gress, had charge of the ordinance on its passage, and was, no doubt, its legal draughtsman. Manasseh Catler, the wise and far-sighted agent of pioneer land purchasers, secured particular and satisfactory amendments, and the original sixth article of the great compact forever for bidding slavery north of the Ohio river, is found in his handwriting. The enactment was the result of a consensus of wisdom and the experience of a series of years in land legislation. Its creation and passage are a part of the record of the Continental Congress, and the honor connected with it belongs largely to that historic body.

Owing to the impotence of its declining years no great honor or renown attached, in the early opinion of the American people, to the suc cessor of the Revolutionary Congress. Its name had become almost a synonym for impotence. For nearly a decade of years it had dragged its weary length along without power, without energy, without respect, almost without a local habitation and a name. Later years have res cued its memory from an unmerited disrespect. Yet this representative Congress of a weak confederacy was the same Congress, in effect, which had organized resistance to the mother country, had gathered the Colonial army, had given Washington his commission, had negotiated foreign assistance, and had declared and achieved our national independence. A small assembly of great statesmen, sometimes for months unable to muster a quorum, it was a body Constitutionally so weak as to be despised, but personally so strong that, with all its Constitutional impediments, it was able to perform a work which has won the veneration of their posterity and the admiration of mankind. The records of the Continental Congress contain two remarkable documents which alone entitle the body to a memorable place in history. One of these is the Declaration of Independence, the other the Ordinance of 1787. The same body laid the foundation and prepared the way for the Constitution, and these three documents, in the opinion of Hon. George F. Hoar, "make the three title deeds of American history."1

The great statute of '87, the last six articles of which are in the nature of a compact between the original States and the people of the new Territories, contained for the prospective States some solemn guarantees. Upon these guarantees rests the fame of the ordinance. It guaranteed to their people forever:

1. FREE SOIL.

"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."

These historic and familiar words, which became the model for subsequent restrictions upon slavery, had been inserted by Jefferson in his Ordinance of 1784, but as his design covered the Southwest as well as the Northwest Territory, Congress refused to ratify the restriction. When, three years later, the words became part of the law of the land, they 'Oration at Centennial Celebration of the founding of Marietta, Ohio, April, 1888.

made slavery forever illegal in the Northwest Territory. At least, their enactment into law made the future permanence of slavery impossible in these States. They were also the words of the famous Wilmot Proviso which attempted the rescue from slavery of our Mexican acquisition in 1846 and 1847; and subsequently they were made a part of our Constitution by the 13th amendment, in 1865.

Mr. J. P. Dunn in his late admirable sketch of the early history of Indiana has pointed out the extent to which slavery existed in the Indiana Territory. The Territorial statutes are evidence enough upon that point. In 1796, as Judge T. M. Cooley has made known,' the slaves in the Northwest, "as regards the legal question affecting their liberty," were divided into three classes: (1) Those subject to French owners previous to the cession to England in 1763; (2) Those held by British owners at the time of Jay's Treaty in 1796; (3) Those brought from States in which slavery was lawful. The first class had become merely an historical reminiscence; English ownership had transmitted an inconsiderable and a rapidly decreasing number-the only legal slaves that ever existed in the Territory after its possession by the United States; it was the third class, that which came by immigration, chiefly from Virginia and Kentucky, which presented a slave problem to Indiana.

The "act concerning servants," approved by Governor Harrison September 17, 1807, bears testimony to a social condition from which slavery was by no means debarred. The language concerning "negroes" "mulattoes" and the "purchase of servants," the provisions concerning indentured servants, those allowing masters to bring their slaves into the Territory and to hold them in servitude until a specified age, attest the fact of slavery. But we do not find that any legal decision ever gave sanction to such enactments. In the course of events they would certainly have been set aside in a constitutional way; and even though the majority of the people of Indiana had not soon voted to become a free Territory and a free State, it would have been decided as it was in Michigan that "a right of property in the human species can not exist in this Territory." Slavery could not exist in the face of the ordinance of 1787. The great compact guaranteed the soil in fact, as well as in theory, to free labor and free men. The eloquence of Senator Hoar at the centennial anniversary of the founding of Marietta, Ohio, in April 1888, is in accord with the truth of history: "When the older States or nations, where the chains of human bondage have been broken, shall utter the proud boast With a great sum obtained I this freedom,' each sister of this imperial group-Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin-may lift her queenly head with the yet prouder answer, 'But I was free born.""

The importance of this provision the events of history have in a measure revealed. Without it the story of education in Indiana as it is today would not have been written.

2. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

This, also, the ordinance guaranteed: "No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable, orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments, in the said territory." This was a step in advance of the general sentiment of the age. Establishment and religious discrimination had not yet been driven out of New England. In this respect Virginia had gone to the front. Jefferson, Madison, and Mason had been contending for some years in the Old Dominion for religious freedom. That which they had so great a struggle to secure under their own local government they thus helped to guarantee to the populations of future States. The influence of the fact on social progress and education is best understood by those who most appreciate the significance of the idea of religious freedom in universal history.

