Northwest Ordinance

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School provides a transcription of the Northwest Ordinance. This created a legal structure within which the inhabitants of lands outside of the 13 original states could operate, outlined the steps to form territorial governments and the means by which new states could be admitted to the Union. See also: Northwest Ordinance (Library of Congress),  Northwest Ordinance (1787) (Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives) and 1 Stat. 50 "An Act to provide for the Government of the Territory Northwest of the river Ohio" (Library of Congress).