How the States Got Their Shapes Too Read online

  United States, 1784

  Jefferson’s 1784 proposal for new states

  Jefferson’s committee reported back to Congress in March 1784. It proposed boundaries for the future states to be created in the western lands, the process by which they would become states, how these areas would be governed prior to becoming states, and even names for most of the proposed states. While the report was issued by a committee, considerable evidence suggests that the states it proposed reflected the vision of Jefferson.3

  The boundaries of these states and even their names tell us a good deal about this particular Founding Father. The names he assigned included Sylvania, Michigania, Cherronesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Polypotamia, and Pelisipia—all neoclassical constructions hearkening back to the ancient democracies of Greece and Rome. The two remaining names, Saratoga and Washington, memorialized the American Revolution. In addition, while the monarchs of England often named American colonies after individuals, Jefferson named only one of his proposed states after an individual—an ethos that continued long after Jefferson. In the years ahead, Congress would reject Tennessee’s originally proposed name (Franklin) and Colorado’s first proposed name (Jefferson). Most senators and representatives viewed only one American as worthy of having a state named after him, that person being George Washington. Other than Washington, however, none of Jefferson’s proposed names was ever used, although Illinoia and Michigania, once declassicized, did become state names.

  Similarly, Jefferson’s proposed boundaries were also scrapped between then and now. But the principle underlying his boundaries is all over the map. Jefferson’s underlying tenet was that all states should be created equal, or—characteristically applying pragmatism to his ideals—as equal as possible. Jefferson’s report stated:

  The territory ceded or to be ceded by individual states to the United States … shall be formed into distinct states bounded in the following manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit, that is to say: northwardly & southwardly by parallels of latitude so that each state shall comprehend from south to north two degrees of latitude.

  Still, as can be seen from the map of his proposed states, Jefferson did not consider size to be the sole factor in determining equality; he also considered geographic and agricultural factors. Consequently, the widths he proposed varied slightly:

  Eastwardly and westwardly they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi by that river on one side and the meridian of the lowest point of the rapids of Ohio on the other; and those adjoining on the east by the same meridian on their western side and on their eastern by the meridian of the western cape of the mouth of the Great Kanhaway [the present-day Kanawha River].

  In effect, Jefferson proposed two tiers of states with slightly different dimensions to mitigate differences in resources. While his lines do not appear on the American map, their prototypical dimensions do. Indeed, two tiers of states ultimately did emerge, side by side, further west: Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota all have three degrees of height. Neighboring them, the mountainous states of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana all have four degrees of height. Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, and South Dakota all have seven degrees of width, as do (allowing for coastal wiggles) Oregon and Washington.

  Ghosts of Jefferson: prototype shapes

  When did Congress begin fiddling with this Founding Father’s vision? Answer: eighteen days after his report. The report was delivered to Congress on March 1, 1784, and on March 19 Congress began altering it. Three days later, Jefferson presented additional revisions, to which additional amendments were made the following month. But the largest change came in 1787, when Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance. Jefferson’s proposed state names were now gone and, with the Northwest Ordinance, his proposed boundaries were also swept under the carpet. Moreover, the new proposed state borders were now confined solely to the Northwest Territory.

  By then Jefferson himself was no longer in Congress; in fact, he was no longer in the country. He was in Paris, serving as the American ambassador to France. But he was not happy with what Congress was doing to his plan. The Northwest Ordinance stipulated that the region would be divided into “not less than three nor more than five States.” It then described where those divisions were located. These new boundaries were largely the work of Jefferson’s fellow Virginian (and fellow future president) James Monroe. Jefferson wrote to Monroe, his friend and protégé:

  Borders stipulated in Northwest Ordinance of 1787

  Will their inhabitants be happiest divided into states of 30,000 square miles, not quite as large as Pennsylvania, or into states of 160,000 square miles?… They will not only be happier in states of a moderate size, but it is the only way in which they can exist as a regular society. Considering the American character in general … a state of such extent as 160,000 square miles would soon crumble into little ones … and if they decide to divide themselves, we are not able to restrain them. They will end up by separating from our confederacy and becoming its enemies.4

  Indeed, 160,000 square miles is the approximate size of the westernmost state proposed in the Northwest Ordinance, composed of present-day Illinois, Wisconsin, and regions of Minnesota and Michigan. Had such a state ultimately been created, it would be roughly the size of California.

  As can be seen on today’s map, Congress eventually divided the Northwest Territory into five states. It also relocated numerous borders stipulated in the Northwest Ordinance. Nevertheless, each of the states that finally emerged exceeds 30,000 square miles.

  Knowing when Congress tinkered with Jefferson’s vision begs the more important question: why? The congressional resolution that ultimately altered Jefferson’s boundaries stated that increased knowledge of the regions involved revealed that some of the proposed states would be deprived of navigation and others would consist almost entirely of barren mountain land. Indeed, this was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. The rest of the story wasn’t openly revealed in Congress until 1845, during the debate over Iowa’s statehood. Arguing for a return to more Jeffersonian boundaries, Ohio Congressman Samuel F. Vinton explained how the result of Jefferson’s proposed borders

  would have been ultimately to give the country beyond the mountains a majority of the States.… Shortly after the conclusion of the war with England [the Revolution], very serious difficulties arose between Spain and the United States respecting navigation of the Mississippi. Our settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee … looked to the Mississippi and its outlet through the Gulf of Mexico as their early road to market.… An opinion seems to have sprung up in the Atlantic States that the interests of the transmontane country would always be adverse to theirs.

