Which U.S. state was admitted to the Union in 1812?

Louisiana was admitted to the Union in 1812, becoming the eighteenth U.S. state on April 30 of that year.

The new state was formed mainly from the Territory of Orleans, the southern portion of the vast Louisiana Purchase acquired from France in 1803. At statehood, Louisiana did not yet have exactly the same boundaries it has today; its borders and the status of nearby areas continued to develop in the following years.

Louisiana’s admission occurred during the War of 1812. Congress simultaneously renamed the remaining Louisiana Territory as the Missouri Territory, helping distinguish it from the new state. New Orleans, Louisiana’s major port, later became the site of the war’s best-known American victory in January 1815.

The other options belong to different moments in the nation’s expansion. Indiana entered the Union in 1816, Mississippi in 1817, and Alabama in 1819. Louisiana’s statehood therefore fits both the date and the War of 1812 setting.