Vermont, State of (U.S.A.)

Vermont has continued to govern itself as a sovereign entity based in the eastern town of Windsor for fourteen years.

The independent state of Vermont had issued its own coinage from 1785 to 1788 and operated a statewide postal service.

Thomas Chittenden, who served as governor from 1778–1789 and 1790–1791, had been one of the participants in a series of delicate negotiations with British authorities in Quebec over the possibility of establishing Vermont as a British province.

Because the state of New York had continued to assert a disputed claim that Vermont was a part of New York, Vermont could not be admitted to the Union under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution until the legislature of New York consented.

On March 6, 1790, the legislature had made its consent contingent upon a negotiated agreement on the precise boundary between the two states.

When commissioners from New York and Vermont met to decide on the boundary, Vermont's negotiators had insisted on also settling the property ownership disputes with New Yorkers, rather than leaving that to be decided later in a federal court.

The negotiations had been successfully concluded in October 1790 with an agreement that Vermont would pay $30,000 to New York to be distributed among New Yorkers who claimed land in Vermont under New York land patents.

In January 1791, a convention in Vermont had voted 105–4 to petition Congress to become a state in the federal union.

Congress had acted on February 18, 1791 to admit Vermont to the Union as the fourteenth state as of March 4, 1791.

Vermont becomes the first to enter the Union after the original thirteen states.

As settlers pour in to the frontier districts, they first become territories, with an elected legislature and a governor appointed by the president.

Then, when population reaches one hundred, thousand the territories apply for statehood.

Frontiersmen typically drop the legalistic formalities and restrictive franchise favored by eastern upper classes, and adopt more democracy and more egalitarianism.

In 1800 the western frontier reaches the Mississippi River.

St. Louis, Missouri, is the largest town on the frontier, the gateway for travel westward, and a principal trading center for Mississippi River traffic and inland commerce but remains under Spanish control until 1803.

An influenza epidemic grips New England in 1793.

Middlebury College, founded by Congregationalists as an outgrowth of the Addison County Grammar School, which had been founded three years earlier in 1797, is granted its charter by the Vermont General Assembly on November 1, 1800.

The College's first president—Jeremiah Atwater—begins classes a few days later, making Middlebury the first operating college or university in Vermont.

The Hartford Convention's final report proposes several amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

These attempt to combat the policies of the ruling Democratic-Republicans by:

    Prohibiting any trade embargo lasting over sixty days;
    Requiring a two-thirds Congressional majority for declaration of offensive war, admission of a new state, or interdiction of foreign commerce;
    Removing the three-fifths representation advantage of the South;
    Limiting future Presidents to one term;
    Requiring each President to be from a different state than his predecessor. (This provision is aimed directly at the dominance of Virginia in the presidency since 1800.)
 
The Democratic-Republican Congress will never recommend any of New England's proposals for ratification.

Hartford delegates intend for them to embarrass the President and the Democratic-Republicans in Congress—and also to serve as a basis for negotiations between New England and the rest of the country.

Some delegates may have been in favor of New England's secession from the United States, and forming an independent republic, though no such resolution has been adopted at the convention.

After the Hartford convention, Massachusetts had sent three commissioners to Washington, D.C. to negotiate for the terms that had been agreed.

By the time they arrive in February 1815, news of Andrew Jackson's overwhelming victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, has preceded them and, consequently, their presence in the capital seems both ludicrous and subversive.

They quickly return.

Thereafter, both Hartford Convention and Federalist Party become synonymous with disunion, secession, and treason, especially in the South.

The party is ruined, and ceases to be a significant force in national politics, although in a few places (notably Massachusetts, where Federalists will be elected to the governorship annually until 1823) it will retain some power.

Captain Alden Partridge, after leaving West Point because of congressional disapproval of his system, returns to his native state of Vermont to create the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy (today Norwish University).

In founding the academy, Partridge is rebelling against the reforms of Sylvanus Thayer, who has replaced him as superintendent of West Point, to prevent the rise of what he sees as the greatest threat to the security of the young republic: an aristocratic officer class.

He believes that a well-trained militia is an urgent necessity and develops the American system of military school around this idea.

The Anti-Masonic party has practically superseded the National Republican party in New York since the election of 1828.

New York state assemblyman Millard Fillmore, elected to the US Congress in 1832 as an Anti-Mason, joins the Whig party, the anti-Jackson coalition.

By this time, however, the movement has lost its focus on Masonry, and has spread to neighboring states, becoming especially strong in Pennsylvania and Vermont.

The second Vermont State House is a Greek Revival design based upon the Temple of Theseus in Athens.

Designed by Ammi B.Young, who is later to become the supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury, and constructed between 1833–1838, gray Barre granite is used for the two-story cruciform design.

The Doric portico and low saucer dome echo Latrobe's earliest design for the U.S. Capitol.

William Henry Harrison for President and Francis Granger for Vice President are the nominees of a Pennsylvania state convention held in Harrisburg on December 14-17, following the election of Joseph Ritner as Governor in 1835, to choose Presidential Electors for the 1836 election.