How The States Got Their Shapes Too Part 15

Norton herself did not come from a politically radical family. Her father, a third-generation Was.h.i.+ngtonian, was an attorney whom she described as a "died-in-the-wool" Democrat. Her mother, a teacher who had migrated from the South, brought with her the traditional customs of southern African Americans. But both parents embraced the spirit of Norton's great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, who had been the first member of the family to move to Was.h.i.+ngton. He did so in the dead of night, escaping slavery in Virginia. The Was.h.i.+ngton into which he had arrived in the early 1850s was risky terrain for an escaped slave. While it had many free African Americans, it also had slaves, and under the Fugitive Slave Act, runaway slaves could be reclaimed at any time. Though the stakes were considerably less for young Eleanor, her venturing to Antioch echoed her great-grandfather's spirit of risk.

In 1963 the soon-to-become Yale law student ventured into terrain every bit as dangerous as her great-grandfather's. She traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi, to partic.i.p.ate in that summer's historic effort to register African American voters. Arriving in Jackson, she met with the field secretary for the state's NAACP, Medgar Evers, who briefed her on the situation she would be encountering, then dropped her off at the bus station for her trip to Greenwood. That night Evers was shot and killed.

As a young lawyer, Norton worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, where she first began to get national attention. Ebony magazine wrote of her in 1969: In her Afro hairstyle, her dangling earrings and her multi-colored striped dress ... Eleanor Holmes Norton hardly looks like what she is-an astute const.i.tutional lawyer who has argued controversial cases before the Supreme Court and won. But there is a certain irony in a number of her victories.... [S]he has ... defended the free speech of George C. Wallace, the segregationist National States Rights Party, and individual klansmen.

For Norton, civil rights transcended race and political views. Rather, she saw them as inseparably connected to humanity's inalienable rights. This deeply held conviction drew the attention of New York Mayor John V. Lindsay. "Eleanor Holmes Norton, a civil liberties lawyer, was appointed chairman of the city's Commission on Human Rights yesterday," the New York Times reported in 1970. "As head of the city's princ.i.p.al antidiscrimination agency, Mrs. Norton, who is 32 years old, will also be the highest ranking Negro woman in Mr. Lindsay's administration." Norton's achievements during her seven years in New York brought her to the attention of others as well. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter chose Norton to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In 1990, when Was.h.i.+ngton, DC's delegate to Congress retired, Norton (now a law professor at Georgetown University) sought and won election to the position. Once in office, she took up the torch that had been carried by a long line of predecessors: equal representation for the District of Columbia.

Following President Monroe's 1818 call to rectify the status of the District, its residents had created a committee to propose solutions. "The Committee confesses that they can discover but two modes in which the desired relief can be afforded," it reported back to Congress in 1822, continuing "either by the establishment of a territorial government ... restoring them to equal rights enjoyed by the citizens of the other portions of the United States, or by a retrocession to the States of Virginia and Maryland of the respective parts of the District which were originally ceded by those States to form it."4 Neither idea was new, ideal, or favorably received.

The problem then went dormant until 1841, when it was picked up again by President William Henry Harrison. "It is in this District only where American citizens are to be found who ... are deprived of many important political privileges," he declared in his inaugural address. "The people of the District of Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the States, but free American citizens. Being in the latter condition when the Const.i.tution was formed, no words used in that instrument could have been intended to deprive them of that character." Unfortunately for District residents, Harrison died one month later.

In 1846 the issue was resolved for those District residents living on the Virginia side of the Potomac. That year, Congress returned that portion of the city to Virginia (see "Robert M. T. Hunter" in this book).

In 1888 New Hamps.h.i.+re Senator Henry W. Blair proposed an amendment to the Const.i.tution to provide voting representation for the District of Columbia. The Senate voted it down. He was followed in 1918 by Illinois Senator James Hamilton Lewis. "The United States is the only country in the world that exiles it own National Capital," Lewis wrote in a Was.h.i.+ngton Post column proposing statehood for the District. "The federal government could reserve a sufficient area for all federal buildings and reserve governmental control over all the area, just as it does now over military posts." Senator Lewis's efforts went nowhere as well. His statehood proposal was followed by that of Texas Representative Hatton Sumners in 1940. Sumners's was followed by that of another Texas congressman, Henry Gonzalez, in 1967. Gonzalez's was followed by that of Iowa Senator Fred Schwengel in 1971; Schwengel's by Ma.s.sachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy's in 1984, 1985, and 1987.5 This field of failures was the terrain into which Norton ventured in 1990. Over the years, the struggle had become further complicated by the terrain dividing into various battlefields: statehood, retrocession to Maryland, territorial status, and limited voting rights. But risky terrain for fundamental rights had always attracted her. Though a rookie in Congress and, as a nonvoting delegate, batting without a bat, she made her play within months of her election. The Was.h.i.+ngton Post reported: Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton ... acknowledging that statehood faces an uphill battle, introduced legislation that would create the state of New Columbia.... Under Norton's bill, the boundaries of the new state would be the same as the District's, excluding the Mall and other federal landmarks such as the White House. These would be made part of a federal enclave that would remain under direct congressional control.... Critics have long contended that the Const.i.tution would have to be amended to achieve statehood.

