#Northwest Territory

[gordopickett]

Behind-the-scenes of Territory before the muster. 🥰🧸🤠

@ilovemendo @lacontroller1991 @tavners

[gravitascivics]

OH, OHIO

One might argue that a chief challenging reality to the values and aims of federalist thinking is bigness.  If to be federated means a populous shares a sense of partnership, then large social/political arrangements undermine the supposed interpersonal requisites that such a sense would intuitively demand.  One is more apt to federate with others who see the world through similar lenses, and geographic settings would affect the level of “usness” one would presuppose to be necessary.

          In retrospect, probably from the beginnings of the American republic, its fate was sown-in in the treaty with Great Britain to end the Revolutionary War.  Mostly through the American minister, John Adams, the resulting treaty with Great Britain ceded the American nation just about all of the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River.  Of particular interest to this posting is the expansion of land north of the Ohio River or what would become to be known as the Northwest Territory.

          A nation that didn’t even exist before the war was now a significantly large one.  And while on paper that seemed just about unprecedented, it left that nation with a demanding challenge – how does one extend control over that vast expanse?  And here, what would be considered as an added challenge, an extended post-war economic depression, turned out to be a motivator for people to behave in just the way this expansion challenge needed them to behave.

          Here is what the historian, David McCullough, describes took place:

Unprecedented financial panic had gripped the new nation since the end of the Revolutionary War.  The resources and credit of the government were exhausted.  Money, in the form of scrip issued by the government, was nearly worthless.  The scrip the veterans received as compensation for their service was worth no more than ten cents on the dollar.  Trade was at a standstill.  In Massachusetts the situation was worst of all.  Farmers were being imprisoned for debt.  Only a few months earlier, an armed rebellion led by poor Massachusetts farmer and war veteran named Daniel Shays had to be put down by a force of loyal militia commanded by General Tupper.

            As it was, the severe economic depression that followed the war would last longer even than the war.  But out west now there was land to be as never imagined – vast land, rich land where there was “no end to the beauty and plenty” – that could be made available to veterans at a bargain price in compensation for their service.  West was opportunity.  West was the future.[1]

And this opportunity and how it was exploited portrays a number of the attributes of the prevailing construct among the American population having to do with governance and politics.

          As this blog has argued, that construct can be given the name parochial/traditional federalism.  Yes, it ascribed to sustaining a federated populous but mostly only among the nation’s Western European descendants (including the recent immigrants from that area).  It excluded blacks and indigenous peoples.  While indigenous people’s rights were mostly neglected in the process by which the Northwest Territory was incorporated into the American system, there was an element of the process that addressed the rights of blacks.

          And this concern was also extended to other demographic classifications.  McCullough explains:

It was intended that this ordinance, now called the Northwest Ordinance, should stipulate that in the whole of the territory there would be absolute freedom of religion and particular emphasis on education, matters New Englanders considered fundamental to a just and admirable society.

Most importantly, there was to be no slavery.  In the plan for the creation of a new state northwest of the Ohio River, the proposition put forth by Rufus Putnam [war hero who led the Ohio Company of Associates] and others at the time of the Newburgh Resolution, total exclusion of slavery was an essential.

As would be observed by historians long afterward, the Northwest Ordinance was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life.[2]

And a couple of points should be emphasized.  One, this area would initially be inhabited by migrating New Englanders.  And two, various states would eventually be formed in this area and all of them were organized and developed under a culturally federalist mind set.

          The New England base was to be highly Calvinist and as such highly based on covenantal thinking in the formulation of political arrangements.  As the political scientist, Daniel Elazar, points out, the northern stretch of states as one moves from east to west in the US can be considered an extension of New England’s moralistic political subculture. 

That is, it highlights the moral bases of governance.  That view more specifically emphasizes the interests of a commonwealth, that governments are to advance the public interests, that the polities are to have very low tolerance of corruption, and that citizens have a duty to participate in politics.[3]  And these characteristics became common among the New England colonies and then states from the time of their earliest settlement and extended westward among the northernmost layer of states.

As for the landmass in question, it is sufficient to list the states that eventually were formed in this territory.  They are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  Significant shoreline on the Great Lakes would prove to be of economic advantage to these states.  This became particularly true with the building of the Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, and opened trade lanes out to the Atlantic Ocean via the port of New York.

Of course, these developments were done with concerns over the “Indian menace.”  Among the indigenous peoples a certain belief prevailed, that “considered the Ohio country their rightful, God-granted domain.”[4]  This aspect of the American expansion – of its parochial character – deserves its own separate analysis.

[1] David McCullough, The Pioneers:  The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West (New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster, 2019), 8.  Historical claims in this posting rely on this source.

