Northwest Ordinance

After the American Revolution, one of the many issues facing the United States were competing claims to western lands, which were ceded to the new country following the Treaty of Paris (1783). The area generally referred to as the Northwest Territory includes the current states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota. Various Indigenous nations resided in this area including the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, and Ojibwe. Their territorial rights to the lands they resided in were not considered by European powers or the United States, and they were not represented in these diplomatic negotiations. The Northwest Ordinance (1787) outlined how to organize the territory into new states and their subsequent incorporation into the larger framework of the United States, as well as how those territories are governed. Ultimately, the creation of the Northwest Ordinance emphasized the need for a stronger federal government, later realized with the ratification of the Constitution. 

Under the Articles of Confederation

The Northwest Ordinance was established by the Confederation Congress under the Articles of Confederation on July 13, 1787. Previously, the Congress planned to create states from the territory, but had not yet established a plan on how to do so or handle pre-existing land claims of states or the actions of speculators.

Virginia claimed much of the territory based on a reading of the state’s original, colonial charter dating back to 1607. Smaller states blocked from expanding westward rejected these claims to western lands. Representatives from smaller states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island insisted that Virginia and other states claiming large tracts of western land cede their privileges to the national government.

Some complications arose from states that used land bounties to recruit men for military service during the revolution. The use of land bounties created additional conflict because both individual states and the Continental Congress used them to fill the ranks of Continental forces. After the war, competing claims for lands in the west, especially in Kentucky, prompted feuds and legal disputes that took years to resolve in the court system.

Finally, speculators and squatters claimed lands in the territory arguing that they had directly purchased land from Native Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains. In sum, there was no clear legal process for obtaining western lands prior to the Northwest Ordinance nor was political authority clear in the territories. Without clear, established authority and an equally clear process laying out the procedure of settling the frontier, the Northwest Territory would remain a point of conflict between white settlers, squatters, speculators, and Native Americans seeking to assert their rights to frontier lands.

In assuming federal control of the territory, the Ordinance allowed the territory to be sold off, settled, and organized as new states without advantaging any single state. The territory had an appointed governor to oversee this process, and the first governor of the Northwest Territory was Arthur St. Clair. Overtime the territory was to be surveyed, organized into gridded townships, and sold by the federal government to individuals and companies. Once the area reached a specified population, those living there could begin the legal journey to statehood.

The Northwest Ordinance demonstrated the need for a stronger federal government to mitigate disputes between states, and centralize political power in order to physically expand the United States. In this instance, the role of a centralized government was paramount to handling the questions surrounding expansion.

The Northwest Ordinance and the Ratification of the Constitution

The Northwest Ordinance established clear processes for acquiring, settling and organizing western lands, while legitimizing the powers of the United States government. In doing so, the Northwest Ordinance established the civil liberties guaranteed of those living in the territory. Consequently, the Northwest Ordinance solidified federal power by establishing that Congress was the authority in the territories.

In chartering this vision for the Northwest territory and recognizing the need for a stronger federal government, representatives from every state but Rhode Island met in September of 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. Ultimately, they created a new federal government under the Constitution. The new Congress upheld the Northwest Ordinance (1787), and the rights explicitly delineated in its framework stood as a basis for the rights of U.S. citizens outlined in the Bill of Rights.

Ultimately, the Ordinance benefitted large landholders who were able to establish their claims to tracts in the Ohio Valley. George Washington held substantial tracts of land; in fact, these lands were a considerable portion of his personal wealth by the time he became president.¹ Thus, the ordinance protected the claims of those speculators who were able to verify their holdings without compromising its provisions.

Within the processes outlined by the Northwest Ordinance, is an effort for the U.S. to control settlement in the highly desired Ohio River Valley. In this process, lands of various Native American nations and areas they traditionally controlled became encroached upon and that instigated violence. This required the U.S. to establish forts and send forces to the region under the direction of Secretary of War Henry Knox.² During his presidency, ongoing tensions in the Ohio River Valley informed Washington’s policies with Native Americans and led to a series of conflicts referred to as the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795).

The Legacy of the Northwest Ordinance

In addition to creating guidelines for how the United States would expand through a centralized process in which territories could become states, the Northwest Ordinance strengthened federal power regarding sectional issues. Some, including Thomas Jefferson, initially imagined that slavery would at the very least be gradually abolished in the Northwest Territory. Ultimately, the Northwest Ordinance banned slavery in the Northwest territory, which asserted the supremacy of the new federal government to decide issues that generated sectional tensions. This compromise was an effort to suppress conflict over slavery. 

At this time, slavery was fully protected in the original states, except in those which abandoned the institution when they drafted new state constitutions during the Revolutionary War. The Ordinance effectively set up the conditions to suppress conflict over western expansion and slavery until the admission of Missouri as a “slave state” in 1820 from the Louisiana Territory.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was critically important in the context of the Constitutional Convention and how the new Constitutional government would create the infrastructure for the country to expand. The existing law provided a workable solution to include new states as full and equal members of the republic and removed the issue of slavery, temporarily, from national discourse. The proposal enabled the infant republic to grow without contributing to the sectional tensions that emerging between the original thirteen states.

Revised by Zoie Horecny, Ph.D. 9 April 2025

Notes:

1. “Enclosure: Schedule of Property, 9 July 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives.

2. “Washington’s Memoranda on Indian Affairs, 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives.

Bibliography:

Ablavsky, Gregory. Federal Ground: Governing Property and Violence in the First U.S. Territories. Oxford University Press, 2021.

Countryman, Edward. The American Revolution. Revised Edition. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.

Ellis, Joseph. American Creation Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. New York: Vintage Books, 2007.

Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution 1774-1781. Madison, Milwaukee, and London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.

McDonnell, Michael A. Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America. Hill and Wang, A Division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015.

Onuf, Peter S. Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance. University of Notre Dame Press, 2019.

Van Cleve, George William. A Slaveholders’ Union Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010.