The Very Real Power of Civility

24 Jun The Very Real Power of Civility

I recently started reading David McCullough’s latest book, The Pioneers, about the settling of the Northwest Territory: what would become Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

The directive for this settlement, the Northwest Ordinance, included three extraordinary conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and the prohibition of slavery. Extraordinary because at that time—before the Constitution was written and ratified—the first two were not guaranteed in all thirteen colonies, and slavery was legal (and practiced) in all thirteen colonies.

The Northwest Ordinance was largely driven by a Massachusetts minister, Manasseh Cutler. For Cutler, those three conditions were non-negotiable. Especially the prohibition of slavery.

How did Cutler manage to outlaw slavery in what was effectively half the country—“265,878 square miles of unbroken wilderness”—at a time when the country’s southern delegation was adamantly opposed to any restriction of their “peculiar institution”?

When Cutler lobbied members of Congress in New York, McCullough writes, “His manners in particular impressed three of the five members who were southerners. Never before, they said, had they seen such qualities in a northern man.”

This is more than a nice descriptive touch. According to Cutler’s grandchildren (who edited his correspondence and journals), “his way with the southern members of Congress had been the deciding factor” in guaranteeing that there would never be “slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.”

A thing almost unimaginable, accomplished with civility.