was taken on the anti-slavery clause the six states from Pennsylvania eastward voted aye:  Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina voted no; and the other states were absent.  Jefferson was not alone in feeling chagrin at the defeat and in resolving to persevere.  Pickering expressed his own views in a letter to Rufus King:  “To suffer the continuance of slaves till they can be gradually emancipated, in states already overrun with them, may be pardonable because unavoidable without hazarding greater evils; but to introduce them into countries where none already exist ... can never be forgiven.”  King in his turn introduced a resolution virtually restoring the stricken clause, but was unable to bring it to a vote.  After being variously amended, the ordinance without this clause was adopted.  It was, however, temporary in its provision and ineffectual in character; and soon the drafting of one adequate for permanent purposes was begun.  The adoption of this was hastened in July, 1787, by the offer of a New England company to buy from Congress a huge tract of Ohio land.  When the bill was put to the final vote it was supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, Abraham Yates.  Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland were present, and all of them voted aye.  Its enactment gave to the country a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution.  Applying only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for the erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed in republican government, secured in the freedom of religion, jury trial and all concomitant rights, endowed with public land for the support of schools and universities, and while obligated to render fugitive slaves on claim of their masters in the original states, shut out from the regime of slaveholding itself.[22] “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory,” it prescribed, “otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”  The first Congress under the new constitution reenacted the ordinance, which was the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government in the period.

[Footnote 22:  A.C.  McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution (New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A.  Hinsdale, The Old Northwest (New York, 1888), chap. 15.]

By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force.  The excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of individuals had threatened for a time to break the community’s grasp upon the essentials of order and self-restraint.  Social conventions of many sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class interests, and the central government,