The Toledo War was an almost bloodless boundary dispute between the U.S. state of Ohio and the adjoining territory of Michigan. Poor geographical understanding of the Great Lakes helped produce conflicting state and federal legislation. Both sides deployed militias on opposite sides of the Maumee River near Toledo.
About Toledo War in brief
The Toledo War was an almost bloodless boundary dispute between the U.S. state of Ohio and the adjoining territory of Michigan. Poor geographical understanding of the Great Lakes helped produce conflicting state and federal legislation. Both sides deployed militias on opposite sides of the Maumee River near Toledo, but besides mutual taunting, there was little interaction. During the summer of 1836, the United States Congress proposed a compromise whereby Michigan gave up its claim to the strip in exchange for its statehood and about three-quarters of the Upper Peninsula. But in December, the Michigan government, facing a dire financial crisis and pressure from Congress and President Andrew Jackson, called another convention which accepted the compromise that resolved the Toledo War. The U. S. Congress accepted the draft constitution with this proviso before Ohio’s admission to the Union in February 1803. The draft constitution would guarantee that the most most of the southern shore of Lake Erie west of Pennsylvania would fall under Ohio’s borders. The most highly regarded map of the time, the Mitchell Map, placed it at a latitude near the mouth of the Detroit River. This meant that the entire shoreline of Lake. Erie westof Pennsylvania would have belonged to the state that was to become Ohio. Ohio would thus be granted access to most or all of the Lake Erie shoreline west of. Pennsylvania, and any other new states carved out of the Northwest Territory would have access to the Great. Lakes only via Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior. The Ohio constitution included a provision that if the fur trapper’s report about Lake Michigan’s position was correct, the correct boundary line would be slightly angled as northeast to intersect Lake Erie at the cape of the Miami most northerly cape of Miami Bay.
This provision would guarantee Ohio’s position in the proposed constitution in the fall of 1803, when Ohio was referred to as the most likely state to join the Union. In 1805, the draft Ohio constitution was accepted by the Congressional committee that defined the state’s boundary as the line between Lake Erie and the Maummee River watershed. The border was to be an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, running east … until it shall intersect lake Erie or the territorial line, and thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line aforesaid. The actual location of this extreme was unknown, but the framers of the 1802 Ohio Constitution believed it was the intent of Congress that Ohio’s northern boundary should certainly be north of the mouths of theMaumee and Detroit rivers. At the time it was possible that an east-west line extending east from Lake. Michigan’s southern tip might intersect Lake Toledo. or worse, might not intersect the lake at all; the more land Ohio would lose, perhaps even if the Lake Michigan actually extended, maybe even farther south than had previously been believed. Thus. the Ohio Constitution included a proviso that the correct line was the line that would be angled so that Lake Erie would be at the northeast corner of the cape.
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This page is based on the article Toledo War published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
