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Show 286 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT As finally drafted, it provided: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other States; 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. A notable difference between the wording of this provision in the Constitution and the provision in Article V of the Northwest Ordinance respecting admission of new states is the substitution in the Constitution of "may be admitted" for "shall be admitted."4 Vermont Little time passed under the new Constitution before Congress was faced with questions concerning the admission of new states. Vermont, in fact, had long been a problem because of its resistance to the efforts of New York and New Hampshire to control it. The little state had once been a part of the dominion of New Hampshire, whose Governor had granted away much of its land. When freed of New Hampshire's control by the Crown in 1764, it had been taken under the control of New York, which voided the New Hampshire grants and made new grants of its own. Vermonters, refusing to be controlled by either of these states, set themselves up as an independent state in 1777, and though they fought alongside the Americans in the Revolution, they still remained independent and outside the Union because of their conflict with New York over titles. These issues were settled in 1790 when Vermont agreed to pay an indemnity to New York for the land it claimed and had granted. In January 1791, Vermont ratified the new Federal Constitution. President Washington then sent Congress documents expressing the consent of New York to the admission of Vermont and a request from Vermont that it be admitted "as a distinct member of the Union." Everyone seemed happy that the long years of wrangling over the status of Vermont were over and Congress on February 18, 1791, consented in its shortest admission act that on March 4, 1791 "Vermont shall be received and admitted into this Union, as a new and entire member of the United States of America."5 Vermont was the only state admitted into the Union without conditions of any kind, prescribed either by the Congress or by the state from which it was carved. Kentucky Virginia's trans-Appalachian territory south of the Ohio attracted settlers and land speculators even before the Revolution, but the flood-tide of landseekers set in afterwards. Conscious of interests different from those of tidewater Virginia, the trans-Appalachian settlers called a convention in 1784 to appeal to Virginia for separation and the right to petition the Confederation for admission as a separate state. Then began a long struggle which produced 10 successive conventions, a number of drafts of constitutions, and petitions to Virginia for permission to create a separate state and for support in their efforts to gain admission to the Confederation as the State of Kentucky. In four successive enabling acts Virginia set forth the conditions on which it would allow Kentucky independence. Virginia insisted that title disputes in Kentucky involving grants made by Virginia must be determined by the laws of the mother state. Under this and other features of the enabling acts and of the compact finally made between Virginia and Kentucky, Kentucky bound herself to abide by laws that were subsequently found to be sharply at variance with her own. The application of Virginia land law to title disputes in Kentucky brought about in 1821- 23 one of the great constitutional clashes in 4 Commager, Documents, p. 144; Arthur Taylor Prescott, Drafting the Federal Constitution (University, La., 1941), pp. 478 ff. 6 1 Stat. 191; Debates and Proceedings of the Congress of the United States, II, 2013. |