, that in my address to the convention, which is assigned as the reason of my being dismissed, there was either "intemperance or indecorum of language towards the legislature of the United States, or a disorganizing spirit of evil tendency and example," unless an honest and true representation of facts deserve those epithets, or that "the rules of conduct enjoined by my public station" were in any way violated, unless it is understood that the rule of conduct is an implicit blind obedience.

As the convention, sir, was to meet in pursuance of an act of Congress, whereby the election of the members was directed to be made according to the law of the Territory that had existed, but had been long repealed, a sense of duty led me to cause the elections to be made conformably to the spirit of the act and the existing election laws of the Territory, as they could not be made conformably to the words of it, and when the convention was met I had done with it in my public capacity. Every citizen has a right to address that body, either openly or in writing, and that right was common to me with the rest; and I believe, sir, it is a paramount duty, which every man owes to the community of which he is a member, to give warning either to the representatives or to the body, when he sees the rights of that community invaded, from whatever quarter the invasion may come, and direct them, if he can, to the means of warding it off or of repelling it; and I scruple not to say that the violent, hasty, and unprecedented intrusion of the legislature of the United States into the internal concerns of the Northwestern Territory was at least indecorous and inconsistent with its public duty, and I might add that the transferring of above five thousand people, without their knowledge or consent, from a country where they were in possession of self-government to another where they will be, at least for some time, deprived of that privilege, and subjected to many other inconveniences, was something worse than intemperate and indecorous, and that, had it happened in Germany, where such things have happened, no man in America would have hesitated to have used a harsher term. Degraded as our country is, and abject as too many of her sons have become, there are still a vast proportion of them who will be at no loss for the proper term.

Be pleased, sir, to accept my thanks also, for the peculiar delicacy you observed in committing the delivery of your letter, and in furnishing him with a copy of it, to Mr. Byrd, against whom there

were in your hands, to be laid before the President, complaints of something more than mere indecorum, and of a total neglect of and refusal to perform his official duty. It is such strokes as this which serve to develop character, and, like the relief in painting, to bring out the figure distinctly in its proper place. It produced, however, no other emotion in me but that kind of derision which physiognomists tell us is "the involuntary expression on the countenance of a certain mental sensation," which I do not choose to name, and never fails to produce it.1

With due respect I am, etc.

1 If any thing could justify the tone of the above letter, it was the manner in which Mr. Madison communicated to the veteran St. Clair the fact of his removal by the President. I know of no relations to party or political ethics, that will excuse the Secretary of State in inclosing an official communication of that delicate nature, under cover, to a bitter political and personal enemy. It was known to Mr. Madison that Mr. Secretary Byrd had refused for months to discharge his duties as secretary of the Territory; that he had on one occasion taken advantage of the Governor's absence to remove his appointees, and put Republicans in their places; and that he had devoted his time since his appointment to the office in forming a party in opposition to the Governor, whom he never failed to treat with studied disrespect. All this was known to Mr. Madison; but, then, Mr. Byrd was engaged in the work of making a new Republican State.

Here the public career of Arthur St. Clair properly ends. See Vol. I., pp. 248-256.

Vale Arthur St. Clair, Federalist; enter Edward Tiffin, Republican.

APPENDIX I.

THE ORDINANCE OF 1787, AND ITS HISTORY.

BY PETER FORCE.

[See Vol. I., pp. 116-36.]

On the first of March, 1784, a committee, consisting of Mr. Jefferson, of Virginia, Mr. Chase, of Maryland, and Mr. Howell, of Rhode Island, submitted to Congress the following plan for the temporary government of the Western Territory:

The committee appointed to prepare a plan for the temporary government of the Western Territory have agreed to the following resolutions:

Resolved, That the territory ceded or to be ceded by individual States to the United States, whensoever the same shall have been purchased of the Indian inhabitants, and offered for sale by the United States, shall be formed into additional States, bounded in the following manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit: That is to say, northwardly and southwardly by parallels of latitude, so that each State shall comprehend, from south to north, two degrees of latitude, beginning to count from the completion of thirty-one degrees north of the equator; but any territory northwardly of the forty-seventh degree shall make part of the State next below. And eastwardly and westwardly they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi by that river on the one side, and the meridian of the lowest point of the rapids of the Ohio on the other; and those adjoining on the east, by the same meridian on their western side, and on the eastern by the meridian of the western cape of the mouth of the Great Kanawha. And the territory eastward of this last meridian, between the Ohio, Lake Erie, and Pennsylvania, shall be one State.

That the settlers within the territory so to be purchased and offered for sale shall, either on their own petition or on the order of Congress, receive authority from them, with appointments of time and place, for their free males of full age to meet together for the purpose of establishing a temporary government to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of these States, so that such laws nevertheless shall be subject to alteration by their ordinary legislature, and to erect, subject to a like alteration, counties or townships for the election of members of their legislature.

That such temporary government shall only continue in force in any (603)