The adoption of this was hastened in July, 1787, by the offer of a New England company to buy from Congress a huge tract of Ohio land.

When the bill was put to the final vote it was supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, Abraham Yates.

Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland were present, and all of them voted aye.

Its enactment gave to the country a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution.

Applying only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for the erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed in republican government, secured in the freedom of religion, jury trial and all concomitant rights, endowed with public land for the support of schools and universities, and while obligated to render fugitive slaves on claim of their masters in the original states, shut out from the regime of slaveholding itself.[22] "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory," it prescribed, "otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The first Congress under the new constitution reenacted the ordinance, which was the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government in the period.
[Footnote 22: A.C.McLaughlin, _The Confederation and the Constitution_ (New York [1905]), chap.