Mike
Carruthers:
When you look at a map of the United States, you
see a series of lines dividing one state from another. How those lines got there
is fascinating.
Mark
Stein:
There was a difference between the ways England created
the colonies (which became our first thirteen states) and the way Congress did
it after the Revolution. Mark
Stein, author of the book How
the States Got Their Shapes… And
the difference is that when England did it, it simply was not on the King's (or
in one case the Queen's) screen that all colonies should be created equal. If
it behooved them to create a little colony called Rhode Island to ease a problem
in Massachusetts they would do that and not care that Rhode Island was much, much
smaller. When Congress took over the function after the Revolution, the guiding
principal was all states should be created equal. Which
is why as you look west of the original thirteen states they start to look more
uniform and the boundaries are straighter. Sometimes a river is a state's boundary
but where exactly is the line and which state does the river belong to? It
does differ; sometimes the line is down the middle of the channel. In the case
of Maryland and Virginia the entire Potomac River is in Maryland. There are actually
teeny little parts of Delaware that are across the Delaware River from Delaware
and attached to New Jersey but they are parts of Delaware because they were dumped
there in dredging operations. And the entire Delaware River in that segment belongs
to Delaware. Tomorrow,
why Vermont almost wasn't - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should
Know.
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