Slavery in the Northwest Territory

immigration, and that slave-owners would be free to move to Indiana if they chose. The suspension would also improve the condition of the slaves. The more they were scattered, the better care they received from their masters, as experience proved that the comfort of slaves was in proportion to the smallness of their number—an argument to be made much of by Madison, and repeated by the friends of slavery extension in 1820. The House, however, took no action. Again, in 1807, a committee reported favorably, and its opinion was reinforced by a letter from William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Territory. A new argument was presented. Though inexpedient to force the population of the Territory, it was desirable to connect its scattered settlements, and place it on equal footing with the different States. Indiana was so far inland it was improbable that slaves could ever become so numerous as to endanger the peace of the country. The Territory should be open freely to the current of immigration. Suspension of the clause, it was now claimed, did not involve the abstract question of freedom or slavery, because slavery existed in different parts of the Union. Rather, the suspension would ameliorate the condition of the slaves, because it would merely authorize their removal from other States. But the House took no action. The Indiana petition came as a resolution of the Territorial Legislature. Private judgment was thus strengthened by the official act of the legislative and executive. In January, 1808, the whole matter came before

the Senate, but its committee reported the proposed change inexpedient, and Congress took no further action. Thus, by a coincidence, the territory northwest of the Ohio was secured to freedom in the year when, by the terms of the national Constitution, Congress was free to prohibit the African slave-trade.

The fate of the Indiana memorial, settled five years after the acquisition of Louisiana, may now be said to have been an augury of the fate of slavery in the new domain, but there is slight evidence that the action of Congress was so construed at the time. The name Louisiana, then, as now, was connected, in popular thought, with the southernmost part of the purchase. There was no objection to the acquisition because of the extension of slavery. Objection was of the kind expressed in the federal convention of 1787, when the contingency of new States in the West was discussed-that they would multiply and out-vote the East, and therefore ought not to be created. Moreover, the Constitution made no provisions for the acquisition of territory. These two objections, involving questions of federal relations rather than of slavery, engrossed what public attention was given to the matter. The article of the treaty by which the Constitution of the United States was soon invoked as guaranteeing the right of property in man, was generally unknown or overlooked. Was not the acquisition a Southern and Western question, after all? Quincy and the New England Federalists, of course, object

*

Louisiana and Orleans as Territories

ed, but would they not object, as they ever had objected, to whatever the South and West might ask? Times had changed; henceforth the West should outweigh a black cockade. Let the Federalists remember that Jefferson, the man of the people, was President. At last the West was to have its rights, and it gathered more fervently than ever beneath the banner of that new and powerful party described by its founder as "inclining to the legislative powers."

Ten days after the treaty was proclaimed Congress authorized the President to take possession of the new country, and it was erected into two Territories-Louisiana and Orleans. The fugitiveslave law of 1793, and the laws respecting the slavetrade, were specially mentioned as extended to the new Territories. On the 2d of March Orleans was provided with a permanent government, and on the next day Louisiana. The form became the precedent for later Territories in the South. Within five years from the organization of Orleans its population had sufficiently increased to authorize the formation of a State government. By the enabling act of February 20, 1811, the electors were empowered to choose delegates to a constitutional convention. Its work was completed eleven months later. The act prescribed several conditions, suggested in part by a clause in the treaty of 1803. The constitution should contain the fundamental principle of civil and religious liberty,

* See Josiah Quincy's speech in the House, January 14, 1811.

should be republican in form, and consistent with the national Constitution. Satisfied with the plan of government submitted, Congress admitted the State on the 8th of April, and, six days later, enlarged its boundaries.

The greater part of the Louisiana purchase remained as yet unorganized. To the portion north of the new State, Congress, on the 4th of June, gave a Territorial organization and the name Missouri. The government departed slightly from precedent in prescribing a biennial election of members of the House. These were required to be freeholders. In 1816 the sessions of the Legislature were made biennial-the first application to a Territory of a reform already in progress in the States. The laws of Louisiana were extended over the new Missouri Territory, except any parts of them inconsistent with the act creating the Territory. Thus the early legislation of Missouri was, in part, ingrafted on the civil law.

Georgia had recently ceded to the United States all the region west of her present boundary-the result of an amicable agreement between the State and national commissioners, ratified on the 16th of June, 1802.* The United States agreed to pay one and a quarter millions of dollars, and also to extinguish the Indian title within the State and over the greater portion of the ceded area. The new Territory was to be admitted as a State as soon

* For papers respecting this cession, see Donaldson's Public Domain, pp. 79-81. Forty-seventh Congress, second session; House of Representatives, Miscellaneous Document 45, Part 4.

The Progress of State-Making

as it contained sixty thousand people, or sooner, if Congress thought expedient, and the United States agreed that the Ordinance of 1787 should apply to it, except the article forbidding slavery. This cession enabled Congress to extend the Territory of Mississippi northward to the Tennessee line. The right to vote was limited to free white males above the age of twenty-five, citizens of the United States who were residents of the Territory one year, provided they owned fifty acres of land in the United States, or a town lot worth one thousand dollars within the Territory.

Indiana was divided in 1805, and to the portion comprising the southern peninsula the name Michigan was given, with Detroit as the capital. Again, four years later, the Territory was divided, and the western part, with capital at Kaskaskia, was called Illinois.

Indiana now sought admission, and on the 19th of April, 1816, Congress authorized its people to elect delegates to a constitutional convention, limiting the choice to white male citizens of the United States, residents of the Territory for one year, who had paid a county or Territorial tax. On the 29th of June of the following year this convention assembled at Corydon, and completed a constitution, which was ratified by the electors and approved by Congress. On the 11th of December the State was admitted.

In 1812 the Territory of Mississippi was enlarged so as to include the region east of the Pearl River, west of the Perdido, and south to the