RECOVERED HISTORY: HOW AMERICA WOULD HAVE LOOKED IF JEFFERSON HAD GOT

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STRANGE MAPS - No one seems to regret that Thomas Jefferson's plan for
the division of the Northwest Territory into ten new states was shelved.
The proposed names were just too silly, writes 19th-century
Jefferson-biographer John T. Morse, Jr.:

"The names suggested for these ten States are a peculiar mixture of
Latin and Indian, and while a semblance of some of the names still
remains in two cases, in all others it is so absolutely forgotten that
the very fact has ceased to be known by many close students of American
history. Yet, besides this humane and noble piece of statesmanship (the
proposed prohibition of slavery in the territory) we have a glimpse of
that absurd element in Jefferson's mind which his admirers sought to
excuse by calling him a 'philosopher'. The matter is small, to be sure,
but suggestive. He proposed as names for the several subdivisions of
this territory: Sylvania, Michigania, Cheronesus, Assenisippis,
Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, and
Pelipsia.". . .

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/248-friends-polypotamians-countrymen/


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