Talk:List of U.S. states by date of admission to the Union/Archive 1

Under the Articles of Confederation
The original 13 existed as states under the Articles of Confederation. To list their predecessors as British colonies is misleading. Otherwise, they were all admitted on July 4, 1776. --Jiang 20:36, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * It just says preceding entity. Do you think the AoC-era colony-states had a different status? If so, I'd love to know so I can do an article about it, otherwise the colonies were the preceding entities of the states. Made note that date is "admitted to union or ratified constitution." jengod 20:40, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

Ratifying the Constitution did not change the name of the individual state governments. Under the AofC, each state sovereign and independent ina confederation. They were definately not colonies. They became states when they declared independence, not when they ratified the constitution, in which they ceased to be states in the normal sense of the term. --Jiang 02:37, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * There is some serious confusion here that needs to be corrected. This is a list of U.S. states by date of statehood, that is, the date when each U.S. state joined the Union. This list is misleading in two ways.
 * 1. New York became an independent state on July 9, 1776 and enacted its constitution in 1777. New York then ratified the US constitution on Saturday, July 26, 1788. Its statehood was therefore attained earlier. The other twelve of the thirteen colonies all did the same, completing the process of attaining statehood in 1777.
 * 2. The US States did not join the Union with their ratification of the US constitution. That was the second constitution of the USA. The first constitution of the USA was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which was ratified in 1781. The thirteen states joined the Union in 1781. --Ramayan (talk) 23:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

date for Ohio admission
An anon added "(this is disputed by some)" to the entry for Ohio which says "The date of admission was declared retroactively on August 7, 1953". What precisely is disputed and by whom? There can be no disputing that Congress passed a resolution making such a declaration on that date. The actual date may be disputed, but that is unclear as written. Some citations about who and what would be helpful. older &ne; wiser 22:57, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

WP:FLC
Is someone thinking of nominating this at WP:FLC? It could do with some references, but they should be easy to find. Otherwise, it is a very good potential candidate. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:25, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

state map

 * This has gotta be the best one... right? I mean, come on... it's red, white and blue! &lt;g> (Well, okay... red, gray and blue. Again, see the prior discussion for more info.) - dcljr (talk) 05:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC) &mdash; I've been bold (again) and substituted my latest version into the article. - dcljr (talk) 05:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The red one is the best because it is monochromatic (except for perhaps the black states, which I'm fine with). If there is only a single dimension (year) we are considering, it is the clearest to the mind if the colors are monochromatic. The current one is confusing because gray is not intermediate between red and blue. --MagneticFlux 21:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Graphic - WV and ME
The graphic in the upper right is correct in that it counts West VIrginia as part of Virginia, coloring it in in dark blue when Virginia acceded to statehood, and then just drawing in a border when WV became a state proper. However, Maine is handled incorrectly. It is still colored gray until the point it became a state in its own right, even though prior to that it was a part of the union as part of the state of Massachusetts.

I'm not sure how that could be represented graphically, but it seems silly that such care was taken to represent West Virginia's statehood accurately, but the same has not been done for Maine.--DaveOinSF 23:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * it could be shown with a line joining Maine & Massachusetts, or Maine in a lighter color? Otherwise it would look like Maine was a state from 1788. I am working on a version which has the correct borders based on the territorial growth maps which should have these problems fixed. --Astrokey 44 02:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles of Confederation
The article says, "[T]he Articles of Confederation... is the original document naming the United States as such, and giving the initial label of "states" to the subnational political entities."

I believe this to be incorrect. The Declaration of Independence calls the former colonies "states" in its title, declares them "independent states" in its conclusion, and uses the phrase "the UNITED STATES of AMERICA" (sic) for all the states collectively as represented in Congress.

The AoC give the name to the Confederation formed under them, but the name "as such" plainly existed earlier. To the extent that the nation formed under the current constitution is not the same political body as that under the AoC, the term used in the DoI is just as applicable, I think, to what came afterward.

At the time the AoC was written the former colonies plainly considered themselves sovereign "states" in the normal sense of the word, and the Articles simply formed them into a "league" or "Confederation" in its own words, not a "nation". The states were therefore not "subnational units" at that time. Nor were they conceived as such collectively for some time afterward, which is partly why the term has perdured. The constitution doesn't call the new political body it defines a "nation" either, but a "Union". And although this Union eventually began to function as a more unitary nation, the Confederation never did.

