dition:

"Fifthly. That the territory thus ceded shall become a State, and be admitted into the Union as soon as it shall contain sixty thousand inhabitants, or at an earlier period, if Congress shall think it expedient, on the same conditions and restrictions,

with the same privileges, and in the same manner, as is provided in the ordinance of Congress of the 13th day of July, 1787, for the government of the western territory of the United States; which ordinance shall, in all its parts, extend to the territory contained in the present act of cession, the article only excepted which forbids Slavery."

Congress was thus precluded, by the unprecedented and peremptory conditions affixed to their respective cessions of their western territory by North Carolina and Georgia, from continuing and perfecting the Jeffersonian policy of fundamental and imperative Slavery inhibition in the Federal Territories. Had Mr. Jef ferson's Ordinance of 1784 been passed as he reported it, this beneficent end would have been secured. Accident, and the peculiar requirements of the Articles of Confederation, prevented this. Mr. Dane's Ordinance of 1787 contemplated only the territories already ceded to the

2 The Rev. Jonathan Edwards (son of the famous Jonathan Edwards, who was the greatest theologian, and one of the greatest men whom New England has ever produced), preached a sermon against the African Slave-Trade, September 15, 1791, at New Haven, Connecticut, then a Slave State. Text: The Golden Rule; Matthew vii., 12.

It is so commonly urged that the Abolitionists condemn a relation whereof they are grossly ignorant, that the following extract from that sermon is of interest, as the testimony of one living amid Slavery, and as proving how essentially identical are the objections urged to human chattelhood at all times, and under whatever circumstances. Mr. Edwards said:

"African Slavery is exceedingly impolitic, as it discourages industry. Nothing is more essential to the political prospect of any State than industry in the citizens. But, in proportion as Slaves are multiplied, every kind of labor be- |

be ceded to be governed by some future act. The assumption, however, that there was between the North and the South an original and subsisting compact, arrangement, understanding, or whatever it may be called, whereby so much of the common territories of the Republic as lay south of the Ohio, or of any particular latitude, were to be surrendered to Slavery, on the condition that the residue should be quitclaimed to free labor, is utterly unfounded and mistaken. The author of the original restriction was himself a slaveholder; yet he contemplated and provided for (as we have seen) the consignment of every acre of those territories, north as well as south of the Ohio, and down to the southernmost limit of our domain, to Free Labor evermore. A majority of the States which sustained that proposition were then slaveholding, and had taken no decided steps toward Emancipation. Yet they none the less regarded Slavery as an evil and a blunder,2 to be endured,

comes ignominious; and, in fact, in those of the United States in which slaves are the most numerous, gentlemen and ladies of any fashion disdain to employ themselves in business, which in other States is consistent with the dignity of the first families and the first offices. In a country filled with negro slaves, labor belongs to them only, and a white man is despised in proportion as he applies to it. Now, how destructive of industry in all of the lowest and middle class of citizens such a situation, and the prevalence of such ideas will be, you can easily conceive. The consequence is that some will nearly starve, others will betake themselves to the most dishonest practices to obtain a means of living. As Slavery produces an indolence in the white people, so it produces all those vices which are naturally connected with it, such as intemperance, lewdness, and prodigality. These vices enfeeble both the body and the mind, and unfit men for any vigorous exertions and employments, either external or mental. And those who are unfit for such exertions are already very degenerate; degenerate, not only in

perhaps, for a season where already established, rather than to invoke greater mischiefs and perils by its too sudden and violent extirpation than were likely to flow from its more patient and gradual extinction. But to plant Slavery on virgin soil-to consecrate vast and yet vacant territories to its extension and perpetuation to conquer and annex still tion-to further domains expressly to increase its security and enlarge its power are guilty dreams which never troubled the repose of the great body of our Revolutionary sages and patriots. Enlightened by their own experience

a moral, but a natural sense. They are contemptible too, and will soon be despised, even by their negroes themselves.

Slavery tends to lewdness, not only as it produces indolence, but as it affords abundant opportunity for that wickedness, without either the danger or difficulty of an attack on the virtue of a woman of chastity, or the danger of a connection with one of ill fame. A planter, with his hundred wenches about him, is, in some respects at least, like the Sultan in his seraglio; and we learn too frequently the influence and effect of such a situation, not only from common fame, but from the multitude of mulattoes in countries where slaves are very numerous.

'Slavery has a most direct tendency to haughtiness also, and a domineering spirit and conduct in the proprietors of slaves, and in their children, and in all who have control of them. A man who has been brought up in domineering over negroes can scarcely avoid contracting such a habit of haughtiness and domination as will express itself in his general treatment of mankind, whether in his private capacity, or any office, civil or military, with which he may be vested. Despotism in economics naturally leads to despotism in politics, and domestic Slavery in a free government is a perfect solecism in human affairs.

