How The States Got Their Shapes Too Part 6

Seeking enforcement of the treaty, the Cherokees sent a delegation to Was.h.i.+ngton in early 1828 that included, as a shrewd public relations move, their nationally known figure, Sequoyah. The delegates met in several sessions with the secretary of war and once with President John Quincy Adams. Sequoyah was a big hit. He was interviewed (via translators) by scholars and sat for his portrait. President Adams himself noted in his diary, "George Guess is the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, by which, I told him, he had rendered a great service to his nation in opening to them a new fountain of knowledge." The only thing absent from everyone's good wishes to Sequoyah and his fellow Cherokees was any expression of enforcing the treaty.

Indeed, even when the government had been negotiating the 1817 treaty, plans were afoot for the future removal of the Cherokees from the land being promised. In 1816 Andrew Jackson's fellow negotiator, Jonathan Meigs Sr., wrote to the secretary of war: [The Cherokees] are aware, even if placed in the west of Arkansas, that they must probably make cession of lands to the United States in that country, but they presume that they shall be less pressed on that subject there than here; and to guard against, or rather to provide for such a contingency, it has been suggested to me by an intelligent Cherokee that in allotting a tract of land for them ... to have only three definite lines drawn to designate such allotment, leaving the boundary westward open as a wilderness, so that as they make cessions on the east side, they may make proportionate advances on the west.

Quite possibly some Cherokees were aware of the government's plan; if not, clearly the Arkansas chiefs suspected it, since they instructed the delegation to Was.h.i.+ngton not to make any concessions of land.

Initially, President Adams advised his secretary of war as to how the United States could squirm out of the treaty's obligations. He confided in his diary: [Secretary of War] Barbour called for a decision upon the application of the Arkansas Cherokee Indians. Westward of the spot on which they are located is a large tract which goes by the name of Lovely's Purchase.... White people have discovered that the land is excellent and they are swarming thither like bees. They are covering it with unlicensed settlements, and the people of the territory are loudly claiming that the land should be offered for sale. This collision between the just and the reasonable demands of our own people and the pledge seemingly given to the Indians is very embarra.s.sing. I observed, however, to Mr. Barbour that, as the pledge in its utmost extent a.s.sured to the Indians only an outlet, or, in other words a right of way, they might be informed that in the grants of lands upon Lovely's Purchase a right of peaceful way would be reserved for them.

The following week, Arkansas's territorial delegate (and future senator) Ambrose Sevier complained to the president that the new treaty would be the second time that the eastern end of Arkansas had been given to Indian peoples. The first reduction, in 1824, had resulted from the fact that General Jackson, making treaties right and left after the War of 1812, inadvertently had granted to the Choctaws land upon which whites had already settled. This second reduction resulted from a compromise that gave the Cherokees the bulk of Lovely's Purchase. Under the proposed compromise, the upper half of Arkansas's western border would s.h.i.+ft eastward to the corner of Missouri, then angle from that point through Lovely's Purchase to the Arkansas River (the southern extent of the Cherokee lands). The lower half of the Arkansas border would then also s.h.i.+ft eastward to connect with the upper half, resulting in today's bent western border.

1828 treaty: Arkansas boundary adjustments Arkansas's territorial delegate wasn't the only one who objected. The Cherokee delegates opposed the treaty as well. Their instructions were clear: get the government to abide by its promise to remove the whites from Lovely's Purchase and do not cede any land. But the government made it equally clear that it would only abide by that promise if the Cherokees moved further west.

Some of the delegates suggested that they simply go home. That too, however, had risks. The 1828 presidential campaign was in full swing. Jackson had been nominated for a rematch against Adams. Should Jackson win, the Cherokees would lose; Jackson was not a compromiser. If any of the English-speaking members of the Cherokee delegation read Was.h.i.+ngton's Daily National Journal while in town, they may have encountered its article on Jackson. Referring to the War of 1812 battle at Horseshoe Bend, when Jackson faced the British-allied Red Sticks, the article stated what the Cherokee delegates no doubt already knew: "The battle had ended-the poor untutored, misguided, and deluded savages had thrown down their arms and sued for mercy; but Jackson orders them to be exterminated; and keeps up the ma.s.sacre until the shades of night stay the wave of human slaughter.... Cold is their bed of clay, while Jackson is wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d."8 Many voters subscribed to the view of the Carolina Observer that Jackson had displayed patriotism "in the defense of his country ... controlling and directing the irregular valor of militia ... with which he chastised the cruelty and overawed the ferocity of the Indians."

