taken care of, but schools for the people were not provided.

The school fund was growing and was jealously guarded, and the enactment of a few inefficient school laws indicated the growth of educational sentiment, but no uniform system of free schools was instituted for the State until after the adoption of the new Constitution. For five years or more before the constitutional convention met in 1850 au agitation was going on for free and uniform schools. Colleges and academies had produced the agitators. One of these college agitators, during the years from 1846 to 1851, as we have occasion to relate in subsequent pages, addressed some forcible messages to the legislature. Speaking as "one of the people" his purpose was to give to the legislators an adequate idea of the. dangers and evils of the existing illiteracy, and to press upon them their duty under the circumstances. By the existing law there was no uniformity throughout the State, or even throughout a single county or township in educational matters. The maintenance of schools depended upon the whims of the district. Feuds, apathy, or opposition caused abandonment of education in many communities. The "pure democracy" of the New England town did not always succeed in the West. Not all communities in Indiana were like New England. Indiana stood twenty-third in the list of States in regard to popular education, with only three slave States below her. Such was the condition of the State when the new Constitution was adopted in 1851.

It has been during this third period, since 1851, and under the wise and liberal provisions of this second Constitution, that the present advanced position of the State in educational affairs has been attained. The essential fact in this period is that the fundamental law not only required that the educational system of the State should be general and uniform, but also forbade the enactment of local or special laws for supporting common schools. In 1852 these provisions were enacted into a law containing the germs of the present system. This act, after a few revisions under the guidance of Supreme Court decisions, was embodied in the act of 1865, the last comprehensive statute on the subject of common schools.

Our sketch will include a brief analysis of this system of schools. But before directing attention to that theme, or before attempting to trace the growth of the higher education, we must turn to the early influences which made this development possible. To understand properly the educational history of any of the States of the Northwest we must recall the organization of the territory from which they were formed. This will lead us to the influence in the Northwest of the men, of the Revolution and of the Congress of the Old Coufederation.

CHAPTER I.

TERRITORIAL LEGISLATION OF THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.

At the close of the Revolutionary War four States presented claims to the same or different parts of the Northwest Territory.

Massachusetts and Connecticut claimed by their original royal charters all the land between their northern and southern parallels from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River.

New York relied chiefly upon her rights derived from the Six Nations.

Virginia, quoting the old charter granted by James I in 1609, which gave her the land north and south along the coast from Old Point Comfort "up into the land north and west from sea to sea," and asserting the more tangible right of possession derived from the success of her expedition under George Rogers Clark, embraced by her claim what was then our entire Northwest.

The settlement of these conflicting claims was one of the most important questions with which the peace Congress of the old Confederacy had to deal. Through the courageous and far-seeing policy of Maryland the Articles of Confederation had not been allowed to go into operation until assurance had been given by the claimant States that this land, "won by the common blood and treasure of all," should become the common possession of the United States. The cessions guaranteed on the part of New York as early as 1780 and by Virginia as early as 1781 were completed by Connecticut's cession, September 30, 1786, with the exception of her "Western Reserve," which she held until 1800.

On June 5, 1783, Colonel Bland, of Virginia, moved in Congress to accept Virginia's cession of her north western land to the General Gov. ernment on the terms which Virginia had offered. These terms were, chiefly, that Congress should guarantee to Virginia the possession of the territory now known as Kentucky. His motion included a proposition for the division of the Northwestern Territory into districts suitable for prospective States and for a reservation of land for the founding of seminaries of learning.

This proposition was the first one looking toward an appropriation of public lands in the new Territory for the support of education. When Virginia afterward made her cession without condition, the proposi

tion of Colonel Bland was not revived by Mr. Jefferson in his ordinance of 1784. But on May 7 of that year, a little more than a fortnight after the passage of his ordinance, Jefferson reported to Congress a bill for ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of lands in the Western Territory. This bill received no attention from Congress till March 4, 1785, when it was reported from the committee unchanged. Timothy Pickering noticed that no provision was made in the bill for schools and academies, and in a letter to Rufus King, a member of the committee, Pickering called attention to the fact. On April 12, 1785, the committee reported the bill with many modifications and additions. During the month's debate which followed, the clause which sought to give public support to religion was stricken out and on May 20, 1785, the bill became a law.

This was the first law of Congress relating to education within the present Territory of Indiana. In the law were these significant words: "There shall be reserved from sale the lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within the said township." "This reservation," says Professor Knight, "marks the beginning of the policy which, uniformly observed since then, has set aside one thirtysixth of the land in each new State for the maintenance of common schools."1

The reservation was, no doubt, in the nature of an inducement to purchasers, for the pioneer settlers who were proposing to leave their homes for the wilderness were seeking the most favorable terms they could secure, and the easiest way Congress had to meet its pressing creditors was by payment in lands. Whatever may have been the motive of Congress, whether it acted for revenue only or from a public-spirited purpose of establishing and fostering a system of State education, it is certain that the early settlers in the Ohio Valley were firm believers in general and higher education by the State. If they dictated terms to a needy Congress, it may still be said that the terms were wise and generous and from a public spirit, and that the Congress acted not without meritorious design. This act of the Continental Congress may be looked upon as the beginning of State education in the West.

