Rick Moraine is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald and writes a regular column.
Have you ever wondered why the rural Midwest is laid out with 36 one-mile square lots per township? Or where does the Midwest's emphasis on public education come from? Is it coming? Or why didn't slavery take hold here? Or why were so many federal Bill of Rights protections guaranteed to the Midwest even before it was adopted into the Constitution?
no? Well, no problem. I'll say it anyway.
All of these practical and laudable attributes date back to the 1780s and stem from a series of ordinances adopted by Congress created by the Articles of Confederation during the Revolutionary War.
(Note: The “Union” of the 1780s has nothing to do with the “Union” of the South in the Civil War of the 1860s.)
The Articles of Confederation and Permanent Confederation governed the infant nation for about a decade until the Constitution was ratified in 1789. This provision created an intentionally weak central government and left most political power to the states.
This arrangement soon proved problematic, and a replacement constitution aimed to rectify the situation by creating a presidential office, a federal court system, and the right to tax the people.
But some needs couldn't wait until 1789. Among them are the Appalachian Mountains, the Ohio River, the Mississippi River, and Canada. There were very few American settlers in the area, and Congress, under the same Article, was able to organize an attack on the new hordes of “Westerners” who would surely cross the mountains now that the United States owned all the land in the West. It was recognized that unless appropriate procedures were developed, confusion would prevail. Mississippi.
The result was a quartet of ordinances that, unlike the many failures of written government, represented the nation's greatest achievements in the decade between the revolution and the creation of the constitution. Two of his stand out. The Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Ordinance of 1787 (known as the North West Ordinance).
The Land Ordinance established a standardized system by which settlers could purchase ownership of farmland in newly acquired areas. The land was now owned by the U.S. government. There were no individual titles. This ordinance established a survey system that covered more than three-quarters of the area of the continental United States, including the area that would eventually become the state of Iowa.
This ordinance provided for the official survey of the area within the Northwest Territories (now consisting of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and about one-third of Minnesota). This formed the now familiar pattern of square townships six miles on a side, each township divided into 36 sections of one square mile or 640 acres. The Land Ordinance records the first use of the terms “township” and “section” in connection with land surveying.
(Greene County is a classic example of this system, measuring 24 miles by 24 miles and containing 576 sections. Junction and Washington townships on the county's eastern border are both standard townships. Because of its size, the county has 15 townships instead of 16, but the principles remain the same.)
This arrangement was an ingenious way for the federal government to generate revenue. This provision did not allow the government to raise funds through direct taxation, so the sale of land in the area for $1 per acre became an important source of income.
Another important provision of the Land Ordinance of 1785 was the requirement that section 16 in the center of each township be set aside for the maintenance of public schools. The farm income from this tract could be used to pay for the maintenance of his town schools, which usually had nine schools in each township.
The idea of setting aside parcels of land for public education was a New England practice incorporated into the Land Ordinance of 1785 by Virginian Thomas Jefferson. The concept thus symbolically represented both the South and North of early America.
That was the Land Ordinance of 1785, which established a mechanism for selling and settling land in the West. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 focused on their government.
The Northwest Ordinance mandated the creation of a new state in the region, established a required minimum population (60,000 people), and provided for the very first state that the new state would be recognized in Congress on an equal footing with the original 13 states. We have established important provisions.
Before becoming a state, the region was governed as a territory, with detailed requirements for governing officials. But the ordinance's other purposes are just as important, perhaps even more so.
For example, the Northwest Ordinance foreshadowed several important provisions of the soon-to-be-adopted Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. The ordinance declared religious tolerance in the area, guaranteed the right to habeas corpus, prohibited excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment, and required trial by jury.
Slavery was prohibited in this region. About 80 years after the Civil War, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery throughout the United States, directly cited the Northwest Ordinance.
In retrospect, the bittersweet provisions of this ordinance dealt with the area's Indian tribes.
The utmost good faith must always be observed towards Indians. Their lands and property will never be taken away from them without their consent. and their property, rights, and liberties shall never be invaded or interfered with except in a just and lawful war authorized by Congress. But laws based on justice and humanity are enacted from time to time to prevent wrongs from being done to them, and to maintain peace and friendship with them.
If so. Within 50 years of the ordinance's adoption, virtually all tribal lands in the region had been confiscated in some form by federal and state governments, and most of the Native Americans had been expelled across the Mississippi River against the ordinance's instructions. it was done.
In Iowa and other states west of the Mississippi River, the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided a template for settlements, territorial government, and statehood well into the 19th century. Some of the provisions continued into his 20th century.
Another job that the founding fathers accomplished brilliantly.
Image above: A map of the city of Stockholm, Iowa from the 1920 Crawford County Atlas. Available from Wikimedia Commons.
