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.31The fi rst national prohibition on slavery, together with King s fugitiveslave clause, fi nally made it into federal legislation with the passage of theNorthwest Ordinance of 1787.A greatly modified version of the failed Ordi-nance of 1784, the bill carved the northwest country into five territories andestablished the method by which those territories were to become states.Initially, the bill contained no mention of slavery, as the statute s principalauthor, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, believed southern delegates wouldreject the entire measure if it did.But on July 13, on the eve of a fi nal voteon the measure, Dane included what became Article VI at the request ofManasseh Cutler, a speculator who had already invested more than a milliondollars to develop the Ohio Valley.Since Cutler regarded Pickering s soldiersas his principal customers, he urged Dane to move the article [banningslavery], which was agreed to without opposition. The brief article, whichmelded portions of Jefferson s 1784 ordinance with King s wording fromtwo years before, announced: There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntaryServitude in the said Territory, but added, Provided always, that any personescaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed inany one of the original states such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed andconveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid. 32Given the southern wall of opposition to almost identical clauses in1784 and 1785, why this time were proslavery voices so silent? The answerundoubtedly lies in the fact that the Northwest Ordinance, as its name indi-cates, pertained only to the lands north of the Ohio River, while Jefferson s1784 bill (and King s failed 1785 amendment) restricted slavery in all236 | death or liberty western territories.Dane s statute said nothing about the lands below theOhio, and the inescapable implication was that the act constituted a quietcompromise.Northern congressmen surreptitiously permitted slavery toexpand into America s southwestern regions in exchange for restriction inthe northwestern portions, lands that few southerners coveted in any case.AsDane s last-minute addition included King s 1785 sentence allowing them torecover their footloose property, southerners might actually have regarded thebill as a victory.Richard Henry Lee, who voted against Jefferson s bill threeyears before, openly endorsed the 1787 measure.So confi dent was NorthCarolina about the right to carry slaves into the West that when in 1789 itceded to the federal government what would become Tennessee, the stipula-tion that no regulations made by Congress shall tend to emancipate slaves was regarded as being perfectly consistent with federal law.33Although the northern frontier hardly constituted a slave society, settlersfrom western Virginia had already begun to move across the Ohio River.Theregion was also home to a number of slaveholding French nationals who hadarrived in the region prior to 1763.Both groups angrily petitioned Congressto repeal the ban, arguing the prohibition violated the Revolution s promise toprotect private property.When that failed, some Frenchmen accepted Spain soffer to relocate from Illinois to the Spanish Side of the Mississippi River, in consequence of a resolve in Congress respecting negroes, who were to befree. Congress ignored the petitions, yet neither did they trouble themselvesabout the small number of slaves already living in the southern parts of theIllinois Territory.Even so, if the Northwest Ordinance allowed slavery intowhat would become five slave states, it immediately banned it from anotherfive.In the process, Dane established the critical precedent that Congress pos-sessed the legal authority to ban slavery in the western territories.34Two months before passage of the Northwest Ordinance, and only twoblocks away from where it would be passed, fi fty-fi ve men gathered at theold statehouse in Philadelphia on May 25 for the purpose of revising theArticles of Confederation.The result was to be not the few modificationsgrudgingly requested by Congress, but a completely new constitution.Atleast fi fteen of the delegates, such as Virginia s Edmund Randolph, GeorgeWashington, George Mason, and James Madison, were slaveholders; others,such as former slaveholder Benjamin Franklin, were dedicated abolitionists;still others, including Alexander Hamilton, were both.The failure of theArticles of Confederation as a framework had nothing to do with slavery, andnone of the men chosen to represent their states rode toward the conventionwith explicit instructions on the issue.Yet if a small number of powerful menwere about to devise a new system of government, no southern state planneda suspicion only | 237 to allow northern reformers to tamper with their labor system.So woven intothe fabric of American life was unwaged labor that the institution of slaveryand its implications, Madison admitted, formed the line of discrimination in virtually all of the summer s debates.35South Carolina was the state with the highest percentage of Africans andenslaved Americans, and its delegation had barely dismounted before theybegan to express their unease with any alterations that resulted in greaterfederal power.South Carolinians wished instead to see explicit protectionsfor slavery incorporated into the new document [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.31The fi rst national prohibition on slavery, together with King s fugitiveslave clause, fi nally made it into federal legislation with the passage of theNorthwest Ordinance of 1787.A greatly modified version of the failed Ordi-nance of 1784, the bill carved the northwest country into five territories andestablished the method by which those territories were to become states.Initially, the bill contained no mention of slavery, as the statute s principalauthor, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, believed southern delegates wouldreject the entire measure if it did.But on July 13, on the eve of a fi nal voteon the measure, Dane included what became Article VI at the request ofManasseh Cutler, a speculator who had already invested more than a milliondollars to develop the Ohio Valley.Since Cutler regarded Pickering s soldiersas his principal customers, he urged Dane to move the article [banningslavery], which was agreed to without opposition. The brief article, whichmelded portions of Jefferson s 1784 ordinance with King s wording fromtwo years before, announced: There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntaryServitude in the said Territory, but added, Provided always, that any personescaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed inany one of the original states such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed andconveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid. 32Given the southern wall of opposition to almost identical clauses in1784 and 1785, why this time were proslavery voices so silent? The answerundoubtedly lies in the fact that the Northwest Ordinance, as its name indi-cates, pertained only to the lands north of the Ohio River, while Jefferson s1784 bill (and King s failed 1785 amendment) restricted slavery in all236 | death or liberty western territories.Dane s statute said nothing about the lands below theOhio, and the inescapable implication was that the act constituted a quietcompromise.Northern congressmen surreptitiously permitted slavery toexpand into America s southwestern regions in exchange for restriction inthe northwestern portions, lands that few southerners coveted in any case.AsDane s last-minute addition included King s 1785 sentence allowing them torecover their footloose property, southerners might actually have regarded thebill as a victory.Richard Henry Lee, who voted against Jefferson s bill threeyears before, openly endorsed the 1787 measure.So confi dent was NorthCarolina about the right to carry slaves into the West that when in 1789 itceded to the federal government what would become Tennessee, the stipula-tion that no regulations made by Congress shall tend to emancipate slaves was regarded as being perfectly consistent with federal law.33Although the northern frontier hardly constituted a slave society, settlersfrom western Virginia had already begun to move across the Ohio River.Theregion was also home to a number of slaveholding French nationals who hadarrived in the region prior to 1763.Both groups angrily petitioned Congressto repeal the ban, arguing the prohibition violated the Revolution s promise toprotect private property.When that failed, some Frenchmen accepted Spain soffer to relocate from Illinois to the Spanish Side of the Mississippi River, in consequence of a resolve in Congress respecting negroes, who were to befree. Congress ignored the petitions, yet neither did they trouble themselvesabout the small number of slaves already living in the southern parts of theIllinois Territory.Even so, if the Northwest Ordinance allowed slavery intowhat would become five slave states, it immediately banned it from anotherfive.In the process, Dane established the critical precedent that Congress pos-sessed the legal authority to ban slavery in the western territories.34Two months before passage of the Northwest Ordinance, and only twoblocks away from where it would be passed, fi fty-fi ve men gathered at theold statehouse in Philadelphia on May 25 for the purpose of revising theArticles of Confederation.The result was to be not the few modificationsgrudgingly requested by Congress, but a completely new constitution.Atleast fi fteen of the delegates, such as Virginia s Edmund Randolph, GeorgeWashington, George Mason, and James Madison, were slaveholders; others,such as former slaveholder Benjamin Franklin, were dedicated abolitionists;still others, including Alexander Hamilton, were both.The failure of theArticles of Confederation as a framework had nothing to do with slavery, andnone of the men chosen to represent their states rode toward the conventionwith explicit instructions on the issue.Yet if a small number of powerful menwere about to devise a new system of government, no southern state planneda suspicion only | 237 to allow northern reformers to tamper with their labor system.So woven intothe fabric of American life was unwaged labor that the institution of slaveryand its implications, Madison admitted, formed the line of discrimination in virtually all of the summer s debates.35South Carolina was the state with the highest percentage of Africans andenslaved Americans, and its delegation had barely dismounted before theybegan to express their unease with any alterations that resulted in greaterfederal power.South Carolinians wished instead to see explicit protectionsfor slavery incorporated into the new document [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]