ion of the 6th
article of compact, prohibiting slavery. When it came up the next day,
the 12th, for a second reading, Mr. DANE rose and stated as follows:

"In the committee, as ever before, since the day when
JEFFERSON first introduced the proposal to prohibit slavery
in the territory, it was found impossible to come to any
arrangement; that the committee desired to report only so
far as they were unanimous; that they, therefore, had
omitted altogether the subject of slavery; but that it was
understood that any member of the committee might,
consistently with his having concurred in the report, move
in the house to amend it in the particular of slavery. He
therefore moved as an amendment, to add a prohibition of
slavery in the following words:

"That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the
punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted."

And as a compromise, Mr. DAVIS proposed to add the following proviso:

"Provided always, that any person escaping into the same,
from whom labor-service is lawfully claimed in any one of
the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully retained
and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or
service as aforesaid."

This was at once unanimously accepted by the slave States. The next
day, the 13th, the ordinance was passed, every slave State present,
viz.: Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia,
and every member from those States voting for it. The same
prohibition--which a large majority of the South had resisted when
presented alone--was now, when accompanied with the proviso,
unanimously agreed to.

Here was a sudden change. But the proviso giving the right of
reclamation in the said territory, only partially explains it. For a
full explanation we must turn again to the Convention. And the first
thing is a further extract from Mr. MADISON, respecting a letter,
before quoted, as follows:

"The distracting question of slavery was agitating and
retarding the labors of both bodies--Congress and the
Convention; and led to conferences and intercommunications
of the members, which resulted in a Compromise, by which the
Northern, or anti-slavery portion of the country, agreed to
incorporate into the ordinance and Constitution, the