USA > Michigan > Genesee County > History of Genesee County, Michigan, Her People, Industries and Institutions, Volume I > Part 6
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"Many of the lakes have extensive margins, sometimes thickly covered with a species of pine called 'Tamarack,' and in other places covered with a coarse, high grass, and uniformly covered from six inches to three feet (and more at times) with water. The margins of these lakes are not the only places where swamps are found, for they are interspersed throughout the whole country, and filled with water, as above stated, and varying in extent.
"The intermediate space between these swamps and lakes-which is probably near one-half of the country-is, with very few exceptions, a poor, barren, sandy land, on which scarcely any vegetation grows, except very small, scrubby oaks.
"In many places that part which may be called dry land is composed of little, short sand-hills, forming a kind of deep basin, the bottoms of many of which are composed of marsh similar to the above described. The streams are generally narrow and very deep compared with their width, the shores and bottoms of which are (with very few exceptions) swampy beyond description; and it is with the utmost difficulty that a place can be found over which horses can be conveyed in safety.
"A circumstance peculiar to that country is exhibited in many of the
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marshes, by their being thinly covered with a sward of grass, by walking on which evinces the existence of water, or a very thin mud, immediately under their covering, which sinks from six to eighteen inches under the pressure of the foot at every step, and at the same time rises before and behind the person passing over it. The margins of many of the lakes and streams are in a similar condition and in many places are literally afloat. On approaching the eastern part of the military lands, towards the private claims on the straits and lake, the country does not contain so many swamps and lakes, but the extreme sterility and barrenness of the soil continue the same.
"Taking the country altogether, so far as has been explored, and to all appearances, together with information received concerning the balance, it is so bad there would not be more than one acre out of a hundred, if there would be one out of a thousand, that would in any case admit of cultiva- tion."
Of course Congress had no reason to believe that the conditions were other than as reported. In 1816 .a new law was passed, which provided for locating the two million acres of bounty lands partly in Illinois and partly in Missouri. This, apparently, was an official condemnation of Michi- gan lands by the national government, an action which became widely known in the East, through the newspapers. The common belief grew up that the interior of Michigan was a vast swamp that might well be aban- doned to fur-bearing animals and the trappers and hunters. School geo- graphies based on Tiffin's report contained maps of Michigan with "Inter- minable swamps" printed across the interior of Michigan territory. The effect was to deter many from seeking homes in Michigan who under a more favorable report would have filled up the country rapidly. Instead of Michigan, the rival state of Illinois and the lands south of Michigan re- ceived the first great immigrations from the Eastern states.
Besides this gross ignorance of Michigan lands in the East, due to misrepresentations, Cass had to contend with the natural distrust and dread of the Indians, who had so lately been allies of the British, and stories of whose horrible atrocities, with no lack of fanciful coloring, had reached Eastern ears. Not only was the presence of the Indians a deterrent to immigration and disquieting to the settlers, but they still held title to most of the Michigan lands. To deal with this problem, Cass was made superin- tendent of Indian affairs for the Northwest, and gave early attention to extinguishing the Indian titles, as a first step to the removal of the Indians from the Great Lakes region. A grand council of the Chippewas and Otta-
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was was held in 1819 at the site of Saginaw, where a treaty was signed, by which one hundred and fourteen chiefs and principal sachems ceded to the United States a tract of country estimated to include about six million acres. According to the words of the treaty, the boundaries were as fol- lows :
"Beginning at a point in the present Indian boundary line (identical with the principal meridian of Michigan), which runs due north from the mouth of the Great Auglaize river, six miles south of the place where the base line, so-called, intersects the same; thence west sixty miles; thence in a direct line to the head of Thunder Bay river; thence down the same, follow- ing the course thereof, to the mouth, thence northeast to the boundary line between the United States and the British province of Upper Canada; thence with the same to the line established by the treaty of Detroit, in the year 1807; and thence with the said line to the place of beginning."
