the constitution and laws of the United States. A Federal district court and a superior territorial court were organized by the act. The trial by jury was instituted, and the writ of habeas corpus guaranteed the inhabitants. Claiborne was continued as governor. New Orleans contained about eight thousand inhabitants. In the District of Louisiana, the chief settlement was St. Louis. The President was authorized to propose to the Indians on the east of the Mississippi to exchange their lands for those west of that stream; in the meanwhile the whole territory was annexed to the territory of Indiana. The territory east of the Mississippi, in which the Indian title had been extinguished, were, by another act, ordered to be surveyed, and land offices were opened at Detroit, Vincennes, and Kaskaskia. The lands were offered for sale in quarter-sections of one hundred and sixty acres, without interest on the instalments if prompt payment was made. The salt-springs were reserved, and every sixteenth section in each township reserved for schools, and an entire township in each district for a seminary.

1804, FEBRUARY.- A memorial was presented to Congress from a convention of delegates from the societies in the different states for promoting the abolition of slavery and improving the condition of the African race, asking that the importation of slaves into the Territory of Louisiana, recently obtained, be prohibited.

It was referred to the committee on the government of Louisiana, and in the act creating the Territory of Orleans it was forbidden to introduce slaves except from some part of the United States, and by actual settlers in the new territory; slaves introduced into the United States since 1798 being exempted from this permission.

1804. THE legislature of South Carolina repealed the act prohibiting the slave trade.

The representative from the state defended it in the national House, on the ground that it was done because slaves were constantly imported, and to avoid the daily open infraction of the law. The law was repealed.

1804, FEBRUARY 15.-The legislature of New Jersey passed an act abolishing slavery.

It made all persons born in the state after the fourth of the next July, free. The children of slaves to become free, males at twenty-five and females at twenty

one.

1804. CONGRESS passed an act giving to the electors the right of designating their candidates for President and VicePresident.

It was passed by the speaker's vote.

1804. AN additional duty of two and a half per cent. was laid on goods subject to an ad valorem duty.

It was to remain in force during the continuance of hostilities in the MediterThe news had arrived of the capture of the Philadelphia. A million of dollars was also appropriated, and additional frigates ordered.

ranean.

1804, FEBRUARY 16. The captured frigate Philadelphia was

boarded and burned in the harbor of Tripoli by an expedition under Lieutenant Decatur.

She had been refitted by her captors.

1804. CONGRESS repealed the Bankruptcy Act.

1804, MARCH 10.-Upper Louisiana was formally surrendered to the United States.

It was taken possession of by Captain Amos Stoddard, as the agent of the United States. The chief business of the territory was furs, which centred at St. Louis, and the circulation consisted of peltry bonds, or notes payable in furs.

1804.-- THERE were eighty-four patents granted this year. 1804.THE legislature of New York passed an act prohibiting all unincorporated companies from issuing their notes to serve as money.

A similar act was passed in Massachusetts.

1804, MAY 9.-The Richmond Inquirer appeared at Richmond, Virginia.

It was published by Thomas Ritchie and William W. Worsley, and was founded upon the Examiner, a Republican paper edited by Merriweather Jones. Jefferson was interested in its establishment, and in its first number it printed the laws of the United States. Thomas Ritchie retired from it in 1843, and his sons William F. and Thomas, Jr. carried it on. It is still in existence. In its palmy days it was known as the organ of the Richmond Junta.

1804. ELEVEN thousand dollars of the gold coined this year was obtained from North Carolina.

All the gold from this date to 1827, amounting to one hundred and ten thousand dollars, was obtained from this state.

1804. OLIVER EVANS constructed, this year, a steam dredg ing-machine which he called the Eruktor Amphibolis.

It propelled
Later in the

It was built on the order of the Philadelphia Board of Health. itself upon land, and in the water with paddle-wheels at the stern. year he made an estimate for the Lancaster Turnpike Company of the expense of a locomotive engine, and offered to build one such.

1804, JULY 11.-Alexander Hamilton was fatally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr.

His death created much excitement, and was of much influence in creating an abhorrence of duelling. The coroner's inquest found Burr guilty of wilful murder. In New Jersey, where the duel was fought, he was indicted for murder, and in New York, he and his seconds were indicted for being concerned in sending and receiving a challenge, a recent law of the state having made this an offence punishable with disfranchisement and incapacity for holding office for twenty years. 1804. CONGRESS appropriated sixty thousand dollars for building twenty-five gunboats.

They were in addition to the ten ordered before. Jefferson, in his annual

message, had advised twenty-five a year for ten years, to be used for harbor defence.

1804. A COMPANY of Germans, under the leadership of George Rapp, landed, and, organizing the "Harmony Society," settled about twenty-five miles north of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

In 1814 they moved to Posey County, Indiana, and in 1824 moved to their present settlement of Economy, on the Ohio. They are a religious community, and are very wealthy.

1804. THE Historical Society in New York city, and the Athenæum Library in Boston, Massachusetts, were both organized this year.

1804.-DAVID PEACOCK, of New Jersey, patented a plough. The mould-board and land-side were made separate and of cast-iron, while the share was of wrought-iron edged with steel.

1804.JOHN STEVENS, of New York, constructed a steampropeller.

It was finished soon after Fulton's steamer, the Clermont. As Livingston and Fulton held the monopoly of steam navigation in the state, Stevens carried his boat by sea round to the Delaware.

John Stevens was born in New York in 1749, and died at Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1838. In 1812 he published a pamphlet proposing to build a railroad from Albany to Lake Erie.

