While Congress was drafting up the Northwest Ordinance in 1784, Thomas Jefferson proposed a plan to prohibit the westward expansion of slavery by 1800. This would have limited the boundary of American slavery to east of the Mississippi River. However, his plan was shot down by only one vote. Had a single New Jersey representative not been sick that day, he might have voted for the resolution which would have passed. If this happened, what impact would it have had on America's westward expansion, internal development, and disputes over slavery? One obvious impact is that slavery would need to be banned from the Louisiana Territory, albeit gradually, something that President Jefferson supported in a personal letter to Thomas Paine.