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: Suggested Citation