The Effect of the Compromise of 1850... Territory Covered by the Ordinance of 1787........ Facing p. 1 .p. 378 .p. 455 Free-Soil and Slave-Soil in 1860.... p. 540 .p. 560 THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. CHAPTER I. THE CONSTITUTION BEFORE CONGRESS AND THE COUNTRY: RATIFICATION BY DELAWARE, PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY, GEORGIA AND CONNECTICUT. While the Convention had been working out the draft of the Constitution, Congress, in session at New York, had passed several acts of which the most important was "the ordinance for the government of the United States northwest of the river Ohio." The act of 1784, providing for a territorial government of the Northwest, was never operative. Its amendment occupied Congress at short periods during the two following years, but not until the ninth of July, 1787, was the plan handed over to a new committee for completion.1 The energy and activity of the recently formed Ohio Company seem to have been the principal cause of reviving the subject. Of the members of the committee none was more sagacious and active than Nathan Dane of Massachusetts. It is impossible to identify the special contribution of its members to the work in hand. It is evident, however, upon comparison of the bill reported with the laws and constitutions already in 1 The committee consisted of Nathan Dane, Melanchton Smith, Edward Carrington, Richard H. Lee and John Kean. See J. A. Barrett's Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787, University of Nebraska, Seminary Papers, April, 1891, 51. This exhaustive monograph cites authorities. |