The First Colony of the United States

No, not the first colony IN the United States, the first colony OF the United States:  The Old Northwest Territory.  I never thought about that before, the fact that America had colonies of it's own...

THAT'S a big chunk of land!  Seems to be bordered by all the Great Lakes...

The Treaty of Paris in 1763, ending the French and Indian War against the British colonies in North America, granted all French territory on the "mainland" of North America to either the British or Spanish. The French and Indian War was the war George Washington cut his teeth on, so to speak.  He got his hinny whupped (as we say in Texas) by the French at Fort Duquesne in Ohio, but he learned from his mistakes, and we know the rest of that story...

In the Treaty of Paris, the British received Quebec and the Ohio Valley, essentially extending their northwest boundary from the northwest angle of Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi River.  (Itasca was the western boundary!  THAT's why it was important to find the source!  And we found it!  Cool!)

That's the little frozen lake behind the marker that the Mississippi flows from.

The port of New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi were ceded to Spain in the Treaty of Paris for their efforts as a British ally. 

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, signed July 13, 1787 by the Confederation Congress (the United States Constitution wasn't signed until September 17th, 1787, so there wasn't "Congress" as we know it today)...  The Northwest Ordinance established a government for the Northwest Territory, outlined the process for admitting a new state to the Union, and guaranteed that newly created states would be equal to the original thirteen states.  It was officially titled "An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North West of the River Ohio."

Thus began the westward expansion of America.  That's good because Granpa and I can now go all over and never cross an international border!

Wow, 1787 and this Ordinance outlawed slavery in the new territories.  Congress knew even then that slavery was wrong - they just weren't sure how to get rid of it.  It took the will of the people (Abolitionists for certain) to ultimately bring it about. 

This is interesting:  The Northwest Ordinance outlawed the right of primogeniture in the Territory.  That's the right of the first born to inherit the parent's everything.  We don't think about that much in America, do we?  That's another piece of the "puzzle of reasons" folks immigrated here:  if they weren't the first born son, no matter how wealthy the parents were, they received nothing of the inheritance.  The only way they could make their way in the world was to pull themselves up by their boot straps.  The best way to do that was to come to America.

Along these same lines, the Ordinance also established the awesome principle of American colonies becoming equal in all ways with the parent State if they were ever granted statehood.  (Kind of a government abolishment of the right of colonial primogeniture.)  These things were important to our Founding Fathers because they recognized first hand the harm that it created in Europe.