Although the original Northwest Ordinances only covered a portion of the continental US, the survey system would be reproduced in future legislation throughout the nineteenth century. As the United States expanded west through bloodshed, treaty, and commercial dealings (including the 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France of land to the west of the Mississippi, a cherished ambition of Jefferson’s that almost doubled the size of the country overnight), the grid was repeated with methodical intent. Over the next two centuries, it would come to encompass more than 1.8 billion acres of land, covering
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