Over the years, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have consistently opposed or supported DC statehood. During his 199192 presidential campaign, Democrat Bill Clinton supported DC statehood despite having opposed it as the governor of Arkansas.6 Likewise, among present-day Republicans there are some who maintain that Congress can extend voting representation to DC residents without having to amend the Const.i.tution. Two of the most prominent of such Republicans are Utah Senator Orrin Hatch and Kenneth Starr, a former federal judge appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, then appointed solicitor general by President George H. W. Bush, and later selected to be the independent counsel investigating misconduct by President Clinton.7 In his 2004 testimony before Congress, Starr pointed out: The judiciary has rightly shown great deference where Congress announces its considered judgment that the District should be considered a "State" for specific legislative purposes.... In 1949, the Supreme Court's Tidewater decision ... confirmed what is now the law: the Const.i.tution's use of the word "State" in Article III cannot mean "and not of the District of Columbia." Identical logic supports legislation to enfranchise the District's voters: the use of the word "State" in Article I cannot bar Congress from exercising its plenary authority [over the District] to extend the franchise to the District's voters.

Despite the fact that Starr and Hatch agreed that the Const.i.tution need not be amended to provide voting representation to the District, politicians from both parties continued to invoke the need for a const.i.tutional amendment in order to cloak other concerns. "Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton bristled several times when witnesses contended that the proposed statehood legislation is unconst.i.tutional," the Was.h.i.+ngton Post reported in March 1992, when her bill was under consideration by the House Committee on the District of Columbia. The following month, the committee sent Norton's bill to the floor of the House. With every (nonretiring) member of the House having to face the voters in November, opponents of representation for the District now uncloaked their actual concerns. "President Bush recently criticized a District law expanding h.o.m.os.e.xual rights," the Post reported in a May 1992 article headlined, "Statehood Stirs Up Opposition." The article quoted a ma.s.s mailing by Senator Jesse Helms that told voters, "I've already got my hands full fighting the far-left, ultra-liberals in Congress. And the last thing I need is having to battle Jesse Jackson." (At the time, African American leader Jesse Jackson lived in the District of Columbia.) This opposition effort, which its backers ratcheted up as the November election approached, succeeded. "Citing recent overwhelming defeats for the District on issues such as the death penalty and gay rights, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said she will not ask lawmakers to vote on statehood before they adjourn," the Post announced in October. "Norton said she remains upbeat about statehood's chances for several reasons, including the chance that Bill Clinton might be elected President."

Following the election of President Clinton, Norton again introduced a proposal for DC statehood. The bill's supporters emphasized that the population of the District exceeded those of Alaska, Wyoming, and Vermont, that District residents paid taxes and served in the military just as other Americans did, and that the Const.i.tution did not prevent Congress from granting voting rights to the District. Norton spoke to the issue's core. "We are debating whether at last to grant full citizens.h.i.+p to a group of people on whom every duty of citizens.h.i.+p has been imposed," she stressed on the House floor. "This nation was formed precisely because Americans paid taxes to a sovereign who afforded them no representation. The animating principle of American democracy has been no taxation without representation."

Michigan Representative John Dingell, one of the most powerful Democrats in the House, spoke in opposition to DC statehood. "I have heard many, many complaints about people being denied const.i.tutional rights," he responded. "There is no const.i.tutional right whatsoever that is being denied to the citizens here. If they do not like the way the government is run, they can pack up and move out."

Dingell was not the only Democrat opposed to DC statehood. Though the Democrats const.i.tuted a majority of the House of Representatives, the measure failed 277 to 153.

