It was even more than that. It in a measure shaped the fundamental policy of the nation that was to be. It was Virginia, under the lead of Jefferson, then her governor, that first offered to the Confederation the lands north of the Ohio. Later, when the cession to the general government had actually been effected, it was Virginia, also under Jefferson's lead, that moved for the establishment of an organized government over those lands. The Ordinance of 1787, for the government of the Northwest Territory, was one of the most important pieces of legislation made by the Congress of the Confederation. Daniel Webster doubted "whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character." George F. Hoar has declared that it "belongs with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution" as one of the three title deeds of American constitutional liberty."

These lofty estimates are not overdrawn. It was that ordinance that established the principle of congressional government of territories belonging to the United States but not yet incorporated into the Union, and that provided for the creation of states out of such territories, and for their admission into the Union. The ordinance also provided that after the year 1800 human slavery should not exist north of the Ohio River, a provision which formed the corner-stone of the free

state power of the North, and which half a century later led to results of vast importance. We have said that Jefferson was the author of the Ordinance. of 1787. It was not adopted just as he would have had it. He earnestly urged the application of the antislavery clause to the territory south of the Ohio, too. Had his counsel prevailed, the slavery question would have been settled and disposed of at the very beginning of our national life. We may smile at Jefferson's fantastic proposals to call the new transmontane states by such names as Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Poloypotamia, Pelisipia, and Illinoia. They were survivals of his green and salad days when he habitually referred to his adored Belinda as "Campana in Die" — a polyglot pun almost deserving of capital punishment. But we must rank among the great glories. of his career his strenuous support of Clark's conquest of the northwest, and his statesmanlike leadership in giving to that region a free republican constitution and in opening to it the doors of the Federal Union. Of a truth, expansion was well provided for, even before we became a nation. The possibility of ten new states was secured to us, and the transformation of the Confederation into a federal Union, and of the colonies into a nation, was irrevocably assured.

CHAPTER III

THE NATION FIRST ENTERS IN

THE nation had "found itself." It was competent to possess and to improve the domain which had been gained for it by the early expansionists, from Spottswood to Jay. It had got rid of its early passion for clinging to the sea. It was ready to go in and possess the land. Immediately upon the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris the tide of pioneers and settlers which had already set westward was enormously increased in volume. Through every gap in the mountain wall it flowed in mighty streams. It was not long before new states began to be formed. Of those west of the mountains Kentucky was first of all, in 1792. That was only sixteen years after the first and futile attempt to secure for Kentucky organization and recognition as a county of Virginia. Four years later, in 1796, Tennessee also became a state. The identity and position of these two deserve attention. They were not the best land in the transmontane region. Ohio and Illinois have since grown into greater states. Nor were they the easiest to possess and to improve. But they had the supreme.

ing in it a menace to her own territories in Louisiana and beyond the Mississippi. She had exerted all her influence upon France to keep the United States shut away from the Mississippi in the treaty of 1783. Having been beaten in those efforts by the adventure and daring of Clark and by the diplomacy of Jay, she spitefully determined to make our possession of those territories and our use of the Mississippi as uncomfortable as possible.

Another cause of friction with Spain and of discontent in the United States was found in the Yazoo Territory. In the Treaty of Paris it was stipulated that the southern boundary of the United States, between it and the Floridas, which latter England was about to return to Spain in exchange for the Bahamas, should begin on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Red River and run eastward along the thirty-first parallel as far as the Chattahoochee River. But a secret article in that treaty, known at the time to only England and the United States, provided that if England should retain possession of West Florida, the line should be drawn east from the mouth of the Yazoo River, in about latitude 32° 30', or nearly a hundred miles farther north. Thus England and the United States indicated that each was quite willing that the other should have that valuable strip, which now forms much of the southern half of Mississippi and Alabama, but neither was willing

that Spain should have it. In time the secret clause became known to Spain, and great, and not unnatural, was her wrath thereat. There was actually talk of war, for which, however, Spain was hopelessly ill prepared. But the American government was flatly informed that Spain intended to hold that territory, claiming everything up to the Yazoo River. A strong Spanish garrison was maintained at Natchez. Americans were warned not to navigate the Mississippi below the Yazoo, and it was intimated that no further concessions for commercial privileges on the lower Mississippi would be granted until the United States withdrew from the territory below the Yazoo and formally relinquished it to Spain. For some years after the Treaty of Paris, Spain's policy concerning our use of the lower Mississippi was arbitrary and capricious in the extreme. Thus in 1783 she opened that river to us. In 1784, on learning of our secret compact with England, she rigorously closed it. In 1785 she opened it again, and again closed it against us in the same year. It was impossible to tell in advance whether a vessel starting down the river would be able to get to the sea or not. Presently she began a still more annoying policy. In 1787 the vessel of a Vincennes merchant was seized by the Spanish and confiscated, for trespassing in Spanish waters, and during the next year or two many such acts of aggression were committed.

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