1804, AUGUST. During this month two treaties were made at Vincennes, by which the Indian title to large tracts was extinguished.

The treaties were held with the Delawares and Piankeshaws. In November another treaty was made at St. Louis with the Sacs and Foxes, by which also large tracts were ceded. The consideration in this last treaty was a yearly payment in goods of a thousand dollars, and the tract ceded embraced nearly eighty thousand square miles, lying on both sides of the Mississippi.

1804.- CONGRESS annexed all the region south of the state of Tennessee to the Territory of Mississippi.

The act made an appropriation for exploring the Territory of Louisiana, and under it the expedition of Lewis and Clarke was made.

1804. A MEMORIAL from a convention of the people of Indiana, held at Vincennes, asking for the territory a suspension of the article in the ordinance of 1787 prohibiting slavery north of the Ohio, was referred, together with a report made upon it by a committee, to a new committee.

The memorial had been presented at the last session, and the committee had reported just before its close, that they thought it "highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the north-western country, and to give strength and security to that extensive frontier." The new committee reported in favor of the suspension, so as to admit for ten years slaves born in the United States, their male heirs to be

free at the age of twenty-five, and their female heirs at the age of twenty-one. No further action was taken on the subject.

1805, JANUARY 2.-Judge Chase, of the Supreme Court, appeared before the Senate to answer charges of impeachment, and requesting delay, was given a month.

There were eight charges against him: six for his conduct in trials, and two for his late charge to the Maryland grand jury. At the trial, in consideration of his age and infirmities, he was allowed to be seated in the centre of the Senate chamber. He was acquitted on all of the charges.

1805. THE Territory of Orleans was given such a government as that of the Territory of Mississippi, or of a territory of the first class,

The people had petitioned for the right to form a state, and had complained of the arbitrary government placed over them. This gave them a legislature chosen by the people, and the privilege of organizing themselves into a state, forming a constitution, and claiming the right of admission to the Union, as soon as they numbered sixty thousand. Claiborne was continued as governor, and Robert Williams made governor of Mississippi.

1805.

THE District of Louisiana was erected into a territory of the second class.

The governor and judges had the legislative power. By a section of the act, all existing laws and regulations were continued in force until repealed or altered by the legislature. This tacitly permitted slavery, which existed in some of the settlements on the Arkansas and Missouri.

1805. A PORTION of Indiana was divided off and erected into a territory of the second class called Michigan.

The population of the territory was about four thousand. The Indian title had been extinguished in only a small tract about Detroit, and another on the main land opposite Mackinaw. William Hull was appointed governor.

1805, FEBRUARY 13.- Thomas Jefferson was elected President, and George Clinton Vice-President.

1805, APRIL.—The New York legislature granted a charter to the Merchants' Bank of New York city.

1805. THE legislature of New York appropriated the proceeds of the remaining state lands for the school fund.

The land consisted of more than a million acres.

1805, JUNE.A treaty of peace was made with Tripoli.

It provided for an exchange of prisoners, man for man. As the American prisoners were fewer by about two hundred, sixty thousand dollars were paid by the United States.

1805. THE King's County Society of Mechanics and Trades. men was incorporated in New York.

1805. THE first cargo of ice exported from this country was

one of one hundred and thirty tons, sent by Frederick Tudor, of Boston, in his own brig, to Martinique.

Mr. Tudor persevered, making very little, if any profit from the business until after the war of 1812. In 1815 he obtained the monopoly of the Havana trade; in 1817, that of Charleston, South Carolina; in 1820, that of New Orleans. In 1833 he sent the first cargo to Calcutta, and in 1834, the first to Brazil. He monopolized the business until 1836, when other parties became interested.

1805. THE Free School Society was incorporated in New York city.

The present Board of Education was its outgrowth.

1805, JULY 4. At a treaty held at Fort Industry, the Indians ceded to the United States the tract in Ohio known as the Connecticut Reserve.

The treaty was made by Governor Harrison, with the Wyandots, Ottawas, Chippeways, Mamsees, Delawares, Shawanees, and Pottawatomies. The consideration was a perpetual annuity of one thousand dollars. The Connecticut Land Company, which had purchased the land from Connecticut, had already paid the Indians sixteen thousand dollars.

1805, AUGUST 21. By a treaty with the Indians, their title to almost the whole of the present state of Indiana was extinguished.

The treaty was made with the Delawares, the Pottawatomies, Miamis, Eel River Indians, and Ucas. The land ceded extended to within fifty miles of the Ohio, except a narrow strip along the west bank of the Wabash. The consideration was four thousand dollars in cash, an annuity for ten years of five hundred dollars, and a permanent one of eleven hundred dollars.

1805. THE Cherokees ceded to the United States the tract between the settlements of East and West Tennessee, and allowed the opening of roads, and the passage of the mail through their territory.

The consideration was fourteen thousand dollars in cash and a perpetual annuity of three thousand dollars. Having become interested in agriculture and stock-raising, they no longer needed as wide an expanse of hunting-grounds.

1805, ОСТОВЕR. A decision in a Massachusetts court was considered a further advance of religious liberty.

A tax-collector in the town of Dalton had collected a tax from a member of a Baptist church for the support of an older parish in the town. Suit was brought against the town for the recovery of the money, and the court decided it should be returned.

1805. THE Reporter appeared in Lexington, Kentucky.

It was established by William W. Worsley, who left the Richmond Inquirer, and Thomas S. Smith. It was the organ of Henry Clay.

1805.-A BILL was passed by the New York legislature authorizing the truth to be given in evidence, when the matter,