How The States Got Their Shapes Too Part 5

It is as plain as daylight that Wisconsin is about to be most flagrantly robbed of a large share of her rightful domain.... A fine strip of territory has been sacrificed.... Wisconsin is ... having her pockets picked!

-WISCONSIN HERALD, JANUARY 9, 1847 Nathaniel Pope is responsible for the location of Illinois' most boring border, its straight-line northern boundary with Wisconsin. Had it not been relocated, the Land of Lincoln might have been the Land of Slavery. And what became the Civil War may well have had a different outcome. But try telling that to Wisconsin, which lost over 9,000 square miles in the deal.

Pope came to Illinois in February 1809, only days after Congress had created the territory. Born and raised in Kentucky, he was a twenty-two-year-old attorney when, in 1806, he began his career in the recently acquired Louisiana Territory, basing himself in the previously French town of Ste. Genevieve in present-day Missouri. The reason he then moved to Illinois, just as it was created, was that President James Madison had appointed him secretary of the new Illinois Territory, its number two position. The territorial secretary had the authority to act as governor should the appointed governor be absent. Pope received this appointment through the efforts of his brother, Senator John Pope of Kentucky.1 Nepotism often results in the appointment of incompetents, but not this time. Nathaniel Pope was an able attorney and savvy politician. The northern border of Illinois proves it.

Nathaniel Pope (1784-1850) (photo credit 16.1) The legislation creating the Illinois Territory stipulated its boundaries to be the land east of the Mississippi River and west of both the Wabash River "and a direct line drawn from the said Wabash River and Post Vincennes due north to the territorial line between the United States and Canada." Thus the original Illinois included all of present-day Wisconsin and sections of present-day Michigan and Minnesota, though the legislation noted that these boundaries were only for the purposes of temporary government. Consequently, maps of Illinois prior to statehood antic.i.p.ated the future state's northern border to be that established in the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, a line due west from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan.

Illinois's southern connections Under the Northwest Ordinance, the introduction of slavery was prohibited in Illinois, as it was in the entire Northwest Territory. Not all residents of Illinois were happy about that fact. Illinois extended more deeply south than any other part of the Northwest Territory, and many of its original settlers were Southerners. Its connection to the South was strengthened by the fact that virtually all of its rivers flow into the Mississippi.

When, in 1816, Pope ran for Congress as the territory's nonvoting delegate, slavery was not yet a campaign issue. Statehood too was not a campaign issue, despite the fact that Illinois sought statehood only one year later. Pope was elected instead on a platform that emphasized road construction and education. The issue of slavery, however, was bubbling just beneath the territorial surface, and the skillful attorney in Pope understood that, when that surface turned into a state, a case could then be made to allow slavery based on a phrase in the same legislation that had prohibited it.

The Northwest Ordinance not only had proposed boundaries for future states in the Northwest Territory and banned the introduction of slavery, it also had stipulated the requirements for becoming a state. Critical in the case of Illinois were two elements in the clause that stated, "whenever any of the said states shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such state shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original states in all respects." The phrase that caught Pope's legal-eyed attention was "on an equal footing with the original states." The original states had determined for themselves whether or not to permit slavery. Since, upon becoming a state, Illinois would exist on an equal footing with those states, it could attempt to claim the right to determine for itself whether or not to permit slavery.

The significance of this phrase helps explain Pope's reaction when, as a delegate to Congress, he unexpectedly received a resolution pa.s.sed by Illinois's territorial legislature instructing him to propose a bill for statehood. To one congressional colleague he confided that he could not "suppress my regret that the application was made at this time."2 The other element in the Northwest Ordinance that was problematic to Illinois's bid for statehood was the population requirement. Illinois was not yet sufficiently populated, and what population it did have resided primarily in its southern end, where proslavery sympathies predominated. "The only difficulty I have to overcome," Pope half-truthfully wrote in a letter to the Illinois Intelligencer, "is whether we have the population supposed by the legislature, no enumeration of the inhabitants having lately been taken.... If it were certain that we had even thirty-five thousand inhabitants, no objection I think would be made to our admission." While 35,000 is considerably less than 60,000, the number stipulated in the Northwest Ordinance, Pope knew of political tap dances that could step around that legal detail. But he also knew they wouldn't be easy.

