This was the Northwest
Order of 1787 - Created and unified the Northwest Territory, the first
organized territory of the United States, encompassing the lands on the
north side of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. This
ordinance would create the precedent of dividing and organizing the
lands to the West, and when the population of a territory reached 60,000
inhabitants or more, they could ask that this territory become a state. Another important fact of this Ordinance was that slavery was prohibited in these new states that would be created. The
Ohio River was established as the boundary between the zone of
forbidden slavery and legal slavery, which prepared everything for the
emergence of free states and slave states.
