Toledo War

The Toledo War (1835–1836), also known as the Michigan–Ohio War or Ohio–Michigan War, was a boundary dispute between the state of Ohio and the adjoining Michigan Territory over the Toledo Strip. Control of the Maumee River's mouth was seen by both parties as a valuable economic asset, due to the inland shipping opportunities that it offered and the good farmland to the west.

Poor geographical understanding of the Great Lakes helped to produce conflicting state and federal legislation between 1787 and 1805, and varying interpretations of the laws led the governments of both Ohio and Michigan to claim jurisdiction over a region along their border. The situation came to a head when Michigan petitioned for statehood in 1835 and sought to include the disputed territory within its boundaries, and both sides passed legislation attempting to force the other side's capitulation. Ohio Governor Robert Lucas and Michigan's 24-year-old "Boy Governor" Stevens T. Mason both instituted criminal penalties for residents submitting to the other's authority. Both states deployed militia forces on opposite sides of the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio, but there was little interaction between the two forces apart from mutual taunting. The single military confrontation of the war ended with a report of shots being fired into the air, incurring no casualties. The only blood spilled was the non-fatal stabbing of a law enforcement officer.

During the summer of 1836, the United States Congress proposed a compromise whereby Michigan gave up its claim to the strip in exchange for its statehood and the remaining three-quarters of the Upper Peninsula. While the northern region's mineral wealth would become an economic asset to Michigan, the compromise was considered a poor deal at the time for Michigan, and voters soundly rejected it the following September. The Michigan government was facing a dire financial crisis and pressure from Congress and President Andrew Jackson, so it convened what was called the "Frostbitten Convention" to accept the compromise and resolve the Toledo War.

Origins

thumb|right|Map of the [[Northwest Territory as established by the Congress of the Confederation in the Northwest Ordinance, shown with present-day state borders, and correct spatial relationship between Lakes Michigan and Erie]]

In 1787, the Congress of the Confederation enacted the Northwest Ordinance, which created the Northwest Territory in what is now the upper Midwestern United States. The Ordinance specified that the territory was eventually to be divided into "not less than three nor more than five" future states. One of the boundaries between them was to be "an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan". When Congress passed the Enabling Act of 1802, which authorized Ohio to begin the process of becoming a U.S. state, the language defining Ohio's northern boundary elaborated on that, but was fundamentally the same: "an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, running east ... until it shall intersect Lake Erie or the territorial line [with British North America, now Canada], and thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line aforesaid".

thumb|left|"[[Mitchell Map" of the region, from the late 18th century, used to create the Ordinance Line of 1787. The southern tip of Lake Michigan is depicted as being farther north than Lake Erie.]]The most highly regarded map of the time, the "Mitchell Map", showed the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan at a latitude north of the mouth of the Detroit River, suggesting that an east–west line would not intersect with Lake Erie at all, until well across the international border. The framers of the 1802 Ohio Constitution therefore believed it was the intent of Congress that Ohio's northern boundary should certainly be north of the mouth of the Maumee River, and possibly even of the Detroit River. Ohio would thus be granted access to most or all of the Lake Erie shoreline west of Pennsylvania, and any other new states carved out of the Northwest Territory would have access to only Lakes Michigan, Huron, or Superior.

However, the delegates allegedly received reports from a fur trapper that Lake Michigan extended significantly farther south than had previously been believed (or mapped). Thus, it was possible that an east–west line extending east from Lake Michigan's southern tip might intersect Lake Erie somewhere southeast of Maumee Bay, or worse, might not intersect the lake at all; the farther south that Lake Michigan actually extended, the more land Ohio would lose, conceivably even the entire Lake Erie shoreline west of Pennsylvania.

When Congress created the Michigan Territory in 1805, it used the Northwest Ordinance's language to define the territory's southern boundary, disregarding that provision in Ohio's state constitution. This difference, and its potential ramifications, apparently went unnoticed at the time, but it established the legal basis for the conflict that would erupt 30 years later. Delayed because of the War of 1812, it was only after Indiana's admission to the Union in 1816 that work on the survey commenced. At that time, the border between Michigan and Indiana was altered from the Northwest Ordinance boundary – over the protests of the Michigan Territory – moving it northward to give the new state substantial frontage on Lake Michigan.

U.S. Surveyor General Edward Tiffin, who was in charge of the survey, was a former Ohio governor, and employed William Harris to survey not the Ordinance Line, but the line described in the Ohio Constitution of 1802. When completed, the "Harris Line" placed the mouth of the Maumee River completely in Ohio, as intended by the drafters of the state constitution. When the results of the survey were made public, Michigan territorial governor Lewis Cass objected, writing in a letter to Tiffin that the survey was biased to favor Ohio and "is only adding strength to the strong, and making the weak still weaker."

right|thumb|upright|Former Ohio Governor and U.S. Surveyor General [[Edward Tiffin, who commissioned the Harris Line survey]]

In response, Michigan commissioned a second survey that was carried out by John A. Fulton. The Fulton survey was based upon the original 1787 Ordinance Line, and after measuring the line eastward from Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, it found the Ohio boundary to lie just southeast of the mouth of the Maumee River. The region between the Harris and Fulton survey lines formed what is now known as the "Toledo Strip". This ribbon of land between northern Ohio and southern Michigan spanned a region wide, over which both jurisdictions claimed sovereignty. While Ohio refused to cede its claim, Michigan quietly occupied it for the next several years, setting up local governments, building roads, and collecting taxes throughout the area. A small but important part of the Strip—the area around present-day Toledo and Maumee Bay—fell within the Great Black Swamp, and this area was nearly impossible to navigate by road, especially after spring and summer rains. Draining into Lake Erie, the Maumee River was not necessarily well-suited for large ships, but it did provide an easy connection to Indiana's Fort Wayne.

The success of the Erie Canal inspired many other canal projects. Because the western end of Lake Erie offered the shortest overland route to the frontiers of Indiana and Illinois, Maumee Harbor was seen as a site of immediate importance and great value. Detroit was up the Detroit River from Lake Erie, and faced the difficult barrier of the Great Black Swamp to the south. Because of this, Detroit was less suited to new transportation projects such as canals, and later railroads, than was Toledo. From this perspective on the rapidly developing Midwest of the 1820s and 1830s, both states had much to gain by controlling the land in the Toledo Strip. Thus, townships that were established north of the line assumed they were part of the Michigan Territory. By the early 1820s, the growing Michigan Territory reached the minimum population threshold of 60,000 to qualify for statehood. When it sought to hold a state constitutional convention in 1833, Congress rejected the request because of the still-disputed Toledo Strip.

In February 1835, Ohio passed legislation that set up county governments in the Strip. The county in which Toledo sat would, later in 1835, be named after incumbent Governor Robert Lucas, a move that further exacerbated the growing tensions with Michigan. Also, during this period, Ohio attempted to use its power in Congress to revive a previously rejected boundary bill that would formally set the state border to be the Harris Line.

Michigan, led by the young and hot-headed Mason, responded with the passage of the Pains and Penalties Act just six days after Lucas County was formed; the act made it a criminal offense for Ohioans to carry out governmental actions in the Strip, under penalty of a fine up to $1,000 (), up to five years imprisonment at hard labor, or both. Acting as commander-in-chief of the territory, Mason appointed Brigadier General Joseph W. Brown of the Third U.S. Brigade to head the state militia, with the instructions to be ready to act against Ohio trespassers. Lucas obtained legislative approval for a militia of his own, and he soon sent forces to the Strip area. The Toledo War had begun.

War

thumb|upright|right|U.S. President [[Andrew Jackson, who sided with Ohio in the conflict and dismissed Mason as governor]]

Acting as commander-in-chief of Ohio's militia, Governor Lucas—along with General John Bell and about 600 other fully armed militiamen—arrived in Perrysburg, Ohio, southwest of Toledo, on March 31, 1835. Shortly thereafter, Governor Mason and General Brown arrived to occupy the city of Toledo proper with around 1,000 armed men, intending to prevent Ohio advances into the Toledo area as well as stopping further border marking from taking place.

Presidential intervention

In a desperate attempt to prevent armed battle and to avert the resulting political crisis, U.S. President Andrew Jackson consulted his Attorney General, Benjamin Butler, for his legal opinion on the border dispute. At the time, Ohio was a growing political power in the Union, with 19 U.S. representatives and two senators. In contrast, Michigan, still a territory, had only a single non-voting delegate. Ohio was a crucial swing state in presidential elections, and it would have been devastating to the fledgling Democratic Party to lose its electoral votes. Jackson calculated that his party's best interest would be served by keeping the Toledo Strip as part of Ohio. However, Butler held that until Congress dictated otherwise, the land rightfully belonged to Michigan. This presented a political dilemma for Jackson that spurred him to take action that would greatly influence the outcome.

Lucas reluctantly agreed to the proposal and began to disband his militia, believing the debate to be settled. Three days later, elections in the region were held under Ohio law. Mason refused the deal and continued to prepare for possible armed conflict.

During the elections, Ohio officials were harassed by Michigan authorities, and the area residents were threatened with arrest if they submitted to Ohio's authority. On April 8, 1835, the Monroe County, Michigan sheriff arrived at the home of Major Benjamin F. Stickney, an Ohio partisan. In the first contact between Michigan partisans and the Stickney family, the sheriff arrested two Ohioans under the Pains and Penalties Act on the basis that the men had voted in the Ohio elections.

Battle of Phillips Corners

thumb|right|A box labeled "Toledo, Mi" that may have been used by the Michigan Militia during the Toledo War

After the election, Lucas believed that the commissioners' actions had alleviated the situation and once again sent out surveyors to mark the Harris Line. The project proceeded without serious incident until April 26, 1835, when the surveying group was attacked by 50 to 60 members of General Brown's militia in the Battle of Phillips Corners. As the only site of armed conflict, the battle's name is sometimes used as a synonym for the entire Toledo War.

thumb|right|Site of the Battle of Phillips Corners

Surveyors wrote to Lucas afterward that while observing "the blessings of the Sabbath", Michigan militia forces advised them to retreat. In the ensuing chase, "nine of our men, who did not leave the ground in time after being fired upon by the enemy, from thirty to fifty shots, were taken prisoners and carried away into Tecumseh, Michigan." While the details of the attack are disputed—Michigan claimed it fired no shots, only discharging a few musket rounds in the air as the Ohio group retreated—the battle further infuriated both Ohioans and Michiganders and brought the two sides to the brink of all-out war.

Bloodshed in 1835

thumb|upright|Ohioan Two Stickney, who caused the sole serious injury in the Toledo War by stabbing a Michigan sheriff's deputy

In response to allegations that Michigan's militia fired upon Ohioans, Lucas called a special session of Ohio's legislature on June 8 to pass several more controversial acts, including the establishment of Toledo as the county seat of Lucas County, the establishment of a Court of Common Pleas in the city, a law to prevent the forcible abduction of Ohio citizens from the area, and a budget of $300,000 ($ in ) to implement the legislation.

Lucas ordered his adjutant general, Samuel C. Andrews, to conduct a count of the militia, and was told that 10,000 volunteers were ready to fight. That news became exaggerated as it traveled north, and soon thereafter the Michigan territorial press dared the Ohio "million" to enter the Strip as they "welcomed them to hospitable graves".

In June 1835, Lucas dispatched a delegation consisting of U.S. Attorney Noah Haynes Swayne, former Congressman William Allen, and David T. Disney to Washington D.C. to confer with Jackson. The delegation presented Ohio's case and urged Jackson to address the situation swiftly.

Throughout mid-1835, both governments continued their practice of oneupmanship, and constant skirmishes and arrests occurred. Citizens of Monroe County joined in a posse to make arrests in Toledo. Partisans from Ohio, angered by the harassment, targeted the offenders with criminal prosecutions.

On July 15, Monroe County, Michigan, Deputy Sheriff Joseph Wood went into Toledo to arrest Major Benjamin Stickney, but when Stickney and his family resisted, the whole family was subdued and taken into custody. Looking for peace, Lucas began making his own efforts to end the conflict, again through federal intervention via Ohio's congressional delegation.

