Bloodless
wars; you know them, you love them -- the Pork and Beans War, the Anglo-Swedish
War of 1810-1812, and the Huéscar-Denmark War. I would have included the Pig
War, but as a friend pointed out, the pig was a casualty. But what about the
wars that aren’t exactly full-on wars, but someone does get hurt; what about history’s
ALMOST bloodless wars?
Usually, they’re
like the above; some stupid pissing match that got out of hand and evolved into
the fight over the watering hole between the ape-men from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Except instead of a black monolith teaching them how to use a bone to kill each
other, followed by Also sprach
Zarathustra playing really loudly, it was “Well, sheriff, we’d been
drinking and waving our guns around at them Michigander sumbitches, when . . .”
That’s right, long before “The Game” as Wolverines and Buckeye’s fan refer to
their long-standing football rivalry, there was *cue Also sprach Zarathustra* . . . the Toledo War.
The roots
of the Toledo War lie in a simple mistake of geography. The Treaty of Paris of
1783 (There are like, a million treaties of Paris), which ended the American
Revolution in the home team’s favor, ceded the lands east of the Mississippi
River, south of Canada, north of the Ohio River, and west of the Appalachian
Mountains, to the United States. That may sound cut-and-dried, but it was
actually pretty nebulous and lacking in enough detail that there followed for
decades, more treaties, border disputes, and other assorted unpleasant
situations that are too numerous to mention here.
One I will
mention though, because it has some parallel to our main story, is the dispute
over the Erie Triangle, that little triangular jag of land in western Pennsylvania
that pokes up above the 42nd parallel north, and gives that state
more than what would have been the roughly five miles of access to Lake Erie it
would otherwise have had. At the end of the American Revolution, it turned out
that there was no clear claim to that area. Pennsylvania and New York were the
primary entities who wanted it, but based on original colonial grants, Connecticut,
and Massachusetts threw their hats in the ring too. Pennsylvania had the most
to lose, having already paid the Iroquois Confederacy for the land in 1789, and
then separately, the Seneca Nation, a constituent of the Confederacy, in 1791.
Both of these sales were in violation of the Contract Clause of the U.S.
Constitution, which prohibits individual States from contracting treaties with
foreign powers. By 1792, the federal government, fed up with the bickering, got
each state to set their claims aside, and then, mainly to get Pennsylvania to
shut up about a separate boundary dispute, sold the land to them for 75 cents
an acre. Yay! Congress does its job! Problem solved, pretty much peacefully.
Not so with the Toledo Strip.
In 1835, at
the time of our little history tale, the Toledo Strip was a 5 to 8 mile wide section
of land disputed between the state of Ohio and what was then the Michigan
Territory, although the argument had been going on for some time before that.
When the
Northwest Territory was organized, the Congress of the Confederation (the U.S,
was operating under the Articles of Confederation at the time, not the
Constitution) already planned for the Territory to eventually be split into between
three and five states, depending on what Congress would decide in the future.
As part of this it was stipulated that if they were to decide there should be
five states instead of just three, that the southern boundary for the northern
two would be “. . . an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or
extreme of Lake Michigan.” Problem was no one really knew where the southerly
bend of Lake Michigan was.
By the time
Ohio was applying for admission as a state in 1802, people had a better idea
where that location was, and unfortunately it would give the important lands at
the mouth of the Maumee River to one of those hypothetical future two northern
states, as outlined in the Northwest Ordinance. Ohio was having none of that,
so when they wrote the draft constitution to be submitted to Congress, they
changed the language to clearly define the northern border as being well north
of the Maumee. The record of the Congressional committee tasked with reviewing
the constitution clearly recognized the change, but decided to kick the can
down the road and leave the matter unsettled. After all, nobody was going to
draw blood over the matter.
By 1812
there was a town at the mouth of the Maumee, eventually to be named Toledo,
which considered itself part of Ohio and wanted the matter resolved. The Ohio
legislature asked Congress to finally pick up that can, and after a brief delay
due to the War of 1812, a survey was commissioned. That survey found that even
though the border provisions laid out at the formation of the Michigan
Territory in 1807 used the original language of the Northwest Ordinance, the
border was definitely, positively, with one-hundred percent surety, north of
the Maumee’s mouth. Given that the Surveyor General who had commissioned the
survey was a former governor of Ohio, the governor of the Michigan Territory
had problems with this and commissioned a survey of his own, which found that
the border was south of the Maumee. Congress kicked the can further down the
road, and settlers from both sides continued to establish communities in the
disputed lands.
To further
increase tensions, when Michigan began trying to apply for statehood, the Ohio
Congressional delegation blocked all its efforts. Enter Stevens T. “The Boy
Governor” Mason, member of a family with close political ties to President
Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory himself. In 1831, when Mason was 19, Jackson
appointed him to the position of Secretary of Michigan, replacing his father,
who Jackson was sending to Mexico. The
territorial governor at the time was rarely in Michigan, so this effectively
made Mason the acting governor, and he went at it with a vengeance, continuing
to push for Michigan’s admission as a state. By 1834, Mason, now at least
legally able to vote, was made territorial governor in fact.
The next
year, Ohio upped the ante by setting up county governments in the Toledo Strip.