The Cherokee delegates took the deal.

When news of the treaty reached the Arkansas Cherokees, the esteem in which Sequoyah had been held evaporated. To say that the Cherokees were upset would be an understatement. "Poles have been erected," the Arkansas Gazette reported, "in front of the houses of the delegation, on which their heads are to be exhibited as soon as they return." Learning of this, Sequoyah did not go home. He sought refuge among the Cherokees still living in Georgia.9 By October there were news reports that, though anger still pulsed among the Arkansas Cherokees, some delegates had begun drifting back and had not been killed. Sequoyah, too, eventually returned and migrated west with his people to the land accorded them in the new treaty.

Sequoyah lived quietly from then on, venturing into political affairs only when the eastern Cherokees, forced to the reservation in 1838, vied with their western predecessors for dominance. He contributed to the drafting of an 1839 Cherokee const.i.tution, hoping it-words on paper-would resolve the feud. It didn't. Only time did.

In the spring of 1842, the now elderly Sequoyah enlisted several companions to join him on a journey to Mexico. There he sought to find Cherokees with whom contact had been lost. This branch, having foreseen a future of loss in the United States, had migrated to land controlled by Spain, believing their chances there would be better. Age and illness pursued Sequoyah, but in August of the following year he and his companions found a Cherokee village near the present-day town of Zaragoza, Mexico, fifteen miles southeast of El Paso. There he connected with brethren who predated the rift between the eastern and western tribes and who welcomed him wholeheartedly. Several days later, he died among them. Shortly before he pa.s.sed away, Sequoyah wrote a letter home. But his final message has been lost.

MICHIGAN, OHIO.

STEVENS T. MASON.

The Toledo War

Never in the course of my life have I known a controversy of which all the right was so clearly on one side, and all the power so overwhelmingly on the other.

-JOHN QUINCY ADAMS1 Michigan officially became a state on January 26, 1837, yet its state seal bears the date 1835. The discrepancy represents the period during which Stevens T. Mason led the self-declared state in what has come to be called the Toledo War.

The seed of this dispute was inadvertently planted by Congress in 1787, when it stipulated how the Northwest Territory would eventually be divided into states. Among those boundaries was one that divided "the said [Northwest] territory which lies north of an east-and-west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan." Unfortunately, Congress was using an inaccurate map.2 If an accurate map had been available, the stipulated line would have put Toledo in Michigan, had Toledo existed in 1787. As American commerce on the Great Lakes swiftly increased, however, Toledo not only came into existence, it brought Ohio and Michigan to the brink of war.

In 1802 a hunter told delegates to Ohio's statehood convention that he believed Lake Michigan extended considerably farther south, so much so that Toledo, whose first white settlers had arrived eight years earlier, might be in the territory to be created north of Ohio.3 Since no one knew for sure the lat.i.tude at which Lake Michigan ended, or the lat.i.tude at which the Maumee River (known then as the Miami River) emptied into Lake Erie, the delegates defined Ohio's northern border slightly differently than in the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. They stipulated it as being "a direct line running from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the most northerly cape of the Miami Bay." Congress was aware of this alteration in wording, as was President Thomas Jefferson, who had auth.o.r.ed the report that led to the boundaries specified in the Northwest Ordinance. Given the uncertainties, however, a report jointly issued by his administration and Congress concluded that it was "unnecessary to take it at this time into consideration."4 Stevens T. Mason (1811-1843) (photo credit 20.1) Toledo, Ohio, or Toledo, Michigan?

Meanwhile, Americans were beginning to migrate to the region above Ohio in larger numbers, and in 1805 Congress created the territory of Michigan. Yet twelve more years were to pa.s.s before Michigan challenged Ohio's boundary adjustment. Why so long? Possibly because of another event that took place in 1817, the year their boundary dispute commenced. Construction began that year on the Erie Ca.n.a.l.

