e Federal Constitution, that the ordinance, whether made with or
without authority, was in its terms a compact between _all the States_,
and was recognized by all the States as such by tacit assent, if not
express legislation. It was expressly so recognized by Virginia, Georgia
and North Carolina. Consent had cured the usurpation of the Congress, if
such it was, as Madison affirmed, and therefore, the ordinance, when the
Constitution took effect, was legally and constitutionally _an
engagement of the United States, under the Confederation_, binding upon
the Federal government by express provision of the sixth article of the
Constitution, declaring that "all debts contracted and engagements
entered into before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid
against the United States under this Constitution, as under the
Confederation." It was upon this legal ground, as well as upon the
ground that Indiana was not adapted to and did not need slave labor,
that Congress refused to allow the petitions of Indiana while a
territory, which petitions were approved by William Henry Harrison, for
a suspension for a term of years of the sixth article of the ordinance
of 1787, prohibiting slavery. It was a compact to which all the States
were parties, and by its express terms, could not be repealed or
suspended without their common consent.

Second--The prohibition of the ordinance, applied to territory
substantially free from slavery, and which it was well understood was
not adapted to slave labor. It raised no such question, as would have
been raised, if it had been applied to territory where slavery then
largely existed, or which was adapted to negro slave labor. It is,
therefore, no precedent for Congressional action in such a case. The
precedent of one case is not a rule of decision for another, unless the
two are substantially alike. This noble ordinance of 1787, then rather
affirmed a principle of freedom, than imposed a necessary practical
prohibition, for it may be well to know, that notwithstanding the
ordinance, there were as late as 1810, in Indiana, 237 slaves, and as
late as 1820, in Illinois, 917 slaves, but upon a soil fitted by nature
for the vigorous growth of freedom, African slavery, the tree of tropic
climes, could not grow, and it withered and died, as it had done before
in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New
York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In connexion with the ordin