Page 177 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Northwest Ordinance: The Confederation’s
6.1 Major Achievement

However weak Congress may have been, it did score one impressive triumph. Congres-
6.2 sional action brought order to western settlement, especially in the Northwest Terri-
tory, and incorporated frontier Americans into an expanding federal system. In 1781,
the prospects for success did not seem promising. For years, colonial authorities had
ignored people who migrated far inland, sending neither money nor soldiers to pro-
6.3 tect them from Indian attack. Tensions between the seaboard colonies and the fron-
tier regions sometimes flared into violence. Disorders occurred in South Carolina in
1767, in North Carolina in 1769, and in Vermont in 1777. With thousands of men and
6.4 women, most of them squatters, pouring across the Appalachians, Congress had to act
quickly to avoid the errors of royal and colonial authorities.
The initial attempt to deal with this explosive problem came in 1784. Jefferson,
then serving as a member of Congress, drafted an ordinance that became the basis for
more enduring legislation. He recommended carving ten new states out of the western
lands north of the Ohio River that Virginia had recently ceded to the United States.
He specified that each new state establish a republican form of government. When the
population of a territory equaled that of the smallest state already in the Confederation,
the region could apply for full statehood. In the meantime, free white males could par-
ticipate in local government, a democratic guarantee that frightened some of Jefferson’s
more conservative colleagues.
The impoverished Congress was eager to sell off the western territory as quickly
as possible. The frontier represented income that did not depend on the unreliable
generosity of the states. In 1785, the Land Ordinance established an orderly process
for laying out new townships and marketing public lands. Public response disap-
pointed Congress. Surveying the lands took longer than anticipated, and few persons
possessed enough hard currency to make even the minimum purchase. Nevertheless,
small homesteaders settled wherever they pleased, refusing to pay either government
or speculators for the land.
Congress worried about the excess liberty on the frontier. In the 1780s, the West
seemed to be filling up with people who by eastern standards were uncultured. Timo-
thy Pickering, a New Englander, declared that “the emigrants to the frontier lands
are the least worthy subjects in the United States. They are little less savage than the
Indians; and when possessed of the most fertile spots, for want of industry, live miser-
ably.” The charge was as old as the frontier itself. Seventeenth-century Englishmen had
said the same things of the earliest Virginians. The lawless image stuck, however. Even
a sober observer such as Washington insisted that the West crawled with “banditti.”
The Ordinance of 1784 placed the government of the territories in the hands of people
about whom congressmen and speculators had second thoughts.
These various currents shaped the Ordinance of 1787, one of the final acts passed
northwest Ordinance Legislation under the Confederation. The bill, also called the Northwest Ordinance, provided a new
in 1787 that established govern- structure for government of the Northwest Territory. It authorized creating between
ments in America's northwest three and five territories, each to be ruled by a governor, a secretary, and three judges
territories, defined a procedure appointed by Congress. When the population of a territory reached 5000, voters who
for their admission to the Union
as states, and prohibited slavery owned property could elect an assembly, but its decisions were subject to the governor’s
north of the Ohio River. absolute veto. Once 60,000 persons resided in a territory, they could write a constitution
and petition for full statehood. While these procedures represented a retreat from Jeffer-
son’s original proposal, the Ordinance of 1787 contained several significant features. A
bill of rights guaranteed the settlers the right to trial by jury, freedom of religion, and due
process of law. The act also outlawed slavery, which freed the future states of Ohio, Indi-
ana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin from the curse of human bondage. (See Map 6.2.)
Quick Check By contrast, Congress paid less attention to settlement south of the Ohio River.
How did the Northwest Ordinance Thousands of Americans had already streamed into a part of Virginia known as
resolve the problem of the western Kentucky. The most famous of these settlers was Daniel Boone. In 1775, the population
lands?
of Kentucky was approximately 100; by 1784, it had jumped to 30,000.
144