Page images
PDF
EPUB

The Articles of Confederation were agreed to by delegates from the Thirteen Original Colonies on November 15, 1777. The defects in the form of government thereby instituted were so many that steps were soon taken to change it. A convention called in 1787 to draft a constitution for the United States completed its labors on September 17 of the same year. The Constitution of the United States of America was ratified and the Thirteen Original States became members of the Union on various dates between 1787 and 1790 (table 2).

TABLE 2.-Date and order of admission of the 50 States into the Union

[blocks in formation]

70

Congress, by act approved April 4, 1818, effective July 4, 1818,7 ordered that "the flag of the United States be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be twenty stars [there were then 20 States], white in a blue field," and that "on the admission of every new State into the Union, one star be added to the union of the flag" on the 4th of July following.

EARLY SESSIONS OF CONGRESS

The place and time of the early sessions of Congress are indicated below.

Continental Congress and Congress of the Confederation

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

103 Stat. L. 415. See also 1 Stat. L. 341 and Preble (1917).

Continental Congress and Congress of the Confederation-Continued

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Sept. 27, 1777 (1 day only).
Sept. 30, 1777, to June 27, 1778.
July 2, 1778, to June 21, 1783.
June 30, 1783, to Nov. 4, 1783.
Nov. 26, 1783, to June 3, 1784.
Nov. 1, 1784, to Dec. 24, 1784.
Jan. 11, 1785, to Nov. 4, 1785.
Nov. 7, 1785, to Nov. 3, 1786.
Nov. 6, 1786, to Oct. 30, 1787.
Nov. 5, 1787, to Oct. 21, 1788.
Nov. 3, 1788, to Mar. 2, 1789.

[merged small][ocr errors]

U.S. Congress

Mar. 4, 1789, to Sept. 29, 1789.
Jan. 4, 1790, to Aug. 12, 1790.

Philadelphia was the meeting place for subsequent sessions from December 6, 1790, until November, 1800, when the seat of Government was moved to Washington."1

AREAS OF THE STATES AND OVERSEAS TERRITORY

The following information relating to the area of the United States and its overseas territory has been assembled in tabular form for convenient reference. The areas are approximate only. Exact outlines of drainage basins of large rivers that form boundaries are in many places not well established even on the best maps.

Original area of the United States and areas of continental changes (except

Alaska and Canal Zone)

Square miles

The territorry of the United States, as recognized by Great
Britain in 1783: The area limited by the present accepted
northern boundary from eastern Maine to a point near the
northwesternmost angle of the Lake of the Woods, thence by
a direct line to the source of the Mississippi River, down that
river to the 31st parallel of latitude, thence eastward along that
parallel and the north line of Florida to the Atlantic Ocean
(excluding the water surfaces of the Great Lakes, except Lake
Michigan, and the Atlantic Ocean) ---

[blocks in formation]

The parts of the Great Lakes on the international boundary
which are under the jurisdiction of the United States‒‒‒‒‒‒‒ 38,550

1 This value was obtained by adding the accepted areas of the 24 States and the District of Columbia (723.947 sq mi) which lie wholly within the 1783 treaty limits, including the parts of Alabama (49,359 sq mi) and Mississippi (44,079 sq mi) north of lat 31° N. and the part of Minnesota (29,950 sq mi) east of the Mississippi and Lake of the Woods lines. The Lake Michigan area (22,400 sq mi) was also included, as it is within the original cession.

711 Stat. L. 130. See "A Biographical Congressional Directory," U.S. 61st Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. 654, p. 25, 1913, and 69th Cong., 2d sess., H. Doc. 783, p. 31, 1928, for places and dates of meetings of the Continental Congress. See annual Congressional Directory for dates and meetings of the U.S. Congress; also U.S. 69th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 398. p. 1062, 1927. U.S. 56th Cong., 2d sess., H. Doc. 552, 1901, gives illustrations of the eight buildings in which sessions of Congress were held.

GENERAL STATISTICS- -AREAS OF STATES, OVERSEAS TERRITORY 263

Original area of the United States and areas of continental changes (except Alaska and Canal Zone)-Continued

Square miles

A 3-mile strip along the Atlantic coast..
Louisiana Purchase, 1803: The part of the drainage basin of the
Mississippi River west of that river, including the basin of the
Missouri River and the area south of the 31st parallel between
the Mississippi and Perdido Rivers:

South of the 49th parallel__
North of the 49th påfallel.

