Territorial Government

(noun)

Is the government of a subnational entity akin to a state government.

Related Terms

Examples of Territorial Government in the following topics:

  • Territorial Government

    • The private profit motive dominated the movement westward, but the federal government played a supporting role in securing land through treaties and setting up territorial governments, with governors appointed by the president.
    • The federal government first acquired western territory from other nations or native tribes by treaty, then it sent surveyors to map and document the land.
    • With the war over, the federal government focused on improving the governance of the territories.
    • It standardized procedures and the supervision of territorial governments, taking away some local powers, and imposing much "red tape," growing the federal bureaucracy significantly.
    • Territorial governors were political appointees and beholden to Washington so they usually governed with a light hand, allowing the legislatures to deal with the local issues.

  • Incorporating Louisiana

    • Louisiana was incorporated into the Union and territorial governments were set up which later would become states.
    • Like in those regions, territorial governments were set up, in which a governor was appointed in Washington and presided over a legislature elected by settlers.
    • A territory could be proclaimed when a population of 5,000 settlers had been obtained.
    • The question of slavery in the Louisiana Territory was left ambiguous in the north.
    • The Purchase was one of several territorial additions to the U.S.

  • Settlers and the West

    • The Northwest Territory had long been desired for expansion by colonists.
    • As an organic act, the ordinance created a civil government in the territory under the direct jurisdiction of the Congress.
    • Senate, had the power to appoint and remove the Governor and officers of the territory instead of Congress.
    • In the Northwest Territory, various legal and property rights were enshrined and religious tolerance was proclaimed.
    • The territories northwest and southwest of the Ohio River are depicted on this map of the early United States (1783–1803).

  • Congress and the West

    • However, the 1784 resolution did not define the mechanism by which the land would become states, or how the territories would be governed or settled before they became states.
    • The Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Northwest Territory, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 13, 1787, until March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio.
    • Other states, such as Maryland, refused to ratify the Articles of Confederation so long as these states were allowed to keep their western territory, fearing that those states could continue to grow and tip the balance of power in their favor under the proposed system of federal government.
    • As a concession in order to obtain ratification, these states ceded their claims on the territory to the federal government, resulting in the majority of the territory became public land owned by the U.S. government .
    • Evaluate government land policies that shaped the political and economic environment of America after the Revolution

  • The Mexican Borderlands

    • The resulting dispute among Texas, the federal government, and New Mexico Territory was resolved in the Compromise of 1850.
    • This resulted in much of these lands becoming parts of other territories of the United States in exchange for the U.S. federal government assuming the Texas Republic's $10 million in debt.
    • The Mexican government regarded this action as a violation of its sovereignty.
    • The failed Texas Santa Fe Expedition of 1841 was its only attempt to take that territory.
    • El Paso was only taken under Texas governance by Robert Neighbors in 1850, over four years after annexation.

  • Land Ordinances and the Northwest Territory

    • However, the ordinance did not define the mechanism by which the land would become states, or how the territories would be governed or settled before they became states.
    • Further, the prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.
    • The passage of the ordinance, which ceded all unsettled lands to the federal government, followed the relinquishing of all such claims over the territory by the states.
    • The first state created from the Northwest Territory was Ohio, in 1803, at which time the remainder was renamed Indiana Territory.
    • A significant portion of Minnesota was also part of the territory.

  • Wilmot Proviso

    • The Wilmot Proviso would have banned slavery in any territory acquired from the Mexican War.
    • The Wilmot Proviso, as proposed by Congressman David Wilmot, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from the Mexican War.
    • The result was a violent sectarian debate in Congress that forced political leaders to make numerous compromises to determine the slave issue in the newly acquired U.S. territories.
    • Calhoun, Southern slaveholders claimed that the federal government had no right to curtail the spread of slavery into any new territories, claiming that it was each individual state’s right under the principle of state sovereignty to determine whether or not its territory would be free or permit slavery.
    • The Wilmot Proviso was killed in the Senate, but the debate it sparked revealed a fundamental divide between Northern and Southern politicians, which translated to a national sectarian split over the governance of new territories.

  • Land Policy under the Confederation

    • However, there was no defined mechanism by which the land would become states, or means to how the territories would be governed or settled before they became states.
    • It established the precedent by which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward across North America with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation.
    • The prohibition of slavery in the northwest territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as a boundary between free and slave-holding territories in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.
    • In the Northwest Territory, various legal and property rights were enshrined and religious tolerance was proclaimed.
    • Illustration of the state cessions that eventually allowed for the creation of the territories north and west of the River Ohio.

  • Land Policy

    • This territory was intended for a southern transcontinental railroad.
    • Oregon Country was then later divided into U.S. territories and states.
    • All four of these areas were ruled under United States Military Government for extended periods of time.
    • A government map, probably created in the mid-20th century, that depicts a simplified history of territorial acquisitions within the continental United States
    • Name several key territorial acquisitions in the early history of the American republic

  • The Breakdown of Sectional Balance

    • In 1836, a group of American-born Texans led a revolution against Santa Ana's Mexican government and declared Texas an "independent republic," while simultaneously applying to the United States for annexation.Mexico, torn apart by civil war, refused to recognize Texan independence and threatened war with the United States if annexation occurred.
    • In 1840, territorial expansion became a priority for President James Polk, as Texas was annexed shortly before his inauguration.Believing in the "Manifest Destiny" of the United States to expand to the Pacific, Polk supported "Texans in their efforts to seize all land to the Rio Grande and claim the river as their southern and western border, in spite of the fact that Mexico claimed the Nueces River as the Texan border.With the annexation of Texas and the growing conflict between Mexicans and Texans, the Mexican government broke diplomatic relations with the United States.
    • However, the Mexican War was the source of much political conflict in the 1840s and compounded the sectional divides that already split national political coalitions.Most Whigs in the North and South opposed the war, while most Democrats supported it.In particular, Southern Democrats who were animated by the belief in Manifest Destiny enthusiastically supported the war in hope of adding slave-owning territory to the South (and thereby maintaining a political-balance of power with the faster-growing North).For most Whigs, the Mexican War represented little more than a weak justification by southern politicians for the aggressive expansion of slavery.However, Polk and southern Democrats continued to justify the war using arguments of Manifest Destiny and claiming that territory ceded from Mexico would repay the United States for several hefty loans given to the Mexican government during its war of independence.
    • Mexico's cession of Alta California and Nuevo México and its recognition of U.S. sovereignty over all of Texas north of the Rio Grande formalized the addition of 1.2 million square miles of territory to the United States, with a final territorial adjustment between Mexico and the U.S. made with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
    • Mexican territorial claims relinquished in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, depicted in white.