This Was The First State To Enter The Union

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 16, 10:54AM EDT

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This Was The First State To Enter The Union — © DenisTangneyJr / iStock via Getty Images

The United States seemed to start in stages. The Revolutionary War started on April 19, 1775. United States Declaration of Independence was issued on July 4, 1776. The Constitution of the United States was ratified on June 21, 1788. George Washington was sworn in as President on April 30, 1789.

The country was not formed until it actually had states to be part of the United States. The first of these to ratify the Constitution was Delaware on Dec. 7, 1787. However, the United States could not be formed without other states. Article 4, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution stated: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”

The ninth state admitted as New Hampshire on June 21, 1788. At that point, the United States was actually created.

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Although the current President Joe Biden is from Delaware, its importance to the country has slipped considerably in 200 years. It does not even have one million residents. As of the 2020 Census, it has 989,948, which places it 46th among all states.

Delaware’s rank by square miles is even smaller than its rank by population. It covers 2,488.72 square miles. Only Rhode Island is smaller at 1,544.89.

Because of its physical size, Delaware is among the most densely populated at 508 people per square miles.

Delaware is among the very few states that, because of its small population, has two U.S. Senators, and only one member of the House of Representatives–Lisa Blunt Rochester. According to Govtrack, she is known as a “at-large” representative, because she represents the entire state.

Click here to read Best And Worst States To Live In

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.