icy.

The Prohibition of Slavery.

The one point of difficulty was the slavery question. Only eight States
were at the time represented in the Congress; these were Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia--thus five of the eight States were southern. But the Federal
Congress rose in this, almost its last act, to a lofty pitch of
patriotism; and the Southern States showed a marked absence of sectional
feeling in the matter. Indeed, Cutler found that though he was a New
England man, with a New England company behind him, many of the Eastern
people looked rather coldly at his scheme, fearing lest the settlement
of the West might mean a rapid drainage of population from the East.
Nathan Dane, a Massachusetts delegate, favored it, in part because he
hoped that planting such a colony in the West might keep at least that
part of it true to "Eastern politics." The Southern members, on the
other hand, heartily supported the plan. The committee that brought in
the ordinance, the majority being Southern men, also reported an article
prohibiting slavery. Dane was the mover, while the rough draft may have
been written by Cutler; and the report was vigorously pushed by the two
Virginians on the committee, William Grayson and Richard Henry Lee. The
article was adopted by a vote unanimous, except for the dissent of one
delegate, a nobody from New York.

The ordinance established a territorial government, with a governor,
secretary, and judges. A General Assembly was authorized as soon as
there should be five thousand free male inhabitants in the district. The
lower house was elective, the upper house, or council, was appointive.
The Legislature was to elect a territorial delegate to Congress. The
governor was required to own a freehold of one thousand acres in the
district, a judge five hundred, and a representative two hundred; and no
man was allowed to vote unless he possessed a freehold of fifty acres.
[Footnote: "St. Clair Papers," ii., 603.] These provisions would seem
strangely undemocratic if applied to a similar territory in our own day.

Features of the Ordinance of 1787.

The all-important features of the ordinance were contained in the six
articles of compact between the confederated States and the people and
states of the territory, to be forever unalterable, save by the consent
of both parties. The first guaranteed complete freedom of worship and
religious