ld be neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude in any of them. While Jefferson's plan for the
exclusion of slavery was stricken from the ordinance, his noble ideas of
freedom were afterwards fully and completely incorporated in the final
Ordinance of 1787, whereby "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime,
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," should ever be
permitted. This ordinance, through the predominating influence of
Virginia and her statesmen, was passed by the vote of Georgia, South
Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and
Massachusetts, and afterwards ratified by the legislature of Virginia
who had to consent thereto to give it full force.

It is at once apparent that these statesmen and patriots who looked
forward to the establishment of free republics in the western domain,
based on free labor and equal rights, would never consent that the
foundation of these new republics should be laid in blood. The outrages
perpetrated on the frontiers of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and
on the infant settlements of Kentucky, during the revolution, and all at
the instigation of the British, had left behind them a loud cry for
vengeance. In fact similar outrages were still taking place daily. The
claim was made that under the treaty of peace with Great Britain, that
no reservation had been made in favor of any of the Indian tribes, or in
favor of their claims to any of the lands they occupied; that under the
treaty the absolute fee in all the Indian lands within the limits of the
United States had passed to the several states such as Virginia, who had
a legitimate claim to them, and later by cession of these states to the
general government, and that congress "had the right to assign, or
retain such portions as they should judge proper;" that the Indian
tribes, having aided Great Britain in her attempt to subjugate her
former colonies, and having committed innumerable murders, arsons and
scalpings on the exposed frontiers, should now be required to pay the
penalty for their crimes; that their lands and hunting grounds should
stand forfeit to the government, and they be expelled therefrom. In
other words, it was asserted that the government should turn a harsh and
stern countenance towards all these savage marauders and drive them by
force, if need be, from the public lands.

Towards all these arguments in