Admission to the Union

The Admission to the Union Clause of the United States Constitution, oftentimes called the New States Clause, and found at Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1, describes the authority vested in the United States Congress to admit new states into the United States beyond the thirteen already in existence at the time the Constitution went into effect.

The Constitution went into effect on June 21, 1788, after ratification by 9 of the 13 states, and the federal government began operations under it on March 4, 1789. Since then, 37 additional states have been admitted into the Union. Each new state has been admitted on an equal footing with those already in existence.

Most of the states (all but six) admitted to the Union after the original 13 have been established from an existing U.S. territory. A state so created might encompass all or a portion of a territory. When the people of a territory (or a region thereof) would make their desire for statehood known to the federal government, Congress would generally pass an enabling act authorizing the people of that territory (or region) to frame a proposed state constitution as a step towards admission to the Union.

Each enabling act would detail the mechanism by which the territory would be admitted as a state following ratification of their constitution and election of state officers. Although the use of such an act is a traditional historic practice, a number of territories have drafted constitutions for submission to Congress absent an enabling act and were subsequently admitted. The broad outline for this process was established by the Land Ordinance of 1784 and the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, both of which predate the present U.S. Constitution.

The Admission to the Union Clause also forbids the creation of new states from parts of existing states without the consent of both the affected states and Congress. This caveat was designed to give Eastern states that still had Western land claims (there were 4 in 1789), to have a veto over whether their western counties could become states. It has served this same function since, whenever a proposal to partition an existing state or states in order that a region within might either join another state or to create a new state has come before Congress.

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New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

Background

Articles of Confederation

Between 1781 and 1789 the United States was governed by a unicameral Congress, the Congress of the Confederation, which operated under authority granted to it by the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution. During this period, the Confederation Congress enacted two ordinances governing the admission of new states into the Union.

The first such ordinance was the Land Ordinance of 1784, enacted April 23, 1784. Thomas Jefferson was its principal author. The Ordinance called for the land (recently confirmed as part of the United States by the Treaty of Paris) west of the Appalachian Mountains, north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River to eventually be divided into ten separate states. Once a given area reached 20,000 inhabitants, it could call a constitutional convention and form a provisional government. Then, upon enacting a state constitution which affirmed that the new state would forever be part of the Confederation, would be subject to the Articles of Confederation and acts of Congress, would be subject to payment for federal debts and would not tax federal properties within the state border or tax non-residents at a rate higher than residents, and would have a republican form of government, and also after reaching a population equal to that of the least-populated of the established states, it would be admitted, on an equal footing with all other states, based on a majority vote in Congress. Jefferson's original draft of the ordinance gave names to the proposed states, and also contained a provision that "After the year 1800 there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of them."

The 1784 ordinance was superseded three years later by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Enacted by the Confederation Congress on July 13, 1787, it created the Northwest Territory, the first organized incorporated territory of the United States. The Northwest Ordinance (Article V) provided for the admission of several new states from within its bounds:

There shall be formed in the said territory, not less than three nor more than five States . . . And, whenever any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitution and State government: Provided, the constitution and government so to be formed, shall be republican, and in conformity to the principles contained in these articles; and, so far as it can be consistent with the general interest of the confederacy, such admission shall be allowed at an earlier period, and when there may be a less number of free inhabitants in the State than sixty thousand.

Considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress, it established the precedent by which the Federal government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation.

No new states were formed in the Northwest Territory under either ordinance. In August, 1789, the ordinance was replaced by the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, in which the new Congress (under the present Constitution) reaffirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications. The territory itself remained in existence until 1803, when the southeastern portion of it was admitted to the Union as the State of Ohio, and the remainder was reorganized.

1787 Constitutional Convention

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal to include the phrase, "new States shall be admitted on the same terms with the original States", was defeated. That proposal would have taken the policy articulated in the Ordinance of 1784 and made it a constitutional imperative. Many delegates objected to including the phrase however, fearing that the political power of future new western states would eventually overwhelm that of the established eastern states. This concern also prompted delegates to include language that would preclude formation of a new state out of an established one without the consent of the established state as well as the Congress. As a result, new breakaway states are permitted to join the Union, but only with the proper consents.

Equal footing doctrine

Shortly after the new Constitution went into effect Congress admitted Vermont and Kentucky on equal terms with the existing 13 states, and thereafter formalized the condition in its acts of admission for subsequent states. Thus the Congress, utilizing the discretion allowed by the framers, adopted a policy of equal status for all newly admitted states. The constitutional principle derived from these actions is known as the equal footing doctrine. With the growth of states' rights advocacy during the antebellum period, the Supreme Court asserted, in Lessee of Pollard v. Hagan (1845), that the Constitution mandated admission of new states on the basis of equality.

