, not
by legal right.

Whatever contrariety of views obtained, and regardless of the
conflicting opinions of the courts or judges as to the effect of
the great Ordinance on the condition of the slaves in the Northwestern
Territory, certain it is that the Ordinance operated to prevent,
after its date, the legal importation of slaves into the Territory,
and hence resulted in each of the States formed therefrom becoming
free States. In the light of history it seems certain that at
least Indiana and Illinois would have become slave States but for
the Ordinance.(26)

This Ordinance contained a clause requiring the rendition of
fugitives from "service or labor," and being applicable to only a
part of the Territory of the United States, partook of the nature
of a compromise on the slavery question,(27) and was the first of
a series of compromises, some of which are found in the Federal
Constitution, others in the Act of 1820 admitting Missouri as a
State, and also the Compromise Measures of 1850, in which Clay,
Webster, Calhoun, Seward, and others of the great statesmen of the
Union participated, all of which were, however, ruthlessly overthrown
by the Nebraska Act (1854), of which Douglas, of Illinois, was the
author.

The slavery-restriction section of the Ordinance was copied into
and became a part of the Act of 1848 organizing the Territory of
Oregon, the champions of slavery, then in Congress, voting therefor;
and three years after the enactment of the Compromise Measures of
1850, this provision of the Ordinance was again extended over the
newly organized Territory of Washington by the concurrent votes of
substantially the same persons who voted, a year later, that all
such legislation was unconstitutional.

But neither origin, age, nor precedent then sanctified anything in
the interest of freedom,--slavery only could appeal to such things
for justification. The propagators of human slavery were on the
track of this Ordinance; they overtook and overthrew it by
Congressional legislation in 1854; then by the Dred Scott decision
of 1857, as we shall soon see. But it reappeared in principle, in
1862, as we shall also see, and spread its wings of universal
liberty (as was its great author's purpose in 1784) over all the
territory belonging to the United States, to remain irrepealable
through time, immortalized by the approval of President Lincoln,
and endorsed by the just judgment of enlightened mankind.

Virginia,