The Ordinance of 1784 (enacted April 23, 1784) called for the land in the recently created United States which was located west of the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. The ...

, north of the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of ...

and east of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest Drainage system (geomorphology), drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson B ...

to be divided into separate states.

Adoption

The ordinance was adopted by the United States

Congress of the Confederation The Congress of the Confederation, or the Confederation Congress, formally referred to as the United States in Congress Assembled, was the governing body of the United States of America during the Confederation period, March 1, 1781 – Mar ...

under the

Articles of Confederation The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 Colonies of the United States of America that served as its first frame of government. It was approved after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777) by ...

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

was the principal author. His original draft of the ordinance contained five important articles: * The new states shall remain forever a part of the United States of America. * They shall bear the same relation to the confederation as the original states. * They shall pay their apportionment of the federal debts. * They shall in their governments uphold republican forms. * After the year 1800 there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of them. Notably the map in Jefferson's draft of the committee's report to Congress included two states to be carved out of land ceded by Virginia on its western side and south of the

, in what is now Kentucky.

Demarcating westward expansion of slavery

In the late eighteenth century, slavery prevailed throughout much more than half the lands of North America. Jefferson designed the ordinance to establish from end to end of the whole country a north and south line, at which the westward extension of slavery should be stayed by an impassable bound. On exactly the ninth anniversary of the fight at Concord and Lexington, Richard Dobbs Spaight of North Carolina, seconded by

Jacob Read Jacob Read (1752 – July 17, 1816) was an American lawyer and politician from Charleston, South Carolina. He represented South Carolina in both the Continental Congress (1783–1785) and the United States Senate (1795–1801). Biography Read ...

of South Carolina, moved to strike out the fifth article concerning the restriction on the expansion of slavery. The votes of seven states were needed to approve Jefferson's clause. From a letter from Jefferson to

James Madison James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father. He served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for h ...

, dated April 25, 1784: "The clause was lost by an individual vote only. Ten states were present. The four eastern states, New York, and Pennsylvania were for the clause; Jersey would have been for it, but there were but two members, one of whom was sick in his chambers. South Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia voted against it. North Carolina was divided, as would have been Virginia, had not one of its delegates been sick in bed." The absent Virginian was

James Monroe James Monroe ( ; April 28, 1758July 4, 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was ...

, who for himself has left no evidence of such an intention. For North Carolina the vote of Spaight was neutralized by Williamson. Six States against three, sixteen men against seven strove to stop the spread of slavery. Jefferson denounced this outcome all his life.

George Wythe George Wythe (; December 3, 1726 – June 8, 1806) was an American academic, scholar and judge who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. The first of the seven signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence from ...

and he, as commissioners to codify the laws of Virginia, had provided for gradual emancipation. When, in 1785, the legislature refused to consider the proposal, Jefferson wrote: "We must hope that an overruling Providence is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren." In 1786, narrating the loss of the clause against slavery in the ordinance of 1784, he said: "The voice of a single individual would have prevented this abominable crime; heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail." The ordinance passed without the 5th clause despite Jefferson's wishes, and was in force for three years. The ordinance was further augmented with the

Land Ordinance of 1785 The Land Ordinance of 1785 was adopted by the United States Congress of the Confederation on May 20, 1785. It set up a standardized system whereby settlers could purchase title to farmland in the undeveloped west. Congress at the time did not have ...

, and superseded by the

Northwest Ordinance 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 Co ...

of 1787. This latter ordinance provided for civil liberties and public education within new territories that would be created north and west of the Ohio river, and banned slavery therein. It was the first U.S. federal legislation ever to restrict the expansion of slavery.

Jefferson's reflections on the ordinance

To the friends who visited him in the last period of his life, he delighted to renew these aspirations of his earlier years. In a letter written just 45 days before his death, he refers to the ordinance of 1784, saying: "My sentiments have been forty years before the public: although I shall not live to see them consummated, they will not die with me; but, living or dying, they will ever be in my most fervent prayer."

References

External links

Full text
at

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

''Encyclopædia Britannica'' article
dealing with the 1784, 1785, and 1787 ordinances

Sources

George Bancroft George Bancroft (October 3, 1800 – January 17, 1891) was an American historian, statesman and Democratic politician who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state of Massachusetts and at the national and internati ...