uth," _anti_ "opposite," and _ville_ "town;" and the
whole read backwards as "Town-opposite-mouth-of-Licking." In 1790
General St. Clair, then governor of the northwest territory, changed
this name to Cincinnati, in honor of the military order to which he
belonged. With such examples in mind, we may see that the names of the
proposed ten states, from which the failure of Jefferson's ordinance has
delivered us, illustrated the prevalent taste of the time rather than
any idiosyncrasy of the man. The proposed names were Sylvania,
Michigania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga,
Washington, Polypotamia, and Pelisipia.

[Sidenote: He wishes to prohibit slavery in the national domain.]

It was not the nomenclature that stood in the way of Jefferson's scheme,
but the wholesale way in which he tried to deal with the slavery
question. He wished to hem in the probable extension of slavery by an
impassable barrier, and accordingly he not only provided that it should
be extinguished in the northwestern territory after the year 1800, but
at the same time his anti-slavery ardour led him to try to extend the
national dominion southward. He did his best to persuade the legislature
of Virginia to crown its work by giving up Kentucky to the United
States, and he urged that North Carolina and Georgia should also cede
their western territories. As for South Carolina, she was shut in
between the two neighbouring states in such wise that her western claims
were vague and barren. Jefferson would thus have drawn a north-and-south
line from Lake Erie down to the Spanish border of the Floridas, and west
of this line he would have had all negro slavery end with the eighteenth
century. The policy of restricting slavery, so as to let it die a
natural death within a narrowly confined area,--the policy to sustain
which Mr. Lincoln was elected president in 1860,--was thus first
definitely outlined by Jefferson in 1784. It was the policy of
forbidding slavery in the national territory. Had this policy succeeded
then, it would have been an ounce of prevention worth many a pound of
cure. But it failed because of its largeness, because it had too many
elements to deal with. For the moment, the proposal to exclude slavery
from the northwestern territory was defeated, because of the two thirds
vote required in Congress for any important measure. It got only seven
states in its favour, where it needed nine. This defeat, however, was
r