The Pioneers

by David McCullough

  There were stops at the university and to view several churches of different denominations. Then, after a brief rest, they were joined by Elbridge Gerry to move on to what was to be the main event of the day, to the Market Street home of Benjamin Franklin.

  As all knew, Franklin, at eighty-one, was taking part in the Constitutional Convention, but on this particular afternoon they found him in his garden, sitting under a large mulberry tree chatting with several gentlemen and ladies.

  “There was no curiosity in Philadelphia which I felt so anxious to see as this great man,” Cutler would write. In his imagination until then Franklin loomed considerably larger than life.

  But how were my ideas changed, when I saw a short, fat, trenched old man in a plain Quaker dress, bald pate, and short white locks, sitting without his hat under the tree, and, as Mr. Gerry introduced me, rose from his chair, took me by the hand, expressed his joy to see me, welcomed me to the city, and begged me to set myself close to him.

  At once they entered into a “free conversation” and most agreeably, until one point when Franklin started to talk about some humorous incident that had taken place earlier in the day at the Constitutional Convention and had to be stopped by one of the other listeners and reminded of the secrecy of all Convention matters.

  By this time, as it was turning dark, everyone moved inside to Franklin’s library where Cutler feasted his eyes, certain he was looking at the largest and finest private library in America. And, of course, there was more to be seen than books:

  He showed us a glass machine for exhibiting the circulation of the blood in the arteries and veins of the human body . . . a rolling press for taking the copies of letters or any other writing . . . his long artificial arm and hand, for taking down and putting books upon high shelves which are out of reach . . . his great armed chair, with rockers, and a large fan placed over it, with which he fans himself, keeps off flies, etc., while he sits reading, with only a small motion of his foot; and many other curiosities and inventions, all his own.

  What Franklin wanted most to show his accomplished guest was a large volume on botany, “which, indeed,” wrote Cutler, “afforded me the greatest pleasure of any one thing in his library.”

  The book was so large that only with great difficulty was Franklin able to raise it from a low shelf and lift it onto a table. But as it often was with old people, wrote Cutler, “he insisted on doing it himself, and would permit no person to assist him, merely to show us how much strength he had remaining.” As Cutler’s father could still help bring in the hay, so the great doctor could still bring to the table weighty works of the mind.

  The book was Systema Vegetabilium by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, lavishly illustrated with large full-color cuts of every plant. “It was a feast to me,” Cutler wrote. He wished he had at least three months to devote himself entirely to this one volume.

  Franklin, too, as he said, loved natural history, and Cutler was amazed and “delighted with the extensive knowledge he appeared to have of every subject, the brightness of his memory, and the clearness and vivacity of all his mental faculties.” Not until ten o’clock did Cutler and the others take their leave.

  The day following, Saturday, July 14, he was up and dressed earlier than usual. Told that the City Market was among Philadelphia’s greatest curiosities, he walked out the door to see for himself. It was still dark, yet people were converging from all directions.

  The market was an open, one-story brick building nearly half a mile in length. By the time it was daylight the marketers had everything arranged. All that might be imagined was on display—fish, meats, vegetables of every kind, fresh fruit—and all in perfect order. No less a wonder was the crowd, people “of every rank and condition in life, from the highest to the lowest, male and female, of every age and every color.”

  He could hardly tear himself away, but another full day was in store. Taking no break for breakfast he and Dr. Clarkson were off again in the doctor’s carriage, heading this time to the large homestead and famous gardens of the eminent naturalist William Bartram, several miles out of town on the banks of the Schuylkill River. There a considerable contingent of those attending the Constitutional Convention was already gathered and waiting, including Madison, Mason, Rutledge of South Carolina, and Alexander Hamilton.

  Bartram was found busy hoeing in his garden without shoes or stockings, and at first seemed embarrassed by so large a delegation appearing so early in the day. But, as Cutler wrote, he soon got rid of his embarrassment and became quite sociable.

  Like his time with Franklin, this summer morning visit with William Bartram was an experience Cutler would long treasure. They talked botany, toured the garden, then walked to the river between two great rows of immense trees to a summer house on the bank of the river.

  About nine o’clock the group moved on to breakfast at Gray’s Tavern also on the Schuylkill, and were treated to a tour of an even more lavish garden. For someone as passionate about flowers as Cutler, it seemed paradise.

  At every end [he wrote], side, and corner, there were summer-houses, arbors covered with vines or flowers, or shady bowers encircled with trees and flowering shrubs, each of which was formed in a different taste. In the borders were arranged every kind of flower, one would think, that nature had ever produced, and with the utmost display of fancy, as well as variety.

  On a path overlooking the river, they came to a fence, beyond which was a “view of one of the finest cascades in America. . . . A broad sheet of water comes over a large horizontal rock, and falls about seventy feet perpendicular. . . . Here we gazed with admiration and pleasure for some time.”

  As if he had not already done enough for one day, he next undertook an afternoon tour of the Philadelphia hospital with Benjamin Rush. It seemed the more there was for him to see and learn in the time available, the more people wanted to show him, the greater his curiosity and energy.

