How The States Got Their Shapes Too Part 4

-LT. COL. WILLIAM WHITSON, NORTH CAROLINA STATE MILITIA,

TO MAJ. JAMES BRITTAIN, DECEMBER 17, 18101.

Had it not been for the actions of James Brittain, the boundary between North Carolina and Georgia might well be twelve miles north of where it is today. Until recently, however, one would be hard-pressed to find any history book that mentioned Brittain. The reason his name has now resurfaced is the flip side of the reason it was suppressed: convenience/inconvenience.2 Brittain's story is an important part of North Carolina and Georgia history, but it has become more important for what it reveals about history itself.

James Brittain was born in the mid-1700s, served in the American Revolution, and afterward settled in Mills River, North Carolina, with his wife and children. The various surviving doc.u.ments in which his name appears suggest he was a leading citizen in the region, though never its preeminent leader. He represented Buncombe County in the North Carolina Senate for six (nonconsecutive) terms.

He was not always an ill.u.s.trious leader, as a 1792 resolution suggests: The commissioners appointed to fix the center and agree where the public buildings in the County of Buncombe should be erected have failed to comply with the above recited Act, and the inhabitants of said county much injured thereby.... For remedy ... Joshua Inglish, Archibald Neill, James Wilson, Augustin Shotes, George Baker and John Dillard ... [shall] be appointed commissioners in the room and stead of Philip Hoodenpile, William Britain, William Whitson, James Brittain and Lemuel Clayton.3 Ten years later, Brittain's name crops up in another snafu over public buildings, as revealed in an 1802 directive issued by the Buncombe County Grand Jury: The Court house and Jail, the former of which being 35 feet long, stands partly on the Town street, and partly on the lot of Samuel Chunn and Zebulon Baird, and the latter on the lots of James Brittain and Andrew Erwin, so that the County, after expending a very considerable sum of money in executing said Buildings, have not the slightest t.i.tle to the ground on which they stand ...

(Signed) William Whitson, Foreman4 Brittain subsequently appears to have opted to donate the land inadvertently used to build the county jail, unlike others on the list.

Brittain's personal finances were considerably more involved in his state's boundary dispute with Georgia. In 1802 he purchased 100 acres of land, and in 1806 an additional 200 acres, elsewhere in Buncombe County, North Carolina-or, from Georgia's point of view, in Walton County, Georgia.

Technically, this land had originally belonged to South Carolina. But South Carolina had ceded the region to the United States in 1787. At the time, it was within the domain of the Cherokee nation. In 1798 the government "negotiated" a treaty with the Cherokees that required them to relocate to a reservation west of the Mississippi River-a forced migration now known as the Trail of Tears. In the absence of the Cherokees, the land South Carolina had ceded to the United States remained outside any state's jurisdiction. It came to be called the Orphan Strip.

The difficult access in the mountainous Orphan Strip provided ideal terrain for people who didn't want to be found. So many such people repaired to the region that, in 1800, a congressional committee proposed that it be given to South Carolina.

South Carolina, however, pa.s.sed on the offer. It had no interest in extending its jurisdiction into this labyrinth of mountains, where many residents had repaired to escape jurisdiction.5 North Carolina and Georgia weren't interested either. But in 1802 the federal government found a new solution. Georgia (which then still included present-day Alabama and Mississippi) had gotten in hot water regarding land fraud in its western region. The federal government offered Georgia a deal. In return for relinquis.h.i.+ng the land that would become Alabama and Mississippi, the United States would let Georgia off the hook for land fraud if it also agreed to accept jurisdiction over the Orphan Strip.

The Orphan Strip North Carolina did not protest this offer, though some North Carolinians suspected that the state's border with Georgia had been inaccurately surveyed. The border was stipulated as being a line along the 35th parallel. As it turned out, the 35th parallel is twelve miles south of where the border had been located.

Still, the United States had rid itself of a pesky problem, and Georgia dutifully organized the land as Walton County (not to be confused with present-day Walton County, Georgia). Georgia went on to appoint officials to govern its new county. What had been a notorious no-man's-land was looking better and better ... to North Carolina. That state now declared that the land was part of its Buncombe County. North Carolina likewise appointed officials to enforce state laws and register land t.i.tles.

Among those buying land and having the t.i.tle recorded in North Carolina was James Brittain. Such purchases by absentee investors were precisely what most fueled Georgia's ire. Often the investors sought to charge rent to those living on their land t.i.tled in Buncombe County, North Carolina. This did not sit well with those living on the land who held t.i.tle to it in Walton County, Georgia. In some instances the North Carolina owners turned to the region's North Carolina authorities to evict those who refused to pay their rent. Those Georgians living on such land who held t.i.tle to it in Georgia turned to the region's Georgia authorities for protection. Confrontations, often violent, ensued.

In December 1804 one such confrontation involved Buncombe County constable John Havner and several Walton County residents. It ended when Havner was struck in the face with the b.u.t.t of a rifle, an injury that proved fatal.6 In response, North Carolina sent a unit from its state militia, under the command of Brittain. Walton County residents quickly ma.s.sed to defend themselves. In Georgia the Augusta Chronicle reported the following in February 1805: On the 19th of December, a party of hors.e.m.e.n consisting of 70 or 80 men, and headed by a Major James Brittain, marched into [Walton] County from Buncombe, North Carolina.... They took and made prisoners of Richard Williamson, James Lafoy, J. Cloud, G. Williamson, esquires, and several others.... Five they discharged and ten were kept and marched off like prisoners of war to Morganton, North Carolina.

Brittain's foray resulted in the battle of McGaha Branch, where his forces quickly overtook the Georgians. Those who escaped regrouped atop Selica Hill. But once again Brittain's men prevailed. Both "battles" might be more accurately described as skirmishes. The number of casualties is uncertain but known to have been low. Some accounts say one to fourteen people died, others say no deaths resulted.7 What is certain today is that, unbeknownst to those involved, both clashes took place north of the Ophan Strip. Neither side knew, at the time, just where the boundaries were.

Those arrested and taken to the Morganton jail included the leading officials of Walton County. All escaped. How they managed to do so was not recorded. Notably, however, they did not continue to attempt to enforce Georgia's jurisdictional claims in the region. Though Georgia and North Carolina continued to dispute the region-periodically agreeing to surveys, then disagreeing on the results-only North Carolina's officials exerted jurisdiction. The people in the region also continued to conflict, often resulting in a.s.saults and vandalism. These acts, along with Brittain's foray, const.i.tute what has come to be called the Walton War.

North Carolina-Georgia engagements In 1810, with North Carolina solidifying its control, Georgia hired Andrew Ellicott, one of the nation's foremost surveyors, to locate the 35th parallel. Milledgeville's Georgia Journal reported in 1812 what his findings were rumored to be (and, in fact, were): "No official communication has yet been made by Mr. Ellicott to our Executive; but we learn that no part of Walton County belongs to this state." Georgia took no official action in response to Ellicott's survey. In fact, it came to act in ways that sought to render the dispute invisible.

During that time, James Brittain too began to disappear from the public mind. When he died (likely in the years near Ellicott's survey), he was buried in what would become the family gravesite in Mills River, North Carolina. Today his grave is invisible, covered by tract homes.8 More pressing needs also erased his memory. In 1860 Georgia sc.r.a.pped the const.i.tution it had been using, which included a description of its boundaries, and replaced it with the const.i.tution of the Confederate State of Georgia. It contained no boundary descriptions, since the last thing the Confederate states needed was conflict among themselves. Georgia's Confederate const.i.tution was replaced during Reconstruction with a const.i.tution that also included no a.s.sertion of boundaries. In this instance, those writing this const.i.tution were imposing an end to a national conflict; they too had no wish to stir up local trouble.

For the same reasons, regional historians minimized or totally avoided any reference to the Walton War, seeking to suppress the fact that the North Carolina militia was once led into battle against fellow countrymen from Georgia. One multivolume history of Georgia informed its readers, "For several years a bone of contention between Georgia and North Carolina was the matter of locating the 35th parallel of north lat.i.tude, recognized as the boundary line between the two states. In 1806, surveyors representing both states ..." Even though 1806 was only two years after Brittain's foray, this highly detailed history of the state simply skipped it.9 On the North Carolina side, even historians focused solely on the state's western end ignored the event. One such historian acknowledged the Walton War but wrote of it: Georgia, about December, 1803, created a county within this territory and called it Walton County. Georgia naturally attempted to exercise jurisdiction over what it really believed was its own territory, and North Carolina as naturally resisted such attempts. Consequently, there were great dissentions, the said dissentions having produced many riots, affrays, a.s.saults, batteries, woundings and imprisonments. On January 13, 1806 ...10 In both instances, the transition to 1806 leaves Brittain's 1804 foray in the narrative's dust.

