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

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

MINNESOTA, NORTH DAKOTA, MONTANA, IDAHO

RICHARD RUSH

The 49th Parallel: A New Line of Americans

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

—AMBASSADOR RICHARD RUSH1

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

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

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

The commencement of the War of 1812 made that year particularly pivotal for Rush and, separately, the 49th parallel. Because of his oratorical talent, Rush was selected to give a Fourth of July address before both houses of Congress, the president, and his cabinet. In effect, Rush was addressing the nation’s founders on behalf of the next generation, and his words reveal the passing of the torch. “Thirty years, fellow citizens, is a long time to have been exempt from the calamities of war,” he said to these veteran leaders of the Revolutionary War. “It is a fact that affords, in itself, the most honorable and incontestable proof that those who have guided [this nation] … have ardently cherished peace … [despite] abundant provocation.