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This new edition of Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance, originally published in 1987, is an authoritative account of the origins and early history of American policy for territorial government, land distribution, and the admission of new states in the Old Northwest. In a new preface, Peter S. Onuf reviews important new work on the progress of colonization and territorial expansion in the rising American empire.
"Onuf explains why the ordinance came to be incorporated into the trinity of icons, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as 'one of the title-deeds of American constitutional liberty' (from a speech by George F. Hoar). People living in other regions may not understand this, but a Midwesterner will find the resonance clear and unambiguous." —Carl Ubbelohde, The Annals of Iowa
Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, emeritus, at the University of Virginia. He is the author and co-author of fourteen books, including, with Annette Gordon-Reed, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.
Maps
Acknowledgments
Preface to the 2019 Edition
Introduction
1. Liberty, Development, and Union: Visions of the West in the 1780s
2. Squatters, Speculators, and Settlers: The Land Ordinance of 1785
3. New States in the Expanding Union: The Territorial Government Ordinances
4. From Territory to State
5. Boundary Controversies
6. Slavery and Freedom
7. From Constitution to Higher Law
Notes
Index