Northwest Ordinance

The Northwest Ordinance (formally the An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance) was an act of the Continental Congress of the United States passed on July 13, 1787 under the Articles of Confederation. The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation by Northwest Territory as the first organized territory of the United States out of the region around the Great Lakes north and west of the Ohio River. On August 7, 1789, the U.S. Congress affirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications under the Constitution.

Arguably the most important single piece of legislation passed by the Continental Congress, it established the precedents by which the United States would expand westward across North America by the admission of new statess, rather than by the expansion of existing states. The banning of slavery in the territory had the effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This division helped set the stage for the balancing act between free and slave states that was the basis the most critical political question in American politics in the 19th century until the Civil War.

History

See Northwest Territory for the general history of the region

Acquired by Great Britain from France following the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the Ohio Country had been closed to white settlement by the Proclamation of 1763. The United States claimed the region after the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War, but was subject to overlapping and conflicting claims of the states of the Massachussets, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia, as well as a lingering British presence that was not settled until the War of 1812.

The region had long been desired for expansion by colonists, however, and urgency of the settlement of the claims of the states was prompted in large measure by the de facto opening of the area to settlement following the loss of British control.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson proposed that the states should relinguish their particular claims to all the territory west of the Appalachains, and the area should be divided into new states of the Union. Although the proposal was not adopted, it established the precedent that would become the basis for the Northwest Ordinance three years later.

Effects of the legislation

Abolition of state claims

The passage of the ordinance forced the relinquishing of all such claims by the states over the territory, which was to be administered directly by Congress, with the intent of eventual admission of newly-created states from the territory. The legislation was revolutionary in that established the precedent for lands to be administered by the central government, albeit temporarily, rather than underneath the jurisdiction of paticular states.

Admission of new states

The most significant intended purpose of the legislation was that its mandate of the creation of new states from the region once a population of 60,000 had been achieved within a particular territory. The actual legal mechanism of the admission of new states was established in the Enabling Act of 1802. The first state created from the territory was Ohio in 1803.

Establishment of territorial government

As an organic act, the ordinance created a civil government in the territory under the direct jurisdiction of the Congress. The ordinance was thus the prototype for the subsequent organic acts that created organized territories during the westward expansion of the United States.

It specifically provided for the appointment by Congress of a Territorial Governor with a three-year term, a Territorial Secretary with a four-year term, and three Judges, with no set limit to their term. As soon as there was a population of 5,000, they could form a general assembly for a legislature.

In 1789, the U.S. Congress made minor changes, such that the President, with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, had the power to appoint and remove the Governor and officers of the territory instead of Congress. Also, the Territorial Secretary was authorized to act for the Governor, if he died, was absent, removed or resigned from office.

Establishment of civil rights

The civil rights provisions of the ordinance foreshadowed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Many of the concepts and guarantees of the Ordinance of 1787 were incorporated in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In the Northwest Territory, various legal and property rights were enshrined, religious tolerance was proclaimed, and free and public education was encouraged. The right of habeas corpus was written into the charter, as was freedom of religious worship and bans on excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment.

Prohibition of slavery

The ordinance prohibited slavery in the region even during a time when northeastern states such as New York and New Jersey still permitted slavery. In the decades preceding the civil war, the abolition of slavery in the northeast by the 1830s created a contiguous region of free states to balance to the Congressional power of the slave states in the south. After the Louisiana Purchase, the Missouri Compromise effectively extended the Ohio River boundary between free and slave territory westward from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. The balance between free and slave territory established in the ordinance eventually collapsed following the Mexican-American War. See Origins of the American Civil War

Definition of the Midwest as a region

The Northwest Ordinance, along with the Land Ordinance of 1785, laid the legal and cultural groundwork for midwestern (and subsequently, western) development. Significantly, the free state legal philosophies of both Abraham Lincoln and Salmon P. Chase (Chief Justice, Senator, and early Ohio law author) were derived from the Northwest Ordinance.