The Question of Slavery.

The vital feature of the ordinance was the prohibition of slavery.  This prohibition was not retroactive; the slaves of the French villagers, and of the few American slaveholders who had already settled round them, were not disturbed in their condition.  But all further importation of slaves, and the holding in slavery of any not already slaves, were prohibited.  The prohibition was brought about by the action of the Ohio Company.  Without the prohibition the company would probably not have undertaken its experiment in colonization; and save for the pressure of the company slavery would hardly have been abolished.  Congress wished to sell the lands, and was much impressed by the solid worth of the founders of the association.  The New Englanders were anxious to buy the lands, but were earnest in their determinating to exclude slavery from the new territory.  The slave question was not at the time a burning issue between North and South; for no Northerner thought of crusading to destroy the evil, while most enlightened Southerners were fond of planning how to do away with it.  The tact of the company’s representative before Congress, Dr. Cutler, did the rest.  A compromise was agreed to; for, like so many other great political triumphs, the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 was a compromise.  Slavery was prohibited, on the one hand; and on the other, that the territory might not become a refuge for runaway negroes, provision was made for the return of such fugitives.  The popular conscience was yet too dull about slavery to be stirred by the thought of returning fugitive slaves into bondage.

    Land Purchase.

A fortnight after the passage of the ordinance, the transaction was completed by the sale of a million and a half acres, north of the Ohio, to the Ohio Company.  Three million and a half more, known as the Sciato purchase, were authorized to be sold to a purely speculative company, but the speculation ended in nothing save financial disaster.  The price was nominally seventy cents an acre; but as payment was made in depreciated public securities, the real price was only eight or nine cents an acre.  The sale illustrated the tendency of Congress at that time to sell the land in large tracts; a most unwholesome tendency, fruitful of evil to the whole community.  It was only by degrees that the wisdom of selling the land in small plots, and to actual occupiers, was recognized.

Together with the many wise and tolerant measures included in the famous Ordinance of 1787, and in the land Ordinance of 1785, there were one or two which represented the feelings of the past, not the future.  One of them was a regulation which reserved a lot in every township to be given for the purposes of religion.  Nowadays, and rightfully, we regard as peculiarly American the complete severance of Church and State, and refuse to allow the State to contribute in any way towards the support of any sect.