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Toledo War
| Toledo War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 The portion of the Michigan Territory claimed by the State of Ohio known as the Toledo Strip | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Ohio militia | Territory of Michigan militia | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Robert Lucas John Bell |
Stevens T. Mason Joseph W. Brown | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 600 | 1,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | 1 wounded | ||||||||
| In exchange for ceding the Toledo Strip, all of what is now known as the Upper Peninsula was included within Michigan's bounds when it was admitted into the Union in 1837 (only the easternmost portion of the peninsula had been claimed in Michigan's 1835 statehood petition). | |||||||||
The Toledo War (1835–1836), also known as the Michigan–Ohio War or Ohio–Michigan War, was a boundary dispute between the U.S. state of Ohio and the adjoining territory of Michigan over what is now known as the Toledo Strip. Control of the mouth of the Maumee River and the inland shipping opportunities it represented, and the good farmland to the west, were seen by both parties as valuable economic assets.
Poor geographical understanding of the Great Lakes helped produce conflicting state and federal legislation between 1787 and 1805, and varying interpretations of the laws led the governments of Ohio and Michigan to both claim jurisdiction over a 468-square-mile (1,210 km2) region along their border. The situation came to a head when Michigan petitioned for statehood in 1835 and sought to include the disputed territory within its boundaries. Both sides passed legislation attempting to force the other side's capitulation, and Ohio's Governor Robert Lucas and Michigan's 24-year-old "Boy Governor" Stevens T. Mason helped institute criminal penalties for residents submitting to the other's authority. Both states deployed militias on opposite sides of the Maumee River near Toledo, but besides mutual taunting, there was little interaction between the two forces. The single military confrontation of the war ended with a report of shots being fired into the air, incurring no casualties. The only blood spilled was the non-fatal stabbing of a law enforcement officer.
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 the remaining three-quarters of the Upper Peninsula. Although the northern region's mineral wealth later became an economic asset to Michigan, at the time the compromise was considered a poor deal for the new state, and voters in a statehood convention in September soundly rejected it. In December, facing a dire financial crisis and pressure from Congress and President Andrew Jackson, the Michigan government called another convention (called the "Frostbitten Convention"), which accepted the compromise, resolving the Toledo War.
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