Have you ever asked yourself why we only have one state named after a president, but half
a dozen states named after kings and queens from other countries?
Well that wasn’t the original plan, there’ve been quite a few attempts to name states after
founding fathers that ended up failing…
So let's start at the beginning.
Before Vermont became the fourteenth state, there were two other places that were trying
really hard to get that coveted slot.
First, let’s talk about this bit of land, which at the time was part of North Carolina.
Since they were on the other side of the Appalachian mountains, the government of North Carolina
hard a rather hard time governing the area… so the people there decided to form their
own potential state, named Frankland.
They petitioned for statehood in 1785, but were rejected, since North Carolina didn’t
feel like giving up the land just yet.
So they changed their name to Franklin, after the at-the-time still-living Benjamin Franklin,
and asked him for help with getting recognized.
Franklin was famously full of himself, but his response is easily the most nicely worded
“I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not going to work” dismissals I’ve ever
seen put to paper.
“I am sensible of the honor which your Excellency and your council thereby do me.
But being in Europe when your State was formed, I am too little acquainted with the circumstances
to be able to offer you anything just now that may be of importance” – Benjamin
Franklin, 1787 The State of Franklin eventually gave up their
attempt and were absorbed into the territory that became Tennessee in 1796.
But that doesn’t stop the people who live there from slapping “State of Franklin”
on businesses and tourist spots to this day.
At the same time, this region, which was controlled by Virginia and Pennsylvania, was also on
the other side of the Appalachians and was difficult to govern from their respective
capitals, and as a result was likewise trying to become the fourteenth state, known as “Westsylvania.”
But promotion of the independence movement was made illegal and an act of treason in
1782, which technically made it punishable by death.
The reasoning behind that was that this land belonged to the Indians, and creating a state
there would start a war… which the US obviously didn’t want.
So it remained part of Virginia… at least until the Civil War.
Again, since it was on the other side of the Appalachians, so geography helped separate
the people, and when Virginia broke away from the US to join the Confederacy, Westsylvania
broke away from Virginia to stay in the Union.
This happened literally weeks after the start of the Civil War.
So the delegates of the area got together to decide on a constitution, and perhaps more
importantly, what to name this new state.
I have an idea, let’s call it Kanawha.
What?
Kanawha.
Why are you putting so much emphasis on the H?
I dunno, it just sounds better that - The fact that you’re doing that is the main
reason we’re not going to call it that, let’s call it Columbia.
The capital is already the District of Columbia, we can’t call it that.
How about New Virginia?
Are you seriously?
We might as well just go back to calling it Westsylvania…
And so “West Virginia” was born.
As you’ll soon realize, America, like Britain, is not very creative when it comes to the
naming.
Oftentimes we don’t even change it from whatever it was before… like Florida.
Florida was originally a Spanish colony and means the “land of flowers.”
But because of the expansion of the United States, many Americans came to inhabit the
area.
In 1799, an American banded together with the local Seminole and Muscogee Indians and
formed the short lived State of Muskogee.
It’s worth noting that the Indian tribe it was named after was spelled with a C, not
a K, but whatever.
It lasted all of four years before it was destroyed.
But thanks to that, combined with the ever-expanding United States, the territory became too expensive
for the Spanish to maintain.
So they ceded the territory to the US in 1810.
At which point the area was divided into… *sigh*…
East and West Florida.
Anyway, it was admitted as the full state of Florida in 1845.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Several times since then, including as recently as 2008 and 2014, the counties in southern
Florida have proposed resolutions to split the state in half.
What would they name these two partitions?
North and South Florida.
See what I mean?
Trust me, this is a recurring theme.
So let’s move on to a state I brought up in my last video on the topic of states.
Texas.
As I mentioned before, Texas likes to brag about how they used to be an independent republic
and say that they can secede if they want.
They can’t, but they can break themselves up into five states if they ever felt like
it.
They’ve never made up plans to break up into that many, but they have proposed breaking
into two.
The first plan was drawn up in 1870, after the Civil War, and would divide Texas along
the San Antonio River.
Don’t worry, they were a little more creative with the names this time.
They wanted to call this part Lincoln and this part Jefferson.
You’d think a state that fought on the losing side of the Civil War would be a little salty
over the idea of naming themselves Lincoln… and you’d be right.
So they changed the name to Matagorda, which is Spanish for Thick Bush.
Grow up.
The plan was reintroduced in 1906…
Then again in 1915… and 1921.
It made it to Congress once or twice, but obviously never passed.
Then in 1945, after World War 2, this area of Northern Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle
– hey wait, why does Oklahoma have a panhandle anyway?
– I’ll get to that later, but anyway, they were tired of being ignored by Texas
and Oklahoma and drafted a proposal to secede and form the state of…
Wait… actually, take a second and think of a name for this proposed state on your
own.
Trust me, it’s just as unoriginal as you would expect.
Okay you got it?
Did you guess Texlahoma?
Because I’m guessing you were pretty close, maybe only one letter off.
Obviously, that didn’t happen either.
But it’s not the first time they tried to break up Oklahoma.
Back when it was called the Indian Territory, they were seriously considering making this
area a legitimate Indian-controlled state named Sequoyah.
The movement lasted until 1907, when the US Congress predictably didn’t let them create
an Indian only state, and instead created Oklahoma.
In 1939, during the Great Depression, many plains Indian tribes got together with the
mostly Republican ranchers in protest of FDR’s New Deal… with those crazy democratic ideas
and plans to build infrastructure… and submitted a proposal to break away and form the State
of Absaroka.
They even had their own license plates and their own Miss Absaroka 1939.
The plan was abandoned shortly afterwards, especially when World War 2 began.
But let’s jump back in time a bit to the late 1840s, when the Rockies were mostly inhabited
by Mormons.
After the Mexican-American war, when Texas became a state and California was in the process,
the church decided they better stake their claim and sent someone to Washington…
Hi, we’re Mormons and we would like to create the State of Deseret.
That’s a pretty big area you’re claiming there.
Yes well, you just admitted Texas, which is pretty big… and California is pretty big
too…
Texas is special and California has gold.
What do you have?
…uhh…
Polygamy?
Yeah… get rid of that and we’ll talk.
So California got to become a state and Deseret did not… instead they were lumped into the
Utah Territory as part of the Missouri Compromise in 1850 which I’ll talk about later.
But as part of the compromise, California joined the union as a free state, and they
had to promise to send one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery senator to Congress…
Which caused all sorts of problems, so almost right away, there was a plan to just break
California up into two states.
With the northern half being named Shasta and the southern half named Colorado, after
the ruddy Colorado River.
They later decided to keep the northern half named California.
Which by the way, comes from the Spanish word for “Land of the Caliph”… as in the
Islamic Caliphate.
Just putting that out there.
Anyway, once the Civil War started this plan was obviously dropped.
Which is a good thing because the Colorado River no longer drains into the Pacific Ocean
in California… so they would have named themselves after a river that dries up in
their state.
But since then, there have been several plans to break up California, including one in 2013
that actually gained some traction that would have broken it up into six states.
Appropriately named the “Six Californias” plan.
It would have created the state of Jefferson, Silicon Valley … sigh…
North California, Central California, West California, and South California.
But in 1859, at the same time that California was considering naming half of itself Colorado,
the gold miners over here hoped to make this territory into the State of Jefferson.
But the economy was based almost entirely on gold mining, which brought in all the drunkards
and criminals.
And since this area was populated by Mormons, who didn’t like the crime associated with
gold, and still hadn’t given up polygamy (ended in 1890), that whole area was cut out
of the proposed state.
Around the same time, they were considering naming this state or this state Lincoln.
It seems like the names Lincoln and Jefferson go hand-in-hand.
But, obviously, that didn’t happen… so they had to come up with a new name.
Well we can’t call this Jefferson if we don’t also have a Lincoln… so what should
we call it?
How about Idaho?
What does that mean?
Absolutely nothing, I just made it up.
Wha?
Get out of here with that nonsense, nobody would be stupid enough to use a made up name.
Seriously the word Idaho was completely made up.
The people in Idaho like to claim that it means “Salmon Eater” in Comanche, which
is true… but the Comanche live down here, and the guy who made it up didn’t know that.
It’s the same as if you just slammed your head on your keyboard and later found out
that the garble actually means something in a language you’ve never heard of.
Hey remember when California was going to name themselves after that river?
Yeah?
Yeah, well, that river actually *starts* here so… how about that?
So boom, Colorado was born.
But we’re still not done.
The Pacific Northwest was jointly occupied by the US and Great Britain.
In 1846, they signed a treaty officially breaking the area up and establishing the mostly-straight
border between the US and Canada.
Originally, the area was going to be called Columbia Territory, after Christopher Columbus.
Which is why the area north of the border is now called British Columbia.
But they wanted avoid any confusion with the nation’s capital, Washington DC, which stands
for the District of Columbia.
So they called it…
Washington Territory.
Anyway, the original plan was to break the area up into three states…
Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.
Because these are the three presidents that anyone is allowed to admire.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or Democrat, if you say you admire any of
these three, you’ll get a round of applause.
Which is partly why these three, along with Teddy Roosevelt, were put on Mount Rushmore.
But since the area had also been called Oregon Country when it was under US and British control,
when Jefferson applied for statehood in 1848, they adopted the name Oregon.
Since then, there have been a few attempts to break away southern Oregon and Northern
California to reform Jefferson, all the way up to 2013.
It was even part of the Six Californias plan.
But anyway, because the eastern half of what would have become Lincoln was full of gold,
and again, nobody wanted those filthy gold digging criminals in their state, that area
was given to Idaho, and the rest became the State of Washington in 1889.
But when this was all still in the works, when the US was still in that whole Manifest
Destiny kick, they hoped to control the entire Pacific coast.
So they bought Alaska from Russia.
An area two-thirds the size of the Louisiana Purchase, for about half the price.
Look, here’s the actual check used to buy Alaska.
That’s right, we’re the old ladies at the grocery store… paying by check.
Anyway, the hope was that by controlling territory both north and south of Canada, Britain would
just give up trying to control British Columbia and hand it over.
Obviously that didn’t happen, but funny enough, since the entire Pacific Northwest
is populated by a mix of former British and former American settlers, there’s a small
independence movement that would unite the area into an independent republic known as
Cascadia.
Probably not going to happen but… look, they even have their own flag!
But that’s not all, there are currently several movements within the US to break up
current states.
For a long time now, New York City and Long Island have thought about separating and creating
the state of Long Island… that’s usually because the area is more economically active
and they’re tired of sending their tax dollars upstate.
Likewise, the people of the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, called Yoopers after the abbreviation
UP, consider themselves so different from the rest of Michigan that they’ve tried
to break away and create a state named Superior.
There have been several other smaller, less significant secession movements, most notably
the Conch Republic in Key West.
Which is mostly just a joke and has never seriously considered breaking away, it’s
mostly just a tourist thing.
So there you have it, combined with my other two videos, that’s the entire history of
the United States.
So we can finally move on to- Wait, you said you were going to talk about the Missouri
Compromise and why Oklahoma has a panhandle- Oh for…
Okay fine… one more video on the history and geography of the US, and after that we’re
going to talk about other countries… okay?
Not all of my viewers are American.- Yeah but most of them are.- Anyway, at least for
now, you know better.
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