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. Hey guys if you enjoyed that video or you
learned something, make sure to give that like button a click. If you’d like to see more from me I put
out new videos every Sunday, so make sure to propose to that subscribe button. In the meantime, make sure to follow me on
facebook and twitter, and if you’d like to watch one of my older videos, how about
this one?
"east and west Florida" I think you got your annotations the wrong way around there buddy.
The Texas supposed split after the civil war divided the state into 2 states, Lincoln (south) and Jefferson (north). You mentioned that the Lincoln name was to be changed to "Matagorda". Was the Jefferson name to be changed also?
Very interesting video.
He has a soothing voice.
State of Superior resident here. Trolls arent welcome (unless they are only going to da tourist trap to spend money).
Wasn't until the Mount Rushmore part did I realize he was talking about Thomas Jefferson and not Jefferson Davis... /facepalm