Two crucial laws were enacted during the period of the Articles of Confederation. The first is the Land Ordinance of 1785 which created the system for identifying land property. This system was applied to all of the states except for the original 13, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas. The township-range system provided unambiguous property identification and replaced the outmoded and imprecise metes and bounds system. The second is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that laid out exact instructions for adding states to the union on an equal basis with the existing states. The Ordinance pertained to the territory to the North of the Ohio River and to the West of Pennsylvania. The states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin were created from that territory. Also, the Ordinance prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. The Northwest Ordinance can be regarded as the third founding document of the nation, after the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Indeed, the Northwest Ordinance actually preceded the adoption of the Constitution. Major land deals followed immediately after 1787, and organized settlement began on land surveyed under the Land Ordinance.