NOTES ON JEFFERSON'S DRAFT OF THE 

 ORDINANCE OF 1784. 



By ^S2y. M. HALL. 



THE "seventeen STATES PLAN. 



McMaster speaks of the plan for seventeen States as if it 

 were wholly thrown aside by Jefferson's committee. "One plan 

 was to divide the ceded and purchased lands into seventeen 

 States. Eight of these were to lie between the banks of the 

 Mississippi and a north and south line through the falls of 

 the Ohio. Eight more were to be marked out between this 

 line and a second one parallel to it, and passing through the 

 western bank of the mouth of the Great Kanawha. What 

 remained was to form the seventeenth State. But few sup- 

 porters were found for the measure, and a committee, over 

 which Jefferson presided, was ordered to jplace before Congress 

 a new scheme of division. Chase and Howe assisted him, and 

 the three devised a plan whereby the prairie lands were to be 

 parted out among ten new States." * 



These "ten new States" lay north of the Ohio; except, as 

 will presently be seen, parts of two of them. Nevertheless it 

 seems clear that the Ordinance was meant to provide govern- 

 ment for all the Western country that the States might cede, 

 down to the southern line of the United States at 31°. The 

 surrender of some State claims south of the Ohio was expected, 

 and North Carolina did pass a short-lived act of cession a few 

 weeks after. Jefferson was laboring to persuade the Southern 

 States to cede all their territory west of the Great Kanawha 

 meridian. The Ordinance reported by his committee begins 

 by saying that "the territory ceded or to be ceded by indi- 



* Volume I., page 165. But since the following comments were read before the Society, 

 Volume III. of Mr. McMaster's History has been published, containing (at page 101) a 

 seemingly full recognition of the substantial identity of the two plans. 



