Congress of the Confederation in the context of "Supremacy Clause"

The United States Army (U.S. Army) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution. It operates under the authority, direction, and control of the United States secretary of defense. As a part of the United States Department of Defense, it is one of the six armed forces of the United States and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. The Army is the most senior branch in order of precedence amongst the armed services. It has its roots in the Continental Army, formed on 14 June 1775 to fight against the British for independence during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784 to replace the disbanded Continental Army.

The U.S. Army is part of the Department of the Army, which is one of the three military departments of the Department of Defense. The U.S. Army is headed by a civilian senior appointed civil servant, the secretary of the Army (SECARMY), and by a chief military officer, the chief of staff of the Army (CSA) who is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is the largest military branch, and in the fiscal year 2022, the projected end strength for the Regular Army (USA) was 480,893 soldiers; the Army National Guard (ARNG) had 336,129 soldiers and the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) had 188,703 soldiers; the combined-component strength of the U.S. Army was 1,005,725 soldiers. The Army's mission is "to fight and win our Nation's wars, by providing prompt, sustained land dominance, across the full range of military operations and the spectrum of conflict, in support of combatant commanders". The branch participates in conflicts worldwide and is the major ground-based offensive and defensive force of the United States of America.‌

In United States law, an organic act is an act of the United States Congress that establishes an administrative agency or local government, for example, the laws that established territory of the United States and specified how they are to be governed, or established agency to manage certain federal lands. In the absence of organic law, the body of laws that define and establish a government, a territory is classified as unorganized.

The first such act was the Northwest Ordinance, passed in 1787 by the U.S. Congress of the Confederation (under the Articles of Confederation, predecessor of the United States Constitution). The Northwest Ordinance created the Northwest Territory in the land west of Pennsylvania and northwest of the Ohio River and set the pattern of development that was followed for all subsequent territories. The Northwest Territory covered more than 260,000 square miles and included all of the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the northeastern part of Minnesota.

The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from part of the unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolution. Established in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation through the Northwest Ordinance, it was the nation's first post-colonial organized incorporated territory.

At the time of its creation, the territory included all the land west of Pennsylvania, northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River below the Great Lakes, and what later became known as the Boundary Waters. The region was ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. Throughout the Revolutionary War, the region was part of the British Province of Quebec and the western theater of the war. It spanned all or large parts of six eventual U.S. states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the northeastern part of Minnesota). Reduced to present-day Ohio, and some additional lands north and east on July 4, 1800, it ceased to exist March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio, and the remainder attached to Indiana Territory.

The secretary of war was a member of the U.S. Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War", had been appointed to serve the Congress of the Confederation under the Articles of Confederation between 1781 and 1789. Benjamin Lincoln and later Henry Knox held the position. When Washington was inaugurated as the first president under the Constitution, he appointed Knox to continue serving as secretary of war.

The secretary of war was the head of the War Department. At first, he was responsible for the United States Army and the Navy. In 1798, the secretary of the Navy was created by statute, and the scope of responsibility for the War Department was reduced to the Army. From 1886 onward, the secretary of war was in the line of succession to the presidency, after the vice president of the United States, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the secretary of state.

Captain Joshua Huddy (November 8, 1735 – April 12, 1782) was an American military officer and privateer. Born in Salem County, New Jersey, he struggled with financial difficulties in adulthood and was repeatedly convicted of several crimes. During the American Revolutionary War, Huddy supported the Patriot cause and served in the New Jersey Militia along with captaining the privateer ship The Black Snake. In 1782, he was captured by Loyalist irregulars and turned over to the British.

Shortly thereafter, a group of Loyalists removed Huddy from British custody and summarily executed him by hanging. His execution led to a furore among Patriots and sparked the Asgill Affair, in which the Continental Army arranged for the summary execution of British officer Charles Asgill, an act that violated the terms of the 1781 Articles of Capitulation. After diplomatic pressure from the Kingdom of France, the Congress of the Confederation voted to order Asgill's release, ending the affair.

The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio and also known as the Ordinance of 1787), enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. It created the Northwest Territory, the new nation's first organized incorporated territories between British North America and the Great Lakes to the north and the Ohio River to the south. The upper Mississippi River formed the territory's western boundary. Pennsylvania was the eastern boundary.

In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolutionary War, Great Britain ceded the region to the United States. However, the Confederation Congress faced numerous problems gaining control of the land such as the unsanctioned movement of American settlers into the Ohio Valley; violent resistance from the region's indigenous peoples; the continued presence of British outposts in the region and an empty U.S. treasury. The ordinance superseded the Land Ordinance of 1784, which declared that states would one day be formed within the region, and the Land Ordinance of 1785, which described how the Confederation Congress would sell the land to private citizens. Designed to serve as a plan for the development and settlement of the region, the 1787 ordinance lacked a strong central government to implement it. That need was addressed shortly with the formation of the U.S. federal government in 1789. The First Congress reaffirmed the 1787 ordinance and, with slight modifications, renewed it with the Northwest Ordinance of 1789.