.

Step up and meet Jefferson, the 49th state of the Union, this pamphlet announces. The proponents of this US state-to-be, made up of California’s northern parts and southern bits of Oregon, seem to have been firm believers in the strategy of the fait accompli, for their handbill states: If you preserve the map above, you may be acquiring an historic piece of americana to pass on to your descendents. It’s one of the first ever drawn of the new, 49th “State of Jefferson” which 45,000 secessionists of Oregon and California hope to carve out of their states.

But the fait of Jefferson was never accompli, the secession never consummated. Unbeknownst to the jeffersonists, the tide of history would soon turn against them. Very soon: note the date – Dec. 6, 1941. One day later, a Japanese sneak attack would destroy the American Pacific Fleet. This meant, among a great many other things, no more time for frivolous secessionism. And so the idea of a state named for Thomas Jefferson was killed off . This time by the Japanese agression, but hardly the first time.

.

The lost state of Jefferson is a star-crossed, but particularly persistent project in American history. From the middle of the 19th century, the name of the third US president has been attached to at least three unsuccessful attempts at state-building.

• The first was the Territory (1) of Jefferson (1859-1861), a rectangular slab of the Wild West occupying all of present-day Colorado and parts of Utah, Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska. This Territory, partly overlapping the Territory of Kansas, was never recognised by the federal government, which organised the Territory of Colorado as its successor.
• In 1870, during the Reconstruction following the Civil War, a bill was introduced in Congress to split off two territories from Texas, to be admitted as two separate states into the Union: Jefferson (east of the San Antonio river) and Matagorda (west of the Colorado river). But the bill died; Texas remains undivided (2).

The proposal pertaining to the area portrayed in this map was first formulated in October 1941. As is often the case with border areas, both sides of the California-Oregon line felt neglected by their respective state governments. It was in fact the dismal condition of the state roads on either side of the border that pushed Gilbert Gable, mayor of the small coastal town of Port Orford, to announce the creation of a new state.

.

Gable’s secessionism first and foremost was a wake-up call for both state governments, but it developed a momentum all of its own. The city of Yreka, seat of Siskiyou County in California, was proclaimed the ‘provisional capital’ of the future state. In November, a ‘constitutional assembly’ met in town to provide the secessionist project with a name (Orofino, Bonanza and Discontent were proferred, among others) and a governor (Yreka judge John C. Childs). The fledgling state was even endowed with a flag (3).

.

On November 27, 1941, the movement took up arms.

.

A ‘Citizen’s Committee’, armed with hunting rifles, occupied a stretch of US Route 99, handing out pamphlets proclaiming Jefferson’s ‘independence’ (possibly similar to the pamphlet which is partially shown here). The mainly good-natured incident – the rebels promised to “secede every Thursday until further notice” – was recorded by the main newsreel companies. Apparently, the light-hearted item lingered long enough in transit and in cutting rooms to be pushed off the news agenda by Pearl Harbor.

.