Talk:List of U.S. states that were never U.S. territories

National Independence or State Independence

In Re: "They declared independence from Britain on 4 July 1776 and were formally thirteen independent countries until ratification of the first American constitution, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, proposed in 1777, completed in 1781; whereupon the "United States of America" legally came into existence."

There is considerable evidence that the "United States" preceded and did not follow the ratification of the the Articles of Confederation. Although some of the original 13 States declared independence from Great Britain, most did not, holding that the collective Declaration of Independence issued by the Continental Congress had effectively declared national independence.

The Declaration of Independence was not adopted by the individual States but adopted by the Congress FOR the United States. This act took place in 1776 prior to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. The Declaration expressly declares that the representatives were acting on behalf of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA. Contrary to the statement in the Wikipedia entry, the US of A existed prior to the Articles of Confederation.

There were various discussions within the Continental Congress, prior to the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, in which Congress acted as the legislative assembly for the Nation. At one point, the Congress discussed issuing orders to the various States instructing them to abolish the existing colonial governments and establish new State governments under the authority of the Continental Congress.

It is also relevant here to mention that the Articles of Confederation was not the first Constitution of the United States. Prior to their adoption, the Continental Congress and the United States were governed under certain "Articles of Association".

President Abraham Lincoln spoke of the origin of the Nation in his Inaugural address stating, "The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured ... by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union." LAWinans (talk) 20:30, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

United Kingdom

were overseas provinces of United Kingdom, What is incorrect about this mis-statement? Wetman 00:27, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

You tell me? :) jengod 00:44, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

You'll get it. It's too simple. ;) Wetman 00:46, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, I'm really not that smart. Overseas from UK point of view but not ours? GB not UK? Tense-spelling-grammar-punctuation? See. Not that smart. :) jengod 00:50, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

I imagine Wetman means that "province" is technically inaccurate, or perhaps that "the" should precede "United". :-) Jwrosenzweig 00:52, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nope. Simpler than that! Aw, didn't mean to drive you-all crazy. It's right here at Wikipedia: With the 1707 Act of Union the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland, having shared the same monarch since 1603, agreed to permanent union as the Kingdom of Great Britain. The 1801 Act of Union united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, creating the United Kingdom... heh heh heh too simple, eh. Wetman 00:55, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Admission order

The "1" in the admission order column spans the thirteen original colonies... "What it was (Sorted chronologically by admission to the union)." This seems conflicting—and wrong. Shouldn't 1-13 be filled in, since technically all 13 were not admitted at the first time, which is what the sharing of the 1 rank implies? //MrD9 06:45, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Correct. I added numbers 2 through 13 on there (which they conveniently happen to have been in correct order) based on their ratification of the US constitution. The Decl of Indep merely separated the colonies from the UK, not entered them into the USA. That's what ratification did. Cburnett 02:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Ratification of the current Constitution did not create the USA. Either the Decl of Indep did (1776) or the Treaty of Paris (1783). What's more, if ratification of the constitution did create the USA, then the first nine ratifying states entered at the same time, because the constitution wasn't ratified until the nine ratified. —Markles 02:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

If that's your position then why did you revert incorrect text to incorrect text? From the article itself:

...then independent states until ratification of U.S. Constitution in 1787

Are you semi-blindly reverting here or is some form of doublespeak? :) Cburnett 03:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

How are you ignoring things such as Delaware's "The First State" and stuff? Or, a Library of Congress Senate document stating that they were admitted in order? //MrD9 05:29, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Nice find. Cburnett 05:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Like you or someone else said, they were in order already, so obviously they have order, otherwise, if they were all first, they'd be alphabetical (or at least, that would be the most logical thing to do if that were true). Plus, I just couldn't sit back and, although it really has no meaning other than to say "we were first" or whatever, let this go against everything I have ever seen printed throughout my whole life. I'm from New Jersey, and although it would have been nice to have been first (like I said, for no reason at all other than possibly pride?), we're third. Not first. //MrD9 23:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

