Fifth mural in Clark Memorial

This mural, "MARIETTA: THE NORTHWEST, A NEW TERRITORY," brings out an additional result of Clark's campaigns. The great region he won as an officer of Virginia was ceded to the United States. Its possession by the Union of the States helped to hold that union together when it threatened to dissolve. The Continental Congress devised for its development a new political invention, the "territory", a temporary organization providing for gradual extension of self-government and final admission of the new states into the Union on absolute equality with the original ones.

The Northwest Ordinance July 13, 1787, in which this invention was embodied, also consecrated the region to freedom both of conscience and of labor. It provided the model for all subsequent territories. As a political document, it ranks in our history second only to the Constitution of the Untied States.

At Marietta, Ohio, on July 13, the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio was formally inaugurated. Winthrop Sargent, secretary of the territory, read the Northwest Ordinance to the New Englanders of the Ohio Company, who, at the junction of the Muskingum and the Ohio, had founded the first American City in the new region. Back of him in the mural stands Governor Arthur St. Clair, the English army officer, who had come to America to fight the French, and stayed here to fight against the English for independence. Friend of Washington, soldier and statesman of ability - in spite of his own defeat by Indians - his administration, begun on the day represented by the mural, merits everlasting remembrance.

The acquisition of the Old Northwest added to the United States the region which became the very heart of the nation. It now contains about a fifth of the population and of the wealth of the country. Of our six largest cities, three - Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland belong to it. From this region came Ulysses S. Grant, who won the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union.

Ezra Winter, Artist