In 1787 South Carolina ceded to the United States her claim to a strip of land between the Tugaloo River and the North Carolina boundary, 12 or 14 miles wide and 200 miles long, extending. to the Mississippi. In 1802 the National government gave to Georgia that part of the territory now in the State of Georgia and recognized the line of 35° as the northern boundary of the cession. Walton County was organized in the newly acquired district but the line dividing it from North Carolina was not scientifically determined. In 1806 Georgia appealed to Congress to adjust the line and rejected a survey made in 1807 but as the trend of opinion was so much in favor of North Carolina the dispute was dropped. In 1817 Georgia and Tennessee ap pointed a commission to establish the line of 35° along their border and the report of 1819 was acceptable to both States, but an inde pendent survey made a few years later showed that the existing line was 35 chains south of the real 35° line. Nothing was done until after the war. In 1887-89 and 1893 both States appointed commissioners to establish the line but nothing was accomplished, and a tradition still exists in Georgia that Tennes see wrongfully exercises jurisdiction over some of her territory.
In 1819 the line of 35° was run from the Alabama to the Mississippi River, the survey being known as the Winchester line, but 10 years later Mississippi, coveting the rich country about the Chickasaw Bluffs (Mem phis), contended that the line was too far south. In 1831 a report was rendered showing that the line was too far north, but in 1837 a new survey by a joint commission established the true line so far south of the Winchester line that Tennessee received nearly 200 square miles and this survey is the present boundary.
The purchase of Florida in 1819 occasioned two boundary controversies, the first being over the line between Georgia and Florida. The line of the cession of 1763 extended from the junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers to the source of the Saint Mary's and along that stream to the Atlantic, which line was confirmed in 1795 by a treaty between Spain and the United States. In 1798 Andrew Ellicott made a survey of the line between Spanish and American dominions and estab lished a mound at what he considered the head of Saint Mary's River. In 1802 and again in 1818 new surveys were made, Georgia contending for the Watson line which ran south of Ellicott's mound. Three different surveys were made and in 1850 Florida filed suit in the Supreme Court, but in 1857 both States agreed to make a new survey. Work was begun in 1859 but in 1861, when the new boundary (the Orr and Whitney line) was found to be north of the line she contended for, Georgia repudiated the survey. Finally in 1866 both States agreed to accept the Orr and Whitney line and Congress ratified this action in 1872.
When the question of statehood for Mis souri was under discussion the people re quested that the western and northern bound aries be the same as the surveys of 1808-16 in accordance with the Indian treaty of 1808. Congress assented, mentioning certain falls in the Des Moines River as the eastern ter minus of the survey. In 1837 three men, sent by Missouri to locate the northern boundary, after exploring the Des Moines for about 100 miles, determined upon what they thought was the rapids and then surveyed a line to the Missouri, thus adding to the State a strip 100 miles wide and 200 miles long. Congress dis regarded that survey and admitted Iowa with the old Indian boundary, but in 1848 Missouri brought suit against Iowa only to have her complaint dismissed.
The enabling acts of Louisiana and Mis sissippi included within their boundaries some islands within three leagues of the coast of both States. The peninsula of Saint Bernard and the adjacent hummocks were claimed by both; the joint boundary commission of 1901 could not reach an agreement, and appeal was made to the Supreme Court. In 1906 that tribunal awarded the territory in dispute to Louisiana, declaring that the enabling acts did not conflict since the grant of lands within three leagues of the coast of Mississippi re ferred to a line of sea islands extending from Mobile, Ala., to Cat Island, Miss., and that the deep water channel from the mouth of the Pearl River through the islands and penin sulas to the open waters of the Gulf of Mex ico is the boundary between the two States.
A part of the North Carolina-Tennessee boundary was somewhat obscure. The sur veyors intended to follow the line of the high range of mountains lying between the States but south of the Tennessee River the range divides into two branches (Hangover Ridge on the east and Fodder Stack on the west) which unite 10 miles away. A dispute arose over which branch was the proper line but in 1900 the United States Circuit Court decided in favor of Hangover. There was a similar break in the boundary range between County Corners and Bryson's Gap and in 1902 the same court decided in favor of the western spur.
Water courses have occasioned many in terstate disputes, especially regarding juris diction over the shore line, questions of boundary, property rights and jurisdiction caused by change of channels. When Georgia surrendered her western lands in 1802 she stipulated that her boundary extend "west of a line beginning on the western bank of the Chattahoochee River, where the same crosses the boundary between the United States and Spain, running up the said river and along the western bank thereof." In its lower course the river frequently rises and overspreads its banks as much as a half-mile. Alabama held that its rights extended to the low-water line, but Georgia claimed juris diction to the high-water mark. After a long controversy Alabama sued Georgia in the Supreme Court, but the decision of 1859 went against her, the court holding that the bed of a river "is that part of the soil alternately covered and left bare° by the water. In 1877 an extraordinary change occurred in the course of the Missouri River at a point be tween Omaha, Neb.; and Council Bluffs, Iowa, as a result of which Nebraska claimed that the boundary between the two States was the new channel of the river. Suit against Iowa to establish the new boundary was brought in the Supreme Court, but the court held that neither gradual changes in the channel of a river, caused by accretion or decretion, nor a sudden break and a complete transformation, rendering the old river bed dry land, would change the boundary. The Supreme Court has rendered similar decisions in disputes be tween Missouri and Kentucky over the pos session of Wolf Island; between Arkansas and Mississippi over Island No. 76; between Tennessee and Arkansas over lands near Devil's Elbow, above Memphis; between Mis souri and Nebraska over McKissick's Island; between Kentucky and Indiana over Green River Island; and between Washington and Oregon over the ship channel in the Columbia and the ownership of Sand Island. A suit between Arkansas and Tennessee over an island in the Mississippi is still pending in the Supreme Court.