by a committee of which Thomas
Jefferson was chairman. This ordinance contemplated the division of the
land north of the thirty-first parallel into fourteen or sixteen States.
The settlers in these rectangular areas were not to form state
governments at once, but for their temporary government were to borrow
such constitutions as they thought best from the older States. When a
State had twenty thousand inhabitants, it might frame a permanent
constitution and send a delegate to Congress. Admission to the Union was
to be granted only when a State had as many free inhabitants as "the
least numerous of the thirteen original States." Two features of
Jefferson's report do not appear in the Ordinance of 1784; the fantastic
names which Jefferson had selected and the fifth of the fundamental
conditions which were to be a charter of compact between the old States
and the new. It is perhaps no misfortune that the names Assenisipia,
Polypotamia, Pelisipia, do not appear on the map; the article
prohibiting slavery after the year 1800 might well have been retained.

[Map: State-Making In the West 1783-1787]

More important than the Ordinance of 1784, which indeed is interesting
chiefly because it was the forerunner of the final ordinance for the
Northwest Territory, is that adopted by Congress in the following year.
The so-called Land Ordinance of 1785 provided in general for the survey
of a series of townships six miles square in the region immediately west
of Pennsylvania, and for the further division of each township into
thirty-six lots, or, as they were later styled, "sections," one mile
square. After satisfying the claims of the soldiers of the Continental
Army, Congress proposed to distribute these lands among the States, to
be sold at auction for a minimum price of one dollar an acre, reserving
certain sections in each township and one third of the mineral ore which
might be found. The sixteenth section in each township was to be set
aside for the support of education. Each purchaser was to receive with
his deed a definite description of his holding. Subsequent amendments to
the Land Ordinance made the terms of purchase somewhat easier. Instead
of making an out-and-out purchase, prospective settlers might pay one
third in cash and receive a credit of three months for the balance of
the purchase price. Yet even with these inducements only seventy-three
thousand acres had been sold to individuals down to 1788. The hazards of