4 time been adopted for the Territory northwest | of the Ohio, should not be held to apply within her limits. The same course was adopted in organizing Territorial Governments for Mississippi and Alabama, slaveholding communities which had been detached from South Carolina and Georgia. All these States and Territories were situated southwest of the Ohio river, all were more or less already peopled- by slaveholders with their slaves; and to have excluded slavery within their limits would have been a national act, not of preventing the introduction of slavery, but of abolishing slavery. In short, the region southwest of the Ohio river presented a field in which the policy of preventing the introduction of slavery was impracticable. Our forefathers never attempted what was impracticable. But the case was otherwise in that fair and broad region which stretched away from the banks of the Ohio, northward to the lakes, and westward to the Mississippi. It was yet free, or practically free, from the presence of slaves, and was nearly uninhabited, and quite unoccupied. There was then no Baltimore and Ohio railroad, no Erie railroad, no New York Central railroad, no Boston and Ogdensburgh railroad ; there was no railroad through Canada ; nor, indeed, any road around or across the mountains; no imperial Erie canal, no Wel- land canal, no lockages around the rapids and the falls of the St. Lawrence, the Mohawk, and ‘the Niagara rivers, and no steam navigation on the lakes or on the Hudson, or on the Missis- ' sippi. There, in that remote and secluded region, the prevention of the introduction of slavery was possible; and there our forefathers, who left no possible national good unattempted, did prevent it. It makes one’s heart bound with joy and gratitude, and lift itself up with mingled pride and veneration, to read the history of that great transaction. Discarding the trite and common forms of expressing the national will, they did not merely “ vote,” or “ resolve,” or “enact,” as on other occasions, but they “ ordained,” in language marked at once with precision, amplification, solemnity, and emphasis, that there “ shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than 'in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” And they further ordained and declared that this law should be considered a compact between the original States and the People and States of said Territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent. The Ordinance was agreed to unanimously. Virginia, in re-affirming her cession of the territory, ratified it, and the first Congress held under the Constitution solemnly renewed and confitmed it. In pursuance of this Ordinance, the several Territorial Governments successively established in the Northwest Territory were organized with a prohibition of the introduction of slavery, and in due time, though at successive periods, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois', Michigan, and Wisconsin, States erected within that Territory, have come into the Union with Constitutions in their hands forever prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, except fdr.the punishment of crime. They are yet young; but, nevertheless, who has ever seen elsewhere such States as they are! There are gathered the young, the vigorous, the active, the enlightened sons of every State? the flower and choice of every State in this broad Union; and there the emigrant for conscience sake, and for freedom’s sake, from every land in Europe, from proud and all-conquering Britain, from heartbroken Ireland, from sunny Italy, from mercurial France, froin spiritual Germany, from chivalrous Hungary, and from honest and brave old Sweden and Norway. Thence are already coming ample supplies of corn and wheat and wine for the manufacturers of the East, for the planters of the tropics, and even for the artisans and the armies of Europe; and thence will continue to come in long succession, as they have already begun to come, statesmen and legislators for this continent. Thus it appears, Mr. President, that it. was the policy of our fathers, in regard to the original domain of the United States, to prevent the introduction of slavery, wherever it was practicable. This policy encountered greater diffi- culites when it came under consideration with a view to its establishment in regions not,included within our original domain. While slavery had been actually abolished already, by some of the emancipating States, several of them, owing to a great change in the relative value of the productions of slave labor, had fallen off into the class of non-emancipating States; and now the whole family of States was divided and classified as slaveholding or slave States, and non-slaveholding or free States. A rivalry for political ascendency wai soon developed; and, besides the motives of interest and philanthropy which had before existed, there was now on each side a desire to increase, from among the candidates for admission into the Union, the number of States in their respective classes, and so their relative weight and influence in the Federal Councils. The country which had been acquired from France was, in 1804, organized in two Territories, one of which, including New Orleans as its capital, was called Orleans, and the other, having St. Louis for its chief town, was called Louisiana. In 1812, the Territory of Orleans was admitted as a new State, under the name of Louisiana. It had been an old slaveholding colony of France, and the prevention of slavery within it would have been a simple act of abolition. At the same time, the Territory of Louisiana, by authority of Congress, took the name of Missouri; and, in 1819, the portion thereof which now constitutes the State of Arkansas was detached, and beame a Territory,
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