They were noisy, dirty, ephemeral tabernacles
of canvas or of boards in the wilderness, carried westward till the day of
permanent temples should come. But like the Ark of the Covenant in the
history of Israel, they blessed those in whose fields they rested on the
way, even as the field and household of Obed-edom the Gittite were blessed
by the presence of the ark on its way up to Jerusalem in the days of
David.
The initial policy of the government was to sell in as great tracts as
possible (the very reverse of the present conserving, anti-monopolistic
policy, as we shall see). The first sale (1787) was of nearly a million
acres, for which an average of two-thirds of a dollar per acre in
securities worth nine or ten cents was received. This sale, whatever may
be said for it as a part of a fiscal policy, was significant not only in
opening up a great tract (one thousand three hundred square miles) but in
the fact that the purchase and holding were conditioned by certain
provisions of a precious ordinance--the last of importance of the old
Continental Congress-only less important than the Constitution, which it
preceded by two years--the "basis of law and politics" in the northwest.
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