40 Fun Facts About Toledo War

Which region became Michigan's consolation prize for giving up the Toledo Strip to Ohio?

The Upper Peninsula was dismissed at the time as worthless wilderness, and a Michigan convention first rejected the swap. A mining boom began there within a decade.

Michigan and Ohio nearly came to blows in 1835 over a river-mouth port on which of the Great Lakes?

Lake Erie mattered because its western end offered the shortest overland route to the frontiers farther west. Canal builders saw Toledo's harbor as the gateway.

The Toledo War's only blood was drawn when a Michigan deputy sheriff suffered which injury during an arrest in Toledo?

A stab wound was the war's entire casualty list: Deputy Joseph Wood recovered, and his attacker escaped into Ohio, whose governor refused to hand him over.

The Toledo War is sometimes named as the root of the Michigan Wolverines' football feud with which Ohio team?

The Buckeyes of Ohio State first faced Michigan in 1897, six decades after the border dispute, and many followers simply call the yearly meeting The Game.

Which metal, struck on the Keweenaw in the 1840s, turned Michigan's Toledo War consolation prize into a mining bonanza?

Copper set off the first major mining boom of its kind in the United States, in land Michiganders had written off as worthless wilderness.

Which president removed Michigan's young territorial governor in 1835 under pressure from Ohio's members of Congress?

Andrew Jackson had been advised that Michigan held the better legal claim. He backed Ohio anyway, calculating that his party's interests lay with the state rather than the territory.

After a 1915 re-survey finally fixed the Ohio–Michigan line, what did the governors of both states do at the border?

They shook hands across a line newly marked by 71 granite posts. Surveyors had bent the old boundary in places so that no landowner was left with parcels in both states.

Which crossing, opened in 1957, finally tied Michigan's Toledo War consolation prize to the rest of the state by road?

The Mackinac Bridge replaced the ferries that had been the only link across the straits. Nearly five miles long, it was the world's longest suspension bridge between anchorages when it opened.

Which city was Michigan's capital throughout the Toledo War, a decade before the government moved to Lansing?

Detroit sat 20 miles up its own river from the lake, which made it a poorer site for canals and railroads than Toledo. That is partly why Michigan fought so hard for the port.

Which slave state was admitted in June 1836 as the counterweight to free Michigan, whose own entry hung on Toledo?

Arkansas joined at once, but Michigan had to wait seven more months: the bill signed that day admitted it only after it gave up the Toledo Strip.

Which former president, then serving in the House, backed Michigan's side of the Toledo border dispute?

John Quincy Adams said he had never known a controversy with all the right so clearly on one side and all the power on the other. Congress still refused Michigan a statehood convention.

Which conflict stalled the first official survey of the Ohio–Michigan border for years after Congress approved the work?

The War of 1812 began in the very year Congress approved the survey, so the line went unmeasured for about five years. The survey that followed traced the border in Ohio's constitution, not the older federal one.

Which body settled the last Ohio–Michigan boundary question, in the waters off Toledo, with a 1973 ruling?

The US Supreme Court sided with Ohio, ruling that the water boundary angles to the northeast as Ohio's constitution describes. It was the final adjustment, 136 years after Michigan became a state.

Which state's 1816 admission moved its border ten miles into Michigan Territory to gain a Lake Michigan shoreline?

Indiana got the change over Michigan Territory's protests, so Michigan had already lost one border argument with a new state years before it lost Toledo.

Toledo, the port Ohio kept after the Toledo War, later earned which nickname from its biggest manufacturing industry?

The Glass City earned the name after the first of many glassmakers arrived in the 1880s, turning out windows, bottles and windshields. The Toledo Museum of Art holds a large collection of the craft.

Which 1787 law drew the east–west boundary through Lake Michigan's southern tip that Michigan cited in claiming Toledo?

The Northwest Ordinance fixed the line before anyone had measured where the lake actually ended. The best map of the day put its tip too far north, so Ohio's founders assumed Toledo's bay was safely theirs.

Which 'Boy Governor', still in his early twenties, led Michigan Territory into the Toledo War against Ohio?

Stevens T. Mason had been running the territory on and off since he was 19, before he could vote. Elected at 23, he remains the youngest state governor in American history.

Which river, rising at Fort Wayne and reaching the Great Lakes at Toledo, was the real prize of the Toledo War?

The Maumee drains the largest watershed of any river feeding the Great Lakes. Ohio had already approved a canal from the Ohio River that would empty through its mouth, so losing Toledo meant losing the outlet.

Ohio's Toledo War governor later sparked the Honey War with Missouri as the first governor of which territory?

Iowa got the same combative governor a few years later, and he again called out militia over a disputed border strip. That standoff is remembered for three felled bee trees.

In which Michigan town did delegates meet in December 1836 to accept Congress's terms and end the Toledo War?

Ann Arbor had hosted a first convention three months earlier that rejected the same deal. The second gathering was called without the legislature's approval, so many said it was illegal.

What nickname was given to the disputed December 1836 meeting at which Michigan accepted the loss of Toledo?

The Frostbitten Convention got its name from a notable cold spell and from the scorn of Michiganders who thought the gathering unlawful. Congress doubted its legality too, then accepted the result anyway.

Who reportedly warned Ohio's 1802 constitution writers that Lake Michigan reached farther south than the maps showed?

A fur trapper's tip is said to have alarmed the delegates, since a lake reaching farther south pushed the border south with it. They wrote a fallback clause angling the line up to Toledo's bay.

Nine Ohioans seized in the Toledo War's only armed clash were marched to a Michigan town named for which Native leader?

Tecumseh, Michigan, received the captured survey party after militia chased it off the disputed line. Michigan insisted its men had only fired a few musket rounds into the air.

Major Benjamin Stickney of Toledo gave his sons numbers for names; which son attacked a Michigan deputy in 1835?

Two Stickney was the younger brother of One Stickney, and their father was among Ohio's loudest partisans in Toledo. After the attack he fled into Ohio, whose governor refused Michigan's demand to hand him over for trial.

What did Ohio officials slip into Toledo before dawn in September 1835 to hold, as proof of the state's authority?

A court session, however brief, was enough: the judges met in a schoolhouse in the dark, kept the minutes on scraps of paper in the clerk's hat, and hurried away from the Michigan militia sent to stop them.

Which vast wetland around Toledo made the disputed Toledo Strip nearly impossible to cross by road in the 1830s?

The Great Black Swamp kept the rival militias from closing with each other, and it made a river port at its edge all the more valuable. It was drained for farmland later in the century.

Which political asset, which Michigan lacked as a mere territory, made Ohio too valuable for the White House to cross?

Electoral votes decided it: Ohio was a swing state with 19 representatives, while Michigan had one delegate who could not vote. The president's party could not afford to lose Ohio.

Which cabinet officer told the president in 1835 that the Toledo Strip was Michigan's until Congress said otherwise?

The Attorney General, Benjamin Butler, gave the answer the White House did not want. The president then sent commissioners to Toledo with a compromise that let Ohio finish marking its preferred line.

Which political party boycotted the December 1836 gathering at which Michigan finally agreed to give up Toledo?

The Whigs stayed away from a meeting the legislature had never authorized, and as a result many Michiganders ridiculed its vote.

Which 1817 survey, named for the man who ran it, put Toledo's river mouth entirely inside Ohio?

The Harris Line followed Ohio's constitution; Michigan answered with its own survey along the older federal boundary. The gap between them, five to eight miles wide, became the Toledo Strip.

Which former Ohio governor, as US Surveyor General, ordered the border run the way Ohio's constitution described?

Edward Tiffin had been Ohio's first governor, and Michigan's governor protested in writing that the survey was biased. Yet he later let federal land surveys close on the line Michigan preferred.

Which Michigan territorial governor, later a presidential nominee, called the 1817 border survey biased toward Ohio?

Lewis Cass wrote that the survey only added strength to the strong and made the weak still weaker. He was sitting in the president's cabinet by the time the quarrel turned into the Toledo War.

Which 1835 Michigan law made it a crime for Ohio officials to act in the Toledo Strip?

The Pains and Penalties Act threatened a fine of up to $1,000 and five years at hard labor. Michigan sheriffs used it to arrest Toledo residents simply for voting in an Ohio election.

The Toledo War's lone armed clash, when Michigan militia chased off Ohio surveyors, is named for which place?

Phillips Corners is where Michigan militia surprised an Ohio survey party on a Sunday. Michigan claimed it fired only into the air, nobody was hurt, and the skirmish is still styled a battle.

Because of the Toledo dispute, Michigan's first elected senators were allowed to attend the Senate only as what?

As spectators in the gallery, Lucius Lyon and John Norvell could only watch. Michigan's elected congressman fared slightly better: he was seated, but as a delegate with no vote.

Which federal windfall, payable to states but not territories, pushed near-bankrupt Michigan to drop its Toledo claim?

A Treasury surplus share was about to go out to every state, and Michigan, drained by militia costs, would get nothing as a territory. Statehood on Congress's terms suddenly looked affordable.

Which Ohio county containing Toledo was created mid-dispute and named for the governor then defying Michigan?

Lucas County honoured Robert Lucas while he was still in office and leading the state's militia in the dispute. Making Toledo its seat was a direct challenge to Michigan's claim.

The canal that made Toledo worth fighting over was built to link the port with which city on the Ohio River?

Cincinnati was to be joined to the lakes by a 274-mile canal that Ohio approved in 1825. Had Michigan held Toledo, the waterway's outlet would have sat outside the state that paid for it.

Which suburb of Toledo, lying inside the old Toledo Strip, shares its name with a state on the Pacific coast?

Oregon, Ohio, stands on land that Michigan once governed and taxed. The neighbouring suburb of Sylvania also lies inside the wedge that both governments claimed.

Which tiny isle off Toledo, once treated as wholly Michigan's, was split with Ohio by a 1973 boundary ruling?

Turtle Island was sold at a federal auction in 1827 and carries the ruins of an 1866 lighthouse. Most of it now lies in Ohio, with a smaller share left to Michigan.