History of the Ordinance of 1787 and the Old Northwest Territory / A Supplemental Text for School Use

by Unknown

The thirteen colonies, which in 1776 declared their independence from England, all lay east of the Alleghany Mountains, with their settled portions extending barely two hundred miles inland from the seashore. Today our country extends from ocean to ocean, a distance of three thousand miles. It was the governmental conception which first found concrete expression in the Ordinance of 1787 which made possible this vast westward expansion of our country, and its development from a union of thirteen seaboard states into a continent-wide nation of forty-eight.

It came about this way: Before the American Revolution, colonies were universally regarded as dependencies, to be governed by the mother country for the promotion of its own advantage. After the conquest of Canada, the British ministry decided to maintain a standing army in America, and since the colonies were to be protected by it, the ministry determined that they should be taxed to support it. The colonists, however, refused to submit to such taxation, and after a long period of argument and debate, made good their refusal by waging a successful war against their king. This success marked the death of the old British Empire, and led directly to one of the most momentous political discoveries in human history.

The colonists had refused to be treated any longer as mere dependents, subject to the control of a distant parliament, in which they were not represented. But even before independence had been won, they found themselves face to face with the same problem, how to govern a dependency, which had baffled the wit of the British ministry. Some of the colonies had claims to portions of land west of the Alleghanies. Other colonies had none, and Maryland in particular demanded that all should share in the ownership of the western country which had been won by the “common blood and treasure” of all the colonies.

“No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. I know most of the men personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community.”—George Washington.

“—that ordinance was constantly looked to whenever a new territory was to become a state. Congress always traced their course by the Ordinance of 1787.”—Abraham Lincoln.

The debate over this issue went on for several years in the Continental Congress, Maryland, meanwhile, stoutly refusing to accept any federal government until her demand concerning the western country should be met. Out of the long debate was gradually evolved a new political conception for the government of dependencies. The states having claims to lands in the western wilderness ceded them to the general government, to be administered for the common benefit of all; and Congress solemnly pledged that the country thus given to the nation should be organized into new states, which would be admitted to the Union on a basis of equality with the existing states.

This program for the government of America’s own colonial domain eliminated at a single stroke the grievance which had driven the older colonies into rebellion against their king and country. For their complaint, at bottom, was that they were regarded as politically inferior to their countrymen at home, subject to be governed forever by the latter, without regard to their own views or desires. The American program said, in effect, to the western colonists: “While you are few in numbers, strangers to one another, and menaced by hostile forces outside yourselves, the nation will govern and protect you, as a parent governs and protects his child; but as soon as you reach a state of maturity where you can do these things for yourselves, you will be admitted to the union of states, with the same powers and privileges that all the rest enjoy.”

“In truth the Ordinance of 1787 was so wide reaching in its effect, was drawn in accordance with so lofty a morality and such far seeing statesmanship, and was fraught with such weal for the nation, that it will ever rank among the foremost of American State papers.”—Theodore Roosevelt.