It’s the early 1800s, and the Great Lakes region doesn’t have many states. It’s mostly one big designation called the Northwest Territory.
But, one day, a group of politicians decide they want to make Ohio an official state. They draft a constitution, draw up state lines and are just about to send the paperwork to Congress for approval, when this fur trapper shows up.
“I can just imagine this grizzled trapper with a big, burly beard coming into the offices of the state legislature and saying, “Hold on, gentlemen. You're about to make a major mistake,” says Tedd Long, a local historian and storyteller in Toledo, Ohio.
The trapper tells the politicians they’re drawing part of the northern border all wrong. They’re denying the future state of Ohio a major trade port.
So, the Ohio politicians decide to just nudge the line even farther north and include that port.
That move starts a decades-long border fight between Michigan and Ohio called the Toledo War. There are winners. There are losers. And in the end, it shapes the states as we know them.
Credits:
Producer: Ryan Schnurr
Editor: Morgan Springer
Additional Editing: Dan Wanschura, Ellie Katz, Claire Keenan-Kurgan
Host: Dan Wanschura
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
Special Thanks: Peggy Watson, Michigan Public, Zach Bernard and WBOI.
Transcript:
DAN WANSCHURA, HOST: Every year, at the end of November, the football teams from the University of Michigan and Ohio State University play each other in the final game of the regular season.
(Michigan/Ohio State football game SFX)
ZAK BERNATH: It's tense. There's a lot on the line with Ohio State-Michigan.
WANSCHURA: Zak Bernath is a diehard Ohio State fan.
BERNATH: So when you’re watching the game there is a lot of anxiety.
(Game SFX)
BERNATH: You pan out, … and you can see the field of maize and blue, primarily blue if it's at Michigan. Ohio State, it's mostly scarlet. … And you know how that fanbase is feeling. You're an enemy in hostile territory.
(Game SFX)
WANSCHURA: Zak grew up in Ohio, about fifteen miles south of the Michigan border. And he says the area was always about fifty-fifty, Michigan versus Ohio State fans.
BERNATH: And I do have to this day I've got some friends who don't talk about the game. You just let it happen. The loser knows they lost, and you're best off not talking about it.
WANSCHURA: So, yeah. It’s a serious rivalry.
BERNATH: This is how you know it might be the greatest rivalry in college football or in sports–it’s literally just called “The Game.”
(Game SFX)
BERNATH: And everyone knows what you mean. … “The Game” is Ohio State-Michigan.
WANSCHURA: And every year, when “The Game” comes around, the announcers dredge up an even older rivalry. It’s a rivalry from about 200 years ago – back before football even existed.
BERNATH: Every year the border war gets brought up. … The Toledo War. … Michigan fans will wear a t-shirt that says … Toledo War Champs … and it's a picture of the Upper Peninsula.
WANSCHURA: The Toledo War. Sometimes called the Michigan-Ohio War.
It happened in the 1830s. Michigan and Ohio were fighting over the border where the line between their two states would be. Toledo was involved. So was the Upper Peninsula. There were militias on horseback, a boy governor, and a couple of guys named One and Two.
This is Points North, a podcast about the land, water and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura.
Today, we go back 200 years, to this moment when Michigan and Ohio duked it out over the border. There were winners. There were losers. And in the end, they shaped the states as we know them today. Producer Ryan Schnurr has the story.
RYAN SCHNURR, BYLINE: It’s the early 1800s, and the Great Lakes region doesn’t have many U.S. states. It’s mostly part of one big territory: the Northwest Territory. Then, one day, politicians get together and decide to create the state of Ohio. And they do all the things you need for statehood, drafting a constitution, drawing state lines. And they’re getting ready to send it to Congress. But then, the story goes, a fur trapper wanders out of the woods.
TEDD LONG: I've heard the story, seen the story in writing. Never seen any real documentation. It’s a great story. Maybe just a myth.
SCHNURR: That’s Tedd Long, a local historian and storyteller in Toledo, Ohio.
LONG: I mean, I can just imagine this grizzled trapper with a big, burly beard coming into the offices of the state legislature and saying, “Hold on gentlemen, you know, you're about to make a major mistake.”
