How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [69]
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 assets 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 Constitution (which replaced that document) 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 butter 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