could any one of them ever be separated from the Union. In such wise,
the theory of peaceful secession was condemned in advance, so far as it
was possible for the federal government to do so. Jefferson's principle,
that slavery should not be permitted in the national domain, was also
adopted so far as the northwest was concerned; and it is interesting to
observe the names of the states which were present in Congress when this
clause was added to the ordinance. They were Georgia, the two Carolinas,
Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts; and the
vote was unanimous. No one was more active in bringing about this result
than William Grayson of Virginia, who was earnestly supported by Lee.
The action of Virginia and North Carolina at that time need not surprise
us. But the movements in favour of emancipation in these two states, and
the emancipation actually effected or going on at the north, had already
made Georgia and South Carolina extremely sensitive about slavery; and
their action on this occasion can be explained only by supposing that
they were willing to yield a point in this remote territory, in order by
and by to be able to insist upon an equivalent in the case of the
territory lying west of Georgia. Nor would they have yielded at all had
not a fugitive slave law been enacted, providing that slaves escaping
beyond the Ohio should be arrested and returned to their owners. These
arrangements having been made, General St. Clair was appointed governor
of the territory; surveys were made; land was put up for sale at sixty
cents per acre, payable in certificates of the public debt; and settlers
rapidly came in. The westward exodus from New England and Pennsylvania
now began, and only fourteen years elapsed before Ohio, the first of the
five states, was admitted into the Union.

[Sidenote: Theory of folkland upon which the ordinance was based.]

"I doubt," says Daniel Webster, "whether one single law of any
law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct,
marked, and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." Nothing could
have been more emphatically an exercise of national sovereignty; yet, as
Madison said, while warmly commending the act, Congress did it "without
the least colour of constitutional authority." The ordinance was never
submitted to the states for ratification. The articles of confederation
had never contemplated an occasion for such a peculiar assertion of
sov