A Compromise on Slavery

will of its local legislative authority. Slavery southwest of the river Ohio was a victory over national sovereignty, and the result of surrender of the powers of Congress to a Territorial Legislature. However, its establishment was considered just and equable. The States which had ceded the Southwest Territory were slave-holding States; those which ceded the Northwest Territory, except Virginia, were free soil. By excluding slavery from the Northwest and permitting it in the Southwest, it was supposed that all political and ethical equities would be realized, and that the progress of the country would be harmonious, if not homogeneous.

In order to adapt the Ordinance of 1787 to the Constitution of the United States, the first Congress at its first session re-enacted and modified it by providing that the Governor and all the other officers of the Territory hitherto appointed by Congress should be nominated by the President and appointed with consent of the Senate. This act was further modified on the 8th of May, 1792, authorizing the Governor and judges of the Territory northwest and in that southwest of the river Ohio to repeal any laws which they had made. The Secretary of State was instructed to provide proper seals for all the public offices in the two Territories, and any supreme or superior court judge in them was authorized to hold court in the absence of the other judges. Before the spring of 1800 population had flowed into the Northwest Territory so as to make its subdivision into

separate governments desirable; and on the 7th of May Congress provided that after the 4th of July of that year that part of the Northwest Territory lying to the westward of a line beginning on the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Kentucky River, and a line thence to Fort Recovery, and thence north until it intersected the boundary line between the United States and Canada, should constitute the Territory of Indiana. Its civil government

was organized under the Ordinance of 1787. As soon as its Governor should receive satisfactory evidence that it was the wish of the majority of the freeholders to elect an Assembly, although there might not be five thousand free male inhabitants of full age in the Territory, an Assembly should be chosen. Until that number should be attained, the number of Representatives to the Territorial Assembly should not be fewer than seven or more than nine, and be proportioned by the Governor according to the number of free males of the age of twenty-one years and more which the counties might respectively contain. Chillicothe was made the capital of the Territory northwest of the river Ohio, and St. Vincents of the Indiana Territory.

On the 4th of March, 1791, Vermont was received into the Union "as a new and entire member of the United States of America," the first addition to the original thirteen. Kentucky was admitted on the first day of June, 1792, and Tennessee just four years later.

On the 7th of April, 1798, the fifth Congress,

Struggle for the Mississippi Territory

at its second session, provided for the establishment of a government in the Mississippi Territory, and also for the amicable settlement of the limits of the State of Georgia. The domain between the Mississippi River and the western boundary of Georgia, as it exists to-day, was claimed by that State. Perhaps no other part of the country had been claimed by so many nations and commonwealths. By the act of the 7th of April, Congress inaugurated a peaceful settlement of the dispute by empowering the President to appoint three commissioners to meet those appointed by Georgia for the purpose of determining the claims of the United States and of Georgia to the territory lying west of the river Chattahooche, north of the thirty-first degree of north latitude-the old boundary between the United States and West Florida determined by the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain-and south of Tennessee. The area bounded on the west by the Mississippi, on the north by a line to be drawn due east from the mouth of the river Chattahooche, on the east by that river, and on the south by the thirty-first degree of north latitude, was organized into one district and called the Mississippi Territory. Over this district the President was authorized to establish a government in all respects similar to that northwest of the Ohio, excepting the article respecting slavery, and he was further authorized to appoint all necessary officers for the new Territory. At the discretion of Congress it might later be divided into two districts, with separate governments. The

establishment of this new government in no wise impaired the right of the State of Georgia, or of any citizen therein, to the jurisdiction of the soil of Mississippi Territory. All rights and privileges granted to the people of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio by the Ordinance of 1787 were to be fully possessed and enjoyed by the people of Mississippi. As soon as the new Territorial government was established no person could bring any slave into Mississippi from any place without the limits of the United States; every person convicted of the offence was required to forfeit for each slave so imported the sum of three hundred dollars, of which one-half was to go to the United States, and the other to the informer. Every slave brought in should receive his freedom. A supplemental act was passed on the 10th of May, 1800, by which so much of the Ordinance of 1787 and of the act of 1789 providing for the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio as related to the organization of the General Assembly and prescribed its powers took effect in Mississippi, but until the number of its free male inhabitants of full age amounted to more than five thousand not more than nine Representatives were returned to its General Assembly. By this act provision was first made for the apportionment of representation in the Territory and for the election of a General Assembly. Provision was also made for the settlement of the disputed boundary between Georgia and the United States

Extension of Territory by Exploration

before the fourth day of March, 1803. These organic acts somewhat changed the map of the United States, but the changes affected only Territorial and commonwealth boundaries.

Meanwhile an important discovery had extended our national domain. On the 29th of April, 1792, Robert Grey, captain of the ship Columbia, which had left Boston on the 30th of September five years before, entered the mouth of the great river which drains the Oregon country, and which now is known by the name of his ship. For nine days he explored it, and thus established the claim of the people of the United States to the vast area drained by the Columbia and its tributaries. The country formed no part of the area claimed by France or Spain, for it constituted an entirely distinct basin, bounded on the French and Spanish sides by highlands, and drained by rivers hitherto unknown to Europeans. The law of discovery, which gave to France, England, and Spain their possessions in the New World, gave the Oregon country to the United States. Nearly a century after its discovery it became three commonwealths.

The analogy between these Territorial acts and the constitutions of the eighteenth century is obvious. Qualifications for electors and office-holders like those in the States were re-enacted. Except the religious qualification, all the old ones were retained in kind, and, nearly, in degree. Future Western States were thus laid, for a time. at least, on Eastern foundations. As yet there was