These conditions were fixed by the famous Ordinance
of 1787; one of the two or three most important acts ever passed by an
American legislative body, for it determined that the new northwestern
States, the children, and the ultimate leaders, of the Union, should get
their growth as free commonwealths, untainted by the horrible curse of
negro slavery.
Several ordinances for the government of the Northwest were introduced
and carried through Congress in 1784-1786, but they were never put into
operation. In 1784 Jefferson put into his draft of the ordinance of that
year a clause prohibiting slavery in all the western territory, south as
well as north of the Ohio River, after the beginning of the year 1801.
This clause was struck out; and even if adopted it would probably have
amounted to nothing, for if slavery had been permitted to take firm root
it could hardly have been torn up. In 1785 Rufus King advanced a
proposition to prohibit all slavery in the Northwest immediately, but
Congress never acted on the proposal.
The next movement in the same direction was successful, because when it
was made it was pushed by a body of well-known men who were anxious to
buy the lands that Congress was anxious to sell, but who would not buy
them until they had some assurance that the governmental system under
which they were to live would meet their ideas.
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