the
most distinguished politician of our history; a Virginian by birth and
continued residence, and withal a slaveholder,--conceived the idea of
taking that occasion to prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern
Territory. He prevailed on the Virginia Legislature to adopt his views,
and to cede the Territory, making the prohibition of slavery therein
a condition of the deed. (Jefferson got only an understanding, not a
condition of the deed to this wish.) Congress accepted the cession with
the condition; and the first ordinance (which the acts of Congress were
then called) for the government of the Territory provided that slavery
should never be permitted therein. This is the famed "Ordinance of '87,"
so often spoken of.

Thenceforward for sixty-one years, and until, in 1848, the last scrap of
this Territory came into the Union as the State of Wisconsin, all parties
acted in quiet obedience to this ordinance. It is now what Jefferson
foresaw and intended--the happy home of teeming millions of free, white,
prosperous people, and no slave among them.

Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the policy of
prohibiting slavery in new territory originated. Thus, away back to the
Constitution, in the pure, fresh, free breath of the Revolution, the State
of Virginia and the national Congress put that policy into practice. Thus,
through more than sixty of the best years of the republic, did that policy
steadily work to its great and beneficent end. And thus, in those five
States, and in five millions of free, enterprising people, we have before
us the rich fruits of this policy.

But now new light breaks upon us. Now Congress declares this ought never
to have been, and the like of it must never be again. The sacred right of
self-government is grossly violated by it. We even find some men who drew
their first breath--and every other breath of their lives--under this very
restriction, now live in dread of absolute suffocation if they should
be restricted in the "sacred right" of taking slaves to Nebraska. That
perfect liberty they sigh for--the liberty of making slaves of other
people, Jefferson never thought of, their own fathers never thought of,
they never thought of themselves, a year ago. How fortunate for them they
did not sooner become sensible of their great misery! Oh, how difficult it
is to treat with respect such assaults upon all we have ever really held
sacred!

But to return to history. In