veyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." Mr. Poole, a native of Massachusetts, in his able piece in the North American Review, for April, 1876, proves conclusively that Mr. Dane, of that state, although reputed to be, was not the author of that ordinance. On the other hand, Mr. Peter Force, the late president of the National Institute at Washington, and author of the ten volumes of "American Archives," in his article in the Western Law Journal, of 1848, has shown most satisfactorily that Mr. Carrington, of Virginia, chairman of the committee who reported it, was really its author. It is true, Mr. Dane, after he had joined in its report, without the slavery clause, when he found the House in favor of such a restriction, and not until then, did move the 6th Article as an amendment. Three days after its adoption he wrote to Mr. Rufus King, saying: "I had no idea the states would agree to the 6th Article, prohibiting slavery, as only Massachusetts of the eastern states was present, and, therefore, omitted it in the draft, but finding the House favorably disposed on the subject, after we had completed the other parts, I moved the Article, which was agreed to without opposition." On its passage, there were eight states represented, five southern and three northern. The delegates from the South, wanting but one of being double of those from the North, unanimously voted for it; the only opposition being among the few northern delegates, who cast merely six votes in its favor. In July, 1787, while the passage of this ordinance was under consideration, Dr. Cutler, a man on whom Yale had conferred the degree of LL.D., who had taken regular degrees in law, divinity, and medicine, and was four years in Congress from Dane's district, was sent as the agent of a company organized for holding lands in the north-west, to urge the passage of a suitable act for its government. Although not there when the ordinance was reported and passed, he had previously frequent interviews with all the members of the committee on the subject. In his diary, kept at that time, he writes: "Dane must be carefully watched, notwithstanding his professions." Grayson, R. H. Lee, and Carrington are certainly my warm advocates. Lee tells me he has a speech an hour long prepared." The great principles of free government, such as the right of trial by jury, the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, of religious liberty, the encouragement of public schools, etc., etc., which are contained in the ordinance, are

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in wonderful harmony with those to be found scattered through the earlier constitutions of Virginia and North Carolina, adopted in 1776; and go far to confirm the reasoning and newly discovered testimony of Mr. Force, to prove that it was emphatically a measure of Southern origin.

It may be added just here, that Rufus King, in the Congress of 1785, when the Northern states were in the majority, had moved a clause prohibiting slavery in this territory, as an amendment to the ordinance of Mr. Jefferson, which had already passed without it; but that majority merely "committed it," and, although certainly having the power, failed even to call it up, or attempt to pass it.

In part explanation of this apathy in the enactment of the ordinance on the part of New England, Mr. Poole, in the article above referred to, very significantly says: "The Massachusetts members never engaged with much zeal in any plan for settling the north-western territory. They saw it would draw away the capital of their own state, and thousands of its most enterprising citizens, as it did. Massachusetts had an immense unoccupied territory, in the province of Maine, on the market, and Maine was a part of her own jurisdiction." Hence, Dr. Cutler's distrust of Mr. Dane. Hence, neither he, nor any one from his state, ever called up Mr. King's amendment, nor offered any one like it, to ordinances reported for the North-west by committees of which he was a member, and when all New England was present. Hence, he did not propose the 6th Article which was passed, until prompted by the House. Besides, he was utterly incapable of writing such an ordinance, as shown conclusively by Mr. Poole. He was then but thirty-four years old, had received his education very late in life, had practiced law but five years, and, as his biographer says, was always ungraceful and awkward in the style of his composition. On the other hand, Carrington, the chairman, who reported the ordinance, was a man of experience and of marked talent and ability; and Lee, his colleague and assistant in the committee, was one of the most distinguished men in America. In 1776, he had been selected to move for adoption the resolution of Independence; and his speech on that memorable occasion to his high auditory, is said to have been one of transcendant power, a marvel of eloquence and oratory, producing a scene of excitement and passion unknown before in so grave an assemblage. After this, he became a member of Congress, over which he was elected to preside.