SCHNURR: Okay, so bear with me. We’re gonna talk about geography. Because this whole story really boils down to a single line on a map – part of the northern boundary of Ohio. The Ohio politicians had borrowed their border from an old regional map. It seemed as good a line as any. But the trapper says their map is wrong.
LONG: Whipping out some kind of crude map and showing them, showing them how, “If you follow through with what you're gonna use, … you're gonna lose Maumee Bay and parts of the shore of Lake Erie.”
SCHNURR: There was a port on the west end of Lake Erie, right by the Maumee River. And it was one of the most important trade routes in the region.
Back then, water was the quickest way to transport things. People would load up boats full of furs and other goods – whiskey, flour, guns – and ship them up and down the Maumee. They could get to Detroit and Canada. They could also make it all the way down the Mississippi to the ocean. Basically, it was a transcontinental railroad for boats.
And so the trapper says, if you put the line where you’re thinking of putting it, you’re going to give up control over this whole trade route.
LONG: And then I could just see the look on the faces of these legislators, just, “now what?” And then there's always that one person in the room who just says, “Well, let's just slide it up to the north a little bit, and no one will ever notice.”
SCHNURR: So that’s what they did. They shifted the border to the north and claimed the port for Ohio. And that’s the line that became their official state border.
But there’s a problem. Another territory had formed to the north a couple years later: Michigan. And the federal government gave them the old line – the one Ohio almost used before the trapper stopped them. That old line gave Michigan control of the port and the major trade route.
So Michigan and Ohio each survey their versions of the border. And we end up with two competing lines running at slightly different angles. They create a sort of wedge-shaped strip of land with the port at one end. And nobody can agree about who owns it.
LONG: They were inside what was called the area of dispute.
SCHNURR: The area of dispute. I love that term. It seems to perfectly capture the confusion of the moment. Everybody is just marking boundaries and staking claims. It’s a land rush. The world is up for grabs.
Of course, the U.S. had just recently taken this land from the Indigenous people living there – the Erie, Kickapoo, Odawa, and Seneca. So really neither Michigan nor Ohio had any sort of grand claim to the area.
But the white settlers who live in this area of dispute, they can’t agree if they’re part of Ohio or Michigan, And the guy in charge of the port writes to the governor of Ohio and says:
LONG: You have a problem, and this is just gonna get bigger and bigger.
SCHNURR: He was right. The problem did get worse. And 20 years later it erupted into a war. Sort of. People call it a war at least. The Toledo War. It’s the 1830s, and the governor of the Michigan Territory is named Stephens T. Mason. The “Boy Governor.” They called him the boy governor because he was really young, in his early 20s and pretty aggressive.
MARTY HERSHOCK: Stevens T. Mason is very keen on A.) building a reputation for himself, but also he sees a lot of potential in Michigan.
SCHNURR: Marty Hershock is a professor of history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
HERSHOCK: He really starts to push for statehood, and for Michigan to include, within its geographic boundaries, the mouth of the Maumee.
SCHNURR: In other words: he wants the area of dispute, the port, and the trade route. Michigan’s major aggression starts with an act: The Pains and Penalties Act.
LONG: Just the name Pains and Penalties Act in itself makes it sound just very, very obscure and scary.
SCHNURR: Tedd Long again.
LONG: It's an act that says, if you even think of insulting the territory of Michigan, we're gonna come down, arrest you and put you in jail.
SCHNURR: Yeah. You don't call something the Pains and Penalties Act unless you're trying to project an image of aggression.
LONG: Exactly. Exactly.
SCHNURR: The big thing this act says, though – the thing that really ramps up the aggression – is that Michigan could arrest Ohioans for acting like they owned the area of dispute. And they do. Michigan sheriffs arrest Ohioans that summer – for voting, surveying, agitating. Obviously Ohio was mad about this, so its governor gathers his own troops at the edge of the area of dispute.
LONG: That's when it really starts to look like something serious is gonna happen. … These are mobs of people that are really upset and trying to have a physical part in deciding who's gonna get this property.
SCHNURR: What happens next, after the break.
(Sponsorship message)
SCHNURR: So, back to those upset mobs. You’ve got committed governors, angry villagers, troops amassed along the borders, the prime conditions for full-out war. But nothing major really ends up happening. And when blood is eventually drawn, it’s so minor it’s almost comical. That story begins with a guy named Benjamin Franklin Stickney.
LONG: He's quite a character. I mean, one of my favorite Toledo characters.
SCHNURR: Stickney had just helped found the city of Toledo, in the area of dispute. And he has two sons. Their names are One and Two Stickney.
LONG: He didn't think it was fair for parents to name their children and force them to live with those names throughout their entire life. So he gave his children temporary names so that they could later on decide to change their name.
SCHNURR: Except they didn’t. They stuck with One and Two. At this point the Stickneys are all in for Ohio. One Stickney has been organizing people in the area of dispute. So Michigan sends a sheriff's deputy down to arrest him.
LONG: And he's in a tavern, and the deputy comes in. Well, One Stickney’s brother, Two, stands up to defend him, and they get into a physical altercation in which Two Stickney stabs the deputy with a pen knife.
SCHNURR: That's such a wild story. It's just a lawless place, you know? It feels so wild-
LONG: It absolutely is. Yeah.
SCHNURR: So far as anybody knows, this is the only actual blood drawn in the Toledo War. Which really makes the term ‘war’ seem like an exaggeration. But they’re fighting over boundaries, and Toledo is there. So that’s the name. It’s kind of funny if you’re thinking about it now. Not so much if you’re the deputy. He was pretty sure his stab wound was fatal.
HERSHOCK: He was taken to a local doctor in what is again, today, Toledo, who pronounced that he was fine. But he didn't trust this guy because he was known to be pro-Ohio.
SCHNURR: So he called in a surgeon from Michigan who confirmed-
HERSHOCK: “You're going to live.”
SCHNURR: Now remember, Michigan is still a territory, but it desperately wants statehood. And they want to make sure their border includes that area of dispute and the major trade port. So, the Boy Governor decides he’s just gonna keep acting like he owns the place, keep sending militias, keep arresting people.
But Ohio is a pretty powerful enemy, and it’s fighting back. It’s already a state, which means it has more independence and credibility than Michigan. So the Ohio politicians pull a legal move. They decide to create a new county in the area of dispute, surrounding the city of Toledo, to make it harder for Michigan to convince the feds it owns the place. But creating that county – it's kind of risky.
LONG: They realize in order for that all to be legal, they have to hold court inside that property.
SCHNURR: And they have to do it without getting arrested by Michigan. So, the governor of Ohio sends staff to Toledo to hold court to make the county. Michigan sends a thousand armed men on horseback to stop them. The Ohio guys have outfox the Michiganders. So, on the day of the hearing, they find a spot right on the very edge of town: a schoolhouse.
LONG: And they hold the court at, basically, I think four or five in the morning. … I could see all these Michigan troops. They're riding up and down the streets trying to figure out where this court's being held. And they've been completely duped because they're there at the wrong time, number one and number two-
SCHNURR: They were in the wrong place. An Ohio judge, a clerk, and the rest of the court staff meet in the schoolhouse with the desks and the chalk. It’s a quick process. About ten minutes total. They certify the records. And the race is on. They need to book it out of town and get these court records back to undisputed Ohio territory.
LONG: The paperwork that had to be signed to make it all legal gets stuffed into someone's hat, and they all take off in different directions so they're not caught by anybody or trailed by anyone.
SCHNURR: The guy who actually has the court papers is the clerk: Dr. Horatio Conant. He’s got them tucked up into his hat, and he’s riding along toward the Ohio border – no Michigan militia in sight. Then his hat gets knocked off by a tree branch. Now the official records are on the forest floor somewhere.
LONG: You know, he has to turn around and go back and get it.
SCHNURR: So, he’s searching for these papers in the dark. And he’s gotta find them because otherwise the whole thing doesn’t count.
LONG: It's just, it adds another element to this whole story that makes it sound like it certainly ought to be a movie.
SCHNURR: So the clerk is looking and looking … until eventually he finds the papers. And he gathers them up and keeps riding toward Ohio. And he makes it. Ohio now has an official county in the area of dispute. And it will be that much harder for Michigan to make its case for control.
