The Northwest Ordinance provided a clearly defined process by which the western lands would, in several stages, eventually be “formed into distinct republican States.” The historian Daniel Boorstin called it “the add-a-state plan.” It ensured that the western lands would not be held as permanent colonial dependencies but would gradually enter the Union on terms exactly equal to those the already existing states enjoyed. The result would be a steadily growing country, not an empire, and a union that grew more and more imbued with a spirit of national unity.
