finished their rereading which i do every year of my favorite book of all time "to kill a mockingbird." harper lee is now only a friend and resident of my district but this and has touched the world is second to the bible in terms of the number of copies and languages around the world. every year i make it a point* to read "to kill a mockingbird". . .

book the book was not able to contain those stories and so, in this book as a collection of people i encountered and subsequently created the lines. but both books are seeking to answer one question which is to

this and in this second book, some of the chapters deal with people who not with these particular lines but try to put more of these on the map but failed or people who have tried in some cases are currently trolleying to change some of those lines. if you all got a handout should look like this these are the names of the people that i've looked into. a number of them i will be talking about tonight but i wanted you have a copy so leader when we do questions it can help formulate questions or help others follow what you're talking about. what intrigued me about all these people was that none of them come into effect as far as i know, no person ever said when i grow by one to establish a state line. [laughter] but, what i found is that all

these people have a quest, their own a personal quest that somehow ended up impacting where the line is today. if you look at these names or the names on your hand out, you will see that some of them are famous, and some of them are not famous, and some of them you've heard of but you don't really know why, nor did i read a don't know if i will be able to make this point. daniel webster etcoff maine. what did he ever really do? most of us don't know. i didn't before i started. stephen douglass, who is in the middle of this map and number of times to be to abraham lincoln. what else? some of them are people that we've heard of, but i've discovered that what i heard wasn't quite the whole story or in some cases was simply wrong. if you look to rhode island you

will see roger williams. i was taught in school roger williams founded rhode island to establish tolerance. true enough. but i didn't know is that he did it for religious reasons. he wasn't kicked out the massachusetts colony because he was a lucey tuzee liberal guy but rather because he was to puritan for the puritans. [laughter] i will give you a quick example, there were other incidents in massachusetts the colonial charter that created the colony begins with the words charles by the grace of god king of england and roger williams said how do we know he has the grace of god? we don't know who we and who does not have the grace of god and therefore do we have the right to take the land from these natives and his fellow puritans said roger, but he wouldn't be quiet and eventually things like that got him kicked

out. another name that is very misunderstood, and i want to take a few moments to talk about it because it is a springboard to the larger issue i want to kind of following this discussion tonight is mason and dixon, the famous line that they've contributed to the map, the mason and dixon's line believed as the separation of the states from the slave states absolutely incorrect. [laughter] that's the mason-dixon line. it's not a line, its 3-cd lines. it was created or surveyed by mason and dixon to s best they could mitigate conflicts in the colonial documents the creative pennsylvania, maryland and delaware. now they don't know but it could be the phrase dixie comes from

the name jeremiah dixon but jeremiah dixon was not a southerner, he wasn't even an american. charles mason and jeremiah dixon were very eminent british scientists, and to get mason and dixon to come over to become survey years of the line is the equivalent of getting mozart to play at the prom. [laughter] they came in 1763 before the revolution. well, in 1763, there was no prohibition of slavery in any of the colonies and in fact slavery existed in most if not all of the colony's. so the question becomes where do we get the phrase mason-dixon line as we are referring to the states and the slave states, the answer begins here the louisiana purchase in 1803, president jefferson made this purchase and very soon a question of rose

what about slavery in this new region? it wasn't until 1820 that got result in what's called the missouri compromise. this compromise offered by henry clay, and it is published a line. the key word is lined. the missouri compromise is a line at 36 degrees and 30 minutes it was an extension, give or take given some surveying of the boundary from virginia and below kentucky come and it said that no new state or territory north of the 36 degrees, 30 minutes can have slavery with the exception of misery, that being the compromise. after that was established and this is the earliest i could find. it may have already been in the news before that. i found a reference by john randolph the congressman from virginia which is the earliest reference i could find to the

mason-dixon line as a line dividing states from slave states. randolph said on the floor of the congress we who belong to that unfortunate portion of this confederacy which is south of the mason-dixon line in the east of the allegheny mountains have to make up our mind to perish or we must resort to the measures we first opposed the british aggression and usurpations to the sort of interesting as early as 1824 in fact earlier already out in the open was the idea of southern independence from the union leader to be called secession. so it was at that point we start seeing this shorthand roof of the mason-dixon line but if you look at the map, you will notice parts of the areas east are north of the mason-dixon line. a delaware goes up a little of the dixon line and what is now

west virginia that china was still virginia as a whole can handle sticking at between it and ohio north of the line, and you may be able to see that new hampshire i have a kind of checkerboard color. in new hampshire did not officially abolished slavery until the civil war. so it's really shorthand became our language. but i want to talk about it because slavery is one of the two underlining elements that i want to follow to light through the people that because of slavery established a great deal of lines on the american matt, and also to talk about another underlining element that can to be intertwined with slavery, and that is the vision of this man, thomas jefferson. in 1784, the congress and signed thomas jefferson the task of coming up with a way to create new states.

