TAHPDX: History Topic

1. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Context

As the historian Frederick Jackson Turner pointed out more than a century ago, the frontier played a crucial and formative role in what would become the United States.  "The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development." With these words, Frederick Jackson Turner [web resource] presented a "frontier thesis" that continues to influence historical thinking today.

The thirteen colonies offered opportunity, particularly in the form of arable land.  Settlement spread gradually from the east coast to the interior.  Outline maps are available that highlight this U.S. Territorial Expansion for 1790-1800 and 1810-1920 [map posters].

This hunger for land disturbed both the indigenous peoples on the land and, often, England, which wanted the colonists to maintain close ties with the mother country and not to instigate costly wars with Indian nations.  Indeed, after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, England drew a line at the Appalachian Mountains and decreed that its colonists should stay east of that line.  Land-hungry colonists of course ignored this proclamation.

Many Indian nations joined England in the American Revolution and were vulnerable when England surrendered and no longer supported the native nations.  Thousands of citizens of the young United States streamed across the mountains, into the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River, raising a set of thorny questions: How would title to the land be secured from Indian nations?  Did or would the land belong to the federal government, existing states, or future states?  How would citizens gain title to land?

Speculators and Settlers

Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts claimed land far outside their contemporary boundaries, usually on the basis of their founding charters.  The other six states were understandably reluctant to cede so much territory and power to their rivals, especially when these lands could instead be sold to help settle the large debt under which the fledging federal government labored.

Powerful and numerous land speculators complicated the struggle. Many leading revolutionaries had invested heavily in the purchase of extensive tracts in the “West.”  Some speculators preferred to work with state governments, others with the federal government.  Land companies were also not above bribing congressmen.  Most of the states ceded their claims in the 1780s, though not until 1802 would Georgia cede the last of its western lands.

Meanwhile, before these divisive issues had been resolved politically, settlers of generally modest means were settling – or, according to some, squatting – on these disputed western lands.  The federal government clearly needed to resolve these disputes and ambiguities.

The Land Ordinance of 1785

The federal government was notoriously weak under the Articles of Confederation that prevailed until the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.  The Land Ordinance of 1785 [pdf resource] was one of the few pieces of consequential federal legislation passed during these years.

The ordinance outlined the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) [pdf resource] and stipulated that government-owned lands would be divided into townships that were six miles square and sections within the townships that were one mile square (640 acres).  Land would be sold for $1.00 an acre after it was surveyed.  One half of the government land would be sold as townships (to land speculators) and one half as sections (to settlers).

The system prized order over speed and wealthy investors over settlers of modest means.  Settlers on the southern frontier, in particular, were accustomed to claiming their own, irregularly shaped, pieces of land before surveyors arrived.  Relatively few settlers possessed the $640 need to purchase the minimum amount of land.  But the legislation certainly met the needs of land speculators.  In 1787, for example, the federal government sold five million acres to the Ohio Company of Associates [pdf resource], which sold most of that land to the Scioto Company, whose investors included several Congressmen.  The heavily discounted purchase came to about nine cents an acre.

The ordinance also imposed an abstract but powerful conceptual landscape upon the West's forests, fields, streams, and mountains.  As the survey marched toward the Pacific Ocean, it neatly and uniformly divided a vast land into a series of perfect rectangles prepared for sale and settlement.

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Map Resource:  Poster map showing the Western Oregon Land Survey.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787

The Ordinance of 1785 left open the sticky question of how territories and states would be formed from the young nation's western lands.  The original thirteen states understandably feared that states created from the vast Mississippi Valley might eventually overwhelm the smaller and older states.  Their leaders also wondered if rough frontiersmen could be trusted to govern their own affairs.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 [pdf resource] struck a balance between eastern and western interests.  On the one hand, the proposed territories were quite large.  There would be no danger of western states outnumbering eastern ones any time soon.  The territories would at first be run by governors and judges named by the federal government and would not gain full control of their affairs until admitted to statehood.  Men had to hold at least fifty acres to be able to vote; territorial legislators had to own at least two hundred.

But, these conservative provisions notwithstanding, upon achieving statehood the western states would have the same rights as the original thirteen.  White men could leave an eastern state for a western territory secure in the knowledge that any loss of political power would be temporary.

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NOTE:  Images of the original federal documents (Land Ordinance of 1783 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787) can be viewed at NARA's (U.S. National Archives) Our Documents webpage.  Use the Search function to locate a document.  Graphical images of original documents can be viewed online or select pages can be downloaded and printed in pdf format.  Many documents also have a transcription available for download as well.