[2] Ibid., 12.

[3] “Explaining Policy Difference Using Political Culture,” West Texas A&M University, n.d., accessed January 27, 2024, URL:  https://www.google.com/search?q=elazar+moralistic+political+culture&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=elazar%27s+moralistic&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgCECEYqwIyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgcIAhAhGKsCMgcIAxAhGKsCMgcIBBAhGKsC0gEJMTQxMThqMGo5qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.  

[4] McCullough, The Pioneers, 7.

[mx-xcitement]

i was inspired by my last rb.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Joshua says when he first arrived at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre in November 2023, he was skeptical about its therapeutic community model. “I questioned everything and I was finding myself trying to change them, trying to change the program … and I wasn’t getting anywhere,” he said. Yet Joshua recalls telling himself as he later walked out of the Hay River facility: “Wow, here I was so-and-so months ago, saying that I was going to change this place. And actually, the program changed me.” Joshua, not his real name, spent nearly eight months at the facility in Hay River, which he said had a profound impact on his life. Cabin Radio has agreed to protect his identity. After being released, Joshua said he began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, reconnected with his family and is now completing an addiction recovery program in Ontario.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[vintagecamping]

True wilderness.

Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territories

Canada

1989

[inatungulates]

Barren-ground caribou Rangifer arcticus arcticus

Observed by catwin, CC BY-NC

[have-you-seen-this-animal]

here have some more - pika - mottled cup moth caterpillar - fruit piercing moth caterpillar - tortoise beetle - empusa fasciata - australian prowfish - chistmas tree worm - tiger butterfly sea slug - phyllodesmium serratum - skeleton panda sea squirt - violet boxer shrimp - harlequin shrimp - telescopefish - pygmy seahorse

Thank you! I'll start at the top and go from there, if I've done one too recently I'll skip.

Photos thanks to caiawatha & sydcannings on iNaturalist!

[humanoidhistory]

Radar station at Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada, circa 1960. (CCA)

[searchsystem]

Gregor Sailer / The Polar Silk Road – North Warning System, Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada / Photography / 2020

[johntorrington]

this is one of my fav tweets of all time but one part of it haunts me so i need to know:

[sammaggs]

3x01 Burning Down the House | Territorial

It’s summer in the Territories and that means things just above the 60th parallel have thawed—including Benton Fraser.

[nakamopapina]

Tried drawing in a bit of realism on Freeform, I think . (I haven’t really practiced with realism, so I know it’s not the best)

Drew Northwest and Sask and I was starting Bertie and Newfoundland. (Not sure if I’ll finish those two though)

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Northwest Territories, Canada

Inuvialuit herders move Canada’s last free-range herd of reindeer, numbering around 4,000, to the animals’ calving grounds. The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation took full ownership of the herd in 2021 with a goal of growing a sustainable food source.

PHOTOGRAPH BY KATIE ORLINSKY

[acetechne]

in true canadian fashion: sorry i'm late

although, in some ways, i'm actually early. You know what I realized doing this ambitious painting? this year is going to be the 15th anniversary of IAMP.

The call for auditions was uploaded September 22, 2009, and if I recall correctly my audition as artist and VA was accepted around October or November of that same year. I've grown a lot as an artist and as a person in that long time and for some weird reason I just can't let these guys go.

anyway, thanks for everyone who participated in the roulette, I know it doesn't seem like a big deal but I really struggle drawing all of these guys without losing steam. it really helped! especially since I don't do a lot of gouache work and I second guessed myself a lot. It warms my heart a little to see you guys engaged in this silly game.

what else is there to say. oh yeah, I put two types of maple leafs. the stereotypical sugar maple is in the upper right of course, but I also put a manitoba maple in the lower left because that's the kind of maple I'm most familar with where I'm from. it's long been my mission to bring the western rep in whatever I do, so it's kind of my love letter signature to my own constantly changing understanding of Who Am I and Where Am I From.

anyway. enjoy :) i enjoyed making it. thanks to ctcsherry for creating these guys

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Clad in a crisp white dress shirt, Wilbert Antoine, 77, puts the finishing touches on a vest he made.

"It's exhilarating," said Antoine, beaming with pride about his first sewing project.

His thoughts linger on his mother, a master seamstress who made her children moccasins and mitts before they left to residential school.

"It all got taken away," said Antoine. "I'm very, very humbled and grateful to be able to do the things that my mom had made for me."

Antoine is a member of Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation in Fort Simpson, N.W.T. He's taking part in a sewing workshop for men — a first for the community. [...]

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[rabbitcruiser]

In the North

What do you think about my pic?