Union
As a result of an act passed by the State of New York on October 7, 1790, regarding a settlement of New York's claims, the Vermont General Assembly authorized a convention to consider an application for admittance to the Union of the United States of America. The convention met at Bennington, on January 6, 1791. On January 10, 1791 the convention approved a resolution to make an application to join the United States by a vote of 105 to 2 nays. Vermont was admitted to the Union on March 4, 1791. March 4 is celebrated in Vermont as Vermont Day.
Vermont's admission to the Union in 1791 was in part as a free state counterweight to Kentucky, which joined as a slave state shortly after Vermont. The North, the smaller states, and states concerned about the impact of the sea-to-sea grants held by other states, all supported Vermont's admission. Thomas Chittenden served as governor for Vermont for most of this period, and became its first governor as a member-state in the United States.
The 1793 Vermont state constitution made relatively few changes to the 1777 Vermont state constitution. It retained many of its original ideas, as noted above, and kept the separation of powers. It remains in force with several amendments.
Read more about this topic: Vermont Republic
Famous quotes containing the word union:
“How can I explain the difference to me between America and Russia?... the America I’ve known is a place where men on horseback escort union marchers, the Russia I’ve known is a place where men on horseback slaughter young Socialists and Jews.”
—Golda Meir (1898–1978)
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)