The second objection to our conclusion is grounded upon the Ordinance of the Confederation, in 1787, by which slavery was prohibited in the North-western Territory ceded to the United States by Virginia. This magnificent domain, including the present States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, was conquered from the public enemy in the years 1778-9, by the Commonwealth of Virginia. She sent out her own troops, at her own charges, without either authority or assistance from the Confederation, then also engaged in a war with Great Britain, under her own commission to her heroick son, General George Rogers Clarke. Upon the conquest of the country, she disposed by her own State action of the prisoners of war captured, and annexed the territory to the State of Virginia, which then also included Kentucky. The other States, and the Confederation, uniformly recognized this region as legitimately a part of Virginia. But during and after the war, the States which owned no unsettled territory grew exceedingly jealous of those which possessed such regions, and especially of Virginia. They feared her ulterior grandeur and power. But their expressed plea was, that she, and other States possessed of vacant lands, could pay their share of the common war debt, without taxation, by the sale of these lands, which, as they claimed, were the fruits of the common exertions of the States, while the others would be subjected to an onerous taxation. The North-west Territory had, in fact, been won by Virginia, with her own bow and spear; but at the request of the Congress of the Confederation, she magnanimously laid the splendid prize upon the altar of the common cause, ceding it in 1784 to Congress, for the common behoof of the United States. The Congress of the Confederation passed a long enactment, known as the Ordinance of 1787, providing, in many articles, for its settlement, for its government while a territory, and for the sale of lands. Among these was a clause prohibiting slavery in it. But meantime, the Confederation was superseded by the general government organized under the new constitution of 1787. The first Congress during the administration of General Washington, acting under the article of the constitution already cited for taking and managing the "territory and other property" of the Confederation, passed an act, (August 7th, 1789,) for putting in effect the Ordinance of the Congress of the Confederation, now extinct.