Congress assigned Thomas Jefferson the task of studying this matter and in 1784 Jefferson issued a report to Congress in which he proposed that the region be divided into states having two degrees of height and four degrees of width, wherever possible.Īs it turned out, Congress didn't employ these borders when it enacted the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, the law that included the boundary lines for the future states to be created from the Northwest Territory. After the Revolution, Congress had to decide how best to divide this region, known as the Northwest Territory, into states. The division of this land acquired in the French and Indian War influenced virtually every state border that followed. The boundaries of that war are still on the map today, for they provide borders for the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. With this victory, England added to her North American possessions all the land between the Ohio River and the Mississippi River. In this war, England and her American colonists began what became the dismantling of France's possessions in North America. The French and Indian War (1754-63) resulted in the oldest of these multistate boundaries. Many of our state borders are segments of borders that date from England's and, later, the United States' territorial acquisitions, and they can be identified by looking for lines that provide multistate borders.
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