A glimpse of Pope's anger at this unexpected task can be found in a letter he sent to Illinois's territorial governor, Ninian Edwards, under whom he had served when secretary of the territory and also as Edwards's adjutant during the War of 1812. "You are but a poor correspondent," Pope wrote sarcastically to his longtime political ally, "owing, I suppose, to being exclusively absorbed in mercantile speculations. It is, however, not a little surprising that upon the subject of [statehood] ... you should have withheld from me your own views-especially as, when I left home, it was not contemplated."3 Despite his misgivings, Pope pursued his a.s.signment "with that candor and good faith becoming my station." Step one was to write a resolution enabling Illinois to hold a statehood convention. Pope included in that resolution a requirement that a census be taken. But what if the population turned out to be less than 60,000? The resolution stated that Illinois could become a state only if "it shall appear from the enumeration ... that there are within the proposed state, not less than.... thousand inhabitants." Evidently, Pope was still working on this.

Step two was to do nothing. Pope simply sat and listened as Congress took up the topic of "internal improvements." It was an issue that, strange as it may seem today, was a hot topic in 1818. It also set the stage for Pope's next step. The debate on the floor regarded whether or not the federal government should provide funds to build internal improvements such as roads and ca.n.a.ls. Unless amended, the Const.i.tution prohibited almost all such expenditures. But the nation had doubled in size since the signing of the Const.i.tution. New states were being created from the Northwest Territory and the Louisiana Purchase. Roads and ca.n.a.ls (and soon railroads) could help strengthen the bonds of unity between these new states and the rest of the nation. The risk, however, was that Congress could favor certain states over other states-such as, say, Northern states over Southern states.

After his colleagues had talked themselves out, unable to reach agreement, Pope stood back up with his Illinois bill, to which he now, step three, urged a brilliantly crafted, perfectly timed amendment regarding its northern border. As originally proposed, the bill called for a northern border that was "an east and west line, drawn through a point ten miles north of the southern extreme of Lake Michigan." Though this boundary differed from that stipulated in the Northwest Ordinance (a line extending from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan), it was identical to the northern border Congress had recently created for neighboring Indiana. Why had Congress made this change? Why were ten miles of frontage on Lake Michigan more important in 1818 (or, in Indiana's case, 1816) than in 1787?

They were more important because, in 1817, New York had begun construction of the Erie Ca.n.a.l. In offering his amendment to a bill he himself had written, Pope addressed the issue that Congress had just debated-slavery: If [Illinois's] commerce is to be confined to ... the Mississippi ... there is a possibility that her commercial relations with the South may become so connected that, in the event of an attempted dismemberment of the Union, Illinois will cast her lot with the southern states. On the other hand, to fix the northern boundary of Illinois upon such a parallel of lat.i.tude as would give to the state the territorial jurisdiction over the southern sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan, would be to unite [Illinois] ... to Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. By the adoption of such a [boundary] line, Illinois may become, at some future time, the keystone to the perpetuity of the Union.4 Though access via the Great Lakes to the Erie Ca.n.a.l, which would further bind Illinois to the Union, was the primary reason Pope sought to relocate Illinois's northern border, he went on to discuss another ca.n.a.l. This was step four. He spoke of creating a ca.n.a.l that would connect Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. Combined with other ca.n.a.ls being discussed in Illinois, the northern half of the state's waterways could be diverted from the Mississippi River and the South to the Erie Ca.n.a.l and the North. A potential harbor for this idea existed on Lake Michigan by having the ca.n.a.ls connect to a small waterway called the Chicago River.

Diversion of waterways in Illinois The land needed for these proposed ca.n.a.ls was already included in the bill, by virtue of the northern border having been relocated ten miles north of the southern end of Lake Michigan. The amendment Pope proposed sought to relocate that border even further north-nearly sixty miles north of the tip of Lake Michigan. What, other than land, would Illinois gain?

It would gain people (step five). Pope needed all the people he could get to satisfy the population requirement for statehood-a figure that, as seen six months later in the Annals of Congress, he had managed to bargain down by the time Illinois had completed its statehood convention and submitted its proposed const.i.tution to Congress for approval and admission as a state: MR. SPENCER, of New York, inquired whether it appeared from any doc.u.ments ... that [Illinois] had the number of inhabitants required by the law....

MR. ANDERSON, of Kentucky, said that the committee had no information on that subject before them.... He had ... himself seen in the newspapers evidence sufficient to satisfy him of the fact that the population did amount to forty thousand souls, the number required.