This treaty is known as the Treaty of Saginaw. In 1821 Governor Cass and Hon. Solomon Sibley, who was associated with him as United States Indian commissioner, concluded a treaty with the Ojibways, Ottawas and Pottawatomies on the site of Chicago, which has since been known as the Treaty of Chicago. The boundaries of the lands ceded by this treaty included between seven and eight thousand square miles in southwestern Michigan.
The year before a cession of land was secured at Sault Ste. Marie. Cass was on his way to explore the northern and western portions of the territory, and with him was a considerable party, including Henry R. School- craft, as geologist. He had determined to inquire into the condition of the Indians; to explain to them that their visits to the British in Canada for presents must be discontinued, and, among other things, to investigate the copper region and make himself familiar with the facts concerning the fur trade. An incident occurred in the council at the Sault that was thoroughly characteristic of the personal coolness and courage of Governor Cass in his dealings with the Indians. In a disagreement that arose, the Indians be- came threatening. At the close of an animated discussion, one of the chiefs, a brigadier in the British service, drew his war lance and struck it furiously in the ground. He kicked away the American presents and in that spirit the council was dispersed. In a few moments the British flag was flying over the Indian camp. Cass at once ordered his men under arms. Pro- ceeding to the lodge of the chief who had raised the flag, he took it down, telling him that no such insult could be permitted on American soil. He said he was the Indians' friend, but that the flag was a symbol of national
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power, and that only the American flag could float above the soil of his and their country. If they attempted to raise any other "the United States would set a strong foot upon their necks and crush them to the earth." The boldness of the governor had the intended effect; soon after this, a treaty of cession was peaceably concluded. The expedition continued along the south shore of Lake Superior, whence they crossed southward to the Mississippi river and thence up the Wisconsin to Green bay. The return to Detroit was made by way of Chicago and the Indian trail through south- ern Michigan, thus giving to men close to the national government a first- hand knowledge of the country misrepresented by the early surveyors.
Cass now pushed forward the new surveys, which he had already in- duced the government to undertake as early as 1816. By 1818 they had progressed so far that a land office was established at Detroit and sales were begun. In 1820 the best of Michigan's lands then on sale could be bought for one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, and the way was open for any prudent and industrious man to make a moderate home for his family. Immigration gradually scattered settlers through the Michigan forests. The plow began the task of achieving the victories of peace. The settlers found, instead of "innumerable swamps," a fertile, dry and undulating soil, clothed with richest verdure, crossed by clear and rapid streams and studded with lakes abounding with fish. In the clearings of the forest, the cosy log hut of the pioneer soon curled its smoke to the heavens from the banks of lake and stream, where children played and men and women toiled, and rested after toil; and among the stumps and felled trunks of the trees, little patches of new wheat basked in the sun like green islands amid the vast and magni- ficent ocean of wilderness.
STEAM TRANSPORTATION ON LAND AND WATER.
Immigration to Michigan was much helped at this time by the beginning of steam transportation on the Great Lakes. The day of the steamboat was dawning. In the same year with the first land sales at Detroit, "Walk-in- the-Water," named after a Wyandot chief, made her first appearance (1818) and was hailed as the harbinger of a new era. In 1819 she made a trip to Mackinac Island, a voyage if not so famous as that of the "Griffin" more than a hundred years before, was yet one looked upon generally with much curiosity, and associated in the Eastern newspapers with reference to the "Argosy" and the search for the golden fleece. She ran with some regular- ity between Buffalo and Detroit, until she went ashore in a storm on Lake
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Erie in 1821. A number of boats quickly succeeded her, and by the end of the territorial period a thousand passengers daily were landing from lake steamers at the port of Detroit.
Contributory to the strength of this immigration to Michigan was the Erie canal. In 1825 this great "ditch" opened an all-water route from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard. Combined with the steamboats on the lakes the canal gave cheap and easy transportation for settlers and their merchandise from the great commercial metropolis of the Union to the doors of the new territory.
