In his second message, the
President sent to Congress a petition for statehood from an authorised
convention of the people inhabiting the district of Kentucky, together
with a permission to that end from the parent State, Virginia. Both
papers had been inherited from the old Congress. As the President said,
they contained "sentiments of warm attachment to the Union and its
present government." Such a happy termination of the sixteen years'
contest between the trans-Alleghenians and their parent State, as well
as such a final contradiction to the repeated rumours of the secession
of Kentucky, caused the speedy enactment of a law "that upon the
aforesaid first day of June, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two,
the said new state by the name and style of the state of Kentucky shall
be received and admitted into this Union as a new and entire member
of the United States of America." A few days later it was decreed in
another simple law that Vermont should be admitted on March 4, 1791.
New York, the parent State, had agreed to release her on payment of
thirty thousand dollars. Vermont secured the prior admission because
her application named no day, as that of Kentucky did.
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