But the authorship of this or of that clause is of much less importance than the scope of the document as a working plan of government.

As such the Ordinance of 1787 owes much to Jefferson's Ordinance of 1784.

Under the new ordinance a governor and three judges were to be appointed who, along with their other functions, were to select such laws as they thought best from the statute books of all the States.

The second stage in self-government would be reached when the population contained five thousand free men of age; then the people were to have a representative legislature with the usual privilege of making their own laws.

Provision was made for dividing the whole region northwest of the Ohio River into three or four or five districts and the final stage of government was reached when any one of these districts had sixty thousand free inhabitants, for it might then establish its own constitution and government and be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States.
The last-named provision for admission into the Union, being in the nature of a promise for the future, was not included in the body of the document providing for the government, but was contained in certain "articles of compact, between the original States and the people and States in the said territory, [which should] forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent." These articles of compact were in general similar to the bills of rights in State Constitutions; but one of them found no parallel in any State Constitution.