26/11/2022
Did you know that, long before the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, the two states really didn't like each other?
All In Ohio (the website/online publication) is being re-branded as a family travel site where readers can find articles and videos about Ohio attractions, destinations, museums, history, and personalities. It will debut sometime in December. For now, here is a story about The Toledo War, which is timely since The Game is set for High Noon on Saturday!
Before The Game, There Was The War
By Jeff Louderback
Across America, multiple storied college football rivalries are celebrated during the final week of the regular season.
One such tradition – arguably the most heated rivalry in college sports – is shared by Ohio State and Michigan.
When these two historic programs meet on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, it is simply known as “The Game.”
Before the two schools first met on the gridiron in 1897, a longstanding feud between the states lingered as a result of what is known as The Toledo War.
Actually, The Toledo War was more of a border dispute than an official war. Nobody was killed. Little blood was spilled. Yet hostilities between the states surfaced not long after the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established the northern boundary of Ohio as “an east-west line drawn through the southerly of extreme Lake Michigan.”
Inaccurate maps at the time showed Lake Michigan's southern border as several miles north of its actual location. This placed the new town of Toledo – and the surrounding area known as the Toledo Strip- in Ohio instead of Michigan.
Toledo was highly desirable because it was a valuable trade port at the mouth of the Maumee River and Lake Erie. When the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, it became a vital link to the East Coast.
The line formed by the Northwest Ordinance was reinforced by the U.S. Congress in the Enabling Act of 1802, legislation that led to Ohio becoming a state a year later. Congress used the same language in 1805 when it created the Michigan Territory.
Congress believed that the border would intersect Lake Erie north of the Maumee River’s mouth. When the Ohio Constitutional Convention took place in 1802, a fur trapper told delegates that the line passes south of the Maumee River.
Convention delegates emphasized in the Ohio Constitution of 1803 that Ohio’s northern boundary must include the mouth of the Maumee River. Congress accepted Ohio’s constitution but never formally acted on the boundary provisions.
Hoping to end the dispute, Congress authorized a survey of the border in 1812, but the War of 1812 prevented that from happening.
Five years later, Ohio surveyor general Edward Tiffin ordered a survey of the state’s northern border based on the boundary established in Ohio’s constitution. Lewis Cass, who was governor of what was then the Michigan Territory, authorized his own survey using the Enabling Act of 1802’s boundary.
Both sides refused to compromise.
By the early 1830s, Michigan was moving towards statehood. Representatives of the Michigan Territory settled the area, built roads, held elections, and collected taxes. In the early 1830s, to force the surrender of the Toledo Strip, an Ohio congressman helped block Michigan’s statehood petition.
Michigan was guided by Stevens T. Mason, who was nicknamed “The Boy Governor” because he was elected governor at the age of 23, the youngest chief executive in any state's history.
Ohio was led by Gov. Robert Lucas.
Mason was elected governor in 1835, even though Michigan was not admitted as a state until Jan. 26, 1837. Upon election, Mason asserted his authority over the Toledo Strip. He passed the “Pain and Penalties Act,” which approved harsh fines and jail sentences on Ohio officials who attempted to apply jurisdiction in the territory.
Lucas and the Ohio legislature passed a resolution that extended county borders into the Toledo Strip. Lucas created a new county and named it after himself. Lucas and Ohio lawmakers also hired a team of surveyors to re-mark the border. Tensions continued to escalate, and Ohio and Michigan organized militias to guard the disputed land.
The federal government ordered Ohio and Michigan officials to cease action until a proper survey was conducted. That mandate was ignored. Michigan authorities went to work enforcing their Pains and Penalties Act.
In April 1835, a posse of 30 men led by a Michigan sheriff surprised a smaller group of Ohio surveyors working in Michigan’s Lenawee County. Nine Ohioans were captured, charged with violating Michigan’s Pains and Penalties Act. and imprisoned in Tecumseh, Michigan. The law dictated that only Michigan residents could act as public officials in the Toledo Strip.
Several of the surveyors escaped capture, returned to Ohio, and told Lucas that “an armed force of several hundred men” stretched across the Ohio-Michigan border.
Tensions continued to escalate. On July 15, 1835, Monroe County deputy sheriff Joseph Wood arrived in Toledo to arrest Two Stickney, an Ohioan who was accused of violating the Pains and Penalties Act.
Stickney pulled out a penknife and stabbed Wood in the side, causing a minor wound. Wood is remembered as the Toledo War’s lone casualty.
When the early autumn of 1835 arrived, it appeared that Ohio and Michigan were destined for a violent battle.
Lucas announced his intentions to hold a court session in Toledo to establish Ohio’s rights to the land. In response, assembled 1,200 Wolverine militiamen and marched on the Toledo Strip, determined to stop the meeting. The Ohioans; however, held a midnight gathering and departed the area to avoid bloodshed.
That marked the last instance of armed hostilities in the Toledo War. President Andrew Jackson lost patience with Mason’s militance and removed him from his role.
Two years later, he was voted back into office when he was eligible. By this time, tensions had cooled.
Congress authored a compromise that would give Michigan statehood as long as it relinquished their claim on the Toledo Strip.
As compensation, they were awarded what is now known as the Upper Peninsula.
At the time, it appeared that Ohio received the better end of the deal. The Upper Peninsula was considered worthless wilderness. Then copper and iron were discovered in the region, leading to a mining boom that lasted long into the 20th century.
Ohio benefitted from the value of the port of Toledo.
Interestingly, the state that was most harmed by the conflict was not even involved. The mineral-rich Upper Peninsula would likely have become part of Wisconsin if Michigan did not lose the Toledo Strip.
The exact location of the Ohio-Michigan boundary line remained in question until 1915 when a new government survey was completed and agreed upon by both states.
Michigan and Ohio’s governors celebrated the accomplishment by shaking hands across the border at a peninsula in Lake Erie.
In 1965, the lieutenant governors from both states repeated the ceremony. The same year, the states placed a plaque with the words “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors” on a boundary marker at the state line.
A new type of rivalry between the two states arrived when Ohio State and Michigan first clashed on the gridiron in 1897.
They played annually and uninterrupted from 1918 to 2020, when the game was cancelled after the Wolverines reportedly experienced a COVID-19 outbreak in the midst of an eight-game losing skid in “The Game” and a year after a 56-27 Ohio State victory.
Michigan’s losing skid ended last year with a 42-27 win, the first for Jim Harbaugh in six games against Ohio State.
The Toledo War on the border was later followed by “The Ten-Year War,” a series of hotly contested games between the Buckeyes and Wolverines that pitted coaches Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler against one another at a time when a Big Ten championship, Rose Bowl trip and sometimes a national title were on the line.
That period stretched from 1969 to 1978 and is one of most significant chapters in the heated rivalry between the states that started with a battle over a boundary line.
