Northwest Ordinance - Context and History

Context and History

Since earliest times, rivers have been the arteries of inland travel, and the history of exploration in North America has been based in its waterways. Having been excluded from known sea routes to the orient, which were based in European trade, the early French and British explorers in the area searched for the mythic water route known as the Northwest Passage through North America to the Pacific Ocean. English settlement was concentrated along the Atlantic coast; the French established dominance over the inland areas around the Great Lakes and major rivers, with the help of native Indian knowledge. From 1660 to 1670, French Jesuit missionaries extended into the new territory, with establishments at Sault Ste. Marie and Green Bay. In 1673, Fathers Marquette and Joliet traveled south on Lake Michigan to Green Bay, crossed the divide of the Fox into the Wisconsin and reached the Mississippi River, from where they continued southward passing the confluence of the Pekistanoui from the west, the Ohio from the east, and until noting signs of Spanish influence from the south. This exploration largely defined the known limits of the Northwest Territories.

Between 1673 and 1689 La Salle opened another water route from the St. Lawrence River, through the Niagara and the Great Lakes and across the Chicago portage to the Mississippi. He founded forts on the St. Joseph River in Michigan, and on the Illinois River and farther south. LaSalle understood the meaning of the crossing paths of French and Spanish exploration from opposite directions, and outlined the main lines of future French strategy in North America; he recognized the Mississippi as the key to control of the vast continental heartland, and the Ohio River became the line beyond which they would attempt to bar British expansion from the east. This lasted for nearly a hundred years under French colonial rule and another twenty under the British. During this time, the waterways were the transportation and trading routes which yielded the inland's vast riches; they were both a source of European rivalry and the object of future American developmental desire.

The territory was acquired by Great Britain from France following victory in the Seven Years War and the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Great Britain took over the Ohio Country, as its eastern portion was known, but a few months later closed it to new European settlement by the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The Crown tried to restrict settlement of the thirteen colonies between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, which raised colonial tensions among those who wanted to move west. With the colonials' victory in the American Revolutionary War and signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the United States claimed the territory, as well as the areas south of the Ohio. The territories were subject to overlapping and conflicting claims of the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia dating from their colonial past. The British were active in some of the border area until after the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812.

The region had long been desired for expansion by colonists. The states were encouraged to settle their claims by the US government's de facto opening of the area to settlement following the defeat of Great Britain. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson, a delegate from Virginia, proposed that the states should relinquish their particular claims to all the territory west of the Appalachians, and the area should be divided into new states of the Union. Jefferson's proposal to create a federal domain through state cessions of western lands was derived from earlier proposals dating back to 1776 and debates about the Articles of Confederation. Jefferson proposed creating seventeen roughly rectangular states from the territory, and suggested names for the new states, including Chersonesus, Sylvania, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Polypotamia, Pelisipia, Saratoga, Washington, Michigania and Illinoia. The Congress of the Confederation modified the proposal, passing it as the Land Ordinance of 1784. This ordinance established the example that would become the basis for the Northwest Ordinance three years later. Michigan, Illinois, and Washington were eventually adopted as new state names.

The 1784 ordinance was criticized by George Washington in 1785 and James Monroe in 1786. Monroe convinced Congress to reconsider the proposed state boundaries; a review committee recommended repealing that part of the ordinance. Other politicians questioned the 1784 ordinance's plan for organizing governments in new states, and worried that the new states' relatively small sizes would undermine the original states' power in Congress. Other events such as the reluctance of states south of the Ohio River to cede their western claims resulted in a narrowed geographic focus.

When passed in New York in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance showed the influence of Jefferson. It called for dividing the territory into gridded townships, so that once the lands were surveyed, they could be sold to individuals and speculative land companies. This would provide both a new source of federal government revenue and an orderly pattern for future settlement.