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Nathan Dane.

55 1

without convicting Dane of anti-federal ideas, was chairman made another. It had not or of anything worse than a wish to strengthen been a very pressing matter, for the Terri tory itself was a howling wilderness, with no the national system by methods that were con sistent with the existing organic law. The particular need until now for any system of Philadelphia plan meant a total revolution in government. The reason why it was needed the Federal system, and until it should be car now was that there was a prospect of an imme ried out, the Congress was the only custodian diate immigration of settlers from New Eng and trustee of national interests. It does not land. A large joint-stock company, including many Revolutionary veterans who had long

appear that Dane ever antagonized the Con been petitioning Con stitution itself; he gress for a grant of voted for its submis bounty lands, was of sion to the people,1 fering to buy fifteen and for taking steps hundred thousand to put it in opera acres in Ohio if satis tion; 2 and it is, per factory terms could be haps, to the purpose had. They had sent to add that when it to New York, as their was laid before the agent, the Rev. MaMassachusetts con nasseh Cutler, a towns vention, which ap man of Dane's, and a proved it by the close man of multifarious vote of 187 to 168, gifts, for he was a doc the delegates from tor as well as a clergy his own town sup man, had studied law ported it. beside, and to crown It was during this all, was a natural poli same summer of 1787 tician. He kept so that he gave its final minute a diary that form to the ordinance every step of his jour for the government of ney and almost every the Northwest Terri detail of his business tory. The subject was can be followed in its not a new one; Con EDWARD CARRINGTON. gress had experiment pages. ed on it repeatedly. A There had been no plan that Jefferson had made in 1784 had been quorum present in Congress since the 11th adopted, but it never went into operation; of May. But on the 4th of July seven and in 1786 a committee of which Monroe States were represented; and as Gen. Arthur St. Clair, its president, was away, William 1 4 Journals of Congress, 782. 2 Ibid. 827. EDWARD Carrington of Virginia, the chairman of the Ordinance Committee, was afterward conspicuous as foreman of the jury that tried Aaron Burr. At twenty-seven he was lieutenant-colonel of the artillery regiment com manded by Benjamin Harrison. Strongly attached as he was to Hamilton, he was of course a Federalist; and it is remarkable that in a letter to his friend, written as early as 1794, he expressed the conviction that Southern politics tended to disunion. When the breach came, the Carringtons, like Scott and Thomas, St. George Cooke, Strother, and Minor Hotts, were among those true Virginians to whom loyalty must have meant a passionate devotion to their country far beyond the mere sentiment that prevailed where majorities made it easy. It does not appear that he was a lawyer; but his brother Paul, and Paul. Carrington, Jr., were both judges. A son of the younger Paul was Gen. Edward C. Carrington, who took part in the War of 1812; and the latter's son and namesake, Gen. Edward C. Car rington, an officer in the war with Mexico, was district attorney at Washington during the Rebellion. The original of the portrait hangs in his country residence, Charlton Heights, Branchville, Prince George's County, Maryland.