A century and a half ago, on the thirteenth day of July, 1787, the Congress of the United States, in session at New York, among its last acts under the Articles of Confederation, enacted an ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River. We know of no legislative enactment, proposed and accomplished in any country, in any age, by monarch, by representatives, or by the peoples themselves, that has received praise so exalted, and at the same time so richly deserved, as has this same Ordinance of 1787.
It has been lauded by our great statesmen, great jurists, great orators, and great educators.
In his notable speech in reply to Robert Young Hayne, delivered in the United States Senate in January, 1830, Daniel Webster said of it:
“We are accustomed to praise the law-givers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787. We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow.”
Judge Timothy Walker, in an address delivered in 1837 at Cincinnati, spoke upon this subject in the following words:
“Upon the surpassing excellence of this ordinance no language of panegyric would be extravagant. It approaches as nearly to absolute perfection as anything to be found in the legislation of mankind; for after the experience of fifty years, it would perhaps be impossible to alter without marring it. In short, it is one of those matchless specimens of sagacious forecast which even the reckless spirit of innovation would not venture to assail. The emigrant knew beforehand that this was a land of the highest political, as well as national, promise, and, under the auspices of another Moses, he journeyed with confidence to his new Canaan.”
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase said of it:
“Never, probably, in the history of the world, did a measure of legislation so accurately fulfill, and yet so mightily exceed, the anticipations of the legislators. The Ordinance has well been described as having been a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night in the settlement and government of the Northwestern States.”
Peter Force, in 1847, in tracing its history, declared: