The sixth and most important article declared that there should never be slavery or involuntary servitude in the Northwest, otherwise than for the punishment of convicted criminals, provided, however, that fugitive slaves from the older States might lawfully be reclaimed by their owners.  This was the greatest blow struck for freedom and against slavery in all our history, save only Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, for it determined that in the final struggle the mighty West should side with the right against the wrong.  It was in its results a deadly stroke against the traffic in and ownership of human beings, and the blow was dealt by southern men, to whom all honor should ever be given.  This anti-slavery compact was the most important feature of the ordinance, yet there were many other features only less important.

    Importance of the Ordinance.

In truth the ordinance of 1787 was so wide-reaching in its effects, was drawn in accordance with so lofty a morality and such far-seeing statesmanship, and was fraught with such weal for the nation, that it will ever rank amongst the foremost of American state papers, coming in that little group which includes the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Washington’s Farewell Address, and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Second Inaugural.  It marked out a definite line of orderly freedom along which the new States were to advance.  It laid deep the foundation for that system of widespread public education so characteristic of the Republic and so essential to its healthy growth.  It provided that complete religious freedom and equality which we now accept as part of the order of nature, but which were then unknown in any important European nation.  It guaranteed the civil liberty of all citizens.  It provided for an indissoluble Union, a Union which should grow until it could relentlessly crush nullification and secession; for the States founded under it were the creatures of the Nation, and were by the compact declared forever inseparable from it.

    New Method of Creating Colonies.

In one respect the ordinance marked a new departure of the most radical kind.  The adoption of the policy therein outlined has worked a complete revolution in the way of looking at new communities formed by colonization from the parent country.  Yet the very completeness of this revolution to a certain extent veils from us its importance.  We cannot realize the greatness of the change because of the fact that the change was so great; for we cannot now put ourselves in the mental attitude which regarded the old course as natural.  The Ordinance of 1787 decreed that the new States should stand in every respect on an equal footing with the old; and yet should be individually bound together with them.  This was something entirely new in the history of colonization.  Hitherto every new colony had either been subject to the parent state, or independent of it.  England,