Florida claimed that the state line was a straight line (called McNeil's line, for the man who surveyed it for the U.S. government in 1825) from the confluence of Georgia's Chattahoochee and Flint rivers (forming the Apalachicola River, at a point now under Lake Seminole), then very slightly south of due east to the source of the St. Mary's River, which was the point specified in Pinckney's Treaty in 1795.

If upheld, Georgia would have obtained additional territory estimated at 800 to 2,355 square miles.

The position of the U.S. commissioners was that the actual source of the St. Mary's was two miles north of the Ellicott mound.

[2] On April 9, 1872, Congress approved the Orr and Whitner Line as part of the border between Georgia and Florida.

[3] Justice Curtis, joined by Justices McLean, Daniel and Campbell, delivered the dissenting opinion, asserting that the United States was effectively made a party through the Attorney General, and such intervention by the United States government was an impermissible intervention in matters of the individual states.