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The Red River Boundary Dispute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

W. Clayton Carpenter
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Extract

The Supreme Court of the United States is now bringing to a close a case which has occupied its attention for five years, involving the boundary along the Red River between Oklahoma and Texas. The principles of law applied by the court were not new, but the facts to which they were applied were complicated and interesting, both from historical and legal points of view, and when taken in connection with the warmth of popular feeling along the boundary, are perhaps worth recording in this JOURNAL, since they could easily have given rise to actual warfare had the contesting sovereignties been independent nations instead of members of the United States of America.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 1925 , pp. 517 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © by the American Society of International Law 1925

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References

1 The principal opinions of the Supreme Court in the case of Oklahoma v. Texas, the United States of America, Intervener, are recorded in 256 U. S. 70, 258 U. S. 574, 260 U. S. 606. Other orders and minor opinions dealing principally with the affairs of the Receivership appear also in Vols. 252, 253, 254, 257, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, and 266 of the United States Supreme Court reports. These will give an idea of the amount of labor which the court has devoted to this case, most of it probably falling to the lot of the committee appointed by the court to take particular charge of this case: Chief Justice White, Justice Pitney and Justice Van Devanter, the latter being the only member of the committee who lived to see the termination of the case, and the author of the principal opinions.

2 8 Stats. L. 252.Google Scholar

3 Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, pp. 254–256, 266–269.Google Scholar While these quotations are ex parte statements, they are supported by the formal diplomatic correspondence. See American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. 4, pp. 437, 530, 532, 545 and 621.Google Scholar These documents were all introduced in evidence in the case. See Transcript of Testimony, vol. 1, pp. 161–185.Google Scholar

4 U. S.v. Texas, 162 U. S.1, 90.Google Scholar

5 256 U. S.70, 89.Google Scholar

6 Geographical Review, April, 1923, p. 161.Google Scholar This article is profusely illustrated with photographs, diagrams and maps, and gives an exceptionally fine picture of the conditions along the river.

7 Opinion 260 U. S.606;Google Scholardecree 261 U. S.340.Google Scholar

8 Treaty of Oct. 21, 1867, 15 Stats. L. 581.Google Scholar

9 The boundary line agreed upon between Spain and the United States became the boundary between the United Mexican States and the United States by the Treaty of Limits of January 12, 1828 (8 Stats. L. 372); it was continued as the boundary between the Republic of Texas and the United States by the Boundary Convention of April 25, 1838 (8 Stats. L. 511); and became the boundary of the State of Texas when it was admitted to the Union, December 29, 1845 (9 Stats. L. 108). When the Territory of Oklahoma was created May 2, 1890, its south boundary was denned as “The boundary line of the State of Texas” (26 Stats. L. 81). The same Act denned the limits of Indian territory on the south by saying: “Bounded ... on the south by the State of Texas”. “All that part of the area of the United States now constituting the territory of Oklahoma and the Indian Territory, as at present described ” was admitted as the State of Oklahoma on November 16, 1907. (35 Stats. L. 2160).

10 258 U. S.574, 593.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 583

12 Ibid., 586.

13 Ibid., 591.

14 258 U. S.574, 582.Google Scholar

15 253 U. S.465, 470.Google Scholar

16 Receiver's Fourteenth Report, pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

17 The problems and details of this business are not pertinent to the purpose of this article, but are exceedingly well set forth in the Receiver's Fourteenth Report to the Supreme Court.