Toledo Strip: two survey lines and the terms of statehood
Michigan Territory and Ohio claimed the same Toledo Strip because their preferred boundaries put the Maumee River's mouth on different sides of the border. The dispute involved a useful outlet to Lake Erie, but also competing definitions of where one government ended and another began. The settlement of 1836 connected that local boundary to the much larger outline of a new state. Michigan's admission depended on accepting Ohio's northern line and a western boundary extending through the Upper Peninsula.
The earlier boundary formula ran east and west through the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. It came from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and was used when Congress established Michigan Territory in 1805. Early maps placed the lake's southern end too far north. Ohio's 1802 constitution provided for a different line toward the northern cape of Maumee Bay if the lake extended farther south than expected. The two formulas could not place the river outlet in the same jurisdiction once the geography was better understood.
Surveyors gave those competing formulas visible positions. In 1817, William Harris followed instructions from Surveyor General Edward Tiffin to survey Ohio's constitutional boundary. Michigan governor Lewis Cass objected. John A. Fulton made another survey in 1818 following the ordinance formula. Michigan State University's boundary comparison places Harris's line north of Fulton's: the northern line left the Maumee outlet in Ohio; the southern line left it in Michigan. The intervening wedge, the Toledo Strip, was roughly five miles wide in the west and eight in the east, encompassing about 468 square miles.
University of Michigan land dealings also extended into the disputed strip. In 1827, its trustees moved to acquire lots at the mouth of Swan Creek in present-day Toledo under a congressional land grant. The Supreme Court's account in Oliver v. Piatt records a February 1831 exchange: William Oliver received lots 1 and 2, while the university received nearby lots and quarter-sections. The later $5,000 sale concerned the property received in that exchange, under a contract made in October 1834. These were university assets within the area claimed by both governments.
Congress's June 15, 1836, act resolved the competing boundary formulas in Ohio's favor. Section 1 specified a direct line from Lake Michigan's southern extremity toward Maumee Bay's northernmost cape, applying after it crossed Indiana's eastern boundary. From the cape, the boundary continued northeast into Lake Erie to meet the international boundary. The law selected the angled approach associated with Ohio's claim. It did not merely order another measurement of the east-west ordinance line.
Section 2 then defined Michigan's territory using that Ohio boundary in the south and a route through the Great Lakes and the Montreal and Menominee river systems in the northwest. Michigan already included the eastern Upper Peninsula; the added area was approximately its western three-quarters. The familiar exchange of Toledo for the Upper Peninsula therefore compresses two different changes: surrender of the Toledo Strip and extension of the proposed state's western reach. Section 3 required a convention elected specifically to assent to the new boundaries.
Congress separately preserved its own position as a landowner. Section 4 of the June act withheld Michigan's authority to interfere with federal sales of vacant, unsold land and barred state taxes on those lands. Admission could enlarge a state's recognized boundaries without placing all the land inside them under its control as property.
Assent was not immediate. In the documents President Andrew Jackson sent Congress on December 27, 1836, Michigan's September convention protested that Congress was sacrificing its rights to the demands of a stronger state. Its delegates rejected the condition. A second convention assembled on December 14 and formally accepted it on December 15. Even that acceptance preserved a protest: the delegates maintained that Congress lacked constitutional authority to demand such assent, while giving it because immediate admission would advance Michigan's interests.
Jackson also identified a procedural complication. The September convention had been called under Michigan legislation, whereas the December gathering originated in local popular meetings. Congress's conditional act specified a convention elected by the people, but did not say which authority must call it. With Congress in session and the circumstances unusual, Jackson submitted the proceedings for its decision. The border settlement consequently involved both the territory to be surrendered and the validity of the process used to surrender it.
The admission act approved January 26, 1837, recognized the assent given on December 15 and declared Michigan a state on equal terms with the existing states. A separate section included Michigan in the distribution of surplus federal money. The university's transaction continued after admission: on May 5, 1837, Oliver received a deed from its trustees for the property covered by the 1834 contract. The Toledo Strip had changed state jurisdiction while parcels remained university property.
- Michigan State University, Randall Schaetzl, The Toledo War, with boundary and settlement maps — project.geo.msu.edu
- U.S. Supreme Court, Oliver v. Piatt, 44 U.S. 333 (1845), university land transactions — www.govinfo.gov
- U.S. Congress, Act of June 15, 1836, Chapter 99, 5 Stat. 49–50 — www.govinfo.gov
- Andrew Jackson and Michigan conventions, State of Michigan, House Document 46, December 27, 1836 — www.govinfo.gov
- U.S. Congress, Act of January 26, 1837, Chapter 6, 5 Stat. 144 — www.govinfo.gov