Admission process

The order in which the original 13 states ratified the constitution, then the order in which the others were admitted to the union.

Historically, most new states brought into being 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. In some cases, an entire territory became a state; in others some part of a territory became a state. In most cases, the organized government of a territory made known the sentiment of its population in favor of statehood, usually by referendums. Congress then directed that government to organize a constitutional convention to write a state constitution. Upon acceptance of that constitution, Congress has always admitted that territory as a state. However, Congress has ultimate authority over the admission of new states, and is not bound to follow this procedure.

Congress is under no obligation to admit states, even in those areas whose population expresses a desire for statehood. In one instance, Mormon pioneers in Salt Lake City sought to establish the state of Deseret in 1849. It existed for slightly over two years and was never approved by the United States Congress. In another, leaders of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) in Indian Territory proposed to establish the state of Sequoyah in 1905, as a means to retain control of their lands. The proposed constitution ultimately failed in the U.S. Congress. Instead, the Indian Territory was incorporated into the new state of Oklahoma in 1907.

Some U.S. territories existed only a short time before becoming states, while others remained territories for decades. The shortest-lived was Alabama Territory at 2 years, while New Mexico and Hawaii territories both were in existence for more than 50 years. The entry of several states into the Union has been delayed due to complicating factors. Among them, Michigan Territory, which petitioned Congress for statehood in 1835, was not admitted to the Union until 1837, due to a boundary dispute the adjoining state of Ohio. The Republic of Texas requested annexation to the United States in 1837, but fears about potential conflict with Mexico delayed the admission of Texas for nine years. Also, statehood for Kansas Territory was held up for several years (1854–61) due to a series of internal violent conflicts involving anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions.

Once established, most state borders have, with few exceptions, been generally stable. Notable exceptions include: the various portions (the Western land claims) of several original states ceded over a period of several years to the federal government, which in turn became the Northwest Territory, Southwest Territory, and Mississippi Territory; the 1791 cession by Maryland and Virginia of land to create the District of Columbia (Virginia's portion was returned in 1847); and the creation, on three separate occasions, of a new state from a region of an existing states. However, there have been numerous minor adjustments to state boundaries over the years due to improved surveys, resolution of ambiguous or disputed boundary definitions, or minor mutually agreed boundary adjustments for administrative convenience or other purposes. One notable example is the case New Jersey v. New York, in which New Jersey won roughly 90% of Ellis Island from New York in 1998.

States that were never part of an organized U.S. territory

In addition to the original 13, six subsequent states were never part of an organized incorporated U.S. territory. Kentucky, Maine, and West Virginia were each set off from already existing states. Texas and Vermont both entered the Union after having been sovereign states (de facto sovereignty in Vermont's case, as the region was claimed by New York). California was set off from unorganized land ceded to the United States by Mexico in 1848 at the end of the Mexican–American War.

State	Date of admission	Formed from
California	September 9, 1850	Unorganized territory (part)
Kentucky	June 1, 1792	Virginia (District of Kentucky: Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln counties)
Maine	March 15, 1820	Massachusetts (District of Maine)
Texas	December 29, 1845	Republic of Texas
Vermont	March 4, 1791	Vermont Republic (also known as the New Hampshire Grants)
West Virginia	June 20, 1863	Virginia (Trans-Allegheny region counties)

See also

• Enabling Act of 1802, authorizing residents of the eastern portion of the Northwest Territory to form the state of Ohio
• Texas annexation, the 1845 incorporation of the Republic of Texas into the United States as a state in the Union

• Legal status of Texas

• Enabling Act of 1889, authorizing residents of Dakota, Montana, and Washington territories to form state governments (Dakota to be divided into two states) and to gain admission to the Union
• Enabling Act of 1906 authorizing residents of Oklahoma, Indian, New Mexico, and Arizona territories to form state governments (Indian and Oklahoma territories to be combined into one state) and to gain admission to the Union
• Alaska Statehood Act, admitting Alaska as a state in the Union as of January 3, 1959

• Legal status of Alaska

• Hawaii Admission Act, admitting Hawaii as a state in the Union as of August 21, 1959

• Legal status of Hawaii

• Federalism in the United States
• List of U.S. states by date of admission to the Union
• List of U.S. state partition proposals
• State cessions