which had grown with the growth of slavery in the South and which had triumphed for a hundred years in every important contest between freedom and bondage, now began to assert itself and concoct plans for an increase of territory. In these acts the slave masters wrought out their own destruction; hence they must be examined.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE BEGINNING-ACQUIRING TERRITORY.

Noble Preachment, Miserable Practice-The Quakers First to ProtestTerritory from Great Britain-What the Various States ClaimedJefferson's Deed of Cession Defeated-Nathan Dane's Ordinance of 1787-Results of Defeating Jefferson's Deed-Attempts to Suspend the Great Ordinance of Freedom-Partial Success in Indiana -Illinois Wanted Slavery-Missouri and Illinois, a PredictionContemptible Trickery of Flesh-brokers in Illinois Defeated-Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama Admitted with Slavery. .. If the fountain is impure the stream will be unclean. Let us go back quickly and observe the manner of beginning.

On the 4th day of July, 1776, a band of intrepid patriots signed articles of rebellion against Great Britain in the form of an instrument called the Declaration of Independence.* They planted themselves upon the divine and enduring foundation that "all men are created free and equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

* And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mu tually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." Here was the highest preachment against human bondage ever formulated by the representatives of any nation; but it was mechanically promulgated in a country per

meated in its every province by the uttermost forms of slavery. Its principles, noble and correct, were for years and generations basely disregarded.

The Quakers were first to discover the glaring discrepancy between the declaration of principles upon which our government reposed and the actual condition of things under them, and began to move, in their strong and dignified but quiet manner, for the adoption of corrective measures.

The Congresses spat upon the prayers of the Quakers, although, one by one, the Northern States, influenced by growing public sentiment, had either abolished slavery or enacted laws for manumission, until at the treaty of peace with Great Britain, by which we obtained a large increase of territory, slavery had but a feeble hold north of Mason and Dixon's line. But it was thriving and growing with great vigor in the States of Georgia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, of the thirteen original colonies. These did not comprise a preponderance in territory, population and State divisions of original colonies, and the public characters of the slave-holding States were therefore incited to extend their boundaries for the purpose of swelling the number of their human possessions and augmenting their representation and power in Congress.

It has been stated that the Republican party was the child. of the excesses of slavery. We should proceed, then, to examine its pedigree. Whatever may be brought out in this connection that is unpleasant, is not wantonly dragged forward so much for the purpose of making up a black record against our opponents, as to show the causes that for years were operating to conceive the Republican party, bring it forth and, under its wisdom and patriotism, transform the Republic into the resplendent picture of prosperity and progress that it now presents.

Great Britain conceded, in the treaty of Paris, signed Nov. 30, 1782, which ended the Revolution, that the claims of the States to the territory west of them between the 31st and 47th parallels, was valid, and therefore relinquished all claims to it. The attention of the leaders respectively of the parties of freedom and bondage was at once turned to this vast accession of rich and promising land. Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, laid demand under their several charters to portions of this unorganized territory. The other States declared that the newly-acquired section should be managed for the common benefit, and not be given exclusively to the States joining it, as it was the fruit of a struggle in which all were equal participants and contributors.

In the spring of 1784, Thomas Jefferson presented to the Continental Congress, in session at Annapolis, a deed of cession to the general government of all the lands north-west of the Ohio River claimed by Virginia. It also contained a plan of government of the entire territory "ceded or to be ceded," in which was a clause providing that after the year 1800 there should be "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except for the punishment of crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" in any of the territory ceded by Great Britain.

On motion of Richard Dobbs Spaight, of North Carolina, the provision prohibiting slavery was stricken out, sixteen delegates voting to retain and seven to strike out. As the votes of nine States were required to render the anti-slavery clause a permanent section of the ordinance, it failed, though less than one-third of the delegates opposed it.

In July, 1787, Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, whose name is perpetuated and honored in Dane county, a rich and beautiful shire of Wisconsin, in the center of which stands the capital of the State, reported the famous ordinance of 1787. It provided a system of government for the territory north-west of the Ohio River, with a clause prohibiting at

once and forever slavery or involuntary servitude in any form save as a punishment of crime whereof the party had been duly convicted.

On the 13th of July the ordinance passed, and thus was dedicated to freedom that splendid tract of country now comprising the prosperous and powerful States of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and a portion of Minnesota. There is only one black spot on this. record-the opposition vote of Yates, of New York.

It is difficult to fitly characterize the importance of this act. It is not dangerous, however, to take issue with nearly all previous historical writers and declare that it was providential that Jefferson's ordinance was defeated, for, had it passed, the propagators of slavery would have made such active efforts to introduce and strengthen bondage in the entire territory embraced in the cession from Great Britain, that before the arrival of the year 1800 the tentacles of the octopus could not have been unfastened.

As it was, such a portion of the rich and rapidly-settling country acquired by the treaty of Paris was saved to freedom that, when the Rebellion, the final struggle, came, there could be but little doubt as to the ultimate result. That was the tide in the affairs of a nation which, taken at its flood, led on to victory and freedom.

If Jefferson's ordinance had been adopted slavery would have spread everywhere in the Republic, save the few Northeastern States, in spite of all enactments to abolish it in the year 1800. Dane's ordinance saved what is now one of the most wealthy, enlightened and populous portions of the Union, and which, in the Rebellion, furnished 957,000 sturdy fighters out of the two and one-half millions of all kinds that entered the field.

Quick to observe and appreciate what they had lost, the agents of slavery made several persistent efforts to have the ordinance of 1787 suspended. Twice Wm. H. Harrison, who

subsequently became President of the United States, led the movement to secure a suspension for ten years of the antislavery clause, knowing that once suspended it could never be returned to its original force and effect; and thrice proslavery committees in Congress reported in favor of a temporary suspension, but without other or further success. However, local efforts were more enthusiastic and presistent, and more nearly successful. Indiana, which at first included Illinois and other territory, admitted slavery in certain forms in direct defiance of the ordinance. Laws were enacted permitting immigrants from slave States to bring "any Negro or mulatto above fifteen years of age into the territory," provided they should register such persons and have them sign a contract to serve a stipulated number of years. Children under fifteen years were to be "held to service" in a similar manner, males until the age of thirty-five and females until the age of thirty-two; and "children born of registered servants" were likewise to be held, males to the age of thirty and females to the age of twenty-eight.

Under this ingenious system of contracts and registry, with a barbarous code of black laws, the most hateful forms of slavery were openly perpetuated in Indiana, a territory supposed to have been dedicated to freedom.

In 1816 Indiana was divided and entered the Union as it now stands, without slavery, and the territory of Illinois was erected. Two years later Illinois, as it is now bounded, became a free State.

After the admission of Missouri in 1821, emigrants from Kentucky and Virginia, with their caravans of Negroes, goods and stock, passed through Illinois on their way to that State. As they halted here and there to rest or feed, they shrewdly informed the land agents and settlers of Illinois that they had been prevented from purchasing plantations in and becoming citizens of the State because of the prohibition of slavery therein; and that Missouri would grow into a rich,