Enabling Act
Read the federal law that allowed Washington to become a state.
Preface
AN ACT to provide for the division of Dakota into two States and to enable the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington to form constitutions and State governments and to be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to make donations of public lands to such States.
(Approved February 22, 1889.) [25 U.S. Statutes at Large, c 180 p 676.]
[President's proclamation declaring Washington a state: 26 St. at Large, Proclamations, p 1552, Nov. 11, 1889.]
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the inhabitants of all that part of the area of the United States now constituting the Territories of Dakota, Montana, and Washington, as at present described, may become the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington, respectively, as hereinafter provided.
SEC. 2.
The area comprising the Territory of Dakota shall, for the purposes of this act, be divided on the line of the seventh standard parallel produced due west to the western boundary of said Territory; and the delegates elected as hereinafter provided to the constitutional convention in districts north of said parallel shall assemble in convention, at the time prescribed in this act, at the city of Bismarck; and the delegates elected in districts south of said parallel shall, at the same time, assemble in convention at the city of Sioux Falls.