Frostbitten Convention and the end of the Toledo War

Horner proved extremely unpopular as governor and his tenure was very short. Residents disliked him so much they burned him in effigy and pelted him with vegetables upon his entry into the territorial capital. In the October 1835 elections, voters approved the draft constitution and re-elected Mason governor. The same election saw Isaac E. Crary chosen as Michigan's first U.S. Representative to Congress. Because of the dispute, Congress refused to accept his credentials and seated him as a non-voting delegate. The two U.S. Senators chosen by the state legislature in November, Lucius Lyon and John Norvell, were treated with even less respect, being allowed to sit only as spectators in the Senate gallery.]]

At the time, new states were admitted only in pairs, at the urging of pro-slavery Southern Senators to preserve the balance between pro-slavery and anti-slavery (free) states in the Senate. On June 15, 1836, when Arkansas, as a slave state, was admitted to the Union as the 25th state, as the first state in 15 years, Jackson signed a bill that allowed Michigan to become a (free) state, but only after it ceded the Toledo Strip. In exchange for this concession, Michigan would be granted the western three-quarters of what is now known as the Upper Peninsula (the easternmost portion had already been included in the state boundaries). Because of the perceived worthlessness of the Upper Peninsula's remote wilderness, which was ill-suited for agriculture, a September 1836 special convention in Ann Arbor rejected the offer.

As the year wore on, Michigan found itself deep in financial crisis, nearly bankrupt because of the high militia expenses. The government was spurred to action by the realization that a $400,000 surplus ($ in ) in the United States Treasury was about to be distributed to the 25 states but not to territorial governments; Michigan would have been ineligible to receive a share.

thumb|right|The [[Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Congress offered the region in red to the state of Michigan in exchange for the Toledo Strip, as a compromise.]]The war unofficially ended on December 14, 1836, when delegates at a second convention in Ann Arbor passed a resolution to accept Congress's terms. The calling of the convention was itself controversial. It came about only because of an upswelling of private summonses, petitions, and public meetings. Since the legislature did not approve a call to convention, some said the convention was illegal. Whigs boycotted the convention. As a consequence, the resolution was ridiculed by many Michigan residents. without the Toledo Strip but with the entire Upper Peninsula. However, the discovery of copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula and iron in the Central Upper Peninsula in the 1840s led to a mining boom that lasted long into the 20th century. Michigan's loss of of agricultural land and the port of Toledo was offset by the gain of of timber and ore-rich land.

While the land border was firmly set in the early 20th century, the two states still disagreed on the path of the border to the east, in Lake Erie. In 1973, they finally obtained a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on their competing claims to the Lake Erie waters. In Michigan v. Ohio, the court upheld a special master's report and ruled that the boundary between the two states in Lake Erie was angled to the northeast, as described in Ohio's state constitution, and not a straight east–west line. One consequence of the decision was that Turtle Island, just outside Maumee Bay and originally treated as wholly in Michigan, was split between the two states.

This decision was the last border adjustment, putting an end to years of debate. In modern times, although a general rivalry between Michiganders and Ohioans persists, overt conflict between the states is restricted primarily to the Michigan–Ohio State rivalry in collegiate American football and to a lesser degree to the rivalry between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians in American League baseball; the Toledo War is sometimes cited as the origin of the animosity represented in today's rivalry.

File:USGS Toledo Strip Topo.jpg|USGS topographic map that shows the Ordinance Line as "South Bdy Michigan Survey". There are jogs in many north–south roads at this line.

File:Mi-ohiowar.jpeg|Michigan Governor Woodbridge N. Ferris and Ohio Governor Frank B. Willis shake on a truce over state line markers erected in 1915.

File:Map of Williams County Ohio With Municipal and Township Labels.PNG|The northern tier of townships in Williams County are within the Toledo Strip. The southern boundary of each lies along the Ordinance Line.

File:1858 Platt Map, Dover Township, Fulton County, Ohio.jpg|The northern half of Dover Township in Fulton County Ohio, formerly claimed by Michigan, is shifted, or "jogs", at "Old State Line Road", now County Road K.

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Origins

War

Presidential intervention

Battle of Phillips Corners

Bloodshed in 1835

Frostbitten Convention and the end of the Toledo War

See also

References

Footnotes

Works cited

Further reading