What was the purpose of the Northwest Ordinance?

• A. It divided land into township and outlined a process for statehood.
• B. It divided land into counties and set up local courts.
• C. It established a national currency for new territories.
• D. It banned slavery in all new territories.

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is how new lands were organized and brought into the Union as states. The Northwest Ordinance set up a framework for governing the Northwest Territory and created a clear path for how a territory could become a state. It specifically organized the land so settlers could move in and build a society, and it laid out the steps a territory had to follow to draft a constitution and apply for statehood, with admission to statehood once certain conditions were met. This combination—structuring the land into an organized grid for settlement and establishing the process for admitting new states—is what makes that answer the best choice.

For context, the ordinance covered the Northwest Territory (roughly today’s Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota) and also included protections for rights and a prohibition on slavery in that territory, though its central purpose was about organization and statehood. The other options describe actions that aren’t the core aim of this ordinance: it didn’t create a national currency, set up local counties and courts, or blanket-ban slavery in all new territories.