GOVERNOR CASS IN JACKSON'S CABINET. 203

drawn by a team of trained sturgeons. The great event of the period, however, and that which had most to do with giving sudden impetus to the growth of Michigan and bringing to it the population that shortly had planted settlements and reared churches and school-houses all through its central and southern parts, was the opening in 1825 of the Erie Canal. It was not long after this before steamers were abundant on the lakes; no less than seven on Lake Erie in 1826, and four years thereafter a daily line was running between Detroit and Buffalo. The fort at Detroit was abandoned, as having become an anachronism, in 1827, and in the same year flour began on a small scale to be exported. In 1830 the population had risen to 32,538, and the territory was self-supporting. By the time Governor Cass was summoned by President Jackson to a seat in his cabinet in 1831, the little frontier settlements which he had come on to defend in 1812 had extended and spread to the dimensions of a commonwealth under his judicious and statesmanlike care and nurture.

There was some feeling of territorial pride that Jackson had looked to this distant region for a member of his cabinet, but the people of the territory parted with the governor with great reluctance. He had not only managed the public affairs with ability and unquestioned integrity, but his example had been excellent and his influ

ence of the best. Governing frontier settlements where rough characters abounded and roystering habits prevailed, he was always in his own deportment courteous and complaisant, always abstemious, always self-respecting; and as unexceptionable in his private character and in all his domestic and social relations as he was in his public capacity and deportment. Permanent American settlement may be said to have begun with him; and it was a great and lasting boon to Michigan when it was given a governor at once so able, so patriotic, so attentive to his duties, and so worthy in his public and private life of respect and esteem.

CHAPTER XI.

THE TERRITORY ADVANCES TO THE DIGNITY OF A STATE.

WHEN Lewis Cass resigned the office of governor of Michigan, there were living within the territory many men of ability and education, who were thoroughly familiar with its affairs and fully possessed of the public confidence. The appointment of any one of these to the vacant office would have been recognized as that of a competent and suitable person. Some of them as, for example, William Woodbridge, who had been secretary of the territory, and as such had occasionally acted as governor in the absence of Governor Cass, and who, after resigning the office of secretary, had been successively delegate in Congress and judge, and Austin E. Wing, who had also been delegate in Congress were already well known at Washington, and others might have been known through Governor Cass had he been consulted. The late governor was a democrat by conviction and not merely in a party sense; it was no new doctrine with him, when, in his famous Nicholson letter, previous to the meeting of the nominating

convention of his party in 1848, he laid down the proposition respecting the inherent right of the people of the territories to self-government which, by way of ridicule, was christened by his opponents as the doctrine of squatter sovereignty; he had himself as governor endeavored to devolve upon the people as belonging to them of right such appointing power as the law had confided to him; and it is not probable, had he been consulted by the president respecting officers for the territory he was leaving, that he would have advised looking beyond the territory itself for such officers, or that he would have felt any difficulty in naming perfectly competent men, who had cast their fortunes with the territory, for every important office in it. It is very rare that a new community in a frontier region contains among its members so many men of culture and ability as Michigan had among its citizens while it remained a territory; and there could have been no just excuse for treating it as a community unfit to govern itself, and requiring rulers sent in from abroad to govern it. This had been necessary in the case of the Northwest Territory, for the settlement was in its infancy and everybody was a new-comer when the organization took place; and it was excusable also in the cases of earlier appointments for Michigan, considering its peculiar population and circumstances. The excuse no longer existed in view of the large, intelligent, and self-respecting population which the territory had acquired.

JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE. 207

But a period had now arrived constituting a new era in American politics, when for a long time no general maxim of government was to be so powerful at Washington as the maxim that to the victor belong the spoils of office. This maxim of war, when war meant robbery and plunder, was now being adopted in the civil administration of the government, and was to vitalize all political life and be the chief spring of all political action and energy. As the people of the territories had no vote, they constituted no part of the victors who had captured and taken possession of the general government, and were, therefore, entitled to no consideration in the distribution of rewards. These must go to Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other states, where many citizens who had shown their patriotism by their labors in electing the president were now waiting in expectation of receiving their share in the division of what had been won at that election. Personal fitness for office was found in the fact that claims had been established by labors in securing the election of the presidential incumbent, and this, if not sufficient for all cases, would seem to have been thought ample in the case of a merely territorial position. But circumstances of a more personal nature might also have some influence, and it therefore caused no surprise when Mr. John T. Mason of Virginia, brother-in-law to the late Postmaster-general Barry, but wholly ignorant of