Excerpt from Rise and Reign of the Bourbon Oligarchy
"The compromises on the slavery question, inserted in the Constitution, were among the essential conditions upon which the Federal Government was organized. If the African slave trade had not been permitted to continue for twenty years, if it had not been conceded that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the apportionment of representatives in Congress, if it had not been agreed that fugitives from service should be returned to their owners, the Thirteen States would not have been able in 1787 "to form a more perfect union." These adjustments in the Constitution were effected after the Congress of the old Confederation had dedicated the entire Northwest Territory to freedom. The ancient commonwealth of Virginia had, for the good of all, generously and patriotically surrendered her title to the great country north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, which today constitutes five prosperous and powerful states and a not inconsiderable portion of a sixth. This was the first territory of which the general government had exclusive control, and the prompt prohibition of slavery therein by the Ordinance of 1787 is an important and significant fact. The ante-slavery restriction would doubtless have been applied to the territory south of the Ohio had the power existed to impose it. The founders of the government not only looked to the speedy extinction of slavery, but they especially abhorred the idea of a geographical line, with freedom decreed on one side, and slavery established on the other. But the territory south of the Ohio belonged to the Southern States of the Union, - Kentucky to Virginia; Tennessee to North Carolina; Alabama and Mississippi to Georgia, with certain co-extensive claims put forward by South Carolina.
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