Which of the following were accomplishments of the northwest ordinance of 1787?

The Northwest Ordinance (formally the Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North West of the River Ohio) primarily created the Northwest Territory. The ordinance was passed by the Continental Congress on July 13, 1787, and affirmed, with slight modifications, by the U.S. Congress on August 7, 1789. Provisions of the Northwest Ordinance presaged several provisions of the Constitution and the First Amendment and announced a prohibition of slavery in the states to be formed out of the territories. States covered by the Northwest Territory of the United States, circa 1787. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)

The Northwest Ordinance (formally the Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North West of the River Ohio) primarily created the Northwest Territory. The ordinance was passed by the Continental Congress on July 13, 1787, and affirmed, with slight modifications, by the U.S. Congress on August 7, 1789. Provisions of the Northwest Ordinance presaged several provisions of the Constitution and the First Amendment and announced a prohibition of slavery in the states to be formed out of the territories.

Northwest Ordinance was a plan to organize the Northwest Territory into new states

When the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, the United States laid claim to lands stretching from the Ohio River west to the Mississippi and north to the Great Lakes. This land, which came to be known as the Northwest Territory, had been claimed by several states, which gave up their claims when they ratified the Articles of Confederation.

In 1784 Thomas Jefferson proposed a plan for developing the new territory into states. The main features of that plan were adopted by the Continental Congress in 1787, while the Constitutional Convention was meeting in Philadelphia.

The primary purpose of the ordinance was to terminate the claims of individual states and to organize the territory into new states. These purposes are accomplished by Sections 1–13 of the document. Section 14 announced a perpetual compact between the people of the original states and the people of the new territories that could be altered only by mutual consent.

Ordinance promised religious toleration

In setting the stage for the Constitution, the first article of the compact promised religious toleration for any person “demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner” regardless of that person’s mode of worship or religious sentiment. The second article announced a series of rights related to criminal procedure, political equality, and the protection of private property. The third article announced that schools and means of education were to be encouraged, because religion, morality, and knowledge were necessary to “good government and the happiness of mankind.”

After the Civil War in the 1860s, the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Northwest Ordinance, and Constitution, taken together, came to be called the “Organic Laws of the United States of America.” The title conveys the conviction, enunciated by President Abraham Lincoln, that the founding of the United States was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

This article was originally published in 2009. Paul J. Cornish is Associate Professor of Political Science at Grand Valley State University. He has published articles on the political thought of John Adams, and on the concepts of natural rights, toleration, and constitutional government in the Catholic natural law tradition

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From Ohio History Central

On July 13, 1787, the Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. The act created a system of government for the Northwest Territory. It also specified how the various parts of the Northwest Territory could become states. Earlier legislation such as the Ordinance of 1784 and the Land Ordinance of 1785, had only said that the territory would some day become states and had described how the federal government would sell the land to private citizens.

Thomas Jefferson, Nathan Dane, Manasseh Cutler, and Rufus King usually receive credit for the ideas behind the Northwest Ordinance. According to the act, the territory would have to progress through three separate stages of government. In the first stage, the Congress was responsible for selecting the territory's leaders. There would be a governor, a secretary, and three judges. The governor and judges would jointly select laws from already existing states to create their territory's legal code. The Congress reserved the right to accept or reject all selected laws. The governor would have power over the militia and Native Americans matters. He also could select law enforcement officials and judges for the lower courts. All five members of the territorial government were to have large holdings of land and be residents of the territory.

Once five thousand free men lived within the territory, the government would enter a second stage. The federal government allowed residents to elect a legislature. The legislature consisted of two houses, a house of representatives and a legislative council. The legislative council was a group of five men selected by Congress from a list of ten names of legislators serving in the house. Every legislator serving in the house had to be an adult male resident with at least two hundred acres of property under his control. To serve on the legislative council a person had to be an adult male who owned five hundred or more acres of land. To be able to vote in the territory, a person had to be an adult male and the owner of at least fifty acres of land. No "squatters" or residents who did not own property were permitted to vote.

The final phase was actual statehood. The Northwest Ordinance stipulated the creation of at least three but not more than five states out of the Northwest Territory. Once sixty thousand people resided in a territory, they could apply for statehood. The people could form a constitutional convention, draft a state constitution, and then submit the document to the United States Congress for approval. The state constitution had to guarantee basic rights to its people, including religious freedom, trial by jury, the right to bail except in capital cases, and several additional rights. The states were to encourage education, but the Northwest Ordinance did not require states to provide public education. Slavery also was outlawed in any of the states created from the Northwest Territory.

The Northwest Ordinance paved the way for Ohio to become the seventeenth state of the United States of America. It also, with some minor modifications, established the process for admission to the United States for all states since 1787.

See Also

References

1. Carter, Clarence Edwin, ed. The Territorial Papers of the United States. Vol. I-III. New York, NY: AMS Press, 1973.
2. Cutler, Julia Perkins. The Founders of Ohio: Brief Sketches of the Forty-eight Pioneers Who, Under Command of General Rufus Putnam, Landed at the Mouth of the Muskingum River on the Seventh of April, 1788, and Commenced the First White Settlement in the Northwest Territory. Cincinnati, OH: R. Clarke & Co., 1888.
3. Cutler, William Parker, and Julia Perkins Cutler, eds. Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL. D. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987.
4. Howe, Henry. Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes. Vol. II. Cincinnati, OH: C.J. Krehbiel & Co., Printers and Binders, 1902.
5. Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
6. Milligan, Fred J. Ohio's Founding Fathers. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2003. 
7. Onuf, Peter S. Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
8. Smith, Dwight L., ed. The Western Journals of John May, Ohio Company Agent and Business Adventurer. N.p.: Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 1961.
9. Williams, Frederick D., ed. The Northwest Ordinance: Essays on Its Formulation, Provisions, and Legacy. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989.

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