Talk:Ohio Country

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Did a complete rewrite of this page, which was based on entirely false information. There was never an organized territory called the Ohio Territory, except in that the particular name was used as synonymous with the Northwest Territory. When the the NW was divided in 1800, the western half became the new Indiana Territory but the eastern half was still the "Territory North and West of the Ohio River", with the same territorial government.

The broadest use of the term "Ohio Territory" is in the colloquial sense, refering the area of the Northwest Territory, even before the Revolutionary War. Being so, I rewrote the article to reflect that. It overlaps some with the NW Terr and NW Ordinance articles, some of the material of which can perhaps be removed to make those articles more specific to those subjects. --- Decumanus | Talk 07:47, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was wondering about this. I had actually forgotten about this article until you started editing it yesterday. I started to look into it, but got distracted. Glad to see you followed up. Bkonrad | Talk 13:04, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Okay, knowing what we know--er, what you know :)--do you think Ohio belongs on List of U.S. states that were never territories? I'm not saying it does or doesn't, just asking. jengod 23:55, Mar 25, 2004 (UTC)

I knew this would come up! I don't know the answer but I tend to think that it shouldn't be on the list, because as far I can know, the Northwest Territory ceased to exist after the creation of the state of Ohio, with the rest of the Northwest Territory being given to the Indiana Territory. So it seems like basically the Northwest Territory "became" the State of Ohio. I use quotation marks here because the whole idea of a territory "becoming" a state is something I don't quite understand fully at this point, from a legal standpoint. Technically they are two different things. But it would be pedantic not to say that certain territories "were admitted" as states, because the government was basically the same in persons and form. Typically the first act of a new state legislature was to enact all of the laws of the previous territory.

But obviously there had to be some continuity from a legal standpoint. Obvouisly prisoners held in territorial prisons were not set free on ex post facto grounds because they had technically not violated any laws of the newly created state, etc.

Again all this reflects my current fuzzy understanding of this which I hope to correct. Perhaps these were the very things addressed by Congress in legislation such as the Enabling Act and were specifically in Statehood articles passed by Congress.

So I guess the question you asked is equivalent to asking: should Arthur St. Clair be considered a territorial governor of Ohio the way other territorial governors are listed on the lists of territorial governors of states. I think the answer is "yes" but I'm not sure. -- Decumanus | Talk 00:22, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh! Lord Dunsmore's War! Another little war! How superexciting!! (me >> hell) :) Anyway...I tend to agree with you re Ohio/NW. Stupid territories. ;)jengod 00:29, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

Sheesh. I had rewrite this article again after doing a little more research and discovering I had made a huge assumption that the term Ohio Territory/Ohio Country applying to the entire region that became the Northwest Territory. What an idiot I am! Well at had enough gas in the tank tonight to modify the article enough (preserving as much as possible you guyses fantastic contributions) so that it is more factually correct and figured a map was in order, based on one of the links I found from an Ohio historical web site [1].

This actually redeems a little bit the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of Francis Marion in my eyes, the scene when the evil British officer puts his finger on a map and says greedily "Tell me about...Ohio", implying that he's going to have a big estate there after they win the war. It was called that before the Revolution and there was a lot of early enterprising going on there just like the movie implied. Go figure. Mel was right. -- Decumanus | Talk 07:19, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)