  Rush led him first to the hospital’s museum to see the finest collection of medical paintings in America. Then, along with twenty or so students, he took Cutler on his rounds of the sick. With each case Rush considered worthy of notice, he would address the students on the nature of the trouble at hand and the mode of treatment to be pursued, and on each of these occasions he would direct his comments to Cutler also, but always as though he, too, were a physician, which Cutler greatly appreciated.

  They moved next to the floor below to see the cells of the “maniacs,” a setting and experience about as different from the gardens of that morning as anything could have been. The cells were each about ten feet square and as formidable as those in a prison. Here were men and women, twenty or thirty in number, some fierce and raving, some nearly naked, others singing and dancing, or talking incessantly.

  But as Cutler already knew, Rush was far ahead in his profession in his insistence on treating the insane as kindly as possible. “This would have been a melancholy scene indeed, had it not been that there was every possible relief afforded them in the power of man,” he wrote. All was exceptionally clean—as it was throughout the hospital. To Cutler the hospital seemed more like a palace than a hospital.

  Shortly after a midday dinner with Rush, the ringing of a church bell signaled that the library on the second floor of Carpenters’ Hall—the historic place where the first Continental Congress had met—was open for receiving and returning books. It was to be Cutler’s last stop in Philadelphia. As he told the others, he would be leaving for New York that evening.

  Back at the Indian Queen, he said his goodbyes to those attending the Constitutional Convention he had come to know. To what extent he had discussed the Ohio project with them, or encouraged their involvement, is unknown. For all he wrote about his many activities in Philadelphia, he recorded virtually nothing concerning the great purpose he was so intent on serving.

  That he considered his time in Philadelphia among the most stimulating experiences ever there is little doubt. In just two days, he had seen most
of the city’s main attractions and met and conversed with all the leading citizens he could have wished for.

  Nor is there any doubt he himself had made an immensely favorable impression on those he met. When one of the other guests at the Indian Queen expressed amazement that the Reverend Cutler came to be in such demand in so short a time in a city he had never before set foot in, Cutler said it was the introductory letters that made the difference. But it had been much more than that.

  As would be widely appreciated in time to come, that he had received “the most marked attentions” by figures so distinguished and of such prominence, was clearly “testimony to the worth and excellence of the character of Dr. Cutler.”

  Having settled his account at the inn and loaded his trunk onto the back of his one-horse shay, he was again on his way, knowing the moment of decision in New York was close at hand.

  III.

  “Called on members of Congress very early this morning,” begins his journal entry for Thursday, July 19. “Was furnished with the Ordinance establishing a Government in the Western federal Territory.”

  He also learned a number in Congress were “decidedly opposed” to his terms—though what this was about, he did not say—and some to any contract whatever. Clearly, he needed to know how many were opposed, who they were, and if possible bring them around.

  He was not at all sure about some of the New Englanders in Congress who worried that the lure of Ohio would take away too many of the home population. One was Congressman Nathan Dane, his neighbor from Ipswich—“Dane must be carefully watched,” Cutler wrote, though exactly what concerned him is not clear.

  Three Virginians were with him, he knew—Edward Carrington, William Grayson, and Richard Henry Lee—but a half dozen others could not be counted on. “If they can be brought over, I shall succeed; if not, my business is at an end.” At a committee meeting he was told by the members they intended to make their report before the close of day.

  The following morning, Friday, July 20, the secretary of Congress presented him with the ordinance agreed upon the day before, stating the conditions of the contract, and Cutler informed the committee that he could not agree to the terms proposed. “I told them I saw no prospect of a contract, and wished to spend no more time and money on business so unpromising.”

  At this point William Duer, secretary of the Board of Treasury, came to him with proposals from a number of principal characters of New York to “extend our contract” further down the Ohio to the confluence of the Scioto River “and to take in another company, but that it should be kept a profound secret.” The plan, which also had the support of Winthrop Sargent, struck Cutler favorably.

  Importantly, he had come to have high regard for Duer. “He is a gentleman of the most sprightly abilities, and has a soul filled with the warmest benevolence and generosity,” Cutler would write. “He is made both for business and the enjoyment of life.”

  He also thought it best not to say anything further about Duer’s proposal to Congress for now. As it was, the committee was “mortified” and seemed not to know what to say, but still urged another attempt.

  Early the next morning, several members of Congress called on Cutler to report that on learning he was determined not to accept their terms and proposed leaving the city, Congress had “discovered a much more favorable disposition, and believed if I renewed my request I might obtain conditions as reasonable as I desired.”

  “This,” as he wrote, “had the desired effect.” The land purchase, he told them, would now be extended down the Ohio as far as the Scioto River. The Ohio Company’s large purchase of land would provide Congress with funds of nearly four million dollars to pay down some of the national debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. “Our intention was an actual, a large, and immediate settlement of the most robust and industrious people in America; and that it would be made systematically, which must instantly enhance the value of federal lands, and prove an important acquisition to Congress.” On these terms he would renew the negotiations, if Congress was willing.