This defeat was followed by another. The era's political winds were propelling the Republican Party into increasingly conservative positions and, via those same winds, increasing popularity. In the 1995 congressional elections, the Republicans won a majority of the seats in the House and maintained that majority for the next twelve years. During this time, Norton knew she needed to adjust her tactics. Since a core belief of the Republicans was that the nation benefited from tax relief, Norton sought to persuade her Republican colleagues via that aspect of the District's status. The Post reported this s.h.i.+ft in February 1995: Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's representative on Capitol Hill, has long advocated D.C. statehood by arguing that the city's situation const.i.tutes "taxation without representation.". Norton has come up with a new plan: no representation, no taxation. This week, she introduced legislation to exempt District residents from paying federal taxes.... Norton's plan probably won't become reality soon. The federal government ... is not likely to give up $1.6 billion in revenue.

This effort failed, as the Post had predicted.

In addition to the challenges in Congress, Norton has also faced challenges from those residents in the District who believe she should pursue other avenues toward representation. "Eleanor Homes Norton is a 10-term delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.... Dougla.s.s Sloan is a Ward 4 advisory neighborhood commissioner.... He wants her job," a neighborhood newspaper reported in 2010, quoting her challenger: "She's been there 20 years ... and she hasn't gotten anywhere." Despite an energetic campaign, Sloan won only 9 percent of the vote in the 2010 Democratic primary, and Norton again triumphed in the general election.

Eleanor Holmes Norton may or may not eventually succeed in achieving statehood for the District of Columbia. What is certain, however, is that if she does not, others will take up the torch-for it is the same torch that has been carried by every individual in this book. It is a torch that illuminates the lines inside us, that define who we are. The lines on the American map are also our interior portraits. Americans don't always find each other attractive, but each of us desires to be acknowledged, to count. In this nation, that desire is a right. The quest for that right is the torch carried by Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Notes.

Roger Williams 1. Letter from Roger Williams to the Town of Providence, in Publications of the Narragansett Club, 1st series, vol. 6 (Providence: Narragansett Club, 1874), 279.

2. Williams's religious basis for the separation of church and state was not rooted in acceptance of other religions; he actively sought to convert non-Christians. His views were rooted in Puritan tenets. From these he derived the belief that, since mankind is comprised of those who are bestowed with Divine Grace and those who are not, and since we cannot know who among us has been bestowed with Grace, forced wors.h.i.+p brings suffering to those bestowed with Grace by empowering others-whom we have no way of knowing whether or not they are bestowed with Grace-to impose laws regarding a realm where only G.o.d has jurisdiction. See Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, ed. Richard Groves (Macon: University of Georgia Press, 2001); Alan Simpson, "How Democratic Was Roger Williams?" William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 13, no. 1 (January 1956): 5367.

3. Simpson, "How Democratic Was Roger Williams?"; Mauro Calamandrei, "Neglected Aspects of Roger Williams' Thought," Church History 21, no. 3 (September 1952): 23958; Sidney V. James, "Ecclesiastical Authority in the Land of Roger Williams," New England Quarterly, 57, no. 3 (September 1984): 32346.

4. LeRoy Moore Jr., "Roger Williams and the Historians," Church History 32, no. 4 (December 1963): 43251; Sacvan Bercovitch, "The Typology of America's Mission," American Quarterly 30, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 13555.

5. Roger Williams, "Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered," in Publications of the Narragansett Club, 1st series, vol. 1 (Providence: Narragansett Club, 1866), 325.

6. LeRoy Moore, "Roger Williams and the Revolutionary Era," Church History 34, no. 1 (March 1965): 5761.

7. Edmund J. Carpenter, Roger Williams: A Study of the Life, Times and Character of a Political Pioneer (New York: Grafton, 1909), 126.

Augustine Herman 1. Samuel Hazard, ed., Annals of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Hazard and Mitch.e.l.l, 1815), 281.

2. Francis Vincent, A History of the State of Delaware (Philadelphia: John Campbell, 1870), 320.

3. James McSherry, History of Maryland (Baltimore: Baltimore Book Company, 1904), 24649.

Robert Jenkins's Ear 1. Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich the Second, called Frederick the Great, vol. 2 (New York: Harper, 1868), 503.

Robert Tufton Mason 1. Collections of the New Hamps.h.i.+re Historical Society, vol. 8 (Concord: New Hamps.h.i.+re Historical Society, 1866), 264.

2. Letter from the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts to Oliver Cromwell (1651), in Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, 2nd ed. (London: M. Richardson, 1765), 521.

3. Letter from New England Ministers to Oliver Cromwell (1650), in Collections of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, 4th series, vol. 2 (Boston: Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, 1854), 118.

