THE TOLEDO WAR.
(“An Ohio Idea.”)
What does the Toledo War have to do with the history of Michigan’s upper peninsula? It put Michigan in the UP.
What is known as the Toledo War was one of a very peculiar and harmless character, beginning in perspective and ending without collision, fight, or casualty; yet exhibiting on the start on both sides a maximum of bombastic threatenings, prospective of possible coming war, with bloody battles and direful consequences, and although it brought out on the part of Michigan the most formidable military demonstration incident to a dispute, between States as to territory occurring in the United States, it ended in a wordy peace, which has resulted in handing down the whole affair, both civil and military, in undeserved traditional and written ridicule. In the beginning of 1835 the State of Ohio undertook to enforce jurisdiction over certain territory south of the Maumee Bay, which was then considered as a portion of Michigan Territory, and claimed as such.
The legislative council of Michigan on February 12, of that year, passed an act “to prevent the exercise of foreign jurisdiction within the limits of the Territory of Michigan,” making it a penal offense for any one to accept or exercise any public office in any part of the Territory, except by commission from the United States, or Michigan. On the 19th of the same month Acting Governor Mason, in a letter of instructions in detail to General Joseph W. Brown, then commanding a division of the Michigan militia, says: “Under existing circumstances but one of two courses is left for Michigan to pursue. If Ohio continues to persevere in the attempt to wrest from us our territory, as she now meditates,—in voluntary submission to encroachment upon our rights, or firm and determined opposition to her,—the latter though painful to us, is preferable to the former, and must be decided upon.
