“Article 1. No person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments in the said Territory.
“Article 2. The inhabitants of said Territory shall always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus and of trial by jury; of a proportionate representation of the people in the legislature, and of judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law. All persons shall be bailable except for capital offences, where the proof shall be evident or the presumption great. All fines shall be moderate, and no unusual or cruel punishment shall be inflicted. No man shall be deprived of his liberty or property but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land; and should the public exigencies make it necessary, for the common preservation, to take away any person’s property, or to demand his particular service, full compensation shall be made for the same; and in the just preservation of rights and property it is understood and declared that no law ought ever be made, or have force in the said Territory, that shall in any manner whatever interfere with or effect private contracts or engagements, bona fide, and without fraud, previously formed.
“Article 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always lie observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights and liberty they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars, authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall, from time to time, be made for preventing wrong being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.
“Article 4. The said Territory, and the States which may be formed therein, shall forever remain a part of this confederacy of the United States of America, subject to the articles of confederation, and to such alterations therein as shall be constitutionally made, and to all the acts and ordinances of the United States in Congress assembled, conformable thereto. The inhabitants and settlers in said Territory shall be subject to pay a part of the Federal debts, contracted or to be contracted, and a proportional part of the expenses of government, to be apportioned on them by Congress, according to the same common rule and measure by which the apportionments thereof shall be made on the other States; and the taxes for paying their proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the district or districts, or new States, as in the original States, within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled. The legislatures of those districts or new States shall never interfere with the primary disposal of the soil by the United States in Congress assembled, nor with any regulation Congress may find necessary for securing the title to such soil to bona fide purchasers. No tax shall be imposed on lands, the property of the United States; and in no case shall non-resident proprietors be taxed higher than residents. The navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common highways, and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of the said Territory as to the citizens of the United States, and those of any other States that may be admitted into the confederacy, without any tax, import or duty therefor.
Article 5. There shall be formed in the said Territory not less than three nor more than five States; and the boundaries of the Stales as soon as Virginia shall alter her act of cession and consent to the same, shall become fixed and established as follows, to wit: The western State in the said Territory shall be bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio and Wabash Rivers; a direct line drawn from the Wabash and Port Vincent’s due north to the territorial line between the United States and Canada; and by the said territorial line to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi. The middle State shall be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash from Port Vincent’s to the Ohio, by the Ohio, by a direct line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami to the said territorial line, and by the said territorial line. The eastern State shall be bounded by the last mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the said territorial line; provided, however, and it is further understood and declared, that the boundaries of these three States shall be subject so far to be altered that, if Congress should hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to form one or two States in that part of the Territory which lies north of an east and west line, drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of lake Michigan. And whenever any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted by its delegates into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original States, in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitution and State government; provided the constitution and government so to be formed shall be republican, and in conformity to the principles contained in these articles; and so far as it can be consistent with the general interest of the confederacy, such admission shall be allowed at an earlier period and when there may be a less number of free inhabitants in the State than sixty thousand.
“Article 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided, always, that any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or services as aforesaid.”
The authorship of this grand charter of rights, vouchsafed to a people who to-day number many millions and are living happily under its benign influence, bears the marks of wisdom the most profound, of statesmanship of the highest order, of foresight akin to inspiration. The question then very naturally arises for eager solution, “Who was the author?” or if more than one, “Who were the authors?” The question has never been, probably never will be, fully and definitely answered to the satisfaction of every inquirer. The claims of Thomas Jefferson, of Nathan Dane, of Dr. Manasseh Cutler have in turn been ably supported by various writers. The truth no doubt is that all these gentlemen, together with Colonel Carrington and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and Arthur St. Clair, the President of Congress, were concerned in its preparation. More importance is attached to the authorship of Articles III and VI, especially of the latter, than to any other portion of the instrument. Religious liberty, the provision for the spread of education, the manner in which the Indians should be treated, and the inhibition of slavery, are its distinguishing features. To whom are we chiefly indebted for their place in the Ordinance?
Jefferson has a strong claim upon our gratitude, for it was he who drafted the anti-slavery clause in the inoperative ordinance of 1784, from which the anti-slavery clause (Article VI) of the Ordinance of 1787, no doubt, was copied. The similarity in the phraseology of the two clauses is too striking to admit of a doubt of this, as any one who will carefully read and compare the two will readily perceive. To Jefferson, then, we owe much, but it must be remembered that he was not a member of the last Congress of the old confederation, but was at that time our minister to France. Nathan Dane was the committee’s secretary, and no doubt the original draft is in his handwriting. He had prepared and reported an ordinance in May previous which was not passed, and which contained none of the grand principles that characterized the ordinance under question. If he were the author of any part of the latter, it was an unessential part, as he afterwards, in a letter to Mr. Rufus King published in Spencer’s History of the United States, clearly shows that he had no adequate conception of the grand features of the Ordinance. Moreover he declined to offer the anti-slavery clause as a part of the Ordinance at its first reading because he believed it could not pass, and only presented it the day before the final adoption of the Ordinance, after having learned the feeling of Congress toward the slavery question.
It is undoubtedly true that to no one man are the people who have enjoyed and to-day enjoy the benefits of the Ordinance, so much indebted as to Dr. Manasseh Cutler. It was he who directed the battle in its favor; it was he who secured the appointment of his friends, Carrington and Lee, on the committee; who urged the necessity of the adoption of the Ordinance before the land purchase could be made; who insisted, as representative of the company which was most immediately concerned in the nature of the laws that should form the government of the Territory, upon the anti-slavery clause, and, to win the southern members to its support, favored the addition of the proviso for the rendition of fugitive slaves; and without doubt it was he who urged the insertion of what relates to religion, morality and education. At this time anti-slavery sentiment in Virginia was popular with the leading men of that State, and with the protection to the property rights in the slave which the proviso afforded, the Virginia members of the committee were readily won to the support of the anti-slavery clause. What, therefore, Dr. Cutler accomplished in behalf of the Ordinance was of the greatest importance. He obtained the appointment of a new committee favorable to such a measure as he was solicitous to have adopted; urged the insertion of many of the grand principles it contained; won such friendly interest for it from opposing elements as to insure for it certain victory, and was instrumental in securing its passage.
Judge Ephraim Cutler, in 1849, received a letter from his brother, Temple Cutler, in which he says: “Hon. Daniel Webster is now convinced that the man who suggested some of its articles was our father,” and in the same year Judge Cutler wrote as follows: