How the States Got Their Shapes Too.

Mark Stein.

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 partic.i.p.ated 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 in The Devil and Daniel Webster? Stephen Vincent Benet's tale may well be why Webster remains famous. But Daniel Webster never debated with Satan-at least not in public. He did, however, create one state's lines.

Most of those who partic.i.p.ated 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 sp.a.w.ned, 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 pa.s.sion 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 t.i.tle, Why Is Iowa? "I liked your first t.i.tle," 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, and connected me with, a descendant of Jesse Hawley, the subject of one of the book's chapters. Trudy Hawley's family records provided information not otherwise available. I was also delighted to be reunited with cartographer Rob McCaleb of XNR Productions, who had created the maps for my previous book. Once again he has turned words into maps that reduced me to one word: "exactly." His geodetic eye also spotted an element in the battles fought by James Brittain that had gone unnoted by historians of North Carolina and Georgia's violent boundary dispute, leading to its being noted for the first time in this book.

I also want to express my grat.i.tude to the Bender Library at American University for the privileges it extended to me. And a special thanks to Professor William W. E. Slights-a profound influence on my life when I was his student at the University of Wisconsin, and a dear friend ever since-who generously shared his knowledge of colonial era English abbreviations. I also received valuable a.s.sistance from Robert S. Davis Jr., Frank Drohan, and Paul Schmidt, in addition to Lauren Leeman of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Kari Schleher of the University of New Mexico Library, and Arlene Balkansky of the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress. Ms. Balkansky, in addition to all her help with the resources of the Library of Congress, devoted time to reading each chapter as it was first drafted, spotting textual errors and even problems in the flow and arc of the draft. All of this not only exceeded the duties in her job description but also those in our wedding vows from over thirty years ago.

RHODE ISLAND.

ROGER WILLIAMS.

The Boundary of Religion.

It has fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship.... All the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of these Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks be forced to come to the ship's private prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.

-ROGER WILLIAMS, 16541.

Roger Williams believed in the separation of Church and State ... for religious reasons. A devout Puritan minister, he fervently believed that Christians violated the word of G.o.d when they mandated religious acts.2 Williams's views were too pure for the Puritans. They kicked him out of Ma.s.sachusetts. In the wilderness lands of the Narragansett Indians, Williams arranged to create a haven for people of all faiths (and of no faith), which came to be called Rhode Island.

The story of Rhode Island's founding for purposes of religious freedom typically omits Williams's religious motive. Teaching his reasoning in a public school risks, ironically, crossing the boundary between church and state. Aside from that, his religious motive has often been omitted because it makes his achievement less purely secular, less "American."3 The American quest for a purely secular government reveals the odd couple who became the nation's cultural parents: the Enlightenment and the Puritans.4 Consequently, the church/state conflicts Williams confronted in creating Rhode Island continue to this day.

Roger Williams (ca. 1603-1683) (photo credit 1.1).

One of the first issues Williams faced began as soon as he arrived in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1631: who owns the earth? Did the king of England, ruling by divine right, have the authority to claim possession of land upon which non-Christians lived? Williams maintained that the answer was no. Here again, his reasons were religious: a state that, on the basis of Christianity, a.s.serts authority over a land where non-Christians live violates the Christian (meaning Puritan, as interpreted by Williams) necessity of separating church and state.

Williams's view was not likely to sit well with British authorities, upon whom the Ma.s.sachusetts colonists depended for protection. Williams also believed that the Puritan Church, to remain pure of the corruption in the Church of England, should officially separate from the national church-also a view that Ma.s.sachusetts officials wished he would keep to himself. In 1633 Governor John Winthrop noted in his journal (referring to himself in the third person): Mr. Williams also wrote to the governor ... very submissively professing his intent ... [and] offering his book, or any part of it, to be burnt.

In 1634 the governor noted:.

Mr. Williams of Salem [has] broken his promise to us, in teaching publicly against the king's patent, and our great sin in claiming right thereby to this country.

And the year after that:.

The governor ... sent for Mr. Williams. The occasion was, for that he had taught publicly that a magistrate ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate man, for that we thereby have communion with a wicked man in the worship of G.o.d, and cause him to take the name of G.o.d in vain.

Williams was driving the governor crazy. He was also genuinely angering fellow ministers and others in the colony's power structure. This time around, he was put on trial for advocating against the Church of England, against the colony's religious laws, against the use of oaths in the name of G.o.d prior to giving testimony, and against England's right to the land. In his defense, Williams stated, "I acknowledge the particulars were rightly summed up, and I also hope that ... through the Lord's a.s.sistance, I shall be ready ... not only to be bound and banished, but to die also, in New England, as for most holy Truths of G.o.d in Christ Jesus."5 He was convicted.

The court ordered Williams to leave the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony within six weeks. Technically, he was banished for religious reasons. In reality, he was banished for secular reasons. His views undermined British authority. Here again, the events have frequently been told in a way that flips their religious/secular basis. In this instance, however, the story was given its secular spin not by postRevolutionary War Americans but by the Puritan colonists as justification for his banishment.6 Ironically, among those same colonists were some who privately sympathized with Williams-including none other than Governor Winthrop himself. "When I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land," William revealed some thirty-five years later, "Governor Mr. Winthrop privately wrote to me to steer my course toward Narragansett Bay."7 Williams arranged with the local Indians to build a homestead on a plot of land on Narragansett Bay's northeastern edge. But, as he soon learned from another private friend, this location had a boundary problem. Ma.s.sachusetts, at that time, comprised the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony and the Plymouth Colony, and the governor of the Plymouth Colony informed him that he would have to leave there, too. That governor also turned out to be a secret sympathizer. "I received a letter from my ancient friend, Mr. Winslow, then governor of Plymouth," Williams later recollected, "advising me, since I was fallen into the edge of their bounds, and they were loath to displease the Bay, to remove but to the other side of the water and there, he said, I had the country free before me."

Williams consequently relocated to the bay's western edge, where, to accommodate the arrival of his followers, he arranged with the Narragansetts for a larger area upon which to settle. Because the land he was accorded resulted from acts of kindness by native peoples and colonial governors-all ostensibly enemies-Williams accorded it a special name: Providence.

During the time that Williams was arranging to relocate outside the boundaries of the Plymouth Colony, another group of exiles arrived from Ma.s.sachusetts. Anne Hutchinson had been banished after Williams, in her case for religious beliefs that undermined the power of ministers (as opposed to Williams's beliefs, which undermined the power of magistrates). Williams welcomed Hutchinson and her followers. As he set about establishing Providence, she and her followers paid the Narragansetts for the use of land on a nearby island in the bay, known to the Indians as Aquidneck and to the British as Rhode Island. To this day, the official name of Rhode Island is "the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." And to this day, its const.i.tution a.s.serts religious freedom for religious reasons. "We, the people of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations," it begins, "grateful to Almighty G.o.d for the civil and religious liberty which He hath permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and to transmit the same, unimpaired, to succeeding generations, do ordain and establish this Const.i.tution of government."

Original Rhode Island and Providence plantations.

This intertwined religious/secular duality that remains in Rhode Island's const.i.tution also characterized Williams's efforts to establish the colony and form its government. The Narragansetts' permission to use the land carried as much weight with England as did Williams's opinions about England not having the right to claim Indian land. For Williams, however, this was a solvable problem. He would simply follow the words of Christ (Matthew 22:21) and render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. The problem had to do with identifying Caesar. The king was Charles I, but royal authority in England was under attack in a civil war being led by Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan.

In 1641 Williams opted to render unto Cromwell after Parliament enacted laws restricting the authority of the king-notably, the king's power to dissolve the Parliament and his authority over the colonies. Still, Williams had to proceed carefully. Cromwell, like the Ma.s.sachusetts Puritans, believed that Christian governments were required to protect the word of G.o.d. When Williams arrived in London in 1643, he stayed at the home of Henry Vane, a longtime friend and highly influential Puritan in Parliament. Vane disagreed with Cromwell about many things, including separation of church and state, and in time he would find himself imprisoned by Cromwell after the king had been beheaded and Cromwell had become lord protector of Great Britain. But at this early point in the struggle against the monarchy, the two had joined forces. Through Vane's offices, Williams got what he wanted: By the authority of the aforesaid Ordinance ... the Lords and Commons, give, grant and confirm to the aforesaid inhabitants of the towns of Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport, a free and absolute Charter of Incorporation, to be known by the name of the incorporation of Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett-Bay in New-England, together with full power and authority to rule themselves, and such others as shall hereafter inhabit within any part of the said tract of land, by such a form of civil government as by voluntary consent of all, or the greater part of them, they shall find most suitable to their estate and condition.

