In other important respects, too, the framers of the ordinance were far in advance of their age—in advance, even, of that more famous body of legislators who framed our national constitution. Included in the articles of compact is a provision guaranteeing the sanctity of private contracts—the first appearance of such a guarantee in any charter of government. This was copied into the United States Constitution, where it became the basis of the vast development of private corporations with which we are today familiar. In 1819 the Supreme Court, in the famous Dartmouth College Case, carried this guarantee to its logical conclusion by ruling that a charter or franchise is a contract, which, once granted by a state legislature or other governing body, cannot be withdrawn.
Of tremendous portent to our social system of today was the abolition of the age-old law of primogeniture, the concept that the eldest son alone should inherit the real estate of his parents. Thomas Jefferson had long contended in the Virginia legislature for the adoption of this reform, but it remained for the Ordinance of 1787 to make the first legal provision whereby children should share equally the estates of their parents.
Another provision, well in advance of the age, affords perhaps the most notable sentence in the entire document: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” In 1787 “schools and the means of education” found very little encouragement over most of the face of the globe. Today, America is dedicated to the ideal of universal education, and nowhere is more liberal encouragement extended to education than in the five states of the Old Northwest.
In its original contract with the Ohio Company, Congress agreed to give two townships of land for “the uses of a university.” In 1795, with the ink scarcely dry on General Wayne’s treaty with the red men at Greenville, the “college townships” were located and surveyed. In 1802 the legislature of the Northwest Territory passed an act establishing a university in the village of Athens—the first legislative act passed west of the Alleghany Mountains, for the advancement of higher education. Today, each of the five states not only maintains at public expense a great state university, but the pattern set in 1787 has resulted in a nationwide system of colleges and universities aided by grants of public lands. The principle, here originated, of devoting fixed portions of the public lands to the support of schools and education has produced the broadest plan of universal education in the world, providing thereby the most essential aid to the existence of democratic self-government.
In still another respect the ordinance expressed a noble ideal, which, unfortunately, was destined not to be realized. At a time when the Indians of the Old Northwest were determined to prevent the Americans from ever entering the country, the ordinance held out to them the doctrine of the Golden Rule; they should ever be treated with the utmost good faith, their rights and liberties should be respected, and “laws founded in justice and humanity” should be enacted for preserving peace and friendship with them. If such an ideal could be generally realized between nations today, it would free a war-oppressed world from the greatest menace which threatens the continued existence of civilized society.
Another article in the compact proclaimed navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence to be common highways, “forever free” to the people of the United States. It is this guarantee which permits the humblest citizen of our country to use and enjoy the rivers and lakes of the Old Northwest for purposes of recreation and travel—a freedom which, but for this guarantee, would frequently be denied him by individual and corporate owners of real estate.
One final provision demands our attention. In 1787 the institution of human slavery existed in all but one of the states of the Union. But many humane and far-sighted men recognized its evils, and one in particular, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, was unwearied in his efforts to abate it. Although Jefferson was not the author of the Ordinance of 1787, it was largely because of his influence that its final article dedicated the Old Northwest—then, of course, the new Northwest—to freedom. “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory ...” the article begins, continuing with certain provisos respecting criminals and fugitives from justice. Several decades were to pass before the soil of the Old Northwest endured its last pollution from the footprints of a slave, but the prohibition proved an effective ban against the widespread expansion of slavery over the territory, and eventually exterminated it here completely. In doing so, the ordinance prepared the way for its ultimate extermination in the nation; for when civil war came and North and South faced each other on the field of battle during four awful years, it was the exuberant might of the free Northwest which decided the issue in favor of permanent Union and human freedom.
In 1787 the United States was a feeble confederacy of less than three million souls, almost all of whom dwelt within two hundred miles of the Atlantic seaboard. Today it stretches from sea to sea with a population of nearly 130,000,000. The thirteen original states have increased to forty-eight great and harmonious commonwealths. In the five states of the Old Northwest dwell 26,000,000 people. Mere numbers do not mean everything, however, else China and India would be the world’s foremost nations. The Old Northwest is today the political and industrial heart of the nation and, although the territory comprises but one-twelfth of the land area, one-fifth of the nation’s population lives within its boundaries.
The time that has elapsed since 1787 may be spanned by the lives of two elderly men, yet the changes which have been wrought in the Old Northwest since the first feeble American beginnings at Marietta would have staggered the imagination of any man then alive. Here began the political expansion of the United States; here the principles which made possible the development of the nation we know today were first concretely applied. Such is the historical significance of the Ordinance of 1787.
