Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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]
Historically, most new states formed by Congress have been established from an organized incorporated U.S. territory, created and governed by Congress in accord with its plenary power under Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the Constitution. [14] In some cases, an entire territory became a state; in others some part of a territory became a state.
The last major international change was the acquisition in 1904, and return to Panama in 1979, of the Panama Canal Zone, an unincorporated US territory which controlled the Panama Canal. The final cession of formal control over the region was made to Panama in 1999. States have generally retained their initial borders once established.
Tennessee was the last state to formally leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. With Nashville occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union during Reconstruction.
The first state to ratify was Virginia on December 16, 1777; 12 states had ratified the Articles by February 1779, 14 months into the process. [11] The lone holdout, Maryland, refused to go along until the landed states, especially Virginia , had indicated they were prepared to cede their claims west of the Ohio River to the Union. [ 12 ]
The first seven became states in February and March 1861 upon agreeing to the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States, and each joined the permanent Confederation of states between March 12 and April 22, 1861, upon ratifying the Constitution of the Confederate States, its permanent constitution (a separate table is included below ...
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states ...