This fresh impetus to immigration made a demand for roads to the interior. At the close of the War of 1812 there were no good roads any- where in the territory. While the war had taught the need of roads to connect Detroit with the Ohio valley and with Chicago, it was now seen that immigration would also be greatly helped by a road around the west end of Lake Erie. Cass appealed to the general government for aid and his call was liberally responded to. Congress provided for the construction of a road from Detroit to Chicago to Fort Gratiot, and to Saginaw bay. A road was also projected from Detroit to the mouth of Grand river. Before the close of the territorial period, these roads were well advanced.
With better roads, a bountiful soil and an increasing population, little centers of interior settlement began to crystalize. Villages sprang up at Pontiac, Romeo, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Tecumseh, Adrian, Jackson, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, White Pigeon, St. Joseph, Grand Rapids, Flint and Saginaw. All of these settlements were on important roads and rivers of Michigan.
In 1830 the population of Michigan was 31,639. In the four years following it had more than doubled, reaching 87,273. From then to the end of the decade it went forward by leaps and bounds, mounting in 1840 to 212,267. The prime secret of this great immigration was the improved means of transportation. In the words of one historian :
"Michigan as well as the other Western states owe in fact their unex- ampled growth more to mechanical philosophy acting on internal improve- ment, than to any other cause. What stupendous consequences does Ameri- can mechanical philosophy, the characterizing feature of the present age, exhibit throughout the country? The railroad, the canal, the steamboat, the thousand modes and powers by which machinery is propelled, how vastly has it augmented the sum of human strength and human happiness. What glorious prospects does it open before us? It has bound together the wealth of the north and the south, the east and the west, the ocean and the lakes,
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as a sheaf of wheat; and urged forward the progress of improvement in mighty strides. Pouring its millions into the wilderness, it has sent forth, not serfs, but hardy, practical, enterprising men, the founders of empires, who have finished the work of erecting states before the wolf and the panther have fled from their dens. Bestriding the lakes and the streams which discharge their waters through the Mississippi, it has studded them with hundreds of floating palaces, to conquer winds, waves and tides. In a single day it lives almost a century. More powerful than Xerxes when he threw manacles into the Hellespont, it has claimed the current of rivers by the dam, the millrace and the water wheel, and made them its slave. It has almost nullified space, by enabling us to rush across its surface like the wind, and prolonged time, by the speed with which we can accomplish our ends. It can do the work of innumerable armies and navies in war and in peace. It has constructed railroads across the mountains and, in the sublime language of another, 'the backs of the Alleghanies have bowed down like camels'."
Under the administration of Governor Cass, a steady advance was made in local and territorial self-government. Cass was a democrat, in the broadest sense of the word, believing thoroughly in the rule of the peo- ple, by the people and for the people. Even at the expense of curtailing his own powers, he consistently advocated a larger measure of government by the people. Population had so increased by 1819 that Michigan was allowed a delegate in Congress. William Woodbridge, the first delegate, was suc- ceeded by Solomon Sibley and he, in turn, by the beloved Father Richard. Under the influence of Cass, Michigan advanced a step in popular govern- ment by the transfer of legislative power from the governor and judges to the governor and a council of nine, to be selected from eighteen chosen by the people. In 1827 the people were given exclusive power to choose the councilmen.
Governor Cass was a firm believer in popular education. "Of all pur- poses," he declared, "to which a revenue derived from the people can be applied under a government emanating from the people, there is none more interesting in itself, nor more important in its effects, than the maintenance of a public and general course of moral and mental discipline. Many repub- lics have preceded us in the progress of human society; but they have dis- appeared, leaving behind them little besides the history of their follies and dissensions to serve as a warning to their successors in the career of self- government. Unless the foundation of such governments is laid in the virtue and intelligence of the community, they must be swept away by the
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first commotion to which political circumstances may give birth. Whenever education is diffused among the people generally, they will appreciate the value of free institutions; and as they have the power, so must they have the will to maintain them. It appears to me that a plan may be devised which will not press too heavily upon the means of the country, and which will insure a competent portion of education to all youth in the territory." These views seem commonplace enough today, but at the time they were uttered, they were on the frontier of educational thinking. Under his influence legislation was secured to enforce these practical propositions.
