for the government of our western territory. Virginia's cession of the territory north and west of the Ohio, which we mentioned near the close of the last chapter, was completed on March 1, 1784. Jefferson was appointed with Chase, of Maryland, and Howell, of Rhode Island, to prepare a plan for its temporary government. Without waiting for the other States with western claims to cede their lands beyond the Alleghanies, Jefferson drew up and reported an "Ordinance for the government of the Western Territory of the United States." The draft of the ordinance in Jefferson's handwriting is in the archives of the State Department at Washington. It provided for the division of the whole territory between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, into "States" by degrees of latitude and meridians of longitude. Each "State," as soon as it should have "acquired 20,000 free inhabitants," should be authorized by Congress to establish a permanent constitution and government for itself, which must conform to the following principles: (1) It must forever remain a part of this Confederation of the United States of America. (2) Its powers, property, and territory must be subject to the government of the United States in Congress assembled.

(3) It must pay the part of the federal debts contracted or to be contracted which was apportioned to it by Congress.

(4) Its government must be republican in form and admit no person to be a citizen who holds any hereditary title.

(5) Slavery should not exist in any of the "States" after the year 1800 of the Christian era. Whenever any of these new States gained as many inhabitants as the least populous of the thirteen original States, its delegates should be admitted to Congress "on an equal footing with the said original States, provided nine States agreed to such admission." Until then they should have a representative in Congress with the right of debating but not of voting.

The student of our political institutions will recognize in this ordinance of Jefferson's all the essential principles of the organization and government of Territories of the United States. Since the year 1910 Territorial governments within our country proper have ceased; an unbroken band of forty-eight States extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But from the Virginia cession of 1784 down to the Civil War at least one-half of the area of the United States was in the form of Territories, and the reciprocal influence of the old States on the new Territories and the new Territories on the old States has been one of the most important of the political and social chapters of American history. In the light of these facts Jefferson's Ordinance for the government of the West takes on a great significance. Its provi

sions were copied largely in the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and in the Constitution of the United States. Its spirit influenced our Territorial governments for more than a century.

Jefferson's Ordinance was not adopted in toto, however. The fantastic names which he suggested for the new Western States were dropped; the clause forbidding the holder of an hereditary title to become a citizen was stricken out; and the provision for the abolition of slavery after the year 1800 was defeated. Only the three States of South Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia actually voted against the no-slavery clause; but Georgia and Delaware had no delegates at all in Congress at the time, New Jersey's vote was lost because she had only a single delegate present, and North Carolina's because her two delegates were paired. So there remained but the six States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania in support of the clause. One more delegate in attendance from New Jersey, or the change of one vote of the Virginia or North Carolina delegation would have given the vote of the seventh State necessary to make the majority.

It is doubtful if a vote fraught with more serious consequences for the subsequent history of our country has ever been passed by the Congress of the United States than this rejection of a no-slavery clause in the plan of government for our Western

territory. Had the clause been adopted and observed, the territory south of the Ohio as well as that to the north would have been organized as free soil. The next fifteen years would not have seen the admission of Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796) as slave States, and the organization of the huge Mississippi Territory (1798) with slavery. The invention of the cotton-gin and the consequent hunger for new slave soil was still a decade off when Jefferson's clause was rejected. A broad band of free soil might have extended from the Lakes to the Gulf, shutting slavery up in the original States of the South along the Atlantic, and presenting a solid front of freedom on the Mississippi. Instead, the sectional antagonism in the old States was carried out to the frontier, there to kindle a struggle for the possession of every new acquisition of territory. The Civil War is latent in the vote of 1784. Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party came back to the rejected clause of Jefferson's Ordinance for their platform: no slavery in the Territories of the United States. Jefferson expressed his disappointment mildly to Madison in a letter of April 25: "South Carolina, Maryland, and! Virginia! voted against it"; but to his French friend, De Meusnier, he poured out his indignant sorrow: "The voice of a single individual would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hang

ing on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent in that awful moment."

With the advent of peace and the acknowledgment of our independence it became necessary for us to win a respected place in the family of nations. Our commerce had been monopolized by England to such an extent that we had had little opportunity of showing to other European nations the reciprocal advantages that would result from an exchange of goods. John Adams declared in his later days that he could not read the British Acts of Trade as a young lawyer "without pronouncing a hearty curse upon them. . . as a humiliation, a degradation, and a disgrace" to his country. But the British acts were not exceptionally severe. On the contrary, they were rather more liberal than those of most European countries. Free trade was a thing unknown in the eighteenth century. Every land surrounded itself with tariff walls and tried to monopolize its colonies' products. So long as we were a part of the great British Empire we enjoyed the benefits of her colonial monopoly, in spite of the exasperating acts arising from the enforcement of that monopoly, and our products found good markets and favorable tariff discriminations within the Empire. But when we became an independent nation we found ourselves outside the protective system of Great Britain, without thereby being admitted to the privileges of trade with the other