Again – The plan laid out by Congress in the 1850s (perhaps coincident with the Kansas-Nebraska Act) specified that additional new states from the Louisiana territory and the newly acquired territory from Mexico would be of defined size based on lat/long (with a couple of minor exceptions in Dakota and a major one in Montana). And that compromise was intended (among other things) to ensure that slave states never became a majority.
Which has nothing to do with the Dakota split.
One time I was driving from Montana to Houston, and I had to pass through both Dakotas. I headed east into North Dakota, where I turned south toward South Dakota. And I realized as I went from southwest North Dakota, south into northwest South Dakota … I needed a fucking compass.
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The Dakotas actually have a pretty interesting history, particularly for the Plains tribes. The Journey of Crazy Horse is worth reading. There’s also a pretty good history of the region, The Dakotas, which I think is one of the better state histories.
Several years ago I was asked to do something for an elderly Jewish woman, and she took me to lunch. She told me that her deceased husband’s family had emigrated to Devil’s Lake, North Dakota from Russia in the late 1800s, and that there were a lot of Jewish Russian families. She gave me a book, I can’t remember the name, but it was a woman’s memoir about life in a sod hut in North Dakota. It was brutal.
Most of the earlier Jewish emigrants apparently left for Minneapolis or Chicago within a generation or so.
The wittiest tourist attraction I’ve ever seen was in the Fargo Visitors Center. It was autographed by the Coen Brothers.
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Just wait until you’re in Virginia and have to go northeast to get to southwest West Virginia.
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The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index dropped by 0.1% in November compared to the previous month, marking the first decline since April 2020.
NYT: How this is bad for Joe Biden…
“North Dakota’s Southern Border In preparation for statehood, the Dakotas divided into North and South Dakota in 1887. The legislation called for the Dakota Territory to be divided along the 46th parallel, which bisected the Dakota Territory’s six degrees of height (43 ° to 49 °). In effect, the location of this line had been determined over thirty years earlier, when Congress created Kansas and established its southern boundary at 37 °. In doing so, Congress altered, by one-half of a degree, a boundary line that extended from Virginia/ North Carolina, through Kentucky/ Tennessee, and Missouri/ Arkansas. Why make this change? By locating the southern border of Kansas at 37 °, Congress could eventually create a column of four states, each having three degrees of height. And in fact, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota all possess three degrees of height.”
— How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein
“South Dakota’s Southern and Northern Borders In the course of the controversy surrounding the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress adjusted the southern border of Kansas from 36 ° 30’ to 37 °. In doing so, Congress made it possible for a tier of four states, each having three degrees of height, to fit between Oklahoma and Canada. Those states became Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.”
— How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein
And again…zero to do with ensuring they were admitted as non-slave states.
I give up. There were no slave states by then. But the Kansas-Nebraska act was ALL about slavery and that is when the decision was made about how big the future states would be. And one aspect of THAT decision was to ensure that more states (and thus more senators) would be non-slave states. In the event, such long term planning proved irrelevant.
You seem to want to keep ignoring that the push to split the Dakota Territory wasn’t made until well after the Civil War settled the free/slave state debate and that it was really about the regional identity politics of the time. I’m not sure why. But it is what it is.
Merry Christmas
Most of the rest of us have learned not to argue with election denying anti-vaxxing fuckwits, but, as always, he persists.
Hudson could spend an hour arguing with a shower curtain.
Assuming your cute comment was directed towards me. I haven’t even commented on the history of the Dakotas. You can go slide down a razor blade you mouth breathing jackass. Merry Christmas to everyone but you.
Just wait till you are driving on I-81 and sleepy and cross into Virginia from TN and think “I will be in D.C. in no time.” VA never ends.
2023 will not be defeated, even at this late stage.
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As I have said before, part of Biden’s win in 2020 was down to the Trump campaign being flat broke by the beginning of October. As a result, they ceded the airwaves in the battleground states to the Biden campaign.
Trump’s “campaign” infrastructure is designed to funnel all the small donations into his campaign coffers or into his PAC, which he then spends on himself and himself alone (mostly lawyers). The GOP still has the big money donors, of course, but they can only put the big money into PACs, which cannot be spent on campaign infrastructure.
The monster has come home to burn down the castle.