NORTHWEST ORDINANCE Definition & Meaning

Northwest Ordinance

noun

the act of Congress in 1787 providing for the government of the Northwest Territory and setting forth the steps by which its subdivisions might become states.

Northwest Ordinance

A law passed in 1787 to regulate the settlement of the Northwest Territory, which eventually was divided into several states of the Middle West . The United States was governed under the Articles of Confederation at the time. The Northwest Ordinance organized the territory into townships of thirty-six square miles each and provided for self-government and religious toleration in the territory. Slavery was prohibited.

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In passing the Northwest Ordinance of 1787—one of four founding legal documents, alongside the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution—Congress placed education at the physical center of what it meant to be a state.

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The law also “authorizes” — but does not require — the display of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance in K-12 public schools.

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In a separate act, the Continental Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance, which outlaws slavery in the territories north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi Rivers.

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The so-called “convict clause,” the legal exception for prison slavery, originated with the Northwest Ordinance, applying to territories claimed northwest of the Ohio River, and was carried forward in the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.

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In his Jan. 1 op-ed, “In unsettled times, look to Midwestern values,” George F. Will defined the Midwest as the 12 states derived from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

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North-West Frontier Province Northwest Passage

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