4. Pet.i.tion of Robert Mason, in Albert Stillman Batch.e.l.lor, ed., State of New Hamps.h.i.+re Doc.u.ments Relating to the Masonian Patent, vol. 29 (Concord, NH: Edward Pearson, 1896), 1013.

5. Gov. John Endicott to Charles II (1661), in Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 45455.

6. Opinion of Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Nov. 8, 1660, in Batch.e.l.lor, State of New Hamps.h.i.+re Doc.u.ments, 1067.

7. A. H. Buffinton, "The Isolationist Policy of Colonial Ma.s.sachusetts," New England Quarterly, 1, no. 2 (April 1928): 161.

8. Charles II to Ma.s.sachusetts Government, March 10, 1675, in Batch.e.l.lor, State of New Hamps.h.i.+re Doc.u.ments, 111.

9. Publications of the Prince Society: Capt. John Mason (Boston: Prince Society, 1887), 1045.

10. Royal Commission on New Hamps.h.i.+re (1679), in William Forsyth, Cases and Opinions of Const.i.tutional Law (London: Stevens and Haynes, 1869), 136.

11. Charles II to Ma.s.sachusetts Government (1682), in Batch.e.l.lor, State of New Hamps.h.i.+re Doc.u.ments, 123.

12. Jeremy Belknap, The History of New Hamps.h.i.+re, vol. 1 (Dover, NH: S. C. Stevens and Ela & Wadleigh, 1831), 11415.

13. Allen's daughter was married to Ma.s.sachusetts Governor John Usher. Under Usher's leaders.h.i.+p, Ma.s.sachusetts bought Gorges's claim to Maine, finalizing its annexation of the territory. Why Ma.s.sachusetts did not also purchase the Mason claim is unknown. See John Gorham Palfrey, History of New England, vol. 4 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1897), 207; Belknap, History of New Hamps.h.i.+re, 1:252.

14. Isaac W. Hammond, ed., State of New Hamps.h.i.+re, Miscellaneous Provincial and State Papers: 17251800, vol. 18 (Manchester: John B. Clarke, 1890), 72.

Lord Fairfax 1. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., The Writings of George Was.h.i.+ngton, vol. 1 (New York: Putnam, 1889), 4.

2. William Hand Brown, ed., Archives of Maryland: Letters to Governor Horatio Sharpe (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1911), 15.

3. James V. L. McMahon, Historical View of the Government of Maryland, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Lucas, Cus.h.i.+ng, 1831), 6465.

Mason and Dixon 1. Anonymous, "The Rights o' Man," Punch 38 (January 28, 1860): 41.

2. Edwin Danson, Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America (New York: John Wiley, 2001), 5455.

3. H. W. Robinson, "Jeremiah Dixon (17331779): A Biographical Note," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 94, no. 3 (June 20, 1950): 273.

4. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, Field Notes and Astronomical Observations (autograph ma.n.u.script), in Report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, PA: Edwin H. Meyers, 1887), 145.

5. Thomas D. Cope, "Some Contacts of Benjamin Franklin with Mason and Dixon and Their Work," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95, no. 3 (June 12, 1951): 238.

Zebulon Butler 1. Williamson, James R., and Linda A. Fossler, Zebulon Butler: Hero of the Revolutionary Frontier (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 14.

2. Albert Henry Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 10 (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 215.

3. Williamson and Fossler, Zebulon Butler, 61.

4. Robert J. Taylor, ed., The Susquehannah Company Papers, vol. 7 (New York: Cornell University Press, 1969), 24546.

Ethan Allen 1. Connecticut Courant, June 1-June 8, 1773.

2. Walter Hill Crockett, Vermont: The Green Mountain State, vol. 1 (New York: Century History, 1921), 182.

3. Ibid., 338.

4. Ibid., 341.

5. Ibid., 370.

6. Hugh Moore, Memoir of Col. Ethan Allen (Plattsburgh, NY: O. R. Cook, 1834), 4862.

7. Prentiss C. Dodge, Encyclopedia Vermont Biography (Burlington, VT: Ullery Publis.h.i.+ng, 1912), 12.

8. Ibid., 15.

Thomas Jefferson 1. Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, in The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, ed. John P. Foley (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), 940.

2. H. Hale Bellot, "Thomas Jefferson in American Historiography," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 4 (1954): 13555.

3. Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., "Jefferson, the Ordinance of 1784, and the Origins of the American Territorial System," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 29, no. 2 (April 1972): 231.

