" If the government of the
Northwest had been one of laws, and not of men, this specific
provision would have made the territory free soil and would have
relieved the inhabitants from all interest in the "peculiar
institution." But the laws never execute themselves--least of all
in frontier communities. In point of fact, considerable numbers
of slaves were held in the territory until the nineteenth century
was far advanced. As late as 1830 thirty-two negroes were held in
servitude in the single town of Vincennes. Slavery could and did
prevail to a limited extent because existing property rights were
guaranteed in the Ordinance itself, in the deed of cession by
Virginia, in the Jay Treaty of 1794, and in other fundamental
acts. The courts of the Northwest held that slave-owners whose
property could be brought under any of these guarantees might
retain that property; and although no court countenanced further
importation, itinerant Southerners--rich planters traveling in
their family carriages, with servants, packs of hunting-dogs, and
trains of slaves, their nightly camp-fires lighting up the
wilderness where so recently the Indian hunter had held
possession"--occasionally settled in southern Indiana or Illinois
and with the connivance of the authorities kept some of their
dependents in slavery, or quasi-slavery, for decades.
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