How the States Got Their Shapes

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC you well good afternoon thank you for joining us I'm John Cole I'm the director of the Center for the book in the Library of Congress and of course we're thrilled at the size of the crowd today sorry we don't have a larger room but on the other hand it's a wonderful topic and we have an excellent speaker and there's going to be lots of time for questions and answers so I think everyone will get the question about their particular state answered the Center for the book was created in 1977 to help stimulate public interest in books and reading we are the reading promotion arm of the Library of Congress and we also have centers in every state of the Union so we have a special interest in States and in today's topic we also are the author people who work on the National Book Festival and this year's National Book Festival which the Library of Congress does with first lady Laura Bush will be on the National Mall this year on September 27th we hope that you can join us and we have our own take on marks topic this is a state map that we hand out in the pavilion of the States every state is represented in the pavilion of the States and the each state has its own seal and the kids of course drag their parents around to visit every state table then make darn sure that they get a stamp from the state so this is our little piece of the state action that we're gonna hear more about today I'd like to thank not only mark our speaker but also arlene val can't ski who is marks wife who also is a Library of Congress employee Arlene where are you Arlene are you handing out she's in the very corner she's pulling out chairs and helping in a general way she's been at the Library of Congress for over 25 years for the last year Arlene has been a senior reference specialist in the serial and government publications division earlier when working in the motion picture broadcasting and recorded sound division she gave numerous publications on the cataloguing of Ark film and television and on the library's collection of Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic films this is the bookmark is going to discuss today it's called how the state's got their shapes it's filled with anecdotal history mark as you may have known has been already been on CBS Sunday morning he's been on National Public Radio and I know that several of you are here because of the advertising campaign mark is a playwright mark Stein is a playwright and a screenwriter his plays have been performed off-broadway and theaters around the country his films include house sitter with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn he has taught writing and drama at American University and Catholic University and he lives in Washington DC mark will tell us about the book we'll have a chance to ask mark questions and then we will regroup for a book signing in this room as soon as he is through as a pleasure to introduce mark Stein mark thank you John and I want to thank the Center for the book for inviting me I also want to thank the Library of Congress for enabling me to be invited because if we're not for this institution I don't know that I could have written the book and so I just kind of briefly want to mention before diving into the talk about the book just some of the different areas of this library that were so critical to me in creating it the geography and map division here is just extraordinary at least from the point of view of a researcher if you don't know it's just so much fun to go find it on the web they have all these historical maps an extraordinary collection of historical maps that you can pull up zoom in for me to be able to find place names from treaties and other documents that don't that aren't on the map today and to be able to locate them on a historical map is absolutely critical to understand some of the boundaries and their reference division I can't say enough about so clearly my mind is going in there one day and saying I'm just I cannot find the reason for New York's logic in this dispute and they said well sit down we'll see what we can find they were like waiters they were the four books were placed in front and in no time there it was in a book from the Government Printing Office that probably pretty hard to find elsewhere there's also something called the ephemera collection I believe is what it's called that had tremendous nuggets to understand the the culture of the time in a particular locale I'm particularly thinking about Louisiana after Louisiana Purchase when all these french-speaking people who do not want to be American necessarily choose to be Americans were suddenly Americans I could find things in the ephemera collection likewise after the Mexican War the Hispanic population and that had not sought to become Americans I could find things in the ephemera collection it's very helpful for understanding what Congress was dealing with when creating a boundary in terms of this new population and of course the books and particularly with the in the library and something John didn't mention about having my wife work at the Library of Congress is it she has borrowing privileges and I cannot tell you how many times I'd send an email asking if you could bring home in one case I wrote it down here original instructions governing public land surveys in Iowa from the Iowa Engineering Society and Adair to later there it would be and in fact that book had it had a very critical piece of information that I'd been searching for for for quite a long time um my my interest in this topic goes back to my teens I don't clearly remember in what order these two things happen but I do remember I grew up in Maryland I remember that and I would see the map of Maryland in school day after day and I remember at about the age of 13 looking at this map at one point in thinking what is this thing how did it get this shape it's almost broken and two on the west and on the east it's missing half a rectangle what's that rectangle it turns that was Delaware and I remember thinking then do we really need Delaware Maryland wouldn't be that biggest state even if it had Delaware why do we have Delaware it was also right about that point when I was in taking geography and junior high school that my teacher who though this story may end up sounding somewhat critical of her she was actually a wonderful teacher would but she had it she had a game we'd play I loved it she'd hold up shapes States no names just their shapes and we'd raise our hands and and try to identify them I