4. Jefferson to Monroe, July 9, 1786, in Berkhofer, "Jefferson, the Ordinance," 257.

5. J. M. Keating, History of the City of Memphis, Tennessee (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason, 1888), 7278.

6. Congress did not officially adopt Jefferson's proposed surveying method until it enacted the Land Ordinance of 1785.

John Meares 1. J. Richard Nokes, Almost a Hero: The Voyages of John Meares, R.N., to China, Hawaii, and the Northwest Coast (Pullman: Was.h.i.+ngton State University Press, 1998), 911.

2. John Meares, "Memorial to the House of Commons," in London Daily Advertiser, May 20, 1770.

3. Public Advertiser (London), May 31, 1790; November 10, 1790.

4. "[There is a] settlement at the Columbia River ... formed before the late war [of 1812] and broken up by the British ... in the course of it.... As the British government admit explicitly their obligation under the first article of the treaty of Ghent to restore the post, there can be no question with regard to the right of the United States to resume it." Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Writings of John Quincy Adams, vol. 6 (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 4023.

5. John Meares, Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789 from China to the North-West Coast of America (1790; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1967).

6. London World, February 23, 1791.

Benjamin Banneker 1. Davis S. s.h.i.+elds, ed., American Poetry: The 17th and 18th Centuries (New York: Penguin, 2007), 574.

2. Sylvio A. Bedini, The Life of Benjamin Banneker (New York: Scribner, 1972), 17.

3. Martha E. Tyson, "Banneker: The Afric-American Astronomer," in The Posthumous Papers of Martha E. Tyson, edited by Her Daughter (Philadelphia: Friends' Book a.s.sociation, 1884).

4. Pennsylvania Mercury, October 15, 1791.

5. Michael Hardt, ed., Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence (New York: Verso, 2007), 85.

6. Ibid., 86.

7. Bedini, Life of Benjamin Banneker, 238.

Jesse Hawley 1. Jesse Hawley [pseud. Hercules], Genesee Messenger (New York), January 1807, in David Hosack, Memoir of DeWitt Clinton (New York: J. Seymour, 1829), 311.

2. Ibid., 323.

3. Cadwallader Colden, The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada Which Are Dependent on the Province of New York in America and Are the Barrier Between the English and French in that Part of the World (1724), in Ibid., 234.

4. John Lauritz Larson, " 'Bind the Republic Together': The National Union and the Struggle for a System of Internal Improvements," Journal of American History 74, no. 2 (September 1987): 36387; Pamela L. Baker, "The Was.h.i.+ngton National Road Bill and the Struggle to Adopt a Federal System of Internal Improvement," Journal of the Early Republic 22, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 43764.

5. Hosack, Memoir of DeWitt Clinton, 347.

6. Gerard Koeppel, Bond of Union: Building the Erie Ca.n.a.l and the American Empire (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2009), 7.

7. William Cooper, A Guide in the Wilderness, or the History of the First Settlements in the Western Counties of New York with Useful Instructions to Future Settlers (Dublin: Gilbert and Hodges, 1810), 2122.

8. Daily National Intelligencer (Was.h.i.+ngton, DC), May 19, 1813; Roy I. Wolf, "Transportation and Politics: The Example of Canada," Annals of the a.s.sociation of American Geographers 52, no. 2 (June 1962): 17690; Don C. Sowers, "The Financial History of New York State from 1789 to 1912," Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, vol. 57 (New York: Columbia University, 1914), 61.

9. Rochester Democrat, repr. in Cleveland Daily Herald, January 17, 1842; Albany Evening Journal, repr. in New York Spectator (New York City), January 19, 1842; Milwaukee Journal, February 2, 1842.

James Brittain 1. Robert Scott Davis Jr., "The Settlement at the Head of the French Broad River or the Bizarre Story of the First Walton County, Georgia," North Carolina Genealogical Journal 7, no. 2 (May 1981): 65.

2. In addition to Davis's "Settlement at the Head of the French Broad River," Brittain is named in Alexia Jones Helsley and George Alexander Jones, A Guide to Historic Henderson County, North Carolina (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007); Harry McKown, "December, 1810: The Walton War," This Month in North Carolina History (December 2006), http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/dec2006/index.html; Jim Brittain, "History Corner," Mills River, North Carolina Newsletter 5, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 2.

3. Theodore Davidson, Genesis of Buncombe County (Asheville, NC: Citizen Company, 1922), 78.

4. Ibid., 119. The name of the grand jury foreman, William Whitson, also appears with Brittain's in the list of dismissed commissioners. Whitson was also Brittain's commanding officer in the state militia.