it's not in the constitution, so we needed some kind of method for doing so. this was the proposal for new states that jefferson handed in, probably the first thing to street q. well that isn't what we got. [laughter] nor do we keep most of those names although two of them have kind of survived. but jefferson, what's intriguing to me is jefferson had a question as well, and when he issued this report and made this suggestion, she made a statement that you may not quite follow everything that he's suggesting here and i will get into that right after, you will hear the question and recognize the quest of thomas jefferson. with respect to the new states, the question to stand simply in this form, may be a ultramontane territory, that means west of the allegheny mountains and the

deep delete to be disposed of so as to create the most immediate benefit to the inhabitants of the maritime states, these are the darker green states along the east. the plan would be laying it off into two or more states only. good faith requires us to put the question and it's just form hal made the territories of the union be disposed of so as to produce the greatest degree of happiness to its inhabitants, there is that quest. jefferson had two things in mind with happiness. one was much smaller states than we ended up with. he believed a state was too big, it would end up containing people from too diverse groups, and would eventually crumble. he knew of what he was speaking because his state, virginia at the point in time included what

is now virginia, kentucky and west virginia, and was not a happy state and in fact it leader broke up. kentucky was seated right around this time. west virginia not until the civil war. but the other thing jefferson was talking about was who controls the senate. all those maritime states the talked about, the darker green states on the map have rivers and waterways that flow to the atlantic. west of the appellation the waterways flow unless they go directly into the gulf, they ultimately find their way to the mississippi river. and at that point in time, the mississippi river was controlled by spain in what is now tennessee since it had not yet been a state they proclaim themselves a state without congress' approval, franklin, and they talked about proclaiming themselves a republic called franklin and opening negotiations with spain for the navigation along the mississippi river.

so congress had to get its act in your pronto, and they also wanted to -- the issue would be in terms of spain and things like that, who would control the river? the biggest provision -- i guess the first question i want to point out is when did the congress began to tinker with the founding fathers' vision? we hear a lot today of tinkering or strengthen the founding fathers' vision. it began 18 days after jefferson handed in his report. they started to tinker with it. but the biggest change came three years later when congress passed the northwest ordinance. that divided the area in light green which was called the northwest territories. and in this period they also started creating and laying out what became the future boundaries for kentucky, tennessee, alabama and mississippi. as you can see, they didn't

follow jefferson's visiones all coming and as you can see some of these lines are in fact the lines that excess in the seats today for illinois, indiana and ohio. you can also see who controls the senate because if you add up the states we have in this region today, they do not equal the number of states in the maritime side. this was probably the biggest gerrymandering in the history of the united states. two of the lines are not lines we have today, and so the next question is what happened to that horizontal flying and vertical line through leak michigan? this man happened. jesse holley affected more state lines than any other person with the exception of stephen douglas. but jesse how we did it from jail. [laughter] he was a former merchant in western new york and depended on the mohawk river to transport

the flour to the markets in the east. at the time the river wasn't fully navigable and the company that controlled the navigation on the shipping company had promised the merchants moving into western new york that they would improve the navigation. but they didn't. and jesse all the and probably others went bankrupt and when you go bankrupt in those years, you go to the debtor's prison. while he was in debtor's prison, he wrote a series of lengthy articles that he published in newspapers using a pseudonym because the debtor's prison wasn't good for the resume in which he described an idea that he had come and that was the erie canal. and now jesse wholley was in the first person to imagine such a canal, but by the way in -- in box number one -- what did i do?

let's go back. here we go. that is the erie canal. it begins in buffalo at the eastern end of lake erie and it crosses through western new york to albany where it meets the hudson river and then it goes down to the port at new york. so it turns all of the great lakes into a highway of commerce from the midwest to the atlantic ocean. ha leni the geography of western new york so well and the geology the underground structures so well and the hydrology so well that he broke these reports with so much detail, and they're willing to come in the up book links, that the clinton governor of new york used the reports as his bible in getting the legislature of new york to fund the erie canal, and it was expensive. those opposed called it clinton's deutsch, but the erie

canal altered the proposed boundaries or the existing boundaries of every state your future state a round of the great lakes, beginning first -- i'm sorry, this button. pennsylvania was negotiating its boundary with new york, and when it concluded them, it ended up with a little tab at the western end of pennsylvania. that tab gives it a port on lake erie. just below box three, you will see the red line is the line from the ordinance of 1787 that congress had established but then with the erie canal idea, congress moved the border of indianan north 10 miles to give it a port at garrey. you will also see ohio's border moved north, but it is in the street 10 miles. why didn't congress moved north

10 miles? the answer is converse didn't move it, though how you did, and we will come back to that in a moment. [laughter] box five and six on the map are over in that box to the left. that's wisconsin. there were two changes made to the territory of wisconsin deutsch to the erie canal. one was this western boundary number five was taken away from the future state of wisconsin and given to the future state would be created to its west, which is minnesota, and that provided minnesota with a port at duluth, and then the number six shows the of the peninsula which extends off wisconsin. it was removed from wisconsin and given to michigan because of that line down there between ohio and michigan. when ohio wrote its constitution for statehood in i believe 1803, they suspected that this line

due east from the bottom of lake michigan and the ordinance of 1787, keep in mind just because it on paper doesn't mean people know what it really is, but they suspected it would cut off the western river in ohio from its port where it empties into lake erie tolino commesso described the northern border little differently. they describe it as going from the northern end of the day, the top of toledo, to the bottom of the point of lake michigan stopping when it reaches the indianan boundary. that is why ohio has a slightly angled line. congress didn't have -- and what they're doing and recognized ohio made a little shift. they didn't see it as that big of a deal until the 1830's, when this man became the governor of michigan.

steven mason was 19-years-old when president jackson appointed him to be the secretary of the territory of michigan. in fact that made him the governor because the governor at that point had basically gone fishing. the people in michigan were outraged and they sent letters to the president saying please, get rid of this kid, and should there was a man as the governor. so mason had a quest coming and it was to show that he was a man and that he had the moxie to lead this state. when he became first of this in effect governor and later the actual territorial governor, we are now in the early 1830's there were a lot more canals being built because of the erie canal, and one in particular was called the wabash erie canal. it connected the wabash river where the circle is on the map

to the maumee river. with that it is create a waterway through the entire hinterland of the united states from, i will start at the bottom and this is now looking at this map. if you start at new orleans you go up the mississippi to the ohio river to the wabash river, through the erie canal to the maumee river into lake erie, through lake erie to the erie canal to the hudson to the ocean. that is an incredible highway, and the hub is toledo. [laughter] so steven mason was the first governor of, talking stila territory of michigan, to challenge that adjustment that ohio made, and the governor of ohio, robert lucas said we are a state, you are a territory.

you cannot alter a state line without our consent. i'm a preceding things enormously here. [laughter] mason said whose army is going to call vv to stop us and he said my army is going to stop. he called up ohio's fallujah and we get to the militia face-to-face in what is known as the war which almost sparked the combat but didn't because the congress quickly intervened and said how about this, we will give you this peninsula coming off wisconsin. hardly anyone even living there. [laughter] and if we do that how about you let ohio have its way. again, to simplify, michigan finally said okay, we will take the deal. robert lucas went on to become the territorial governor of iowa

and was in that capacity that we begin to return quite to thomas jefferson. lucas, too request. he was quite a character and so i would like to take a moment to read three excerpts from the times of robert lucas. the first is from the cleveland herald in 1838 comes a point of 1838 is this is after he has won this dispute with michigan and had been appointed to become the territorial governor of ohio. governor lucases of the most deserving men and the party, and when we dealt lot of or approved of the territory of iowa. he's an intelligent western pioneer. isn't that nice? the second is a letter that lucas wrote many years earlier during the war 1812 when he was a young officer and wrote this

letter to a fellow officer. what's important to keep in mind is the words you're hearing he put in writing. she rode never was there a more patriotic army that had it more completely in their power to accomplish every object of their desire than the present and it must be now sunken in disgrace for want of a general lack their hand. neither was the mnf talent as there are some say and do the cushing foley opposed by an assault or treacherous commander. first of all, the grammar is imperfect because this man was self educated but smart. second, you put that in writing you could get in a lot of trouble. but this was a man who as we saw with michigan and ohio, and as we see here back in the war of 1812, a pioneer which is to say she would go and get what he wanted, and example number three

