Editing Northwest Ordinance (section)

===Prohibition of slavery===
{{blockquote|'''Art. 6.''' There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.<ref>{{cite web|title=Northwest Ordinance; July 13, 1787|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/nworder.asp|work=Avalon Project|publisher=Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School|access-date=February 17, 2014}}</ref>}}

At the time, no one claimed being responsible for this article. Sometime later, [[Nathan Dane]] of Massachusetts claimed he wrote it, and Manasseh Cutler told his son [[Ephraim Cutler]] that he wrote it. Historian [[David McCullough]] discounts Dane's claim because Dane was not a good writer.<ref>David McCullough, "The Pioneers," Simon and Schuster, New York, pp. 29–30{{ISBN?}}</ref> The language of the ordinance prohibits slavery<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/opinion/sunday/anti-immigration-laws-black-pioneers.html|title=Opinion {{!}} When Anti-Immigration Meant Keeping Out Black Pioneers|last=Cox|first=Anna-Lisa|date=2019-09-20|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-09-21|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> but also contains a clear fugitive slave clause.<ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/pss/3122644 |page=345|jstor=3122644 |title=Slavery and the Northwest Ordinance: A Study in Ambiguity |last1=Finkelman |first1=Paul |journal=Journal of the Early Republic |date=1986 |volume=6 |issue=4 |doi=10.2307/3122644 }}</ref> An attempt to add limited slavery to the proposed constitution of Ohio in 1802 was defeated after a major effort led by Ephraim Cutler, who represented Marietta, the town founded by the Ohio Company.<ref>McCullough, pp. 144–147</ref>

Efforts in the 1820s by proponents of slavery to legalize slavery in two of the states (Illinois and Indiana) created from the Northwest Territory failed, but an "[[indentured servant]]" law allowed some slaveholders to bring slaves under that status who could not be bought or sold.<ref>David Brion Davis and Steven Mintz, ''The Boisterous Sea of Liberty'', 2000 p. 234</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/pss/3123523 |jstor=3123523 |title=Evading the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois |last1=Finkelman |first1=Paul |journal=Journal of the Early Republic |date=1989 |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=21–51 |doi=10.2307/3123523 }}</ref> Southern states voted for the law because they did not want to compete with the territory over tobacco as a commodity crop since it was so labor-intensive that it was grown profitably only with slave labor. Also, slave states' political power would be merely equalized since there were three more slave states than there were free states in 1790.<ref>Marcus D. Pohlmann, Linda Vallar Whisenhunt, [https://books.google.com/books?id=XbzhWvjCxc0C&q=ordinance ''Student's Guide to Landmark Congressional Laws on Civil Rights''], Greenwood Press, 2002, pp. 14–15</ref>

The [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]], ratified in 1865, which outlawed slavery throughout the United States, quotes verbatim from Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/4/essays/124/fugitive-slave-clause|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120421180046/http://www.heritage.org/constitution#!/articles/4/essays/124/fugitive-slave-clause|url-status=unfit|archive-date=April 21, 2012|title=Guide to the Constitution|website=www.heritage.org|access-date=2019-09-21}}</ref>