ought by individuals remained uncertain in the
absence of official maps and records. To meet this last situation,
Congress instituted a systematic survey of the Ohio country, laying it
out into townships, sections of 640 acres each, and quarter sections. In
every township one section of land was set aside for the support of
public schools.

=The Northwest Ordinance.=--The final problem which had to be solved
before settlement on a large scale could be begun was that of governing
the territory. Pioneers who looked with hungry eyes on the fertile
valley of the Ohio could hardly restrain their impatience. Soldiers of
the Revolution, who had been paid for their services in land warrants
entitling them to make entries in the West, called for action.

Congress answered by passing in 1787 the famous Northwest Ordinance
providing for temporary territorial government to be followed by the
creation of a popular assembly as soon as there were five thousand free
males in any district. Eventual admission to the union on an equal
footing with the original states was promised to the new territories.
Religious freedom was guaranteed. The safeguards of trial by jury,
regular judicial procedure, and _habeas corpus_ were established, in order
that the methods of civilized life might take the place of the
rough-and-ready justice of lynch law. During the course of the debate on
the Ordinance, Congress added the sixth article forbidding slavery and
involuntary servitude.

This Charter of the Northwest, so well planned by the Congress under the
Articles of Confederation, was continued in force by the first Congress
under the Constitution in 1789. The following year its essential
provisions, except the ban on slavery, were applied to the territory
south of the Ohio, ceded by North Carolina to the national government,
and in 1798 to the Mississippi territory, once held by Georgia. Thus it
was settled for all time that "the new colonies were not to be exploited
for the benefit of the parent states (any more than for the benefit of
England) but were to be autonomous and cooerdinate commonwealths." This
outcome, bitterly opposed by some Eastern leaders who feared the triumph
of Western states over the seaboard, completed the legal steps necessary
by way of preparation for the flood of settlers.

=The Land Companies, Speculators, and Western Land Tenure.=--As in the
original settlement of America, so in the opening of the West, great
companies