But Pope needed those people for more than just statehood. Statehood, as he well knew, would enable Illinois to challenge its federally mandated prohibition of slavery, based on the "equal footing" clause in the Northwest Ordinance. Pope was opposed to slavery. He knew he could reduce the risk of Illinois's seeking to permit slavery with the additional voters living in the swath of land he sought to la.s.so into the state-particularly if this swath became connected, via ca.n.a.ls, to Northern commerce.5 It didn't take a genius to foresee these events. Even at the time Congress voted on Illinois statehood, the handwriting was on the wall-or, more specifically, on Illinois's proposed const.i.tution. New York Congressman James Tallmadge Jr. objected to the fact that the proposed const.i.tution permitted the renting of slaves from residents of other states. The clause was subsequently deleted and, on December 3, 1818, Illinois became a state.

But four years later, Illinois residents sought to amend the state's const.i.tution to permit slavery. Then as now, Illinois's const.i.tution could only be amended if, by referendum, a majority of voters opted to have a const.i.tutional convention. The referendum took place in September 1824, with the whole nation watching. Philadelphia's National Gazette soon reported, "Our readers will recollect that ... the people of Illinois were to determine whether they would have a convention for amending their state const.i.tution, or in other words, whether they would introduce slavery into that free state. The question has been settled." The proposed convention garnered 1,410 votes in favor; 2,593 opposed. At that time, the population of the region Pope had added to Illinois was approximately 1,000. Their predominantly antislavery votes were indeed needed.

Nathaniel Pope was by then Judge Pope, having been appointed to the U.S. District Court for Illinois in 1819. He served in that capacity for the rest of his life. Twenty years into that service, he saw the northern border of Illinois back in the news. "We had a fine breeze in the House of Representatives on Tuesday last, growing out of the introduction of the Wisconsin resolutions ... to settle and ascertain the line between Illinois and Wisconsin," the Milwaukee Sentinel reported in February 1840. Wisconsin's nonvoting delegate had argued "that no change could take place [in the Northwest Ordinance boundary] without the mutual consent of [Wisconsin].... Consequently, the northeast corner of the state of Illinois is at the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan." To say the border "is at," rather than "should be at," reflected the location of the newspaper. Congress, being located elsewhere, referred the question to the Judiciary Committee, which never responded-this being one of the traditional strategies of congressional committees. Meanwhile, many residents of Wisconsin continued to insist on what they viewed as their legal right to that land, threatening a Supreme Court challenge and even secession. Other residents told them to hush up, not wanting to rock Wisconsin's boat as it sought to navigate its own way to statehood. Ultimately, Wisconsin hushed up.6 Also ultimately, the union of states did rupture into the Civil War. Nathaniel Pope, however, did not witness that turn of events. He died on January 22, 1850.

Six months prior to his pa.s.sing, Judge Pope received, as he often did, a request for a letter of recommendation: Dear Sir: I do not know that it would, but I can well enough conceive that it might, embarra.s.s you now to give a letter recommending me for the General Land Office.... Having at last concluded to be an applicant, I have thought ... to show the influences which brought me to the conclusion.

Your obedient servant, A. Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln did not get that job. In time he got a better one, in which he saved the Union, whose frail future Nathaniel Pope had sought to ensure. During the Civil War, the Union army was aided in no small part by more than 256,000 soldiers from the state of Illinois.

MISSOURI, ARKANSAS.

JOHN HARDEMAN WALKER.

Putting the Boot Heel on Missouri

The bill coming before the House for admitting us [Missouri] into the union ... lops off that part of the boundary ... between the White River and 3630 north lat.i.tude and west of the river St. Francis.... The enemies to our prosperity ... [believe] the new state should have a pretty, geometrical appearance on the map.

-JACKSON [MISSOURI] HERALD, SEPTEMBER 4, 1819 No private citizen has left a more obvious irregularity in the shape of a state than John Hardeman Walker, the man responsible for the "boot heel" of Missouri. Not only did he succeed in altering the southern boundary of Missouri that Congress was contemplating, but he did so in his early twenties.

Already known as "the czar of the St. Francis River Valley," Walker owned extensive amounts of land emanating west of present-day Caruthersville, Missouri. When Missouri was preparing for statehood, Walker realized that the southern boundary being proposed would put his land below Missouri, in what would later become the state of Arkansas. As the map makes clear, he did not want that.

Why did Walker care? Slavery would not have been his motive since Missouri, which already had slavery, was seeking admission as a slave state. Some historians have speculated that he may have been impatient to be part of a state, with its attendant voting rights.1 Indeed, the far less-populated region of Arkansas would not become a state for another fifteen years. He himself never said. But actions he took throughout his life reveal that John Hardeman Walker understood raw power.

