to
ascertain. When the Ordinance of '87 was passed he was sitting in the
Convention. He was afterwards appointed Secretary of War; yet no record
has thus far been discovered of his opinion. Mr. M'Henry also wrote a
biography of La Fayette, which, however, cannot be found in any of the
public libraries, among which may be mentioned the State Library at
Albany, and the Astor, Society, and Historical Society Libraries, at New
York.

Hamilton says of him, in a letter to Washington _(Works_, vol. vi., p.
65): "M'Henry you know. He would give no strength to the Administration,
but he would not disgrace the office; his views are good."]

[Footnote 9:--William Blount was from North Carolina, and William Few
from Georgia--the two States which afterward ceded their Territory to
the United States. In addition to these facts the following extract from
the speech of Rufus King in the Senate, on the Missouri Bill, shows the
entire unanimity with which the Southern States approved the
prohibition:

"The State of Virginia, which ceded to the United States her claims to
this Territory, consented, by her delegates in the Old Congress, to this
Ordinance. Not only Virginia, but North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia, by the unanimous votes of their delegates in the Old Congress,
approved of the Ordinance of 1787, by which Slavery is forever abolished
in the Territory northwest of the river Ohio. Without the votes of these
States, the Ordinance could not have been passed; and there is no
recollection of an opposition from any of these States to the act of
confirmation passed under the actual Constitution."]

[Footnote 10:--"The famous Ordinance of Congress of the 13th July, 1787,
which has ever since constituted, in most respects, the model of all our
territorial governments, and is equally remarkable for the brevity and
exactness of its text, and for its masterly display of the fundamental
principles of civil and religious liberty."--_Justice Story, 1
Commentaries_: Sec. 1312.

"It is well known that the Ordinance of 1787 was drawn by the Hon.
Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, and adopted with scarcely a verbal
alteration by Congress. It is a noble and imperishable monument to his
fame."--_Id._ note.

The ordinance was reported by a committee, of which Wm. S. Johnson and
Charles Pinckney were members. It recites that, "for extending the
fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the
basis whereon these rep