The Land Ordinance of 1787 provided what?

The Land Ordinance of 1787 was called the Northwest Ordinance. It was an act of the Congress of the Confederation. The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory as the first organized territory of the US out of the region south of the Great Lakes, north & west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. It established the precedent by which the US would expand westward across North America by the admission of new states rather than by the expansion of existing states. Also, slavery was banned in this new territory, which had the effect of making the Ohio River the boundary between free and slave territories in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi.