, calls attention to the
faithful secretary of the Continental Congress during its entire
existence.]
The century contest over slavery in the United States made that factor
so prominent in national history that it overshadows matters of equal
importance in many transactions. The anti-slavery provision of the
Ordinance of 1787 has been extravagantly praised ever since the oratory
of Daniel Webster first called general attention to it. Sectional
partisans have exhausted logic in trying to trace the authorship to
Jefferson, a Southern man, or to Dane, a Northern man. The North has
credited it to the persistence of New England; the South, pointing to
the five Southern affirmative votes out of the eight, has attributed
it to the indulgence of their section. In recognising this first
anti-slavery action of the National Government, Northern orators have
overlooked an attendant clause, the first national fugitive slave law.
It paved the way for a similar provision in the Constitution and led
to the obnoxious slave rendition laws of later years. In praising the
indulgence of the South, the eulogists of that section have failed to
consider the price the New England Associators paid in this first
slavery compromise of the nation.
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