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Nathan Dane.

553

reported its bill on the 11th, it was imme diately read the first time; the second time on the 1 2th; the third and last time on the 13th; was put upon its immediate passage, and passed at once by the unanimous vote of the eight States present, save that of the aforesaid Yates. Dr. Cutler came back on the 17th, and on the 19th recorded in his diary that he —

scheme through. In this he met an amount of opposition such as there is no hint of in connection with the Ordinance; and he be trays a little of his nervous strain in record ing a suspicion of Dane, of whom he notes that he "must be carefully watched, notwith standing his professions." It is enough to say, however, that he succeeded, and that the Ohio purchase garrisoned the Northwest for freedom, and the "called on members of Ordinance for the gov Congress very early this ernment of that ter morning; was furnished ritory was the great with the ordinance es charter of its liberties. tablishing a government Indeed, it came in in the Western Federal later years tobeknown Territory. It is in a de as the Ordinance of gree new modelled. The Freedom. amendments I proposed Like MagnaCharta, have all been made ex it included two classes cept one. and that is bet of provisions, — the ter qualified. It was that one of local and tem we should not be subject to continental taxation porary application, unless we were entitled and the other a state to a full representation in ment of various great Congress. This could principles. The " tem not be fully obtained, for porary parts," as Dane it was considered in Con afterward called them, gress as offering a pre embraced the scheme mium to emigrants. They of territorial govern have granted us repre ment, and this did sentation with the right not vary much from of debating, but not of MELANCTON SMITH. one that had been voting, upon our being reported in May. first subject to taxation." The rest was em Cutler's diary, full as it is, makes no further bodied in what were called Articles of allusion to the Ordinance, but tells in graphic Compact, — the compact being between the detail how he had to work to get his land people of the Territory and the General Melancton Smith was the oldest of the Ordinance Committee. He was sixty-three; Lee, fifty-five; Carrington, thirty-eight; Dane, thirty-four; and Kean, thirty-one. lie had been sheriff in 1775, was afterward in Congress and in the New York Assembly, and late in life was made circuit judge; his business, however, had been that of a mer chant. Politically he was a follower of his friend George Clinton, and was an anti-Federalist; one of the grounds on which he opposed the Federal Constitution was that provision which gave the slaveholders a three-fifths representation on account of their slaves. Born on Long Island, of Quaker antecedents, his posterity have been famous in war; his son, Col. Melancton Smith, was in the defence of Plattsburgh; his grandson, the present Rear Admiral Melancton Smith, commanded the " Mississippi," under Farragut, in the advance on New Orleans. The first Melancton died in 1798, being the first of the yellow fever victims in New York that year. The only known portrait of him was a penand-ink sketch, found forty years after his death, in an old trunk; on it were the words : "Mr. Smith — 1787 — C. Congress." How interesting it would be to know which one of his colleagues it may have been that scrawled this undeniably striking likeness 1