In the Ordinance of 1787, whereby Congress created the old Northwest
Territory out of the triangle of country lying between the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers and Lake of the Woods and the Great Lakes, it was
provided that this vast region should eventually be parcelled into five
States. The east-and-west dividing line was to be "drawn through the
southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan"; south of this line were to
be erected three States, and north of it two. "Whenever," the ordinance
read, "any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants
therein, such State shall be admitted" to the Union.
It should be said, in explanation of this east-and-west line, that all
the maps of Lake Michigan then extant represented the head of the lake
as being much farther north than it was proved to be by later surveys.
The line as fixed in the ordinance proved to be a bone of contention in
the subsequent carving of the Northwest Territory into States, leading
to a good deal of angry discussion before the boundaries of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the five States eventually
formed from the Territory, became established as they are to-day.
Ohio, the first State to be set off, insisted that Maumee Bay, with the
town of Toledo, should be included in her bounds, although it lay north
of the east-and-west line of the ordinance. Michigan, on the other hand,
stoutly insisted on the line as laid down in the law. In 1835 and 1836
there were some popular disturbances along the border; one of these,
though bloodless, was so violent as to receive the name of "the Toledo
war." Congress finally settled the quarrel by giving Ohio the northern
boundary which she desired, regardless of the terms of the ordinance;
Michigan was compensated by the gift of what we now call the "northern
peninsula" of that State, although it had all along been understood that
the country lying west of Lake Michigan should be the property of the
fifth State, whenever that was created. Thus, in order that Ohio might
have another lake port from Michigan, Wisconsin lost this immense tract
of mining country to the north.
When Indiana came to be erected, it was seen that to adopt the
east-and-west line, established by the ordinance, would be to deprive
her entirely of any part of the coast of Lake Michigan. In order,
therefore, to satisfy her, Congress took another strip, ten miles wide,
from the southern border of Michigan, and gave it to the new State.
Michigan made no objection to this fresh violation of the agreement of
1787, because there were no important harbors or towns involved.
Illinois next knocked at the door of the Union. The same conditions
applied to her as to Indiana; a strict construction of the ordinance
would deprive her of an opening on the lake. The Illinois delegate who
argued this matter in Congress was shrewd; he contended that his State
must become intimately connected with the growing commerce of the
northern lakes, else she would be led, from her commercial relations
upon the south-flowing Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to join a Southern
confederacy in case the Union should be broken up. This was in 1818, and
shows how early in our history there had come to be, in the minds of
some far-seeing men, a fear that the growing power of slavery might some
time lead to secession. The argument prevailed in Congress, and there
was voted to Illinois a strip of territory sixty-one miles wide, lying
north of the east-and-west line.
Thus again was the region later to be called Wisconsin deprived of a
large and valuable tract. When Wisconsin Territory was created, there
was a great deal of indignation expressed by some of her people, at
being deprived of this wide belt of country embracing 8500 square miles
of exceedingly fertile soil, numerous river and lake ports, many miles
of fine water power, and the sites of Chicago, Rockford, Freeport,
Galena, Oregon, Dixon, and numerous other prosperous cities.
An attempt was made in 1836, at the time the Territory was established,
to secure for Wisconsin's benefit the old east-and-west line, as its
rightful southern boundary. But Congress declined to grant this request.
Three years later, the Wisconsin Territorial legislature declared that
"a large and valuable tract of country is now held by the State of
Illinois, contrary to the manifest right and consent of the people of
this Territory."
The inhabitants of the district in northern Illinois which was claimed
by Wisconsin, were invited by these resolutions to express their opinion
on the matter. Public meetings were consequently held in several of the
Illinois towns interested; and resolutions were adopted, declaring in
favor of the Wisconsin claim. The movement culminated in a convention at
Rockford (July 6, 1839), attended by delegates from nine of the fourteen
Illinois counties involved. This convention recommended the counties to
elect delegates to a convention to be held in Madison, "for the purpose
of adopting such lawful and constitutional measures as may seem to be
necessary and proper for the early adjustment of the southern
boundary."
Curiously enough, the weight of public sentiment in Wisconsin itself did
not favor the movement. At a large meeting held in Green Bay, the
following April, the people of that section passed resolutions "viewing
the resolutions of the legislature with concern and regret," and asking
that they be rescinded. With this, popular agitation ceased for the
time; and in the following year the legislature promptly defeated a
proposition for the renewal of the question.
