s of the Committee's report. This
inference is strengthened by the fact that the illustrious Ex-Governor
was a member of the Committee. It will be convenient to refer to the
boundaries recommended by the Committee as the _Lucas boundaries_.

The Lucas boundaries were based upon the topography of the country as
determined by rivers. On the East was the great Mississippi, on the
West the Missouri, and on the North the St. Peters. These natural
boundaries were to be connected and made continuous by the artificial
lines of the surveyor. As to the proposed Eastern boundary there could
be no difference of opinion; and it was generally felt that the
Missouri river should determine the Western limit.

On the South the boundary must necessarily be the Northern line of the
State of Missouri. But the exact location of this line had not been
authoritatively determined. During the administration of Lucas it was
the subject of a heated controversy between Missouri and Iowa which at
one time bordered on armed hostility. The purpose of the
Convention in 1844 was not to settle the dispute but to refer to the
line in a way which would neither prejudice nor compromise the claims
of Iowa.

The discussion of the Northern boundary was, in the light of
subsequent events, more significant. As proposed by the Committee the
line was perhaps a little vague and indefinite since the exact
location of certain rivers named was not positively known. Some
thought that the boundary proposed would make the State too large.
Others thought that it would make the State too small. Mr. Hall
proposed the parallel of forty-two and one-half degrees of North
latitude. Mr. Peck suggested the parallel of forty-four. Mr.
Langworthy, of Dubuque, asked that forty-five degrees be made
the Northern limit.

Mr. Langworthy's proposition met with considerable favor among the
people living in the Northern part of the Territory who desired to
increase the size of the State by including a considerable tract North
of the St. Peters. Mr. Chapman suggests the existence of sectional
feeling in the matter of boundaries when he says, in reply to Mr.
Langworthy's argument, that "it was a kind of creeping up on the North
which was not good faith to the South."

On October 14 the report of the regular Committee on State Boundaries
was referred to a Select Committee consisting of representatives from
the twelve electoral districts. But this Committee made no changes in
the o