3. CIVIL LIBERTY.

The benefits of habeas corpus, of trial by jury, of reasonable fines, and moderate bail, of all judicial proceedings according to the common law, these rights secured to Englishmen by Magna Charta and the glorious revolution of 1688, and which are embodied in the first eight amendments of our Constitution known as the "American Bill of Rights," were incorporated in the constitutional law of the Northwest Territory.

4. SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT FOR EDUCATION.

"Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good gov ernment and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged."

This guarantee is as familiar to the people of the Northwest as the language of the Declaration, or of the Constitution. It became the basis and inspiration of the educational life of these States. Like the first line of a written Constitution it bound each State, as it came into the Union, to recognize its obligation to carry out this provision.

Such was the last act of the old Continental Congress. It was an exercise of national sovereignty, as Madison said, "without the least color of constitutional authority." It has been called "a nsurpation to meet an emergency." That such an exercise of authority passed without serious objection shows the growth of sentiment in the States toward the national idea. Like Mr. Jefferson's later extra-constitutional act in the purchase of Louisiana, this assumption of power in imposing a form of government upon the Northwest has been fraught with such momentous consequences for good that the act is remembered as the

The two other articles of compact in the ordinance related to the division of the territory into States, and asserted the perpetual jurisdiction of the United States over the people of the new territories as a part of the Federal Uniɔn.

chief glory of the closing years of the Congress. The act was ratified by the first Congress under the Constitution. The eulogies which it has received, though zealous in admiration, yet may not be called extravagant. Mr. Webster has said of it, "We are accustomed to praise the law givers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787. We see its consequences at this moment and we shall never cease to see them while the Ohio shail flow." Senator Hoar has called it one of the acts "which devoted this nation forever to equality, to education, to religion, and to liberty." Judge Timothy Walker, of Ohio, has described it as "one of those matchless specimens of sagacious foresight which even the reckless spirit of inno vation would not venture to assail." Chief Justice Chase, in his Introduction to the Statutes of Ohio, says: "Never, probably, in the history of the world, did a measure of legislation so accurately fulfill, and yet so mightily exceed, the anticipation of the legislators. The ordinance has well been described as having been a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night in the settlement and government of the Northwestern States. Dr. G. V. N. Lothrop, of the University of Michigan, says of this legislation, "In advance of the coming millions it had, as it were, shaped the earth and the heavens of a sleeping empire. The great charter of the Northwest had consecrated it irrevocably to human freedom, to religion, learning, and free thought. This one act is the most dominant one in our whole history since the landing of the Pilgrims. It is the act which became decisive in the great rebellion. Without it, so far as human judgment can discover, the victory of free labor would have become impossible."

Attention has been directed, at so great a length, to this law because it is fundamental to all subsequent legislation in the Territory and the State. Its influence has been decisive, not only in determining legisla tion, but in shaping thought and opinion upon popular education, and in giving direction to the spirit of the people. Without a comprehension of its provisions and its influences the subsequent history of education in the State can hardly be explained. It may be safely said that the free school system of the State is the natural, if not the inevitable, outgrowth of this radical and organic law.

We give in a subsequent chapter a brief analysis of Indiana's system of education.

CHAPTER II.

THE BEGINNINGS OF HIGHER EDUCATION-VINCENNES UNIVERSITY.

After the passage of the ordinance of 1787 Congress still hesitated to offer satisfactory terms of land sales to the Ohio Company. Conditions offered in an ordinance, July 19 of that year, provided that the only reservation was to be the lot No. 16, as provided for in the law of 1785. Dr. Cutler insisted upon more favorable terms and he made known to Congress the only conditions upon which the Ohio Company was willing to purchase. By his perseverance and determination he gained for the State of Ohio, by the law of July 23, 1787, two additional townships for the perpetual support of a university. The precedent here established gave Indiana an opportunity to claim a similar donation from Congress, which, it will be seen, she afterwards obtained.

Indiana Territory was organized in the year 1800. In 1804, March 26, Congress passed an act entitled, "An act making provision for the disposal of the public lands in the three land districts, viz, Detroit, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes." In 1805 the Detroit district became the Territory of Michigan; in 1809 Kaskaskia became Illinois, embracing substantially the present States of Illinois and Wisconsin. The act of 1804 provided for the sale of certain lands, "with the exception of the section numbered sixteen, which shall be reserved in each township for the support of schools within the same; also, of an entire township in each of the three described tracts of country or districts to be located by the Secretary of the Treasury for the use of a seminary of learning." On the 10th October, 1806, Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury, located township No. 2 south, range 11 east, now in Gibson County, Indiana, for the use of a seminary of learning, as required by this act. We will refer in this connection to the second reservation of land by Congress for the purpose of higher education in Indiana. By an act to provide for the admission of Indiana as a State of the Union, Congress provided, April 19, 1816, "that one entire township, which shall be designated by the President of the United States, in addition to the one heretofore reserved for that purpose, shall be reserved for the use of a seminary of learning to be appropriated solely to the use of such seminary," by the legislature of the State. Mr. Monroe, then President, designated the township, which is now named Perry, in the county which received the name of Monroe by reason of the President's selection.