1790 George Washington - Kentucky's struggle for Statehood

For more than seven years, Kentuckians struggled to achieve statehood.  Unlike most states, Kentucky needed authorization not only from Congress, but also from it's "parent state" of Virgina.   It took 10 statehood conventions over seven years to reach final agreement.  Prior to 1789, the state of Virginia had passed two Enabling acts with time tables for the statehood of Kentucky, but Congress had chosen not to act on it and the deadlines had expired. A third enabling act was needed, and so on December 18, 1789, the Virginia General Assembly met and passed an act allowing Kentucky to apply for statehood.  Each of these Enabling Acts had specified that Congress must be consulted once approved, and that Congress must give it's consent.   In keeping with this timeline, after the members of the ninth convention approved the Virginia Compact, they sent a message to both the President and Congress "for the purpose of receiving into the Federal Union the people of Kentucky, but the name of the State of Kentucky".  

Upon receiving this letter, President George Washington used his second state of the union address to encourage Congress to consider with "affectionate concern" the case before them of receiving Kentucky into statehood.

"Since your last sessions I have received communications by which it appears that the district of Kentucky, at present a part of Virginia, has concurred in certain propositions contained in a law of that State, in consequence of which the district is to become a distinct member of the Union, in case the requisite sanction of Congress be added. For this sanction application is now made. I shall cause the papers on this very transaction to be laid before you.

The liberality and harmony with which it has been conducted will be found to do great honor to both the parties, and the sentiments of warm attachment to the Union and its present Government expressed by our fellow citizens of Kentucky can not fail to add an affectionate concern for their particular welfare to the great national impressions under which you will decide on the case submitted to you."

Still, it wasn't until June 1792 that Congress finally admitted Kentucky as the fifteenth state.  This was one year after Vermont was quickly and easily admitted as the 13th state, in what must have felt like an insult to the people of Kentucky.   It was then, in Washington's fourth state of the Union address that he was able to  share the good news of Kentucky finally becoming the fifteenth state of the Union.

"The adoption of a constitution for the State of Kentucky has been notified to me. The Legislature will share with me in the satisfaction which arises from an event interesting to the happiness of the part of the nation to which it relates and conducive to the general order"

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29432
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/kentucky/
The Untied States:  Alabama to Kentucky pgs. 461 - 480 n act allowing Kentucky to apply for statehood and on 1 June 1792, those nine counties became a state, with the full consent of Virginia.