can't remember how we distinguished Wyoming from Colorado because they're both rectangles I think she just didn't have them in there but but you know we could learn the shape of New York and the shape of Florida years later I thought back on that and I thought what she was teaching us is what is the shape of New York but not why is the shape of New York and that there's so much more value in learning why a set of conditions exist than simply accepting those conditions and committing them to memory and in that regard to know why Colorado is the shape that it is why the lines are where they are in that rectangle and not five miles this way or that can prove to be a very important thing to No so part of my motive in writing this book was in playwrights language the subtext was to encourage readers and particularly perhaps the younger readers to try to glom onto that notion of asking why a set of conditions exist in the time we have today of course I can't cover them everything so I'm just going to focus on four elements that influenced a lot of the shapes of the states that we have and the first of those elements would be the American Revolution and that in the difference in which colonies were created by the crown as opposed to the way after the Revolution states were created by Congress for the most part they had the same kind of considerations on their plate and they dealt with them but there was one major consideration that Congress had which simply was not on the screen for the crown it just wasn't in their mind and that was the equality among the colonies so for instance if it proved the crown to create a very small colony called Rhode Island for religious tolerance and in doing so relieve what could be a explosive political problem building in Massachusetts with their burning people at the stake over religious issues it would do that and it wouldn't be terribly concerned it wouldn't be concerned at all in fact that Rhode Island was so much smaller than Massachusetts or Pennsylvania or Virginia so that the colonies that we inherited from from England after the Revolution are a great deal more diverse in size than are the states I do not see I must have one of those maps that you all have because if not I'm gonna be son here we go I got it if you look at them the handout you were given the states that are in color where I should say the areas that are in color those are the 13 colonies at the start of the American Revolution okay and the reason I put them in color was to show that as diverse as those 13 colonies are in size when you just think of them today they were even more diverse at the start of the revolution Virginia you know included three but are now three states Georgia what are three states Massachusetts included Maine New York at the start of the Revolution though not by the end included Vermont there was and and Rhode Island and Delaware routine well that was a sighs yeah so there was this tremendous diversity in size after the Revolution as your eye kind of goes west on the map you'll see that doesn't continue the states are much there's much greater parity it's not necessarily in stipler miles in fact that's only part of it it would be equality of resources quality of access to rivers and quality of the arable land and and things like that a couple things happen right after the Revolution that try to level the playing field they inherited and to create a more level playing field for the future I was just want to mention them briefly the first was Congress created a bicameral legislature a house and a Senate this was to try to level the playing field so in the house representation is by population therefore New York would have a whole lot more influence and say Rhode Island but in the Senate every state gets two votes Rhode Island's is equal then to New York it mitigates the situation the other thing Congress did was to urge those states that had colonial claims beyond the Appalachian Mountains or in the case of Massachusetts with Maine to cede those lands to the United States to create a greater number of states more equal in size and as you can say that ultimately did happen I should put a footnote here that this sounds just wonderful everybody working in concert didn't happen without conflict and the motives weren't always so wonderful Georgia and Virginia and North Carolina realized that by ceding their Western claims and creating additional states they would be creating additional votes in the US Senate for slavery and there were always looking down the pike worrying that they could eventually be outvoted in the Senate on slavery and the slavery might be outlawed so there's a dark underside to this as well so that's element one then the the the the change from the the monarchy to the Congress a second element that affected a lot of the states was the proposal in 1808 to build an Erie Canal after the Revolution we're no longer part of England we no longer can be assured of access to the st. Lawrence River which connects the Great Lakes to the ocean 1808 the the st. Lawrence is entirely in Canada it's not our boundary except for small part in New York in 1808 they proposed a canal that would leave Lake Erie roughly Buffalo across the state of New York connect tella Hudson River and go down to the ocean that impacted about at least one boundary for every state and the vicinity of the Great Lakes so that it changed of the boundary line for Ohio for Indiana for Illinois for Wisconsin Michigan indirectly ended up with that Upper Peninsula that's not even connected to Michigan and Minnesota ended up also with land that was not originally Minnesota the Erie Canal was huge for that region not too long later after that element three railroads when railroads came into into being as a viable means of transportation rivers became less critical for boundaries they're still very important as a resource but it was less critical and so what you see as your eye scans the map from east to west as those lines start to straighten out and one of the reasons they can straighten out is that Congress did not have to rely on rivers and in the way that the British monarchs did or the early years of Congress did perhaps with the Northwest Territory and then the fourth element and this one's interesting because it bounces in a couple unusual ways is slavery and on the map there's their vestiges of the effort by Congress in state boundaries to regulate slavery but also there are vestiges of the surrender of that effort by Congress and here's specifically what I mean after the Louisiana Purchase the question came up will there