"How baneful all these tendencies and effects of Slavery must be to the public good, and especially to the public good of such a free country as ours, I need not inform you.”—Sermons, 177599, p. 10.

3 The opinion of the Father of his Country respecting the "peculiar institution" of the South may be perceived from the following extracts. In a letter to Lafayette, bearing date April 5, 1783, he says:

"The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose as a precedent to encourage the emancipation of the black people in this country from that state of bondage in which they are 1xld, is

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as to the evils and dangers of arbitrary, despotic, irresponsible power, they were too upright and too logical to seek to fasten for all time on a helpless and inoffensive race chains far heavier and more galling than those they had just shaken off. Most of them held slaves, but held them under protest against the anomaly presented to the world by republican bondage, and in the confident hope. that the day would soon dawn that would rid themselves of the burden and their country of the curse and shame of human chattelhood. Had they been asked to unite in any of

3

a striking evidence of the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the business until I have the pleasure of seeing you."-Sparks's Washington, vol. viii., p 414. Again, in a letter to the same, of May 10, 1786:

"The benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so conspicuous upon all occasions, that I never wonder at any fresh proofs of it; but your late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view to emancipate the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself in the minds of the people of this country! But I despair of seeing it. Some petitions were presented to the Assembly at its last session, for the Abolition of Slavery, but they could scarcely obtain a reading."-Ibid., vol. ix., p. 163.

In a remarkable and very interesting letter written by Lafayette in the prison of Magdeburg, he said:

"I know not what disposition has been made of my plantation at Cayenne; but I hope Madam De Lafayette will take care that the negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty."

The following language is also Lafayette's, in a letter to Hamilton, from Paris, April 13, 1785: "In one of your New York Gazettes, I find an association against the Slavery of the negroes, which seems to me worded in such a way as to give no offense to the moderate men in the Southern States. As I have ever been partial to my brethren of that color, I wish, if you are one in the society, you would move, in your own name, for my being admitted on the list."-Works of Alex. Hamilton, N. Y., 1851, vol. i., p. 423.

John Adams, in a letter to Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819, expresses himself as follows: "I respect the sentiments and motives which

of Roanoke, then a young member, as its chairman. On the 2d of March, 1803, Mr. Randolph made a unani mous report from this Committee, recommending a denial of the prayer of the petitioners, for these reasons :

When Ohio was made a State, in 1803, the residue of the North-West Territory became Indiana Territory, with William Henry Harrisonsince President of the United States as Governor. Its earlier settlements were mainly on the banks of the Ohio and of its northern tributaries, and were principally by emigrants from Virginia, Kentucky, and other Slave States. These emigrants, realizing an urgent need of labor, and being accustomed to supply that need by the employment of slaves, almost unanimously memorialized Congress, through a Convention assembled in 1802, and presided over by their Governor, for a temporary suspension of the sixth article of the Ordinance of '87, whereby Slavery was expressly prohibited. Their memorial was referred by the House of Representatives to a Select Committee of three, two of them from the Slave States,

have prompted you to engage in your present occupation so much, that I feel an esteem and affection for your person, as I do a veneration | for your assumed signature of Benjamin Rush. The turpitude, the inhumanity, the cruelty, and the infamy of the African commerce, have been so impressively represented to the public by the highest powers of eloquence, that nothing that I could say would increase the just odium in which it is, and ought to be, held. Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of Slavery from the

"The rapid population of the State of Ohio sufficiently evinces, in the opinion of your Committee, that the labor of slaves is not necessary to promote the growth and settlement of colonies in that region; that this labor-demonstrably the dearest of any -can only be employed in the cultivation of products more valuable than any known to that quarter of the United States; that the Committee deem it highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the North-Western Country, tensive frontier. In the salutary operation and to give strength and security to that exof this sagacious and benevolent restraint, it is believed that the inhabitants of Indiana will, at no very distant day, find ample remuneration for a temporary privation of labor, and of emigration.

The session terminated the next day; and the subject was, the next winter, referred to a new committee, whereof Cæsar Rodney, of Delaware, was chairman. This committee reported in favor "of a qualified suspension, for a limited time," of the inhibition aforesaid. But Congress took no action on the report.

The people of Indiana Territory persisted in their seemingly unanimous supplication to be allowed, for a limited period, the use of Slave Labor; and Mr. Garnett, of Virginia, on the 14th of February, 1806, made

United States. * * * I have, through my whole life, held the practice of Slavery in such abhorrence, that I have never owned a negro or any other slave, though I have lived for many years in times when the practice was not disgraceful-when the best men in my vicinity thought it not inconsistent with their character; and when it has cost me thousands of dollars for the labor and subsistence of free men, which I might have saved by the purchase of negroes, at times when they were very cheap."-Works of John Adams, Boston, 1856, vol. x., p. 386.

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mittee in favor of granting their request. But Congress never took this report into consideration. At the next session, a fresh letter from Governor Harrison, inclosing resolves of the Legislative Council and House of Representatives in favor of suspending temporarily the inhibition of Slavery, was received, and referred (January 21, 1807) to a Select Committee, whereof Mr. B. Parke, Delegate from said Territory, was made chairman. This Committee, composed mainly of members from Slave States, made (February 12th) a third report in favor of the petitioners; but Congress never acted upon the subject.

At the next session, the matter was brought before the Senate, on the apparently unanimous prayer of Governor Harrison and his Legislature for permission temporarily to employ slaves; but there was now, for the first time, a remonstrance of citizens of the Territory against the measure. The Senate referred the subject to a Select Committee of three, whereof Mr. Jesse Franklin, of N. C., was chairman; and Mr. Franklin, on the 13th of November, 1807, reported briefly against the petition, closing as follows:

"Your Committee, after duly considering the matter, respectfully submit the following

resolution:

"Resolved, That it is not expedient at this time to suspend the sixth article of compact for the government of the Territory of the

United States North-West of the river Ohio."

And here the long and fruitless struggle to fasten Slavery upon the vast Territory now forming the States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and

For a counter-revolution had been silently proceeding for some years previous, and had almost eradicated the lessons and the principles of the Revolution from the hearts of the South, saving, of course, those portions wherein they seem to have never been learned. The bases of this revolution are the acquisition of Louisiana and the invention of the Cotton Gin;* events for which Thomas Jefferson and Eli Whitney—neither of them pro-slavery-are primarily responsible. The acquisition of Louisiana, though second in occurrence and in importance, first attracted and fixed the attention of mankind, and shall, therefore, be first considered.

The river Mississippi was first discovered in 1541, by the Spanish adventurer De Soto, in the course of his three or four years' fantastic wanderings and fightings throughout the region which now constitutes the Gulf States of our Union, in quest of the fabled Eldorado, or Land of Gold. He left Spain in 1538, at the head of six hundred ambitious and enthusiastic followers, all eager and sanguine as himself in their quest of the fountain of perpetual youth and life. He died of a malignant fever on the bank of the Mississippi, in the spring or early summer of 1542; and his body,

to conceal his death from the surrounding hostile savages, was sunk by his surviving followers in the deep current of that mighty stream. Of the entire expedition, less than half, an enfeebled and wretched remnant, finally reached the coast of Mexico, in the summer of 1543, glad to have escaped with their bare lives from the inhospitable swamps and savages they had so recklessly encountered. It does not appear that any of them, nor even De Soto himself, had formed any adequate conception of the importance of their discovery, of the magnitude of the river, or of the extent and fertility of the regions drained by its tributaries; since more than a century was allowed to transpire before the Mississippi was revisited by civilized men. And its next discoverers were not Spaniards, but Frenchmen; although Spain had long possessed and colonized Florida and Mexico on either side of its mouth. But the French-now firmly established in Canada, and penetrating by their traders and voyageurs the wild region stretching westward and south-westward from that Colony -obtained from the savages some account of this river about the year 1660; and in 1673, Marquette and Joliet, proceeding westward from Montreal, through the Great Lakes, reached the Mississippi above its junction with the Missouri, and descended it to within three days' journey of its mouth. In 1682, La Salle descended it to the Gulf of Mexico, and took formal possession of the region in the name of his king and country. A fort was erected on its banks by Iberville, about the year 1699; and in 1703, a settlement was made at St. Peters, on the Yazoo.

New Orleans was first chosen as the site of a city in 1717, laid out in 1718, when the levees which protect it from the annual inundations of the river were immediately commenced, and steadily prosecuted to completion, ten years afterward. The colony of Louisiana (so named after Louis XIV.) remained a French possession until 1762, when it was ceded to Spain. New Orleans gradually increased in trade and population, but the colony outside of that city was of slight importance under its Spanish rulers, who did little to develop its resources, and were not popular with its mainly French inhabitants. In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, induced the feeble and decaying Bourbons of Spain, then in close alliance with revolutionary France, to retrocede to her Louisiana, almost without consideration; and the French flag once more waved over delighted New Orleans.

+

In the United States, however, the transfer was regarded with regret and apprehension. Our settlers beyond the Alleghanies, who must export their surplus products through the lower Mississippi, or see them perish useless and valueless on their hands, had been for fifteen years in a state of chronic and by no means voiceless. dissatisfaction with the alleged jealous hostility and obstructive regulations of the Spanish rulers of that essential outlet. Threats were freely uttered that they would soon descend the river and clear its lower banks of the Dons and drones who seemed to burrow there only as an impediment and a nuisance. The Spaniards were charged with fomenting intrigues in Kentucky and Tennessee, which had for their object the aliena