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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

REPORT OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE WESTERN TERRITORY 1 - Thomas Jefferson, The Works, vol. 4 (Notes on Virginia II, Correspondence 1782-1786) [1905]

Edition used:

The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 4.

Part of: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols.

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


REPORT OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE WESTERN TERRITORY1

c.c.

[March 22, 1784.]

The Committee to whom was recommitted the the report of a plan for a temporary government of the Western territory have agreed to the following resolutions.

Resolved, that so much of the territory ceded or to be ceded by individual states to the United States as is already purchased or shall be purchased of the

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Indian inhabitants & offered for sale by Congress, shall be divided into distinct states, in the following manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit; that is to say, by parallels of latitude, so that each state shall comprehend from South to North two degrees of latitude beginning to count from the completion of thirty-one degrees North of the Equator; and by meridians of longitude, one of which shall pass thro’ the lowest point of the rapids of Ohio, and the other through the Western Cape of the mouth of the Great Kanhaway, but the territory Eastward of this last meridian, between the Ohio, Lake Erie, & Pennsylvania shall be one state, whatsoever may be its comprehension of latitude. That which may lie beyond the completion of the 45th. degree between the sd. meridians shall make part of the state adjoining it on the South, and that part of the Ohio which is between the same meridians coinciding nearly with the parallel of 39° shall be substituted so far in lieu of that parallel as a boundary line.

That the settlers on any territory so purchased & offered for sale shall, either on their own petition, or on the order of Congress, receive authority from them with appointments of time & place for their free males of full age, within the limits of their state to meet together for the purpose of establishing a temporary government, to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of the original states, so that such laws nevertheless shall be subject to alteration by their ordinary legislature; & to erect, subject to a like alteration, counties or townships for the election of members for their legislature.

That such temporary government shall only continue in force in any state until it shall have acquired 20,000 free inhabitants, when giving due proof thereof to Congress, they shall receive from them authority with appointment of time & place to call a convention of representatives to establish a permanent Constitution & Government for themselves. Provided that both the temporary & permanent governments be established on these principles as their basis. 1. That they shall forever remain a part of this confederacy of the United States of America. 2. That in their persons, property & territory they shall be subject to the Government of the United States in Congress assembled, & to the articles of Confederation in all those cases in which the original states shall be so subject. 3. That they shall be subject to pay a part of the federal debts contracted or to be contracted, to be apportioned on them by Congress, according to the same common rule & measure, by which apportionments thereof shall be made on the other states. 4. That their respective Governments shall be in republican forms and shall admit no person to be a citizen who holds any hereditary title. 5. That after the year 1800 of the Christian æra, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the sd states, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to have been personally guilty.

That whensoever any of the sd states shall have, of free inhabitants, as many as shall then be in any one of the least numerous, of the thirteen original states, such state shall be admitted by it’s delegates into the Congress of the United States on an equal footing with the said original states: provided nine States agree to such admission according to the reservation of the 11th. of the articles of Confederation, and in order to adapt the sd articles of confederation to the state of Congress when it’s numbers shall be thus increased, it shall be proposed to the legislatures of the states originally parties thereto, to require the assent of two thirds of the United States in Congress assembled in all those cases wherein by the said articles the assent of nine states is now required; which being agreed to by them shall be binding on the new states. Until such admission by their delegates into Congress, any of the said states after the establishment of their temporary government shall have authority to keep a sitting member in Congress, with a right of debating, but not of voting.

That the preceding articles shall be formed into a charter of compact, shall be duly executed by the president of the United States in Congress assembled, under his hand & the seal of the United States, shall be promulgated & shall stand as fundamental constitutions between the thirteen original states and each of the several states now newly described, unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress assembled, & of the particular state within which such alteration is proposed to be made.

That measures not inconsistent with the principles of the Confedn. & necessary for the preservation of peace & good order among the settlers in any of the said new states until they shall assume a temporary Government as aforesaid, may from time to time be taken by the U S in C. assembled.

[1 ]Endorsed “Report on Western Territory. Delivered 22 March, 1784. Read. Wednesday 24 assigned for consideration.”

The original report of a temporary ordinance (see ante, p. 251) not satisfying Congress, it was recommitted to the original committee for amendment, and the above was by them reported to Congress. It was considered on April 19, 21, and 23, 1784, when, after amendment, it was adopted, by the vote of every state but one. The report was at once printed as:

The Committee to whom was recommitted the Report of a / Plan for a temporary Government of the Western Ter- / ritory having agreed to the following resolutions. / Folio. Broadside.

The ordinance as adopted was printed with the title of:

By the United States in Con- / gress assembled. / April 23, 1784. / Folio. 2 leaves.

Next to the Declaration of Independence (if indeed standing second to that), this document ranks in historical importance of all those drawn by Jefferson; and, but for its being superseded by the “Ordinance of 1787,” would rank among all American State papers immediately after the National Constitution. Its importance has already been commented upon in the introduction. That it contains practically every provision which has made the later ordinance famous, has been carefully overlooked by those who have desired to give the credit of them to Northerners. Still more have these special pleaders suppressed the fact that Jefferson proposed to interdict slavery in all the western territory and not merely in the northwest territory as the Ordinance of 1787 did. Had it been adopted as Jefferson reported it, slavery would have died a natural death, and secession would have been impossible.

There is another reason, however, for the little reputation this paper has brought to Jefferson, aside from the studious suppression of its importance by the special pleaders of New England. This plan, with its limitation of slavery, though failing by only one vote of adoption in 1784, was unpopular at the South and increasingly so as slavery became more and more profitable and more and more a Southern institution. As early as 1790 Jefferson’s partizans were already his apologists for this document, and from that time Jefferson carefully avoided any public utterance on slavery. This change of attitude is alone sufficient explanation why Southerners acquiesced with the Northerners in the suppression of this paper, and of Jefferson’s drafting of it. In Jefferson’s memoranda of the services which he took pride in having rendered his country, written in 1800, he carefully omitted all mention, as also in his Autobiography, written in 1821. And thus it has been left to the Massachusetts orators to glorify King, Dane, and Cutler for clauses in the Ordinance of 1787, which the latter had in truth but taken from the Ordinance of 1784, and which they made sectional, where Jefferson had made them national.