Talk:Organized territory

Glad to see you expanded this Decumanus. (and have started re-inserting the link to this artcle from the territorial articles that I dumbly removed it from.) I'm still confused by the distinction between incorporated and organized though. I suspect that the usage has changed over the years. I think that incorporated is of more recent vintage and that it might be incorrect (or at least misleading) to apply it retroactively to earlier territories. But I digress. What I really wanted to ask is, if Ohio and Indiana were the first organized territories, then what was the status of the Northwest and Southwest Territories? Bkonrad | Talk 19:24, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wow. I just got done researching exactly what you were asking about (synchronicity). My understanding of incorporated territory was embarrassingly hazy but I finally understood it after reseaching some Supreme Court decisions.

I think you may be right, about the possible error of calling historic territories such as the Ohio Territory "incorporated territories", since legally the concept seems to have arisen only in the 20th century. See Talk:Historic incorporated territories of the United States

O.K. Perhaps I'm wrong. Was there the Northwest Ordinance on Organic Act that established a civil government? Embarasingly I don't know. If so, then it was certainly the first organized territory. All of a sudden I realize that there were governors (Arthur St. Clair, so yes I guess they were organized territories. -- Decumanus | Talk 21:20, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Expansion

Since Organic Act redirects here, it would be nice to have a list of them, or other expanded coverage. -- Beland 02:42, 16 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Organic Act has since been reconstituted with a list, and this article merged elsewhere, also with a list. -- Beland (talk) 17:08, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]