88 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



laughing-stock of Europe. To many it seemed that a return to 

 the protection of England was the only way of salvation, for the 

 paper money had become worthless, the fires of local insurrec- 

 tion burst forth from the ashes of discontent, interstate com- 

 merce was destroyed by petty frontier exactions, and the great 

 experiment of independence seemed doomed to end in anarchy. 



We cannot here review the disquiet and anxiety of that 

 troubled time, and can only briefly indicate the unexpected 

 cure. The possession of a national domain, composed of terri- 

 tory ceded by the states to the Confederation, proved to be the 

 anchor of the Union. Over this area Congress had assumed a 

 certain degree of power, and it was the only sphere in which the 

 sovereignty of the Confederation could assert itself. In the vast 

 unpopulated stretches of the great Northwest, Congress, by the 

 ordinance of 1784 and the later ordinance of 1787, exercised the 

 right of eminent domain, ruled by its laws, and sold the land to 

 obtain an income. The future states were bound to make their 

 laws in harmony with the great principles of freedom, education, 

 and suffrage laid down by Congress, and under no circumstances 

 could they ever be separated from the Union. " I doubt," says 

 Daniel Webster, " whether one single law of any law-giver, an- 

 cient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, 

 and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787." 



Thus grew up silently, almost unobserved, yet, as Madison 

 remarked, " without the least color of constitutional authority," 

 a national sovereignty which justified recognition at last by the 

 formation of the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation 

 had contemplated no such exercise of power, and the ordinance 

 was never submitted for ratification by the States ; but the ne- 

 cessity of governing that vast territory had forced upon Congress 

 a course as wise as it was illegal, until, as by a sudden turn in 

 a mountain path a splendid landscape bursts into view, the great 

 and impressive fact that a nation had been created commanded 

 attention ; and, seeing its sublime significance, confessing its 

 rightful claims, the whole people felt their kinship and unity, 

 and could express their conviction in the potent phrase, " We, 

 the people of the United States." 



The treaty of 1783 stipulated that the navigation of the Mis- 

 sissippi from its source to the ocean should be forever free and 

 open to the citizens of the United States. Spain, however, who 

 was not a party to this agreement, asserted an exclusive control 

 overthe river and denied the right of free navigation. This situa- 



