- Vermont is the only state which truly invented itself. It was an independent republic before becoming a state. (Texas was part of Mexico until 1836.)
- Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery in its Constitution.
- It was also the first to give the right to vote to people without property.
- When Alexander Twilight graduated from Middlebury College in 1823, he was the first African American college graduate in America.
- In 1836, he became the first African American to be elected to the state legislature.
- Vermont was the first state to send troops to fight in the Civil War in 1861.
- U.S. Senator Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont sponsored the legislation creating land grant colleges in the United States.
- University of Vermont graduate George Washington Henderson became the second African American Phil Beta Kappa member in 1877.
- The first canal built in America was in Vermont.
- The electric motor and the platform scale were invented in Vermont—the first state to receive a patent.
- Vermonters summarily rejected the development of a Connecticut River Authority modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority.
- The University of Vermont is the smallest of the flagship state universities in America.
- Vermont is the most rural state in the nation.
- Vermont has no death penalty and virtually no gun control laws, yet it is one of the least violent states in the union.
- Vermont’s Civil Union law was the first in the nation.
- Vermont was the first state to have a state symphony orchestra.
- The Green Mountain state is cityless, and its capital Montpelier is the smallest in the country.
- Vermont has no slums or urban ghettos.
- Vermont’s unique environmental law regulating real estate development, Act 250, was the first in the nation.
- In 1993, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the entire state of Vermont as one of America’s most “endangered historical places,” the first time a state had ever been so designated. The designation was repeated in 2004.
- For twenty years, Cavendish was the home of Russian Nobel prize-winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
- Vermont was one of the first states to pass a “bottle bill.”
- It has the highest percentage of unpaved roads and was the first state to ban billboards alongside highways.
- The Vermont Law School has the best environmental law program in the country.
- Vermont kept Wal-Mart at bay longer than any other state.
- Montpelier is the only state capital without a McDonald’s restaurant.
- Even though Vermont was the most Republican state in the Nation between 1854 and 1958, it managed to avoid both McCarthyism and the politics of race.
- Today, Vermont is the most liberal state in the Union. Senator Bernie Sanders and Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss are both Progressives (Democratic Socialists).
- When Reagan was still riding high, 180 Vermont towns voted in favor of a nuclear freeze.
- Vermont was the first state to offer a headstart program.
- Vermont elected a Jewish woman, who was born in Switzerland, governor in 1985.
- In 1994, when every defeated incumbent in the U.S. House of Representatives was a Democrat, Vermont elected a socialist to Congress.
- Seven of seven independent-minded Vermont towns voted to secede from the Union in their 1990 town meetings.
- Vermont is always ranked near the top of the list of states who treat women and children well.
- All three members of Vermont’s Congressional delegation voted against the resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.
- Vermont has no military bases, few defense contractors, and no strategic resources, other than the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
- Vermont is the healthiest state in the nation according to the United Health Foundation.
- Seventy-seven percent of the eligible voters in Vermont believe the U.S. government has lost its moral authority.
- Forty-nine percent of them think the United States has become unsustainable (politically, economically, militarily, and environmentally).
May 15, 2008