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WATERWAYS OF WESTWARD EXPANSION

from any insults of the Indians.[1] Under this order Fort Harmar was erected at the mouth of the Muskingum River (Marietta, Ohio) in 1785. Fort Harmar and Fort Finney, erected at the mouth of the Miami, nominally accomplished the purposes for which they were erected; the immigration movement across the Ohio was stopped until preparations had been made for it. They were the first legal homes of Americans north of the Ohio River after the Revolutionary War.

In the meantime propositions for the government of this great region north of the Ohio River were being debated in Congress; and finally it was declared to be the "Territory Northwest of the River Ohio" by the Ordinance of 1787. This famous act had been pending three years in Congress, but was passed within twelve days of the arrival in New York of Dr. Manasseh Cutler, hero-preacher and skilled diplomat; he came as the authorized agent of an Ohio Company of Associates which had been formed by Revolutionary veterans

  1. The MS. Harmar Papers; St. Clair Papers, vol. ii, p. 7, note 1.