1791 to 1792
Vermont, the Bill of Rights and Kentucky
Vermont, an independent republic since 1777 and claimed by New York, pays $30,000 to settle the New York land claims and is admitted as the fourteenth state on 4 March 1791. Ten of the twelve amendments sent to the states in 1789 are ratified by 15 December 1791 and become the Bill of Rights.
The twelve amendments proposed by Congress on 25 September 1789. Ten were ratified as the Bill of RightsWikimedia Commons, National Archives, Public domain (Bill of Rights - DPLA - a65f6d0b6210c18d17c596908ebcf270 (page 1).jpg)
In 1791 Pierre Charles L’Enfant lays out the plan of the federal city in the district on the Potomac. Kentucky, which held a series of conventions at Danville to separate from Virginia, becomes the fifteenth state on 1 June 1792.
Pierre Charles L'Enfant's plan for the federal city on the Potomac, 1791, in an 1887 copyWikimedia Commons, Peter Charles L'Enfant, Public domain (L'enfant plan of Washington, D.C..jpg)
Sources
- Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788 (2010).
- Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969).
- Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty (2009).
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