is from an ohio paper in 1832, and the plant is 1832 is this was before the conflict with michigan altogether. when the colonel of the regimen 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 of his hands and nothing could be got, he was put in jail for the debt and then issued the orders for his regiment to rescue him from the custody of the law. and he had to make good on his debt but this is one baldheaded guy but by the time he became that and now the territorial governor of iowa, he still had

all that in him that he learned to do it within the ground rules when he became -- let me go back one. when he became the governor of iowa, ironically he immediately encountered an identical boundary conflict that he had had in ohio. this is it in the boundary of the southern port of fallujah and at the northern border of misery. the only difference was that he was not a territorial governor opposing the governor of the state, and opposing the way that the boundary had been surveyed compared to the way that it might have been stipulated. i won't go into the details. the point is lucas one. steven mason did not. she played his cards differently and was much more impatient and

ultimately on yellow one that conflict. lucas also wanted a different northern border for iowa. these lines actually make sense in a way. the fall of the mississippi river to the minnesota river. then there's a straight line over there on the northwest the tics and referred to the big river and follows the big sioux river to the missouri river. it's not a logical but in fact in its day it made sense in comparison to other states in the northwest jerkily. if that were on a lot it wouldn't look all the different. what when iowa camp for statehood with the proposed border, and samuel, a congressman from ohio opposed it, and what's important is in opposing it, he reminded the contras about jefferson's original vision of 1784 and how the congress in 1787 straight from the division. he then went on to say what has

been the effect of this change? the vast region between the ohio, the leaks and the mississippi, goes illinois, wisconsin and michigan has been reduced from 12 to 14 states to five uppermost that can never have 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. he then proposed to streamline border. iowa had a nonvoting delegate their who opposed this straight line. what's interesting to me about this he said that line you create it is just an arbitrary line and the question i want to

deal with is was it an arbitrary line and the answer to that begins with this man, stephen douglas. douglas affected, as i suggested before, more lines than any other person on the map. she's one of those people that she did david lincoln, right? he did. he also beat lincoln in the 1858 senate race and douglas won that election but douglas also had a class, his was to become the president of the united states and he tried to do that by presenting the nation from the fighting over slavery. so it's true stephen douglas the issue of slavery and vision of thomas jefferson begins to become intertwined and it starts here. the united states won the mexican war and 1840 and in

doing so, the treaty that ended the war, the united states acquired this land in yellow. very quickly the question came up as it did in the louisiana purchase, what about slavery? because southerners could see probably you can, too, the misery compromise line wasn't going to work anymore or maintain parity between the states and slave states. many of the state lines that douglas affected dealt with that compromise line and dealt with in this bill. the kansas nebraska act of 1954, which douglas wrote. in the snap, the red line as the missouri compromise. but the main thing about the kansas nebraska act is that it's said we are not going to use the line anymore. we are no longer going to regulate where slavery can be or not be. from here on out, new states and territories will decide for

themselves whether or not to have slavery. it's called popular sovereignty. it was extremely controversial. there was a huge dustup, and when they finally voted and enacted the kansas nebraska act, not too many people noticed during the dustup, douglas had made the change in his proposal. initially he proposed the southern border of kansas at 36 degrees, 30 minutes. it made sense. it made it adjacent to the top of texas which entered the union 1945. it followed along the line of misery but then he entered an amendment and wrist that by one-half of 1 degrees. that left a gap. that gap is now the panhandle of oklahoma. and what does that have to do with the northern border of iowa?

by creating this baseline at 37 degrees whether intentionally or not i can't tell you because stephen douglas never spoke treacly to what his intentions were but what evolves over the the coming years were eight years prairie states with six ackley three degrees a tight. kansas, nebraska, north dakota and south dakota and just to the west using the st baseline mountainous states, less good for a culture with 4 degrees of height, color river, wyoming and montana. if you look at i love it has almost exactly 3 degrees of height. more to the point what we see here is a jefferson's vision of the states being created from a mathematical finally emerged home in asahel -- the map. hastert frequently making the

new states with 7 degrees of wit. dart dakota, south dakota, wyoming, colorado, washington and oregon all have 7 degrees. washington and oregon, you know, give or take because of the coast. others come close three it so we have a prototype of justin jefferson so we go from jefferson to robert lucas to samuel to stephen douglas and jefferson returns to the american map. well, here he is again. when you leave here today, you will know why stephen douglas was famous before he dated a one-term congressman who lost the election and two years later ran for president. the other piece of legislation that dealt with slavery that stephen douglass was a great participant of was the compromise of 1850. there was a package of five and he was involved in two of them in particular, but the one i