Toledo, at the western end of Lake Erie, was now of such importance that Michigan's territorial governor, Lewis Ca.s.s, wrote to the surveyor general, "Report says that the line which has been recently run, purporting to be the line between the State of Ohio and this Territory, was not run [along] a due east course from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, but a course somewhat to the north of this, although how much I am unable to ascertain." Ca.s.s went on to cite the boundary mandated by the Northwest Ordinance, then said of the altered boundary in Ohio's const.i.tution, "This proposition has never been acceded to by Congress ... [and] no agreement, even by that body, without our consent, could alter these lines."5 The fact remained, however, that Congress had approved the const.i.tution of Ohio with the boundaries it had stipulated.6 But also a fact was that the Northwest Ordinance mandated that the "following articles shall be considered as articles of compact between the original states and the people, and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent." Ca.s.s's letter resulted in a second survey of the Michigan-Ohio boundary. The first survey, to which he'd referred in his letter, came to be known as the Harris Line. It followed the boundary stipulated in the const.i.tution of Ohio. The second survey, which came to known as the Fulton Line, conformed to the boundary stipulated in the Northwest Ordinance. Both surveys were then presented to Congress. It did nothing.

For nearly twenty years the issue remained an open wound before an infection entered, in the form of a second ca.n.a.l. "It will doubtless be gratifying to your readers," a correspondent for Was.h.i.+ngton, DC's National Intelligencer wrote, "to learn that another navigable communication between the Ohio River and the Northern Lakes has been commenced, and is now in progress of actual construction. This ca.n.a.l ... extends from the head of steamboat navigation on the Wabash River to the Maumee Bay."

Conflicting federal survey lines The Wabash and Erie Ca.n.a.l would connect the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico via the Maumee, Wabash, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers. Its entry point on the Great Lakes was Toledo. During the commencement of its construction in the early 1830s, Michigan's population reached the point at which it could seek to become a state-a fact whose significance was not lost on Ohio. "This subject is particularly interesting at this time," Ohio's Scioto Gazette reported, "from the obvious necessity to Ohio that Maumee Bay, which will be the future termination of the Wabash and Erie Ca.n.a.l, should be included in the limits of this state."

Since Congress had never responded to the two conflicting surveys, Ohio's legislature upped its claim over the disputed region by enacting legislation in early 1835 (the year engraved in Michigan's crest) that created counties within the region. Six weeks later, Michigan's territorial legislature enacted the Pains and Penalties Act, making it a criminal offense for anyone other than officers of the Michigan Territory or the United States to exercise official functions in the disputed region.

The fight was on: Stevens Thomson Mason, Michigan's twenty-three-year-old territorial governor, versus Ohio's Governor Robert Lucas.

Mason came from a distinguished Virginia family. He was the great-grandson of Thomson Mason, who had been chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court and whose brother, George Mason, was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (the direct inspiration for the U.S. Bill of Rights). He had arrived in Michigan in 1830 after President Andrew Jackson appointed his father, John Mason, as secretary of the territory. John Mason resigned after a year to pursue a purported business venture in Mexico. The venture may in fact have been a secret mission for President Jackson, as it closely followed a meeting with Jackson (at which the younger Mason was present) and as Jackson then appointed Mason's then nineteen-year-old son to take his place.7 Whether or not the appointment was a political quid pro quo, the people of Michigan were not pleased. A citizens' committee pa.s.sed a resolution stating that the "great responsibility and trust ... conferred on Stevens Thomson Mason, a minor, is ... derogatory to the freemen over whom he is thus attempted to be placed, and that we hold it to be our duty to take prompt measures with a view to his removal from office."8 Jackson's appointment particularly galled the residents of Michigan because it coincided with Governor Ca.s.s's departure to become secretary of war and, as his replacement was yet to arrive, the teenage Mason would be in charge.

What the people of Michigan didn't know, but soon learned, was that young Mason was an extraordinarily talented individual. Public opinion changed as Mason deftly navigated the territory through difficulties involving the Black Hawk War during the absence of the new governor, George B. Porter. When Porter died in 1834, Mason became acting governor, now with considerable support as he led Michigan in its bid for statehood.

In 1835 Ohio Governor Lucas issued a directive to commence surveying in the newly created counties. In response, Michigan Governor Mason issued a directive, too. "The [Pains and Penalties Act] must be rigidly enforced," he directed the commander of Michigan's militia. "You are authorized to call to your aid, in the event that the posse comitatus of the sheriff should be insufficient, any a.s.sistance that may be required to resist the strength the military authorities of Ohio may bring against you."

