William Frederick Poole

Reprinted from the North American Review of April, 1876. The author’s purpose here is to establish who was most responsible for the Ordinance of 1787; i.e. who proposed its main ideas, who framed the legislative strategy and used their personal influence to facilitate passage. Poole and other authors of similar articles on this web page seem to agree that this Ordinance was excellent legislation and had great importance both for the region and the country. Poole brings up the prohibition on slavery in the Ordinance and argues that without it, Indiana and Illinois and possibly Ohio would have been slave states, with dire consequences for the Union in the Civil War.