us-constitution
When a new state is admitted into the U.S.A., when can the president appoint federal officers to serve within that state?
<p>It seems the U.S. Senate had not planned to be in session on March 4, 1791, but President George Washington summoned them and addressed this message to them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Gentlemen of the Senate [4 March 1791]</p>
<p>The ‘Act for the admission of the state of Vermont into this union’ having fixed on this, as the day of it’s admission, it was thought that this would also be the first day on which any officer of the Union might legally perform any act of authority relating to that state. I therefore required your attendance to recieve nominations of the several officers necessary to put the federal government into motion in that state.</p>
<p>For this purpose I nominate &amp;c. [Nathaniel Chipman to be judge of the district of Vermont; Stephen Jacobs [Jacob] to be attorney for the United States in the district of Vermont; Lewis R. Morris to be marshal of the district of Vermont, and Stephen Keyes to be collector of the port of Allburgh, in the State of Vermont.]</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://founders.archives.gov/?q=Ancestor%3ATSJN-01-19-02-0103&amp;s=1511311111&amp;r=7" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://founders.archives.gov/?q=Ancestor%3ATSJN-01-19-02-0103&amp;s=1511311111&amp;r=7</a></p>
<p>(The word <em>it's</em> and the word <em>recieve</em> are spelled in those ways on the linked web page.)</p>
<p>Note that he wrote &quot;it was thought&quot;, without saying who it was who thought that. But nine days earlier the secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, wrote this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Secretary of State having recieved from the Commissioners for the State of Vermont a letter proposing these Questions 1. Whether, as that state will not be a distinct member of the union till the 4th. day of March next, the President can, before that day, nominate officers for it? and 2. if he cannot, whether he can nominate them after the recess of the Senate? makes thereon to the President of the U. S. the following Report.</p>
<p>He is of opinion the President cannot, before the 4th. of March, make nominations which will be good in law: because, till that day, it will not be a separate and integral member of the U. S. and it is only to integral members of the union that his right of nomination is given by the Constitution.</p>
<p>But that nomination may be made on the 4th. of March, and, if the Senate will meet on that day, may be reported to them for their approbation. [ . . . ] This therefore is what the Secretary of State thinks best to be done.</p>
<p>Th: Jefferson
Feb. 19. 1791.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My question is whether that precedent has stood.</p>

<p>The precedent is unlikely to recur. In 1791, Vermont was not territory that was part of the United States in any respect until it was admitted to the Union. </p>

<p>All recent cases have involved two stages. A first in which territory becomes unincorporated territory of the United States outside any U.S. state, which allows federal officials to be appointed there, and a second in which unincorporated territory is granted statehood.</p>

<p>The situation presented in the Vermont case would only come up, if, for example, the U.S. added Canada as a U.S. state pursuant to an act of Congress and Canada ratified its entry into the United States.</p>
