Land Ordinance of 1785

LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785

The Land Ordinance of 1785 was the second of three land ordinances passed by the Confederation Congress after the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). The three ordinances, which included the Ordinance of 1784 and the Northwest Ordinance (1787), were meant to manage the lands of the Old Northwest, ceded by Great Britain at the end of the Revolution. The Treaty of Paris (1783), which established normal diplomatic relations between England and the former colonies after the Revolution, turned the area that is now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin over to the new U.S. government. In 1784 a committee led by Thomas Jefferson drew up legislation to provide for future statehood for settlers already in the area. The following year, in the Land Ordinance of 1785, Jefferson's committee established the way in which the territory would be measured and divided for sale.

The new nation was governed for the most part by the states. The relationship between the states and with the central government was defined by the Articles of Confederation. The central government was the Confederation Congress, a holdover from the Second Continental Congress which had been convened in the spring of 1775 and had coordinated the revolutionary war effort. The Articles of Confederation, ratified by the states in 1781, summarized the existing relationship between the Congress and the states.

It was an indication of the distrust with which the American people viewed central authority that the Articles of Confederation did not allow the Congress to tax either the states or individuals. As a way of keeping the nation solvent, the states that claimed western lands from the terms of their colonial charters gave up those lands to the Confederation government. The Confederation government expected to use these lands as a way of meeting governmental expenses. In order to attract land buyers, the Congress declared that these lands would be made into new states, which would enter the Union on an equal basis with the original thirteen colonies. This declaration made possible the creation of the modern United States.

The Land Ordinance created the pattern along which American public land would be divided and sold until the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. The Ordinance of 1785 ruled that the western lands north of the Ohio River would be divided by surveyors into a square grid. Each square (called a township) measured six by six miles and was subdivided into thirty-six one-mile-square sections. Each section (measuring 640 acres) could then be further divided, usually into half, quarter, eighth, or sixteenth-section lots of 320, 160, 80, or 40 acres. Certain sections had restrictions placed on their sales; for instance, money from the sixteenth section of every township was to be set aside to fund public schools in the township. The first territorial survey took place in what is now southeastern Ohio, and it measured land that stretched westward from Little Beaver Creek to the Tuscarawas River and southward to the Ohio River. A total of about 91 townships were created (although some of them were fractional and did not contain a full 36 sections), with about 3,276 sections comprising 2,096,640 acres of land ready for development by U.S. farmers.

Although the Land Ordinance of 1785 was conceived as a way to divide the western territory more evenly than had been the case before the Revolution, in practice it was less than fair. Congress thought that land sales in the territory would help it meet its big debts left over from the war. As a result, land sales were aimed at wealthy purchasers rather than the poorest farmers, who were most in need of land on which to settle. Until 1841 the government also required that public land be offered at auction where syndicates of land speculators usually snatched it up before it could be sold to private individuals. Congress set the minimum amount of land that could be purchased at one section—640 acres—and the purchase price at one dollar per acre. Small purchases on credit were not allowed. The $640 minimum purchase placed the cost of western lands far outside the budget of most U.S. citizens. Most of the lands went instead to wealthy land speculators, who were also given the option of buying on credit. The speculators bought lands from the government, divided them up, and then resold them to small farmers at a profit.

An interesting sidelight to the Ordinances was the way that they steered the political culture of the nation. The third Ordinance, passed in 1787, stipulated that future inhabitants would be guaranteed a "bill of rights" guaranteeing freedom of religion and the right to a jury trial. It also prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River, although this applied to the future and did not contemplate the freeing of slaves that were already held in the Old Northwest Territory. The ordinance also contained provisions for the return of escaped slaves.

See also: Thomas Jefferson, Old Northwest, Northwest Ordinance

FURTHER READING

Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. Western Lands and the American Revolution. New York: Russell and Russell, Inc., 1959.

Clawson, Marion. The Federal Lands Revisited. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

Gates, Paul W. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC: Wm. W. Gaunt and Sons, 1968.

Morris, Richard B. The Forging of the Union, 1781– 1789. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.

Onuf, Peter S. Statehood and Union: The Northwest Ordinance. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Rohrbough, Malcolm. The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.