Whereas, our common country is known among the Nations of the earth only as ‘the United States of America,’ a designation at once inconvenienently cumbrous and palpably indefinite, since the term ‘United States’ is common to other political confederations, even on this continent, and is very likely to be adopted by or applied to others in the course of not many years.

And Whereas, that transcendant genius and true hero, by whose life-long devotion and daring this Continent was added to the domain of Civ[ili]zation and Christianity, was treated in his earlier life with neglect and contumely as a visionary and a Charlatan, in his later years, with monstrous ingratitude and wrong as a usurper and tyrant; while, by an amazing fatality, Mankind have since conspired to perpetuate the injustice of his age, by bestowing on the continent so discovered by columbus the name of a mere follower in his footsteps without a shadow of just pretence to the discovery of the New World: Therefore,

Resolved that this union of states will hereafter be known and officially designated by the name or appelation Columbia, in grateful acknowledgement of our obligations to, and in tardy atonement for the injustice hitherto suffered by, the great Discoverer of this Continent.