Missouri's Platte Purchase and Michigan's Stunted Statehood: Common Property Allocation by Territorial Logroll

26 Pages Posted: 30 Mar 2016

Date Written: March 27, 2016

Abstract

Gains from trade may have been operative in allowing peaceful, simultaneous violations of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 both to occur in the year 1836. In the formative years of the vast continental United States, every other proposed and actual violation of these and similarly weighty territorial agreements (such as changes in the ground rules embodied in popular sovereignty, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and the Wilmot Proviso) proved disruptive and even deadly. A unique territorial “logroll” unappreciated by historians and economists may have made this breach of vital territorial agreements starkly different.

Keywords: gains from trade, Ronald Coase, common property, U.S. economic history, Missouri Compromise, Dred Scott, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Wilmot Proviso

JEL Classification: A1, B1, K00, N00

Suggested Citation

Crews Jr., Clyde Wayne, Missouri's Platte Purchase and Michigan's Stunted Statehood: Common Property Allocation by Territorial Logroll (March 27, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2755287 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2755287

Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. (Contact Author)

Competitive Enterprise Institute ( email )

1310 L St,
7th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.cei.org

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
39
Abstract Views
631
PlumX Metrics