How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [0]
Cover illustration © 2011 by Leigh Wells
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Published by Smithsonian Books
Executive Editor: Carolyn Gleason
Production Editor: Christina Wiginton
Editor: Duke Johns
Designer: Mary Parsons
Maps: XNR Productions, Inc.
Photo Researcher: Amy Pastan
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stein, Mark, 1951-
How the states got their shapes too : the people behind the borderlines / Mark Stein.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58834-315-4
1. United States—Boundaries—History. 2. U.S. states—Boundaries.
3. United States—Biography. I. Title.
E180.S744 2011
973—dc22
2011003467
For permission to reproduce illustrations appearing in this book, please correspond directly with the owners of the works, as seen on this page. Smithsonian Books does not retain reproduction rights for these images individually, or maintain a file of addresses for sources.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Map
Acknowledgments
Roger Williams The Boundary of Religion
Augustine Herman Why We Have Delaware
Robert Jenkins’s Ear Fifteen Minutes of Fame
Robert Tufton Mason Winning New Hampshire
Lord Fairfax What You Know or Who You Know?
Mason and Dixon America’s Most Famous (and Misunderstood) Line
Zebulon Butler Connecticut’s Lost Cause
Ethan Allen Vermont: The Fourteenth Colony
Thomas Jefferson Lines on the Map in Invisible Ink
John Meares The U.S. Line from Spanish Canada
Benjamin Banneker To Be Brilliant and Black in the New Nation
Jesse Hawley The Erie Canal and the Gush of Redrawn Lines
James Brittain The Man History Tried to Erase
Reuben Kemper From Zero To Hero?
Richard Rush The 49th Parallel: A New Line of Americans
Nathaniel Pope Illinois’s Most Boring Border
John Hardeman Walker Putting the Boot Heel on Missouri
John Quincy Adams The Massachusetts Texan
Sequoyah The Cherokee Line
Stevens T. Mason The Toledo War
Robert Lucas Ohio Boundary Champ Takes on Missouri and Minnesota
Daniel Webster Maine’s Border: The Devil in Daniel Webster
James K. Polk Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!
Robert M. T. Hunter Cutting Washington Down to Size
Sam Houston The Man Who Lassoed Texas
Brigham Young The Boundary of Religion Revisited
John A. Sutter California: Boundless Opportunity
James Gadsden Government Aid to Big Business
Stephen A. Douglas The Line on Slavery: Erasing and Redrawing
John A. Quitman Annexing Cuba: Liberty, Security, Slavery
Clarina Nichols Using Boundaries to Break Boundaries
Lyman Cutler’s Neighbor’s Pig The British-American Pig War
Robert W. Steele Rocky Mountain Rogue?
Francis H. Pierpont The Battle Line That Became a State Line
Francisco Perea and John S. Watts Two Sides of the Coin of the Realm
Sidney Edgerton and James Ashley Good as Gold
William H. Seward Why Buy Alaska?
Standing Bear v. Crook The Legal Boundary of Humanity
Lili’uokalani and Sanford Dole Bordering on Empire
Alfalfa Bill Murray, Edward P. McCabe, and Chief Green McCurtain Oklahoma’s Racial Boundaries
Bernard J. Berry New Jersey Invades Ellis Island
Luis Ferré Puerto Rico: The Fifty-First State?
David Shafer When the Grass Is Greener on the Other Side
Eleanor Holmes Norton Taxation without Representation
Notes
Photography Credits
Preface
No child has ever been known to say, “When I grow up, I want to establish a state line.” But somebody had to do it. Who were those people? How did they end up in that endeavor?
As it turns out, the people involved in America’s states being shaped the way they are have come from all walks of life. Some are famous, such as Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, though how they participated in shaping our states is not widely known. Others are famous, but why they’re famous is not widely known. Daniel Webster, for example: is he famous because of his extraordinary debate