The system of education seen in Indiana, and which we describe in the following pages, did not, as we have intimated, spring up in a day. Its rise and progress may not be said to be the result of any single legislative act nor the outcome of any one man's genius and foresight. The early law of 1785 to which we have referred does not contain the permanent principle on which these Commonwealths have developed a system of free education. We must look elsewhere for the durable basis upon which the structure has been reared.

Somewhere in law, by educational foresight, a foundation was laid which has made this development possible. The tendency to trace the origin of institutions to some one act, opinion, or law has become a

The Northwest Territory; Papers of the Am. Hist. Assoc., Vol. I.

noticeable habit with the historic writer. But seldom, we repeat, may an institutional development be truly called the product of a single parliamentary or legislative enactment. Yet, like the institutions of civil liberty, the educational institutions of the Northwest Territory have their Magna Charta. That great charter is found in

THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.

The school boys and girls of the "Old Northwest" have been learning in recent years the history and the importance of this celebrated ordinance. The hundredth anniversary of its passage has been the occasion of calling the attention of the Commonwealths which it has blessed to the wisdom and benefits of its provisions. On the evening of July 13, 1887, more than 5,000 American teachers met in national convention at Chicago, the present metropolis of the Northwest Territory, to celebrate the centennial anniversary of this last act of the old Confederate Congress. It is not the purpose of this sketch to give a history of the events leading to that enactment, nor to attempt to estimate adequately its great consequences. But some notice of its wise provisions and a brief outline of the influences leading to its adoption may not be impertinent in this connection.

What was this celebrated ordinance, and why has it become so famous ?

In itself the ordinance was but an act of the Continental Congress providing for the government of the Northwest Territory. It bears the distinction of being the model upon which nearly all subsequent Territorial governments were organized. The territory to which it applied, coming to England by the treaty of 1763 from the undefined claim of France, known as Louisiana, had come to the States of the Confederacy in 1783 by the definitive treaty of peace which acknowledged our independence. The expedition of George Rogers Clark had secured possession of the disputed soil, and it was the right of possession which was the determining fact in the disposal of this region by the treaty closing the Revolution. It was the energy of Clark and the diplomacy of Jay, Franklin, and Adams which secured for us the great Northwest. But the Territory came to the States severally and not to the General Government. It embraced all territory south of the present boundaries of British Canada, east of the Alleghanies, north of the Chio, and east of the Mississippi, comprising the now flourishing States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and that part of Minnesota east of the Mississippi.' The lines of the conflicting claims of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia ran across these lands. Their original charters usually gave them occasion to claim from sea

'Since the ordinance applied only to the land north of the Ohio, the laws of Kentucky were afterward operative across that river to low-water mark. By the cutting of the current in the lower part of the river some interesting land litigation has arisen between Indiana and Kentucky.

to sea. Maryland, one of the landless States, had wisely insisted as a condition of her acceptance of the articles of confederation that the territory secured by the common toil and suffering should be ceded to the common possession and control. The claimant States, led by New York as early as February, 1780, expressed their willingness to consent to the grant, and on March 1, 1784, the Confederate Congress, accepting the proposed grants in disregard of the claims of the other States or relying upon their pledges, received the Northwestern Territory from the delegates of Virginia. Virginia had fitted out Clark's expedition without the help of the Continental Congress, and she held his success as a crowning title to the land. The Congress was now under obligation to provide for the government of the Northwest. The ordinance of 1784, prepared by Jefferson, was the immediate result, and was the first attempt of Congress in this direction.

Except as the basis and the forerunner of later laws and the greater ordinance, the draft of Jefferson is not important in this sketch. It opened the way and helped to make straight the path for the more important enactment of three years later. The immediate occasion for the ordinance of 1787 was the proposition of the Ohio Company of New England to purchase lands in the West. Gen. Rufus Putnam, Dr. Manasseh Cutler, and Gen. Samuel H. Parsons, as the authorized directors of this company, were pressing Congress for a favorable offer of the public lands. As early as 1783 some Revolutionary soldiers of New England had conceived the project of forming a new State west of the Ohio, and Timothy Pickering had outlined a plan for its government. Early in 1786 they effected an organization and applied directly to Congress for liberal terms of purchase. The financial straits of the Continental Government tended to the promotion of their project; Con. gress was anxious to sell, the land company was anxious to buy. But the directors of the proposed new State had well-formed opinions as to the conditions upon which they were willing to purchase Government land, to leave their New England homes and to settle in the "far West." They were looking to the building of a free State, and it was reserved for Manasseh Cutler, their agent in the purchase, to secure in the fundamental law of the Territory a stable foundation for future Commonwealths.

AUTHORSHIP OF THE ORDINANCE.

The controversy over the authorship of the ordinance is interesting only to technical and particular students of history. "Great measures," says Mr. J. P. Dunn, in his history of Indiana, "are seldom the fruit of any one mind." It is well said in connection with the ordinance of 1787. Timothy Pickering is credited with the earliest suggestions of some of its fundamental features. Thomas Jefferson outlined the general plan for Territorial governments three years before. Nathan Dane, a careful and painstaking lawyer, as chairman of the committee of Con