@bill93 the Supreme Court said the Sullivan line was the line used and respected by the us government in administering the territory and besides it looks like it split the baby.
I was particularly interested in the Ia-Mo line since I grew up a dozen miles from it. I once found a copy of the 1850's Supreme Court reporter original volume with that case at a book sale for $1. I later gave it to the county museum.
The Surveyors Historical Society publication Backsights fall edition just arrived, and has reprinted this?ÿ article about the Iowa Missouri boundary dispute.?ÿ It's a poor article that I'd seen somewhere before.?ÿ I thought it was on this forum but can't bring it up now.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/honey-war-missouri-iowa-border
The title blames sloppy surveying for the dispute, but sloppiness played no part.?ÿ The dispute was over which interpretation should be made of the wording that tried to define the boundary and thus which survey should control.?ÿ Sullivan was a bit sloppy in not updating his magnetic declination as he went east, but his survey created no ambiguity and served its purposes well.