  That earlier Congress did indeed have cause for concern. The residents of North Carolina’s land west of the Appalachians (present-day Tennessee) had grown impatient at the delays preventing it from becoming a separate state, and in 1784 they declared themselves the state of Franklin. Many of its residents further agitated for the state of Franklin to declare itself an independent republic and commence negotiations with Spain.5 This risk not only spurred Congress to begin at once creating states in the land west of the Appalachians, but also to create larger and therefore fewer states than Jefferson had recommended. Fewer states in the region, Vinton went on to point out, would translate into fewer votes in the Senate. And treaties could be ratified only by the Senate.

  One other of Jefferson’s proposals, however, did survive the crucible of democracy. At the same time that he was proposing the division of the nation’s western lands into future states, Jefferson offered a separate proposal stipulating the method by which the boundaries of and within these western lands would be located. “It shall be divided into Hundreds of ten geographical miles square … by lines to be run and marked due North and South, and others crossing these at right angles,” he urged. “These Hundreds shall be subdivided into lots of one mile square each … marked by lines running in like manner due North and South, and oth
er crossing these at right angles.”6 Jefferson, whose many accomplishments including surveying, did not invent this approach. It was already known as the rectangular survey system, one of several methods used by surveyors at that time.

  East Coast roads and Midwest roads

  Today airline passengers flying over the eastern states and the Midwest can look down and see a clear change in the pattern of the roads. East of the Appalachians, the roads generally conform to geographic features. In the Midwest, where the Northwest Ordinance was implemented using the method proposed by Jefferson, they conform primarily to a right-angled grid, positioned north–south by east–west. While Jefferson’s influence on the American map can be difficult to detect, in that grid of roadways we can see his literal imprint on the United States.

  · · · CALIFORNIA, OREGON, NEVADA, IDAHO, UTAH · · ·

  JOHN MEARES

  The U.S. Line from Spanish Canada

  The Spaniards have seized three British vessels in the fur trade at … Nootka Sound, on the western coast of North America.… Their crews are sent to Mexico in irons.… [The incident] has been transmitted and presented to the government by a Mr. Meares, who came home a passenger.

  —LONDON CHRONICLE, MAY 1, 1790

  A multistate boundary line separating the southern ends of Oregon and Idaho from the northern ends of California, Nevada, and much of Utah owes its existence to both Spanish Canada and China. Canada is not typically thought of as Spanish, nor are American state lines usually connected to Chinese influence. But a glance at a map of Canada’s Vancouver Island reveals remnants of Spanish Canada in names such as the Juan de Fuca Strait, Flores Island, Cortes Island, and Estevan Point.

  Spain, as the first European nation to plant its flag in the New World, proclaimed that it owned it all. And from 1492 into the early 1600s, it did. But then other nations began infiltrating uninhabited coves and bays along the New World’s Atlantic coast and Caribbean islands. By the late 1700s, foreign infiltration also began on the western coast, as China became more open to European trade. One of the most valuable exports to China was the lustrous fur of the sea otter. Enter the adventurous English sea merchant, John Meares.

  Line and remnants of Spanish Canada

  John Meares (ca. 1756-1809) (photo credit 10.1)

  From obscure origins, Meares struggled his way up the ropes of British seafaring to its top knots. Born in the mid-1750s in or near the town of Bath, he joined the Royal Navy at fifteen as a cabin boy. By the end of the American Revolution, he had shown enough intelligence and skill to rise to the rank of lieutenant. With the war’s end, however, his service was no longer needed. Meares needed to find a new avenue to wealth and fame. Quite possibly he found it by reading the newspapers. “The importance of Botany Bay will appear by all who examine Capt. Cook’s chart of his discoveries,” London’s Evening Post wrote in 1786. “Its situation is well adapted for carrying on a trade between Nootka Sound and Cook’s River on the American coast, and the islands of Japan and the Chinese Empire, in sea otter skins.” Botany Bay (present-day Sydney, Australia) was but one of British naval captain James Cook’s discoveries in the Pacific Ocean. In 1778 he discovered a way station for ships crossing that vast ocean en route to North America. The way station was a chain of tiny islands now known as Hawaii. It too would figure into Meares’s plans.

  England was not the only nation reaping the riches of lands newly discovered by Europeans. All of Europe, joined now by the fledgling United States, elbowed for opportunities. But Spain remained the best positioned, having been the first to establish settlements and naval forces in these regions. Evidence of Spain’s power even permeated the previously cited news item, when it referred to the importance of Cook’s River and Nootka Sound on the American West Coast but made no mention of San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Diego. Those better-known locations were controlled by Spain. (Seattle was yet to be discovered by Europeans.)

