The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce
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of Independence.
Area, Population, and Date of Admission of the States
The thirteen original states, in the order in which they ratified the Constitution
| Foreign Policy and Territorial Extension | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ratified the Constitution | Area in square miles | Population (1910) | |
| Delaware | 1787 | 2,050 | 202,322 |
| Pennsylvania | 1787 | 45,215 | 7,665,111 |
| New Jersey | 1787 | 7,815 | 2,537,167 |
| Georgia | 1788 | 59,475 | 2,609,121 |
| Connecticut | 1788 | 4,990 | 1,114,756 |
| Massachusetts | 1788 | 8,315 | 3,366,416 |
| Maryland | 1788 | 12,210 | 1,295,346 |
| South Carolina | 1788 | 30,570 | 1,515,400 |
| New Hampshire | 1788 | 9,305 | 430,572 |
| Virginia | 1788 | 42,450 | 2,061,612 |
| New York | 1788 | 49,170 | 9,113,614 |
| North Carolina | 1789 | 52,250 | 2,206,287 |
| Rhode Island | 1790 | 1,250 | 542,610 |
| States subsequently admitted, in the order of their admission | |||
| Vermont | 1791 | 9,565 | 355,956 |
| Kentucky | 1792 | 40,400 | 2,289,905 |
| Tennessee | 1796 | 42,050 | 2,184,789 |
| Ohio | 1802 | 41,060 | 4,767,121 |
| Louisiana | 1812 | 48,720 | 1,656,388 |
| Indiana | 1816 | 36,350 | 2,700,876 |
| Mississippi | 1817 | 46,810 | 1,797,114 |
| Illinois | 1818 | 56,650 | 5,638,591 |
| Alabama | 1819 | 52,250 | 2,138,093 |
| Maine | 1820 | 33,040 | 742,371 |
| Missouri | 1821 | 69,415 | 3,293,335 |
| Arkansas | 1836 | 53,850 | 1,574,449 |
| Michigan | 1837 | 58,915 | 2,810,173 |
| Florida | 1845 | 58,680 | 752,619 |
| Texas | 1845 | 265,780 | 3,896,514 |
| Iowa | 1846 | 56,025 | 2,224,771 |
| Wisconsin | 1848 | 56,040 | 2,333,860 |
| California | 1850 | 158,360 | 2,377,549 |
| Minnesota | 1858 | 83,365 | 2,075,708 |
| Oregon | 1859 | 96,030 | 672,765 |
| Kansas | 1861 | 82,080 | 1,690,949 |
| W. Virginia | 1863 | 24,780 | 1,221,119 |
| Nevada | 1864 | 110,700 | 81,875 |
| Nebraska | 1867 | 77,510 | 1,192,214 |
| Colorado | 1876 | 103,925 | 799,024 |
| N. Dakota | 1889 | 70,795 | 577,056 |
| S. Dakota | 1889 | 77,650 | 583,888 |
| Montana | 1889 | 146,080 | 376,053 |
| Washington | 1889 | 69,180 | 1,141,990 |
| Wyoming | 1890 | 97,890 | 145,965 |
| Idaho | 1890 | 84,800 | 325,954 |
| Utah | 1895–96 | 84,970 | 373,351 |
| Oklahoma | 1907 | 70,057 | 1,657,155 |
| Arizona | 1911 | 113,020 | 204,354 |
| New Mexico | 1911 | 122,580 | 327,301 |
Territories, Etc.
| Area | Population (1910) | |
|---|---|---|
| Hawaiian Islands | 6,449 | 191,909 |
| Alaska | 590,884 | 64,356 |
| District of Columbia | 70 | 331,069 |
| Philippine Islands 1 | 127,853 | 7,635,426 |
| Porto Rico | 3,435 | 1,118,012 |
What do you think of our institutions?” is the question addressed to the European traveller in the United States by every chance acquaintance. The traveller finds the question natural, for if he be an observant man his own mind is full of these institutions. But he asks himself why it should be in America only that he is so interrogated. In England one does not inquire from foreigners, nor even from Americans, their views on the English laws and government; nor does the Englishman on the Continent find Frenchmen or Germans or Italians anxious to have his judgment on their politics. Presently the reason of the difference appears. The institutions of the United States are deemed by inhabitants and admitted by strangers to be a matter of more general interest than those of the not less famous nations of the Old World. They are, or are supposed to be, institutions of a new type. They form, or are supposed to form, a symmetrical whole, capable of being studied and judged all together more profitably than the less perfectly harmonized institutions of older countries. They represent an experiment in the rule of the multitude, tried on a scale unprecedentedly vast, and the results of which everyone is concerned to watch. And yet they are something more than an experiment, for they are believed to disclose and display the type of institutions towards which, as by a law of fate, the rest of civilized mankind are forced to move, some with swifter, others with slower, but all with unresting feet.
When our traveller returns home he is again interrogated by the more intelligently curious of his friends. But what now strikes him is the inaptness of their questions. Thoughtful Europeans have begun to realize, whether with satisfaction or regret, the enormous and daily increasing influence of the United States, and the splendour of the part reserved for them in the development of civilization. But such men, unless they have themselves crossed the Atlantic, have seldom either exact or correct ideas regarding the phenomena of the New World. The social and political experiments of America constantly cited in Europe both as patterns and as warnings are hardly ever cited with due knowledge of the facts, much less with comprehension of what they teach; and where premises are misunderstood inferences must be unsound.
It is such a feeling as this, a sense of the immense curiosity of Europe regarding the social and political life of America, and of the incomparable significance of American experience, that has led and will lead so many travellers to record their impressions of the Land of the Future. Yet the very abundance of descriptions in existence seems to require the author of another to justify himself for adding it to the list.
I might plead that America changes so fast that every few years a new