Is it conceivable that Carrington and Lee, men of such great talents and experience, would have resigned the task of framing such an ordinancc, requiring the highest order of statesmanship, for an original part of Virginia, to a young, inexperienced lawyer, like Dane, of only five years' practice, and wholly unknown to the public at that time as an author? Such a statement is incredible. And it is said, Mr. Webster, after his celebrated eulogy upon the ordinance, was convinced of his error in supposing that Dane was its author. Drafted, therefore, by Virginia, for the government of the territory she had ceded, and enacted by a Congress in which the Southerners had an overwhelming majority, almost two to one, in which they gave it their unanimous support, why was it that the ordinance, thus voted for, contained a restriction against slavery, hitherto unheard of in the legislation of the country? The only true answer to this question is to be found in the following explanation: Virginia, both before and after the Revolution, had been the most prominent and zealous of all the states in her persistent efforts to prohibit the importation of slaves from abroad; and it was to shut the door of this vast territory against the introduction of such importations, rather than against the slaves already in America, which induced Virginia and the other states to adopt so unanimously the 6th Article of the ordinance. A contrary motive, with other considerations which have been named, may have induced the commercial states of New England, whose citizens had engaged so extensively in the slave trade, to postpone indefinitely the adoption of Mr. King's proposition, and to be so dilatory and careless about the passage of such a measure. For it is true, as Judge McLean, in one of his judicial opinions, said: "This system of slavery was imposed upon our colonial settlements by the Mother Country, and it is due to truth to say, that the commercial colonies and states were chiefly engaged in the traffic." The contrast between the apathy of those states and the zeal of Virginia, in their opposition to the slave trade, was manifestly shown in deciding the question in the convention of 1787 whether it should be discontinued in 1800, or continued until 1808. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut voted for its continuance to 1808, and Virginia that it should not be continued beyond 1800. That the above was the purpose and policy which caused the insertion of the 6th Article in the ordinance of '87, is conclusively proven by Mr.

Madison, who, in his letters of 1819 and 1820, to Mr. Walsh and President Monroe, wrote as follows: "The great object of the convention seemed to be to prohibit the increase of the importation of slaves. A power to emancipate slaves was disclaimed. Nor is anything recollected that denoted a view to control the disposition of those within the country. When the existence of slavery in that (the north-western) territory was precluded, the importation of slaves was rapidly going on, and the only mode of checking it was by narrowing the space open to them. The expedient would not have been undertaken, if the power afterwards given to terminate the importation everywhere had existed, or been even anticipated. When the ordinance passed, the Congress had no authority to prohibit the importation from abroad. All the states had, and some were in the full exercise of, the right to import them, and consequently there was no mode, in which Congress could check the evil, but the indirect one of narrowing the space open for the reception of slaves. Had a federal authority then existed to prohibit directly and totally the importation from abroad, can it be doubted that it would have been exerted? and that a regulation having merely the effect of prohibiting an interior disposition of the slaves actually in the United States, would not have been adopted, or perhaps thought of ?" Mr. Madison was simultaneously a member of the old Congress and of the convention of 1787. The fourth volume of the Journal of the Continental Congress shows him to have been present in that body on the 14th of July, 1787, the day after the passage of the ordinance, and to have made a report in conjunction with Carrington, Dane, and King, on the subject of the northwestern territory; and his works show that during all these proceedings in relation to it, by letters, dated at that time, he was in correspondence with Jefferson and others on the subject. It was Mr. Madison who, in the convention of '87, on the 18th of August, first moved for a constitutional provision "to dispose of the unappropriated lands of the United States, and to institute temporary governments for new states arising therein;" which suggestion led to the adoption of the provisions now in the constitution relating to the power of Congress over the territories, and the admission of new states. He was also a member of the first Congress, which, in 1789, passed the act to continue in full effect the ordinance of '87. Who, then, can challenge his high authority on all questions

which relate to this ordinance, and the constitutional provisions and legislative action which followed it on the subject of the territories? In his letter to Mr. Walsh he says: It may be observed that the ordinance, giving its distinctive character on the subject of slaveholding, proceeded from the old Congress acting with the best intentions, but under a charter which contains no shadow of the authority exercised."

Seemingly conscious of this truth, its authors founded it, in fact and form, in the nature of a compact which should be considered binding on all the states consenting to it, either expressly or by acquiescence, as they certainly did. For the same original sovereignty of the separate states, which united, formed the confederacy, could, with equal authority, adopt the ordinance as a binding compact.

Adopted thus, before the existence of our present constitution, its obligatory force was recognized and continued by the following clause in that instrument: "All debts contracted, and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under the constitution as under the confederation." By virtue of this clause, the ordinance, as an engagement valid against the United States, was perpetuated, but to the extent only of its existence over the territories embraced by it, so long as they remained such; for by one of its own provisions, each state formed out of them" shall be admitted by its delegates into the Congress of the United States on an equal footing with the original states." By this provision, the ordinance itself provided for its own annulment when the territories it governed were admitted as states into the Union under the present constitution. For in the act of admission, they were invested with the same powers which the original states had. Congress, thus bound by an engagement existing prior to the constitution, passed, in compliance with it, acts applying the ordinance with its restriction against slavery to the several territories into which the North-west included in it was divided, viz., to the territory of Indiana in 1800, to that of Ohio in 1802, to that of Michigan in 1805, to that of Illinois in 1809, and to that of Wisconsin in 1836.

In accordance with the construction of the constitution, that no authority existed in it, outside the ordinance, for congress to apply the restriction against slavery to any territory of the United States,