These articles of compact were in general similar to the bills of rights in State Constitutions; but one of them found no parallel in any State Constitution. Article VI reads: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This has been hailed as a farsighted, humanitarian measure, and it is quite true that many of the leading men, in the South as well as in the North, were looking forward to the time when slavery would be abolished. But the motives predominating at the time were probably more nearly represented by Grayson, who wrote to James Monroe, three weeks after the ordinance was passed: "The clause respecting slavery was agreed to by the southern members for the purpose of preventing tobacco and indigo from being made on the northwest side of the Ohio, as well as for several other political reasons."
It is over one hundred and forty years since the Ordinance of 1787 was adopted, during which period more than thirty territories of the United States have been organized, and there has never been a time when one or more territories were not under Congressional supervision, so that the process of legislative control has been continuous. Changes have been made from time to time in order to adapt the territorial government to changed conditions, but for fifty years the Ordinance of 1787 actually remained in operation, and even twenty years later it was specifically referred to by statute. The principles of territorial government today are identical with those of 1787, and those principles comprise the largest measure of local self-government compatible with national control, a gradual extension of self-government to the people of a territory, and finally complete statehood and admission into the Union on a footing of equality with the other States.
In 1825, when the military occupation of Oregon was suggested in Congress, Senator Dickerson of New Jersey objected, saying, "We have not adopted a system of colonization and it is to be hoped we never shall." Yet that is just what America has always had.
Not only were the first settlers on the Atlantic coast colonists from Europe; but the men who went to the frontier were also colonists from the Atlantic seaboard. And the men who settled the States in the West were colonists from the older communities. The Americans had so recently asserted their independence that they regarded the name of colony as not merely indicating dependence but as implying something of inferiority and even of reproach.
And when the American colonial system was being formulated in 1783-87 the word "Colony" was not used. The country under consideration was the region west of the Alleghany Mountains and in particular the territory north and west of the Ohio River and, being so referred to in the documents, the word "Territory" became the term applied to all the colonies.
The Northwest Territory increased so rapidly in population that in 1800 it was divided into two districts, and in 1802 the eastern part was admitted into the Union as the State of Ohio.
The rest of the territory was divided in 1805 and again in 1809;
Indiana was admitted as a State in 1816 and Illinois in 1818. So the process has gone on. There were thirteen original States and six more have become members of the Union without having been through the status of territories, making nineteen in all; while twenty-nine States have developed from the colonial stage. The incorporation of the colonies into the Union is not merely a political fact; the inhabitants of the colonies become an integral part of the parent nation and in turn become the progenitors of new colonies. If such a process be long continued, the colonies will eventually outnumber the parent States, and the colonists will outnumber the citizens of the original States and will themselves become the nation. Such has been the history of the United States and its people. By 1850, indeed, one-half of the population of the United States was living west of the Alleghany Mountains, and at the present time approximately seventy per cent are to be found in the West.
The importance of the Ordinance of 1787 was hardly overstated by Webster in his famous debate with Hayne when he said: "We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." While improved means of communication and many other material ties have served to hold the States of the Union together, the political bond was supplied by the Ordinance of 1787, which inaugurated the American colonial system.
