New Hampshire Grants - Drive For Statehood

Drive For Statehood

In January 1775 Committees of Safety from over twenty towns in the New Hampshire Grants area met in Manchester to discuss the need for independence from New York. The Manchester meeting created a "civil and political Body" to regulate their community. Two months later, another convention meeting at Westminster renounced the authority of New York's government. On March 13, 1775, two men were killed in Westminster by officers from New York. News of the clash between American militia and British troops at Lexington and Concord interrupted the Westminster convention, but settlers gathered at yet another convention at Dorset in 1776 and petitioned Congress to be recognized as a state independent of New York. It would be another sixteen years before Congress responded favorably on Vermont's petition.

In 1777 the citizens of the territory established a constitution and declared independence from New York. What is now known as the Vermont Republic was not granted any formal recognition, but the territory had all of the trappings of government, including courts, an assembly, and even its own currency. During the later stages of the Revolutionary War Vermont's leaders engaged in controversial negotiations with British authorities in Quebec over the possibility of reintroducing British control over the area.

Following the American Revolutionary War, it became clear to the Congress and New York that the region of the New Hampshire Grants should become a state. The idea was pursued at several stages, ending in failure for one reason or another until 1790, when New York consented to the admission of Vermont into the Union, ceded control of the New Hampshire Grants to Vermont and stated the New York-Vermont boundary should be the western edge of the New Hampshire Grants and the mid-channel of Lake Champlain. Vermont's border with New Hampshire is still the western bank of the Connecticut River (unlike other riverine political boundaries, which usually follow the river's main channel). The government of Vermont paid New York $30,000 (New York had sought $600,000) in compensation for that state's diminished territorial reach.

Vermont voters ratified the United States Constitution on January 6, 1791 and the U.S. Congress passed the resolution admitting Vermont into the Union on February 18. On March 4 of the same year, the New Hampshire Grants, as Vermont, became the 14th state, the first state admitted to the Union after the original 13 colonies.