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Show Chapter XII Grants to States on Admission to Union Whether or not the Federal Union was developing a "sense of Mission" in the 1780's there is clear evidence that Americans were planning the creation of new states beyond the Alleghenies to be carved out of the area ceded to the United States by Great Britain and by the Original States with western land claims. (See map, page 76) New states in the region beyond the Ohio were contemplated by Virginia in its Act of Cession of December 20, 1783, wherein it is stated:1 the territory so ceded shall be laid out and formed into States . . . and the States so formed shall be ... admitted members of the Federal Union, having the same rights of sovereignty, freedom and independence as other States. . . . The act of cession also declared that all the lands within the territory so ceded . . . shall be considered as a common fund for the use and benefit of such of the United States as have become or shall become members of the confederation . . . Having acquired control of a rich territory, Congress proceeded to establish a system of government for it and rules for disposing of the land. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was simply an act of the Congress of the Confederation, and therefore subject to whatever revision any later Congress might wish to make. Nevertheless, it became something Editor's note: In conjunction with this chapter, refer to App. G. 'Henry Steele Commager (ed.), Documents of American History (New York, 1944), pp. 119-23. more because of liberal features written into it and the great prestige it early acquired as part of American democratic traditions.2 It provided for three stages of government for the territories and states into which the region was to be divided. Article V stated that: whenever any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitution and State government: Provided, the constitution and government so to be formed, shall be republican and in conformity to the principles contained in these articles . . . This proviso implies that Congress should determine whether the time had come to receive the new state into the Union.3 At the very time the Congress of the Confederation sitting,in New York was considering the Northwest Ordinance, the Constitutional Convention of state representatives meeting in Philadelphia was preparing Article IV, Section 3 of its document dealing with the admission of new states into the Union. 2 See for example Joseph Story's encomium on "the famous ordinance" of 1787 in which he called it "the model of all our territorial governments . . . equally remarkable for the brevity and exactness of its text, and for its masterly display of the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty." Commentaries of the Constitution (3 vols., Boston, 1933), III, 187. Elsewhere Story called the ordinance a "notable and imperishable monument," III, 190n. 3 Commager, Documents, pp. 131-32. 285 |