Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1867-07-23

Texas resolved in favor OF free school
system and an equitable homestead law
Has any Democratic or Conservative
Convention in the Southern States resolved
In favor of free school system, home
stead law, or any other measure calculated
to elevate the laboring classes. Not one.
On the contrary, the presses of that party
groan with abuse of these measures, and
the energies of its prominent men are
put forth to strangle them.-Toledo Blade
The first homestead law in Ohio was, If
our memory be not altogether at fault, the
work of ASA G.. DIMMocK, then Demo-
cratic Senator, and now the editor of the
Wayne. County Democrat.
The first and most earnest advocate of a
homestead law in Congress, was ANDREW
Congress from Tennessee.
The author of the present school law of
Ohio is Democratic was passed by
Democratic Legislature and was put into
operation by a Democratic School Com
missioner. --
At the close of the war of the Revolu-
ton, the Government came near being
wrecked for want of funds to pay its SOL
diers who had fought during the seven
year struggle. At that time many of the
States owned, or claimed to own, large
tracts of land in what was then known as
the Great West.
Congress, to save the infant Republic
ON disruption, asked the States claiming
this land to donate it to the General Gov
ernment, in order that, from the proceeds
of its sale, the exhausted Treasury might
be replenished. The State of Virginia
held the only valid title to the lands now
enclosed within the States of Michigan, In
diana, Illinois, portion of Iowa and Wis
consin, and to all of Ohio except the strip
known as the Western Reserve, the title of
which was in ConneSticut.
Except small tracts in Ohio, which that
State had already set apart to pay her own
Revolutionary troops, Virginia donated as
free gift to the General Government every
foot of her land embraced within the vast
district then known as the territory north
west of the River Ohio-a territory larger
than England, Ireland. Scotland and q
dozen German Principalities combined
Connecticut held on to her Western Re-
serve, and sold it out to her own citizens
and to others and put the proceeds into her
State Treasury.
In order that her gift might the sooner be
made available, the State of Virginia stipu-
lated that one section, of $40 acres, in each
township = one-thirty- part of the
whole gift, making territory much larger
than the whole of England-be set apart
for the benefit of common schools for the
education of the children therein; and,
with patriotism worthy of all praise, she
not only did this, but, under the belief that
the vast territory thus donated would meet
with more rapid sale if slavery was ex-
cluded, her Legislature, in agreeing to the
Ordinance of 1857, stipulated that slavery,
except in the punishment for crime, of
which the party should first be duly con-
victed, should forever be excluded.
The result of this patriotic act was the
speedy settlement of the great Northwest,
the States of which sent Senators and Rep
resentatives to Congress, resident upon the
soil thus donated, in numbers sufficient
t. deny the State that thus decided, as a
Union, her rights in the Union, and to
hold her as conquered Territory instead
Of State in the Union.
We said the State of Connecticut held
her land in the Western Reserve and sold
it, putting the proceeds into her State
Treasury. At the time she was Federal
State, governed by the fathers of the men
beaten in the war for supremacy at the late
election. All the money derived from the
lands donated by Virginia, went into the
Treasury at Washington to support the
government of the United States and to
pay off the debt due her Revolutionary
soldiers. That accruing from the sales OF
the land in the Western Reserve, went into
the Treasury of Connecticut to be used for
State expenses, and large portion of it
was devoted to Educational purposes, not
in the territory where the land was sold,
but in distant State.
Years after this, the people ofthe Western
Reserve complained that all other portions
of the Great Northwest had section of
land, in each township, donated to the sup
port of the common schools therein, and
that they had none. Believing their COM
plants just, Congress granted to each town
ship in Cheesedom, $40 acres ofland for that
purpose, and it was taken out of a portion
OF the unsold lands of the gift of Virginia
to the Union, and was located in and near
the city of Toledo, where the Blade, that
now accuses the South of opposition to ed
ucation, is printed.
These facts show the Blade that its edi-
tor, as is not uncommon with slanderers,
makes his lies out of whole cloth.
The slip Love- for she Soldier