Particular attention should be paid to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which historian Robert Remini has dubbed the “Bulwark of the Republic.” The signature achievement of the Articles of Confederation government, this Ordinance was one of the most important, progressive, and far-reaching legislative acts in the nation’s history.[21] The Northwest Ordinance, along with the Land Ordinances of 1784 and 1785, set up the structure for the orderly addition of states to the union. Until these Ordinances, there had been significant dangers of states setting up their own colonial empires or territories coming under foreign influence.
Dr. James White, a North Carolina congressman who in the words of one recent historian had a dream of empire for “Greater Franklin,” told Don Diego de Gardoqui, the Spanish minister to the United States, that the western settlements would separate from the United States if Spain would reopen the Mississippi River, provide a military alliance and commercial concessions, and permit them to expand their territory down the Tennessee River past the Muscle Shoals to the headwaters of the Alabama and Yazoo Rivers.[22] Another such threat involved the ever-scheming James Wilkinson. He came to Kentucky from Maryland around 1783 and quickly established himself as a leader of the movement to separate Kentucky from Virginia. He demanded radical action, and there was plenty of talk about establishing an independent nation. Wilkinson and his friends called for a declaration of independence from Virginia and from the United States. It was decided to take the issue to the people and the question of separation was narrowly rejected, a little too close for comfort.[23]
What made the difference, what completely turned the situation around, was the passage of the Northwest Ordinance. It was passed by a skeleton crew of only eighteen congressmen as all the big guns were either at the Constitutional Convention or out of the country on diplomatic missions. But the backbenchers came through, passing the ordinance on July 13, 1787. Now the West knew that Congress had a policy with respect to the territories and that that policy meant colonial rule until such time as the settlers were prepared to take their place as co-equals with the other states in the Union. The United States could now expand, not as an empire with subject peoples and territory but by the orderly addition of new, sovereign states; and these states, in the words of the Ordinance, would be “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatsoever.”[24] At the Constitutional Convention, delegates approved Article IV, section 3, paragraph 2 of the Constitution which stated, “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other property belonging to the United States.”[25]