January 13th, 1795 – With the addition of the states of Kentucky and Vermont having been added to the union, Congress changed the U.S. flag to 15 stars and 15 stripes.
Having previously been rejected in 1788 by the Continental Congress, Kentucky again sought admission to the Union in 1790. On July 28th of that same year, George Muter, a long-time resident of the Kentucky territory, penned a letter to the president to accompany the petition to become a state. In it, he wrote that the people of Kentucky were “as warmly attached to the American Union, and … to the perfect happy establishment of the Federal Government as any of the citizens of the United States.”
When submitting the Kentucky Convention Memorial to Congress for admission to the union, President Washington made a point to inform the members that both Virginia, which had permitted the cleaving off of the frontier territory, and Kentucky had each bridled their passions admirably in the separation.
The president wrote, “The liberality and harmony, with which it has been conducted will be found to do great honor to both parties; and the sentiments of warm attachment to the Union and its present Government expressed by our fellow citizens of Kentucky cannot fail to add an affectionate concern for their particular welfare to the great national impressions under which you will decide the case submitted to you.”
Both houses of Congress promised to move expeditiously in voting on the measure. They were true to their word, and the bill to admit Kentucky to the union was made law on February 4th, 1791.
New York had a harder time relinquishing its claim to the Vermont territory, which had been part of New York since the 1664 Land Grant issue to the Duke of York. There was the usual difficulty in untangling the land titles of various farmers and the multitude of claims by land speculators, but there were others as well. Vermont was more politically divided than Kentucky.
In addition to concerns over the disposition of the nation’s debt and its citizens’ fear of being landlocked as an independent state, many of Vermont’s citizens were very much still loyal to Great Britain and worried about whether the former mother country would countenance its joining the union.
The national forces would prove too much for the private interests of a few Vermonters. With the admission of Kentucky as a southern state, a great many in Congress were concerned that the geographic imbalance would place in jeopardy several of the key initiatives before Congress, most notably Hamilton’s economic plan for the nation.
Benjamin Franklin’s grandson and namesake, Benjamin Franklin Bache, published the following doggerel in his anti-Washington, anti-federalist newspaper, The General Advertiser;
Kentucky to the Union given—
Vermont will make the ballance even;
Still Pennsylvania holds the scales,
And neither South or North prevails.
“Pennsylvania holds the scales” was a reference to whether or not another Franklin, named John, would be successful in splitting a portion of Northern Pennsylvania into another state.
No less than Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson got involved and worked behind the scenes to ensure Vermont and Kentucky were both admitted and had equal representation from the beginning.
President Washington, for his part, pushed hard from his end as English, French, and Spanish efforts to detach the West from the Union by any means were a constant threat to American sovereignty.
After considerable wrangling for every interested party imaginable, Vermont was admitted to the Union on March 4th, 1791, one month after Kentucky. The fifteen-star canton, coupled with fifteen stripes, formed the new American Flag. It was this flag that would be called the “Star Spangled Banner” after the storied “banner yet waved, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”
