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The History of the Lost
Peninsula |
Lost Peninsula is a small
part of Michigan that became separated because of the 1835 Toledo
War,
changing the Michigan/Ohio Boundary. It was also the staging area for rum runners,
bringing illegal spirits into the United States from Canada.
The Toledo War
The Toledo War (1835–1836; also known
as the Ohio-Michigan War) was the largely bloodless outcome of
a boundary dispute between the U.S. state of Ohio and the adjoining
territory of Michigan. The dispute originated from conflicting
state and federal legislation, passed between 1787 and 1805,
which left Ohio's northern border uncertain. The governments
of Ohio and Michigan both claimed sovereignty over a 468 square
mile (1,210 sq km) region along the border, now known as the
Toledo Strip. When Michigan pressed for statehood in the early
1830s, it sought to include the disputed territory within its
boundaries, but Ohio's Congressional delegation was able to halt
Michigan's admission to the Union.
Beginning in 1835, both sides passed legislation meant to force
the other side's capitulation. Ohio's governor Robert Lucas and
Michigan's then 24-year-old "boy
governor" Stevens T. Mason were both unwilling to cede jurisdiction of the
Strip, so they raised militias and helped institute criminal penalties for citizens
submitting to the other state's authority. Both militias were mobilized and sent
to positions on opposite sides of the Maumee River near Toledo, but there was
little interaction between the two sides besides mutual taunting. The single
military confrontation of the "war" ended with a report of shots being
fired into the air, incurring no casualties. There was only one serious injury
in the entire conflict: the stabbing of a Michigan deputy sheriff involved in
the arrest of a partisan Ohio family.
In December 1836, the Michigan territorial government, facing a dire financial
crisis, surrendered the land under pressure from Congress and President Andrew
Jackson, and accepted a proposed resolution adopted in the U.S. Congress. Under
the compromise, Michigan gave up its claim to the strip in exchange for its statehood
and approximately three-quarters of the Upper Peninsula. Considered a poor outcome
for Michigan at the time, the later discovery of copper and the plentiful timber
in the Upper Peninsula more than compensated for the loss of the strip.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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