In 1971 Georgia suddenly renewed its boundary dispute with North Carolina, though modifying its claim. It also took up a similar dispute with Tennessee. The North Carolina dispute was triggered to maintain consistency in Georgia's boundary claim with Tennessee. That dispute had been triggered by Georgia's need for access to the Tennessee River to help supply water to rapidly growing Atlanta, rising in the wake of the civil rights movement as the preeminent city of the New South. Reflecting that change, Atlanta's leading African American newspaper followed the boundary challenge with equal concern. "Georgia Rep. Larry Thomason ... chairman of the Georgia Boundary Commission, contends the state's present northern boundary is about a mile south of where it should be," Atlanta's Daily World reported in September. Noting that the U.S. Geodetic Survey had announced a meeting to be held with representatives of the three states, the article continued, "Georgia has accepted the invitation and is waiting for responses from North Carolina and Tennessee."

Apparently, Georgia is still waiting. No boundary adjustments have ensued. What has ensued, however, is an awakened awareness of the basis for the conflict, and with it the name of James Brittain has begun to reappear in historical accounts.

LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI.

REUBEN KEMPER.

From Zero to Hero?

The outrages of the Kempers a few years ago are not yet forgotten. That family has on the recent occasion displayed its accustomed contempt for the laws of society, and was very active in ... erecting Florida into a government independent alike of Spain and the United States.

-PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY AURORA, MARCH 3, 1811 Why is the Museum of the Republic of West Florida located two states away in Louisiana? The answer has a lot to do with Reuben Kemper, an American immigrant to Spain's province of West Florida.

After the Revolution, what had been a trickle of Americans migrating to West Florida turned into a flood. Reuben, Nathan, and Samuel Kemper moved there from Virginia around 1800. Like many Americans, they were attracted by the fact that Spain made it easier for the average person to acquire land than did the United States. In the United States, to obtain t.i.tle to land one had to have the money to purchase it. In Spanish West Florida, one could apply for t.i.tle to land, and ultimately obtain that t.i.tle, simply by living on the land and cultivating it-and by professing loyalty to Spain.1 The policy aimed to discourage absentee land speculators and reward individual productivity. To the extent that it was enforced, Spain's policy resulted in an industrious-and loyal-population.

The Kempers, however, were not happy campers. In 1804 the Natchez Herald reported that Reuben and his brothers, with a party of about 30 men, with colors flying and horns sounding, marched from the neighborhood of the line of demarcation between this territory [Mississippi] and West Florida ... against the fort of Baton Rouge.... They arrived on the following morning about daylight near the fort. The Spanish commandant ... had posted a piquet of 18 or 20 men, who hailed the party as they approached. They immediately answered by a volley from their rifles, which dispersed the Spaniards, two of whom were observed to fall.

Spanish Florida, 1783-1810 The newspaper account reported that the Kemper party then returned to its headquarters at St. Francisville, without explanation of why they retreated. Instead, the account quoted, in its entirety, a broadside that the Kempers had posted at points along the way.

The posting spoke of "the despotism under which we have long groaned," and their resolve "to throw off the galling yoke of tyranny, and become free men, by declaring ourselves a free and independent people." The message closely resembled the Declaration of Independence, though at no point did it say they sought to join the United States. Nevertheless, their declaration raised Spanish eyebrows. Earlier that year, President Thomas Jefferson had signed the Mobile Act, stating that the 1803 Louisiana Purchase included West Florida. But Jefferson also stated that, because of the ambiguity of the doc.u.ment defining the Louisiana Purchase, along with the ambiguity of land transfers between Spain and France, he would not a.s.sert American claims militarily.

Although Kemper and his brothers were not in cahoots with the U.S. government, weren't they freedom fighters nevertheless? Probably not, despite their rousing posters. One month after their attack at Baton Rouge, New York's Republican Watch Tower revealed that "Mr. [Reuben] Kemper, the leader of the a.s.sociation, was for some time in the service of Mr. Smith, of Tennessee, to whom he became indebted to a considerable amount. Being prosecuted, he fled to Florida, where, at the head of thirty men, he raised the standard of revolt."

The details were actually somewhat different. Mr. Smith was John Smith, a resident of Ohio-in fact, a U.S. senator from Ohio. He owned land in West Florida, which he paid the Kemper brothers to manage. Smith's absentee owners.h.i.+p was in violation of Spanish policy, but Spanish policy was laxly enforced (especially for a U.S. senator).2 The debt mentioned in the news account resulted from Smith's providing the Kempers with dry goods that they were to sell to local residents. When the business failed, Reuben Kemper was deeply in debt to Smith, but he did not flee to West Florida, since that is where he lived and where the litigation took place. The judgment in favor of Smith resulted in efforts by West Florida authorities to evict the Kempers from Smith's land. These efforts became increasingly violent confrontations that, not unlike a barroom brawl, began to involve additional people.

Spain's governor of West Florida viewed the Kempers as ne'er-do-wells who attracted bandits and a few otherwise innocent bystanders. He thus sought to isolate them from their followers by pardoning all those who had been arrested during the eviction confrontations, with the exception of the Kempers. The policy succeeded, as evidenced by the fact that the Kempers' response-the 1804 attack on Baton Rouge-attracted only some thirty men.

What, meanwhile, did the U.S. government think, since it claimed this region? William Claiborne, governor of the neighboring Louisiana Territory, reported to Secretary of State James Madison that the Kemper incident was "nothing more than a riot, in which a few uninformed, ignorant men had taken part."3 Madison, in turn, repudiated the Kempers' actions and vowed to arrest them if they entered American territory.

But what the federal government actually thought turned out to be less clear. When the Kemper brothers, seeking to evade capture by the West Florida militia (composed primarily of American immigrants), fled into American territory, they were not arrested as promised. So Spain arrested them. But to do so, the West Florida militia had to step over the line into Pinckneyville, Mississippi. Because they had crossed the boundary, the United States justified its forces' freeing the Kempers as they were being transported down the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge.

For the next six years, the brothers tended to their own affairs. When Reuben surfaced again in December 1810, the situation had clearly changed. Baltimore's Federal Republican reported: Col. [Reuben] Kemper, in service of the [Republic of West Florida] convention, was on the Alabama River with 340 men, where he will probably remain until he receives a reinforcement.... We learn from St. Francisville that the Legislature a.s.sembled there last week under the new const.i.tution ... that in consequence of dispatches from Col. Kemper, a detachment of 1500 men (with a suitable train of artillery) under the command of Col. Kirkland, marched from St. Francisville for Pensacola.

How had Reuben Kemper gone from being a debtor corralling a gang of bandits to a leaders.h.i.+p position in a rebellion against Spain? Two underlying elements contributed to his success: deteriorating relations with Spain and political uncertainty in the United States. One deteriorating relations.h.i.+p involved the United States' need for unrestricted access to the sea via the Gulf of Mexico. After the Louisiana Purchase, Spain and the United States quarreled over the tariffs charged to American vessels at Baton Rouge and at Mobile (the mouth of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers). These tensions heightened three years after the Kemper incident, when President Jefferson signed the 1807 Embargo Act, prohibiting trade between the United States and any other nation. This extraordinary ban resulted from frustration with France and England's refusal to recognize American neutrality. Both nations, then at war, had repeatedly seized U.S. s.h.i.+ps engaged in trade with their respective enemy. The act, which sought to curtail all trade until the war ended, aimed to hasten that end by withholding American supplies. To prevent smuggling, the Embargo Act also called for a blockade of Spain's West Florida ports. Spain was not pleased.

Spain had other problems that also contributed to the change in West Florida. Its Latin American colonies, following in the footsteps of the United States, had begun to seek independence, most notably under the leaders.h.i.+p of Simn Bolvar. With its position in the world so uncertain, Spain closed immigration from the United States to West Florida. Even American relatives of West Florida citizens were prohibited from entering the province. The immigration restrictions created widespread animosity among the citizens of West Florida toward the nation to which they had previously been loyal.

Uncertainty on the American side also contributed to Reuben Kemper's reversal of fortune. This uncertainty emanated from a man whose involvement with West Florida is all but forgotten, but whose duel that killed Alexander Hamilton is not: Aaron Burr.

Burr, who had been vice president during Jefferson's first administration, never stood trial for the duel, but his reputation was in tatters. He subsequently traveled a great deal, often in Louisiana, in Mexico (where he had leased 40,000 acres that were being cultivated by armed "farmers"), and in West Florida. Burr's travels raised American suspicions, particularly in light of meetings he had held with the U.S. military commander in Louisiana, James Wilkinson. Though a highly talented general in the Revolution, Wilkinson later negotiated with Spain as a private citizen, seeking privileged navigation for Kentucky along the Mississippi River. Many in the Jefferson administration now wondered whether, in the event of war with Spain, the two men were conspiring to coordinate Wilkinson's forces and Burr's "farmers" to separate the Louisiana Purchase, Burr's Mexican lands, and all or some of West Florida into their own country. Wilkinson ultimately revealed this plot, though questions regarding his credibility only added to American uncertainty.

People don't like uncertainty, and many cope with it by finding a way to fill in the blanks. Reuben Kemper, who was also entangled in the alleged Burr conspiracy, was able to rehabilitate his reputation by providing the public with a way to fill in the blanks. The opportunity to do so presented itself, ironically, following his arrest by the federal government, which was reported nationwide. In January 1811 North Carolina's The Star, reprinting a story from the Rhode Island Republican, reported: Since the [Republic of West Florida] Conventional Party have declared themselves free and independent of Old Spain ... a number of the inhabitants of this part of the [Mississippi] Territory wis.h.i.+ng well to the cause have taken an active part in the business and about a fortnight since several men, to the number of sixty-five, went below the line of demarcation.... All who have returned above the line have had writs served upon them for the purpose of a prosecution, on account of having engaged in an expedition not authorized by the government of the United States-among whom are Col. Kennedy and Col. Kemper.

Because Kemper had lain low for six years, his dubious past escaped the notice of most newspapers. But his arrest risked revealing his days at the head of what the U.S. government had declared to be a gang. Shrewdly, he seized this moment to publish his own account in newspapers throughout the country. He related how he had been contacted by a man named Lewis Kerr, who knew of his past attack at Baton Rouge and invited him to an important meeting, at which he would have to take an oath of secrecy: "Before taking this oath, I told Mr. Kerr that was there anything in opposition to the government of the United States, that it must not be made known to me on any terms whatever! He a.s.sured me there was not." Kemper then employed some cla.s.sic name-dropping, citing Kerr's a.s.surance that the secret project "was set on foot by men higher in office than any others in the United States-I believe meaning the president." Kemper's article related that the venture being planned-technically not by the United States-was to take possession of West Florida. He was asked how many men he could raise and allowed as he could "fill the place."

The crux of Kemper's article followed this account of his recruitment. It sought to separate his partic.i.p.ation from Aaron Burr's alleged conspiracy to create a new country: I asked him if he had ever learned or could conjecture what Mr. Burr's plans were, in coming to this country the year before.... His route was a strange one. Mr. Morgan said so it was, but he knew nothing of Mr. Burr's plans; that he was not in the habit of telling him, but said there was a man in this place some time prior to this had told him that he expected Burr was on some revolutionary plan or other toward Mexico.... I observed that, in my opinion, Burr was an intriguing character, who would stop at nothing in his situation. Mr. Morgan said very true, he was all that, but he was a man of too much sense for that.

Kemper concluded by relating an extraordinary effort he undertook to eliminate any uncertainty about the military action in which he was becoming involved: I at length determined in going to see Mr. Jefferson, and in June I left the Mississippi Territory for Was.h.i.+ngton city. On my route, I had planned a thousand ways of introducing the inquiry, knowing the unfavorable impression that had been made on the mind of the president through my particular "friends," Mr. Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana, Mr. John Smith, Senator from the State of Ohio, and some others.

But the climax of the article-Kemper's meeting with President Jefferson-engaged in the very thing the article hoped to eliminate: uncertainty. "I rather bungled the business," Kemper wrote, "obtained no information, and I suppose gave but little. The president thought he had received a novel visit, and I thought he treated his guest in a novel manner." Meaning what? Who knows. What we do know is how Kemper rehabilitated his reputation by skillfully exploiting uncertainty.

Uncertainty continued to accompany the Kempers as they pa.s.sed into history. The 1874 American Cyclopaedia described Reuben Kemper as one of the "leaders in the movement to rid West Florida of its Spanish rule." Extolling Kemper, it says, "The Spanish authorities caused the Kempers to be kidnapped, but they were rescued.... After these occurrences, Reuben Kemper devoted himself to the task of driving the Spaniards from the American continent." Other histories have viewed Kemper more along the lines of William Horace Brown, who in 1906 described him as "a man whose lawlessness has found respectable apologists-who has even been lauded, like many others of his brutal breed, as a gallant knight of the frontier."

As for the portion of Spanish West Florida that was "liberated" in September 1810, it const.i.tuted itself as an independent republic. But before the year was out, the United States dissolved the Republic of West Florida, taking possession of the western half of the region and annexing it to Louisiana. This action created the segment of southern Louisiana east of the Mississippi River.

MINNESOTA, NORTH DAKOTA, MONTANA, IDAHO.

RICHARD RUSH.

The 49th Parallel: A New Line of Americans

As regarded the ... boundary line, I remarked [to Lord Castlereagh] that the ground of the objection was that the only line that could be run in the direction proposed under the Treaty of 1783 would not, as had been ascertained since ... strike the Mississippi; and to run it lower down would bring it through territory within the limits of the United States.

-AMBa.s.sADOR RICHARD RUSH1 The longest boundary line in the United States is the 49th parallel, separating the United States and Canada from Minnesota to the West Coast. The American most largely responsible for this line is Richard Rush, who, as amba.s.sador to England, negotiated the first use of this lat.i.tude as a border. The simplicity of this boundary line is deceptive. Its location on the map preserves several elements reflecting the development of the United States in its infancy among the family of nations.

Rush himself was one of those developing elements. Born in 1780 amid the American Revolution, he was the son of a Founding Father, Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. As the son of a political celebrity, Rush-like his friend, John Quincy Adams-carried an extra burden in establis.h.i.+ng an ident.i.ty. Rush developed an ident.i.ty complementary to that of his father, a revolutionary whose revolution had succeeded, by becoming a diplomat, thereby devoting his career to forming bonds rather than breaking them. Characteristically, he prefaced his memoir of being amba.s.sador to England by stating, "Enough has been written and said on both sides to irritate. My desire is, and such my effort, to soothe."

Though his father's contacts opened doors, Richard Rush strove mightily to achieve his own laurels, graduating from Princeton University at the age of fourteen, far and away the youngest member in his cla.s.s. At Princeton he honed his oratorical skills, an effort that served him well in establis.h.i.+ng his reputation as a lawyer. He was appointed attorney general of Pennsylvania in 1811, and later that year he was chosen to be comptroller of the U.S. Treasury by President James Madison.

The commencement of the War of 1812 made that year particularly pivotal for Rush and, separately, the 49th parallel. Because of his oratorical talent, Rush was selected to give a Fourth of July address before both houses of Congress, the president, and his cabinet. In effect, Rush was addressing the nation's founders on behalf of the next generation, and his words reveal the pa.s.sing of the torch. "Thirty years, fellow citizens, is a long time to have been exempt from the calamities of war," he said to these veteran leaders of the Revolutionary War. "It is a fact that affords, in itself, the most honorable and incontestable proof that those who have guided [this nation] ... have ardently cherished peace ... [despite] abundant provocation.... Let the blood of Concord and of Lexington answer again!"2 The speech was reported by newspapers throughout the nation. It led to Rush's becoming an unofficial spokesman for the administration on behalf of the War of 1812, the causes of which were understood by the American public then about as well as they are today. Using the pen name of John d.i.c.kinson, Rush published an extensive series of articles justifying the war.3 On the same July 4 that Rush spoke before Congress and the president, an item appeared in the Charleston City Gazette speculating that America's opening thrust in the War of 1812 would be an invasion of Upper Canada. The report explained that Upper Canada was bounded "by Hudson's Bay [Company] in the 49th parallel of north lat.i.tude, extending due west indefinitely." As early as 1812, then, the 49th parallel had surfaced as the Canadian-American border. In the American press, that is; not in the act of Parliament that had defined Canada. The 1774 Quebec Act had stipulated the southern border of Canada's western region as being "the southern boundary of the territory granted to the Merchants Adventurers of England, trading to Hudson's Bay." The boundaries of the Hudson's Bay Company had previously been stipulated in 1670 as being all the land within the drainage basin of Hudson Bay. That drainage basin, however, dips below the 49th parallel, while further west it ends north of the parallel. Just as important, mapmakers in 1774 did not know how far these tributaries extended. When the news article about Upper Canada appeared in 1812, more was known, but much remained uncertain.

Richard Rush (1780-1859) (photo credit 15.1) Southern boundary (western end) of Hudson Bay watershed These uncertainties intersected with Rush's career when, after the War of 1812, President Monroe appointed him to be the amba.s.sador to England, replacing John Quincy Adams, who was returning to become secretary of state. While awaiting the return of Adams from London, Rush served as acting secretary of state and negotiated the 1817 Rush-Bagot Convention, demilitarizing a key frontier between the United States and British North America (present-day Canada) by limiting the number of wars.h.i.+ps England and the United States could have on the Great Lakes.

The Rush-Bagot Convention boded well for Rush's upcoming boundary negotiations. But upon Rush's arrival in London, his endeavor to resolve differences with England did not get off to an easy start. Charles Bagot, the British amba.s.sador to the United States with whom he had just negotiated, wrote disparagingly of one bridge-building effort by Rush: It is not true that the New England states preserve the manners of old England at the time of their settlement to the degree that Rush thinks.... The real truth is there is very little similarity between the two people, and that little is becoming daily less.... All the young generation, nearly without exception, are of the Democratic Party, the creed of which being hatred of England, leads them to reject as much as they can what they conceive to be an England usage. And, let Rush say what he pleases ... in the Southern States ... the climate itself would soon induce a great change in English manners, customs, and feelings.4 Rush let such comments pa.s.s and focused on his goals, listing them in a paper he gave the British side. His list of eleven items provides insight into what is now the long straight line across most of the top of the United States. Item three was the "Northwestern boundary line," and item four was the "Columbia River question."5 Imperceptible on the map today, the long boundary along the 49th parallel resulted from two separate issues.

