Resolutions on Kentucky Statehood, 12 December 1785

Resolutions on Kentucky Statehood

[12 December 1785]

…

Fifth,—That the use and navigation of the river Ohio, so far as the territory of the proposed State, or the territory which shall remain within the limits of this Commonwealth, lies thereon, shall be free and common to the citizens of the United States, the respective jurisdictions of this Commonwealth, and of the proposed State over the river as aforesaid; shall be concurrent only with the States which may possess the opposite shore of the said river.1

Sixth,—That a time ought to be appointed for the free male inhabitants of the said district to elect a Convention with power to approve or disapprove of a separation on the conditions above mentioned; which Convention, in case they approve thereof, shall and may name a day on which the authority of this Commonwealth over the district aforesaid, under the exceptions aforesaid, shall cease and determine forever: It being nevertheless, always understood and provided, that previous thereto, the assent of the United States in Congress to such separation, their release of this Commonwealth from so much of its Federal obligations as arise from the said district being part thereof, and the fixing the terms on which the proposed State shall be admitted into the Confederacy, shall be obtained and declared.

Printed copy (JHDV description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg. Beginning in 1780, the portion after the semicolon reads, Begun and Held in the Town of Richmond. In the County of Henrico. The journal for each session has its own title page and is individually paginated. The edition used is the one in which the journals for 1777–1786 are brought together in two volumes, with each journal published in Richmond in either 1827 or 1828 and often called the “Thomas W. White reprint.” description ends , Oct. 1785, p. 88). No Ms of the resolutions has been found.

1. JM served as chairman of a special committee which was formed to consider the Kentucky petition for statehood presented on 28 Oct. (Vi; JHDV description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg. Beginning in 1780, the portion after the semicolon reads, Begun and Held in the Town of Richmond. In the County of Henrico. The journal for each session has its own title page and is individually paginated. The edition used is the one in which the journals for 1777–1786 are brought together in two volumes, with each journal published in Richmond in either 1827 or 1828 and often called the “Thomas W. White reprint.” description ends , Oct. 1785, pp. 10, 36). The committee report, carried before the House of Delegates by Mann Page, recommended that the movement toward statehood proceed, provided that all property rights of Virginians in the proposed state be unquestioned and that the new state assume its share of the national debt. When the amended resolutions came out of the Committee of the Whole, these additional provisions had been tacked on to the first report. JM spoke of his “proposed amendment” but did not go into particulars, so that Brant assumed that a single additional amendment was involved—specifically the sixth—whereby “the partition act should not take effect until the new state had been admitted into the Union” by Congress (Brant, Madison description begins Irving Brant, James Madison (6 vols.; Indianapolis and New York, 1941–61). description ends , II, 372). JM may have limited his proposal to this nationalistic resolution, but his views on free navigation of international riverways make it equally possible that he was the originator of that section. In short, his reference to a single amendment “to the report on the Memorial of Kentucky” obscures the precise nature of JM’s addition to the Committee of the Whole report (JM to Monroe, 9 Dec. 1785).

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Source Project: Madison Papers
Title: Resolutions on Kentucky Statehood, 12 December 1785
Author: Madison, James
Date: 12 December 1785

Reference

Cite as: “Resolutions on Kentucky Statehood, 12 December 1785,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0229. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 8, 10 March 1784 – 28 March 1786, ed. Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 441–442.]