want to talk about is the bill but involved with texas. when it entered the union it had been republican was larger than the texas we have today. it continued further north and all the way up to wyoming, tapering it as it went. it relinquished all of its land north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes because the missouri compromise was still affecting the antislavery and wanted to keep it so they let the united states have that land but it still included all of the land east of the rio grande which is today the eastern half of mexico and also still included a whole lot of debt it had occurred in its years as a republic. so 1850, this texas bill paid texas enough money so that it could get out of debt and return this land that is today part of mexico and in those two lines that defined the land that we

got from texas christa pushed by stephen douglas. now it's no trick to understand that horizontal line at the beginning of the purchase that leaves bill pass so but the horizontal line, why did he put in this line where it is? that's 103 degrees west longitude. 154100, what is wrong with 103 degrees? the answer to that surfaced in 1861 win de mexico territory was divided in our group to create the arizona territory. the delegate from the mexican territory was a man and john watts, and it was through him that the line dividing the territory to create arizona was proposed. a congressman from new york,

william wheeler said the only reason he put this line here is it continues from the line separating colorado and utah so you get a nifty four corner of thing going on. walz disagreed with that, and the first thing he pointed out is it created equal to a result of mexico and arizona. but he also spoke to the issue of race, and that's where it it gets interesting for me. one of the mexican families and what had been the mexican province in mexico to get as the united states approach in the civil war, francisco went up and down the rio grande rally which

is where all of that population was centered. urging them to remain loyal to the union when the civil war broke out in fact arizona did become a state but it became a confederate state, and it didn't define itself along the horizontal, the southern half was a reza and the northern half as mexico. the union sent to troops in to reclaim that land from confederate troops defending it and there were several battles all of which won by the union troops and so this area was claimed by the union. a number of those were your friend. many of them were darker skinned, and so this is what [inaudible] also spoke to in terms of this

horizontal vertical boundary that he proposed. i find this side fascinating. there were men who by living constantly in the open air exposed to the rays of the burning sun help become pawns in complexion. he is sidestepping a brace. the treaty stipulation between the united states and public of mexico have invested them with all the privileges and immunities of american citizens. the first duty, which the government owes treat people and it's to give military and civil protection. in this case, the government is under a double obligation. mexico was compelled to relinquish her right to a portion of her territory and to protect a portion of her people. injured to her by 10,000 pleasant memories and hopes and a double the endured by 10,000

painful forebodings for the future. with painful for loadings for the future? well, they can be described in what is a five letter word a very dirty word among the hispanic population along the rio grande. i will just spell that, t-e-x-a-s, texas. [laughter] the people that had come in one, two, three independent republic and then became stephen the union, and now they were beginning to migrate to this area of arizona. the hispanic population was nervous for their culture and their future. if you look at the geometry of this line that john walz proposed, it puts the rio grande as best as possible in the center of the mexican territory and the largest population center santa fe is 3 degrees

from texas and from arizona creating a future state 6 degrees wide and at the same time arizona roughly six degrees five in the amount of area that it would entail. for this geometry to work, you had to have a line at 103 degrees west longitude, the line originally proposed. in my opinion, the line is the most brilliantly located line on the american map. now douglas's giffords for controversial particularly the kansas nebraska act and the scrapping of government regulation slavery and there was an enormous amount of suspicion and the country and from up to the civil war about efforts by northerners and efforts by southerners and one of those people voicing the suspicion was senator thomas finton of

mozambique. senator bentsen was the great uncle of thomas finton diprete paynter, but senator bentsen painted a very different picture, and he fought stephen douglas kansas nebraska act was part of a conspiracy. i want to read to you what he said on the floor of the senate when they were debating the kansas nebraska act as he is describing the conspiracy. i must look for the real object, the particular purpose for which it was manufactured, the kansas nebraska act, and the grand movement of which it is the basis. first, the mission of mr. gets into santa ana. we will talk about him in a moment. it must have commenced about the time of this bill. it must have been conceived about time of this bill. $50 million for as much mexican territory on our southern border house would make five or six states.

