How the States Got Their Shapes Too Read online

  Text © 2011 by Mark Stein

  Cover illustration © 2011 by Leigh Wells

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

  Published by Smithsonian Books

  Executive Editor: Carolyn Gleason

  Production Editor: Christina Wiginton

  Editor: Duke Johns

  Designer: Mary Parsons

  Maps: XNR Productions, Inc.

  Photo Researcher: Amy Pastan

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stein, Mark, 1951-

  How the states got their shapes too : the people behind the borderlines / Mark Stein.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-58834-315-4

  1. United States—Boundaries—History. 2. U.S. states—Boundaries.

  3. United States—Biography. I. Title.

  E180.S744 2011

  973—dc22

  2011003467

  For permission to reproduce illustrations appearing in this book, please correspond directly with the owners of the works, as seen on this page. Smithsonian Books does not retain reproduction rights for these images individually, or maintain a file of addresses for sources.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Preface

  Map

  Acknowledgments

  Roger Williams The Boundary of Religion

  Augustine Herman Why We Have Delaware

  Robert Jenkins’s Ear Fifteen Minutes of Fame

  Robert Tufton Mason Winning New Hampshire

  Lord Fairfax What You Know or Who You Know?

  Mason and Dixon America’s Most Famous (and Misunderstood) Line

  Zebulon Butler Connecticut’s Lost Cause

  Ethan Allen Vermont: The Fourteenth Colony

  Thomas Jefferson Lines on the Map in Invisible Ink

  John Meares The U.S. Line from Spanish Canada

  Benjamin Banneker To Be Brilliant and Black in the New Nation

  Jesse Hawley The Erie Canal and the Gush of Redrawn Lines

  James Brittain The Man History Tried to Erase

  Reuben Kemper From Zero To Hero?

  Richard Rush The 49th Parallel: A New Line of Americans

  Nathaniel Pope Illinois’s Most Boring Border

  John Hardeman Walker Putting the Boot Heel on Missouri

  John Quincy Adams The Massachusetts Texan

  Sequoyah The Cherokee Line

  Stevens T. Mason The Toledo War

  Robert Lucas Ohio Boundary Champ Takes on Missouri and Minnesota

  Daniel Webster Maine’s Border: The Devil in Daniel Webster

  James K. Polk Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!

  Robert M. T. Hunter Cutting Washington Down to Size

  Sam Houston The Man Who Lassoed Texas

  Brigham Young The Boundary of Religion Revisited

  John A. Sutter California: Boundless Opportunity

  James Gadsden Government Aid to Big Business

  Stephen A. Douglas The Line on Slavery: Erasing and Redrawing

  John A. Quitman Annexing Cuba: Liberty, Security, Slavery

  Clarina Nichols Using Boundaries to Break Boundaries

  Lyman Cutler’s Neighbor’s Pig The British-American Pig War

  Robert W. Steele Rocky Mountain Rogue?

  Francis H. Pierpont The Battle Line That Became a State Line

  Francisco Perea and John S. Watts Two Sides of the Coin of the Realm

  Sidney Edgerton and James Ashley Good as Gold

  William H. Seward Why Buy Alaska?

  Standing Bear v. Crook The Legal Boundary of Humanity

  Lili’uokalani and Sanford Dole Bordering on Empire

  Alfalfa Bill Murray, Edward P. McCabe, and Chief Green McCurtain Oklahoma’s Racial Boundaries

  Bernard J. Berry New Jersey Invades Ellis Island

  Luis Ferré Puerto Rico: The Fifty-First State?

  David Shafer When the Grass Is Greener on the Other Side

  Eleanor Holmes Norton Taxation without Representation

  Notes

  Photography Credits

  Preface

  No child has ever been known to say, “When I grow up, I want to establish a state line.” But somebody had to do it. Who were those people? How did they end up in that endeavor?

  As it turns out, the people involved in America’s states being shaped the way they are have come from all walks of life. Some are famous, such as Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, though how they participated in shaping our states is not widely known. Others are famous, but why they’re famous is not widely known. Daniel Webster, for example: is he famous because of his extraordinary debate in The Devil and Daniel Webster? Stephen Vincent Benét’s tale may well be why Webster remains famous. But Daniel Webster never debated with Satan—at least not in public. He did, however, create one state’s lines.

  Most of those who participated in the location of our state lines are not famous. Moreover, they are not exclusively white men. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics have also been involved in shaping the states.

  For none of these people was the establishment of their state line their primary objective in life. Their participation in the creation of a boundary resulted from some personal quest. Those quests differed, yet each quest emanated from the issues of the time. Today those historical issues, and the personal quests they spawned, are imprinted on the map in the form of state lines.

  The borders of the United States, however, do not fully enclose those quests. Many others sought, unsuccessfully, to create additional states in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and—still an issue—Puerto Rico. Their stories further enhance our perspective of the United States.

  The American map is so familiar that even its straight lines begin to seem a part of nature. But looking at it through the individuals involved in its creation, that map becomes a mural. Its lines reflect an ongoing progression of Americans. Who, when, and where they were explains much of why we are who we are today.

  Acknowledgments

  I was fortunate, after the publication of How the States Got Their Shapes, to be urged by my late and much missed editor, Caroline Newman, to offer a follow-up book. But having been a writer in theater and film, as opposed to nonfiction, I had difficulty framing an idea that fit the bill. So I called my longtime friend Mark Olshaker, author of several best-selling books, and asked if we could get together for lunch to see whether we could generate an idea. He said (and this is truly what he said), “Sure. Next week is good. Or how about this? A book on the people, like that guy you mentioned in the first book with Missouri.”

  That is this book.

  First and foremost, then, and with awe, I thank Mark Olshaker for an idea that, as it further developed, captured my imagination as much as my passion for maps drove me to write the first book. “As it further developed” refers in no small measure to the insights of Elisabeth Dyssegaard, who took over as my editor. Elisabeth did not have to fill Caroline’s shoes, because her own editor shoes fit beautifully. Too beautifully, since Elisabeth soon advanced to become editor-in-chief at another publisher. But her parting gift to me was an introduction to Kenneth Wright, who became my agent and navigated my now orphaned project in more ways than I can enumerate here, though I cannot leave unsaid the importance of the encouragement and clear thinking he provided. Ken succeeded in placing the book where I most hoped it would end up, at Smithsonian Books, copublisher of How
the States Got Their Shapes, where I knew I would be in good hands with its director, and now my editor, Carolyn Gleason. I knew Carolyn was ideally suited because of an offhand remark she had made when we first met, shortly after How the States Got Their Shapes replaced my original title, Why Is Iowa? “I liked your first title,” she said, “but it didn’t work.” I knew then we had the same sensibility, except she knew what worked.

  Both my copy editor, Duke Johns, and the schoolteacher who taught him grammar and syntax deserve gold medals. Duke’s mind is a lens of clarity. He is also an intimidatingly thorough fact-checker, for which I am extremely grateful. The treaties and legislation that created our state shapes are complicated and often overlap. To my astonishment, Duke dug them up, checking and adjusting my efforts to explain them. If any errors have slipped past him, it only shows that no goalie can block every shot. (He even nipped and tucked this paragraph.)

  For the images in this book I was privileged to have Amy Pastan searching out photos and portraits with such enthusiasm that she discovered, and connected me with, a descendant of Jesse Hawley, the subject of one of the book’s chapters. Trudy Hawley’s family records provided information not otherwise available. I was also delighted to be reunited with cartographer Rob McCaleb of XNR Productions, who had created the maps for my previous book. Once again he has turned words into maps that reduced me to one word: “exactly.” His geodetic eye also spotted an element in the battles fought by James Brittain that had gone unnoted by historians of North Carolina and Georgia’s violent boundary dispute, leading to its being noted for the first time in this book.

  I also want to express my gratitude to the Bender Library at American University for the privileges it extended to me. And a special thanks to Professor William W. E. Slights—a profound influence on my life when I was his student at the University of Wisconsin, and a dear friend ever since—who generously shared his knowledge of colonial era English abbreviations. I also received valuable assistance from Robert S. Davis Jr., Frank Drohan, and Paul Schmidt, in addition to Lauren Leeman of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Kari Schleher of the University of New Mexico Library, and Arlene Balkansky of the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress. Ms. Balkansky, in addition to all her help with the resources of the Library of Congress, devoted time to reading each chapter as it was first drafted, spotting textual errors and even problems in the flow and arc of the draft. All of this not only exceeded the duties in her job description but also those in our wedding vows from over thirty years ago.

  · · · RHODE ISLAND · · ·

  ROGER WILLIAMS

  The Boundary of Religion

  It has fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship.… All the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of these Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s private prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.

  —ROGER WILLIAMS, 16541

  Roger Williams believed in the separation of Church and State … for religious reasons. A devout Puritan minister, he fervently believed that Christians violated the word of God when they mandated religious acts.2 Williams’s views were too pure for the Puritans. They kicked him out of Massachusetts. In the wilderness lands of the Narragansett Indians, Williams arranged to create a haven for people of all faiths (and of no faith), which came to be called Rhode Island.

  The story of Rhode Island’s founding for purposes of religious freedom typically omits Williams’s religious motive. Teaching his reasoning in a public school risks, ironically, crossing the boundary between church and state. Aside from that, his religious motive has often been omitted because it makes his achievement less purely secular, less “American.”3 The American quest for a purely secular government reveals the odd couple who became the nation’s cultural parents: the Enlightenment and the Puritans.4 Consequently, the church/state conflicts Williams confronted in creating Rhode Island continue to this day.

  Roger Williams (ca. 1603-1683) (photo credit 1.1)

  One of the first issues Williams faced began as soon as he arrived in Massachusetts in 1631: who owns the earth? Did the king of England, ruling by divine right, have the authority to claim possession of land upon which non-Christians lived? Williams maintained that the answer was no. Here again, his reasons were religious: a state that, on the basis of Christianity, asserts authority over a land where non-Christians live violates the Christian (meaning Puritan, as interpreted by Williams) necessity of separating church and state.

  Williams’s view was not likely to sit well with British authorities, upon whom the Massachusetts colonists depended for protection. Williams also believed that the Puritan Church, to remain pure of the corruption in the Church of England, should officially separate from the national church—also a view that Massachusetts officials wished he would keep to himself. In 1633 Governor John Winthrop noted in his journal (referring to himself in the third person):

  Mr. Williams also wrote to the governor … very submissively professing his intent … [and] offering his book, or any part of it, to be burnt.

  In 1634 the governor noted:

  Mr. Williams of Salem [has] broken his promise to us, in teaching publicly against the king’s patent, and our great sin in claiming right thereby to this country.

  And the year after that:

  The governor … sent for Mr. Williams. The occasion was, for that he had taught publicly that a magistrate ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate man, for that we thereby have communion with a wicked man in the worship of God, and cause him to take the name of God in vain.

  Williams was driving the governor crazy. He was also genuinely angering fellow ministers and others in the colony’s power structure. This time around, he was put on trial for advocating against the Church of England, against the colony’s religious laws, against the use of oaths in the name of God prior to giving testimony, and against England’s right to the land. In his defense, Williams stated, “I acknowledge the particulars were rightly summed up, and I also hope that … through the Lord’s assistance, I shall be ready … not only to be bound and banished, but to die also, in New England, as for most holy Truths of God in Christ Jesus.”5

  He was convicted.

  The court ordered Williams to leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony within six weeks. Technically, he was banished for religious reasons. In reality, he was banished for secular reasons. His views undermined British authority. Here again, the events have frequently been told in a way that flips their religious/secular basis. In this instance, however, the story was given its secular spin not by post–Revolutionary War Americans but by the Puritan colonists as justification for his banishment.6 Ironically, among those same colonists were some who privately sympathized with Williams—including none other than Governor Winthrop himself. “When I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land,” William revealed some thirty-five years later, “Governor Mr. Winthrop privately wrote to me to steer my course toward Narragansett Bay.”7

  Williams arranged with the local Indians to build a homestead on a plot of land on Narragansett Bay’s northeastern edge. But, as he soon learned from another private friend, this location had a boundary problem. Massachusetts, at that time, comprised the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Plymouth Colony, and the governor of the Plymouth Colony informed him that he would have to leave there, too. That governor also turned out to be a secret sympathizer. “I received a letter from my ancient friend, Mr. Winslow, then governor of Plymouth,” Williams later recollected, “advising me, since I was fallen into the edge of their bounds, and they were loath to displease the Bay, to remove but to the other side of the water and there, he said, I had the country free before me.”

  Williams consequently relocated to the bay’s western edge, where, to accommodate the arrival of his followers, he arran
ged with the Narragansetts for a larger area upon which to settle. Because the land he was accorded resulted from acts of kindness by native peoples and colonial governors—all ostensibly enemies—Williams accorded it a special name: Providence.

  During the time that Williams was arranging to relocate outside the boundaries of the Plymouth Colony, another group of exiles arrived from Massachusetts. Anne Hutchinson had been banished after Williams, in her case for religious beliefs that undermined the power of ministers (as opposed to Williams’s beliefs, which undermined the power of magistrates). Williams welcomed Hutchinson and her followers. As he set about establishing Providence, she and her followers paid the Narragansetts for the use of land on a nearby island in the bay, known to the Indians as Aquidneck and to the British as Rhode Island. To this day, the official name of Rhode Island is “the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” And to this day, its constitution asserts religious freedom for religious reasons. “We, the people of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” it begins, “grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and to transmit the same, unimpaired, to succeeding generations, do ordain and establish this Constitution of government.”

  Original Rhode Island and Providence plantations

  This intertwined religious/secular duality that remains in Rhode Island’s constitution also characterized Williams’s efforts to establish the colony and form its government. The Narragansetts’ permission to use the land carried as much weight with England as did Williams’s opinions about England not having the right to claim Indian land. For Williams, however, this was a solvable problem. He would simply follow the words of Christ (Matthew 22:21) and render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. The problem had to do with identifying Caesar. The king was Charles I, but royal authority in England was under attack in a civil war being led by Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan.