Which statement accurately describe the relationship between the northwest ordinance and the article of confederation?

The Northwest Ordinance added to the guidelines for American expansion that were introduced in the Articles of the Confederation.

Explanation:

The Northwest Ordinance, adopted July 13, 1787, by the Confederation Congress, chartered a government for the Northwest Territory, provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the territory, and listed a bill of rights guaranteed in the territory. Following the principles outlined by Thomas Jefferson in the Ordinance of 1784, the authors of the Northwest Ordinance (probably Nathan Dane and Rufus King) spelled out a plan that was subsequently used as the country expanded to the Pacific.

The following three principal provisions were ordained in the document: (1) a division of the Northwest Territory into "not less than three nor more than five States"; (2) a three-stage method for admitting a new state to the Union—with a congressionally appointed governor, secretary, and three judges to rule in the first phase; an elected assembly and one nonvoting delegate to Congress to be elected in the second phase, when the population of the territory reached "five thousand free male inhabitants of full age"; and a state constitution to be drafted and membership to the Union to be requested in the third phase when the population reached 60,000; and (3) a bill of rights protecting religious freedom, the right to a writ of habeas corpus, the benefit of trial by jury, and other individual rights. In addition, the ordinance encouraged education and forbade slavery.

The copy of the ordinance on this site is a printed document, dated in the last paragraph and signed by the secretary of Congress, Charles Thomson.

(Information excerpted from National Archives Education Staff. The Constitution: Evolution of a Government. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2001.)

it was the first amendment