uisiana or what was later included in the
Northwest Territory. Slavery then became more and more extensive until by
1750 there were along the Mississippi five settlements of slaves,
Kaskaskia, Kaokia, Fort Chartres, St. Phillipe and Prairie du Rocher.[10]
In 1763 Negroes were relatively numerous in the Northwest Territory but
when this section that year was transferred to the British the number was
diminished by the action of those Frenchmen who, unwilling to become
subjects of Great Britain, moved from the territory.[11] There was no
material increase in the slave population thereafter until the end of the
eighteenth century when some Negroes came from the original thirteen.

The Ordinance of 1787 did not disturb the relation of slave and master.
Some pioneers thought that the sixth article exterminated slavery there;
others contended that it did not. The latter believed that such
expressions in the Ordinance of 1787 as the "free inhabitants" and the
"free male inhabitants of full size" implied the continuance of slavery
and others found ground for its perpetuation in that clause of the
Ordinance which allowed the people of the territory to adopt the
constitution and laws of any one of the thirteen States. Students of law
saw protection for slavery in Jay's treaty which guaranteed to the
settlers their property of all kinds.[12] When, therefore, the slave
question came up in the Northwest Territory about the close of the
eighteenth century, there were three classes of slaves: first, those who
were in servitude to French owners previous to the cession of the
Territory to England and were still claimed as property in the possession
of which the owners were protected under the treaty of 1763; second, those
who were held by British owners at the time of Jay's treaty and claimed
afterward as property under its protection; and third, those who, since
the Territory had been controlled by the United States, had been brought
from the commonwealths in which slavery was allowed.[13] Freedom, however,
was recognized as the ultimate status of the Negro in that territory.

This question having been seemingly settled, Anthony Benezet, who for
years advocated the abolition of slavery and devoted his time and means to
the preparation of the Negroes for living as freedmen, was practical
enough to recommend to the Congress of the Confederation a plan of
colonizing the emancipated blacks on the western lands.[14] Jefferson
incorporated in