The Fathers of the Constitution [19]
Congress to assist in the organization of government in his own State. For two years and a half he served in the Virginia Assembly and brought about the repeal of the law of entailment, the abolition of primogeniture, the recognition of freedom of conscience, and the encouragement of education. He was Governor of Virginia for two years and then, having declined reelection, returned to Congress in 1783. There, among his other accomplishments, as chairman of the committee, he reported the Treaty of Peace and, as chairman of another committee, devised and persuaded Congress to adopt a national system of coinage which in its essentials is still in use. It is easy to criticize Jefferson and to pick flaws in the things that he said as well as in the things that he did, but practically every one admits that he was closely in touch with the course of events and understood the temper of his contemporaries. In this period of transition from the old order to the new, he seems to have expressed the genius of American institutions better than almost any other man of his generation. He possessed a quality that enabled him, in the Declaration of Independence, to give voice to the hopes and aspirations of a rising nationality and that enabled him in his own State to bring about so many reforms. Just how much actual influence Thomas Jefferson had in the framing of the American land policy is not clear. Although the draft of the committee report in 1784 is in Jefferson's handwriting, it is altogether probable that more credit is to be given to Thomas Hutchins, the Geographer of the United States, and to William Grayson of Virginia, especially for the final form which the measure took; for Jefferson retired from the chairmanship and had already gone to Europe when the Land Ordinance was adopted by Congress in 1785. This ordinance has been superseded by later enactments, to which references are usually made; but the original ordinance is one of the great pieces of American legislation, for it contained the fundamentals of the American land system which, with the modifications experience has introduced, has proved to be permanently workable and which has been envied and in several instances copied by other countries. Like almost all successful institutions of that sort, the Land Ordinance of 1785 was not an immediate creation but was a development out of former practices and customs and was in the nature of a compromise. Its essential features were the method of survey and the process for the sale of land. New England, with its town system, had in the course of its expansion been accustomed to proceed in an orderly method but on a relatively small scale. The South, on the other hand, had granted lands on a larger scale and had permitted individual selection in a haphazard manner. The plan which Congress adopted was that of the New England survey with the Southern method of extensive holdings. The system is repellent in its rectangular orderliness, but it made the process of recording titles easy and complete, and it was capable of indefinite expansion. These were matters of cardinal importance, for in the course of one hundred and forty years the United States was to have under its control nearly two thousand million acres of land. The primary feature of the land policy was the orderly survey in advance of sale. In the next place the township was taken as the unit, and its size was fixed at six miles square. Provision was then made for the sale of townships alternately entire and by sections of one mile square, or 640 acres each. In every township a section was reserved for educational purposes; that is, the land was to be disposed of and the proceeds used for the development of public schools in that region. And, finally, the United States reserved four sections in the center of each township to be disposed of at a later time. It was expected that a great increase in the value of the land would result, and it was proposed that the Government should reap a part of the profits. It is evident that the primary purpose of the public land policy