Welcome to the American Story.

Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful

and worthy of our love.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one an evening on the Benjamin Franklin.

It was a rainy Wednesday evening on the Ohio River, November 15th, 1843.

John Quincy Adams was on a steamboat named Benjamin Franklin, making his way up the river from

Marietta, Ohio to Pittsburgh. Adams was a famous American, son of a president, a former diplomat and president himself.

Still an active member of Congress, known as Old Man Eloquent, for the felicity of style with which he championed his staunch

anti-slavery politics. He was accompanied as a sign of honor by a few of the

sign of honor by a few of the prominent citizens from the Marietta area. Among them a man named Ephraim Cutler,

one of the pioneers who came to the wilds of Ohio

over half a century before

when America first acquired what was called the Northwest Territory.

Cutler and Adams were the same age

76 and their fathers, both New Englanders who had

known one another back in the heady days of the 1770s and 1780s had something remarkable in common.

As the Benjamin Franklin carried them up the river, they talked long into the night.

Among their topics was John Adams' role

in securing the Northwest Territory for the United States

in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

After victory in the War for Independence, with the aid of Adams' diplomacy, America acquired

...