When we established our independence, we did not own or claim the country
to which this compromise applies. Indeed, strictly speaking, the
Confederacy then owned no country at all; the States respectively owned
the country within their limits, and some of them owned territory beyond
their strict State limits. Virginia thus owned the Northwestern
Territory--the country out of which the principal part of Ohio, all
Indiana, all Illinois, all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been
formed. She also owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since
been formed into the State of Kentucky. North Carolina thus owned what is
now the State of Tennessee; and South Carolina and Georgia owned, in
separate parts, what are now Mississippi and Alabama. Connecticut, I
think, owned the little remaining part of Ohio, being the same where they
now send Giddings to Congress and beat all creation in making cheese.
These territories, together with the States themselves, constitute all
the country over which the Confederacy then claimed any sort of
jurisdiction. We were then living under the Articles of Confederation,
which were superseded by the Constitution several years afterward.
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