This new edition of Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance, originally published in 1987, is an authoritative account of the origins and early history of American policy for territorial government, land distribution, and the admission of new states in the Old Northwest. In a new preface, Peter S. Onuf reviews important new work on the progress of colonization and territorial expansion in the rising American empire.

This three-volume set brings together the unique stories of each of the fifty United States' journey into statehood.

Historians have emphasized the founding fathers' statesmanship and vision in the development of a more powerful union under the federal constitution. In The Origins of the Federal Republic, Peter S. Onuf clarifies the founders' achievement by demonstrating with case studies of New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia that territorial confrontations among the former colonies played a crucial role in shaping early concepts of statehood and union and provided the true basis of the American federalist system.

Long a bastion of Jewish labor power, garment unions provided financial and political aid essential to founding and building the nation of Israel. Throughout the project, Jewish labor often operated outside of official channels as non-governmental organizations. Adam Howard explores the untold story of how three influential garment unions worked alone and with other Jewish labor organizations in support of a new Jewish state. Sewing the Fabric of Statehood reveals a coalition at work on multiple fronts. Sustained efforts convinced the AFL and CIO to support Jewish development in Palestine through land purchases for Jewish workers and encouraged the construction of trade schools and cultural centers. Other activists, meanwhile, directed massive economic aid to Histadrut, the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Palestine, or pressured the British and American governments to recognize Israel's independence. What emerges is a powerful account of the motivations and ideals that led American labor to forge its own foreign policy and reshape both the postwar world and Jewish history.

In this thought-provoking analysis of international relations, the authors relate the emergence of the modern state-societies to the experiments in constitution-making in the United States.

New Mexico was ceded to the United States in 1848, at the end of the war with Mexico, but not until 1912 did President William Howard Taft sign the proclamation that promoted New Mexico from territory to state. Why did New Mexico’s push for statehood last sixty-four years? Conventional wisdom has it that racism was solely to blame. But this fresh look at the history finds a more complex set of obstacles, tied primarily to self-serving politicians. Forty-Seventh Star, published in New Mexico’s centennial year, is the first book on its quest for statehood in more than forty years. David V. Holtby closely examines the final stretch of New Mexico’s tortuous road to statehood, beginning in the 1890s. His deeply researched narrative juxtaposes events in Washington, D.C., and in the territory to present the repeated collisions between New Mexicans seeking to control their destiny and politicians opposing them, including Republican U.S. senators Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana and Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. Holtby places the quest for statehood in national perspective while examining the territory’s political, economic, and social development. He shows how a few powerful men brewed a concoction of racism, cronyism, corruption, and partisan politics that poisoned New Mexicans’ efforts to join the Union. Drawing on extensive Spanish-language and archival sources, the author also explores the consequences that the drive to become a state had for New Mexico’s Euro-American, Nuevomexicano, American Indian, African American, and Asian communities. Holtby offers a compelling story that shows why and how home rule mattered—then and now—for New Mexicans and for all Americans.