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Statehood and Union

Statehood and Union

A History of the Northwest Ordinance

Published by: University of Notre Dame Press

EPUB
9780268105488
Published: February 2019

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

This new edition of Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance, originally published in 1987, is an authoritative account of the origins and early history of American policy for territorial government, land distribution, and the admission of new states in the Old Northwest. In a new preface, Peter S. Onuf reviews important new work on the progress of colonization and territorial expansion in the rising American empire.

Maps

Acknowledgments

Preface to the 2019 Edition

Introduction

1. Liberty, Development, and Union: Visions of the West in the 1780s

2. Squatters, Speculators, and Settlers: The Land Ordinance of 1785

3. New States in the Expanding Union: The Territorial Government Ordinances

4. From Territory to State

5. Boundary Controversies

6. Slavery and Freedom

7. From Constitution to Higher Law

Notes

Index

Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, emeritus, at the University of Virginia. He is the author and co-author of fourteen books, including, with Annette Gordon-Reed, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.

"Peter Onuf brings political and constitutional history together in Statehood and Union and illustrates the importance of the ordinance in shaping the Northwest. His work should be read by all early national historians." —Jeffrey Brown, Indiana Magazine of History

"Onuf writes intellectual history of a high order. His book is a thoughtful and provocative inquiry into a subject that is in need of a full-dress reevaluation." —Bernard Sheehan, The Journal of American History

"Onuf explains why the ordinance came to be incorporated into the trinity of icons, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as 'one of the title-deeds of American constitutional liberty' (from a speech by George F. Hoar). People living in other regions may not understand this, but a Midwesterner will find the resonance clear and unambiguous." —Carl Ubbelohde, The Annals of Iowa