  Though Spain had lain claim to all the Americas, and its explorers had ventured throughout the Pacific Northwest, identifying their claims by the Spanish names they gave them, it had not sought to settle the northernmost regions. History might have been different indeed had Spain learned there was gold in the Yukon and Alaska. As it was, Spain saw little profit to be reaped from the region and great expense in protecting it, since it was some 600 miles from its nearest available naval harbor at San Francisco.

  On the other hand, Spain was well aware of profits to be had from trade with China. Early on it had established a Pacific base for such commerce by colonizing the Philippines. Spain was also well aware when China became an open market for sea otter furs, and it acted immediately to stop other nations from establishing trading posts along the coast of the sea otter’s habitat in the Pacific Northwest.

  Into these waters John Meares set sail from Calcutta in 1786 on the first of his two voyages to the Northwest. His plan was to establish a permanent trading post for sea otter furs, which he would trade in China for goods to be sold in England. Meares was a raw newcomer, never having headed a commercial enterprise, nor commanded a ship. His apparent self-confidence, coupled with an independent streak, is revealed by the fact that neither of his two voyages was licensed by the East India Company—a risky move on his part. Just as Spain had sought to monopolize its discovery of the New World, so too did the British East India Company seek to monopolize its markets by prohibiting other Englishmen from engaging in trade with its markets.

  For his first voyage, Meares arranged financial backing to secure two ships, which he named the Nootka and the Sea Otter. With himself in command of the Nootka, and a fellow navy lieutenant, William Tipping, commanding the Sea Otter, the two ships left India in March, 1786. Tipping’s Sea Otter, carrying opium, sold its cargo in Southeast Asia before setting a course for the Northwest. There the two ships were to rendezvous, if they had not met up already.1

  Meares arrived at Cook’s River, in present-day Alaska, in August. He began trading with the natives for furs and learned that Tipping’s Sea Otter was just ahead of him. Meares followed in its direction, continuing to trade along the way. As winter weather approached, Meares had yet to acquire a full cargo. He had three choices. He could depart for China (as the Sea Otter apparently had done) but with fewer furs than he wanted. He could harbor for the winter in Alaska and resume trading when warmer weather returned. Or he could winter at the way station discovered and described by Captain Cook: Hawaii.

  Meares feared that his crew would never leave the tropical paradise described by Cook, and he also feared the financial consequences of returning with inadequate cargo. What he didn’t fear was the Alaskan winter … because he had no clue of what it was. Few if any Europeans did. Just how bad did an Alaskan winter turn out to be? Newsworthy bad. “The Nootka … arrived at Oonalaska the beginning of August and arrived in Prince William’s Sound the end of September,” the London World reported in October 1787. “By the severity of the winter they lost their 3rd and 4th Mates, Surgeon, Boatswain, Carpenter, and Cooper and twelve of the foremast men; and the remainder were so enfeebled as to be under the necessity of applying to the Commanders of the King George and Queen Charlotte, who just at this time arrived.”

  The rescue of Meares and his crew by the King George and Queen Charlotte was not particularly cordial. Both ships were licensed by the East India Company. From their point of view, Meares and his men were poaching. Their captains demanded that Meares pledge a £1,000 bond against his promise not to engage in any trade en route back to India, and that he turn over the metal and beads he was using to trade with the natives. In return, they provided Meares and his men with the bare necessities.

  The news of Meares’s rescue was followed a week later by news of his venture’s sister ship. A brief item in the London World reported, “The Sea Otter, Capt. Tipping, sailed from Calcutta a few days after the Nootka … and arrived in Prince William’s Sound in September.… She left the Sound the day after, supposed for Cook’s River … but having neve
r since been seen or heard of, there can be little doubt of her being lost.”

  Once rescued, Meares and his crew set sail for Hawaii, where they replenished themselves and then went on to Macau, a Portuguese colony on the coast of China. Meares sold what cargo he had and his badly damaged ship, then immediately started in again. In less than two months, he had arranged financing for two other ships. To protect himself from the East India Company, he contracted to sail from Guangzhou (Canton), China, for a Portuguese merchant, enabling his ships to fly Portugal’s flag. Meares also protected his men against winter on this second voyage—and commenced his larger plan—by having his crew construct a permanent trading post in Nootka Sound. The one thing Meares was not protected against was Spain, whose ships soon entered Nootka Sound, where they too were arriving to establish a fur trade with China.

  Meares himself had already departed with his newly acquired cargo, leaving behind a staff of Chinese craftsmen and seamen who, in addition to having constructed the trading post, had also constructed a ship, the North West America, as the next step in the expansion of Meares’s enterprise. It was to sail under the command of one of the few Englishmen left to oversee operations at Nootka. Because of the presence of these Englishmen, the arriving Spaniards needed neither hounds nor accountants to sniff out British control of these Chinese settlers working for a Portuguese merchant. What happened next, Meares later reported to Parliament, was that “on the 9th of June, [the North West America] was boarded and seized by boats manned and equipped for war, commanded by Don [Esteban José] Martinez, that he did … take possession of her in the name of his Catholic Majesty.… that the commander of the N. W. America, his officers and men, were accordingly made prisoners … and some of her men were … afterwards put in irons.”2