Page:Final Report of the Northwest Territory Celebration Commission.pdf/59

 The attendance figures shown on the chart, cover only "stop towns", that is, where a pageant showing was given.

No official figures are possible as to the "in-between" towns, or even the countryside, but the caravan figuratively followed a route lined with people. The estimate was made by one of the State directors that between 7½ and 10 million people saw the caravan during its travels.

This appeals to the Federal Commission as a fair and probably true figure.

However, the official attendance at parades and pageants is sufficient. We believe that more people saw the pageant "Freedom on the March" than have ever seen any drama within a year, and probably in its total run.

Northwest Territory Celebration is now a remembrance. Whatever its sponsors may believe is perhaps too apt to reflect their close association with it. The program speaks for itself. It may, however, be interesting to here record some excerpts from editorial comment by various papers during the period of the celebration:

The Ohio State Journal—July 6, 1937—

(This is quoted in full to illustrate the type of editorials common upon the subject. The balance are but brief quotations from editorials.) )

"On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress of the United States, sitting in New York City, passed an ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States 'northwest of the River Ohio,' otherwise known as the Ordinance of 1787. Within a few days, the nation will have reached the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of that great date.

"Ohio, the other four states, and the part of the sixth, which were subsequently created out of the Northwest Territory naturally look to the Ordinance of 1787 as the instrument which established and guaranteed the principles of government on which they are founded. Its significance and importance, however, far transcend the boundaries of the Old Northwest Territory. Written when the Mississippi River was the western border of the nation, the Ordinance is the true bill of rights of these United States and the pattern of virtually every state constitution written while the commonwealth of states was moving from sea to sea.

"It carried guarantees of liberty which were not contained in the Declaration of Independence or the Articles of Confederation and which did not appear in the subsequent Constitution, until the first 10 amendments were adopted. Seventy-eight years later, in almost the exact words of the Ordinance, the Constitution was amended to prohibit slavery.

"With the defects of British primogeniture fresh in their minds, the drafters of the Ordinance—its authorship remains in dispute to this day—provided almost at the outset 'that the estates (of proprietors) shall descend to, and be distributed among, their children... in equal parts.

"The Ordinance also provided that the states erected out of the Northwest Territory should be admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the original states, the pattern followed ever since in the admission of the states.

"Here, too, was first written in a federal document the