citizenship, and when the proposal to incorporate the blacks into the body
politic was clearly presented to these agitators their anti-slavery ardor
was decidedly dampened. Unwilling, however, to take the position that a
race should be doomed because of personal objections, many of the early
anti-slavery group looked toward colonization for a solution of this
problem.[5] Some thought of Africa, but since the deportation of a large
number of persons who had been brought under the influence of modern
civilization seemed cruel, the most popular colonization scheme at first
seemed to be that of settling the Negroes on the public lands in the West.
As this region had been lately ceded, however, and no one could determine
what use could be made of it by white men, no such policy was generally
accepted.

When this territory was ceded to the United States an effort to provide
for the government of it finally culminated in the proposed Ordinance of
1784 carrying the provision that slavery should not exist in the Northwest
Territory after the year 1800.[6] This measure finally failed to pass and
fortunately too, thought some, because, had slavery been given sixteen
years of growth on that soil, it might not have been abolished there until
the Civil War or it might have caused such a preponderance of slave
commonwealths as to make the rebellion successful. The Ordinance of 1784
was antecedent to the more important Ordinance of 1787, which carried the
famous sixth article that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except
as a punishment for crime should exist in that territory. At first, it was
generally deemed feasible to establish Negro colonies on that domain. Yet
despite the assurance of the Ordinance of 1787 conditions were such that
one could not determine exactly whether the Northwest Territory would be
slave or free.[7]

What then was the situation in this partly unoccupied territory? Slavery