11. Abolishment of slavery in some states preceded the Constitution
Before the United States had a President and a Supreme Court, the national government operated under the Articles of Confederation. One of the few lasting acts of the Confederation Congress, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, created the first organized territories of the United States. It incorporated the lands north and west of the Ohio River to the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi, including what became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, part of Wisconsin, and Michigan. Article 6 of the Ordinance stated, “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. The Ohio River became the symbol of the divide between slave states and free, a natural extension of the Mason-Dixon line.
History does not record who wrote the passage, though it is repeated verbatim in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which banned slavery throughout the United States. At least two members of the Confederation Congress claimed authorship, though neither at the time, and historians have largely discounted both. When the US government was formed under the Constitution in 1789, the Ordinance was affirmed by the new Congress, and the US Supreme Court affirmed it as Constitutional the same year. It was the first national act to restrict the spread of slavery in the United States, and thus laid the foundation for disputes over slavery as more territories and states joined the Union.