The Northwest Ordinance was an act passed on July 13, 1787. This law created the Northwest Territory, in the current Midwest region. In addition, this law established the principle by which all the territories annexed to the United States would be incorporated as new territories that, if they met the required population parameters, could apply to be new states of the nation, instead of joining any of the 13 original states of the country. In this way, this law guaranteed that new states were incorporated into the Union as the country began to expand.
<span>One of the main characteristics of american imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the idea of "Manifest Destiny", which held that the US was "destined" to expand in a divine sense. </span>
Because it was the capital of the Byzantine empire and wealth came from trading and its location also helped because it had access to trading routes on sea and by land.