second, the mission of the ambassador to madrid, $250 million for cuba. we will talk about cuba in imminent. this nebraska bill is only an entering wedge to the future enterprises, something in a structured for a particular purpose the steppingstone to a grant movement which is to develop itself finton this country of ours. what senator bentsen was singing is that he saw a nightmare in the offing and was based on three bad dreams. bad dream number one was the destin purchase. james gadson also had a quest. he was a southerner and i would say this particular in his adult life was to preserve the culture and the lifestyle of his country as he saw pushes euphemistic he

wanted to preserve slavery. as a young man he was an officer in the military and repeatedly tried to ingratiate himself to people such as john c. calhoun he may not have been the brightest who pulled in the chandelier because he didn't pick up on them and though i won't get into that at least at this moment, his mission to mexico got a little filed because of some of the things he did. but when he was dispatched by the united states government to go to mexico, it was to buy land for a railroad to create a transcontinental railroad that what part of the transcontinental railroad being planned for the middle of the country. we talked today about big business and its involvement with government and the government dillinger out or the amount of money to big business has in campaigns. at this point in his life, james

was a real road president and in 1853 the taxpayers in this country spent millions of dollars to acquire land so that the railroads could build a railroad that they could draw great profits from. but that was not his nightmare. it was the fact we didn't need the land to create the southern continental railroad, transcontinental railroad. the white line that you see is the route he showed the senate could be built without making this purchase and it ended at san francisco which is a great port. this one he was talking about in the death scene diego which was at that point in time a military base and went through the land whether it was no commerce, no agriculture or future for agriculture. why were they making a purchase way down there? he suspected there was a hidden agenda. that suspicion was fed by the

fact that he tried to purchase all that land in orange and it wasn't $50 million as he sat in his speech use of the rest spent to $65 million. mexico didn't want to sell any land to the united states, but they were broke from the mexican war so santa ana was able to persuade his people to sell just enough land to raise just enough money so they could arm themselves and defend themselves against the people they were selling of the land. so too can see the purchase again on this map but he wanted a great deal more. then there was bad dream of number two. that was the kansas-nebraska act. by letting people decide for themselves, he feared as did most of that kansas would choose to become a slave state and nebraska would be a free state.

turnon after great deal of violence and bloodshed that kansas became a free state but benton had no way of knowing that and 1854. california had been admitted to the union as a single great big state that did not have slavery but the had been debated becoming too states and there was a movement afoot to divide california into two states. someone prominent in that movement by the way was james. the mexican territory had not yet been decided, but there was in the wind the idea that it needed to fight horizontally, and as we mentioned a moment back during the civil war that effort was made. so that bentsen had the fear that there was a whole thing going on in the west regarding the slave states and free states. this is the nightmare number three. cuba. he mentioned the ambassador trying to buy it from spain which turned out didn't work

out. but there was a movement, a secret plan what they discussed in the newspapers to raise a private army and invade cuba and in sleaved those who were colored either black or mixed blood and offer cuba to the united states. this wasn't the plan of a kook, this was being organized by the governor of mississippi, and was less secret than the bay of pigs. when you are seeing our news clippings from before the effort was launched. the one on the tops as the general's contemplated descend on cuba. i love on the bottom right it says the movement further preparations for the invasion of cuba. it was widely discussed in the

papers but a delegate because officially the government didn't know about it or shouldn't have to stop it. right before wittman launched his invasion, president franklin pierce told him don't do it because the acted just been passed and it was an uproar he feared the added uproar would bring to read this a taken together bad dream the number one, to come and recreated this nightmare that there could be a build of slave states large enough to defend itself and sustain itself as an independent nation to the commission, so in effect he wasn't crazy for hovering close.

there are countless people who've contributed to the state boundaries and aside from all the white man i've been talking about a lot to just quickly mentioned that there were people from all walks of life. there were native americans such as the chief who sought to create a native american state called sequoia which would occupy the eastern side of oklahoma. there was sequoia pencil to the negotiations that established the boundary between oklahoma and arkansas fittingly enough that is event line border. the chief standing there impact on what is the northern border of nebraska. there were african-americans. edward who sought to make

oklahoma a majority state, benjamin along with andrew surveyed the boundary line for the district of columbia of 1791. that's quite the gig free black man and 71. he was assassinating figure and even today, eleanor holmes norton seeks to create voting rights for the district of columbia but it's also proposed state heard bill the would alter the boundary by creating a federal enclave separate of the district of columbia or the state of new columbia. there were hispanics i mentioned francisco. this is jose who was the leading voice for puerto rico becoming a state. they didn't follow his a device that they did elect him the governor right after, so they had a great deal of the admiration and there were some women. they were hard to get

information on because they were not getting a seat at the table. i think they had a deal more impact on influenced for them i know of at least, but among them , her efforts failed on behalf of the hawaiian nation to change the boundaries of the united states and she was involved in the convention of kansas and once again eleanor holmes norton. to me all these people and the quest create a bureau of ongoing progression of americans. and why they did what they did and when and where they did that turns the merrill when you step away from minden to a portrait of we are today, and that is what this book of mine is all about. thank you very much. [applause]

[inaudible] [laughter] >> the bouck connects to the fallin and a lot of people say that as vermont, the green mountain boys. the green mountain boys came into existence because at the time there was no vermont. new hampshire always believed the land was part of new hampshire but the king of england gave it in 1763i believe to new york. by that time, new hampshire have already sold land in what is today vermont and deeded it in

new hampshire, the new york started selling in some cases the same land and the beating it in new york. some of it was owned by ethan allen and his brothers among others and the did in new hampshire and the for the vigilante group called the green mountain boys that went after these new yorkers a riveting. ethan allen had never built furniture by the way, never made furniture. [laughter] but he burned a good deal of it. [laughter] and he was a tough character when the revolution broke out he was also a smart character and fought i complete my cards differently with the green mountain boys and those are the green mountain boys we learned about in high school history. so there is the connection with a hampshire.

yes, ma'am. >> [inaudible] >> oklahoma was originally a territory called indian territory that was used when the ethnically cleansed the indians from the southeastern states. they were shipped out to reservations in oklahoma. approaching the turn-of-the-century the groundwork was laid earlier and that meant congress had to change the way that land was titled. was held by tribes and the enactment 1899 keefer citizenship to indians and those tribes in return for the tribe's three disturbing the land so it was titled by individual indians which then enabled it to be sold and broken up.

it's sort of a complicated thing. what is fascinating though to me most about oklahoma's steve hood because the lines were pretty much in place from the surrounding states is there were three movements taking place virtually simultaneously. the first was the attempt by the native american tribes to create their own state to join together and they had a convention to do this and at the same time of they were doing it the trouble and was the eastern end is when edward and others were urging through advertisements or brochures african-americans to migrate to the newly open land in western oklahoma so it could become an african-american majority state to escape persecution mainly in the south. and theodore roosevelt, the president, told both sides

neither of these is going to happen, i'm going to veto it. and then there was a fired convention which was basically -- well, it included native american and whites but blacks were not welcome that created the state of oklahoma which wanted to invest in their constitution white supremacy. and to do that, they had to define a white person and they did it in a way that indians were white people. but other delegates said teddy roosevelt is never going to sign a small so they backed away from that and creative oklahoma and the first act of the oklahoma legislature was to segregate the cars of oklahoma. >> will do discuss the relationship between thomas benton and john fremont in california and also may be

brigham young in utah and the mormons? >> fremont i believe was a son-in-law so benton was the backer of fremont and a general in the united states army and a bit of a loose cannon and he probably wouldn't be -- the history books at all because there were efforts to court martial him. they don't ultimately affect the boundary. you asked about someone else crux brigham young was a mormon leader. he led the largest contingent from illinois to utah in 1847, 48 and envisioned the creation of a state which was headed been created it would have filled pretty much everything but california.

congress wasn't going to let a state like that be created. they weren't happy about the size of california or texas, but texas and california created themselves. i don't have time to go into each one of those but they are in the books. but i will tell you interesting about brigham young and desert it he dispatched a mormon elder to form a port at the furthest navigable point on the colorado river. it empties into the gulf of california. if you look at your map that long split comes down from california, that water between that and mexico is the gulf of california. that's where the colorado river ends. today there isn't much there because of irrigation and things training the river but backend was navigable all the way to a certain point and that is where the created the part called coalville and that was important

for the commerce to the mormons and what they hoped could be but even in utah it was in arizona as it turned out once they created the lines. after the civil war, payback time to arizona for trying to become a confederate state and the western end of the company was given to nevada and became the trying gluck the bottom of nevada. one of the reasons was this important landing on the colorado river and the navigable point. you can see it today, but you have to go under 300 or 400 feet of water because the hoover dam on the kallur river created lake mead and being right on that channel it's a the bottom of lake mead. ..