John Hardeman Walker (1794-1860) (photo credit 17.1) The boot heel of Missouri Walker did not come from a powerful or wealthy family. His pioneering family had left Kentucky in 1809 and moved to a small village, Little Prairie, on the western bank of the Mississippi. Today Little Prairie no longer exists. "The bank of the river where the village stood," he later reminisced, "has washed away near three quarters of a mile back ... so that the happy scenes of my boyish days are extinct."2 The Walkers were the only English-speaking family in Little Prairie. Their neighbors were French settlers from the days, only recently ended by the Louisiana Purchase, when France owned the land. Walker became close friends with a townsman named Jean-Baptiste Zegon. Together they would go on hunting expeditions, during the last of which Walker's land acquisitions were made possible.

On December 16, 1811, Walker and Zegon were hunting across the Mississippi River in the wilderness of western Tennessee. In the middle of the night, as Walker later recalled, We were awakened by a noise like distant thunder, and a trembling of the earth, which brought us both to our feet. The dash of the water against the bank of the lake, and rattling of the limbs in the tree-tops-now and then the falling of a dry branch in the water, or near us on the ground-all these things first led me to believe there was a storm approaching. But no. There was not a breath of air stirring.... It soon became still. My friend said, "May be, he is de shake of de earth."

It was indeed an earthquake, the first of several that, in 1811 and 1812, devastated parts of what are today Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Making their way through forests where no traces could be found of the paths along which they'd come, Walker and Zegon eventually arrived at the point on the river across from their village. There, Walker tells us, his friend's face "turned pale as death. The cause was soon visible. No smoke arose from the chimneys of our habitations, and not a single human being could be seen." After fas.h.i.+oning a raft and crossing, they discovered that all the homesteads lay in shambles and that everyone had fled. They encountered only a neighbor, returning to a.s.sess the damage, followed by Walker's father, desperate to find his son.

The French inhabitants of Little Prairie, determining that the structures were beyond repair, and knowing they were destined to become a minority now that their land had become part of the United States, opted to migrate to Canada. The Walkers returned to Kentucky, but John came back some months later, despite the fact that earthquakes and aftershocks were continuing. The unsteady ground presented a desolate landscape, absent of all but a few human beings, though evidence of their former presence remained scattered about-not the least of which was their cattle, now roaming free. In one of the greatest examples in American history of "Finders, keepers / Losers, weepers," Walker took possession of the land and the cattle, enclosing the herds in far-reaching barriers he fas.h.i.+oned using the rivers and streams. He was, in his own words, "the natural heir to Little Prairie."3 Land that Walker wanted but didn't "inherit" he purchased at rock-bottom prices from owners who had opted, like those of Little Prairie, to leave the area, or whose livelihoods had evaporated in their absence. Walker's holdings quickly spread west toward the St. Francis River.

Anyone who, as Walker demonstrated, so intuitively understood power would also have foreseen that Missouri would become the most powerful state in the region. It had access to the two most important rivers in the American hinterland (the Mississippi and the Missouri) and possessed the land where they converged: St. Louis. Not surprisingly, Walker's efforts to include his land in Missouri commenced immediately after its initial pet.i.tion for statehood. This 1817 doc.u.ment, circulated and signed primarily by citizens in the vicinity of St. Louis, proposed a southern border that simply extended the line that ran across the bottom of Virginia and Kentucky at (with some irregularities) 3630'.4 Had it been adopted, this proposal would have put Walker's land in Arkansas.

The following year, Missouri's territorial legislature pa.s.sed its own proposal for statehood. It sought far more extensive boundaries, including the region where Walker owned land, along with additional land below 3630'. Clearly, residents of those regions had persuaded the legislature to rethink the citizens' proposal. Yet between the time of the legislature's 1818 proposal and the enactment of statehood by Congress in 1819, the area below 3630 was reduced to include only Walker's region between the Mississippi and St. Francis Rivers.

Missouri legislature's proposal Looking back some years later, Missouri Senator George W. Carleton spoke of how Walker had met with the people who would define the boundaries and so eloquently stated the reasons his region was more properly part of Missouri that he succeeded in persuading them.5 Nonpoliticians remembered things differently. The Kansas City Star reported that, after convincing the territorial legislature to propose boundaries including his land, Walker went to Was.h.i.+ngton "with his old, muzzle-loading shotgun, not with any intention probably of ridding the country of any budding statesmen, but just to let them know at the capital that he was in earnest." More likely is that Walker relied on something other than a shotgun or eloquence to convince the lawmakers, something neither party would want recorded-such as money. Indeed, no record of this wealthy landowner's presence in Was.h.i.+ngton has been found in any newspapers or in any annals of Congress, despite the fact that shotguns in Congress were newsworthy even then, and eloquent reasoning is not something lobbyists keep private.

The debate in Congress over Missouri statehood suggests how Walker could have operated without attracting attention. It was highly emotional, touching on the nation's very existence. At issue was slavery in the states to be created out of the Louisiana Purchase. What ultimately resulted was the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting slavery in any new territory or state north of 3630', with the exception (this being the compromise) of Missouri. In the newspapers and the halls of Congress, attention was closely focused on this issue, thereby enabling Walker to go about his particular business unnoticed. Indeed, the only time the debate turned to the "boot heel" being appended to Missouri's southern border was when Rhode Island Senator James Burrill Jr. declared, "With respect to the boundaries of the new state, I desire more definite information.... By a certain bill which has been laid on our desk by mistake, it appears that certain other boundaries have been thought of, and I wish to know the cause of this variation of boundaries." The record shows no response being provided.

Immediately after Missouri became a state, Walker made his first public appearance in the political arena. He became the sheriff in his neck of the woods, New Madrid County. He was just twenty-four years old. He went on to be the county's presiding judge and later created the city plan for the town of Caruthersville, close by where Little Prairie had been. There he lived out his days and is buried alongside the Methodist church.

TEXAS, LOUISIANA, OKLAHOMA.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

The Ma.s.sachusetts Texan

Mr. Onis ... was willing that the boundary line with the United States should extend to the South Sea [Pacific Ocean].... [But] we would yield something of the western line we had proposed ... that she might have a barrier for Santa Fe. I told him ... if Spain had come to the determination. to begin the line at the Sabine. I could not express the disgust with which I was forced to carry on a correspondence with him upon subjects which it was ascertained that we could not adjust.

-SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN QUINCY ADAMS1 John Quincy Adams is widely remembered for the use of his middle name, distinguis.h.i.+ng him from his more famous father, who is widely remembered for doing the things the Founding Fathers did. One thing the Founding Fathers indisputably did was to leave the next generation a tough act to follow. This challenge was vividly ill.u.s.trated in the life stories of John Adams's three sons: one rose to become, like his father, a president; the other two failed to sustain successful careers and died as alcoholics.

As this second generation moved into the presidential ranks, the major rival to John Quincy Adams was Andrew Jackson. Adams was seen as representing the upper cla.s.s from which all the previous presidents had come, and even as a bit monarchical, being the eldest son of a president. Jackson, on the other hand, represented the prototypical American, newly minted by democracy, whose citizens possessed no cla.s.s (in both senses of the phrase). Both men, however, despite their differences, played key roles in establis.h.i.+ng what is today the eastern border of Texas.

The event that ultimately resulted in today's eastern border of Texas was the Louisiana Purchase. When President Thomas Jefferson acquired this region from France in 1803, John Quincy Adams was a thirty-six-year-old senator from Ma.s.sachusetts and Andrew Jackson, the same age, was a judge in Tennessee. The doc.u.ment conveying the land described its boundaries as being "the Colony or Province of Louisiana with the same extent that it has now." Other than the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, the extent of the "Colony or Province of Louisiana" was debatable at the time with both Spain to the west and England to the north. Sixteen years would pa.s.s before those borders were finally specified.

A primary reason for the delay was the fact that the young United States and England were still not on the best of terms, particularly when relations deteriorated into the War of 1812. Spain, therefore, was in no hurry to d.i.c.ker, figuring it would do better if it waited, aided the British here and there, and then negotiated its border with a bruised and battered United States.

Adams and Jackson, meanwhile, were taking on increasingly significant roles in what would ultimately determine that Spanish border. Jackson, now a general, became a national hero for his victory during the war at the Battle of New Orleans. Technically, his victory was after the war since, unbeknownst to him, the war had ended two weeks earlier when American emissary John Quincy Adams negotiated the Treaty of Ghent.

Ironically, Spain was now far more battered and bruised. Between 1810 and 1819 (the year of the treaty creating the present-day eastern border of Texas), Spain lost control of Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. More important, in terms of the United States, twice during this period the United States seized portions of Spanish Florida. At the outset of the war, the Florida Panhandle had extended all the way to the banks of the Mississippi River opposite New Orleans; by the time Adams had concluded the Treaty of Ghent, the Panhandle ended underneath Alabama, where it remains today.

With its empire in the Americas beginning to crumble, Spain decided the time had come to reduce the extent of its colonial claims in order to sh.o.r.e up what remained. Thus in 1818 it commenced negotiations over where the Louisiana Purchase ended and the Spanish colony of Mexico began. To give itself leverage in that negotiation while, at the same time, reducing its colonial claims, Spain also offered to sell Florida to the United States as part of the deal.

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) (photo credit 18.1) The United States, meanwhile, had emerged from the War of 1812 far less battered than Spain had hoped. Its new president, James Monroe, was even preparing to draw a boundary around all the Americas, in effect posting a sign-the Monroe Doctrine-saying "Europe Keep Out." The text of the doctrine would be written by the man with whom Spain was now to negotiate, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

Adams and his Spanish counterpart, Don Luis de Ons Gonzlez Lopez y Vara, had barely said their h.e.l.los when Andrew Jackson came cras.h.i.+ng through. General Jackson was in Florida, where he had just crushed a rebellion by the Seminole Indians. He had been authorized to cross into Florida, a Spanish possession, since the United States maintained that Spain had not lived up to its agreed-upon obligation to stop Indians in its colony from crossing into the United States to engage in attacks. Jackson now moved his troops to Pensacola-where there were no rebellious Seminoles but there was Spain's princ.i.p.al fortification-and conquered the fort. He then quickly took control of the Florida Panhandle, claiming it was necessary to keep the Seminoles subdued.

"Last night I received a note from the Spanish Minister," Adams wrote to President Monroe, "requesting an interview on affairs of the last importance to Spain and the United States."2 Seor de Ons was furious: General Jackson's attack was an act of war. Spain demanded to know if the president had authorized the general's actions. If the president had not, Spain demanded to know what the president intended to do to General Jackson.

The diplomat in Adams viewed Jackson as a loose cannon. In his journal he wrote that the general's actions in Florida were "embarra.s.sing." Still, the politician in Adams recognized shrewdness in those same actions, further noting in his journal that if one publicly criticized what Jackson had done, one would "give offense to his friends, [and] encounter the shock of his popularity." Most significant, the secretary of state in Adams noted a valuable nugget in the dustup: Spain, not having retaliated, was apparently weaker than the United States had thought.3 Adams consequently decided to stake out an ambitious opening bid in his negotiations over the border. "I would henceforth never recede an inch from the [Rio] Bravo," he wrote, referring to the river now known as the Rio Grande, which he proposed as the new southern boundary of the United States.4 This boundary would follow the Rio Grande to its source in the Rocky Mountains, then follow the Rockies north to the Colorado River, then follow the Colorado River to the Gulf of California. In 1848 all this would become part of the United States (with the exception of Baja California). In 1818, however, it was a hefty opening bid.

Adams-Onis Treaty, 1819 Amazingly, Ons did not immediately say no. Adams's reading of Jackson's actions in Florida and the reactions to them had been accurate. Realizing that the Americans perceived its weakness, Spain sought to cover up by claiming that when Adams had referred to the Colorado River, they had thought that meant the Red River. "How this mistake could have been made is inconceivable to us," Adams wrote, in conferring with the U.S amba.s.sador in Spain, "inasmuch as we know of no maps which call the Red River of Natchitoches the Colorado."5 The Colorado River and the Red River, being on opposite sides of the Rockies, would make for rather different borders.

Jackson, meanwhile, remained in hot water, facing a congressional investigation into whether or not he had disobeyed orders. Though he and Adams were both eyeing the 1824 presidential election, no personal enmity yet existed. Adams invited Jackson to dine at his home, an invitation Jackson declined, saying that he was accepting no social engagements during the investigation. Shortly thereafter, Jackson made a point of apologizing for declining the invitation.

Regarding the situation with Spain, Adams and Jackson continued not only to work well together but to see eye to eye. "I called on General Jackson," Adams wrote in his diary, "and mentioned in confidence to him the state of the negotiations with the Spanish Minister, and what we had offered him for the western boundary, and asked what he thought of it." The two men continued these discussions the following day at Adams's home, where they could speak more privately.

Adams and Ons proposed and counterproposed for another twelve months as they honed in on a boundary, much of which remains today in the eastern border of Texas. Adams's eventual success, which helped propel his nomination for president in 1824, was due in no small measure to the a.s.sist he had received from Jackson's adventure in Florida. Jackson's military successes likewise propelled his nomination in the same election. Still, their relations remained good-so good that Adams and his wife hosted a ball in Jackson's honor in January of that year, to help refute the view that Jackson was uncouth and slovenly. "It is the universal opinion," Mrs. Adams wrote afterward, "that nothing has ever equaled this party here, either in brilliancy of the preparation or elegance of the company."6 Two other candidates ran in the 1824 presidential election: Speaker of the House Henry Clay and Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford. As it turned out, none of the four received the necessary majority of votes in the Electoral College, so the decision went to the House of Representatives. Despite the fact that Jackson had won the plurality of electoral votes, the House chose John Quincy Adams.

The political manipulations behind this decision set the stage for an Adams-Jackson rematch in the 1828 election. This was a campaign that set a new low for mudslinging, stooping even to insinuations regarding Jackson's wife. Today's campaigns look tame by comparison. This time around, Jackson won.

Then as now, the candidates were hardly as evil as the opposition's claims. Likewise, the mudslingers were not necessarily in the control of the candidates. Adams disclaimed any connection to the accusations made about Mrs. Jackson. Jackson, however, knew for a fact that Adams was responsible, according to press reports quoting "an anonymous source."7 As for the truth, Adams lamented in his diary, "In the excitement of contested elections and of party spirit, judgment becomes the slave of will. Men of intelligence, talents, and even of integrity on other occasions, surrender themselves up to their pa.s.sions."

The bottom line in politics is always a complicated line. In this case, we can actually see that complicated line. It is the eastern border of Texas.

ARKANSAS, OKLAHOMA.

SEQUOYAH.

The Cherokee Line

Se-Quo-Ya, who invented the alphabet of the Cherokee language ... what has become of this remarkable man?... Is he still alive? Or does his venerable head repose beneath some unknown clod of the grand prairie? These are questions that we cannot now satisfactorily answer.

-EMANc.i.p.aTOR AND WEEKLY CHRONICLE, DECEMBER 4, 1844 The fact that only one state line preserves a treaty with American Indians reflects both the absence of respect for their lands and the special status those treaties accorded each tribe-not of independent nations, as the Cherokees maintained, but of "dependent domestic nations," as the Supreme Court ruled in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831). Thus the boundaries in Indian treaties are unaffected by state lines. The one state line that does preserve a treaty with an Indian nation is the line (bent, as it happens) separating Arkansas and Oklahoma. Among those responsible for this line was Sequoyah, a man most remembered for his development of written symbols for the Cherokee language.

Sequoyah and his fellow Cherokee leaders were, in a sense, the Founding Fathers of today's Cherokee Nation, whose land is now in Oklahoma but had been in the southern Appalachians and upper Tennessee River Valley. European Americans' Founding Fathers emerged when the progress of the colonists led to their quest for independence from the British. A similar progression also led to American Indians' quest for independence. Like our Founding Fathers, the Cherokee leaders shared both a desire for freedom and profound disagreements. Sequoyah, like Thomas Jefferson, was not only politically involved but also had a scholarly and inventive mind. Highly revered today, Sequoyah was also, in his own day, like Jefferson, highly reviled.

Sequoyah (ca. 1767-ca. 1843) (photo credit 19.1) Sequoyah was not, however, the Cherokee Jefferson. Though many aspects of Sequoyah's story have been challenged as having been mythologized, Sequoyah was not, by any account, the son of a prominent father, as was Jefferson.1 Sequoyah's father is traditionally said to have been a white man, this being the reason he was also known as George Guess. If so, his father most likely died or moved on, since Sequoyah never learned English.2 Some maintain, however, that Sequoyah was a full-blooded Cherokee who added to his name that of a white man he had killed. According to this view, to a.s.sume that Sequoyah's ident.i.ty as George Guess indicates he had a white father implies that his great linguistic achievement was racially enabled.3 Unlike Jefferson's, Sequoyah's early political ambitions are uncertain. What is certain is that politics then were as convoluted as politics today. It was Jefferson who commenced a policy to relocate Indian populations out beyond the Mississippi River, in the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.4 The Cherokee leaders disagreed on the issue of migration. Recognizing this (having experienced several similar fundamental disagreements), Jefferson sent a message to the leaders, stating: I understand by the speeches which you have delivered me that there is a difference of disposition among the people of ... your nation; some of them desiring to remain on their lands, to betake themselves to agriculture ... while others, retaining their attachment to the hunter's life, and having little game on their present lands, are desirous to remove across the Mississippi.... Those who wish to remove are permitted to send an exploring party to reconnoiter the country on the waters of the Arkansas and White rivers.

Benevolence or ethnic cleansing? Paradoxically, it was a joining of the two-which is to say: politics.

Jefferson's effort had only partial success. Following the War of 1812, Congress appropriated funds to induce more Cherokees to move. Sequoyah was among the delegation of Cherokees who received a written offer from General Andrew Jackson. Sequoyah had fought under Jackson in a Cherokee regiment (the Cherokees having placed their bets on the Americans in response to their enemy, the Red Stick Creeks, having bet on the British). Jackson did not know Sequoyah, who had only been a private during the war. Nevertheless Sequoyah knew something of Jackson and was sufficiently regarded in his tribe to have been included in the delegation to meet with him. Jackson discovered, however, that the delegates were not high-level leaders. He reported to the secretary of war that "as the Cherokee delegates seemed doubtful as to the extent of their powers, this treaty has been concluded subject to the ratification of the Cherokee nation."

A year later, Jackson returned with a more aggressive agreement. Though Sequoyah was not a party to this treaty, its acceptance altered his life. This 1817 treaty offered a land swap in which the United States would "give to that part of the Cherokee nation, on the Arkansas, as much land on said river and White River as [the United States] have or may hereafter receive from the Cherokee nation east of the Mississippi." To Sequoyah, it seemed like a relatively good deal. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Oolooteka, known also as John Jolly, Sequoyah relocated to the area of present-day Russellville, Arkansas. Other Cherokee chiefs opposed the treaty and bitterly resented that Oolooteka allowed the federal government to divide the Cherokee leaders.h.i.+p openly and geographically.5 They sent a delegation to Was.h.i.+ngton, instructing them: 1817 Cherokee treaty On your arrival at Was.h.i.+ngton city, you will deliver our letter to our elder brother, the Secretary of War.... You will state that ... we have of late years been subjected to the control of the minority of our nation.... Toolchair and others were sent to meet the commissioners with positive instructions to dispose of no lands but, contrary to his instructions, he entered into a conditional treaty ... [ratified] not by the whole Cherokee nation, as expressed by General Jackson in the ratification of that treaty but, on the contrary, there were six or seven headmen present who objected to the ratification of the treaty.6 The federal government, however, having achieved its objective, declared the treaty finished.

Sequoyah spent the next several years working, often with his daughter, on his longtime interest, the development of a set of symbols that would represent spoken Cherokee syllables. These efforts did not take place in a vacuum. During this era, missionaries were trying to develop a system that would transliterate the Cherokee language using Roman letters, as had been done by other missionaries with some Canadian and Alaskan tribes. Sequoyah too employed Roman letters, but in ways that bore no relation to their former role (indeed, they were often configured upside down or backward), and he invented additional symbols. Unlike the competing transliteration system of the missionaries, Sequoyah's syllabic approach was an instant success.

Except for the moment between "instant" and "success" when Sequoyah and his daughter were accused by their clan's shamans of fraudulently claiming magical powers-a serious offense. The two were placed in separate locations, and Sequoyah was told to use his magic pencil to make a particular statement. His interrogators then took this message to his daughter and asked her to tell them what it was. She did. After she wrote what they told her to, they took it to Sequoyah, and he repeated it. Then they demanded to be shown how the markings worked. Within weeks, Sequoyah's former accusers were teaching family and friends this new system for communication. Messages began being conveyed between the Cherokees of Arkansas and their brethren back east, who also immediately learned and taught each other to read.

Everyone was thrilled except, initially, the missionaries. While Sequoyah's creation clearly contributed to Cherokee literacy, it did so in a way that also contributed to Cherokee independence. "By the use of this alphabet," one missionary wrote, "so unlike any other, the Cherokees cut themselves from the sympathies and respect of the intelligent of other nations."7 As with the shamans, this pocket of dissension was quickly overwhelmed by an avalanche of admiration and support. By 1825 a report to the secretary of war stated that the Cherokees "are in advance of all other tribes. They may be considered as a civilized people. Their march has been rapid."

After acquiring special printing fonts, the Cherokees began churning out a tribal newspaper. Soon English-language newspapers were running stories about the new Cherokee alphabet. Sequoyah was now a national celebrity.

His fame coincided with increased conflicts with white settlers in the Arkansas land (to which they had agreed to migrate in order to escape such conflicts). Settlements were springing up in an area known as Lovely's Purchase. Years back, Indian agent William Lovely had bought land from the Osages (in a legally dubious transaction) to serve as buffer between the Cherokees who had accepted President Jefferson's invitation to migrate and the local, resentful Osages. By the time the 1817 treaty was signed, Lovely had pa.s.sed away, but his widow, Persis Lovely, remained on their homestead. Hence, in the 1817 treaty, the United States promised that "all citizens of the United States, except P. Lovely, who is to remain where she lives during life, [will be] removed from within the bounds as above named." The federal government, however, was yet to fulfill its promise to remove the whites from within the stipulated boundaries.