be slavery allowed in the louisia in this new territory and it was ultimately resolved when missouri applied for statehood and what was called the missouri compromise the missouri compromise said no new state or territory can have slavery if it is north of 36 degrees thirty minutes I'll come back to that line in a moment with the exception of the state of Missouri hence the compromise 36 degrees thirty minutes is the southern border of Missouri if you look at the map you'll see that there are some little exceptions to the rule because but basically that line if you go east it continues as the boundary between Kentucky and Tennessee and Virginia and North Carolina it's actually a line that has been with us since colonial times when Queen Anne established actually it was a revision to the original boundary but established the boundary of Virginia and North Carolina as being halfway between the Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound had nothing to do with slavery at the time and since both those states had the western claims it simply continued when they ceded those western claims as the boundary of Kentucky and Tennessee but then Missouri used it as convenient southern boundary just crossing the river but it became significant because of the Missouri Compromise if you look further to the West after Oklahoma you'll see the top of Texas is 36 degrees 30 minutes the reason is when Texas applied for statehood and I believe 1845 it was a republic it had slavery it was a much larger entity than it is today it included not only the eastern half of New Mexico go if you look on your map you'll see a blue line going through New Mexico that's a continuation of the Rio Grande that was all Texas when it became a state and it went up to the red line was just 3630 before Texas statehood the Republic of Texas continued it narrowed down but it continued all the way up as far as as the same latitude as California all the way up to the 42nd parallel so is a much larger Republic and it's an but it could not keep slavery if it went that far north so it said ok we will give you our land north of 3630 in order to keep slavery so that is why the top of Texas has lopped off where it is and why on the map we have this kind of interrupted but long line that goes all the way from Virginia to Texas and it becomes significant in terms of slavery with Missouri as I said before that it was not significant for slavery if you look just above Texas you'll see that there's a line that's the northern border of Oklahoma more significantly the southern border of Kansas and that that line too is pretty long it continues across Colorado Utah at one time it opened all the way to California as part of that territory that line represents the surrender by the federal government of the effort to regulate slavery what am I talking about here after Texas joined the Union it triggered the Mexican War and the Mexican war led to our acquiring a huge amount of land in the West and again the question came up will it be slave land or not and the South could see that the Missouri Compromise wasn't going to work anymore too much of that land was below 3630 it wouldn't take long before they would get outvoted in the Senate and so when Kansas applied for statehood there was a huge dust-up across the way here just over there over whether or not the Missouri Compromise would apply and ultimately to make a long story short Congress said we're done we're gonna scrap the Missouri Compromise we're gonna take up this idea by Stephen Douglas of popular sovereignty which means every state or territory will decide for itself whether or not there's slavery and then the dust settled but when the dust that well it didn't settle on Kansas they had a lot of bleeding they called it bleeding Kansas as they went through their debate about whether or not to in fact have slavery by the way they chose not to but when the dust settled on all this a little shift did happen that went pretty much unnoticed when Kansas applied for statehood at the very start of this brouhaha it proposed its southern boundary at 36 degrees 30 minutes made perfect sense would have put it right flat with Texas and uh and and Arkansas Missouri's line when Congress finally passed the kansas-nebraska act in 1854 it had shifted the southern boundary of Kansas one-half of one degree to the north to 37 degrees that created a gap that gap is the Oklahoma Panhandle but 37 degrees was the beginnings of a new approach or a newly minted approach by Congress for future states because by placing it at 37 degrees and not longer having to worry about slavery Congress could now be much more mathematical in its creation of States and it could create a tier of Prairie states from Kansas to Canada having exactly three degrees of height Kansas Nebraska South Dakota and North Dakota and just to the west it could create a tier of mountainous states starting at 37° having because it was not as good for agriculture they gave it four degrees of height Colorado Wyoming and Montana six of the western states have either exactly or very close to exactly if they happen to be on the west coast seven degrees of width and in creating this prototype they were in my view they were mirroring a prototype that goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson when he was asked to propose boundaries for what was called the Northwest Territories thus the the Wisconsin Illinois Indiana Ohio Michigan that area that we had acquired with the British and the French and Indian War and was part of this country at the outset and they said Jefferson how do we do this are we gonna make these states and he wrote a report to Congress one part of the report said by the way here's what the line should be and he had a whole bunch of states having two degrees of fight and four degrees of width Congress didn't follow it but they followed the principle that all states should be created equal and then later when they really had a clean slate to work with they really followed the idea of a prototype so those are our four key elements that that determine where a lot of the boundaries have ended up on the map the last thing I want to say is just that for me when I set out to do this the map of the 48 states particularly as I suspect for many of you mm-hmm we're so so familiar that all these lines just seemed to me as much a part of nature as the rivers and the mountain crests having gone through this whole process for me now the map has permanently changed and it's a mural it's an incredible mural of a wide swath of American history and with its the nuances and the exceptions and the this isn't that of the American character and and and the way it the various aspects that is has happened so I'm happy to try to answer any questions you may have yeah sure that I love that Ark that are ethically in terms of Pennsylvania which is the reason for the Ark that Ark inscribes in the shape of Pennsylvania it's Quaker past when the reason by the way we have Delaware just to start with we'll get to the Ark is that the Dutch at the time that these colonies were created were one of the colonial powers in North America the English the Dutch the French the Spanish we think of the Dutch in New York primarily but in fact the Dutch settlements began all the way down in what is now Delaware along the Delaware Bay that you expand extended up through Pennsylvania along the Delaware River and into New Jersey on the other side of the Delaware River and then into New York and so forth so there was a whole long swath of the Dutch when the king gave to the Penn family Pennsylvania the Charter for Pennsylvania he knew the Pens were Quakers the Quakers are pacifists and the crown was never looking for trouble if it could avoid the trouble and he knew that if he drew the southern boundary of Pennsylvania's Strait it would put into Pennsylvania a somewhat significant Dutch settlement at Newcastle and he knew he could not count on the don the Pennsylvania Quakers to go to the mat over this land and the way that he knew the Oglethorpe and Georgia would go to the mat was Spain and did but he knew that the Quakers would not and so he said okay we're not gonna get we're not gonna go there we're gonna draw a circle twelve mile semicircle around Newcastle and that will not be part of the colony of Pennsylvania so that's where what appears to be Delaware a semicircle is actually in some ways Pennsylvania's semicircle yeah yeah this is this is little finger of West Virginia that that sticks up between Ohio and Pennsylvania the first thing to keep in mind is that at the time that that finger was surfaced on the map West Virginia was part of Virginia and at that point actually going back even before that a little bit into the point where we're still colonial times after the French and Indian War we acquired as I just said Ohio Indiana all the what all the areas between the Ohio River there and the Mississippi Illinois Wisconsin Michigan the British acquired with the help of the American colonists and then they said to the American colonists but you were not allowed to settle that land which really angered the colonists as much as the Stamp Act but the British knew that if the colonists started expanding westward they were just gonna they're already getting too powerful so they were they were wrestling with this the colonists were so angry that England said okay okay okay we'll work out all deal here you can sell warrants to that land investments you can form corporations and sell it but you can't occupy it yet land along the Ohio River and so Virginia sold the land along the Ohio I spoke to the man next to you along the Ohio River it was part of the reason that were Jinyu gave Kentucky to the US it didn't give West Virginia that didn't happened of the Civil War because of those those those land investments and that access through the Ohio River to the Mississippi to the Gulf to the ocean was important Avenue for commerce after the Revolution so that's why Virginia held on to that then at the same time there was this question of where the western boundary of Pennsylvania would be the British the colonial charters said it would be five degrees west of its eastern boundary the eastern boundary was the Delaware River it's not a straight line so we're on the Delaware River so there was first of all there was bloodshed between the the Pennsylvanians and the virginians before the Revolution and there was continued conflict after as to where that western boundary between their two colonies later States was eventually shortly after the Revolution there was a with Pennsylvania kind of a massive negotiation that involved New York and Pennsylvania the Erie Canal figured into it which is why by the way Pennsylvania has a little tab sticking up on Lake Erie and once they did that they could agree to where the western boundary would be which happens to be five degrees west of the latitude where the Delaware River crosses the boundary of Maryland or something all have some a little formula but it resulted then in this little finger of land that Virginia was still gonna hold on to because it it at that point in time wanted needed the river so much the boundary by the way between Kentucky and West Virginia and again that's really the boundary between Kentucky and what had been Virginia is the Big Sandy River and tucked forth and again those lead to the Ohio and to the west to the Mississippi and down commerce from these western areas to get it to the ocean those waterways were before railroads are very important and in mountainous areas even after railroad state remains very important mm-hmm yeah sure the the ones that are in Nevada actually represent the previous western boundaries of Utah now when I when I say the boundaries are changing I'm always talking about territorial boundaries once you become a state Congress cannot change your boundary without your consent there have been some changes under those terms but but these are territorial I said earlier that a congress operated under the principle that all states should be created equal it was one exception to that and that was Utah because Utah was Mormon and Congress didn't trust the normans Mormons this is the years particularly leading up to the Civil War they worried about their their loyalty to the - to the federal government because of conflicts that had with them in Illinois with state law and polygamy and issues such as that when the Mormons left Illinois they went out to the Great Salt Lake and after the Mexican War the Utah Territory was created virtually all Mormon territory and its original western boundary was that farther west red line and then they discovered I believe it was gold it might have been sober but I was was gold and so right before they created the state of Nevada which was created I believe first they said you know what we're gonna give him the vada an extra degree of longitude give him the gold and then they discovered again right before statehood that ah there's there's there are some water resources here so we didn't fully realize that they could connect us to the Colorado River and transport down and so we can even other degree of longitude