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The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio and also known as the Ordinance of 1787), enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States.
The frontier north and west of the Ohio River became the Northwest Territory in 1787. Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude. Many slaveholders took this to mean that the ordinance excluded people who already owned slaves. [1] [a] Map of the Northwest Territory as of 1787, with years of statehood
The Ohio Company's purchase was enabled first by the passage on July 13, 1787, of the "Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio," commonly known as the Northwest Ordinance, and second, by the Act of October 23, 1787, which authorized Congress to make contracts of public lands for not less ...
Ordinance of 1787: The Northwest Territorial Government ("Northwest Ordinance") - Prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory north of the Ohio River. Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 - Guaranteed rights of slaveholders to retrieve escaped slaves. An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves 1807 - legally prohibited the international slave trade.
The Northwest Ordinance was the first act of its kind in that it prohibited slavery throughout a U.S. territory. This act was less controversial than it may have seemed at the time, practically a rework of an earlier 1784 act that proposed gradual reduction of slavery throughout the territories.
The broad outline for the process was established by the Land Ordinance of 1784 and the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, both of which predate the U.S. Constitution. The Admission to the Union Clause forbids the creation of new states from parts of existing states without the consent of all of the affected states and that of Congress.
In 1787, Congress organized the territory under the Northwest Ordinance, which prohibited slavery by stating "that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory". It was later decided that anyone who purchased a slave outside of the territory could enter and reside there with their slaves.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified, had prohibited slavery in the federal Northwest Territory. The southern boundary of the territory was the Ohio River, which was regarded as a westward extension of the Mason-Dixon line.