good humor into which the cession of the back lands must have put Maryland forms an apt crisis for negotiations." * In March 1784 Jefferson cautiously introduced the subject to Washington,† and then wrote more urgently: "Your future time and wishes are sacred in my eye; but, if the superintendence of this work would be only a dignified amusement to you, what a monument of your retirement would follow that of your public life!" + Washington "was very happy that a man of discernment and liberality like Jefferson thought as he did." More than ten years before he had been a principal mover of a bill for the extension of navigation from tide-water to Will's creek. "To get the business in motion," he writes, "I was obliged to comprehend James river. The plan was in a tolerably good train when I set out for Cambridge in 1775, and would have been in an excellent way had it not met with difficulties in the Maryland assembly. Not a moment ought to be lost in recommencing this business." # He too, like Madison, advised concert with the men of Maryland. Conforming to their advice, Jefferson conferred with Thomas Stone, then one of the Maryland delegates in congress, and undertook by letters to originate the subject in the legislature of Virginia. Before the end of June the two houses unanimously requested the executive to procure a statue of Washington, to be of the finest marble and best workmanship, with this inscription on its pedestal: "The general assembly of the commonwealth of Virginia have caused this statue to be erected as a monument of affection and gratitude to George Washington, who, to the endowments of the hero uniting the virtues of the patriot, and exerting both in establishing the liberties of his country, has rendered his name dear to his fellow-citizens, and given the world an immortal example of true glory." A *Madison to Jefferson, 16 March 1784. Madison, i., 74. Letters to W., iv., 62–66. The vote, emanating from the affections of the people of Virginia, marks his mastery over the heart of his native state. That mastery he always used to promote the formation of a national constitution. He had hardly reached home from the war when he poured out his inmost thoughts to Harrison, the doubting governor of his commonwealth: "The prospect before us is fair; I believe all things will come right at last; but the disinclination of the states to yield competent powers to congress for the federal government will, if there is not a change in the system, be our downfall as a nation. This is as clear to me as A, B, C. We have arrived at peace and independency to very little purpose, if we cannot conquer our own prejudices. The powers of Europe begin to see this, and our newly acquired friends, the British, are already and professedly acting upon this ground; and wisely too, if we are determined to persevere in our folly. They know that individual opposition to their measures is futile, and boast that we are not sufficiently united as a nation to give a general one. Is not the indignity of this declaration, in the very act of peacemaking and conciliation, sufficient to stimulate us to vest adequate powers in the sovereign of these United States? "An extension of federal powers would make us one of the most wealthy, happy, respectable and powerful nations that ever inhabited the terrestrial globe. Without them, we shall soon be everything which is the direct reverse. I predict the worst consequences from a half-starved, limping government, always moving upon crutches and tottering at every step." * The immensity of the ungranted public domain which had passed from the English crown to the American people invited them to establish a continental empire of republics. Lines of communication with the western country implied its colonization. In the war, Jefferson, as a member of the legislature, had promoted the expedition by which Virginia conquered the region north-west of the Ohio; as governor he had taken part in its cession to the United States. The cession had included the demand of a guarantee to Virginia of the remainder of its territory. This the United States had refused, and Virginia receded from the demand. On the first day of March 1784, * Washington to Harrison, 18 January 1784. Sparks, ix., 12 and 13. Jefferson, in congress, with his colleagues, Hardy, Arthur Lee, and James Monroe, in conformity with full powers from their commonwealth, signed, sealed, and delivered a deed by which, with some reservation of land, they ceded to the United States all claim to the territory north-west of the Ohio. On that same day, before the deed could be recorded and enrolled among the acts of the United States, Jefferson, as chairman of a committee, presented a plan for the temporary government of the western territory from the southern boundary of the United States in the latitude of thirty-one degrees to the Lake of the Woods. It is still preserved in the national archives in his own handwriting, and is as completely his own work as the declaration of independence. He pressed upon Virginia to establish the meridian of the mouth of the Kanawha as its western boundary, and to cede all beyond to the United States. To Madison he wrote: "For God's sake, push this at the next session of assembly. We hope North Carolina will cede all beyond the same meridian," "his object being to obtain cessions to the United States of all southern territory west of the meridian of the Kanawha. In dividing all the country north-west of the Ohio into ten states, Jefferson was controlled by an act of congress