President Jackson sought to dissipate the tension by submitting Michigan's Pains and Penalties Act to his attorney general for an opinion regarding the jurisdictional issues. Jackson's neutrality was suspect; the 1836 presidential election was just around the corner, and Jackson's favorite, Martin Van Buren, would need Ohio's electoral votes. Michigan, having no electoral votes, viewed Jackson's gesture as a clearly political gambit. But Michigan modified that view when Attorney General Benjamin Butler reported back that "the act of the legislature of Ohio extending the jurisdiction of that state over the Territory of Michigan is ... repugnant to the act of Congress."9 Butler commented that Congress had the authority to determine the line, but that until it did so, "it will be the duty of the president to consider [the 1787 line] as the boundary of the Territory of Michigan."

The effect of the attorney general's opinion was to give Michigan the ammunition it needed to load-literally-the muskets of its militia. Three weeks later, Ohio's legislature, at the behest of Governor Lucas, appropriated $300,000 to equip and dispatch 500 troops to the disputed region.

President Jackson quickly dispatched two mediators to meet with the governors in April 1835, one of whom was the nation's preeminent diplomat, Richard Rush. The Ohio State Journal reported: Our last week's paper gave the gratifying intelligence, received at the hour of going to press, that all fears of disturbance in the disputed territory were for the present removed ... [due to] the advice or instructions of the Commissioners, Messrs. Rush and [Benjamin C.] Howard.... But the scene has changed. On Wednesday night, at a late hour between twelve and three o'clock, a [Michigan] posse ... came to Toledo ... prowling about the streets and taking some of the citizens.... A number of the Toledians [sic] have been indicted for accepting office under Ohio law.

At this time Michigan began its self-declared statehood convention, amid continuing violence that included the stabbing death of a deputy sheriff.10 The rhetoric of both governors reflected, if not abetted, the rage in the region. Ohio Governor Lucas declared to his legislature: Some [residents of Toledo] have been driven from their houses in dread and terror, while others are menaced by the authorities of Michigan.... And for what? Is it for crime? No, but for faithfully discharging [one's] duty as a good citizen of Ohio.... The authorities of Michigan countenanced prosecutions against the citizens of Ohio ... with a degree of reckless vengeance scarcely paralleled in the history of civilized nations.

Governor Mason, for his part, declaimed: Outrages of a most unjustifiable and unparalleled character have been committed by a number of persons at Toledo upon officers of the [Michigan] Territory.... A regular organization exists among these individuals for the purpose of resisting the execution of the laws of Michigan. If [Ohio] ... is permitted to dragoon us into a partial surrender of our jurisdiction ... the territorial government is at once annihilated. Criminals committing the highest offences are left at large.... All law is at an end.

Once again, President Jackson sought to defuse the situation. Twelve days after Mason's remarks, Jackson, abandoning any pretense of neutrality, fired him. In his place, Jackson dispatched John S. Horner. Like Mason, Horner came from Virginia and had never held political office. Once again, the people of Michigan were not pleased. The Detroit Free Press wrote in October 1836: We have no hesitation in p.r.o.nouncing what is almost the undivided sense of this community, that Mr. John S. Horner is utterly unqualified and unfit for the station in which he has been placed. We trust, however, that the forbearance of the people of Michigan will continue to be exercised for the few remaining days of their territorial existence. On the first Monday in next month, they become a state; they will then have their own executive, legislature, and other public officers. They will then take care of their own rights and interests, protect their territorial possessions, punish the transgressors of their laws and repel invasion.

Indeed, on the first Monday of the next month (November 2, 1835), voters in Michigan elected Stevens T. Mason governor of the state of Michigan-a state not recognized as such by the United States. Territorial Governor Horner and the new state government treated each other equally: he didn't recognize them, and they didn't recognize him.

Congress, at this point, finally took action. It approved statehood for Michigan with one big if: "Be it enacted that the const.i.tution and State Government which the people of Michigan have formed for themselves be ... accepted, ratified, and ... declared to be one of the United States," the legislation stated, "provided always-and this admission is upon the express condition-that the said State shall consist of ... the following boundaries." The boundaries that followed conformed to Ohio's stipulated border-but they also included a peninsula extending eastward from what would later become Wisconsin. Michigan could take the deal, or hold out and remain a territory. If it held out, however, its boundary claim would now have an added hurdle: an act of Congress.

For Ohio, the issue was finished. Governor Lucas closed the book on the conflict, telling his legislature: It is with peculiar pleasure that I announce to you the irrevocable establishment of the northern boundary line of Ohio, in accordance with what we have ever considered our incontrovertible right.... The a.s.sent of Congress has ... removed all grounds for contention, and put a final quietus to the clamorous pretensions of the authorities of Michigan.

In Michigan, Governor Mason said to his legislature: No one can feel more deeply than myself the humiliation of the sacrifice we are called upon to make.... Were I to consult the first impulse prompted by the feeling which every citizen of Michigan must acknowledge, I might be led into a determination to resist the legislation of Congress. But as a public officer called upon to discard excited feelings ... I should violate my duty did I recommend to my fellow citizens to embark in a controversy offering so little hope of gain.

Accordingly, in September 1836, Michigan reconvened its const.i.tutional convention. But the delegates rejected the offer from Congress. The "state" of Michigan seemed headed for a state of limbo. It didn't take long, however, for a sufficient number of Michigan's residents to recognize that they had painted themselves into a corner. In December a new const.i.tutional convention accepted the terms demanded by Congress. Six weeks after that, Michigan entered the union.

As pa.s.sions subsided, so too did the esteem in which Stevens T. Mason had been held. The legislature had voted to raise funds for roads and ca.n.a.ls through the sale of bonds, for which Mason had entered into agreements with brokers just as the Panic of 1837 sent the nation into an economic depression. Funds had been committed based on the bonds, but with the sale of the bonds stalled by the depression, Governor Mason was held aloft as Michigan's leading scapegoat in the 1840 election and was not reelected.11 Months later, Mason moved with his wife to her hometown, New York City, where he practiced law. His career was cut short when he died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-one. But Stevens T. Mason was not to be forgotten. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the people of Michigan dusted off his reputation. His speech to the legislature when Michigan faced its ultimatum from Congress now conveyed its full meaning: To preserve unstained the inst.i.tutions of our country is one of the first duties of every citizen. Will we hazard these stakes now, or will we present to the world an example of compromise of opinion and feeling, dictated by a spirit of patriotic forbearance, even when injustice demands it? The federal government was the great work of a spirit of compromise, and it is only by the exercise of the same spirit by the states that it is to be perpetuated.

In 1905 Mason's remains were moved to Capitol Park in Detroit, where a statue was erected of Michigan's first elected governor.

IOWA, MISSOURI, MINNESOTA.

ROBERT LUCAS.

Ohio Boundary Champ Takes on Missouri and Minnesota

Ex-Governor Lucas [of Ohio] is one of the most deserving men in the party, and we doubt not will prove a good Governor of the new Territory [of Iowa]. He is far from being a brawling supporter of the administration. He is an old fas.h.i.+oned, honest, intelligent, western pioneer.

-CLEVELAND DAILY HERALD, JULY 16, 1838 When Colonel of the regiment and something younger than he is now, Lucas seduced a young lady, who sued him for breach of marriage contract and got judgment against him, and when he had put all his property out of his hands so that nothing could be got, he was put to jail for the debt, and then issued his orders for his regiment to come and rescue him from the custody of the law.

-LETTER TO THE EDITOR, SCIOTOGAZETTE (CHILLICOTHE, OH), SEPTEMBER 26, 1832 Whether or not Robert Lucas was a wily scamp or an honest western pioneer-or matured from the one to become the other-this much is certain: he was a tough opponent. As governor of Ohio, he had led the state through its boundary dispute with the territory of Michigan and-despite the fact that Ohio claimed a boundary that violated what Congress had stipulated-Lucas won. When Lucas then became governor of the territory of Iowa, he inherited a nearly identical boundary dispute with Missouri-except that now his was the powerless territory challenging a formidable state. As if that contest were not enough, Lucas also sought a boundary with what would become Minnesota that triggered a conflict influencing the borders of seven future states.

Robert Lucas (1781-1853) (photo credit 21.1) The foot Lucas first set in Iowa in 1838 was the wrong foot. He and the territory's legislature were immediately at odds. "Strife has arisen between Gov. Lucas and the Iowa Territorial legislature on the question of power," the Cleveland Herald informed his former const.i.tuents in Ohio. "The Governor insists that all laws and resolutions must be approved by him before they are of any force. The Legislative body contests this position ... [and] all public business is delayed in consequence."

Lucas was not one to back down. But neither were Iowa's legislators. Six months after Lucas took office, an item in the New York Spectator revealed the progress these like-minded personalities had made: "The difficulties between [Iowa's territorial legislature] and Governor Lucas have resulted in an application from the former to the President of the United States, praying for the removal of the latter from office."