GIS PROJECTS: <U.S. Territorial Expansion> (shows the original 13 colonies and the acquisition of territory from 1783 through 1853); <Overland Trails> (shows 9 continental trails representing the most common overland routes of westward migration in the mid-1800s including the city of origin in addition to the major canals, railroads, and cattle trails). The project descriptions include download instructions for the GIS projects.
[Click Here for a description of the US Territorial Expansion GIS Project]
[Click Here for a description of the Overland Trails GIS Project]

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2. The Rights of Indigenous Nations

Federal Policy under the Articles of Confederation

The early federal government had little sympathy or concern for indigenous peoples.  Many Indian nations within the borders of the young nation had fought against it during the American Revolution, and the nation's leaders asserted or assumed that such opposition meant that Native Americans had forfeited their lands to the victorious United States.

But those expectations collided with two realities: the new federal government was very weak and Indian nations were not disposed to simply hand over their land to the United States.

The United States dictated a series of treaties from 1784-1786 .  Representatives from several tribes signed, but Indians – with encouragement from the British in Canada – were not disposed to step aside, and the young nation lacked the ability to compel them to do so.

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Web Resource:   For a list and text of Indian Treaties visit Access Genealogy’s Indian Tribal Records webpage.  Examples of treaties during the time period 1784-1786 include Six Nations (1784), Cherokee (1785), Wyandot (1785), Choctaw (1786),  and Chickasaw (1786).

The Good Faith Clause of the Northwest Ordinance

The federal government recognized that it had to treat Indian nations with more respect and care if it wished to ensure both settlement and peace.  The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 asserted that:

"The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them."

This emphasis on fairness and justice grew under the administration of President George Washington.  Secretary of War, Henry Knox, in a letter to George Washington [web resource], struggled to articulate and to execute policies that would gain Indian land peacefully and honorably.  He and others believed that it was incumbent upon the young nation to burnish its image and reputation by acquiring land from Native Americans in an orderly and just fashion.  Like many other leaders, Knox believed that Indians would eventually blend into American society as they absorbed the fruits of Euro-American civilization.  A series of Trade and Intercourse Acts [pdf resource] regulated trade with and settlement among Indians and provided for Indian agents to abet the civilizing process – by teaching indigenous peoples how to farm, for example.  A federal factory system would ensure fair trade and encourage friendship and acculturation.

Failure

Knox's policy was based on two faulty assumptions: that Indians would gladly surrender their cultural and political autonomy once exposed to Euro-American civilization and that American settlers would patiently wait for the federal government to conclude fair treaties before invading Indian land.

The 1790s opened with a major Indian war in the Old Northwest. Early in the 1800s Tecumseh [web resource] created a large confederacy of Indian nations opposed to white settlement and acculturation who fought a long and determined series of battles against the United States.

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Map Resources:  Map posters showing the location of Indian Battles from 1521-1890: Indian Battles 1521-1700; Indian Battles 1701-1800; Indian Battles 1801-1845; Indian Battles 1846-1890; Indian Battles Poster - all years.

Some southern Indians were more willing to acculturate, but southern whites were particularly determined to settle their lands, regardless of federal law.  Time after time, the federal government or state militias responded to white invasions of Indian land by insisting that the Indians cede that land – and fighting them if they did not.

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Map Resource:  Map showing Indian Land Cessions from 1750-1890.

GIS PROJECT: The <Native Americans>ArcView GIS project includes a view that shows the major Indian Battles from 1521-1890; this data can be used to track points of conflict reflected in the westward migration of settlers and the progression of the cession of Indian lands. In addition, the project contains another view that shows the general boundaries of the major Oregon tribal groups (ca. 1850). Both views also have a data layers showing current Indian Reservations (with tribal affiliations). The project description includes download instructions for the GIS project.
[Click Here to download the Native Americans GIS Project Description]

Book Resource:  Excerpts from indigenous leaders concerning the native perceptions of the loss of land can be found in Calloway, Colin G. (ed). 1994. The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America. New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, pp. 164-178.  In particular see:
Chickasaw Chiefs Message to Congress (July 1783) – pg. 164
Joseph Brant Message to Governor Frederick Haldimand (1783) – pg. 167
Alexander McGillivray Letter to Governor Arturo O’Neill (July 10, 1785) – pg. 172
United Indian Nations Speech - Confederate Council (Nov 28 & Dec 18, 1786) – pg. 175
Henry Quaquaquid Petition to the Connecticut State Assembly (May 1789) – pg. 178

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3. Jefferson and the West

Nature's Nation

Like many prominent patriots, Thomas Jefferson [graphic resource] believed in American exceptionalism, that the thirteen colonies and then the United States were more virtuous and vigorous than their European counterparts.

In Jefferson's case, this emphasis on America's moral superiority required considerable tolerance for ambiguity.  Jefferson, after all, was a wealthy planter and slave owner and a connoisseur of the best in European wines, literature, and other products.

Jefferson believed that America's strength and future lay not in imitating Europe, but in cultivating and drawing strength from its own soil. He repeatedly took issue with France's George Louis Leclerc de Buffon, the most respected naturalist of the day, who asserted that America's lack of impressive mammals – like its obvious lack of culture – showed its inferiority. Jefferson countered by scrambling to present Buffon with specimens of American elk, and he hoped to prove that gigantic "mastodons" (Americans had unearthed the remains of long-extinct woolly mammoths) still roamed North America.

Like other educated nationalists, Jefferson asserted that the nation's natural features, its impressive mammals and oversized landscape, bequeathed to it a special and fresh quality and strength that trumped the ancient temples and churches of Europe.

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Web Resource:  For information about the debate between Thomas Jefferson and George Louis Leclerc de Buffon visit the Academy of Natural Science Museum section (“Buffon’s American Degeneracy”).

The West and Virtue

Jefferson had very concrete reasons for embracing America's wildness and vastness.  He believed that the nation's future depended on a continuing and intense relationship with the land, particularly with farming as evidenced in his famous “yeoman farmer” statements in Notes on the State of Virginia [pdf resource].

Farming, according to Jefferson, bred virtue.  Successful farming required considerable self control and hard work.  Farmers had to be able to order their own affairs.  They were free from the oversight of others and depended on their own judgment and labor.  They reaped, literally, the fruits of their foresight and hard work or their follies and laziness.  Farming therefore bred independence and competence – in a word, virtue.

From Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (Query XIX):

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistance, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While we have land to labour then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff.

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Web Resource:  A full text transcription of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia can be found on the University of Virginia Library’s Electronic Text Center.

Virtue was a crucial quality to early patriots like Jefferson. A republic could only function if it were peopled with persons of great virtue, citizens who were able and willing to put aside narrow self interest in the service of a larger ideal.  Yeomen farmers were the bedrock of the republic not simply because they produced food and participated in trade. The act of farming successfully bred the very qualities that the young nation required.  It was therefore essential that as the young nation grew in population it expanded westward, so that the great majority of its citizens would continue to be men of the soil.

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4. Hamilton's Competing Vision

A Stronger Federal Government

Unlike Jefferson, who was born to wealth, Alexander Hamilton worked his way up from an illegitimate birth in the West Indies.  A key aide to General George Washington during the American Revolution, he was a leading advocate of the Constitution of 1789 and became Secretary of the Treasury in Washington's distinguished cabinet.

Hamilton favored a much stronger federal government than Jefferson and most other southerners.  One key instrument for centralizing government power would be for the federal government to assume state debts, in addition to the substantial debt already carried by the federal government.  These debts would be fully paid by government land sales, though speculators had already bought up much of the debt at a small fraction of its face value.  This plan, Hamilton reasoned, would cause influential citizens to shift their primary allegiances from state governments to the federal government, put more wealth into the hands of people who were apt to use it productively, give the Washington administration more leverage in raising taxes to pay for the debt, and establish that the new nation was fiscally sound.

Southerners, especially, opposed the plan, arguing that it rewarded (largely northern) speculators and endangered the nation's finances.  But Hamilton’s ideas narrowly prevailed in Congress.

Southern fears were inflamed further when Hamilton proposed a national bank to handle the nation's finances and to provide capital for private investment.  Southerners argued that this stretched the implied powers that the Constitution had reserved for the federal government to the breaking point.

Hamilton's Vision

Unlike Jefferson, who foresaw a nation of small farmers very unlike industrializing England, Hamilton looked to England as a model for American development.

A stronger federal government would make for a stronger nation, particularly a stronger economy.  According to Hamilton, the federal bank and higher taxes were engines of economic development.  Hamilton made this plan explicit within his 1791 Report on Manufactures [pdf resource] in which he proposed tariffs on imported European goods to both enhance federal revenues and to protect American manufactures from foreign competition.

