Show On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. It prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territories. This was the first act in a continuing struggle over the future of slavery in the new territories added to the United States. The question of slavery in the new territories of the United States was contentious. North Carolina and Georgia had ceded territory to the federal government to the west to create new states. However, they had one condition that those states allow slavery. Thomas Jefferson had proposed in 1784 proposed that slavery not be permitted in new territories after 1800. Unfortunately, he could not get the proposal passed the Congress. In 1787 the Congress approved the Northwest Ordinance. The act gave Congress the power to divide the territory into three to five sections and appoint governors. The act also prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. At the same time, it also guaranteed the property rights of residents. The effect was that the prohibition on slavery did not include slaves that were already in the territory. In addition, some slaveholders continued to bring slaves into Illinois and Indiana territory. In 1823 Illinois finally banned slavery altogether. Finally, to secure passage, a version of the later Fugitive Slave Act was inserted into the ordinance guaranteeing that slaves who escaped from the South would be returned. Despite the limitation it was a first step in ending slavery.
The Northwest Ordinance (formally the Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North West of the River Ohio) primarily created the Northwest Territory. The ordinance was passed by the Continental Congress on July 13, 1787, and affirmed, with slight modifications, by the U.S. Congress on August 7, 1789. Provisions of the Northwest Ordinance presaged several provisions of the Constitution and the First Amendment and announced a prohibition of slavery in the states to be formed out of the territories. States covered by the Northwest Territory of the United States, circa 1787. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) The Northwest Ordinance (formally the Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North West of the River Ohio) primarily created the Northwest Territory. The ordinance was passed by the Continental Congress on July 13, 1787, and affirmed, with slight modifications, by the U.S. Congress on August 7, 1789. Provisions of the Northwest Ordinance presaged several provisions of the Constitution and the First Amendment and announced a prohibition of slavery in the states to be formed out of the territories. Northwest Ordinance was a plan to organize the Northwest Territory into new statesWhen the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, the United States laid claim to lands stretching from the Ohio River west to the Mississippi and north to the Great Lakes. This land, which came to be known as the Northwest Territory, had been claimed by several states, which gave up their claims when they ratified the Articles of Confederation. In 1784 Thomas Jefferson proposed a plan for developing the new territory into states. The main features of that plan were adopted by the Continental Congress in 1787, while the Constitutional Convention was meeting in Philadelphia. The primary purpose of the ordinance was to terminate the claims of individual states and to organize the territory into new states. These purposes are accomplished by Sections 1–13 of the document. Section 14 announced a perpetual compact between the people of the original states and the people of the new territories that could be altered only by mutual consent. Ordinance promised religious tolerationIn setting the stage for the Constitution, the first article of the compact promised religious toleration for any person “demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner” regardless of that person’s mode of worship or religious sentiment. The second article announced a series of rights related to criminal procedure, political equality, and the protection of private property. The third article announced that schools and means of education were to be encouraged, because religion, morality, and knowledge were necessary to “good government and the happiness of mankind.” After the Civil War in the 1860s, the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Northwest Ordinance, and Constitution, taken together, came to be called the “Organic Laws of the United States of America.” The title conveys the conviction, enunciated by President Abraham Lincoln, that the founding of the United States was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” This article was originally published in 2009. Paul J. Cornish is Associate Professor of Political Science at Grand Valley State University. He has published articles on the political thought of John Adams, and on the concepts of natural rights, toleration, and constitutional government in the Catholic natural law tradition Send Feedback on this article
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The Northwest Ordinance is one of the great American Founding documents. Often it is considered as the single most important accomplishment under the Articles of Confederation. The land north and west of the Ohio River became part of the United States by the Treaty of Peace in 1783. Virginia claimed possession of the territory under its colonial charter. Sparingly inhabited mostly by a number of Native American tribes, Virginia ceded the territory to Congress in 1781 and again in 1783. Congress rejected some of the provisions of the first cession, but formally accepted the revised cession on 1 March 1784. Although nothing in the Articles of Confederation specifically gave Congress the authority to administer territories, Congress of necessity passed several measures for the surveying, sale, and administration of the Old Northwest. The Northwest Ordinance provided for the government of the territory. Congress was to appoint a territorial governor with a three-year term, a secretary of state with a four-year term, and a three-judge court with tenure for good behavior. Once the population of the territory reached 5,000, a territorial general assembly could be appointed consisting of a legislative council with five members with five-year terms and a house of representatives to be apportioned according to the number of free male inhabitants. Representatives were to have two-year terms. The Ordinance provided that “the governor, legislative Council, and house of representatives shall have authority to make laws in all cases for the good government of the district not repugnant to the principles and articles in this Ordinance,” provided that all bills passed by a majority of both the council and the assembly “be referred to the governor for his assent” The Ordinance contained an abbreviated bill of rights consisting of six articles that formed a compact between the original states and “the people and states in the said territory.” Between three and five states were to be created from the territory. Once a population of 60,000 was reached, that portion of the territory could apply for statehood on an equal basis with the original states. Inhabitants of the new state could write their own constitution that had to have a republican form of government. The sixth article of the Ordinance prohibited slavery and indentured servitude in the territory. When Congress considered the Ordinance in July 1787, Massachusetts delegate Nathan Dane, the author of the Ordinance, removed article six because a majority of the states attending Congress were from the South. Southern delegates, however, encouraged Dane to restore the prohibition because Southerners did not want a competing slave economy north of the Ohio River. It was also expected that most immigrants to the territory would come from Northern States and thus would probably oppose slavery. Furthermore, by overtly prohibiting slavery north of the Ohio, Congress tacitly would be allowing slavery in the Southwest Territory. With freedom just across the Ohio River, a fugitive slave clause was added to the sixth article. The Articles of Confederation had an extradition clause aimed at runaway criminals but no fugitive slave clause. When the delegates to the Constitutional Convention then meeting in Philadelphia saw the fugitive slave clause in the Northwest Ordinance they without much debate inserted a similar clause into the draft Constitution. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 proved to be somewhat inconsequential in returning runaway slaves, but the much harsher Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was one of the important steps leading to the Civil War. Some Southerners and some long-time residents of the Northwest Territory objected to the prohibition of slavery. Bartholomew Cardiveau expressed such concerns in a long letter to Arthur St. Clair, the first governor of the Northwest Territory. The “obnoxious resolution” was said to be an ex post facto law that would illegally “deprive a considerable number of citizens of their property, acquired and enjoyed long before they were under the dominion of the United States.” Some proponents of the prohibition suggested that it would only prohibit “the future importation of slaves into the Federal country; that it was not meant to affect the rights of the ancient inhabitants.” Promises were allegedly made that a clause would be inserted in a re-enacted Ordinance in 1789 “explanatory of its real meaning, sufficient to ease the apprehensions of the people, but it was not done.” Consequently, slave owners in the Northwest Territory, particularly Spanish-speaking residents, swore allegiance to Spain; some even moved west of the Mississippi River taking their slaves with them. If the complete prohibition of slavery persisted, “the Western country, will infallibly remain for a long time in a state of infancy.” Cardiveau also suggested that allowing slavery to exist in the Northwest Territory would provide a place to which freedmen could be transported “without violating the right of property, and without endangering the safety, peace and manners of the whites by a promiscuous intermixture of so many blacks turned loose upon society, destitute of industry, and uncontrolled by the principles of morality, or the habits of good society.” Cardiveau hoped that a “gentler annihilation of servitude might be introduced in the United States” (Bartholomew Cardiveau to Arthur St. Clair, Danville, Kentucky, 30 June 1789, William B. Smith, ed., The St. Clair Papers . . . (2 vols., Cincinnati, Ohio, 1882), II, 117–19, 119n–20n.) Although the prohibition of slavery was never changed, various subterfuges were used that, in essence, allowed slavery to exist in the territory. When the five states came into the Union (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin), all of their constitutions prohibited slavery. |