Northwest Ordinance Of 1787 Quotes

Fully fifteen years after his father’s success in championing passage of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance abolishing slavery in the territory, he had carried the same banner of abolition and with success.

It was an act of wholehearted fortitude and the result was never to be forgotten. “It cost me every effort I was capable of making,” he wrote, “and it passed by a majority of one vote only.” Fully fifteen years after his father’s success in championing passage of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance abolishing slavery in the territory, he had carried the same banner of abolition and with success.

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.