it. He went beyond this and advocated and urgently solicited Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to cede their rights in the land west of the Mountains, and he would have had slavery prohibited in this territory also after the year 1800. His plan was no more or less than to prohibit slavery after the year 1800 in all land between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, from the Lakes to Florida.

On April 19, 1784, Jefferson's Ordinance came up for consideration. North Carolina moved that the clause prohibiting slavery after 1800 be stricken out; South Carolina seconded the motion, which was put in the form, "Shall the words moved to be stricken out stand?" Six States voted that the clause should stand, three were opposed to it, but as the Articles of Confederation required the votes of nine States, the motion was lost and the Ordinance, with the slavery clause taken out, was then adopted.

The following year Congress made inducements so attractive that in a short time several companies were organized and bought large tracts in the new National Territory; and as they purposed settling on their purchases at once, Congress agreed upon a more elaborate plan of government and laws than those set forth in the Ordinance of 1784. The famous Ordinance of 1787 was the result of this agreement. Mr. Jefferson was not present at the time of its adoption, having been sent as Minister to France, but the influence of his work and sentiments were felt, and his ideas were adopted in a new form. The new Ordinance repealed the old one, and among other things provided that the Territory should be cut up into not less than three nor more than five States, all of which were to be admitted into the Union when they had a population of 60,000 free inhabitants. The States which might be formed were forever to remain a part of the United States, and it was declared that the Ordinance was to be considered as a compact between the original States and the people and States of the new territory, and forever to remain unalterable unless by common consent. Most important and far-reaching of all was the Article,

"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; Provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service, as aforesaid."

With slavery forever prohibited in such a large territory, with the Ordinance beyond repeal, and secession condemned, the Ordinance of 1787 stands out as one of the most remarkable and most important enactments in American history. What the Declaration of Independence and the War had obtained, and the Constitution was to make more perfect—the Union —the development of the country under the Ordinance of 1787 was to preserve. The South yielded to the strong anti-slavery clause in this ordinance because a fugitive slave clause was added to it, and because she had a plan of making the territory west of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia slave territory. This was done shortly afterwards, when two years later South Carolina and North Carolina, and Georgia in 1802, ceded their western claims to Congress on the express condition that it should be slave soil, and Congress accepted the territory on that condition; Kentucky being admitted as a slave State in 1792.

While the national greatness and safety were being worked out in the West, affairs were in a miserable condition in the East, owing to the radical defects in the Articles of Confederation which had been in operation since 1781. The cup of bitter national humiliation was being drained to the dregs, but fortunately the best men of the country finally succeeded in calling a Convention to revise the Articles. The Convention met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and by September had adopted a new Constitution.

The great struggle between the North and the South began in the Constitutional Convention. Slavery and the conflicting commercial interests were the difficult questions which divided the country and resulted in the first of the Compromises that held off the Civil War for so many years. It was decided to have an equal representation of States in the Senate and an unequal representation in the House, based upon population; but should slaves be counted as population? This and the other slavery questions which came up in the Convention threatened to disrupt the proceedings entirely. There were at this time about 675,000 slaves in the country, of which number fully 625,000 were in the South. South Carolina, henceforth to be so active for the interests of the South, immediately claimed that these slaves should be considered as population to be counted in fixing the representation in the House. The North argued that the slaves were chattels and should not be counted, for it was seen at a glance that if this enormous number of slaves were to be counted on any basis, the political power of the South would be greatly increased. South Carolina made open and repeated threats to withdraw from the Confederacy, and the situation was serious, because, without her and the other Southern Colonies, who would unquestionably be influenced by her, the work of the Convention would not be ratified, and there would be no Union. The inexorable necessity of the hour demanded a compromise, and it was decided that in apportioning the Representatives there should be added to the whole number of free persons three-fifths of all other persons. This was equivalent to saying that five slaves in the South should be counted the same as three white persons in the North.

In regard to the slave trade there was a sentiment in all the States except Georgia and South Carolina against it, because five slaves counted as three whites, and because almost all of the eminent men North and South were at this time opposed to Slavery itself as not only a moral wrong, but as something which would injure the development of the country. The Southern planters insisted upon a continuation of the slave trade, but at the same time they were fearful that the North might tax their exports. The second great Compromise was affected, and it was agreed that the importation of such persons as any of the States might think proper to admit should not be prohibited by Congress prior to 1808, but a tax on each person so admitted might be imposed, not exceeding $10, and that no tax or duty should be laid on articles exported from any State. A Fugitive Slave Clause very similar to that contained in the Ordinance of 1787 was also added.

By these Compromises, especially the one giving representation for slaves, the South was given that tremendous political power which she wielded so long to threaten and coerce the North to her bidding. The Slave Power was politically enthroned, not to be finally dislodged until the election of Mr. Lincoln. At this early period, however, it was firmly and honestly believed that in a very short time slavery would disappear in all of the Colonies, as it was already dying out rapidly in the North, and it was fully believed that after 1808, when the slave trade should be prohibited, slavery would become extinct. It must be remembered that at this time cotton was not a staple of the South, and there was nothing seriously present or threatened, in the social or economical development of the South, which made slavery absolutely necessary. Nobody foresaw how greatly cotton was to add to the wealth and standing of the South, and nobody foresaw the great injury which the Constitution was to do the North.

When Washington was inaugurated, April 30, 1789, the United States reached from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Lake of the Woods, the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence and St. Croix Rivers southward to