Excerpt from Reminiscences of Seventy-Five Years I was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on January 4, 1826; consequently I have nearly completed my eighty-seventh year. Beverly was a town of considerable importance in the Common wealth. It was, as a part of Salem, one of the earliest of the Colonial settlements, many of its citizens had been engaged in foreign commerce sailing from Salem and Boston as well as from Beverly, and some had taken important parts in the polit ical life of State and nation. The leading citizen of that time, and probably for all time, was Nathan Dane, the author of the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwestern territory, by which slavery was forever excluded from what now constitutes the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Seldom is it given to man to become the instrument in legislation of such transcendent importance as this which consecrated that vast region forever to Human Freedom. To Dr. Dane also is due the provision in the Constitution prohibiting any State from passing laws impairing the obliga tion of contracts. I remember him very well, an old gentleman with a serene and kindly face. I used to carry to him the N orth American Review and other periodicals for which he and my grandfather, Robert Rantoul, with Dr. Joshua Fisher, were joint subscribers. When I remember my little conversations with one who had been a distinguished member of the Continental Congress it does seem to me a far cry indeed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.