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THE OHIO-MICHIGAN BOUNDARY LINE DISPUTE.

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TOD B. GALLOWAY.

Sing, O, Goddess Muse,

From whence arose so fierce a strife."

In the examination of the questions involved in the OhioMichigan boundary dispute, I find myself very much in the position of the Justice of the Peace, who, after hearing the plaintiff's side of the case, was ready to decide in his favor; but upon the defendant having presented his argument, he exclaimed, "You mix me up so, I don't know which way to decide." Therefore, I appeal to you to be judge and jury in this case, and upon hearing the facts and what law there is, which is very little, I leave you to find the verdict as ye shall deem best.

The case is the State of Ohio vs. the United States. It can not be the State of Ohio vs. Michigan, for at the time of this controversy Michigan was but a territory, and therefore only a ward of the general government. With this slight preliminary,

I shall plunge at once into the statement of the whole case.

In 1817, Lewis Cass wrote to Edward Tiffin, the United States Surveyor-General, "A disputed jurisdiction is one of the greatest evils that can happen to a country." This is eminently true. All the great wars in history, aside from those involving religious disputes, have been caused by boundary line controversies or disputed jurisdictions.

In regard to the controvesy between Ohio and Michigan as to the boundary line, but very little is known by this generation. Few histories have more than a meagre account of it, generally dismissing the subject with a few lines about "The Toledo War," by relating one or two of the humorous and ludicrous events incident thereto, but failing wholly to give the subject the prominence it deserves.

The contestants were not solely Governor Lucas, of Ohio, and Governor Mason, of Michigan, nor, as I said before, was it a question between the two States, or the State and the territory,

but rather between Ohio and the United States. Under the Constitution of this Republic, had Ohio occupied the disputed territory, it would have been the imperative duty of the President to resist such occupation with all the forces of the nation, if necessary, if he regarded the claims of Michigan as valid and correct.

As this question was one which came into being with the admission of Ohio into the Union, and realizing its important. bearing upon the early history and later development of Ohio and Michigan, I have selected it as the subject of an address before our Archæological and Historical Society.

Mr. Fisk well says, in his "Critical Period of American History:" "Questions about public lands are often regarded as the driest of historical deadwood. Discussions about them in newspapers and magazines belong to the class of articles which the general reader usually skips. Yet there is a great deal of the philosophy of history wrapped up in this subject. * * * * For without studying this creation of a national domain between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, we cannot understand how our Federal Union came to be formed." The problem of divid. ing the great unknown West among the thirteen new States was one of the most complex and intricate questions which baffled the skill of the legislators who had so successfully grappled with the perplexities of the First Continental Congress. The individual members of our first National Congress were, as a matter of fact, ignorant of the extent of the great West. They knew almost nothing of its boundless prairies, its mighty rivers and inland seas; its primeval forests, its wealth of ores and coal. And it is interesting to remember that it was the plan which Rufus Putnam sent from the village of Rutland, Massachusetts, to Congress for the relief of indigent revolutionary soldiers, that they should be colonized between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, that was the immediate origin of the Ordinance of 1787.

In the early history of this country of ours, there was one commodity which was cheap, i. e., land. It was both "dirt cheap" and "cheap dirt." These were the days when a service of ofttimes a questionable nature was repaid with three or four counties in America, from the King of England; or the introduction to Louis XIV of France of a charming mistress meant a

grant of a province; when one English favorite was endowed with a tract of land gravely described as having "a sea front of ten miles and extending westward to the limits of North America."

The story of the occupation of Canada by the French, and of all the Atlantic coast by the English, needs no repetition here. After the treaty of 1760, which ended France's power in America, all that territory north of Louisiana belonged to England; in her was the right of eminent domain, subject to the fast fading claims of France. The colonies had no rights in all this boundless stretch of country, and they had no power or right of acquiring any of this land without special grant from the crown. This point is important as bearing upon the claims which New York, Connecticut, Virginia and others, made to territory beyond the Alleghenies after the Revolution. As one author has said, "English protection preserved the great heart of this continent for Americans, and English shortsightedness produced a Union in which was the only possibility of perpetuating the titles of Americans to the great central valley."

The claims of certain of the States to territorial domain were questions which occupied the First National Congress, and, as we know, even threatened to prevent the union of the young States. Briefly, the question was, did these States have rights. in this vast new territory founded upon incidents of their colonial status, or did this region belong to the United States? Had England's rights not passed to the United States, the colonies, or the States which had been colonies, would only have had such claims on the west as England might see fit to acknowledge. But England's rights had passed by treaty to the United States as a sovereign government, and the colonies had died without testament or issue. Had, however, either side pressed its claims too rigidly on this question, the young republic might never have lived. Thomas Jefferson and his associates took the broad, middle course in this threatening question. They held the fundamental truth to be that the general government had certain prerogatives necessary to its existence, and, on the other hand, that certain concessions to some of the new States were wiser than stringent measures. The guiding hand of Jefferson can there

fore be seen in all the efforts to organize the Northwest territory, and the Ordinance of 1787 was the fruit not only of Jefferson's. labors, but of the best wisdom of the best minds in America. While it is true that Jefferson was in Paris on a mission when the Ordinance was adopted, yet the principles of his proposed Ordinance of 1784 were incorporated in framing it. This ordinance, secured at the cost of a few concessions, that of the Western Reserve to Connecticut and the Military Reservation in Ohio to Virginia, was, as has been said, "one of the wisest and most far-seeing provisions of a time when wisdom and foresight seem to have been especially granted to public men."

"I doubt," said Daniel Webster, "whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." In sagacity, wisdom and foresight, it has never been surpassed. It has stood the test of time for more than one hundred years; it has been the corner stone of territorial governments since its adoption. Our fathers framed laws like the

Patriarchs of old.

However, among the documents in this case, of Ohio vs.. The United States ex rel. Michigan, one article of this remarkable State paper, viz., No. 5, is the only one involved in the issues in the case. It reads as follows:

"There shall be formed in the said territory not less than three nor more than five States; and the boundaries of the States, as soon as Virginia shall alter her act of cession and consent to the same, shall become fixed and established as follows, to wit: The western State, in the said territory, shall be bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Wabash Rivers; a direct line drawn from the Wabash and Post Vincents, due north, to the territorial line between the United States and Canada; and by the said territorial line to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi. The middle State shall be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash from Post Vincents to the Ohio, by the Ohio, by a direct line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami to the said territorial line, and by the said territorial line. The eastern State shall be bounded by the last mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsylvania and the said territorial line; provided,

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