In undertaking his new responsibilities, Rush sought advice from a key Founding Father, former president John Adams. Adams had been a member of the delegation that negotiated and signed the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution in 1783. That treaty stipulated boundaries, fis.h.i.+ng rights, and commerce-all of which were now back on the table for two reasons. Some of the issues came to be contested in what had eventually exploded into the War of 1812 and were still unresolved. Other issues stipulated in the 1783 treaty now required renegotiation owing to the expansion of the United States via the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.

The advice Adams gave Rush reveals both the pa.s.sing of the torch and the evolution of the new nation. Adams described an aspect of that evolution when he replied to Rush, "Not that we were British subjects at the Treaty of 1783, but as having been British subjects ... our right was clear and indubitable to fish in all the places in the sea where British subjects had fished or ever had a right to fish." Pa.s.sing the torch, Adams went on to advise this rising leader: "Former treaties, not formally repeated in a new treaty, are presumed to be received and acknowledged. The fisheries are therefore ours, and the navigation of the Mississippi theirs, that is the British, as much as ever."6 Adams provided a powerful argument for Rush to use in negotiating American rights to fish in the coastal areas and bays of Nova Scotia, Labrador, and Newfoundland. But that same logic worked against Rush regarding the Mississippi River. Free access to the Mississippi and Columbia Rivers was England's primary concern in negotiating the boundary between the United States and Canada from the Great Lakes to the West Coast. Of primary concern to the United States (following the Louisiana Purchase) was total control of the Mississippi River and, to an increasing extent, control of the Columbia River farther west. Rush, therefore, needed to break with the past in a.s.serting access to rivers while preserving the past in claiming American fis.h.i.+ng rights. In both cases, he succeeded in getting more than he gave.

How did he pull this off? Regarding the northern border, he succeeded in part by agreeing to postpone agreement on that segment of the boundary west of the Rocky Mountains (affecting the Columbia River). For the segment from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, one element that contributed to Rush's success was yet another river, the St. Lawrence, 950 miles away. Rush explained in his memoirs: An attempt was made by the British plenipotentiaries to connect with this article a clause securing to Great Britain access to the Mississippi and right to its navigation.... We said that we could consent to no clause of that nature.... The United States have claimed, in a subsequent negotiation, the right of navigating the St. Lawrence, from its source to its mouth. The essential difference in the two cases is that the upper waters of the St. Lawrence flow through territory belonging to both countries.

Had England insisted on access to the Mississippi, it would have had no case for opposing American navigation on the St. Lawrence, an avenue of commerce that was as vital to Canada as the Mississippi was to the United States.

Why, then, the 49th parallel? Why not stick with the straight line established in the 1783 treaty? It commenced at the northwest corner of Lake of the Woods "and from thence on a due west course to the river Mississippi." The problem was that it didn't intersect the Mississippi. The headwaters of the Mississippi turned out to be south of that lat.i.tude. This error was known by the time Rush was renegotiating the boundary, which was why the British initially sought a border providing access to the river. Once England abandoned this issue, other waterways became crucial to British interests in this prerailroad era-those being the waterways that led to the Hudson's Bay Company's settlement at Winnipeg. From Winnipeg, waterways lead to Lake of the Woods and from there to Lake Superior. Once on the Great Lakes, cargo could s.h.i.+p to the St. Lawrence River and the sea. While the precise lat.i.tude of Lake of the Woods was not yet known, it was known that Winnipeg was just below the 50th parallel. This knowledge may have accounted for the 1812 reference to the 49th parallel as the southern border of the Hudson's Bay Company, and for its use in stipulating the U.S.-Canadian boundary in the agreement Rush negotiated in 1818.

Waterways leading to Winnipeg That agreement stated that the boundary extended from the northwest corner of Lake of the Woods "due north or south, as the case may be, until the said line shall intersect the said [49th] parallel of north lat.i.tude, and from the point of such intersection due west." Since, as it turns out, the 49th parallel is south of the northwest corner of Lake of the Woods, the U.S.-Canadian boundary in what is now Minnesota suddenly blips to the south before commencing its long straight line across the remainder of the continent.

Upon the election of John Quincy Adams as president, Rush set aside his diplomatic expertise to become the secretary of the treasury. In 1828 he was nominated to be vice president when Adams sought a second term, in a bitterly fought rematch with Andrew Jackson. This time Jackson won, and for the first time the White House was occupied by a president who had risen from among the common people, not from the patrician families of the Founding Fathers. Rush, however, was so esteemed for his skill at bridging differences that Jackson chose him to represent the United States in laying claim to an unusual and contested bequest of over half a million dollars to create an establishment for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge," whatever that meant. Rush succeeded in obtaining the funds left by a little-known British chemist named James Smithson. The funds were eventually used to create the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, with Rush serving as one of its first regents.

In 1846 Rush saw the boundary line he had negotiated in 1818 extended to the West Coast. The following year President James K. Polk appointed Rush amba.s.sador to France-a particularly challenging post as the government of King Louis Philippe was overthrown during his tenure. Rush managed to maintain good relations with both the royal government and the provisional government that took its place. He duly partic.i.p.ated in political and social events attended by the king, but Rush's fundamentally diplomatic character, which combined his father's political insight with detachment from his father's revolutionary zeal, served him well.

Rush's diary entry on February 23, 1848, began, "A revolution has come like a thunder clap."7 Amid the turmoil and uncertainties, he recognized the symbolic importance of the United States being the first nation to recognize France's new democracy, known as the Second Republic. "Would it be right or expedient," he worried, "to wait for instructions before recognizing [the new government]? A month or more must elapse before instructions could reach me." Rush correctly antic.i.p.ated the instructions of the Polk administration and established diplomatic relations with the new French government.

Rush's diplomatic career concluded at the end of Polk's presidency. But, after he returned to Pennsylvania, his name was increasingly mentioned as a possible nominee of the Democratic Party for the 1852 presidential election. Rush's skills as a diplomat, however, did not transfer to those of a presidential candidate. In an 1850 letter to a gathering of Pennsylvania Democrats, he addressed the issue of slavery by invoking the Founding Fathers: I am of those who think that our Union is in danger from [the slavery issue]; not a visionary danger ... of a few ultras at each end of the Union, but a danger ... of const.i.tutional obligations.... When a Southern man has ventured upon a claim for his fugitive slave ... men, otherwise good citizens ... have carried their opposition to the verge of treason.... Are the present philanthropists superior, as pure men, wise men, patriotic men, to Was.h.i.+ngton and his great a.s.sociates-the Franklins, Adamses, Madisons, Jeffersons ... who signed or approved of the federal const.i.tution with all its sanctions of slavery?8 Rush's suggestion of treason soon came back to haunt him. In September 1851 a Maryland slave owner and his two sons, accompanied by police officers, went to Christiana, Pennsylvania, to retrieve runaway slaves who were hiding there. The morning after their arrival, they were encircled by approximately eighty African Americans and whites who, on the prior advice of abolitionist leaders, demanded that the slave owner turn back. When the slave owner continued his effort (which had been made legal by the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850), shots were fired and a melee ensued in which the slave owner and one of his sons died. The grand jury indictments that followed were for treason, rather than murder, so that the charges could be (and were) brought against not only those who fired the fatal shots but also everyone else in the gathering and against those who had previously advised them. The antislavery press, citing Rush's earlier remarks, was not kind to the candidate. Boston's The Liberator wrote: Richard Rush mourns over the fact that his state is the only one in which treason has repeatedly been attempted against the United States.... Some [of those indicted] were merely present, looking on but taking no part in the affair. Some simply gave information in advance to the fugitives attempted to be arrested.... All these are indicted for treason, for "levying war"-for treason, according to the United States Const.i.tution, "shall consist only in levying war" or adhering to the enemies of the United States, giving them aid or comfort.

The magazine National Era stated that "Mr. Rush is evidently not the man for the hour. He is timid, fearful, trembling. He does not counsel support of the Fugitive Slave Law because it is proper, just, and right; but [because] the 'eyes of the South' are upon Pennsylvania." In a separate article, the magazine even used Rush's success as amba.s.sador to France to castigate him in the political arena: "We presume this humane ex-minister studied the philosophy of the guillotine when in Paris.... As cutting off peoples' heads has proven so efficacious in promoting a holy reverence for law and order in France, the venerable gentleman seems to be under the impression that strangling people must be equally beneficial in Pennsylvania."

Ultimately, none of those tried for treason at Christiana was convicted. In fact, no one was convicted of anything. When the Democrats convened in 1852 to select a presidential nominee, the ballot did not include Richard Rush.

Rush lived out the remainder of his life at his home in Philadelphia and his estate outside the city. Upon his death in 1859, obituaries appeared nationwide. Diplomatically, they made no mention of slavery or treason.

ILLINOIS, WISCONSIN.

NATHANIEL POPE.

Illinois's Most Boring Border