A while after seeing the weird map of the USA from a Simpsons comic, I noticed another weird map in the cartoon Recess (1997-2001). It showed up in a couple of episodes in the background hanging in the school's office.
The Lower 48 states can be complicated to draw, and it's just the background, so I can understand why it might look funky as artists try to get the show together. But, this opportunity also leads to a potential alternate history on how it could look that way. I redrew the map for a bit more clarity and did some brainstorming on how it might've happened.
From the original charters of Virginia and Massachusetts, the English colonies in North America had a bad habit of their borders crossing one another for overlapping claims. The Virginia Company was promised land north and west in 1609, which eventually fell into land also promised to the westward "sea-to-sea" territory of Massachusetts Bay in 1628. Other disagreements soon broke out, such as New Hampshire breaking up Massachusetts in two and the New York colony having an unclear boundary in territory captured from what was called "New Netherlands" and the well-established English colony in Connecticut. Disputes came to a head in the 1680s when William Penn sent letters to several land owners that they should be paying him taxes rather than Baltimore. Penn had been granted some 45,000 square miles in 1681 by James II in lieu of debts owed to Penn's father, which began west of the Delaware River near where Charles I had granted Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, in 1632. Penn needed access to the bay, so he persuaded the king to also grant him lands southward, creating confusion and turmoil.
Penn's legal team argued that the land grant for Baltimore's Maryland had only been for uncultivated land, meaning that portions could be claimed by settlers who made their homes there, such as the earlier colonists of New Sweden and Dutch settlers. Penn now claimed these lands, even though his Quaker sensibilities weren't terribly popular with the established communities in the southern reaches. Exacerbated, the king finally announced that there must be an official survey and that Penn's stakes must be more carefully examined.
During the examination, it came to light that Penn's lawyer, Philip Ford, was a cheat. Penn had given power of attorney upon his departure to visit his holdings and encourage the Quaker colonists in 1682. Not a man for details, Penn trusted Ford and others to make his big-picture dreams into reality even to the point that he signed legal documents without reading them. Ford proved to be charging exorbitant legal fees as well as percentages of all money handled. In fact, Ford had effectively taken ownership of Pennsylvania due to mortgaging rules. Penn had realized this earlier and had tried to keep the matter quiet by agreeing that Ford could keep rent money from Penn's lands in Ireland, but now Penn was the laughingstock of London. Fearing that this might harm the Quaker cause, Penn determined to resolve his financial and territorial matters.
After wresting ownership of Pennsylvania back from Ford at terrible expense, Penn sold the land west of the Susquehanna River to speculators for cash. This land would later be organized into Allegheny, the first colony without immediate access to the Atlantic. He came to terms with Baltimore, trading the questioned Lower Counties to Maryland for good favor. Pennsylvania then joined the Dominion of New England, the reorganization established by James II and furthered by William III after the Glorious Revolution.
The dominion did not last long, and soon the colonies were again reorganized. Thanks to Penn's widely publicized establishment of clear borders, other disputes were determined to be settled. Lobbyists from the Province of New York successfully managed to have Connecticut annexed as it was a royal colony rather than a proprietary one. Massachusetts won its northwestern lands, while New Hampshire also gained a northwesterly angle separating Maine. Pennsylvania was merged into the two Jerseys (east and west) to a single Jersey.
Matters settled in New England for a time with settlers pouring into lands in the St. Lawrence watershed. With such numbers by the time of the Seven Years War (or "French and Indian War" in North America), Canada soon fell to British control. It was also during this war that Prime Minister William Pitt encouraged bold expeditions in the Caribbean that took Guadeloupe (1759), Dominica (1761), and New Orleans (1762). The last action interrupted the Treaty of Fontainebleau in which King Louis XV of France secretly promised the territory of Louisiana to Charles III of Spain. Britain was outraged during the discussions for the Treaty of Paris the next year, but all parties came to an agreement with Britain gaining lands east of the Mississippi as well as north of the 30th Parallel.
Following the American Revolution, those lands became part of the new United States of America. North Carolina fought to keep its claim all the way west to the Mississippi. Virginia, whose ownership of the Northwestern Territory had already been violated for years by settlers eager to get into the Ohio Valley, gave up its claims past the Appalachian Mountains. The territories grew up into new states like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Cumberland.
West of the Mississippi, settlers made new states of what had been broad territories, first carving out Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as Arkansas. Encroachment into Mexico sparked a revolution in Tejas, becoming Texas and a broad stretch of Oklahoma, where Native Americans from the South were forced to resettle. Missouri served as the gateway to the prairie, which would later be broken into North Dakota, South Dakota, North Nebraska, South Nebraska, and Kansas.
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In reality, Lord Baltimore was granted land south of the 40th parallel, but neither party bothered making an official survey. Penn did not review Ford's activities until after Ford's death, when he was driven into debtor's prison by lawsuits from Ford's heirs.
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