During Madison's presidency two states were added to the Union. In
1812 Louisiana was added as the eighteenth state.
The State of Louisiana was only a very small part of the Louisiana
Purchase, and when it was first proposed that it should join the
Union some people objected. Louisiana should be kept as a territory,
they said, and they declared that Congress had no power to admit
new states except those which were formed out of land belonging to
the original thirteen states.
"It was not for these men that our fathers fought," cried a Congressman.
"You have no authority to throw the rights, and liberties, and
property, of this people into hotch-potch with the wild men on
the Missouri, or with the mixed, though more respectable, race of
Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands in the mouth
of the Mississippi."
He declared further that if this sort of thing went on it would
break up the Union. But in spite of him and others who thought like
him Louisiana became a state in 1812.
In 1816, just about two years after the end of the war with Britain,
Indiana was admitted into the Union as the nineteenth state. You know
that besides the Constitution of the United States each state has
also its own constitution. Thus when a territory wanted to become
a state it had to frame a constitution which had to be approved by
Congress.
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