How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [1]
Most of those who participated in the location of our state lines are not famous. Moreover, they are not exclusively white men. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics have also been involved in shaping the states.
For none of these people was the establishment of their state line their primary objective in life. Their participation in the creation of a boundary resulted from some personal quest. Those quests differed, yet each quest emanated from the issues of the time. Today those historical issues, and the personal quests they spawned, are imprinted on the map in the form of state lines.
The borders of the United States, however, do not fully enclose those quests. Many others sought, unsuccessfully, to create additional states in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and—still an issue—Puerto Rico. Their stories further enhance our perspective of the United States.
The American map is so familiar that even its straight lines begin to seem a part of nature. But looking at it through the individuals involved in its creation, that map becomes a mural. Its lines reflect an ongoing progression of Americans. Who, when, and where they were explains much of why we are who we are today.
Acknowledgments
I was fortunate, after the publication of How the States Got Their Shapes, to be urged by my late and much missed editor, Caroline Newman, to offer a follow-up book. But having been a writer in theater and film, as opposed to nonfiction, I had difficulty framing an idea that fit the bill. So I called my longtime friend Mark Olshaker, author of several best-selling books, and asked if we could get together for lunch to see whether we could generate an idea. He said (and this is truly what he said), “Sure. Next week is good. Or how about this? A book on the people, like that guy you mentioned in the first book with Missouri.”
That is this book.
First and foremost, then, and with awe, I thank Mark Olshaker for an idea that, as it further developed, captured my imagination as much as my passion for maps drove me to write the first book. “As it further developed” refers in no small measure to the insights of Elisabeth Dyssegaard, who took over as my editor. Elisabeth did not have to fill Caroline’s shoes, because her own editor shoes fit beautifully. Too beautifully, since Elisabeth soon advanced to become editor-in-chief at another publisher. But her parting gift to me was an introduction to Kenneth Wright, who became my agent and navigated my now orphaned project in more ways than I can enumerate here, though I cannot leave unsaid the importance of the encouragement and clear thinking he provided. Ken succeeded in placing the book where I most hoped it would end up, at Smithsonian Books, copublisher of How the States Got Their Shapes, where I knew I would be in good hands with its director, and now my editor, Carolyn Gleason. I knew Carolyn was ideally suited because of an offhand remark she had made when we first met, shortly after How the States Got Their Shapes replaced my original title, Why Is Iowa? “I liked your first title,” she said, “but it didn’t work.” I knew then we had the same sensibility, except she knew what worked.
Both my copy editor, Duke Johns, and the schoolteacher who taught him grammar and syntax deserve gold medals. Duke’s mind is a lens of clarity. He is also an intimidatingly thorough fact-checker, for which I am extremely grateful. The treaties and legislation that created our state shapes are complicated and often overlap. To my astonishment, Duke dug them up, checking and adjusting my efforts to explain them. If any errors have slipped past him, it only shows that no goalie can block every shot. (He even nipped and tucked this paragraph.)
For the images in this book I was privileged to have Amy Pastan searching out photos and portraits with such enthusiasm that she discovered,