CHAPTER XVII

THE ADMISSION OF MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN

THE fourth section of the Northwest Territory to enter the Union was Michigan. This State was admitted in 1837, nineteen years after Illinois had achieved statehood. This delay is explained partly by the location of Michigan. It was too far north to attract emigrants from the southern States, and it could not be reached by way of the Mississippi and its branches. It was thus denied that ease of communication with the southern and central States which had much to do with the rapid settlement of the three southern States of the Northwest Territory. Again, there was an abundance of fertile land in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois which was open to settlers, so that there was no particular object in going so far north, where the winter was much colder, and where, according to the reports of surveyors, the interior of the peninsula was made up of a very poor quality of land.

On May 6, 1812, Congress passed an Act appropriating six million acres of land for the payment of soldiers who should serve in the war against Great Britain. Of this amount two million acres were to be set apart in the State of Michigan. The surveyor who was sent to lay off this land in Michigan reported that there were no government lands in that Territory fit for cultivation, and April 29, 1816, an act was passed by Congress relieving the soldiers from being compelled to accept this apparently worthless

land. The official report on which the relieving act was based set forth: "The country on the Indian boundary line, from the mouth of the great Auglaize River, and running thence for about fifty miles, is (with some few exceptions) low, wet land, with a very thick growth of underbrush, intermixed with very bad marshes, but generally very heavily timbered with beech, cottonwood, oak, and so forth; thence continuing north and extending from the Indian boundary eastward, the number and extent of the swamps increases, with the addition of a number of lakes, from twenty chains to two and three miles across. Many of these lakes have extensive marshes adjoining their margins, sometimes thickly covered with a species of pine called 'tamarack,' and other places covered with a coarse high grass and uniformly covered from six inches to three feet (and more at times) with water. The margins of these lakes are not the only places where these swamps are found, for they are interspersed throughout the whole country, and filled with water as above stated, and varying in extent. The intermediate spaces between these swamps and lakes, which is probably near one-half the country, is, with a very few exceptions, a poor, barren, sandy land, on which scarce any vegetation grows except a few very small scrubby oaks. In many places, that part which may be called dry land is composed of little short sand hills, forming a kind of deep basins, the bottoms of many of which are composed of a marsh similar to the above described. The streams are generally narrow and very deep compared with their width, the shores and bottoms of which are with very few exceptions swampy beyond description; and it is with the utmost difficulty that a place can be found over which horses can be conveyed. A circumstance peculiar to that country is exhibited in many of the marshes, by their being thinly covered with a sward of grass, by walking on which, evinced the existence of water or a very thin mud immediately under this covering, which sinks from six to eighteen inches from the pressure of the foot at every

step, and at the same time rising before and behind the person passing over. The margins of many of the lakes and streams are in a similar condition, and in many places are literally afloat. On approaching the eastern part of the military lands toward the private claims on the Straights and Lake, the country does not contain so many swamps and lakes, but the extreme sterility and barrenness of the soil continues the same. Taking the country altogether as far as has been explored, and to all appearances, together with the information received concerning the balance, it is so bad that there would not be more than one acre out of a hundred, if there would be one out of a thousand that would in any way admit of cultivation."

Another drawback to the rapid settlement of Michigan was its double frontier, which compelled the settlers to defend their borders against the British in the War of 1812, and against hostile Indians then and at a later period. The Territory suffered severely in the War of 1812, through the surrender of Detroit by General Hull, as well as through other battles. The Indians remained unfriendly for many years so that settlers naturally chose to take up lands farther south where there were greater securities against violence.

When the Northwest Territory assumed the second grade of Territorial government in 1798, Michigan formed the single County of Wayne, and sent one representative to the Territorial Legislature at Chillicothe. On the 7th of May, 1800, when the Northwest Territory was divided, Michigan was mainly included in Indiana. At the further division on January 11, 1805, all north of a line east from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, and north through the lake to the northern boundary of the United States became by Act of Congress the Territory of Michigan.

At the time of the formation of the Territory the white population was mainly French. There were a few British and some adventurous American fur traders. The principal settlement was Detroit, which had been for many years the

centre of French influence in the West. The site of Detroit was first visited by the French in 1669 and settled in 1701. It came into British hands in 1763 and into possession of the United States in 1783. During the eighteenth century it had increased in population in a leisurely way by the coming in of settlers from Canada. With the British occupation a few English and Scotch traders had made Detroit their headquarters. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Detroit, though under American control, still retained many of its French characteristics, so that the problem of government was quite a different one from that faced by the Territorial governor in the portions of the Northwest Territory farther to the south.

He

General William Hull, who was made governor upon the formation of the Territory, did not understand the situation at the outset and never succeeded in grasping it. Hull had done excellent service in the Revolution. He joined the American army soon after the battle of Lexington and fought with marked skill and bravery until Cornwallis surrendered. He was apparently well fitted for the governorship. No one doubted his bravery or his organizing ability, but he did not prove to be the right man to govern a frontier community. He was unfortunate in the men who were selected to be his associates in the administration of affairs. came to the Territory in July, 1805, and instead of the prosperous village there appeared only blackened ruins. On June 11th the entire town had been destroyed by fire. The governor and Chief Justice Woodward made a journey to Washington to obtain relief for the people. Their petition to Congress was successful and that body authorized the governor and judges to lay out a town, including old Detroit and ten thousand acres adjoining; those who had suffered by the fire were to have lots given them. Michigan, like the other Territories, needed a code of laws. This the governor and judges proceeded to make, but their meetings for this purpose were not harmonious and profitable, because Judge Woodward and Governor Hull could not agree.

Woodward was a man of magnificent enterprises. He made a plan for the future city of Detroit following that of the city of Washington, but the people thought it absurd that Detroit, which was only a good sized village, should be laid out upon so extensive a scale as that insisted upon by the chief justice. In the same spirit Woodward entered upon banking in a large way, even before he had secured a charter for his bank. Another of his schemes, which at the time was not to be realized, was his plan for a great University, of which mention has already been made.

The Territorial body of laws was made up of selections from the codes of the different States, according to the principles laid down in the Ordinance of 1787. About one-third of the laws were taken from the Code of Virginia; other parts were from the laws of Pennsylvania, Masachusetts, New York, and Ohio.

Hull was succeeded by Lewis Cass on October 9, 1813. Cass knew the Northwest thoroughly, because from the age of seventeen he had been in Ohio. He was a lawyer of prominence, and in the War of 1812 had shown himself to be a brave and successful leader.

We have stated that one reason for the slow settlement of Michigan was the trouble which came from the Indians. They had aided the British in the War of 1812 and had refused to surrender their lands by treaty, saying that their brothers to the south had been very foolish in doing so, but that they did not intend to be so unwise. So long as the Indians held by far the greater part of the lands in Michigan, there could be little growth of American settlements. Governor Cass realized this and by honest, straightforward business methods succeeded in making no less than eighteen treaties with the Indians. By these treaties the Indians were treated fairly on terms which were satisfactory to them. He crowned his negotiations by causing the Indians to remove beyond the Mississippi. Cass was always regarded by the Indians as their friend and he constantly used