Louisiana, to carry our western frontier beyond the Rocky Mountains, had, in 1779, done more than any one else to support the romantic campaign in which General Clark had taken possession of the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. He had much to do with the generous policy which gave up the greater part of that country for a national domain, and on the very day on which the act of cession was completed he presented to Congress a remarkable plan for the government of the new territory, which was only partially successful because it attempted too much, but the results of which were in many ways notable. [Sidenote: Jefferson proposes a scheme of government for the northwestern territory, 1784.] In this plan, known as the Ordinance of 1784, Jefferson proposed to divide the northwestern territory into ten states, or just twice as many as have actually grown out of it. In each of these states the settlers might establish a local government, under the authority of Congress; and when in any one of them the population should come to equal that of the least populous of the original states, it might be admitted into the Union by the consent of nine states in Congress. The new states were to have universal suffrage; they must have republican forms of government; they must pay their shares of the federal debt; they must forever remain a part of the United States; and after the year 1800 negro slavery must be prohibited within their limits. The names of these ten states have afforded much amusement to Jefferson's biographers. In those days the schoolmaster was abroad in the land after a peculiar fashion. Just as we are now in the full tide of that Gothic revival which goes back for its beginnings to Sir Walter Scott; as we admire mediæval things, and try to build our houses after old English models, and prefer words of what people call "Saxon" origin, and name our children Roland and Herbert, or Edith and Winifred, so our great-grandfathers lived in a time of classical revival. They were always looking for precedents in Greek and Roman history; they were just beginning to try to make their wooden houses look like temples, with Doric columns; they preferred words of Latin origin; they signed their pamphlets "Brutus" and "Lycurgus," and in sober earnest baptized their children as Cæsar, or Marcellus, or Darius. The map of the United States was just about to bloom forth with towns named Ithaca and Syracuse, Corinth and Sparta; and on the Ohio River, opposite the mouth of Licking Creek, a city had lately been founded, the name of which was truly portentous. "Losantiville" was this wonderful compound, in which the initial _L_ stood for "Licking," while _os_ signified "mouth," _anti_ "opposite," and _ville_ "town;" and the whole read backwards as "Town-opposite-mouth-of-Licking." In 1790 General St. Clair, then governor of the northwest territory, changed this name to Cincinnati, in honor of the military order to which he belonged.