The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government | Page 9

nor involuntary
servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of
crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
In December, 1805, a petition of the Legislative Council and House of
Representatives of the Indiana Territory--then comprising all the area
now occupied by the States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin--was presented to Congress. It appears from the proceedings
of the House of Representatives that several petitions of the same
purport from inhabitants of the Territory, accompanied by a letter from
William Henry Harrison, the Governor (afterward President of the
United States), had been under consideration nearly two years earlier.
The prayer of these petitions was for a suspension of the sixth article of
the Ordinance, so as to permit the introduction of slaves into the
Territory. The whole subject was referred to a select committee of
seven members, consisting of representatives from Virginia, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Kentucky, and New York, and the
delegate from the Indiana Territory.
On the 14th of the ensuing February (1806), this committee made a
report favorable to the prayer of the petitioners, and recommending a
suspension of the prohibitory article for ten years. In their report the
committee, after stating their opinion that a qualified suspension of the
article in question would be beneficial to the people of the Indiana
Territory, proceeded to say:

"The suspension of this article is an object almost universally desired in
that Territory. It appears to your committee to be a question entirely
different from that between slavery and freedom, inasmuch as it would
merely occasion the removal of persons, already slaves, from one part
of the country to another. The good effects of this suspension, in the
present instance, would be to accelerate the population of that Territory,
hitherto retarded by the operation of that article of compact; as
slaveholders emigrating into the Western country might then indulge
any preference which they might feel for a settlement in the Indiana
Territory, instead of seeking, as they are now compelled to do,
settlements in other States or countries permitting the introduction of
slaves. The condition of the slaves themselves would be much
ameliorated by it, as it is evident, from experience, that the more they
are separated and diffused the more care and attention are bestowed on
them by their masters, each proprietor having it in his power to increase
their comforts and conveniences in proportion to the smallness of their
numbers."
These were the dispassionate utterances of representatives of every part
of the Union--men contemporary with the origin of the Constitution,
speaking before any sectional division had arisen in connection with
the subject. It is remarkable that the very same opinions which they
express and arguments which they adduce had, fifty years afterward,
come to be denounced and repudiated by one half of the Union as
partisan and sectional when propounded by the other half.
No final action seems to have been taken on the subject before the
adjournment of Congress, but it was brought forward at the next
session in a more imposing form. On the 20th of January, 1807, the
Speaker laid before the House of Representatives a letter from
Governor Harrison, inclosing certain resolutions formally and
unanimously adopted by the Legislative Council and House of
Representatives of the Indiana Territory, in favor of the suspension of
the sixth article of the Ordinance and the introduction of slaves into the
Territory, which they say would "meet the approbation of at least nine
tenths of the good citizens of the same." Among the resolutions were
the following:

"Resolved unanimously, That the abstract question of liberty and
slavery is not considered as involved in a suspension of the said article,
inasmuch as the number of slaves in the United States would not be
augmented by this measure.
"Resolved unanimously, That the suspension of the said article would
be equally advantageous to the Territory, to the States from whence the
negroes would be brought, and to the negroes themselves....
"The States which are overburdened with negroes would be benefited
by their citizens having an opportunity of disposing of the negroes
which they can not comfortably support, or of removing with them to a
country abounding with all the necessaries of life; and the negro
himself would exchange a scanty pittance of the coarsest food for a
plentiful and nourishing diet, and a situation which admits not the most
distant prospect of emancipation for one which presents no
considerable obstacle to his wishes."
These resolutions were submitted to a committee drawn, like the
former, from different sections of the country, which again reported
favorably, reiterating in substance the reasons given by the former
committee. Their report was sustained by the House, and a resolution to
suspend the prohibitory article was adopted. The proposition failed,
however, in the Senate,