“Industry, Enterprize and Energy: Caleb Atwater and the Meaning of Ohio

Historical treatments of Ohio’s admission to statehood often focus on the political culture of the era or on the specific legal concerns of the Ordinance of 1787 (the Northwest Ordinance). The difficulties with defining a union based on abstract notions about democracy, equality, and opportunity have been relatively well treated by historians.¹ Considerations of the ways incoming states became linked to the existing union are less common. Often overlooked is the question of how a new state chose to define itself in relationship to the states with far more direct links to the American Revolution. In other words, what aspects of their identity did Ohioans choose to emphasize to link themselves indivisibly (and indisputably) with the union Ohio wished to join?

The Northwest Ordinance, which defined the process by which federal territories in the Old Northwest would become states, was a product of the disjointed Congress of the Confederation. The Articles of Confederation worked hard to ensure the primacy of states’ rights during and immediately after the Revolution. As a result, the states to be carved out of the federal lands would have to be admitted to the fragile union as equals. Settlement of Ohio had begun well before statehood in 1803—both before and during the primogeniture of the Articles of Confederation. But Ohio’s admission to the United States came under a completely new government, one more committed, at least legalistically, to the idea of a stronger and more centralized union.

The authors of the 1787 Ordinance struggled to balance competing territorial claims from existing states with the needs of the new government and the demands of the squatter-settler population in the region. Thus, the Ordinance attempted to bring harmony, order, and prosperity to the expansive American union. Although the Northwest was in many ways chaotic and disconnected from the rest of the states, policy makers in the Confederation Congress envisioned a future for the territory that brought the area firmly into the union. Despite the realities of life in the early republican frontier, many leaders in the 1780s and 1790s imagined a West “peopled by orderly, industrious settlers, connected to the old states by common interests and loyalties, and busily contributing to the national wealth and welfare.” In many ways, the Northwest Ordinance entrenched in America’s expansionist ideologues the belief that enterprise and national connections were essential to the creation of a stable and prosperous union. Somewhat ironically, though, and reflected in the writings of Caleb Atwater discussed here, the original belief that western enterprise would link the region economically to the older eastern states gradually mutated into a more distinct regional economic and social identity that saw the area as increasingly dominant in national affairs. Of course, this was most clearly manifested in regional attitudes regarding slavery and its expansion.² However, there were other areas that revealed the territory’s shifting self-perception.

Through the writings and speeches of Caleb Atwater, a lawyer from Massachusetts who moved west in 1803, we can see direct comment on these aspects of the Old Northwest’s fluid relationship with the larger union. Atwater’s works touch on some of the most important themes of the early nineteenth century and work hard to place Ohio solidly within them. Atwater uses such themes as American expansion and the value of personal enterprise—each of which was essential in the development of a uniquely American identity—to demonstrate Ohio and the West’s value to the Union.

In essence, Atwater’s works use themes common to American history to establish Ohio’s connection to the union as well as to make the state the exemplar of the nation in the first decades of the nineteenth century. He was among many in the “middling ranks” of first-generation Americans who felt comfortable expounding upon the nature of American society. And Atwater and others felt an obligation to help give the new country an identity that made individual values like ambition, industry, and enterprise those of the nation.³ He was quick to point out Ohio’s polyglot makeup, with many [End...