To southerners like Jefferson, who lived in a region that did much more importing than manufacturing, this amounted to asking the South to subsidize northern industry.  Hamilton's measures were clearly calculated to make the United States more, rather than less, like England, as Jefferson believed that manufacturing would ultimately lead to urbanization and a larger working class.

Who Won?

It is often remarked that Americans have liked to think of themselves as Jeffersonians while acting like Hamiltonians, that we have pursued policies that have led to urbanization, industrialization, and the concentration of wealth and power while styling ourselves as simple agrarians.  Jefferson was in fact able to reverse some of Hamilton's policies during his presidency from 1801-1809.  He cut the size of the federal government and taxes and paid down the national debt.

But, the power of the federal government remained strong – in part because once in power Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (the presidents from 1801 to 1825) were less wary of federal power, but also because the Supreme Court emerged as a powerful branch of the federal government that often upheld federal power.  In 1816, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that it could overturn the decisions of state courts.  Three years later, in McCulloch v. Maryland [pdf resource] it ruled that the federal government could charter a national bank, a decision that established that the Constitution granted the federal government substantial implied powers, powers that the Constitution did not explicitly grant but that could be exercised nonetheless.

Meanwhile, improved roads – including one funded by the federal government – and steamboats had significantly improved transportation by 1820, which in turn spurred manufacturing and commerce.  Canals and then railroads and the application of steam to manufacturing would soon transform parts of the United States into what Hamilton had hoped for and Jefferson had feared.

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5. The Louisiana Purchase

Jefferson's Justification

As Jefferson had long argued that the federal government should only exercise powers explicitly granted by the Constitution, his purchase of the vast Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 seemed contradictory.  The Constitution granted the federal government no such explicit power.  Jefferson drafted a Constitutional Amendment [pdf resource] to deal with this purchase.

Jefferson, whose pragmatism often undercut his principles, felt that two conditions justified the sale as evidenced in a Letter to James Monroe [pdf resource], special envoy to France.  First, as we have seen, it was essential for the nation's long-term economic, political, and moral health that it expand westward so that a majority of its populace could continue, long into the future, as farmers.  Second, the presence of the Spanish to the South and the British to the North endangered the nation's control of its present western borders, including navigation of the Mississippi River, the West's major transportation artery.  France's willingness to part with the western drainage of the Mississippi River for a modest price simply constituted an unexpected windfall too glorious to pass up.

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Map Resource:  Map of U.S. Territorial Acquisitions (1783-1853), including the Louisiana Purchase.

Reactions

Jefferson's enemies had a field day pointing out that the great champion of strict construction and limited executive power had engaged in the boldest act of executive initiative in the young nation's history.  But the Federalist Party lacked the political clout to stop the purchase.

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PDF Resource:  Political Cartoons depicting Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase.

Spain had opposed an expedition that Jefferson had already proposed to send up the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and it certainly opposed the French sale of the Louisiana territory to the United States.  The territory's western borders were vague and might impinge on their own claims.  Spain had just transferred Louisiana to France with the understanding that France would not sell it to the United States, a nation that Spain feared would soon be encroaching on Northern Mexico.  Indeed, Spain dispatched military parties to halt the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

For further information about Spain’s reaction to the Louisiana Purchase, see the following:

Article Resources: 
Brooks, Phillip C.  1940.  Spain’s farewell to Louisiana.  Mississippi Valley Historical Review 27(1): 29-42.  Available in electronic form at JSTOR.
Sloane, William M.  1904.  The world aspects of the Louisiana Purchase.  American Historical Review 9(3): 507-521.  Available in electronic form at JSTOR.

Web Resource:  A good synopsis of the Spanish reaction to the LA Purchase can be found on the “Discovering Lewis & Clark” website. 

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6. The Lewis & Clark Expedition

The Purpose of the Expedition

Jefferson had been planning what would become the Lewis and Clark Expedition even before the Louisiana Purchase.  Jefferson tried to pass the endeavor off as merely a "literary" expedition to the Spanish.  But in his request to Congress to fund the expedition – made before the Louisiana Purchase – he stressed the importance of commerce with the Indians.

The subsequent purchase of Louisiana of course smoothed Jefferson's path in getting the expedition approved.  Now it would be moving largely through land owned by the United States.

Jefferson's instructions to Meriwether Lewis [pdf resource], who had served as his secretary, emphasized the importance of finding a convenient water passage across the western lands (the long-sought Northwest Passage) "for the purposes of commerce."  He also urged Lewis to establish political and economic ties with Native Americans.

