Marietta

The Revolution's Last Campaign: Marietta, Ohio and the Fulfillment of the American Experiment

Long before the first axe bit into timber along the banks of the Muskingum River, the land that would become Marietta, Ohio, existed as an idea—a promise made to soldiers who had bled for independence and a test of whether the principles of the American Revolution could survive the transition from battlefield rhetoric to practical governance. Marietta was not a site of musket volleys or cavalry charges during the War for Independence, yet it may be the single most important place in America for understanding what the Revolution ultimately meant. Founded in April 1788 by veterans of the Continental Army, Marietta became the first permanent, organized American settlement in the Northwest Territory, the proving ground for the Northwest Ordinance, the seat of the first civilian government west of the Appalachians, and the crucible in which revolutionary ideals about liberty, governance, and ordered expansion were forged into reality. Marietta served as the capital of the Northwest Territory from 1788 to 1790 , before the seat of government moved to Cincinnati. Territorial government under the Northwest Ordinance was first inaugurated at Marietta on July 15, 1788. A mural at the George Rogers Clark Memorial depicts Secretary of the Northwest Territory Winthrop Sargent reading the new legislation to the settlers at Marietta in the summer of 1788.

The first territorial laws were enacted and the first court of justice in the Northwest Territory was convened at Campus Martius in September 1788. To study Marietta is to study the Revolution's endgame—the moment when a fragile republic attempted to become a continental nation.

The story begins not in Ohio but in the hardship camps and unpaid ranks of the Continental Army. By the war's end in 1783, thousands of veterans held little more than depreciated currency and paper promises from a government that could barely fund itself under the Articles of Confederation. Among these veterans was Brigadier General Rufus Putnam, a self-taught engineer from Massachusetts who had designed the fortifications at Dorchester Heights that forced the British evacuation of Boston in 1776. After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Putnam enlisted the same day, on April 19, 1775, in one of Massachusetts's first revolutionary regiments.

He organized the batteries and fortifications in Boston and New York City in 1776–77 and then successfully commanded a regiment under General Horatio Gates at the Battle of Saratoga. In 1776, he constructed fortifications around Manhattan and was appointed chief engineer of the Continental Army by Congress.

In 1778 he built new fortifications at West Point, and in 1779 he served under General Anthony Wayne. It was during this period that he came to know George Washington, who would remain Putnam's patron until Washington's death in 1799. Putnam understood both the political frustrations of the officer corps and the vast potential of the western lands that Britain had ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris.

Indeed, Putnam did more than merely understand the frustrations of his fellow officers—he helped channel them into political action. Washington forwarded the Newburgh petition to the Congress of the Confederation without immediate result, but Putnam continued his interest in land in the West. In 1786, he and General Benjamin Tupper drew up a circular describing the riches of the Ohio country and inviting those who wished to become "adventurers" to join in an association to acquire land and promote settlement.

The Ohio Company of Associates grew out of a petition to Congress framed by Putnam, acting for a group of officers encamped at Newburgh, New York, in the last year of the Revolution. Signed by 288 officers "in the Continental line of the army," the petition reminded Congress of its promise of "certain Gra

On March 1, 1786, at a meeting at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston, representatives of potential investors from eleven counties in Massachusetts formally organized the Ohio Company of Associates. In the course of a year, 250 investors acquired shares in the Ohio Company. The company was not merely a land speculation venture; it was a vehicle through which Revolutionary War veterans could convert their depreciated continental currency and military land warrants into tangible property in the West.

The Ohio Company's ambitions, however, required more than land—they required law. Enter the Reverend Manasseh Cutler, a Yale-educated Congregationalist minister, scientist, and shrewd political operator from Ipswich, Massachusetts. Cutler's demand for a workable plan of government, coupled with expectations of profits from increasing land sales, caused Congress to act. In early July 1787, Cutler helped to rewrite a proposal for establishing government in the West, and on July 13 the Ordinance of 1787, or the Northwest Ordinance, was adopted.

It is incontrovertible that specific contributions made by Cutler were provisions for public schools, establishment of a university, and encouragement of religion.

Some historians claim Cutler wrote the section banning slavery north of the Ohio River , though the scholarly debate on the precise authorship of Article Six continues.

In 1787, the company contracted with the federal government to purchase a million and a half acres in what is now southeast Ohio, to be paid for in depreciated continental currency and military land warrants. With the legal framework in place, the great western venture could begin.

After the Ohio Company was established and the contract to purchase 1.5 million acres of land west of the Ohio River was secured, Putnam and Cutler looked to hire field-toughened, brave individuals who had the skills needed to survive the wilderness and build a new settlement. Forty-eight were chosen to join the Company's expedition, including carpenters, boat builders, farmers, surveyors, and many Revolutionary War officers.

Appointed superintendent of the Ohio Company, Putnam was charged with leading this team from the east—skilled tradesmen including surveyors, carpenters, boat builders, blacksmiths, and farmers—down the Ohio River to its confluence with the Muskingum River. The group spent the winter along the banks of the Ohio River near Pittsburgh, and finally reached their destination the following spring on April 7, 1788.

Investors in the Ohio Company elected to rename the site from Adelphia, its earlier name, to Marietta, after Queen Marie Antoinette of France, honoring that nation's contributions to the U.S. victory in the American Revolution. The name was a deliberate act of diplomatic gratitude—a permanent reminder that American independence had been won with French blood and treasure.

Among the remarkable veterans who settled at Marietta was Commodore Abraham Whipple of Rhode Island, whose Revolutionary credentials stretched back even before Lexington and