This was too much for Mason, who passed an act making it a crime for anyone
trying to organize any Ohio county or municipal government in the disputed
lands, and gave orders to the Michigan militia commander to arrest any Ohioan
who dared to break the new law. The Ohio Legislature, at the request of Governor
Robert Lucas, organized a militia of its own. Lucas and his militia moved into
position in the town of Perrysburg, 12 miles southwest of Toledo. Mason
responded by occupying Toledo with his Michigan militia. Shit had just got
real. What could go wrong?
President
Jackson, finally stirred from his normal routine of fighting duels and
obsessively organizing his Cherokee scalp collection, or whatever else that
crazy bastard got up to, asked his Attorney General for a legal opinion. Jackson
needed the support of Ohio, even then a swing state, in the upcoming election
of 1836 if his Democratic Party was to stay in power, and was sure that Attorney
General Benjamin Butler would give an opinion in Ohio’s favor. After all,
Jackson had named a fort crucial to the removal of eastern Indians during the Trail
of Tears after Butler. That should have made them BFFs 4-Ev-R. Bros before
arcane border disputes and all that.
Butler, to
Jackson’s chagrin, gave an opinion favoring Michigan. I can’t find any record
of the epic flip-out Jackson must have had, but the fact his pet parrot had to
be removed from his funeral for its nonstop, extremely loud cursing is a hint
as to what happened. That and the fact that repeatedly screaming
“FUCKETY-FUCK-FUCK-FUCKKKKK!!!” at the top of your lungs is called “throwing an
Old Hickory”. One of the above statements is not true. I’ll leave you to guess
which one.
Jackson sent representatives to try
and arbitrate the dispute, and they called for a compromise whereby another
survey would be made and the residents of the strip would be allowed a
referendum where they would decide which state they wanted to belong to.
Governor Lucas agreed to the compromise, but Mason refused to submit,
threatening to arrest anyone in the Strip who voted in what he saw as an
election that was being rigged by Ohio.
Lucas,
still thinking the matter was settled sent surveyors into the Strip, and they
were eventually set upon by Michigan militia, who -- according to which side
you believe -- either fired at the survey party, or fired their guns into the
air to scare them. Nine of the surveyors were arrested by the Michiganders.
With shots fired, tension ramped up
even more. Harassment of partisans of each side by those of the other followed.
Both legislatures responded by passing bills to prove who had the bigger dick.
Michigan newspapers taunted Ohio newspapers. Things were bad.
In July the
war claimed its first and only casualty when Michigander Deputy Sheriff Joseph
Wood went to the home of Major Benjamin Franklin Stickney to arrest him under
Mason’s Pains and Penalties Act. Stickney was an interesting guy, something of
a polymath, and a staunch Ohio partisan, although he had once been a leading
figure for the Michigander cause. Also something of an eccentric, he name his
sons One and Two. During the brawl that ensued, one of Stickney’s sons, Two,
stabbed Sheriff Wood with a penknife and made his escape to Ohio. Two’s father
and his brother One were arrested. Sheriff Wood survived the stabbing. Insert
your own Abbott and Costello joke here.
When Governor Mason demanded Ohio
turn over Two for trial, Governor Lucas told him to get stuffed. Mason,
thinking Jackson would help him out, asked the President to put the entire matter
before the Supreme Court. Jackson declined, perhaps not wishing to expand the
purview of the Supreme Court to boundary disputes.
Realizing Mason was the main
impediment to any kind of compromise, the Ohio Congressional delegation asked
Jackson to remove him as territorial governor. Doubtless fed up with Mason
acting a little too much like, well, Andrew Jackson, the President shit-canned
Mason, replacing him with John S. “Little Jack” Horner. No kidding, the dude’s
last name was Horner and he was nicknamed “Little Jack”. As if that wasn’t
enough problems for the poor guy, his commitment to a compromise infuriated
Michiganders so much that they greeted his arrival in Ann Arbor by burning an
effigy and throwing vegetables at him.
As the dispute dragged into 1836, in
the biggest F-U they could think of, Michiganders, despite Congress’ refusal to
accept it, voted for their draft state constitution and elected Mason as
governor, along with one representative to Congress. The legislature selected
two senators. When the Michigan Congressional delegation arrived in Washington,
D.C. they were greeted with hostility by
a Congress that refused to allow them to take their seats. In answer Congress
passed a bill that would allow Michigan its statehood, but only if it
surrendered on the matter of the Toledo Strip. In return for doing so it was
offered a sizeable chunk of land on the Upper Peninsula; land that was then
part of the just-months-old Wisconsin Territory. Michigan’s special convention
convened in Ann Arbor, and not pleased with being offered what they saw as a
bunch more worthless trees than they already possessed, all the way on the
other side of Lake Michigan, they rejected the deal.
What finally convinced Michigan to
give in later in the year was essentially what did in the Soviet Union. Defense
spending is a bitch if you don’t have the income to support it. After keeping
the state militia on a war footing for almost a year, Michigan was broke, and
as a territory was not eligible for a share of the large surplus in the U.S.
Treasury that was to be distributed among the states. In a second special
convention, which became known as the Frostbitten Convention, the delegates
accepted the offer, and the Toledo War was effectively over, one non-fatal
penknife stabbing and all. Most importantly, they got some of that sweet, sweet
surplus money. Not a bad score.
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