Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/105



, was organized into the Northwest Territory. This embraced what has since become the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Seventeen million acres of land had been acquired by treaties with the various tribes of Indians. The ordinance providing for its organization had forever prohibited the introduction of slavery within its limits. *

Within a year from the time of its organization, more than 20,000 men, women and children had settled in the new territory. One thirty-sixth of all the public lands was reserved and the proceeds of the sales appropriated to the support of public schools. These two acts of Congress, viz.: the prohibition of slavery, and the grant of lands for public schools, were measures of the broadest statesmanship, which were destined to eventually work out the emancipation of our great republic from the crime and curse of human slavery and provide a comprehensive free public school system. Thus we see how from our eastern neighbors we inherited our simple system of land surveying, our method of providing a common school education and our exemption from African slavery.

* This prohibition was proposed and introduced by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and afterwards President of the United States.