veholding itself.[22] "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude in the said territory," it prescribed, "otherwise than in
punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The
first Congress under the new constitution reenacted the ordinance, which
was the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government in
the period.

[Footnote 22: A.C. McLaughlin, _The Confederation and the Constitution_
(New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A. Hinsdale, _The Old Northwest_ (New York,
1888), chap. 15.]

By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The
excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of
individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon
the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many
sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their
opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist
property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class
interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing
jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking
of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and
particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now
enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and
get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on the
principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old regime: matter-of-fact
reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. The
plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the
popular will to procure a general ratification.

Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but
under local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen,
its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it
continued to lie in the several state governments. The great convention
at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of
authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one
hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate
one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all
problems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignorance
by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in
anoth