Quotes & Sayings About The Northwest Ordinance

And so Jefferson wrote the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which organized the new territories of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin so that slavery would be permanently illegal there. — Allen C. Guelzo

After an early legal and legislative life attempting to abolish slavery, Jefferson, now at midlife, made a calculated decision that he would no longer risk his "usefulness" in the arena by pressing the issue.55 (There was a partial victory later: The Northwest Ordinance of 178756 prohibited slavery north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi rivers.) In all, though, for Jefferson public life was about compromise and an unending effort to balance competing interests. To have pursued abolition, even when coupled, as it was in Jefferson's mind, with deportation, was politically lethal. And Jefferson was not going to risk all for what he believed was a cause whose time had not yet come. — Jon Meacham

Under the new government of the Constitution, beginning in 1789, all of the peacetime measures were repeated: chaplains, prayers, memorials of Thanksgiving, the Northwest Ordinance, funding for the Christian education of Indians. — M. Stanton Evans