into two districts, and in 1802 the eastern part was
admitted into the Union as the State of Ohio. The rest of the territory
was divided in 1805 and again in 1809; Indiana was admitted as a State
in 1816 and Illinois in 1818. So the process has gone on. There were
thirteen original States and six more have become members of the Union
without having been through the status of territories, making nineteen
in all; while twenty-nine States have developed from the colonial
stage. The incorporation of the colonies into the Union is not merely a
political fact; the inhabitants of the colonies become an integral part
of the parent nation and in turn become the progenitors of new colonies.
If such a process be long continued, the colonies will eventually
outnumber the parent States, and the colonists will outnumber the
citizens of the original States and will themselves become the nation.
Such has been the history of the United States and its people. By 1850,
indeed, one-half of the population of the United States was living
west of the Alleghany Mountains, and at the present time approximately
seventy per cent are to be found in the West.

The importance of the Ordinance of 1787 was hardly overstated by Webster
in his famous debate with Hayne when he said: "We are accustomed to
praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of
Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver,
ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and
lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." While improved means
of communication and many other material ties have served to hold the
States of the Union together, the political bond was supplied by the
Ordinance of 1787, which inaugurated the American colonial system.

CHAPTER V. DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN

John Fiske summed up the prevailing impression of the government of
the Confederation in the title to his volume, "The Critical Period of
American History." "The period of five years," says Fiske, "following
the peace of 1783 was the most critical moment in all the history of the
American people. The dangers from which we were saved in 1788 were even
greater than were the dangers from which we were saved in 1865." Perhaps
the plight of the Confederation was not so desperate as he would have
us believe, but it was desperate enough. Two incidents occurring between
the signing of the preliminary terms of peace and the definitive
treaty reveal