Cromwell died in 1658, and two years later the monarchy was restored under Charles II. Williams was now unsure of the validity of the parliamentary patent granting his colony its land-land that Williams theologically doubted England even had the right to grant. But once again he deemed it best to render unto Caesar-even a Caesar claiming a Christian divine right to rule. Fortunately, Charles II, uncertainly perched on the throne, was not looking for fights. Newly chartered Connecticut, however, was-since its borders included present-day Rhode Island. But Connecticut, being a Puritan colony, limited its protests when, in 1663, Charles II issued a royal charter to Rhode Island. What particularly irked Connecticut was that the boundaries of Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations were enlarged by Charles to include other outcast communities that, over the years, had settled near the communities founded by Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. The new boundaries were, with some later adjustments, the shape Rhode Island has today.

In his later years, Williams faced a fundamental church/state challenge in his relations with the colony's Quakers. He had partic.i.p.ated in a public debate of theological issues with the Quakers at their settlement in Newport. Many of the Quakers in attendance, adhering to the Inner Light that was central to their beliefs, began to pray aloud when he spoke, thereby preventing him from expressing his beliefs. Williams subsequently urged Rhode Island's government to suppress those who would suppress others. The younger generation now running the colony opted instead to take their chances, even with religious expressions others considered rude or potentially dangerous.

From the founding of Rhode Island to the present, Americans have wrestled with the question, in what instances does divine authority negate civil authority? The fact that, under the Const.i.tution, Americans agree on the validity of the question has not resulted in agreeing on the answer. From prayer in school to the teaching of evolution, to polygamy, same-s.e.x marriage, medical decisions, and even the performance of autopsies, nearly every aspect of life in the United States has confronted questions of divine versus civil authority.

Did Roger Williams know the answers? If he did, it resides in his one work that seemingly has nothing to do with church or state. In 1643 he published A Key into the Language of America: Or, An Help to the Language of the Natives in that Part of America Called New England. The t.i.tle suggests that the book is simply a guide to the language of the region's Indians. Each chapter presents a group of indigenous words and phrases, explaining their meaning within the context of the tribe's culture, noting their differences from European culture, and concluding with a scriptural reference placing that aspect of the natives' culture within the context of Christian precepts. Williams's "dictionary" was in fact a profound effort to increase understanding between the colonists and their Narragansett neighbors. As such, the most significant statement in A Key into the Language of America is its opening words: "I present you with a key.... A little key may open a box, where lies a bunch of keys." In the life of Roger Williams, there is a key.

DELAWARE, MARYLAND, PENNSYLVANIA.

AUGUSTINE HERMAN.

Why We Have Delaware.

By way of a little discourse on the supposed claim or pretence of my Lord Baltimore's patent unto our aforesaid South River or Delaware ... we utterly deny, disown, and reject any power and authority ... that may or can legally come to reduce or subdue the said river and subjects.

-AUGUSTINE HERMAN, 16591.

Delaware is a little rectangle with a scoop on top that occupies what would otherwise be the eastern end of Maryland. Since Maryland wouldn't be that big even if it included Delaware, why do we have Delaware?

We have Delaware for the same reason the world had Bohemia-the birthplace of Augustine Herman, who grew up to become the man responsible for the existence of Delaware as a separate colony. Bohemia's core was the western half of today's Czech Republic, though at times it included various adjacent regions. Its population was a mix of Germanic people (among whom many, in the wake of Martin Luther, had left the Catholic Church to become Protestants), Slavic people (who adhered to the teachings of the Orthodox Church), and a sizable number of Jews. For Bohemia, creating a sense of itself as an ent.i.ty was further complicated by the fact that it was periodically ruled by far more powerful ent.i.ties that were sometimes Catholic, sometimes Protestant.

Delaware too began as a mix of people-Dutch, Swedes, Finns, and British Marylanders-living in a region that was periodically claimed by far more powerful colonies, both Catholic and Protestant. The Dutch laid claim to Delaware in 1624. They considered it the southern end of the New Netherlands, Holland's vast North American colony that extended up from the Delaware Bay, crossed the Hudson River, and continued northeastward to the Connecticut River. England too laid claim to Delaware in its 1607 charter for Virginia, which included all the land from the top of New Jersey to the bottom of North Carolina, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. England's King Charles I, figuring Virginia could spare 12,000 or so square miles, created Maryland as a colony for Catholics in 1632. The boundaries stipulated in its royal charter included what is now Delaware.

Augustine Herman (ca. 1621-1686) (photo credit 2.1).

Even though Delaware was claimed by both Holland and England, no Europeans lived there, with the brief exception of a failed Dutch settlement in 1631. Not until 1638 did Europeans settle permanently in Delaware, and they were Swedes. In time the Swedes branched out, and Dutch settlements were established. As in Bohemia, the two primary groups were gradually joined by minority populations of other groups.

Dutch New Netherlands.

For twenty years Delaware's settlements prospered and grew, their conflicts confined to fighting local Indians and each other. But in 1659 all the settlements were threatened by the larger colony of Maryland. In August of that year, Maryland sent word to the Dutch along Delaware Bay that they must depart from the colony. The danger resulted in a response from Peter Stuyvesant, governor of the entire New Netherlands. Stuyvesant dispatched two emissaries from Manhattan: a native-born Dutchman named Resolved Waldron and a Bohemian-born immigrant, Augustine Herman. In selecting Herman, Stuyvesant made an astute choice. Herman's efforts-commencing here but enduring for the remainder of his life, and then continued by his son-displayed insights and instincts that were likely connected to the similarities Delaware shared with Bohemia.

Herman had been born in Prague in 1621, a critical time in Bohemian history. One year earlier, German Catholics had regained ruling power in the region. In the wake of this event, 36,000 Bohemian Protestants emigrated, many of them to Holland. Herman's family was among those emigrants.

Herman's parents oversaw an education that endowed their son with skills that would be of value both regardless and because of borders. He became a businessman in the import-export trade and a highly skilled cartographer and surveyor. As an adult he relocated to Manhattan, where his skills led to his becoming a member of the Board of Nine, a.s.sisting Governor Stuyvesant in his decisions and actions.

Herman's relations with Stuyvesant were b.u.mpy. Herman had, at one time, written to Stuyvesant's superiors in Holland complaining of the governor's high-handedness, vengefulness, and morals: "The basket maker's daughter, whom he seduced in Holland on a promise of marriage, coming and finding that he was already married, hath exposed his conduct even in public court."2 While the two apparently patched things up sufficiently for Stuyvesant to appoint Herman as an emissary to Maryland, here too the younger man's approach differed markedly (or more aptly perhaps, "Bohemianly") from the governor's instructions. Stuyvesant had told Herman and Waldron to a.s.sert that Lord Baltimore's demands were "contrary to the 2nd, 3rd, and 16th articles of the confederation of peace made between the Republic of England and the Netherlands in 1654." They were then to demand that Maryland, by virtue of that treaty, pay reparations and damages caused by its "frivolous demands and b.l.o.o.d.y threatenings."

Herman's report of his and Waldron's meetings with Maryland governor Josiah Fendall and the colony's proprietor, Phillip Calvert (the Maryland-based younger brother of Lord Baltimore), reveals that such demands and counterthreats were virtually absent from their discussions.3 The two emissaries did reference the 1654 treaty, but Herman's efforts were far more focused on doc.u.ments issued by England itself, which supported the view that England had long recognized the right of the Dutch to their settlements along the Delaware Bay. Most effectively, Herman cited the English charter that had created Maryland, which stated that it was to be a British colony "in a country hitherto uncultivated in the parts of America, and partly occupied by savages having no knowledge of the Divine Being." Herman argued that the land had been hitherto cultivated by people with knowledge of the Divine Being-namely, the Dutch who had attempted a settlement in 1631. Admittedly, they had been entirely wiped out by Indians within a few months, but their settlement predated Maryland's 1632 charter.

Fendall and Calvert did not buy this argument. Twenty-three years later, however, Charles II bought it, invoking it to refute a later effort by Maryland to claim Delaware. Herman thus pointed the way for future generations to defend Delaware's independence from Maryland.

Though Calvert did not cotton to the claim, he did cotton to the man who made it. His good feelings toward Herman were sufficient to defuse the preparations Maryland had been making for an invasion of Delaware. In this respect, Herman and Waldron's mission succeeded, which in itself was a considerable accomplishment.

In addition, Calvert's good feelings gave the canny Herman an opportunity to further ingratiate himself with the government of Maryland. He offered his services as a cartographer to make a detailed map of the colony and the adjoining regions for Lord Baltimore in return for a grant of land in Maryland on which he and his family could live (and thereby put some distance between himself and his frequent nemesis, Peter Stuyvesant).

