and precisely such a principle as would be held by the New England
Associators where learning had been almost a fetich and where education
at the public expense had its inception in the guise of charity schools.
The principle only is expressed here, since the land ordinance of two
years before promised an endowment for public education as long as
enough land remained to lay out a county. The Associators carried out
this principle in their own tract by donating lands for a university
and for the support of the gospel.

Immediately following the bargain of Dr. Cutler with Congress, the
Associators prepared to migrate _en masse_ to their purchase. What the
hardy spirits among the country people of the South Atlantic States
had been able to accomplish by individual initiative and sheer
endurance, the town-dwellers of the North Atlantic States did more
systematically and rapidly by concerted action. Organisation and
government protection saved the Ohio Associators from such experiments
of colonisation as had frequently led to Indian captivities and
abandoned settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky. The project of a line
of forts along the frontier settlements, conceived during the Indian
and Revolutionary wars, assumed shape after the first sale of public
lands had really been consummated. Forts McIntosh, Steuben, Washington,
Harmar, Vincennes and Massac, were speedily erected or garrisoned,
thus guarding the length of the Ohio River, the pathway to the
North-west. By subsequent Indian treaties, additional reservations
were secured and forts scattered throughout the territory at portages
and along the river highways. Under this protection, the Ohio Company
sent out its band of artificers to erect dwellings and a stockade for
the first settlement. Scarcely a year was allowed to elapse after the
purchase until Marietta was founded on the Ohio at the mouth of the
Muskingum by the veterans of the Revolutionary War and their friends.