Red River Basin and Lake of the Woods drainage: South of the
49th parallel, west of the head of the Mississippi River_-----
By treaty with Spain in 1819 the United States acquired East and
West Florida, an area of 58,666 square miles, and areas west of
the Mississippi River (principally in Louisiana) amounting to
22,834 square miles, but relinquished to Spain 97,150 square
miles (of the Louisiana Purchase), or a net loss of--
Texas, annexed in 1845 (including 95,650 sq mi of the area relin-
quished to Spain in 1819).

Oregon Territory, title established in 1846.

Mexican cession, 1848 (included 775 sq mi relinquished to Spain
in 1819)----

Gadsden Purchase, 1853--

[blocks in formation]

If it is assumed that the United States had no valid claim to the area south of lat 31° N. and between the Perdido and Mississippi Rivers, then this value should be reduced by an area of 13,433 sq mi and that amount added to the area of the Florida Purchase. Of the 13,433 sq mi, 2,639 sq mi is now a part of Alabama, 2,786 a part of Mississippi and 8,008 a part of Louisiana.

The Canada Year Book, 1929, Ottawa, p. 11.

Areas from Bond, (1912, p. 13), chief clerk, General Land Office).

Table 3, showing land and water areas, is taken from the "Statistical Abstract of the United States," 1962, published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The water areas include only "inland water" as defined below, and exclude those parts of the Great Lakes and certain other bodies of water under the jurisdiction of the United States.

The average or mean area of the 50 States is 72,303 square miles. Table 4 (p. 265) includes the areas of overseas territory of the United States. These figures also were taken from the "Statistical Abstract" of the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

TABLE 3.-Land and water area of the United States, by States

[blocks in formation]

TABLE 3.-Land and water area of the United States, by States-Continued

[blocks in formation]

1 Dry land and land temporarily or partially covered by water, such as marshland. swamps, and river flood plains; streams, sloughs, estuaries, and canals less than oneeighth of a statute mile in width; and lakes, reservoirs, and ponds less than 40 acres in

area.

9

2 Permanent inland water surface, such as lakes, reservoirs, and ponds having 40 acres or more of area; streams, sloughs, estuaries, and canals more than one-eighth of a statute mile in width; deeply indented embayments and sounds, and other coastal waters behind or sheltered by headlands or islands separated by less than 1 nautical mile of water; and islands of less than 40 acres of area. Does not include water surface of the oceans, bays. the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, Long Island Sound, Puget Sound, and the Straits of San Juan de Fuca and Georgia, lying within the jurisdiction of the United States.

[blocks in formation]

GEOGRAPHIC CENTERS OF THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES

AND OF THE SEVERAL STATES 72

There being no generally accepted definition of "geographic center" and no completely satisfactory method for determining it, a State or country may have as many geographic centers as there are definitions of the term. The geographic center of an area may be defined as the center of gravity of the surface, or that point on which the surface of the area would balance if it were a plane of uniform thickness.

No marked or monumented point has been established by any Government agency as the geographic center of either the 50 States, the conterminous United States, or the North American Continent. However, a monument was erected in Lebanon, Kansas, by a group of citizens who hired engineers to determine the position of the geographic center of the United States.

Meades Ranch triangulation station, about 12 miles north of Lucas, Kansas, is sometimes confused with the geographic center of the United States. This triangulation station is the reference point for all property lines and city, county, State, and international boundaries on the North American Continent that are tied to the national triangulation networks of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America. Its location is lat 39°12′26.686'' N., long 98°32′30.506′ W. This triangulation station is the base point or origin of geodetic positions and directions in the triangulation net of the United States because it is at the junction of the main east-west transcontinental triangulation arc stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast and the main north-south arc, which follows approximately the 98th meridian from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande. (See page 10.)

Because many factors, such as the curvature of the earth, large bodies of water, and irregular surfaces, affect the determination of geographic centers, the locality of the centers (table 5) should be considered as approximations only.

The geographic center of the conterminous United States (48 States) is near Lebanon, Smith County, Kansas. Its latitude is 39°50′ N. and its longitude is 98°35′ W. (Deetz, 1918, p. 57.)

Other information on geographic centers is contained in Adams (1932, p. 586–587) and Culley (1949, p. 98-99).

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »