for these future States was only crude in having to conform to the imperfect plan of union which then existed. Canada or other external colonies might have joined the old thirteen, to be sure, on terms prescribed; but for new States erected from within, these early Articles of Union made no distinct provision. In Jefferson's plan one traces, therefore, the first lines of the method upon which the sublime experiment of State propagation has since proceeded,at this early date almost a usurpation, but sanctioned and fully provided for in our ampler charter of 1787.

“In each of the new States to be thus erected from the common soil the government was to be republican in form, and slavery was not to exist in any of them after the year 1800. This last fundamental article was the historical one. In all other material portions, except for the romantic names, Jefferson's report was adopted in April; but the clause which ordained freedom was stricken out for want of a majority of States in its favor. Every member from the Northern States voted for it; all but two from the South (Jefferson and Williamson) voted against it. Jefferson's two colleagues arrayed Virginia on the negative side of the question, in spite of him; Williamson divided the vote of North Carolina; New Jersey lost its chance of expression by having but one delegate present; and both Delaware and Georgia, by having no delegates at all. Only six States of the thirteen, in consequence, voted to retain the clause of Jefferson's plan which prohibited slavery.

"Defeat under such qualifying circumstances could not be final and decisive. At a more favorable opportunity, three years later, and while Jefferson himself was abroad, the slavery restriction was renewed in another form, and with reference to the territory northwest of the Ohio alone. That world-renowned Ordinance of 1787 passed, with the aid of Jefferson's Virginia friends, while the framers of a new federal constitution were in session at Philadelphia. The last glorious achievement of the expiring Continental Congress, it was reaffirmed afterward by the first Congress of the new Union, and approved by our first immortal President. No wonder that Nathan Dane and Rufus King, men from anti-slavery States, should have derived lustre from the part they took in preparing and promoting a measure so noble. A tier of energetic States thus erected in the Mississippi Valley gave freedom the vital preponderance in due time by their powerful example. But even here, as in the fundamental verities of our Declaration of Independence, Jefferson's name first blazons the record. He gave the earliest impulse to Congressional regulation, in the common domain, for excluding and forever prohibiting slavery. Freedom, which the Ordinance of 1787 established as partial only and by way of compromise, his earlier ordinance would have made the boon of our whole territorial jurisdiction, south of the Ohio River as well as north. When, about

midway in this nineteenth century, the struggle of hostile systems began in earnest, the party of freedom marched to political victory, baptized by the name of the national party he had once founded, and organized. upon the simple platform of the Ordinance of 1787, or territorial exclusion, reaffirmed in its new adaptation as Jefferson's Ordinance. Well would it have been for his own infatuated State and section, in that generation, had they but accepted the instruction of their greatest of political prophets.". Schouler.

"The Ordinance of 1787," says Hon. George F. Hoar, "belongs with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is one of the three title-deeds of American constitutional liberty." "I doubt," said Daniel Webster, "whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character." The Ordinance of 1787 is printed in Old South Leaflet No. 13; and the student of the present leaflet is advised to give that a careful reading in connection. The Ordinance of 1787, on the government of the Northwest Territory, came into existence only as the result of long and varied efforts. The first of those efforts was in the Ordinance of 1784, of which Thomas Jefferson was the author; and into that first Ordinance Jefferson inserted a clause forever prohibiting slavery after the year 1800 in the States to be constituted from the Northwest Territory. The toleration until 1800 was reported in deference to the situation of a few old families, chiefly French, who already held slaves in the territory, and were protected by treaty stipulation. This provision was struck out by Congress, to be restored and made binding from the time of its passage in 1787; but it is memorable that it was penned in 1784 by the great author of the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson was one of the earliest and most earnest opponents of slavery. Already in his "Notes on Virginia" he had written: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God, that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." He hoped that a way "was preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for a total emancipation." See the references in the lives of Jefferson by Randall and others to his anti-slavery sentiments and efforts. These were largely what made Abraham Lincoln Jefferson's great disciple. He felt him to be the most eminent political thinker of our history, declaring that "the principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society." Slavery stood opposed to all of Jefferson's fundamental principles, and he hoped in the Ordinance of 1784 to deal it a death-blow. His account, written in 1786, before the Ordinance with the anti-slavery clause was finally passed, of the action of Congress which so bitterly disappointed him, is as follows:

There were ten states present. Six voted unanimously for it, three against it, and one was divided; and seven votes being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively, it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the state which was divided, or of one of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the tate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man,- and Heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to be hoped it will not always be silent and that the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail."

It was largely through Jefferson's efforts that Virginia had ceded to the general government her claims in the Northwest. The act of cession was passed in 1781, while Jefferson was governor. Jefferson's interest in the organization of the Northwest, and his efforts to make the territory the home of freedom, were the sequel of years of activity devoted to the securing of the territory for the United States and the opening of it to enterprising settlers from the East. Jefferson, as a member of the Council of Virginia in 1778, was one of the most earnest supporters of George Rogers Clark in his famous expedition into the Ohio country, which led to the overcoming of the British garrisons and the conquest of so large a part of that territory. See Clark's account of the Capture of Vincennes in Old South Leaflet No. 43. It was because, owing to Clark's conquest, the country between the Ohio and he Mississippi was actually held by us at the close of the war that it was possible for us to secure, in the Treaty of Paris, the concession of the Mississippi instead of the Ohio as our western boundary. Clark was a native of Jefferson's own county, and Jefferson held him in high esteem. His Memoirs were written, years afterwards, at Jefferson's request. Clark's account of the capture of Vincennes was sent to Jefferson, who enclosed it to Washington in a letter dated June 19, 1779, Jefferson then having become governor of Virginia. Clark named the fort which he established just below the mouth of the Ohio early in 1780

Fort Jefferson. Jefferson was anxious that Clark should push his conquests still further north, including Detroit; and he carefully planned the new expedition, which, owing to changes in the campaign, was not carried out. His letters to Washington, dated Sept. 26 and Dec. 15, 1780, soliciting co-operation, should be consulted. His letter of instructions to Clark himself, Dec. 25, 1780, is included in the present leaflet. One of the closing sentences is a noteworthy revelation of Jefferson's prescience as to the great significance of Clark's activities with reference to the future of the Northwest: "In the event of peace on terms which have been contemplated by some powers, we shal! form to the American Union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the empire of liberty an extensive and fertile country, thereby converting dangerous enemies into valuable friends." Concerning the literature relating to Clark's work, see the references in Leaflet No. 43. See also Roosevelt's "Winning of the West," William H. English's "Conquest of the Northwest," and Winsor's The Westward Movement," the latter especially containing many references to Jefferson's varied services in the opening of the West.

An important chapter in the history of Jefferson's services for the Northwest is that to which belongs the correspondence with Washington in 1784, printed in the present leaflet. Washington's own great services in opening up the Ohio country and uniting it with the East are more fully illustrated in his Letter to Benjamin Harrison and other papers published in Old South Leaflet No. 16. Jefferson's warm interest is expressed in a still earlier letter to Washington than that here given. Just before writing this letter to Washington, he had in a letter to Madison, Feb. 20, 1784, gone over much the same ground. In this letter, written from the Federal capital, he laments the narrow, local views taken by many of the politcal people in Virginia. "I see the best effects produced by sending our young statesmen here. They see the affairs of the Confederacy from a high ground; they learn the importance of the Union, and befriend federal measures when they return. Those who never come here see our affairs insulated, pursue a system of jealousy and self-interest, and distract the Union as much as they can."

Early in his Presidency, Jefferson became the chief agent in what was perhaps a still more important chapter in he history of our westward expansion than the opening and organization of the Northwest Territory,- the Louisiana Purchase. The papers illustrating his activity in that important transaction are published in Leaflet No. 128. Immediately afterwards he sent out the famous expedition under Lewis and Clark (a brother of George Rogers Clark), which ascended the Missouri River to its sources and explored the valley of the Columbia to the Pacific, thus strengthening our claim to the Oregon country. Jefferson wrote a brief life of Captain Meriwether Lewis, which is published in Old South Leaflet No. 44.

The President of the United States of America, and the First Consul of the French Republic, in the name of the French people, desiring to remove all source of misunderstanding relative to objects of discussion mentioned in the second and fifth articles of the convention of the 8th Vendémiaire, an 9 (30th September, 1800) relative to the rights claimed by the United States, in virtue of the treaty concluded at Madrid, the 27th of October, 1795, between his Catholic Majesty and the said United States, and willing to strengthen the union and friendship which at the time of the said convention was happily reestablished between the two nations, have respectively named their Plenipotentiaries, to wit: the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the said States, Robert R. Livingston, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, and James Monroe, Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of the said States, near the Government of the French Republic; and the First Consul, in the name of the French people, Citizen Francis Barbé Marbois, Minister of the Public Treasury; who, after having respectively exchanged their full powers, have agreed to the following articles:

ARTICLE I.

Whereas by the article the third of the treaty concluded at St. Idelfonso, the 9th Vendémiaire, an 9 (1st October, 1800,) between the First Consul of the French Republic and His Cath

olic Majesty, it was agreed as follows: "His Catholic Majesty promises and engages on his part, to cede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations herein relative to His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other States." And whereas, in pursuance of the treaty, and particularly of the third article, the French Republic has an incontestable title to the domain and to the possession of the said territory: The First Consul of the French Republic desiring to give to the United States a strong proof of his friendship, doth hereby cede to the said United States, in the name of the French Republic, forever and in full sovereignty, the said territory, with all its rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner as they have been acquired by the French Republic, in virtue of the above-mentioned treaty, concluded with His Catholic Majesty.

ARTICLE II.

In the cession made by the preceding article are included the adjacent islands belonging to Louisiana, all public lots and squares, vacant lands, and all public buildings, fortifications, barracks, and other edifices which are not private property. The archives, papers, and documents, relative to the domain and sovereignty of Louisiana and its dependences, will be left in the possession of the commissaries of the United States, and copies will be afterwards given in due form to the magistrates and municipal officers of such of the said papers and documents as may be necessary to them.

ARTICLE III,

The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.