Herman's offer was accepted, and the grant of land was made shortly thereafter. But not just any land. Lord Baltimore, himself quite canny, saw an opportunity presented by Herman's offer to acquire more than just a map. He issued Herman a grant for land in which the eastern portion lay in the disputed area but the western portion was indisputably within Maryland. Lord Baltimore was thus undermining Herman's loyalty to the Dutch. Herman, for his part, named the tract of land Little Bohemia-which is exactly what it was.

It took ten years for Herman to complete the map he had promised-but they were a particularly eventful ten years, not conducive to concentration. During that period he relocated his family to the land he had been granted. England and Holland went to war, resulting in the ouster of all Dutch authorities in the New Netherlands. Charles II deeded most of Holland's former claims to his brother, the Duke of York-but, aiming to avoid conflict with his Maryland colony, the king did not include Delaware in the land deeded to his brother. Delaware was not, however, subsumed under the government of Maryland, since Catholic and Anglican tensions were so hair-trigger tense in England at that time. Consequently, the Duke of York became the de facto proprietor of Delaware, extending the "Duke of York's Laws" to the region and overseeing the appointment of its British officials. With this ascendancy of British rule, Herman opted to become a citizen of Maryland.

The map Herman ultimately delivered in 1670 was a masterpiece of its era. So appreciative was Lord Baltimore that he granted additional land to Herman, who now possessed some 30,000 acres.

Meanwhile, rapid political change continued. In 1672 England and Holland went to war again. This time the Dutch initially ousted the British from Delaware and other settlements. But in 1674 control once again reverted to England. A year later, Lord Baltimore died and his t.i.tle pa.s.sed to his son Charles Calvert, who repressed the rights of the colony's Protestants, among whom was Herman.

It was in this era that aging Augustine Herman pa.s.sed the "Bohemian" baton to his eldest son, Ephraim. One year after Calvert became proprietor of Maryland and commenced repressing the rights of Protestants, Ephraim Herman became a court official in Delaware. Five years later, he was at the helm, navigating Delaware's status in the wake of the region's next major political shift-the 1681 British charter creating Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania's charter caused immediate conflict with Maryland regarding the location of their mutual border. This conflict raised William Penn's concerns regarding Pennsylvania's access to the sea. His colony's only waterway to the ocean was the Delaware River (Pennsylvania's eastern boundary) down into the Delaware Bay (dividing Delaware and New Jersey), then out to the Atlantic. If Maryland should prevail in its continued claim that Delaware was within its borders, it could block Pennsylvania's access to the sea.

Penn, whose Quaker beliefs prohibited warfare and the forms of aggression that led to war, did not seek to possess Delaware. The semicircular top that Delaware has today originated in Pennsylvania's charter, when Penn urged that it include a southeastern border with a twelve-mile radius away from the Dutch town of New Castle, so as not to create conflict. He did, however, seek proprietorship over Delaware, to a.s.sure that Pennsylvania had free navigation to the sea. By seeking proprietorship, Penn left Maryland no choice but to contest the issue again. For Delaware's mostly Protestant residents, the choice of incorporation into Maryland under the anti-Protestant Charles Calvert or proprietorship under the pacifist William Penn was a no-brainer.

England, not wanting colonial conflicts it could avoid, ruled in favor of Penn. In granting him proprietorship over Delaware, England implicitly recognized Delaware as an ent.i.ty unto itself. The Board of Trades and Plantations, which arbitrated the case for the king, cited the reasoning first posited by Augustine Herman regarding Maryland's charter excluding land previously cultivated by Europeans.

Following this act, Penn journeyed to Delaware, where he was officially greeted at New Castle by John Moll and Ephraim Herman, who presented Penn with the key to the town's fort. Augustine Herman, now an elderly man quietly living out his final years on his vast manor, had succeeded in achieving what Bohemia did not.

FLORIDA, GEORGIA.

ROBERT JENKINS'S EAR.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame.

Official persons ... endeavored to deny, to insinuate in their vile newspapers, that Jenkins lost his ear nearer home, and not for nothing.... Sheer calumnies we now find. Jenkins' account was doubtless abundantly emphatic; there is no ground to question the substantial truth of him and it.

-THOMAS CARLYLE1.

In today's society, people often refer to "fifteen minutes of fame," pop artist Andy Warhol's notion that ma.s.s media have become so prevalent that everyone will be in the spotlight at some point in their lives. Warhol actually said that in the future everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame, but in fact there is nothing new in this phenomenon. Ma.s.s media have created fleeting fame for as long as ma.s.s media have existed-which is to say, since the printing press or even the politically charged graffiti of ancient Rome.

