The Great Conspiracy, CompleteLogan, John Alexander
History
The Great Conspiracy, Complete
Logan, John Alexander
Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1861-1865
In the same year (1789) North Carolina ceded her western territory (now
Tennessee) south of the Ohio, to the United States, providing as one of
the conditions of that cession, "that no regulation made, or to be made,
by Congress, shall tend to emancipate Slaves." Georgia, also, in 1802,
ceded her superfluous territorial domain (south of the Ohio, and now
known as Alabama and Mississippi), making as a condition of its
acceptance that the Ordinance of '87 "shall, in all its parts, extend to
the territory contained in the present act of cession, the article only
excepted which forbids Slavery."
Thus while the road was open and had been taken advantage of, at the
earliest moment, by the Federal Congress to prohibit Slavery in all the
territory north-west of the Ohio River by Congressional enactment,
Congress considered itself barred by the very conditions of cession from
inhibiting Slavery in the territory lying south of that river. Hence it
was that while the spread of Slavery was prevented in the one Section of
our outlying territories by Congressional legislation, it was stimulated
in the other Section by the enforced absence of such legislation. As a
necessary sequence, out of the Territories of the one Section grew more
Free States and out of the other more Slave States, and this condition
of things had a tendency to array the Free and the Slave States in
opposition to each other and to Sectionalize the flames of that Slavery
agitation which were thus continually fed.
Upon the admission of Ohio to Statehood in 1803, the remainder of the
North-west territory became the Territory of Indiana. The inhabitants
of this Territory (now known as the States of Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan and Wisconsin), consisting largely of settlers from the Slave
States, but chiefly from Virginia and Kentucky, very persistently (in
1803, 1806 and 1807) petitioned Congress for permission to employ Slave
Labor, but--although their petitions were favorably reported in most
cases by the Committees to which they were referred--without avail,
Congress evidently being of opinion that a temporary suspension in this
respect of the sixth article of the Ordinance of '87 was "not
expedient." These frequent rebuffs by Congress, together with the
constantly increasing emigration from the Free States, prevented the
taking of any further steps to implant Slavery on the soil of that
Territory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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