  July 22 being a Sunday, he attended three different church services and, to judge by his journal, dispensed with politics entirely until the next morning, when he, Sargent, and Duer “made every exertion in private conversation to bring over my opposers in Congress.”

  When the Reverend Cutler was repeatedly asked what civil office would be agreeable to him in the western country, he said he wished no such office, a response, as he wrote, that seemed surprising to “men who were so much used to solicit or be solicited for appointments of honor or profit.”

  In the days following a good part of his time was spent with the head of the Board of Treasury, Samuel Osgood, whom he had first met at Duer’s dinner party and with whom he had much in common. A resident of Massachusetts and a Harvard graduate, Osgood, too, had great interest in science and was known for his piety, as well as his understanding of politics.

  Cutler had been told Osgood was much in favor of the new terms Cutler had offered. Still, Cutler wrote, “such is the intrigue and artifice practiced by men in power, that I felt very suspicious, and was as cautious as possible.” He had no scruples, however, about going over all of the Ohio Company’s plans with Osgood. And Osgood, to Cutler’s surprise, “highly approved.” Indeed, he “thought it the best ever formed in America.”

  George Washington, as both of them doubtless knew, held to the strong belief that organized settlement of the frontier was the best way. “To suffer a wide-extended country to be overrun with land-jobbers, speculators, and monopolizers, or even scattered settlers, is, in my opinion,” Washington had written, “inconsistent with that wisdom and policy which our true interest dictates, or which an enlightened people ought to adopt; and besides, it is pregnant of disputes, both with the savages and among ourselves.”

  “If we were able to establish a settlement as we proposed, however small in the beginning, we should then have surmounted our greatest difficulty,” Osgood told Cutler. “Every other object would be within our reach, and, if the matter was pursued with spirit, he believed it would prove one of the greatest undertakings ever yet attempted in America,” noted Cutler.

  On Thursday, he, Sargent, and Duer did their best to pull every string they could. But Cutler’s patience was nearly gone, which led the English diplomat Sir John Temple to remind him that were he to spend another month trying to get what he wanted he would be far more expeditious than was common for smaller matters through Congress, and that he should remember he was attempting something of unprecedented magnitude, exceeding any private contract ever made before in the United States. What was more, Temple told him, he had never seen anyone who “so warmly engaged” the attention of Congress as Cutler had. Nor had he ever known the members more pressing to bring an issue to a close.

  Friday, July 27. I rose very early this morning, and, after adjusting my baggage for my return, for I was determined to leave New York this day, I set out on a general morning visit, and paid my respects to all the members of Congress in the city, and informed them of my intention to leave the city that day. My expectations of obtaining a contract, I told them, were nearly at an end.

  At half past three that afternoon, he was informed that a new Northwest Ordinance had passed Congress “without the least variation,” and the Board of Treasury was directed to close a contract with the Ohio Company. As the record of the vote on the Ordinance certified, eight had been present.

  By the agreement a grant of 5,000,000 acres of land had been obtained for $3,500,000—a million and a half acres were for the Ohio Company and the remainder for a private real estate venture, the Scioto Company. “We are beholden to the Scioto Company for our purchase,” Cutler would acknowledge. He and several other associates—Rufus Putnam, Samuel Parsons, Winthrop Sargent—were to receive substantial shares in the Ohio Company speculation.

  Just as Sir John Temple had told Cutler, and as Cutler himself was well aware, it was much the largest, most far-reaching con
tract in the history of Congress. And immense as it was in monetary and geographic scale, the clearly stated articles of the new ordinance—“An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio”—were no less in their far-reaching importance.

  The ordinance, as would be said, “created a machinery of government for immediate use,” provided for the creation of new states, and established a form of government meant to be of perpetual obligation. Not surprisingly, given the number of those from Massachusetts involved, the new ordinance read much like the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the first constitution in the United States, written in 1779 by John Adams.

  Cutler knew Adams. He had dined with him, and had been present for some of the sessions concerning the creation of the Massachusetts constitution.

  Particularly in the declaration of rights in both the new ordinance and the Massachusetts constitution were the similarities most evident, Article I of the ordinance, on freedom of religion in the territory, reading almost the same as that in the Massachusetts constitution.

  In what he wrote, John Adams had left no doubt about his faith in education as the bulwark of the good society, the old abiding faith of his Puritan forebears. And so, too, in its Article III, the ordinance was quite clear on the matter. “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

  That such emphasis be put on education in the vast new territory before even one permanent settlement had been established was extraordinary. But of even greater importance was the fact that outside of New England there was then no such thing in the United States as a system of state-supported schools of any kind, and even in New England students were poorly taught, housed, and hardly supervised in the least. Before the year was out, in a contract between the Ohio Company and the Board of Treasury, it would be specified that a section in each township be reserved for common schools and be “given perpetually to the use of an university.”