You're all right, of course. I'm not sure what to make of the order thing and such. Furthermore I certainly did mess up by replacing incorrect with incorrect.—Markles 00:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I certainly think it's worth explaining on the page... Cburnett 01:03, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Admission order (again)

Let's start this bit over. The United States of America was born in either 1776 (self-proclaimed independence) or 1783 (independence recognized by former colonial overlord). At both times, there were 13 states, all of which became states at the same time. And then… in 1787, the Constitution was completed. On December 7, 1787, Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution. The Constitution was ratified on June 25, 1788 (upon ratification by Virginia). The new government (as it exists today) began March 4, 1789, as decreed by the Continental Congress in late 1788. There is absolutely no dispute that Delaware was the first state to ratify. In fact, many consider Delaware to be "The First State."

However, for the purposes of this article as stated by its own terms…

"This is a list of U.S. states that were never territories of the United States after its independence from Great Britain in 1783. They are listed in the order they were admitted to the Union."

…all thirteen states had already been states long before the Constitution was drafted, ratified, effective, whatever.

My point is this: I have no dispute with the primacy of Delaware. But this article does not deal with ratification. It deals with states that were not U.S. territories. By that definition, all thirteen states ought to be listed on our Article page as either: "1" or "1-13" collectively. I recommend they all be 1 and then Vermont is 14.

However, there's no reason why we can't simply change the definition by changing the name of the article or some such thing. We just ought to be consistent with the title.

I'm not changing anything, however, until there's some sort of Wikipedia-style consensus here.

—Markles 00:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's a proposal:

• Group the 13 colonies in their own heading alphabetically
• Order the remaining 6 states alphabetically
• Throw the order column in the trash

Cburnett 00:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I like Cburnett's solution... the order thing doesn't really make sense or matter regarding the issue. However, I think the last part ("order they were admitted to the Union"), would require them to be in 1-13 order if it were listed. Before the government under the Constitution was implemented, each state was sovereign; the "federal" government under the Articles of Confederation was merely that—a confederation. Therefore, while the new government—one soverign nation rather than 13 sovereign nations allying for things like defense, ...—might have "started" on a date after 2/3+ (or all, idk the exact dates) had ratified the Constitution, each state individually had "signed on" to this new, united government beforehand. But of course, like you said, the introductory sentence changes this, since it's not talking about admissions order but rather simply listing states that fit the abovementioned criteria. Consequently, I (like I said already, but I might as well restate it so my argument is somewhat complete) think Cburnett has a good idea, since putting them in admission order (or ranking the first 13) could easily confuse people into thinking admisssion order (and, possibly, "why is this wrong?") rather than what the introductory sentence says. //MrD9 02:16, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

California

I think this article greatly misinterprets California history. California was never an independent republic in any meaningful way and was never recognized as such by any country. In 1846, there were only about 5000 non-Indians in California and most of them were Mexican. Then the United States declared war on Mexico and sent in some soldiers and sailors. It's true one very small group of Americans declared they were an independent republic but they were essentially ignored by everyone else and never established any real government (the Republic's first and only President resigned after only 25 days and was never replaced). So California passed directly from Mexican to American control after a brief period in which the two sides were fighting. A military governor was appointed and California became a state two years later. MK2 02:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Wait a minute, if the area that is now California was ceded in 1848 and California did not become a state until 1850, what was it in the intervening year (1849)? I mean, yes the people of what would become the state of California wrote a bilingual constitution in 1849, but obviously they couldn't have been writing the constitution of their future state unless the area was not a state already. Thus the area that is now California must have been a territory of sorts. I always thought that the state of California was created out of the unorganized territory of the Mexican Cession.72.27.62.58 00:34, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

So, can no one answer the question?208.131.182.238 20:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by the word "territory." "Unorganized territory" is a catch-all term that simply means a piece of land that is under the sovereignty of the United States, is not part of any state, and does not have any internal government of its own. This is generally considered an interim of state of affairs for any region that has a sizable population of any sort. California was part of the large swath of land ceded to the US by Mexico in 1848; due to sqaubbling over whether slavery would be allowed in this newly acquired land, no provisions for government in it were laid down by Congress until the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California as a free state, and organized the rest of the Cession into two organized territories (New Mexico and Utah, both significantly larger than the states with those names). Thus, California became a state without every actually having been a separate jurisdiction called "California Territory" or the like. I believe in practice the whole Mexican Cession was under military government during this interim period. The Territorial evolution of the United States article is a good resource on the sequence of events.

