The territory now covered by the States of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, was ceded to the United States by North Carolina and Georgia prior to 1803, and accepted by the United States, on the condition that Congress should extend over it a government, and ultimately divide it into States, on the principles of the ordinance of 1787, _except as to slavery_, and territorial governments were afterwards organized over it as slave territory. While, therefore, Congress had in 1787 assumed, by a compact of the original States, to prohibit slavery north-west of the Ohio River, it had also within twelve years after the adoption of the ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution, by express contract agreed not to prohibit it in all territory south of the Ohio, and by the admission of Kentucky and Tennessee as Slave States prior to 1800, could not prohibit it there. Up then to the time of the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, the Ohio River was the compromise line between free and slave territory--_a line of agreement_, rather than arbitrary legislation. Louisiana was all slave territory, and by the 3d article of the treaty for its acquisition, its inhabitants were to come into the Union as soon as possible on equal terms with other citizens, and in the meantime their rights of religion, liberty and property were to be maintained and protected. In this territory, the boundaries of which were subsequently defined by treaties with Spain and Great Britain, were included the present States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, and the territories of Kansas, Nebraska, &c. Soon after this acquisition, territorial governments were organized over the southern portion of the territory, without prohibition of slavery. In 1812, Louisiana was admitted as a Slave State, and Arkansas and Missouri were subsequently organized as territories without prohibition of slavery. In 1819, Florida was acquired by treaty with Spain, with the same stipulation, as in the treaty in regard to Louisiana, that the inhabitants were to have the rights and privileges of citizens of the United States and be admitted into the Union; and soon after the territory of Florida was organized without prohibition of slavery.