This rapid and fundamental change in the ordinance tends to discredit all of the foregoing claims.
Authorship of public documents which attain greatness is usually a matter for later dispute.
Such documents have probably never been the work of any one author, but are rather the coordinated expressions of thought which have developed over long periods of time and in many men’s minds. Least of all entitled to credit is the “Scribe” who merely recorded the thought propounded by others, but whose name often becomes associated with the document.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, Congress, in adjusting the claims of officers and soldiers, gave them interest-bearing continental certificates. The United States Treasury was in a state of such depletion and uncertainty, that these certificates were actually worth only about one-sixth of their face value. At the close of the war many of these officers were destitute, notwithstanding the fact that they held thousands of dollars in these depreciated “promissory notes” of the government.
On the eve of the disbandment of the army in 1783, 288 officers petitioned Congress for a grant of land in the western territory. Their petition went beyond a request for lands, however, and set forth certain provisions of government as essential to their petition. In this humble and little-known document known variously as the “Pickering” or “Army” Plan, were contained many of the proposals which later found their way into the Ordinance of 1787. Included for instance was the then radical prohibition of slavery clause. This document bears a closer resemblance in principles and in wording, to the Ordinance of 1787 when it was adopted than does any other contemporary document. Among the petitioners was General Rufus Putnam. It was his plan, if Congress should comply with the petition, to form a colony and remove to the Ohio Valley. On the sixteenth of June, 1783, Putnam addressed a letter to General George Washington elaborating the soldiers’ plan and setting forth the advantages that would arise if Congress should grant the petition, and urged him to use his influence to secure favorable action upon it. This letter is of great interest in the development of the history of the Northwest. It is printed in full in Charles M. Walker’s _History of Athens County, Ohio_, pp. 30-36.