One of Cass's strongest supporters in educating the people was Father Richard, who, in 1809, brought to Michigan from Baltimore the first print- ing press used west of the Alleghanies. One of the first things published was the "Cass Code," as it was popularly called, a sort of abstract of the laws then in force in the territory. In 1817 was founded the Detroit Gazette, and the day of the newspaper in Michigan had dawned. Other papers fol- lowed, in Ann Arbor, Monroe and Pontiac.
Throughout his administration Governor Cass sought by every means in his power to strengthen the foundation of Michigan's prosperity. He found it weak from the throes of war and left it strong. His was a solid and discriminating judgment, of which the young commonwealth stood most in need. Discreet, sagacious, prudent, politic, he sought always the good of Michigan. A soldier, educator and statesman, he gave freely the best that was in him. A contemporary has said, "It can be affirmed safely that the present prosperity of Michigan is now more indebted to Governor Cass than to any other man, living or dead." The verdict of the passing years is re- flected in the language of Judge Cooley, in his "Michigan," in which he says, "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 gov- ernor at once so able, so patriotic, so attentive to his duties, and so worthy in his public and private life of respect and esteem."
A PERIOD OF RAPID GROWTH.
The six remaining years of the territorial period, after Cass's entrance into Jackson's cabinet, were years of unprecedented growth in Michigan's population and general development. In 1832 the question of statehood began to be agitated, but untoward events drew away attention for the moment. The western Indians had risen under Black Hawk, and spread terror even into Michigan. The same year an epidemic of Asiatic cholera
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broke out, the ravages of which were so severe as nearly to paralyze all activities. A second attack occurred in 1834, which carried away Governor Porter, the successor of Cass. Meanwhile a negro riot in Detroit, due to an attempt to return two fugitive slaves to their Southern masters, broke out in 1833 and threatened to assume alarming proportions.
In 1835, with the tremendous impulse given to immigration by the re- newed interest in Michigan lands, a decisive step in advance was taken. The territorial census of the preceding year showed a population of 87,278, nearly thirty thousand more people than were required under the Ordinance of 1787 for admission to the Union. In April of that year members to a constitutional convention were elected, who, in May, met at Detroit and adopted a constitution, which was approved by the people at an election in October.
THE "TOLEDO WAR."
The people conceived that they had a right, under the Ordinance of 1787, to have the southern boundary of Michigan fixed at a line drawn due east from the southernmost bend of Lake Michigan. This right was dis- puted by Ohio, which had been a state since 1803. Indiana and Illinois were also interested adversely to Michigan's claim, since this would cut off a northern strip of territory which they had come to look upon as belonging to them. Toledo was the real object of the controversy which ensued, and it is often therefore called the "Toledo War." Toledo, then as now an im- portant post on Lake Erie, was in the disputed strip of land claimed by Ohio and Michigan. The dispute grew so bitter that both Governor Lucas, of Ohio, and Acting-Governor Stevens T. Mason, of Michigan, called out the militia on each side to enforce the respective claims. The question had also a practical national aspect. The President, Andrew Jackson, who saw on one side Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with votes in the electoral college, and a Territory with no vote at all on the other, was between duty and a strong temptation. As John Quincy Adams said, "Never in the course of my life have I known a controversy of which all the right was so clearly on one side, and all the power so overwhelmingly on the other; never a case where the temptation was so intense to take the strongest side, and the duty of taking the weakest was so thankless."
In October, 1835, the same month in which the state constitution was adopted, the people of Michigan elected a complete set of officials for the new state government. Stevens T. Mason was elected governor. Isaac E.
