Ex-Governor Edward Coles, in a paper on the “History of the Ordinance of 1787,” prepared for the Pennsylvania Historical Society in 1850, disputed Webster’s claim for Dane, and asserted the claim of Thomas Jefferson.
Force undertook to gather from the archives of Congress materials for a complete history of this document, but he found nothing that settled the question of authorship; and although he probably knew more of the original documents pertaining to the Northwest Territory than any other man since its adoption, he died in ignorance of the real author.
Hon. R. W. Thompson, in an eloquent address on “Education,” ascribed the ordinance to the wise statesmanship and the unselfish and far-reaching patriotism of Jefferson.
Lothrop, in his Ann Arbor address in 1878, on “Education as a Public Duty,” said:
“It was a graduate of Harvard, who, in 1787, when framing the Great Charter for the Northwest, had consecrated it irrevocably to Human Freedom, to Religion, Learning, and Free Thought. It was the proud boast of Themistocles, that he knew how to make of a small city a great state. Greater than his was the wisdom and prescience of Nathan Dane, who knew how to take pledges of the future, and to snatch from the wilderness an inviolable Republic of Free Labor and Free Thought.”
In 1876, a year in which many buried historical facts were unearthed, William Frederick Poole, in an admirable article published in the North American Review, presented the history of the Ordinance in a most scholarly manner. But discarding the absoluteness of the claims heretofore set forth, he presents, as the chief actor in this mysterious drama, Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of Massachusetts.
Following, in a general way, the line of argument laid down by Poole, it is interesting to examine the foregoing claims in the light of the known facts. In January, 1781, Thomas Jefferson, then Governor of Virginia, acting under instructions from his state, ceded to the general government Virginia’s claims to that magnificent tract of country known as the Northwest Territory, which had been acquired by Virginia by king’s charter and also as a result of its conquest by George Rogers Clark in 1778-79. The Virginia cession, regarded as the most crucial of the necessary relinquishments of state claims, was not completed in form satisfactory to the United States until 1784. On the first of March of the same year Jefferson, then a member of Congress and chairman of a committee appointed for the purpose, presented an ordinance for the government of all the territory lying westward of the 13 original states to the Mississippi River. There were two notable features in this paper; first, it provided for the exclusion of slavery and involuntary servitude after the year 1800; second, it provided for Articles of Compact, the non-slavery clause being one of them. By this provision there were five articles that could never be set aside without the consent of both Congress and the people of the territory. The non-slavery article was rejected by Congress, and the rest was adopted with some unimportant modifications, on the twenty-third of April, 1784. Whether even this ordinance was actually drafted by Jefferson is disputed, because it was an almost identical copy of the plan submitted by David Howell of Rhode Island in the previous year. However, on the tenth of May, 17 days after the Ordinance of 1784 was adopted, Jefferson resigned his seat in Congress to assume the duties of United States Minister to France. As the Ordinance of 1787 was not adopted until three years after Jefferson had gone to France, and since he did not return until December, 1789, more than two years after its passage, there is serious question as to his possible influence upon it.
Moreover, careful comparison of the Ordinance of 1784 with that of 1787, shows no similarity, except in the two points referred to above: the anti-slavery provision, and the articles of compact. The Ordinance of 1784 contains none of those broad provisions found in the later document concerning religious freedom, fostering of education, equal distribution of estates of intestates, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, trial by jury, moderation in fines and punishments, the taking of private property for public use, and interference by law with the obligation of private contracts. No provision was made for distribution or sale of lands, and under this Ordinance of 1784 no settlements were ever made in the territory.
