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Show GRANTS TO STATES ON ADMISSION TO UNION 289 Company tract, the Symmes purchase, or the Connecticut Reserve, it would mean a much heavier burden of taxes to be borne by the older settlers who were still struggling to create farms, pay off the obligations on their land, and get the usual social facilities under way. As an equivalent for the four concessions, Gallatin proposed the grant of section 16 in each township for schools (which was included in the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the sales to the Ohio Company and Symmes), the grant of the salt springs, and the use of one-tenth of the net proceeds derived from the sale of public lands for the construction of roads leading to and through the new state. Gallatin did not specifically raise the question of the constitutional right of Congress to grant lands for common schools, to give away the salt springs, or to use one-tenth of the net income from the lands for roads, but he pointed out that all these provisions would increase the value of the remaining lands and hence would involve no loss to the government or to the creditors of the government and that they would be "highly beneficial and acceptable" to the people of the new states, and would prevent the establishment of a monopoly in the production of salt. Moreover, the roads would be nearly as beneficial to the people of the Atlantic states through which they would pass as to Ohio, would contribute to cementing the bonds of the Union in areas where there had been some disaffection, and would "induce a compliance, on the part of the new State, with the condition proposed by Congress."10 Responsive to the clear expression of majority opinion in the Northwest Territory in behalf of admission and reflecting Gallatin's recommendations, Congress on April 30,1802, adopted the first of a long line of enabling acts authorizing the inhabitants of the eastern district of the Northwest Territory to elect representatives to a convention and to draft a constitution. The act specified how the members were to be apportioned among the counties, when the elections were to be held, and the time and place for the convention, and stipulated that the constitution must be republican. Certain carefully worded propositions were offered to the people of Ohio "for their free acceptance or rejection." The first proposition stated that section 16 in each township, (or its equivalent if 16 was already disposed of) would be granted for the support of common schools. Second, certain salt springs and adjacent land totaling 28,320 acres would be given, but the springs were to be leased, not sold, and for not longer than 10 years at a time. Third, one-twentieth -not one-tenth as Gallatin had recommended-of the net returns from the sale of public lands within the state made after June 30, 1803, would be applied to building roads to and through the new states, the roads to be laid out under the authority of Congress. All this was on condition that the convention should provide "by an ordinance, irrevocable without the consent of the United States" that the public lands when sold should be exempt from taxation for five years.11 Arthur St. Clair, the Federalist Governor of the Northwest Territory, whose views were sharply at variance with those of the majority in the convention as well as with those of the President and the leadership in Congress, delivered a pointed political attack upon the enabling act at the opening of the convention. The people of the territory, he declared, needed no authorization from Congress to hold a convention. To pretend to authorize one was an interference with the affairs of the territory which Congress "had neither the power nor the right to make." It was not binding on the people and indeed, was a nullity. The promise of section 16 in each township for schools was meaningless for that 10 American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, 327-28. 11 2 Stat. 173-75; William E. Peters, Ohio Lands and Their Subdivisions (Athens. Ohio, 1918), pp. 303 ff. |
