Letter of Colonel Israel Keith to J. P. Palmer Letter of General Philip H. Sheridan to Mrs. Gen. E. H. Stoughton VOL. V THE MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WITH NOTES AND QUERIES MAY, 1907 No. 5 I THE FRUITION OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 (Second Paper) IN April, 1784, a substitute for the Bland Ordinance had become a law. Its controlling feature was the following provision: Provided That both the temporary and permanent government be established on these principles as their basis: 1. That they shall forever remain a part of the United States of America. 2. That in their persons, property and territory they shall be subject to the Government of the United States in Congress assembled, and 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 and 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 there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty. This is the first appearance of that phrase which has now such transcendent associations. The words "involuntary servitude" are not, as here used, a mere synonym of "slavery." They were meant to preclude the enforcement |