Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/152

 For various reasons Georgia was not ready to renounce any territory claimed by her before 1798, and the deed of cession was not made until 1802. Georgia, like North Carolina, desired to have the state formed from her territory enjoy the privileges granted to the Northwest Territory by the ordinance of 1787. Out of the lands relinquished to the general government by the states south of the Ohio, and the territory subsequently acquired by treaty and purchase from France and Spain, were formed, in the early part of the nineteenth century, the several territories afterwards admitted as states with the rights and privileges guaranteed in the compact between the United States and the people of the Northwest Territory.

Hitherto I have sketched the political history of the lands of the United States with the object only of pointing out the change that had occurred in men's ideas of natural rights in the soil. They had also progressed greatly in their understanding of political rights. The struggle of the American colonies to achieve independence had served as an object lesson of immense importance even to the colonies themselves, and they were prepared to guard their new-found freedom with a jealous care. Next to the Declaration of Independence in justice and dignity stands the compact entered into between the people and congress in giving and accepting the territory first ceded by the original states to the United States, and known as the Ordinance of Seventeen Eighty-Seven. By this ordinance the people of the Northwest Territory were assured that no person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, should ever be molested on account of his mode of worship, or religious sentiments. The people should always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, and trial by jury; of proportionate representation in the legislature, and