This new edition of Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance, originally published in 1987, is an authoritative account of the origins and early history of American policy for territorial government, land distribution, and the admission of new states in the Old Northwest. In a new preface, Peter S. Onuf reviews important new work on the progress of colonization and territorial expansion in the rising American empire.

Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, emeritus, at the University of Virginia. He is the author and co-author of fourteen books, including, with Annette Gordon-Reed, Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.