<P> A non-violent slave revolt in 1848 proved more successful . The governor at the time, Peter von Scholten, faced with thousands of enslaved Africans with burning torches threatening to burn down the town of Frederiksted, freed the slaves, even though the Danish Crown had so far intended that the last slaves would be emancipated in 1859 . Von Scholten would later be summoned before a commission of enquiry for his action and deprived of his pension but he was eventually exonerated by the Supreme Court . </P> <P> The United States' first secretary in London, Henry White attempted to purchase the islands from Denmark in 1899 to resist European incursions into the Americas . The sale was unsuccessful and White attributed the failure to the influence of Kaiser Wilhelm II of the ascendent German Empire . During World War I, the fear of rising German influence in the Caribbean region prompted the President Woodrow Wilson to assert the Roosevelt Corollary in Haiti and the Dominican Republic . </P> <P> In 1917 a treaty was concluded in which the United States purchased the islands for $25,000,000 (about $390,000,000 in 2010 dollars). After the United States bought what is now known as the United States Virgin Islands from the Danish, the islands became an unincorporated U.S. territory . Most residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1936, and an act of 1932 provided that all natives of the Virgin Islands who on the date of the act were residing in the continental United States or any of its insular possessions or territories were U.S. citizens . The islands remained under the direct control of the U.S. government until 1968, when residents were first allowed to elect their own Governor (previously, governors had been appointed first by the navy, then by the interior department). In 1972, residents elected their first non-voting delegate to congress . </P> <P> Under Rear Admiral Kitten, a yeoman named Percival Wilson Sparks (married to St. Thomas native, Grace Itah Maria Joseph Sparks) was ordered to design a new flag for the territory, since Kitten knew of Sparks' interest in graphic design . Sparks designed the flag and had his wife and her sister, Blanche Joseph Sasso, sew the first flag for the U.S.V.I. as the professionally made flags had to be manufactured in the states and would take weeks to arrive by ship . The sisters from St. Thomas were then known as the Betsy Rosses of the Virgin Islands . </P>

When did the us get the virgin islands