August 1, 2012

• THE GREAT OHIO-MICHIGAN WAR OF 1835-36

  Surely you’ve heard of it

  I’ve always thought the Upper Peninsula of Michigan should be part of Wisconsin since it’s attached to it, whereas you have to cross a five-mile bridge to get to it from the Lower Peninsula.  I mentioned that to Barb, and she told me about the great Ohio-Michigan war of 1835-36, which I had never heard of.  I did some research and quote from Wikipedia:

  Originating from conflicting state and federal legislation passed between 1787 and 1805, the dispute resulted from poor understanding of geographical features of the Great Lakes at the time. Varying interpretations of the law caused the governments of Ohio and Michigan to both claim sovereignty over a 468-square-mile region along the border, now known as the Toledo Strip. When Michigan sought statehood in the early 1830s, it sought to include the disputed territory within its boundaries; Ohio’s Congressional delegation was in turn able to halt Michigan’s admission to the Union.

  Militias were mobilized and sent to positions on opposite sides of the Maumee River near Toledo, but besides mutual taunting there was little interaction between the two forces. The single military confrontation of the “war” ended with a report of shots being fired into the air, incurring no casualties.

  During the summer of 1836, Congress proposed a compromise whereby Michigan gave up its claim to the strip in exchange for its statehood and approximately three-quarters of the Upper Peninsula. The compromise was considered a poor outcome for Michigan at the time, since nearly all of it was still Indian territory, and voters in a state convention in September soundly rejected it.

  In December 1836, the Michigan territorial government, facing a dire financial crisis and pressure from Congress and President Andrew Jackson, called another convention (called the “Frost-bitten Convention”) which accepted the compromise which resolved the Toledo War.

  So the upshot was, Michigan got the U.P. which turned out to have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of copper, iron, silver and timber, and Ohio got – Toledo.  Sounds fair to me.

  • 12:40 pm
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