American lawyer, born at Ipswich, MA, on the 27th of December 1752. He served in the Continental Congress from 1785 to 1788, and framed the ordinance for the Northwest Territory, inserting a clause prohibiting slavery, and also one prohibiting the passage of laws for the impairment of contracts, a clause that later was inserted in the United States Constitution. He was United States Senator from 1794 to 1798, and he established the Dane professorship of law at Harvard, donating $15,000 for the purpose. He published a Digest of American Law in nine volumes. He died at Beverly, MA, on the 15th of February 1835.
