changing and expanding so fast that this allocation was out of date within a year or two. For one
thing, more territories were clamoring to get statehood. Vermont had been declared independent
in 1777 by delegates from areas originally called New Connecticut and it pinched bits of New
Hampshire and New York, neither of which was ready to yield them. Settlers who wanted to get
a valid title for their lands did not know which state to apply to. Vermont was virtually neutral
during the Revolutionary War, though Britain withdrew any claim to its territory, and it
considered signing a separate treaty with Britain and claiming a Swiss-style neutral status. It
remained aloof until New Hampshire (1782) and New York (1790) withdrew their land claims.
Then it applied to and joined the Union in 1791. So when the Congressional structure was
reordered in 1793, as a result of the 1790 census, Vermont was given two seats.
There was a long and acrimonious row over the Virginia backcountry-'that dark and bloody
land' as it was (perhaps unfairly) called-eventually resolved when Virginia withdrew its claims
and the new state of Kentucky was admitted in 1792 and given two seats. The Pennsylvania
back-country, organized as the independent state of Franklin, and regarded by North Carolina as
a rebellious, landgrabbing illegality, collapsed in 1788, and had to be reorganized by Congress as
the Southwest Territory in 1790. Settlers poured in and it soon passed the 60,000 mark and was
admitted as the state of Tennessee, though not till 1796. Hence, in the 1793 reconstruction,
fifteen states were represented in Congress and the number of House seats was raised to 105,
Virginia now getting nineteen, Massachusetts fourteen, Pennsylvania thirteen, and New York
ten. The 1790 census revealed that the population of the United States was increasing even faster
than optimists like Franklin guessed-it was now 3,929,827. Ten years later, at the end of the
century, the census shows a jump to 5,308,483, which was a 35 percent growth in a decade, and
double the 1775 estimate.
This rapid growth gratified many but alarmed some, including the elite. Franklin, who worried
himself about the dangers of over-population a generation before Malthus systematized them, did
not object to settlers of English descent breeding fast but was disturbed by the prospect of the
Englishness of America being watered down by new, non-English, and non-white arrivals. It was
one reason he objected to the slave-trade and slavery itself: Why increase the sons of Africa by planting them in America,' he asked,where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all
blacks and tawnys, of increasing the lovely white and red?' His mind reaching forward as always,
he feared a future world in which the white races, and especially the English, would be
swamped:
The number of purely white people in the world is proportionately very small. All Africa is black
or tawny; Asia chiefly tawny; America (exclusive of the newcomers) wholly so. And in Europe the
Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes [sic] are generally of what we call a swarthy
complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make the
principal body of white people on the face of the earth. I would wish their numbers were increased
... But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my country, for such kind of partiality is natural to
mankind.
He was not at all happy about the number of Germans coming to America, especially to
Pennsylvania, where they tended to vote en bloc, the first instance of ethnicity in politics. Why should the Palatine boor be suffered to swarm into our settlements and, by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanise us, instead of us Anglicising them?' He wanted language qualificationsfor any Post
of trust, profit or honor.' He also considered monetary rewards to encourage Englishmen to