That isn’t the end though. Sure, Ohio had this county, but Michigan isn’t backing down. So eventually, President Andrew Jackson and the U.S. Congress have had enough. Like parents trying to break up a couple of bickering toddlers, they step in to resolve this thing with the area of dispute – now often called “The Toledo Strip.” They make Michigan an offer.
HERSHOCK: We will allow you to become a state, but in return you must give up your claim to the Toledo Strip.
SCHNURR: And they offer, as a consolation prize, the western part of the Upper Peninsula. Michigan already has the eastern part of the U.P. – from back when it became a territory. And nobody in Michigan wants more U.P. They don’t think it has any real value.
HERSHOCK: It was considered to be a howling wilderness.
SCHNURR: So, Michigan turns down the offer from Congress. But the Boy Governor isn’t done. He really wants to take the deal. He wants the Toledo Strip, but he wants statehood more. And he also knows he’s got an uphill battle because people in Michigan really, really want that area of dispute. But he’s got one more trick up his sleeve: a political maneuver.
He spends the next few months riding around the territory getting a bunch of new cronies elected – people on his side of the debate. And then he organizes a convention in December of 1836.
HERSHOCK: It happens during a very cold spate of weather. … There's only one stove that heats the interior. So there's not a lot of heat, and if you're not near the stove, you're getting virtually none of it.
SCHNURR: They’re uncomfortable. They’re feeling a lot of pressure to get this done. And they’re ready to go home.
HERSHOCK: And so they swallow the bitter pill, and they endorse the compromise.
SCHNURR: They call it the “Frostbitten Convention” – partly because it’s so cold, and partly because they know it will get a frosty reception from the people of Michigan, who still don’t approve of the deal.
HERSHOCK: In fact the resolution that they adopt includes the following language: “It is better to be humiliated and to secure the civil and religious liberties inherent in statehood than to engage in an idle, unprofitable and hopeless contest for a boundary, which is assuredly and forever lost to us.”
SCHNURR: Wow.
HERSHOCK: Not a ringing endorsement.
SCHNURR: So Ohio gets the port and the area of dispute. Michigan gets statehood and the rest of the U.P.
SCHNURR: I mean, this is sort of the question that is begged by any time the term war gets associated with something. Who won, in your mind?
LONG: Well, I think at the time. … Michigan clearly felt like they lost.
SCHNURR: Tedd Long, the Ohioan.
LONG: Over time, Upper Peninsula proved to be a very big economic boom for the State of Michigan with the copper mines, and later on all the tourism that goes on there. So, time only is the kind of factor in the question of who won.
SCHNURR: I asked the same thing of Marty Hershock, who is, of course, from Michigan.
HERSHOCK: Toledo is pleasant. It has a nice zoo. It's got a nice art museum. I don't mind spending time in Toledo. I've got a lot of friends from Toledo. But, in comparison to the Upper Peninsula, I think that Michigan fared much, much better.
SCHNURR: There's a great irony here, I think, in that this western part of the U.P. feels like it ultimately became arguably one of the most important parts of the whole thing.
HERSHOCK: Yeah. Right. It added tremendous wealth and character to the state of Michigan.
SCHNURR: It reminded me of the shirts from the beginning of the episode. The ones people wear around the time of the Michigan-Ohio State football games – that say Toledo War Champs with the outline of the UP.
BERNATH: I think it's funny. It's good for them to have that piece of pride.
SCHNURR: Zak Bernath. The Ohio State fan from the intro. He’s also a friend of mine.
BERNATH: Ohio State fans probably won't wear the same shirt with a little sliver of land by Toledo. It doesn't carry the same weight.
SCHNURR: Wars, like sports, are built around the concept of winners and losers – games, battles, trophies, land. But I actually don’t think that’s the most important thing about this particular story.
This whole thing – the port, the U.P., the Boy Governor, the frostbitten convention – it’s a reminder that the states as we know them weren’t always fixed entities. Even if it’s hard to imagine things shaking out any other way. And over the centuries, these contested areas have come to mean a lot in terms of state identity and pride.
So when Michigan and Ohio State take the field this November, I’ll be thinking about the Toledo Strip. And this moment, 200 years back, when the course of history shifted with a line on a map.