(5)
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Crary was elected to Congress. The Legislature met and elected Lucius Lyon and John Norvell United States senators. Michigan now had two governments. The territorial government was recognized by the President and Congress ; the state government was recognized by the people of Michi- gan. Ultimately, Michigan's view prevailed, except in relation to the south- ern boundary. The President and Congress would not yield on that point. The people of Michigan did not, in fact, yield, until they were com- mitted by a convention falsely purporting to represent them. This convention, which met at Ann Arbor, December 6, 1836, accepted the proposition of Congress that Michigan should be admitted to the Union if it would relin- quish all claim to the disputed strip of land on the south, and accept instead certain lands bordering on Lake Superior-lands now known as the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Michigan technically became a state in the Union on January 26, 1837. It is very significant, however, that the constitution adopted in 1835 was tacitly accepted by Congress without a change, and without being re-adopted; that the officers then chosen continued in office without re-election and that the representative elected to Congress was seated without re-election.
DETROIT IN 1837.
At the time Michigan was admitted to the Union, conditions of life in the new state were still very primitive. The French-Canadians were still an appreciable element in the population. French farms still clustered about the mouths of the rivers and along the shore north and south of Detroit. One of the strongest centers was still Detroit. "Detroit in this year 1837," says Cooley, "had become a considerable town, having now perhaps eight thousand people. Old wind-mills, upon which the people formerly relied for the grinding of cereals, were coming now to be disused, though some were still standing. The noble river in front of the town offered, at all seasons of the year, many inducements to sports and festivities, of which all classes of the people were eager to avail themselves. In the winter, when frozen over, it became the principal highway and was gay with the swift-going vehicles. A narrow box upon runners, wide apart, made the common sleigh, and the ponies, sometimes driven tandem, seemed to enter into the spirit of racing almost as much as their masters. When there was no snow, the little cart was the common vehicle of land carriage for all classes of the people; ladies went in it to church and to parties, and made fashionable calls, being seated on a buffalo robe spread on the bottom, and they were backed up to the door at which they wished to alight and stepped upon the threshold from
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it. Now and then there was a family which had a caleche, a single carriage with the body hung upon heavy leathern straps, with a small, low seat in front for the driver, and with a folding top to be raised in sun or rain. But the cart was a convenience which all classes could enjoy and appreciate, and it was especially adapted to a town like Detroit, which was built upon a clay bank and had as yet neither sidewalk nor pavement.
"Many Scotch, with a fondness for making money, were among the business men of Detroit, and they had a shrewd knack at doing so. There were also some Irish and some English, but the major part of the people who were not French were of American birth. Among those were. now being established-what in fact had existed before, though not in much strength-societies for literary culture and enjoyment. One of them was the Detroit Young Men's Society, which for twenty years was to be an im- portant institution in the town and the training school of governors, sena- tors and judges. At the barracks, though there was none now, there would shortly be a small military force to preserve peace on the frontier, and the officers and their families would constitute an important and valuable addi- tion to the society of the place at all times."
Such was Detroit when Michigan was admitted to the Union. These conditions throw some light upon what may be expected for other parts of the new state. Outside of Detroit, the largest centers of population were Monroe, Ann Arbor, Marshall, Tecumseh, Pontiac and Adrian, all in the eastern part of the state and all mere villages of very primitive life. Most of the people were small farmers, of New England descent, but immediately from New York and Ohio. Life was hard. Rude cabins, hard labor and chills and fever were the common lot of all. Of meats, salt pork was the staple, but all had wheat or corn bread and potatoes. Wild fruits and wild game were abundant and wild honey and maple sugar were much prized. Clothing was made of coarse home-made cloth. One of the great incon- veniences was the lack of mills. Primitive grist-mills and saw-mills began to make their appearance about this time. The saw-mills contributed to the clearing of the forests and to better homes. Framed houses gradually super- seded the log cabins. Among the people the domestic virtues were strong, and churches and schools were among the first institutions. The churches were of all denominations. In southeastern Michigan there were many Quakers, a sober, industrious, steady and thrifty people. Of this sect was one of Michigan's first poets, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, whose anti- slavery poems were once widely read. Of lawyers, Michigan had its full share, and doctors were plentiful, who rode the country on horseback, with
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