For what it's worth, I think California deserves to be included in this list, though it perhaps should be changed to "List of U.S. states that were never organized territories" to make it clearer. --Jfruh (talk) 00:01, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

"In 1846, prior to formal declaration of the Mexican–American War,.....". The US declared war in May 1846, Bear Republic was in June, and Mexico declared war in July. Emargie (talk) 22:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I think territory should be used by its plain meaning. The article has "U.S. Territories" not "organized territories". It's a bit pedantic to say that California wasn't a territory because there was never a "California Territory", the land making it up was formed from U.S. Territory. That makes California much less like rest of the list, and more like the other states. –Fitnr 19:31, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Map vs List

There's an inconsistency: While California is shown on the map it is omitted in the list. I do not know what is right, but both information pieces should match. Tomeasy (talk) 17:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

ehm. Seems I just missed it. Tomeasy_talk 09:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

W. Virginia

I don't think current description has it right:

Congress granted statehood to West Virginia unilaterally, in 1863.

Congress could not Constitutionally do this, as it didn't recognize the legitimacy of Virginia's secession. I think what happened is that the representatives of the counties that would become W. Virginia -- which by 1863 were under de facto Union control -- declared themselves to be the legitimate government of the state of Virginia, which Congress recognized; as such, they gave their assent to division of Virginia, then immediately reconvened as the new government of W. Virginia. Kind of confusing, and not really in the spirit of the Constitutional provision, but technically Virginia did agree to the creation of W. Virginia.

This is just off the top of my head; I will try to find some sources on it. --Jfruh (talk) 00:08, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of how it happened, it's clear that it was extra-constitutional, as were many things that transpired during the Civil War. The Constitution clearly required that Congress gain the agreement of the Virginia legislature to split off WV, and (understandably) they did not. Don't misunderstand me, I shed no tears for Virginia's loss—the kid who bloodies the referee's nose should not expect to get any sympathetic calls on the field from same official. Unschool (talk) 14:55, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but that's the trick. See, the legislators from that part of Virginia under Union control in 1863 convened and declared that they were the legislature of Virginia, on the logic that by voting to seceede the other legislators had committed treason and given up their rights to office, which the Congress recognized. The rump legislature then voted that a new state (which happened to occupy the exact same area that they represented) would be created out of Virginia. So, technically, from the point of view of Congress, the Virginia legislature did give its permission. The fact that this "Virginia Legislature" didn't represent or control the whole state made the whole thing highly irregular, but by some willful blindness the letter of the Constitution was followed. --Jfruh (talk) 17:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

{{subst:RM top|moved to [[List of U.S. states that were never U.S. territories.}} It could be said that colonies are or are not territories, but the ambiguity there is too great. Clarifying that this article is only talking about U.S Territories would help avoid that ambiguity. Spinach Monster (talk) 16:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• Support sounds good. 76.66.196.229 (talk) 06:12, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Simpler to capitalize Territories; the British North American colonies were never "Territories" before 1776. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:55, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Wouldn't that be contrary to WP:CAPS? I don't think territories is a proper noun here. Station1 (talk) 23:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
    • That's exactly what it is, just as in Nevada Territory, which did exist. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:01, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support Move: Simply capitalizing "territories" to "Territories" won't clear up ambiguity for readers who are unfamiliar with the subject, and don't know the history of British North American colonial governance. By the way, make sure "U.S." has periods after both letters each time the term is used (in the move request, it's spelled "U.S Territories") Baileypalblue (talk) 01:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Footnotes for Delaware and Maine suggested? Delaware wasn't a US territory but it could've been and was briefly considered a territory of Pennsylvania. Maine in the same situation with Massachusetts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srt1968 (talk • contribs) 20:00, 4 November 2012 (UTC)