Legislation · 1787
Adopted by the Confederation Congress while the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, the ordinance created a government for the territory northwest of the Ohio River and a path by which three to five new states would join the Union on an equal footing with the original states. It guaranteed settlers religious freedom, habeas corpus and trial by jury, encouraged schools, and prohibited slavery in the territory, while providing for the return of people who escaped from bondage.
From the library
To settle a bitter sectional dispute over Missouri’s bid for statehood, Congress paired the admission of Missouri as a slave state with that of Maine as a free state, preserving the balance between free and slave states in the Senate. The act of March 6, 1820, also prohibited slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′, outside Missouri itself.
Sponsored by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and signed by President Franklin Pierce, the act organized the Kansas and Nebraska territories and left the question of slavery there to their settlers under the principle of “popular sovereignty.” It declared the Missouri Compromise’s prohibition of slavery north of 36°30′ “inoperative and void.”
In a 7–2 decision, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney held that Black Americans descended from enslaved Africans, whether enslaved or free, were not and could not become citizens of the United States and so could not sue in federal court. The Court further held that Congress lacked power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories and that the Missouri Compromise’s restriction was unconstitutional; Justices John McLean and Benjamin R. Curtis dissented.