The brawl between Lucas and his territorial legislature subsided, however, when a bigger brawl presented itself in which they could join together: a boundary dispute with Missouri that was a mirror image of the dispute Lucas had faced with Michigan when he was governor of Ohio. What Iowa was disputing was Missouri's interpretation of the boundary stipulated by Congress in 1820. It defined Missouri's northern border as (fasten your seat belts) "the parallel of lat.i.tude which pa.s.ses through the rapids of the River Des Moines, making the said line to correspond with the Indian boundary line; thence east from this point of intersection last aforesaid, along the same parallel of lat.i.tude to the middle of the channel of the main fork of the said River Des Moines."

Sullivan Line, 1816 Helpfully for readers (though not for Iowans), a line along these lines already existed. It had been surveyed four years earlier by John C. Sullivan. One can only call it "a line along these lines" because the boundary stipulated by Congress contained uncertainties. The first uncertainty was that a line starting at the point on the "parallel of lat.i.tude which pa.s.ses through the rapids of the River Des Moines" be made "to correspond with the Indian boundary line," since the two were not necessarily the same. The second was the phrase "the rapids of the River Des Moines." While it clearly seems to mean the rapids in the Des Moines River, the fact is that there are no rapids in the Des Moines River. At the time, however, there were rapids in the Mississippi River as it met the Des Moines River. This segment of the Mississippi had long been known by river men as "the Des Moines rapids." Sullivan used these rapids in the Mississippi to determine his starting point at the western end, then surveyed eastward. As he proceeded, however, his line veered northward. Whether this deviation resulted from poor surveying or from making his line "correspond with the Indian boundary line" was yet another uncertainty, since no line in the vicinity had been stipulated in any American Indian treaty at or before 1816.

The Sullivan Line was not the line Governor Lucas challenged, but its uncertainties set the stage for the dispute. In 1836 Congress added to Missouri what is today the triangular region in its northwest corner. This region comprised all the land north of the Missouri River up to a westward extension of the state's northern border. Missouri then appointed Joseph C. Brown to survey the northern border of this new region. Unlike Sullivan, he interpreted "the rapids in the River Des Moines" literally. Though hard-pressed to find anything resembling rapids in the Des Moines River, Brown ultimately decided that a point in the river known as "Big Bend" const.i.tuted the closest thing to rapids, and he used that point to determine the lat.i.tude of the border. He then marked off this updated border. Unlike Sullivan's, Brown's line was nice and straight. It was also considerably further north.

Brown Line, 1836 Two years later, Lucas arrived in Iowa and immediately challenged the boundary. His opening move was the same as that of his former boundary adversary, Michigan, in its failed challenge of Ohio. Lucas got Iowa's legislature to pa.s.s a virtually identical resolution: If any person shall exercise or attempt to exercise any official functions ... by virtue of any commission or authority not derived from this Territory or under the Government of the United States. [he shall] be punished by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or imprisoned ... not exceeding five years.... I do hereby enjoin ... all sheriffs, constables, Justices of the Peace, and other peace officers ... that they cause all persons ... attempting to violate any of the provisions of the act ... to be arrested.

But after enactment of the same kind of resolution, Lucas departed from Michigan's approach. Where Michigan's territorial governor, Stevens T. Mason, had remained confrontational, Lucas led the territory of Iowa in the opposite direction. "I know of no difficulty between the Territory of Iowa and the State of Missouri," he said to his legislature, then continued coyly, "Neither can the Territory of Iowa, as a territory, be party to a controversy. The territorial government being entirely under the control of the United States, the controversy about the southern boundary of the Territory of Iowa is between the State of Missouri and the General Government."

Lucas may have sounded here like a wily lawyer, but he was not an attorney. He was not even highly educated. Wily, however, he was. One of nine sons of pioneer parents who had migrated from Virginia to what would soon become Ohio, his schooling had consisted of what he learned from his family, augmented by basic lessons in mathematics and surveying from a tutor. Clearly, however, as he entered adulthood, Lucas continued to learn from those he encountered. Clearly, also, he had a lot of learning to do-particularly with regard to authority.

In 1810 an Ohio court had ordered the twenty-nine-year-old Lucas to pay damages emanating from a breach of promise to a young woman. Lucas sought to outfox the authorities by divesting himself of his a.s.sets and publicly dared the sheriff to arrest him. The sheriff thought it best to resign. The official to whom the task then fell also resigned, as did a third. Now, however, the issue was larger than Lucas; it was about the rule of law. A new group of Ohioans sought and won the vacated positions and collectively hauled Lucas off to jail. Lucas, a colonel in the state's militia, ordered his men to come rescue him. They didn't. He then quickly paid and, as he later stated, learned his lesson.

