The United States Government, however, not only permitted the continuance of the custom of slave-holding in Louisiana, but when, in 1804, Congress divided this vast region into two parts by the thirty-third parallel of latitude, and organized the southern portion as the Territory of Orleans, and placed the northern portion under the jurisdiction of the Governor and judges of the Territory of Indiana, it, at the same time, authorized citizens of the United States immigrating into the Territory of Orleans, for the purpose of actual settlement, to take their slaves with them, and provided that the French laws in force at the date of the division should continue in the northern part until repealed or modified by the Governor and judges of Indiana Territory. Any danger to slavery in this district of Louisiana, which might be contained in the power vested by Congress in the Governor and judges of the Territory of Indiana to {56} repeal or modify the French laws which Congress had allowed to continue in the district, was overcome, the following year, by the independent organization of this district as the Territory of Louisiana, and by a provision in the Act of Congress effecting this organization, which provided for the continuance in force of the laws of the district, until repealed or modified by the legislature of the Territory. When, therefore, in 1812, the Territory of Orleans was erected into the Commonwealth of Louisiana, and the name of the Territory of Louisiana was changed to Missouri, there was no question about the status of the new Commonwealth. It was, both in fact and in law, a slave-holding Commonwealth; and the custom of slave-holding was perpetuated in the newly named Territory by the provision in the Act of Congress that the laws and regulations of the Territory of Louisiana should remain in force in the Territory of Missouri until repealed or modified by the legislature of the Territory of Missouri. [Sidenote: Slavery in the territory west of North Carolina and Georgia.] The Government of the United States had entered into obligations with North Carolina and Georgia, as we have seen, not to prohibit slavery in the territory ceded by them to the United States. Whatever we may think of the binding force of any such agreement from a legal point of view, certainly from an ethical point of view it could have been urged that the Government would have broken faith with some of the citizens of the United States had the Congress disregarded this understanding. [Sidenote: Slavery in Louisiana a different question from slavery in the North Carolina and Georgia cessions.]