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Northwest Territory Bill [HR-14]
July 1789
(Courtesy of the National Archives)
DHFFC Transcript: DHFFC, v.6, pg.1561
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In this act, the First
Congress adopted as its own the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, thus resolving another issue
that the Federal Convention could not: whether new states would be admitted on an equal
footing with the original thirteen. By reaffirming the statutory validity of the Northwest
Ordinance, which provided equal status for new states, the First Congress guaranteed that
all states would be absolutely equal. When it admitted Kentucky and Vermont to the Union
in 1791, Congress established the precedent that for each new southern state a northern one
would be admitted and vice versa.
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