Next in the sequence of great events linked with this subject was the
work of her sons in the preparation and adoption of the ordinance for
the government of the northwest territory. This imperial domain from
which have been created the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan and Wisconsin had been conquered by her soldiers, led by her
son, George Rogers Clark, acting under a commission of her Governor,
Patrick Henry, and her Council.[25] "Virginians," says Mr. Bancroft,
"in the service of Virginia." Virginia claimed the country as
comprised within the limits fixed by her colonial charter.
Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York also asserted claims, but, as
John Fiske declares, "It was Virginia that had actually conquered the
disputed territory."[26] And again he writes, "Virginia gave up a
magnificent and princely territory of which she was actually in
possession."[27] When, by the valor of her sons, Virginia had won the
land from the English and the Indians, she silenced the murmurings of
sister states and consummated the efforts for union by formally
relinquishing the great domain to the common weal.
The day that Virginia's deed of cession, March the first, 1784, was
accepted by the Continental Congress, Mr. Jefferson reported his
bill—the Ordinance of 1784. This measure was one of far reaching
importance in that it provided not only for many of the governmental
needs of this great territory, but declared that after the year 1800,
slavery should never exist in any portion of the vast domain west of a
line drawn north and south between Lake Erie and the Spanish dominions
of Florida. Had this clause been retained in the ordinance, slavery
would have been excluded not only from the five states created out of
the northwest territory but from the country south of it and from
which were subsequently formed the states of Kentucky, Tennessee,
Alabama and Mississippi.
This provision of the ordinance, however, failed of adoption—the
votes of six states being recorded in its favor, one less than the
requisite majority. Mr. Jefferson's colleagues present, Hardy and
Mercer, refused to join him in voting for this novel enactment. Its
failure was a matter of profound regret to its author. In a letter to
M. de Munier, Mr. Jefferson wrote:
"The voice of a single individual of the state which was divided, or
one of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this
abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we
see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man and
Heaven was silent in that awful moment."[28]