Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 | Page 6

of Petition.
The compromises on the Slavery question, inserted in the Constitution, were among the essential conditions upon which the Federal Government was organized. If the African slave-trade had not been permitted to continue for twenty years, if it had not been conceded that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the apportionment of representatives in Congress, if it had not been agreed that fugitives from service should be returned to their owners, the Thirteen States would not have been able in 1787 "to form a more perfect union." These adjustments in the Constitution were effected after the Congress of the old Confederation had dedicated the entire North-west Territory to freedom. The ancient commonwealth of Virginia had, for the good of all, generously and patriotically surrendered her title to the great country north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, which to-day constitutes five prosperous and powerful States and a not inconsiderable portion of a sixth. This was the first territory of which the General Government had exclusive control, and the prompt prohibition of slavery therein by the Ordinance of 1787 is an important and significant fact. The anti-slavery restriction would doubtless have been applied to the territory south of the Ohio had the power existed to impose it. The founders of the government not only looked to the speedy extinction of slavery, but they especially abhorred the idea of a geographical line, with freedom decreed on one side, and slavery established on the other. But the territory south of the Ohio belonged to the Southern States of the Union,--Kentucky to Virginia; Tennessee to North Carolina; Alabama and Mississippi to Georgia, with certain co-extensive claims put forth by South Carolina. When cessions of this Southern territory were made to the General Government, the States owning it exacted in every case a stipulation that slavery should not be prohibited. It thus came to pass that the Ohio River was the dividing-line. North of it freedom was forever decreed. South of it slavery was firmly established. Within the limits of the Union as originally formed the slavery question had therefore been compromised, the common territory partitioned, and the Republic, half slave, half free, organized and sent forth upon its mission.
The Thirteen States whose independence had been acknowledged by George III., occupied with their outlying territories a vast area, exceeding in the aggregate eight hundred thousand square miles. Extended as was this domain, the early statesmen of the Union discovered that its boundaries were unsatisfactory,--hostile to our commercial interests in time of peace, and menacing our safety in time of war. The Mississippi River was our western limit. On its farther shore, from the Lake of the Woods to the Balize, we met the flag of Spain. Our southern border was the 31st parallel of latitude; and the Spanish Floridas, stretching across to the Mississippi, lay between us and the Gulf of Mexico. We acquired from Spain the right of deposit for exports and imports at New Orleans, but the citizens of the Union who lived west of the Alleganies were discontented and irritated to find a foreign power practically controlling their trade by intercepting their access to the sea. One of the great problems imposed upon the founders of the Union was to remove the burdens and embarrassments which obstructed the development of the Western States, and thus to render their inhabitants as loyal by reason of material prosperity as they already were in patriotic sympathy. The opportunity for relief came from remote and foreign causes, without our own agency; but the courageous statesmanship which discerned and grasped the opportunity, deserved, as it has received, the commemoration of three generations. The boundaries of the Union were vastly enlarged, but the geographical change was not greater than the effect produced upon the political and social condition of the people. The ambitions developed by the acquisition of new territory led to serious conflicts of opinion between North and South,--conflicts which steadily grew in intensity until, by the convulsion of war, slavery was finally extinguished.
TERRITORIAL CESSIONS IN AMERICA.
A great European struggle, which ended twelve years before our Revolution began, had wrought important changes in the political control of North America. The Seven Years' War, identical in time with the French and Indian War in America, was closed in 1763 by numerous treaties to which every great power in Europe was in some sense a party. One of the most striking results of these treaties on this side of the Atlantic was the cession of Florida to Great Britain by Spain in exchange for the release of Cuba, which the English and colonial forces under Lord Albemarle had wrested from Spanish authority the preceding year. England held Florida for twenty years, when among the disasters brought upon her by our Revolution was its retrocession to