to do with the
generous policy which gave up the greater part of that country for a
national domain, and on the very day on which the act of cession was
completed he presented to Congress a remarkable plan for the government
of the new territory, which was only partially successful because it
attempted too much, but the results of which were in many ways notable.

[Sidenote: Jefferson proposes a scheme of government for the
northwestern territory, 1784.]

In this plan, known as the Ordinance of 1784, Jefferson proposed to
divide the northwestern territory into ten states, or just twice as many
as have actually grown out of it. In each of these states the settlers
might establish a local government, under the authority of Congress; and
when in any one of them the population should come to equal that of the
least populous of the original states, it might be admitted into the
Union by the consent of nine states in Congress. The new states were to
have universal suffrage; they must have republican forms of government;
they must pay their shares of the federal debt; they must forever remain
a part of the United States; and after the year 1800 negro slavery must
be prohibited within their limits. The names of these ten states have
afforded much amusement to Jefferson's biographers. In those days the
schoolmaster was abroad in the land after a peculiar fashion. Just as we
are now in the full tide of that Gothic revival which goes back for its
beginnings to Sir Walter Scott; as we admire mediaeval things, and try to
build our houses after old English models, and prefer words of what
people call "Saxon" origin, and name our children Roland and Herbert, or
Edith and Winifred, so our great-grandfathers lived in a time of
classical revival. They were always looking for precedents in Greek and
Roman history; they were just beginning to try to make their wooden
houses look like temples, with Doric columns; they preferred words of
Latin origin; they signed their pamphlets "Brutus" and "Lycurgus," and
in sober earnest baptized their children as Caesar, or Marcellus, or
Darius. The map of the United States was just about to bloom forth with
towns named Ithaca and Syracuse, Corinth and Sparta; and on the Ohio
River, opposite the mouth of Licking Creek, a city had lately been
founded, the name of which was truly portentous. "Losantiville" was this
wonderful compound, in which the initial _L_ stood for "Licking," while
_os_ signified "mo