Episode 2 of 2

Criticism of the 1784 Ordinance

When: 1785–1786
Where: United States political circles
Part of: Passage of the Ordinance of Governance by the US Congress

George Washington and James Monroe criticized the ordinance, and other politicians questioned its plan for organizing new state governments.

The 1784 ordinance was criticized by George Washington in 1785 and James Monroe in 1786. Other politicians questioned the 1784 ordinance's plan for organizing governments in new states and worried that the new states' relatively small sizes would undermine the original states' power in Congress.

Sources

Northwest Ordinance Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-19

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.