oup of sister States into the federation.[132:1] While the
importance of the article excluding slavery has often been pointed out,
it is probable that the provisions for a federal colonial organization
have been at least equally potential in our actual development. The full
significance of this feature of the Ordinance is only appreciated when
we consider its continuous influence upon the American territorial and
State policy in the westward expansion to the Pacific, and the political
preconceptions with which Americans approach the problems of government
in the new insular possessions. The Land Ordinance of 1785 is also
worthy of attention in this connection, for under its provisions almost
all of the Middle West has been divided by the government surveyor into
rectangles of sections and townships, by whose lines the settler has
been able easily and certainly to locate his farm, and the forester his
"forty." In the local organization of the Middle West these lines have
played an important part.

It would be impossible within the limits of this paper to detail the
history of the occupation of the Middle West; but the larger aspects of
the flow of population into the region may be sketched. Massachusetts
men had formed the Ohio Company, and had been influential in shaping the
liberal provisions of the Ordinance. Their land purchase, paid for in
soldiers' certificates, embraced an area larger than the State of Rhode
Island. At Marietta in 1788, under the shelter of Fort Harmar, their
bullet-proof barge landed the first New England colony. A New Jersey
colony was planted soon after at Cincinnati in the Symmes Purchase. Thus
American civilization crossed the Ohio. The French settlements at
Detroit and in Indiana and Illinois belonged to other times and had
their own ideals; but with the entrance of the American pioneer into the
forest of the Middle West, a new era began. The Indians, with the moral
support of England, resisted the invasion, and an Indian war followed.
The conquest of Wayne, in 1795, pushed back the Indians to the
Greenville line, extending irregularly across the State of Ohio from the
site of Cleveland to Fort Recovery in the middle point of her present
western boundary, and secured certain areas in Indiana. In the same
period Jay's treaty provided for the withdrawal of the British posts.
After this extension of the area open to the pioneer, new settlements
were rapidly formed. Connecticut disposed of her re