Jefferson also wanted Lewis to gather a great deal of scientific information, to bring back maps and descriptions and samples of plants and animals, perhaps even proof that mastodons still inhabited the Unites States.  But even these scientific goals served national interests, for the expedition's maps and journals would describe the vast area's economic potential.

Execution

In many respects, the Expedition was a great success.  Only one member died, and only one armed conflict erupted with Native Americans.  The expedition returned with a massive amount of detailed descriptions of western lands, peoples, flora, and fauna.

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Map Resource:  Map showing the Lewis & Clark Trail through WA and OR.

PDF Resource:  Biographies and Portraits of Lewis and Clark.

Web Resource:  A complete transcript with notations (in web-interactive or rtf format) of the Journals of Lewis & Clark can be accessed via the University of Virginia’s American Studies Hypertext page.

But the expedition failed to deliver what Jefferson most desired.  There was, of course, no Northwest Passage for Lewis and Clark to discover.  Their route across the Bitterroot Mountains was far from the easiest way to cross the Continental Divide.  Despite distributing many gifts, including peace medals [graphic resource] bearing Jefferson's likeness, the expedition generally failed in convincing Indian nations to abandon British and French traders for American ones.  In some instances – with the Teton of the Missouri River and the Blackfeet in Northern Montana – the expedition unwittingly upset local political relations and prompted long-lasting enmity toward the United States.  The Nez Perce responded much more favorably to the expedition after Lewis and Clark promised trade goods and diplomacy that would shield the Nez Perce from their Indian enemies.  But those promises largely failed to materialize.

Consequences

Despite these “failures,” the Lewis and Clark Expedition stimulated much interest in the far West. Some American fur companies, including John Jacob Astor's, were prompted to expand their operations westward.  Several members of the expedition, particularly William Clark, would play important roles in the history of the West.  The expedition filled in much blank space that had existed in white people's knowledge of the West.

But it would be a mistake to ascribe all or even most of western development to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  White traders were already active in most of the territory that they passed through.  Indeed, Comcomly, the leading Chinook chief in the vicinity of Fort Clatsop, Oregon, thought the expedition too poor in trade goods to bother visiting.  Nor is it accurate to credit the expedition with settling the Oregon Country – nearly four decades passed before the first large wagon trains arrived in the Willamette Valley.  The expedition was one of several events that American diplomats cited in negotiating the boundary with England in 1846.  But the location of that boundary had much more to do with declining British fur trade and expanding American settlement than with the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

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Web resources for the Lewis & Clark Expedition:

Lewis & Clark Virtual Exhibition. A virtual exhibition from the Newberry Library Collection.

"Discovering Lewis & Clark" is a fun interactive internet source for information about the expedition.

PBS "The Journey of the Corps of Discovery" is full of information, interactive maps, and other resources including lesson plans and activities.

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7. Bibliography

Appleman, Roy E.   1996.  Lewis and Clark: The Route 160 Years After.  Pacific Northwest Quarterly.

Billington, Ray A.  2001  Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, 6th edition. University of New Mexico Press. 

Chernow, Ron.  2004.  Alexander Hamilton.  Penguin Books. 

Cunningham, Noble E.  2000.  Jefferson vs. Hamilton: Confrontations that Shaped a Nation.  Bedford/St. Martin's Press. 

Ellis, Joseph J.  1998.  American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.  Vintage (Reprint). 

Hawke, David Freeman.  2003.  Those Tremendous Mountains: The Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  W. W. Norton & Company (reissue edition). 

Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher.  2000. The American West: A New Interpretive History.  Yale University Press. 

Horsman, Reginald.  1998.  Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812.  University of Oklahoma Press (reprint edition). 

Jackson, Donald.  1981.  Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains: The Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  University of Illinois Press. 

Josephy, Jr., Alvin M.  1997.  The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest.  Mariner Books. 

Miller, John C.  1998.  The Federalist Era, 1789-1801.  Waveland Press (reprint edition). 

Prucha, Francis Paul.  1986.  The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians.  University of Nebraska Press (abridged edition). 

Rohrbough, Malcolm J.  2005.  The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands.  Oxford University Press. 

Ronda, James P.  2002.  Lewis and Clark among the Indians.  University of Nebraska Press (bicentennial edition).    

Semonin, Paul.  2000.  American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity.  New York University Press. 

Smelser, Marshall.  1992.  The Democratic Republic, 1801-1815.  Waveland Press (reprint edition).

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