of 1780 which was incorporated into the cession of Virginia. No land was to be taken up till it should have been purchased from the Indian proprietors and offered for sale by the United States. In each incipient state no property qualification was required either of the electors or the elected; it was enough for them to be free men, resident, and of full age. Under the authority of congress, and following the precedent of any one of the states, the settlers were to establish a temporary government; when they should have increased to twenty thousand, they might institute a permanent government, with a member in congress, having a right to debate but not to vote; and, when they should be equal in number to the inhabitants of the least populous state, their delegates, with the consent of nine states, as required by the confederation, were to be admitted into the congress of the United States on an equal footing. The ordinance contained five other articles: The new states * Jefferson to Madison, 20 February 1784. shall remain forever a part of the United States of America; they shall bear the same relation to the confederation as the original states; they shall pay their apportionment of the federal debts; they shall in their governments uphold republican forms; and after the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of them. At that time slavery prevailed throughout much more than half the lands of Europe. Jefferson, following an impulse from his own mind, designed by his ordinance to establish from end to end of the whole country a north and south line, at which the westward extension of slavery should be stayed by an impassable bound. Of the men held in bondage beyond that line he did not propose the instant emancipation; but slavery was to be rung out with the departing century, so that in all the western territory, whether held in 1784 by Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, or the United States, the sun of the new century might dawn on no slave. To make the decree irrevocable, he further proposed that all the articles should form a charter of compact, to be executed in congress under the seal of the United States, and to stand as fundamental constitutions between the thirteen original states and the new states to be erected under the ordinance. The design of Jefferson marks an era in the history of universal freedom. For the moment more was attempted than could be accomplished. North Carolina, in the following June, made a cession of all her western lands, but soon revoked it; and Virginia did not release Kentucky till it became a state of the union. Moreover, the sixteen years during which slavery was to have a respite might nurse it into such strength that at their end it would be able to defy or reverse the ordinance. Exactly on the ninth anniversary of the fight at Concord and Lexington, Richard Dobbs Spaight of North Carolina, seconded by Jacob Read of South Carolina, moved "to strike out" the fifth article. The presiding officer, following the rule of the time, put the question: "Shall the words stand?" Seven states, and seven only, were needed to carry the affirmative. Let Jefferson, who did not refrain from describing Spaight as "a young fool," relate what followed. "The clause was lost by an individual vote only. Ten states were present. 1 The four eastern states, New York, and Pennsylvania were for the clause; Jersey would have been for it, but there were but two members, one of whom was sick in his chambers. South Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia voted against it. North Carolina was divided, as would have been Virginia, had not one of its delegates been sick in bed." The absent Virginian was Monroe, who for himself has left no evidence of such an intention, and who was again absent when in the following year the question was revived. For North Carolina, the vote of Spaight was neutralized by Williamson. * Six states against three, sixteen men against seven, proscribed slavery. Jefferson bore witness against it all his life long. Wythe and himself, as commissioners to codify the laws of Virginia, had provided for gradual emancipation. When, in 1785, the legislature refused to consider the proposal, Jefferson wrote: "We must hope that an overruling Providence is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren."† In 1786, narrating the loss of the clause against slavery in the ordinance of 1784, he said: "The voice of a single individual would have prevented this abominable crime; heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail." + To friends who visited him in the last period of his life he delighted to renew these aspirations of his earlier years.# In a letter written just forty-five days before his death he refers to the ordinance of 1784, saying: "My sentiments have been forty years before the public; although I shall not live to see them consummated, they will not die with me; but, living or dying, they will ever be in my most fervent prayer." I On the twenty-third of April the ordinance for the government of the north-western territory, shorn of its proscription of slavery, was adopted, and remained in force for three years. On the 7th of May, Jefferson reported an ordinance for ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of the public lands. The continental domain, when purchased of the Indians, was * Jefferson to Madison, 25 April 1784. Jefferson, ix., 279. + Ibid., 276. # Oral communication from William Campbell Preston of South Carolina. Jefferson to James Heaton, 20 May 1826. |