Editing Northwest Ordinance (section)

==Background==
{{Main|Northwest Territory}}
The territory was acquired by Great Britain from France after the former's victory in the [[Seven Years' War]] and during the [[Treaty of Paris (1763)|1763 Treaty of Paris]]. Britain took over the [[Ohio Country]], as its eastern portion was known, but a few months later, King [[George III]] forbade all settlements in the region by the [[Royal Proclamation of 1763]]. The Crown tried to restrict the settlement of the [[Thirteen Colonies]] to the area between the Appalachians and the Atlantic Ocean, which raised colonial tensions among those who wanted to move west. In 1774, Britain annexed the region to its [[Province of Quebec (1763–1791)|Province of Quebec]]. With the Patriots' victory in the [[American Revolutionary War]] and the signing of the [[Treaty of Paris (1783)|1783 Treaty of Paris]], the United States claimed the territory as well as the areas south of Ohio. The territories were subject to overlapping and conflicting [[State cessions|claims of the states]] of [[Massachusetts]], [[Connecticut]], [[New York (state)|New York]], and [[Virginia]] dating from their colonial past. The British were active in some of the border areas until after the [[Louisiana Purchase]] and the [[War of 1812]].

The region had long been desired for expansion by American settlers. The states were encouraged to settle their claims by the U.S. federal government's ''de facto'' opening of the area to settlement after the defeat of Great Britain. In 1784, [[Thomas Jefferson]], as delegate from Virginia, proposed for the states to relinquish their particular claims to all territory west of the Appalachians and for the area to 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.<ref name=hubbard>{{Cite book|last= Hubbard | first= Bill Jr. |title= American Boundaries: the Nation, the States, the Rectangular Survey |url= https://archive.org/details/americanboundari00jrbi |url-access= limited |year= 2009 |publisher= University of Chicago Press |isbn= 978-0-226-35591-7 |pages= [https://archive.org/details/americanboundari00jrbi/page/n60 46]–47, 114}}</ref> Jefferson proposed creating ten roughly rectangular states from the territory, and suggested names for the new states: ''Cherronesus'', ''Sylvania'', ''Assenisipia'', ''Illinoia'', ''Metropotamia'', ''Polypotamia'', ''Pelisipia'', ''Washington'', ''Michigania'' and ''Saratoga''.<ref>{{ cite web | url = http://jeffersonswest.unl.edu/archive/view_doc.php?id=jef.00155 | title = Report from the Committee for the Western Territory to the United States Congress | work = Envisaging the West: Thomas Jefferson and the Roots of Lewis and Clark | publisher = [[University of Nebraska–Lincoln]] and [[University of Virginia]] | date = March 1, 1784 | access-date = August 19, 2013}}</ref> The Congress of the Confederation modified the proposal and passed it as the Land Ordinance of 1784, which established the example that would become the basis for the Northwest Ordinance three years later.

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.<ref name=hubbard/>

When it was 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. That would provide both a new source of federal government revenue and an orderly pattern for future settlement.<ref>Jerel A. Rosati, James M. Scott, [https://books.google.com/books?id=SQjN0TpG7tAC ''The Politics of United States Foreign Policy''], Cengage Learning, 2010, p. 20</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Pioneers|last1=McCullough|first1=David|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year=2019|isbn=978-1501168680}}</ref>