(24) State vs. Lasselle, 1 Blatchford, 60.
(25) Cooley's Michigan, pp. 136-7.
(26) For an exhaustive legal history of the slavery restriction clause of the Ordinance and its effect on slavery in the Northwest Territory, see Dunn's Indiana, pp. 219-260.
(27) St. Clair Papers, vol. i., p. 122, note.
(28) Political Text-Book, 1860 (McPherson), p. 53.
VI CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
The Convention to frame the Constitution met in Philadelphia (1787). George Washington was its President; it was composed of the leading statesmen of the new nation, sitting in a delegate capacity, but in voting on measures the rule of the then Congress was observed, which was to vote by States.
The majority of the thirteen States were then slave States, and all, save Massachusetts, still held slaves; and all the coast States indulged in the African slave trade.
Massachusetts provided for the abolition of slavery in 1780 by constitutional provision declaring that:
"All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights," etc., by which declaration its highest judicial tribunal struck the shackles at once from every slave in the Commonwealth.