That Lucas had learned to obey authority was demonstrated during the War of 1812. He led a unit that was part of an effort to invade Canada. After the commanding general ordered the troops to pull back, Lucas obeyed, though he strongly disagreed with the order. He wrote to a close friend, "Never was there a more patriotic army ... that had it more completely in their power to have accomplished every object of their desire than the present-and it must now be sunk in disgrace for want of a General at their head." Such a letter carried considerable risk, were it to fall into the wrong hands, but evidently not enough risk for young Lucas, who added, "Neither was there ever men of talents as there are, so shamefully opposed by imbecile or treacherous commander."1 The Lucas Iowans now heard proclaiming, at age fifty-eight, "I know of no difficulty between the Territory of Iowa and the State of Missouri," was a far smarter Lucas. But underneath he was the same. What he had learned over the years wasn't simply how to cope with more powerful adversaries, but how to win.

How to win in this instance, however, involved considerable uncertainty. While the Articles of Confederation had stated that Congress was to issue decisions on boundary disputes, the Const.i.tution (which replaced that doc.u.ment) said nothing on the subject. Today boundary disputes between states are routinely adjudicated by the Supreme Court, but by 1839 the court had heard only two such cases, neither providing much confidence about that approach.2 Lucas, in a message to his legislature, opted to b.u.t.ter up Congress: Michigan contended that, as a Territory, she was a party to the controversy relative to the boundary between that Territory and the State of Ohio-she denied to Congress the right to act on the subject.... The Territory of Iowa, in the present controversy considers herself entirely under the control of the General Government and ... considers that Congress is the only competent tribunal to decide the controversy with the State of Missouri.

Lucas went on to stroke Congress in this message by saying he believed it had supremacy over the Supreme Court in rulings on such disputes.

On the other hand, he also silently sought to lay the groundwork for approaching the Supreme Court, urging Iowa's territorial legislature to seek statehood to redress "the unwarrantable and unjustifiable proceedings of the authorities of Missouri."3 As a territory, Iowa could not take a dispute to the Supreme Court, since its boundaries, unlike those of a state, were not protected by the Const.i.tution. Lucas, however, said nothing specifically about urging statehood to enable Iowa to approach the Supreme Court. If he privately shared such a strategy with Iowans, he failed to convince them. The legislature opted not to seek statehood, given that the territory was not yet sufficiently populated for the additional costs entailed.

This setback was not a problem for Lucas, since his first gambit was with Congress. One might wonder, however, what hope he had with this approach; Missouri had two senators and three representatives in that Congress, and the Iowa Territory had none. Lucas's hope was best expressed in Missouri itself, a slave state in which one of its senators, arguing that Congress did not have authority to decide the issue, fretted that "if Congress had settlement of this affair, I feel confident that all the free states would range themselves on the side of Iowa-and perhaps some of the slave states, from a feeling of jealousy created by the magnitude of our state."4 As it turned out, Lucas miscalculated. Though legislation was proposed stating that Congress had intended Missouri's northern border to be in accordance with the Sullivan Line, the bill failed to pa.s.s.5 Iowa became a state in 1846. Immediately, it took its dispute with Missouri to the Supreme Court. Lucas, however, was no longer the governor. Having been appointed by President Martin Van Buren, a fellow Democrat, he was replaced when William Henry Harrison, from the Whig Party, entered the White House in 1841. Lucas, however, had laid the groundwork for the legal challenge by having previously disputed the boundary and, with his early statehood proposal, having signaled plan B. In 1848 the Supreme Court issued its ruling. Iowa's Burlington Gazette reported that "the long existing difficulty between this State and Missouri is at last settled by the highest judicial tribunal known to the land-settled, too, we are happy to add, in favor of Iowa. The decision of the Supreme Court ... establishes the old Indian boundary line, as it is called, as the boundary of Missouri."

Most of those Iowans who had clamored for Lucas's removal at the outset of his governors.h.i.+p had come to the see him differently by the time he was replaced. "No man has ever been more true to his trust-none more faithful to the interests of the people over whom he governed," the Gazette now wrote. "The people of this Territory will be struck with astonishment to find that their old and trusted friend, Gov. Lucas, has been displaced."

Though he had been replaced, he was not so easily displaced. Lucas and his family remained in Iowa, and in 1844 he was elected as a delegate to the territory's statehood convention. Serving on its Committee on State Boundaries, Lucas continued an effort he had begun as governor regarding Iowa's border with its future neighbor to the north, Minnesota. In this instance, however, the boundary champ got knocked out.

Lucas had described the boundaries he envisioned for Iowa when he first urged its legislature to seek statehood. The lines he proposed were those of present-day Iowa, with the exception of its northern border. Lucas had sought a northern border composed of waterways leading to the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers (long-distance railroads still being two decades away). At the statehood convention, his committee again proposed such a border, but this time further north, being entirely framed by the Minnesota River (known then as the St. Peter River).

In Congress, Iowa's proposed northern border encountered unexpected and stiff opposition. Ohio Congressman Samuel F. Vinton, an influential member of the House Public Lands Committee, noted that Iowa's proposed boundaries resulted in a state similar in size to Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. He pointed out that those states' borders were created for political reasons that violated Thomas Jefferson's vision for equitable representation in the Senate (see "Thomas Jefferson" in this book). Regarding Iowa (and other future states), Vinton argued: What has been the effect of this change? ... The vast and fertile region between the Ohio, the Lakes, and the Mississippi has been thus reduced from twelve to fourteen States to five at the most ... [that] can never have but ten votes in the Senate.... As an equitable compensation to the western country for this flagrant injustice, I would make a series of small States on the opposite bank of the [Mississippi] river.

Vinton then sought to move Iowa's proposed northern border from the Minnesota River to the 43rd parallel. Iowa's nonvoting delegate, Augustus Dodge, strenuously but unsuccessfully opposed the s.h.i.+ft, calling the new boundary "an artificial line."

Borders proposed by Lucas Was it artificial? As ultimately pa.s.sed, Iowa's northern border was a line set at 4330', resulting in the state having just under three degrees of height. Over the ensuing decades, Congress would go on to create a tier of prairie states just west of Iowa, each of which had three degrees of height (Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota). Just west of those states, Congress created a tier of states in the less populous Rocky Mountain region, each of which had four degrees of height (Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana).

Congressman Vinton's argument had been so powerful it not only affected Iowa's northern border but also brought Jefferson's underlying principle back into the equation for defining state lines. Iowa may have lost the boundary it sought, but it acquired the distinction of being the lynchpin in determining the next phase of the American map.

When Iowa became a state, Robert Lucas hoped to become its first elected governor. But he was now sixty-five years old, and a new generation had come of age. Iowa's Democratic Party instead nominated forty-one-year-old Ansel Briggs, who went on to win the election. Lucas's political career had come to its close, with one last exception. In 1852, the year before his death, he announced his departure from the Democratic Party, following its nomination of Franklin Pierce, a proslavery Northerner. The seventy-two-year-old Lucas, who had entered the Democratic Party as a young stalwart of Andrew Jackson, could no longer a.s.sociate himself with the party when even its northern members veered further toward proslavery views for political purposes. Though Robert Lucas's tactics were wily, his principles were not.

MAINE, CANADA.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

Maine's Border: The Devil in Daniel Webster

The [human] race, if it cannot drag a Webster along with it, leaves him behind and forgets him. The race is rich enough to afford to do without the greatest intellects G.o.d ever let the Devil buy.

-WENDELL PHILLIPS1 Those who know of Daniel Webster typically know of him only from being a.s.signed to read "The Devil and Daniel Webster" or from having seen the film it sp.a.w.ned. Stephen Vincent Benet's fanciful short story posits Webster as the defense attorney for a man who has signed a pact with the devil; Webster wins the case even though the devil gets to pick the judge and jury.

Webster was indeed a great lawyer. He argued more than 200 cases before the Supreme Court and became the preeminent debater in the U.S. Senate. He was also a bit of a devil himself.

Those unfamiliar with Webster can take comfort in the fact that in September 1852 the Daily Ohio Statesman headlined an article on the then longtime political veteran, "Who Is Daniel Webster?" Everyone at that time knew his name, but few knew what-other than oratory-he had done.

Webster served for over twenty-three years as a senator from Ma.s.sachusetts, was the secretary of state twice, and sought the presidency three times. While he never made it to the White House, his work as secretary of state is engraved on today's map in the boundary between Maine and Canada.