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The following table is a list of all 50 states and their respective dates of statehood. The first 13 became states in July 1776 upon agreeing to the United States Declaration of Independence, and each joined the first Union of states between 1777 and 1781, upon ratifying the Articles of Confederation, its first constitution. [6]
1855 J. H. Colton Company map of Virginia that predates the West Virginia partition by seven years.. Numerous state partition proposals have been put forward since the 1776 establishment of the United States that would partition an existing U.S. state or states so that a particular region might either join another state or create a new state.
The United States comprises 50 states: 9 of the Thirteen Colonies that were already part of the United States at the time the Constitution took effect in 1789, 4 that ratified the Constitution after its commencement, plus 37 that have been admitted since by Congress as authorized under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution. [2]
The Guarantee Clause of Article 4 of the Constitution states that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." These two provisions indicate states did not surrender their wide latitude to adopt a constitution, the fundamental documents of state law, when the U.S. Constitution was adopted.
The Constitution of the United States is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world. [ 4 ] [ a ] The drafting of the Constitution , often referred to as its framing, was completed at the Constitutional Convention , which assembled at Independence Hall in Philadelphia between May 25 and ...
The Admissions Clause grants Congress the authority to admit new states but forbids the creation of new states from parts of existing states without the consent of the affected states. The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution requires all states to be admitted on an equal footing , though the Admissions Clause does not expressly include ...
Besides the four aforementioned states, other states have also on occasion used the term "commonwealth" to refer to themselves: The term "commonwealth" is used interchangeably with the term "state" in the Constitution of Vermont, [11] but the act of Congress admitting that state to the Union calls it "the State of Vermont."
An example of a universal state succession is the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Neither part claimed any continuity: both the Czech Republic and Slovakia were new successor states. There are cases where a state is completely extinguished or abolished without having any successor states.