an proposed by the Congress of the
Confederation, but of a formed purpose of each of these States,
existing when the assent of their respective people was given to the
Constitution of the United States.

It appears, then, that when the Federal Constitution was framed, and
presented to the people of the several States for their consideration,
the unsettled territory was viewed as justly applicable to the common
benefit, so far as it then had or might attain thereafter a pecuniary
value; and so far as it might become the seat of new States, to be
admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the original
States. And also that the relations of the United States to that
unsettled territory were of different kinds. The titles of the States
of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina,
as well of soil as of jurisdiction, had been transferred to the United
States. North Carolina and Georgia had not actually made transfers,
but a confident expectation, founded on their appreciation of the
justice of the general claim, and fully justified by the results, was
entertained, that these cessions would be made. The ordinance of 1787
had made provision for the temporary government of so much of the
territory actually ceded as lay northwest of the river Ohio.

But it must have been apparent, both to the framers of the
Constitution and the people of the several States who were to act upon
it, that the Government thus provided for could not continue, unless
the Constitution should confer on the United States the necessary
powers to continue it. That temporary Government, under the ordinance,
was to consist of certain officers, to be appointed by and responsible
to the Congress of the Confederation; their powers had been conferred
and defined by the ordinance. So far as it provided for the temporary
government of the Territory, it was an ordinary act of legislation,
deriving its force from the legislative power of Congress, and
depending for its vitality upon the continuance of that legislative
power. But the officers to be appointed for the Northwestern
Territory, after the adoption of the Constitution, must necessarily be
officers of the United States, and not of the Congress of the
Confederation; appointed and commissioned by the President, and
exercising powers derived from the United States under the
Constitution.

Such was the relation between the United States and the Northwestern
Territory, which a