Posted on 01/31/2017 12:50:08 PM PST by US Navy Vet
...an if so what were/are they?
The Admission of Ohio as a State
August 07, 1953
On this date, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law ending the dispute about the actual calendar day Ohio was admitted into the Union. The Ohio state convention agreed to petition for admittance into the Union on November 29, 1802. Congress approved this action on February 19, 1803, but did not complete the steps to grant statehood. The 8th Congress (1803–1805) missed a critical part of the statehood process: congressional ratification of the state constitution. One hundred and fifty years later, in the 83rd Congress (1953–1955), Representative George H. Bender of Ohio introduced the legislation on January 13, 1953, to retroactively grant statehood. Calling the mistake a legislative oversight, Bender stated, “The State constitutional convention presented the Constitution of Ohio to Congress on February 19, 1803, and Congress chose to ignore the whole business.” Without congressional approval of the state constitution, Ohio technically remained part of the Northwest Territory. The Members of the 83rd Congress poked fun at the expense of their colleagues from Ohio, claiming, as did Representative John E. Lyle of Texas, that “If Ohio is not a member of the Union and we have some illegal members of the Senate and the House here, I should like to know it.” On May 19, 1953, the House voted to approve legislation retroactively ratifying the state constitution and admitting Ohio to the Union as of March 1, 1803. ( http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/The-admission-of-Ohio-as-a-state/ )
Because a state couldn't secede, the regime that declared secession was regarded as illegitimate. So the federal government recognized another state government that allowed for the creation of West Virginia.
I don't know if it counts as a mistake, but we don't know if North Dakota or South Dakota became a state first. President Benjamin Harrison shuffled the papers before signing them, covered the top of the documents when he signed them, and shuffled them again before handing them back.
One mistake we make is thinking Delaware was one of the original thirteen colonies. Delaware was in a strange relationship with Pennsylvania and wasn't considered a separate colony. When Delaware declared its independence from Pennsylvania when it declared its independence from Britain.
Big mistake: whoever surveyed the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Defective instruments were blamed for the raggedy, jerky line of the border, but maybe somebody was drinking.
Make it 1889 and we can throw in Washington. Beautiful state - terrible politics!
They had real problems trying to figure out how to divide up the Oregon Territory. Seattle and Spokane are very different. Northern and Southern Idaho, Eastern and Western Oregon, likewise very different. It was a complicated mathematical problem to get three states out of the Territory.
IIRC, Oklahoma and WEST Virginia are the only States in which zero counties voted for the Hildebeeste.
GFY
The old running joke, that West Virginia is not a state but rather is a condition, is harsh because of the good and decent people of the state. Mismanagement of the state and local government by both parties has left the state in dire economic straights.
No mention of Hawaii? The natives apparently don’t want to be part of our country, so we ought to cut them mostly loose and keep a military presence there so China can’t take it. If Hawaii had never been a state, the Error would have had to have claimed another state at his birthplace.
I meant ‘mistake’ in that West Virginia was created during the Civil War, in an unconstitutional manner that has never been corrected AFAIK................
I’m sure they took care of that to be “readmitted” to the union after the civil War.
“Isn’t it too early to start drinking?”
If you’ve never been around Navy guys, the answer is an emphatic NO.
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