The AoC therefore neither named the United States, nor did it apply the "label" of "states", nor was "states" a label but a proper term. I note the AoC article uses "nation" in places, but I think this is incorrect. TCC (talk) (contribs) 02:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Link to each state's Enabling Act is there is one?
Would it help if we added links to articles on the enabling acts used to join a state to the union, where there is one? --Barberio 14:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it would, however, as far as I can tell, the only ones in Wikipedia are Alaska and Hawaii's. I just put them in the "see also" section.Ericl (talk) 17:00, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

preceding entity
This column should provide the name of the entity immediately preceding admission to the Union. Popkultur 02:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Either that, or perhaps it should list all the predecessor entities in order. I agree that the current presentation is a bit confusing. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * One of the things that makes it confusing is that when multiple predecessors are listed, they are sometimes listed in chronological order and sometimes listed in reverse chronological order. It would help if they were all the same and if the wording were more consistent and unambiguous.  The phrase "A then B" doesn't seem immediately obvious to me.
 * I think this column should:
 * Go backwards from the immediate predecessor, as "A, formed from B, formed from C" or the like.
 * Indicate whether it was formed from the entirety of the preceding entity, or just from a part.
 * Be worded sufficiently consistently so that sorting might actually be interesting.
 * Be headed with "Preceding entities"
 * This doesn't seem to be a hot topic of discussion, so if there are no comments, I may just go ahead and make the changes when I have some spare WP-editing time. YBG (talk) 05:53, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

strange bug or hack with image?
Here is what I saw before I added underscores to the image declaration.

Here was the image declaration that encoded it.



The original declaration looked fine to me... So why was it not displaying correctly? I tried in both FireFox and Chrome, plus adding underscores fixed it, so probably not the browser. Curtbeckmann (talk) 00:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Why do Confederate states get their *original* statehood date?
Just a general question, that I had been hoping might be answered by me coming to this article. It wasn't addressed, so I'm hoping someone knows the answer--and it might also be a good topic to add to the article--

Why are the states which left the U.S. to join the Confederacy, but which then rejoined the Union after they lost the Civil War, have their original dates of joining the Union listed, rather than the dates the REJOINED the Union? It seems to me that the correct date should be when they rejoined, and that those dates should be what is used when determining the order of statehood.

It's like at a concession stand at a sporting event--Once you get out of line, the only place to get back in the line is at the back of the line! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.49.85.248 (talk) 03:04, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I suspect that the reason is that the Federal government never recognized succession.  I notice that in the article about Reconstruction, the term 'Readmission' most usually refers to 'radmission to representation in Congress'.  YBG (talk) 07:53, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

The animation seems to show Maine entering the union after Massachcetts but the article shows Maine entering much later after Alabama

Thanks: Jim Hinderer 5/4/2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.128.237.133 (talk) 17:39, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Office?
What does the "Office" field in the table mean? I can't work it out and it doesn't appear to be explained in the text. I suggest either an explanation should be added or the extra column removed. Any ideas? JRP (talk)

Trivia: lawrence ks
the streets in lawrence kansas are partially ordered by the date of statehood some are now out of order but you will see a large section in order. JmdPpl (talk) 17:01, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Statehood is not the same as admission to the Union
Most of the states other than the first 13 became states when they were admitted to the Union. Vermont was already a state. It was an unadmitted state and became an admitted state. The governor, legislators, judges, etc., were not replace by a new governor, new legislators, etc., who were officers of the state of Vermont, where there had previously only been officers of an earlier entity -- a "territory" or the like. Nor did that already existing state Constitution change at that time. The table suggests that the "Republic of Vermont" was a foregoing entity replaced by the "State of Vermont", but in fact the same entity continued to exist. It was called the "Republic of Vermont" in Latin inscriptions on its coins, and was also called the State of Vermont in other contexts, and the two terms do not conflict with each other any more than the fact that four states are officially call the "Commonwealth of Wherever" means that they are not also _states_. (They are Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky.) If one reads the (very short) act of Congress admitting Vermont to the Union, it says that the "State of Vermont" had applied for admission, not that some other entity called Vermont applied for statehood. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:04, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * ...moreover, the original thirteen states did not become states by ratifying the Constitution; they were certainly states before they did that. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:49, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 02:11, 22 May 2016 (UTC)