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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 committee could have been attempting to effectively eradicate slavery in the West after Jefferson failed to outlaw it in the Land Ordinance of 1784. [citation needed] While the Land Ordinance of 1785 created a New England style land system, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 determined how the townships would be administered.
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 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.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established laws prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory, the region north of the Ohio River comprising the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Article 6 of the ordinance declares, "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory ...
On the contrary, slavery as punishment for a crime dates to antiquity. In the U.S., almost identical wording appears in the Northwest Ordinance of 1784 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Ohio's 1803 Constitution continued the Northwest Ordinance's prohibition of slavery north of the Ohio River. Many Ohioans had come from Southern states that allowed slavery and were not willing to grant rights to African Americans.