It was based on the
broad principles of democracy, and it was sufficiently flexible
to permit necessary changes as the scattered settlements
developed into organized Territories and then into States.
Geographical conditions, as well as racial inheritances,
foreordained that the United States should be an expanding,
colonizing nation; and it was of vital importance that wholesome
precedents of territorial control should be established in the
beginning. Louisiana, Florida, the Mexican accessions, Alaska,
and even the newer tropical dependencies, owe much to the
decisions that were reached in the organizing of the Northwest a
century and a quarter ago.
The Northwest Ordinance was remarkable in that it was framed for
a territory that had practically no white population and which,
in a sense, did not belong to the United States at all. Back in
1768 Sir William Johnson's Treaty of Fort Stanwix had made the
Ohio River the boundary between the white and red races of the
West. Nobody at the close of the Revolution supposed that this
division would be adhered to; the Northwest had not been won for
purposes of an Indian reserve.
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