Such was the case with one Robert Jenkins, the captain of a British merchant ship in the eighteenth century. At a key moment, the newspapers of the day put the spotlight on Jenkins-technically, on his ear, or more technically, on the absence of his ear-and in so doing provoked a war between England and Spain. Though the war had nothing to do with Florida and Georgia, it resulted in the boundary between those two states that exists to this day.

In April 1731 Jenkins was at the helm of the Rebecca, carrying a cargo of sugar from the British colony of Jamaica to London. While off the coast of Cuba, Jenkins's ship was overtaken by the Spanish coast guard, which boarded and searched for contraband goods from Spanish ports. Finding none, Captain Juan de Len Fandino brandished his cutla.s.s and ordered Jenkins to reveal where he'd hidden the contraband. When Jenkins continued to insist he had none, Fandino sliced his sword across Jenkins's ear. Still, Jenkins maintained he could not confess to what was not there. Fandino then had his men tie Jenkins to the yardarm using a neck halter. But even as the Spanish captain ordered the halter incrementally raised, thereby approaching the point of a lynching, Jenkins maintained there was nothing to tell. Frustrated and furious, Fandino took hold of Jenkins's wounded ear and tore it off, handing it to Jenkins and saying (depending on which version one reads), "Carry that to your king, and tell him of it!" Clearly an act of war.

But not in 1731. George II, the last British monarch born outside Great Britain, was uncertain as to his clout and allowed leadership to be exerted by Robert Walpole, who is thus recognized as England's first prime minister. Walpole's success was due in large part to his policy that England's economy was best maintained and strengthened by avoiding war. Consequently, he had negotiated the Treaty of Seville in 1729, which led to the episode involving Captain Jenkins two year later. Under the treaty, England agreed not to trade with Spain's North American colonies and, to enable verification, allowed British ships to be inspected by Spain for cargo from those ports.

The treaty was highly controversial in England. While peace was good for the economy, such severe limitations on its overseas trade were not. Nor did it sit well with the nation's pride. Many merchants and the sea captains and crews they financed did not abide by the treaty's prohibitions.

These violations explain, in part, Captain Fandino's frustration and violence. From Prime Minister Walpole's perspective, Fandino's rage reflected Spain's reduced circ.u.mstances. Spain was increasingly desperate to preserve its monopolies in the New World-the totality of which it had originally possessed following the voyages of Christopher Columbus. But that had been over two hundred years earlier. Spain's efforts to control the New World's supply of sugar and gold created a lucrative black market. Pirates engaged in hijacking, initially on their own and later with secret financing in some instances by other nations. By the time Robert Jenkins was at sea, otherwise legitimate shipping companies engaged in periodic smuggling as well.

When Jenkins returned to England in June 1731, a full account of his misfortune appeared in the press, but fame did not ensue. Such occurrences were not particularly unusual. The article in London's Universal Spectator also included: The Bacchus, Captain Stephens, which is arrived at Bristol from Jamaica, was taken the 27th of April by a Spanish pirate sloop or guarde costa.... They treated her captain and crew very barbarously, putting their fingers between gunlock screws till they flattened them, and some had lighted matches between, in order to extort a confession where their money [Spanish doubloons from smuggling] lay, of which they had none on board.

Still, as these depredations continued, Walpole's efforts to avoid war met with increasing opposition. The tipping point came in 1737 with the death of Queen Caroline, through whose friendship Walpole had maintained the approval-or mitigated the occasional disapproval-of George II and the Prince of Wales (the future George III).

The future king's opposition to his father now emerged more boldly, and with it Walpole's political opponents commenced a drumbeat for war. Parliament held hearings regarding instances of mistreatment of British seamen by Spain. And just as the U.S. Congress has demonstrated its flair for the dramatic through the stage-managed appearances of star witnesses, Parliament's star for 1738 was Robert Jenkins. His presentation was electrifying: he related his breathtaking experience and climaxed his testimony by unfolding a square of cotton and producing his severed ear.

Or so later accounts state. The parliamentary records of his testimony do not record the ear being displayed. Nor is it mentioned in any of the newspaper accounts that immediately followed his testimony. Nevertheless, those news accounts, augmented by politicians expressing newfound outrage, generated a public uproar. Walpole had no choice but to accede to war.