[Published in Essay 7-A: The Northwest Ordinance And Settlers in The West - Constituting America]
America’s westward expansion reshaped the way the world worked. Never before had a national government strategically outlined how settlement would evolve, how new lands would be governed, and how settler rights would be protected.
The movement of people into unsettled or unorganized land was historically shaped by conquest and occupation. Settler rights and representation were at best an afterthought. Rome and other empires granted land to soldiers and political favorites. England and the other European powers granted specific charters for colonies and trading zones. In all cases, these expansions were tied to existing centralized powers and their agendas.
Colonial America found ways to leverage the tangle of charters and geographic distance from England into local self-government. These early forms of representative government closely tied to communities created the foundation of America’s unique civic culture. This led to the Revolutionary War when Britain attempted to undermine this civic culture and constrain the consent of the governed.
America applied the lessons of the Revolution as it was inventing itself under the Articles of Confederation. The grand experiment was how a nation preserves self-governance and protects fundamental rights as it expands territorially. The laboratory for expanding democracy was the unmapped expanse of land beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
In 1670, John Lederer crossed over the Appalachian/Blue Ridge Mountains to explore the Shenandoah River valley and other western lands. In the 1730s, Jost Hite led the first organized group of settlers into this region.
Others soon followed. British King George II allowed westward expansion to counter France’s North American ambitions. King George III, on the other hand, wanted to consolidate American colonists into the narrow coastal region along the eastern seaboard. Preventing westward expansion avoided unnecessary conflicts with Native Americans, allowing England to focus on tightening its control over its colonies.
On October 7, 1763, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding colonists from settling west of the Appalachians. The King demanded that settlers already living west of this new “Proclamation Line” abandon their homesteads and return east. He further prohibited commerce with Native Americans except with traders licensed by the Crown.
Daniel Boone (1734-1820) was among many who ignored the Proclamation, leading legions of settlers into the west through the newly discovered Cumberland Gap (1769).
On January 14, 1784, the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolution. The treaty granted the new nation all British lands from the Proclamation Line to the Mississippi River.
Southern states immediately claimed land to their west all the way to the Mississippi River. This left unclaimed land, known as the “Territory of the United States North West of the Ohio River” to administer. This vast unsettled area was both an unprecedented challenge and opportunity.
Thomas Jefferson proposed the Ordinance of 1784 as a framework for organizing this area. His approach was too complex to implement, but it framed future discussions.
On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance, crafted by Nathan Dane and Rufus King, both delegates from Massachusetts.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 is considered by historians and constitutional scholars as one of America’s most important founding documents, taking its place with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The Ordinance outlined how American settlers in this region would govern themselves, be incorporated into the United States as citizens of new states, and enjoy the basic protections of rights and freedoms. These provisions would guide America’s expansion into the 20th Century.
The Ordinance established a three-stage process for unsettled land to evolve from a federally governed area into a self-governing territory and eventually into a state admitted into the Union as its population grew. It provided for the settlers of these lands to adopt their own state constitution based on the rule of law and consent of the governed. It embraced local governance and federalism, anticipating the U.S. Constitution, which was under consideration at this time (May-September 1787).
The Ordinance’s other key component was Section 14. Its Articles anticipated the Bill of Rights (September 1789-December 1791). This included rights to habeas corpus, trial by jury, due process relating to property, preventing cruel or unusual punishments, and freedom of religion.
The Ordinance’s Section 14, Article 6, prohibited slavery: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” This incendiary issue was deferred in the U.S. Constitution and only resolved when the 13th Amendment was adopted on December 6, 1865.
The Article 6 prohibition of slavery set the line between free and slave regions. It established the precedent and future conflict over limiting the westward expansion of slavery. Prohibiting slavery in the Northwest shifted the region’s settlement demographics. Slaveholders avoided the Northwest territories while “free laborers” and immigrants flocked there. These ancestral demographics shape the culture and politics of this region to this day.
