as composed of one body, each State sending not less than two
or more than seven representatives. The voting in this body was
done by States, each State having one vote.

It therefore soon became necessary to frame and adopt a new organic
act, supplementing the many deficiencies of these Articles.

V
ORDINANCE OF 1787

The memorable Congress of 1776 was willing to do much to the end
that slavery might be restricted, hence, as we have seen, it resolved
"_that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United
Colonies_."

Had it been possible thus early to stop effectually the slave trade,
and to prevent the extension of slavery to new territory, slavery
would have died out. Jefferson sought, shortly after the treaty
of peace, to prohibit slavery extension, and to this end he prepared
and reported an Ordinance (1784) prohibiting slavery _after the
year 1800_ in all the territory then belonging to the United States
above the parallel of 31 deg. North latitude, which included what became
the principal parts of the slave States of Alabama and Mississippi,
all of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the whole Northwest
Territory. In 1784 the United States owned no territory south of
31 deg. North latitude.

This Ordinance of freedom was lost by a single vote. Had that one
vote been reversed, what a "hell of agony" would have been closed,
and what a sea of blood would have been saved! Slavery would have
died in the hands of its friends and the new Republic would have
soon been free in _fact_ as well as name.

Jefferson, though himself a slaveholder, was desperately in earnest
in advocacy of this Ordinance, and, speaking of its prohibitory
slave-clause two years later, he wrote:

"The voice of a single individual would have prevented that abominable
crime. Heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights
of human nature will in the end prevail."(14)

The most important victory for freedom in the civil history of the
United States (until the Rebellion of 1861) was the Ordinance of
1787, reported by Nathan Dane,(15) of Massachusetts, as a substitute
for the defeated one just referred to, but differing from it in
two important respects:

(1) It applied only to the territory northwest of the River Ohio
recently (March 1, 1784) ceded to the United States by Virginia;

(2) It prohibited slavery at once and forever therein. Its sixth
section is in these words:

"There shall be neither slavery nor