One morning after a night of one too many drinks, I gave in and passed my then 2-year-old daughter my phone to watch cartoons while I slept it off. When I woke up, Peppa Pig was nowhere to be found, but my kid had somehow managed to purchase a vintage Nebraska Territory map online. Well played, eBay one-click Buy It Now.
The previous night, I had rabbit-holed into the world of Nebraska yesteryear — and I don’t mean the Tom Osborne era. I was marveling at how big Nebraska used to be.
Established by Congress in 1854, the Nebraska Territory extended from the present-day state’s southeastern tip all the way to what is now the Idaho/Canada border in the northwest, the middle of North Dakota in the northeast, and to nearly the southwest corner of Wyoming. While sipping my amaro that night, I kept thinking about one thing — what if Nebraska had come into the Union the size of its original territory?
I asked City of Lincoln information intelligence analyst Kurt Elder to help me figure out how a Territory-sized Nebraska would stack up. And yes, I realize this is an exercise in nostalgia, the equivalent of watching ’90s Huskers’ games on VHS in your modern-day basement man cave.
Still, it’s startling:
If the Nebraska Territory became a U.S. state, it would comprise 375,000 square miles and be the second-largest U.S. state, trailing only Alaska.
It would include part of present-day Colorado and most of present-day Wyoming, Montana and both Dakotas, leaving the U.S. with only 46 states, depending on how the other land was allocated.
With 4.6 million inhabitants, it would have more than double Nebraska’s current population, yet still be only the 25th most populous state.
The state would have a slightly higher median income, have a slightly lower crime rate, be a touch less diverse, and still lean Republican. It would undoubtedly have more political power, with six U.S. House representatives instead of three.
And what would restoring Nebraska to its original territory do to the balance of power in Washington, D.C.?
Given the 10 U.S. senators representing Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming are all Republicans, making the Nebraska Territory a state would flip control of the U.S. Senate from 53-47 Republican to 47-45 Democrat in our new 46-state country.
But it wouldn’t have changed the last two presidential elections: Former President Joe Biden still would have easily won the Electoral College in 2020, and President Donald Trump would still have won Greater Nebraska and the country in 2024.
Of course, restoring Nebraska to its original territory is unrealistic, to put it mildly. Only one legal way for Nebraska to reclaim its original territorial boundaries exists: The Constitution’s Article IV says two or more states may merge to form new states if the relevant state legislatures and the Congress approve the merger. “The huge obstacle, of course, is that it is hard to conceive of states, in effect, putting themselves out of business,” said Kevin Smith, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln political science professor.
U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, who represents Nebraska’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, views the would-be state’s geography as daunting. “I represent 80 of Nebraska’s 93 counties, so I’m very familiar with covering a lot of ground … I must admit I’m happy with the current state boundaries,” he said.
Given the state’s meager eight likely Republican electoral votes, it would not be an attractive place for presidential campaign stops. “I think it’d remain a bit of a backwater in presidential politics,” said Kevin Smith, the UNL professor.
Rep. Smith disagrees on the “backwater” part but agrees that Making Nebraska Huge Again is a non-starter: “I already consider Nebraska to be very influential at the national level … Going backwards in history to consolidate five states into one and discard eight U.S. senators would eliminate important American voices today.”
Nebraska’s Creation Story
The U.S. had acquired all of what would become the Nebraska Territory in 1803’s Louisiana Purchase.
Starting in the 1840s, Democratic U.S. Sen. Stephen Douglas tried to organize that land into official territories. But Southerners blocked his efforts because the move was politically charged — this Nebraska Territory and any others would need to be free states under the Missouri Compromise, which barred slavery north of the area near the Oklahoma/Kansas border.
So, in 1854, Douglas did an end-run around the slave-owning Southerners. He introduced a bill to create the Nebraska and Kansas Territories and give their residents the right to decide if their governments would allow slavery. The bill became law, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise.
“A lot of folks don’t understand what a huge national controversy resulted from this bill,” said the Nebraska Historical Society’s David Bristow. “This was such a big deal that it led to a national political realignment and the formation of … the Republican Party. Historians see the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a major link in the chain of events leading to the Civil War.”
So Nebraska first came into existence, with Omaha as its capital. The territory’s legislature actually allowed slavery for the first seven years.
But even then, no one envisioned a state of that size ever entering the Union. “I don’t think there was ever any intention for Nebraska to keep its original boundaries, and it was no surprise when it was cut down several years later,” Bristow said.
Once the Homestead Act ignited a land rush, Nebraska quickly balkanized into the Colorado Territory (1861), the Dakota Territory (1861), and the Idaho Territory (1863). Nebraska was approaching statehood, but — as a microcosm of the nation — slavery delayed progress.
Despite Nebraskans fighting for the Union in the Civil War, the would-be state’s 1866 constitution stipulated that only whites could vote.
Congress required that Nebraska remove that provision before granting statehood. Then, in February 1867, then-President and notorious racist Andrew Johnson vetoed the Nebraska Statehood Act, precisely because Nebraska had made the requested change. As the Nebraska Historical Society points out, “To this day, Nebraska still remains the only state admitted into the Union by a presidential veto override.” On March 1, 1867, Nebraska became the 37th state, with today’s borders save for a tiny sliver of land the state wrested back from South Dakota in 1882.
The greatly truncated Nebraska we know was finally born, although it would still take a person almost nine hours to drive from Rulo to Harrison today, so no one can call it a geographically small state.
It’s probably not surprising to learn that when I woke up to learn that my toddler had purchased a Nebraska Territory map online, I canceled the purchase right away.
But a few weeks later, after I thought about it more, I actually went back to eBay and bought it.
Nebraska may be a shadow of its former self, but not on my wall.
7 Comments
“save for a tiny sliver of land the state wrested back from South Dakota in 1882. ”
Correction: That piece of land–Boyd County and a bit of Keya Paha county–was shifted from Dakota Territory to the State of Nebraska (by act of Congress). There was no “South Dakota” from which to wrestle it.
“Then, in February 1867, then-President and notorious racist Andrew Johnson vetoed the Nebraska Statehood Act, precisely because Nebraska had made the requested change. ”
#1. “racist” That’s largely an opinion, not a historical fact.
#2. Johnson did not veto the statehood bill simply because of the change. He vetoed the bill because Congress (the federal gov’t) was dictating to a would-be state a provision that was never contemplated by the NE statehood enabling resolution, not part of the proposed state constitution, not voted upon by citizens of the territory, nor approved by the territorial legislature. In other words, Johnson (and many in the NE territory) objected to Congress imposing additional conditions upon the statehood process, none of which were contemplated or debated by the inhabitants or legislators of the NE Territory. Gee, that sounds reasonable, right? Debatable, but a legitimate reason to veto the admissions bill.
Great story. I love old maps as they are a snapshot of history. I gave a 1850 map of Iowa to a professor friend and it showed Nebraska as Indian Territory.
Is this some Harper 9 thing going on here?
Good story, I wonder how state lines were determined and county lines were set. That would be interesting to know
My Grandfather has had territorial maps of Nebraska (at pretty much every one of the stages described) lining the upstairs hallway of his house since I was a kid. I was so excited to see this piece explaining some of that history!
Had the Republic of Texas gotten to keep its territory when it came into the Union, it works have been 389,200 square miles, incluing the eastern 2/3 of NM, middle of CO (including its highest peaks), and part of south central WY. It still wouldn’t be any closer to me in Dallas.
Texas sold all that extra land to the US gvt. for $10 million. Of course, plenty of gold was found there 14 years later.