Northwest Ordinance (1787): Governing the Old Northwest

The Northwest Ordinance, passed by the Confederation Congress in New York on 13 July 1787, established a government for the lands north of the Ohio River and laid down how they would become new states. It guaranteed civil liberties, encouraged education and banned slavery in the territory. Often counted among the founding documents of the United States, it set the pattern by which the country expanded westward.

Background: the western lands

The Treaty of Paris of 1783 recognised American sovereignty over a vast area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Several states, including Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had rival claims to the region north of the Ohio, but between 1781 and 1786 most of them ceded these lands to Congress. The area was home to many Native American nations, including the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware (Lenape) and Wyandot, as well as small French settlements.

For Congress, governing under the Articles of Confederation, the western lands were a valuable asset that could be sold to pay the war debt. The Land Ordinance of 1785 created a system of rectangular surveys, dividing land into townships six miles square, each with 36 sections, and reserving one section in every township for public schools. An earlier plan of 1784, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, had outlined new states but was never put into effect.

Passage of the Ordinance

In 1787 a group of New England investors, the Ohio Company of Associates, sought to buy a large tract of land in the Ohio country. Their agent, the Massachusetts minister Manasseh Cutler, pressed Congress for a stable system of government that would reassure settlers. A committee revised an earlier draft, and Nathan Dane of Massachusetts is usually credited with the final text.

Congress passed the Ordinance on 13 July 1787 with only one delegate voting against. At the same time, about 100 miles away in Philadelphia, the Constitutional Convention was drafting a new framework for the national government. After the Constitution came into force, the First Congress re-enacted the Ordinance with minor changes in August 1789.

What the Ordinance provided

The Ordinance created a single Northwest Territory and set out three stages of government. At first Congress would appoint a governor, a secretary and three judges. Once the territory had 5,000 free adult male inhabitants, it could elect a general assembly and send a non-voting delegate to Congress.

The region was to be divided into no fewer than three and no more than five states. When any part reached 60,000 free inhabitants it could be admitted “on an equal footing with the original States”. This principle meant that new states would not be colonies but full partners in the union.

Six articles of compact set out lasting guarantees. They protected freedom of religion, trial by jury, habeas corpus and the sanctity of contracts. Article III declared that schools and the means of education should forever be encouraged and promised that good faith would be observed towards the Native peoples, whose lands were not to be taken without their consent except in lawful wars.

The ban on slavery

Article VI stated that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the territory, except as punishment for crime. It was added on Dane’s motion late in the process and passed with the support of southern delegates, perhaps because it was paired with a clause allowing the return of people who escaped from slavery in the original states.

The ban was not complete in practice. French settlers in Illinois and Indiana kept enslaved people, and territorial governments allowed long-term indentures that amounted to slavery in all but name. Even so, the Ordinance made the Ohio River a dividing line between free and slave territory, a boundary that shaped national politics until the Civil War.

Settlement and conflict

In April 1788 Rufus Putnam led a party of Ohio Company settlers to found Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum River, the first permanent American town in the territory. Arthur St. Clair, a former Continental Army general, became the first territorial governor.

Native nations resisted the advance of settlement. A confederacy of peoples defeated American armies in 1790 and 1791, the second time inflicting heavy losses on St. Clair’s own force. Only after General Anthony Wayne’s victory at Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 were large parts of present-day Ohio opened to settlers.

Timeline

• 1784, 23 April: Congress adopts Jefferson’s plan for western government, never implemented.
• 1785, 20 May: The Land Ordinance sets up the township survey system.
• 1787, 13 July: The Confederation Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance.
• 1788, 7 April: Ohio Company settlers found Marietta.
• 1789, 7 August: The First Congress re-enacts the Ordinance under the new Constitution.
• 1795, 3 August: The Treaty of Greenville cedes much of present-day Ohio to the United States.
• 1803, 1 March: Ohio becomes the first state formed from the territory.
• 1848, 29 May: Wisconsin becomes the last.

Why it matters

The Northwest Ordinance established that new territories would grow into equal states rather than remain colonies, and it drew the first federal line against the spread of slavery. Its promises to Native nations were largely broken, but its model of territorial government guided American expansion across the continent.