to Nevada and so Congress twice sliced down Utah and those were the lines to do it a number of the things that we reviewed about the books good what about this book have said and the good reviews that the bite taken out of Utah by Wyoming was also part of this effort to diminish Utah I don't think it was it actually happened a little later and more to the point that if you look at a topographic map of that northeast corner of Utah there are some mountains that form exactly that right angle had Utah been given the the right angle they would have jurisdiction over land they'd have to cross mountains to get to it not easy whereas for Wyoming they're right in there I'm sure it didn't help him that they were Mormons but I don't think it at that point that it that the issues this was post-civil war I believe were quite as strong but those are what those red lines are did you asking us about the Montana one or okay Montana there are two places on the map where I like to say that it embeds the idea that this is the land of opportunity where one person can make a difference better or for worse in the case of Montana the red line is showing you the crest of the Rocky Mountains the Continental Divide and when Idaho went for statehood that was the proposed boundary for Ojai Idaho would be the crest of the of the Rockies and you know hey looks to me like it makes sense you know otherwise Idaho was kind of weird but the year before statehood when Idaho was it still a territory a former congressman named Sidney Edgerton went out to be a federal judge in Idaho Territory the territorial governor gave him a district east of the Rockies which was like nowhere and he was really angry so when a year later Idaho went for statehood Sidney Edgerton came to Washington as part of Montana's delegation he knew a lot of congressmen he knew the President and he had $2,000 in gold in his baggage and he managed to get Congress to move the boundary west to the crest of the Bitterroot Mountains and that's the line you see today for Idaho it starts to taper off if Edgerton got everything he wanted which was to stick with the bitterroots Idaho would actually tip taper off to a point but in fact he didn't quite get everything he wanted which is why at the very top there's a straight line for Idaho a little tab that's giving Idaho one little resource called the Kootenai River Valley up there in the mountains there's a little bit of a agricultural area made by this by the Kootenai River but that's that's what the red line in in Montana is well in a way it does in that you actually should probably take this opportunity to talk about California altogether and Texas in a sense and and and and remind me if I don't come back to that eastern boundary you know I say all states should be created equal well what about Texas and and and California Texas just to touch on real quickly because I've virtually done it already Congress didn't create Texas Texas created itself it was a republic when it came in Congress tried very hard to get Texas down the size if you will they did see the northern land and its northern holdings as I said in 1850 when they were so deeply in debt from their days as a republic Congress purchased from Texas all the land east of the Rio Grande there in New Mexico to that boundary line that is now the western border of Texas which reduced the size of Texas even more there's more to that story but I won't go into that one right now it also had said the Texas opponent becoming a state hey you can divide if you wish into as many as five separate states and this is 1845 pre Civil War the fellow slave states said do it that's ten pro-slavery votes up north where they were proclaiming all men are created equal and they went so crazy about all states being created equal because one big Texas is just two votes as it turned out Texas from its this is my guess from its uh experiences together getting independence from Mexico and struggling as a republic that they have and still to this day have a kind of unique sense of themselves and they were not about to divide into five states so they said no and so we have a very big Texas and and the South lost quite a few potential votes for slavery California we got what is now California that the land in part of the Mexican War that was in 1848 and this is really amazing to follow the timeline modernist in one year probably in fact a little less in a year gold was discovered and so many people rushed to this area around the San Francisco Bay and up into the mountains that before Congress had time to create a territorial government California created its own and it sent to Congress proposals were moving closer to that eastern boundary for borders for its state to call it a proposal is to put it nicely it was a ticket or leave it proposition there's a speech that Senator Seward William Seward of New York later the Secretary of State for Lincoln gave that I quote in the book where he says on the Senate some senators essentially says look I don't like this any more than you do but what can we do suppose California says well we'll just become a nation let's try and stop us we can't get our army across the Rockies we can't get our Navy around the bottom of South America there was no Panama Canal at the time they have so much gold in their hills they can secure credit for their it's new country and are we so naive as to think that other countries would not immediately recognize this new country if only to stop the growth of the United States and so we got to take the deal and we did part of what you were you the may know ask the question yeah part of that deal that that Congress really didn't like in addition to just the size was that eastern border that eastern border encompasses all of the Sierra Nevada mountains that's where the gold was that's California was basically saying oh by the way all the gold is ours and Congress said okay look how about we just move the border back a little to the crest of the mountains in köppen California which was a state by then said no what keeping our border so in a sense it did have to do with the topographical future and that it was saying we'll take the whole topographical feature unlike most mountainous areas were we're in the East that the mountain crest became that the boundary the logic or I know first logic so much as kind of the just the up prototype the California worked after other or the math was that the state would be I believe it was 215 approximately 215 miles wide and that the eastern boundary would follow in a general sense the west coast of the of the state at a distance of 215 miles more or less so that was the logic of that of that particular boundary line yeah yes yes yeah the Michigan indeed is in two parts there is ah the what they call the MIT sometimes and then there's this Upper Peninsula that isn't attached to Michigan the Upper Peninsula was a consolation prize to Michigan for problems for disputes it lost at the other end at the southern end the Michigan mm-hmm and they relate in turn to the Erie Canal when that can now became a possibility at that point Thomas Jefferson's line for that region remember I said he had drawn those lines one of his lines was an east-west line that went to the southern along the southern most tip of Lake Michigan and that was still in use at the time of the Indiana Territory in the Illinois Territory India that gave Indiana one infinitely small point of access to Lake Michigan which was now no longer a lake it was a vital Highway to the Erie Canal so Indiana when it came for statehood said you got to give us some frontage on Lake Michigan and Congress we'll give you ten miles and they moved the northern border of Indiana ten miles up that gave them a port at Gary Indiana Ohio has plenty of frontage Ohio being the other southern state the southern border of Michigan has plenty of frontage on a great lake it's Lake Erie but that line of Jeffersons cut off Ohio from the port that is the end of a long river goes through the whole western part of Ohio called the mommy and it empties into Lake Erie at Toledo and Ohio when it came for stage I said hey you got to give us the port at Toledo and Congress said okay for you we will draw a line from the top of Toledo toward the very bottom of Lake Michigan it'll stop quickly in the other line so one thing that explains is why the boundaries of Indiana and Ohio there are not one straight line but actually to slightly offset segments meanwhile Michigan says is still a territory our we chopped liver you've just taken our land some of our best land some of our best access and you're giving it away and there was what they called the Toledo war where it wasn't really a war in the way that some of these other just beautiful wars but there was one death where involving this would involve harassing the surveyors when they were doing the lines and the one death may have been a barroom brawl may have been part of the thing may having a brawl that had to do with you know the surveying but it was getting heated enough that Congress intervened and said okay look look how about we give you this Peninsula of land up there and that was part of me Wisconsin but no one's living there right now no one's gonna complain take it and Michigan said we'll take it and so Michigan got its Upper Peninsula Wisconsin really just didn't have enough population to raise an issue about it and and in return Indiana and Ohio got the access they needed at those locations two ports on the Great Lake to the west of Kentucky yeah it's called the Kentucky Bend I was just looking this up this morning Kentucky became a state uh well before 1811 I know 1790s I think in 1811 and twelve there were a series of tremendous earthquakes in that part of the country particularly in the Bootheel of Missouri and it changed the flow of the Mississippi River and created the Kentucky Bend no one paid too much attention to it at the time in terms of Kentucky's line because I was Indian land still until the Jackson Purchase Kentucky and Tennessee have a have a long troubled disputed history and they're in their boundaries if you look at the western end of Kentucky you can see there's a little heel that digs down into Tennessee that's actually where the line should have been all across the state that's 36 degrees yeah 30 minutes as it would be correctly surveyed but it had gotten way off course and there were lots of disputes so there was a lot of bad blood and when they surveyed and they got to the Mississippi River they said okay here's the end of Kentucky the Kentucky and said no no it goes to the western end of the you know it ends with the Mississippi ends that line should continue and so they could make that case and so this little section of Kentucky you can't see it on this map the boundary continues even though the Mississippi loops up and back and basically cuts it off from the rest of the state if you want to get from the contagion of Kentucky to the rest of Kentucky you either have to swim the Mississippi because I don't think there's a bridge or drive down to the Tennessee and come up in fact the kids who live in that area go to Tennessee schools I took a woman over here having yeah yeah yeah and I should have also mentioned by the way when the colors on the map for one of the colonies at the time of the revolution you'll notice that Alabama and Mississippi don't have their tabs at the bottom and the tabs are part of today with part of that mirror image by the way that's because at that time they were not part of Kentucky and a part of the Georgia colony they were part of Florida which was a Spanish holding until 1818 the the mirror images is really very much reflecting that notion of States being created equal so that you have this Georgia colony the area in green and Georgia can't really see it it's land west of the Appalachians because the Appalachians end in northern Georgia there ain't no more Appalachians so Georgia came up with a little different formula that followed the principle using I believe it's the Chattahoochee River to create the state of Georgia and then to create what was first called the Mississippi Territory was now Mississippi and Alabama and we also seized from Spain and two separate incidents the land that became the tabs when they divided Mississippi and Alabama the idea was to try to create three states Georgia Alabama Mississippi that are all roughly equal in size Georgia actually is tends to be is a little bit bigger but you know they were the big brother so I got a little more the share but but the reason for the mirror image line is that and then within that the line that divides them there's a bend in that line why not just have a straight line the reason was that that the the most valuable land in Mississippi and Alabama is the southern land the bottom land further north it gets mountainous not as good for Agri culture and particularly down in that region that we took from Spain there was some disputes between the two states as to where it should be but Congress just stepped in and said here's what we're gonna do we are gonna do a north-south line that divides the southern tier of the Mississippi Territory through that land we acquired from Spitz from Spain and it will go as far as the northwest corner of what was then Washington County Mississippi and at that point the line will then proceed to the center point between the Mississippi River and the Georgia border so that's why it bends if it if it if they had used just the bottom line the north-south line the states wouldn't be equal if they had used just the main line the two richest areas of Agriculture wouldn't be equal so it was they bent it to try to do the maximum equality by the way there's a little interesting tab up in the northwest corner of Alabama they depart from the straight line you can barely see it on this map but it's there that's the Tennessee River the reason they follow the Tennessee River was had they simply continued the line to Tennessee the straight line they would have created an island of jurisdiction for Mississippi whereby Mississippi would have had to cross the Tennessee River it's pretty wide to have jurisdiction to have law enforcement in that little piece of land very often when that happened Congress would would not do that and they would they would have a little a little tab does that answer the question yeah yeah and and you're asking about one of my favorite borders and it looks so innocuous on the map today the northern border of Missouri the first there were several proposals from different groups within Missouri for statehood boundaries and the initial ones all placed the boundary I don't have the figure with me here there was three and a half degrees north of the boundary with Arkansas I think that might be right it was not up there where it is now but when the official boundary proposal was made in the final one they followed a line called the Sullivan line which is the boundary first just in general Missouri too big isn't it I mean one other thing about Missouri when it first became a state do you see the straight line western border of Missouri that line continued all the way up to Iowa that triangle of land that continues now in Missouri was not originally part of Missouri in fact we had just negotiated with the Indians and for that region to give them that land for something else had taken after one year statehood Missouri said we want that triangle too and Congress said okay and so where does this come from that Missouri is like you know I'll point out if you look at the bottom of Missouri it's got a boot heel stick it into Arkansas it's another one of these individual things what's what's with Missouri what's with Missouri is the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi River at st. Louis that is one powerful economic resource so the Missouri while all states should be created equal in fact Missouri's a little more equal much as New York is with the Hudson and the Erie Canal because it could be because it possessed this extraordinary valuable resource particularly in a country that at the time feared civil war and the loss of that research so answer number one is Missouri got this northern border that's really too far north surveyed by a guy named John C Sullivan and in fact even that line enough you can quite tell it on this map but as it gets east toward the Mississippi River it starts to veer too far north it's no longer straight it veers a little north it was inaccurately surveyed Iowa challenged that boundary they challenged they couldn't challenge its location because Missouri was already a state but they challenged the inaccuracy of the survey compared to the industry to what he was claimed he did but what no one could figure out was who told Sullivan to do it which is why I asked my wife to get me rules governing public land surveys in Iowa there was for that very line and in that book is where I found that Iowa at one point if there was in 1838 wrote to what is today the Army Corps of Engineers at the time was just a division in the army that did this surveying and said who who told some of them to draw that line and and they wrote back and they said well all we know is it was a William rector who was a head of surveying at the time but we don't know why so I looked up William rector well first of all he was general rector at the time he was part of the army and he was dismissed from the Army for incompetence and nepotism so there could have been shady dealings there and at least I haven't been able to if they're if they're even around to be seen the other boundary though has a more the northern boundary of Iowa with Minnesota and the fact that Minnesota seems outsized is a different story Minnesota if you look at a map the northern part of it is all these lakes it particularly in the at that time just didn't appear to be land that would be very valuable for agriculture or other resources so even even Jefferson in this map made Minnesota what a different name for it but made that region a little larger the reason for the southern boundary the one with Iowa is that at that line virtually all the waterways north of that line lead to the Minnesota River so that the watershed goes for the Minnesota River and below that line the watersheds go to the Mississippi River some of some of Minnesota's watersheds go also to the Mississippi but but for the Minnesota River they're all north of that line so there was a topographical reason for I think for the location on Turk method north I could tell you that's false no state would accept the boundary that was surveyed for that reason talking about the North Carolina South Carolina boundary that boundary is just I don't know be honest that's a comedy of errors depends on which side of the line you're on I guess it was one error after another probably would take me too long I mess it up anyway to try to to recount them but initially the boundary was supposed to be the Cape Fear River then it had turned out that North Carolina had already deeded land along the Cape Fear so Queen Anne relocated it some given number of miles below the Cape Fear River it was supposed to proceed in parallel North West to the 35th degree of latitude they did that but they missed the 35th degree of latitude by like 12 or 13 miles and so the next time when they surveyed further west they said okay well we'll correct it and so you start getting these these these dips and movements there was also an Indian Reservation at Catawba reservations when the few times we respected an Indian boundary and drawing a state line so that on a map that would have to be a little better than this one well you can almost see it there's a little teeny right angle before the curve area in the West that's going around the Catawba reservation at that time much smaller than it had been and then following certain branches of a river to finally get to the crest of the Appalachians and and to follow that but no there's a similar story about a segment of the North Carolina border that it takes a sudden straight line south to Georgia and the story is that they were in the mountains so long they really wanted a tavern and so they went straight to Georgia the fact is they were in the middle of moonshine country and didn't need a tavern and their journals reveal that they didn't need any other services either they were they were all provided for yeah that is my inability to click correctly that should be orange yeah Virginia and Maryland yeah well the boundary is from the colonial charter of Maryland is the Potomac River and all of the Potomac River is Maryland under that boundary one problem is that it didn't stipulate whether because they didn't know about it then the North Branch or the South branch would be considered the Potomac River further out it is in fact the North Branch even though the South branch is larger and therefore by tradition would have been the Potomac River but Virginia was an older richer colony deeded that land that people like Lloyd Fairfax no way was Maryland going to win that battle the one one effect of that is that in today in Washington DC which is the remainder of Maryland's half of the land it gave to create the city the Potomac River in Washington is entirely under the jurisdiction of Washington DC that's why you'll see DC police boats out there that's why when I crossed the chain bridge not long going there was an accident a DC cop was in the middle of the bridge moving traffic sir I think your question right right right right yeah it's actually two different answers because one you're dealing with an international boundary and some other issues but in the case of the Mississippi also the Missouri River and the Ohio River and probably some others they have either shifted course or had their course shifted to make them more straight for shipping or through events there has been accretion and the river has changed but in those instances the boundary remains the original boundary of the state I had a was on a Collin show and a man called in and said he was in southern Illinois with his brother hunting and a sheriff came up and said you can't hunt here and he said no sheriff here's our here's our license he said well that's an Illinois license he said well the Mississippi rivers over there they said well it wasn't always over there this is still Missouri and if you take a close look in fact if there's a second edition and the paperback if they let me do I want to call more attention to that that there are boundaries where the river has shifted now the Rio Grande gets more complicated because we entered into a number of agreements with Mexico and and also there was man-made interference for shipping along the Rio Grande around the El Paso I know so it it gets more complicated and frankly more complicated and detailed in this book even it would attempt to piece out whenever that issue with an international border Maryland's colonial charter every boundary in it was contested and every contest Maryland lost in terms of the mason-dixon line first of all the mason-dixon line is not simply the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania it's also takes a right turn and becomes the boundary between Maryland and Delaware and then takes a left turn and remains is also part of that that Maryland Delaware boundary they surveyed all of that but they came in a little bit later Maryland's boundary northern border according to its Charter was 40 degrees north latitude it's great try through the middle of Philadelphia as it turns out you've got to cut them some slack that back then they didn't always know we just where in the world is hard so Pennsylvania definitely wanted to enter into negotiations with Maryland the the the the negotiations got a little complicated because once the British owl stood the Dutch authorities from here Delaware Maryland claimed Delaware because it was within its charter boundaries also Maryland was a Catholic colony Delaware did not was Protestant Dutch Protestants they did not want to be part of a Catholic colony keep in mind they're not burning the witches new Massachusetts there's a king of England who lost his head over religious issues Catholics and Protestants are killing each other at that time in much of Europe and in England particularly so there was significant fear by Delaware that they wouldn't want to be part of of Maryland meanwhile Pennsylvania of all places wants to claim Delaware where do they come off well they come off because if Delaware is not somehow under their control there could be landlocked there can their access from the pencil Delaware River and the Delaware Bay could be cut off so there's a long negotiation okay and at one point Lloyd Baltimore is in London going through it again with the Sylvania representatives and he finds that they're pretty amenable to his recommendation he's recommending a boarder at Cape Henlopen as the southern border of Delaware and they're saying fine what he didn't and so he said fine to their northern border and what he didn't realize was that his map was wrong and where it showed Cape Henlopen was really Fenwick Island uh which is in fact the boundary between the two and where he gave them the northern border though he didn't know it I don't know if he ever knew it further west he almost cut his head off in two but finally they had an agreement and even when he realized his mistake and said let's have a do-over the crown said forget it we're done and let's get the two finest surveyors in England to come out and and and do this line once and for all so there will be no more mistakes and they got I have their names their first names here Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to come out and do the line they also had to resolve some contradictions in the stipulations for the Delaware border that simply physically couldn't be done but they minimized those those those contradictions so that's where it did it had nothing to do by the way with slavery the mason-dixon line nothing to do with slavery whatsoever well thank you all very much you this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

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Keywords: Library, congress, states, geography, history, maps

Id: 2KG58PI2K70

Length: 61min 30sec (3690 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 08 2009