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Co-organizers:
- Christopher McKnight Nichols – Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies and Professor of History, The Ohio State University
- María Hammack, Assistant Professor of African American History, The Ohio State University
On the Ordinance, the Conference, and Project:
The Northwest Ordinance, adopted on July 13, 1787, by the Confederation Congress, was a crucial political instrument arguably as foundational to the development of the United States as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In stipulating the terms of the eventual statehood for the territories northwest of the Ohio River and establishing the conditions for the continued political conflicts over slavery that would later culminate in the Civil War, the Ordinance was nothing less than a blueprint for the nation. It embodied many of the country’s early ideological, legal, and material strengths, as well as its central contradictions, including the free/unfree divide and Indigenous sovereignty ramifications; questions of progress, expansion, and their requisite labor demands; and the troubled relations with indigenous peoples and those from a wide range of nations and backgrounds.
Despite the Ordinance’s major impacts on development of the Early Republic and enduring legacies, it has been the subject of modest historical attention, particularly in recent years. This conference provides a much-needed reassessment in the context of the nation’s semi quincentennial. This conference, a partnership of many entities at The Ohio State, led by the Ohio State Initiative for America250 and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, later joined by the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, along with the Ohio Commission for the 250th America250-Ohio, the Ohio History Connection, and Ohio Humanities, aims to better understand how the Ordinance influenced all facets of American life and experience by renewing scholarly discourse on complicated questions around the Ordinance as a blueprint for the nation. Bringing together top scholars and thinkers, we hope to shine a bright light on the history of the Ordinance. The conference’s panels and presentations will bring the best insights of history to bear on the history and continuing legacy and impact of the Northwest Ordinance. Among the results we hope for will be a path-breaking book intended for wider audiences and a booklet focused on the Ordinance for teachers, students, and the broader public.
Conference panels and presentations will focus on encounters, people and place, labor, mobility, law, education, settlement, and the economy. Specific topics relate to citizenship, justice, indentured servitude, free/unfree labor, (im)migration, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality, Constitutional law, histories of capitalism, political violence, debt and commerce, civic education, and the conceptualization of the Ordinance as a foreign relations instrument. In turn, on the second day of the conference we will focus on bringing the best of these insights into the classroom with a range of teaching workshops, curriculum and pedagogy sessions, targeted at classes from fourth grade through college.
This conference is free and open to the public. Pre-registration is requested. On-site registration will also be available.
Tentative Conference Schedule:
- 8:30AM – Registration, Coffee
- 9:00AM – Introductory Remarks
- 9:30AM – Panel 1: Blueprint for a Nation
- 11:00AM – Coffee Break
- 11:15AM – Panel 2: Labor, Gender, and Mobilities
- 12:45PM – Lunch
- 1:30PM – Panel 3: Encounters
- 3:00PM – Coffee Break
- 3:30PM – Panel 4: The Economy, Debt, Waterways, and State Formation
- 5:00PM – Reception
- 5:30PM – Dinner and Culminating Panel 5: Legacies of the Northwest Ordinance
Confirmed Panelists & Contributors
- John Bickers, Jesse Hauk Shera Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University
- Brandon Downing, Associate Professor of History, Marietta College
- Paul Finkelman, Distinguished Professor of Law, Emeritus, Albany Law School
- Francois Furstenberg, Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University
- Alexis Guilbault, Term Professor, DePaul University
- Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Professor of History & Law, Harvard University
- María Hammack, Assistant Professor of African American History, The Ohio State University
- Alisha Hines, Director of Research for the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, UCLA
- Jon Lauck, Adjunct Professor of Political Science and History, University of South Dakota; President of Midwestern History Association
- Margaret Newell, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, The Ohio State University
- Christopher McKnight Nichols, Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, and Professor of History, History Department, The Ohio State University
- Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor, Emeritus, University of Virginia
- Jonathan Quint, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan
- Jessica Roney, Associate Professor, Temple University
- Brian Schoen, Associate Professor & Associate Director, Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, The Ohio State University
- Samantha Seeley, Associate Professor of History, University of Richmond
- Susan Stearns, Assistant Professor, The University of Mississippi
- Jazma Sutton, Assistant Professor of History, Miami University (Ohio)
- Nikki Taylor, Professor of History, Howard University
- Guillaume Teasdale, Associate Professor of History, Director of Graduate Studies, Director Detroit River Border Region Digital History Project at the University of Windsor
- Ann Twitty, Associate Professor of History, Stanford University
- Gleaves Whitney, Executive Director, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
Image Credit
Citation: Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North-West of the River Ohio; 7/13/1787; Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774 - 1789; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, Record Group 360; National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
