God's Country: The Northwest Territorial Ordinance, the Creation of Midwestern Anti-Slavery Sentiment, and the Coming of the Civil War

The creation of the Midwest as a region owes much to the Northwest Territorial Ordinance. The fusion of anti-slavery with religious liberty in that document, and the adherence by the states that emerged from the territory, both by their people and their state constitutions, to those principles crafted a place radically different from by the Northeast and South. Sure of their own exceptionalism and confident that they were the true heirs of the Founders, Midwesterners felt empowered to transform the nation with the coming of the Civil War.