Not only did that Ordinance prevail, but it was constantly looked to whenever a step was taken by a new Territory to become a State.  Congress always turned their attention to it, and in all their movements upon this subject they traced their course by that Ordinance of ’87.  When they admitted new States, they advertised them of this Ordinance, as a part of the legislation of the country.  They did so because they had traced the Ordinance of ’87 throughout the history of this country.  Begin with the men of the Revolution, and go down for sixty entire years, and until the last scrap of that Territory comes into the Union in the form of the State of Wisconsin, everything was made to conform with the Ordinance of ’87, excluding slavery from that vast extent of country.

I omitted to mention in the right place that the Constitution of the United States was in process of being framed when that Ordinance was made by the Congress of the Confederation; and one of the first Acts of Congress itself, under the new Constitution itself, was to give force to that Ordinance by putting power to carry it out in the hands of the new officers under the Constitution, in the place of the old ones, who had been legislated out of existence by the change in the Government from the Confederation to the Constitution.  Not only so, but I believe Indiana once or twice, if not Ohio, petitioned the General Government for the privilege of suspending that provision and allowing them to have slaves.  A report made by Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, himself a slaveholder, was directly against it, and the action was to refuse them the privilege of violating the Ordinance of ’87.

This period of history, which I have run over briefly, is, I presume, as familiar to most of this assembly as any other part of the history of our country.  I suppose that few of my hearers are not as familiar with that part of history as I am, and I only mention it to recall your attention to it at this time.  And hence I ask how extraordinary a thing it is that a man who has occupied a position upon the floor of the Senate of the United States, who is now in his third term, and who looks to see the government of this whole country fall into his own hands, pretending to give a truthful and accurate history o the slavery question in this country, should so entirely ignore the whole of that portion of our history—­the most important of all.  Is it not a most extraordinary spectacle that a man should stand up and ask for any confidence in his statements who sets out as he does with portions of history, calling upon the people to believe that it is a true and fair representation, when the leading part and controlling feature of the whole history is carefully suppressed?