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In March, 1789, the first Federal Congress met at New York. It at once
enacted a law in accordance with the terms of the Ordinance of '87
--adapting it to the changed order of things under the new Federal
Constitution--prohibiting Slavery in the Territories of the North-west;
and the succeeding Congress enacted a Fugitive-Slave law.
In the same year (1789) North Carolina ceded her western territory (now
Tennessee) south of the Ohio, to the United States, providing as one of
the conditions of that cession, "that no regulation made, or to be made,
by Congress, shall tend to emancipate Slaves." Georgia, also, in 1802,
ceded her superfluous territorial domain (south of the Ohio, and now
known as Alabama and Mississippi), making as a condition of its
acceptance that the Ordinance of '87 "shall, in all its parts, extend to
the territory contained in the present act of cession, the article only
excepted which forbids Slavery."
Thus while the road was open and had been taken advantage of, at the
earliest moment, by the Federal Congress to prohibit Slavery in all the
territory north-west of the Ohio River by Congressional enactment,
Congress considered itself barred by the very conditions of cession from
inhibiting Slavery in the territory lying south of that river.
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