Governor Doty, however, was a stanch advocate of the idea, and at the
legislative session of 1842 contrived to work up considerable enthusiasm
in its behalf. A bill was reported by the committee on Territorial
affairs, asking the people in the disputed tract to hold an election on
the question of uniting with Wisconsin. There were some rather fiery
speeches upon the subject, some of the orators going so far as to
threaten force in acquiring the wished-for strip; but the legislature
itself took no action. However, in Stephenson and Boone counties,
Illinois, elections were actually held, at which all but one or two
votes were cast in favor of the Wisconsin claim.
Governor Doty, thus encouraged, busily continued his agitation. He
issued proclamations warning Illinois that it was "exercising an
accidental and temporary jurisdiction" over the disputed strip, and
calling on the two legislatures to authorize the people to vote on the
question of restoring Wisconsin to her "ancient limits." At first,
neither the legislatures of Illinois nor Wisconsin paid much attention
to the matter. Finally, in 1843, the Wisconsin legislature sent a rather
warlike address to Congress, in which secession was clearly threatened,
unless the "birthright of Wisconsin" were restored. Congress, however,
very sensibly paid no heed to the address, and gradually the excitement
subsided, until eventually Wisconsin was made a State, with her present
boundaries.
We have seen that the northern peninsula was given to Michigan as a
recompense for her loss of Toledo and Maumee Bay. But when it became
necessary to determine the boundary between the peninsula and the new
Territory of Wisconsin, now set off from Michigan, some difficulty
arose, owing to the fact that the country had not been thoroughly
surveyed, and there was no good map of it extant.
There were various propositions; one of them was, to use the Chocolate
River as part of the line; had this prevailed, Wisconsin would have
gained the greater part of the peninsula. But the line of division at
last adopted was that of the Montreal and Menominee rivers, by the way
of Lake Vieux Desert. This line had been selected in 1834, because a map
published that year represented the headwaters of those rivers as
meeting in Lake Vieux Desert; hence it was supposed by the congressional
committee that this would make an excellent natural boundary. When,
however, the line came to be actually laid out by the surveyors, six
years later, for the purpose of setting boundary monuments, it was
discovered that Lake Vieux Desert had no connection with either stream,
being, in fact, the headwaters of the Wisconsin River; and that the
running of the line through the woods, between the far-distant
headwaters of the Montreal and Menominee, so as to touch the lake on the
way, involved a laborious task, and resulted in a crooked boundary. But
it was by this time too late to correct the geographical error, and the
awkward boundary thus remains.
As originally provided by the Ordinance of 1787, Wisconsin, as the fifth
State to be created out of the Northwest Territory, was, even after
being shorn upon the south and northeast, at least entitled to have as
her western boundary the Mississippi to its source, and thence a
straight line running northward to the Lake of the Woods and the
Canadian boundary. But here again she was to suffer loss of soil, this
time in favor of Minnesota.
As a Territory, Wisconsin had been given sway over all the country lying
to the west, as far as the Missouri River. In 1838, all beyond the
Mississippi was detached, and erected into the Territory of Iowa. Eight
years later, when Wisconsin first sought to be a State, the question
arose as to her western boundary. Naturally, the people of the eastern
and southern sections wished the one set forth in the ordinance. But
settlements had by this time been established along the Upper
Mississippi and in the St. Croix valley. These were far removed from the
bulk of settlement elsewhere in Wisconsin, and had neither social nor
business interests in common with them. The people of the northwest
wished to be released from Wisconsin, in order that they might either
cast their fortunes with their near neighbors in the new Territory of
Minnesota, or join a movement just then projected for the creation of
an entirely new State, to be called "Superior." This proposed state was
to embrace all the country north of Mont Trempealeau and east of the
Mississippi, including the entire northern peninsula, if the latter
could be obtained; thus commanding the southern and western shores of
Lake Superior, with the mouth of Green Bay and the foot of Lake Michigan
to the southeast.
The St. Croix representative in the legislature was especially wedded to
the Superior project. He pleaded earnestly and eloquently for his
people, whose progress, he said, would be "greatly hampered by being
connected politically with a country from which they are separated by
nature, cut off from communication by immense spaces of wilderness
between." A memorial from the settlers themselves stated the case with
even more vigor, asserting that they were "widely separated from the
settled parts of Wisconsin, not only by hundreds of miles of mostly
waste and barren lands, which must remain uncultivated for ages, but
equally so by a diversity of interests and character in the population."
All of this reads curiously enough in these days, when the intervening
wilderness resounds with the hum of industry and "blossoms as the rose."
But that was long before the days of railroads; the dense forests of
central and western Wisconsin then constituted a formidable wilderness,
peopled only by savages and wild beasts.
Unable to influence the Wisconsin legislature, which stubbornly
contended for the possession of the original tract, the St. Croix people
next urged their claims upon Congress. The proposed State of Superior
found little favor at Washington, but there was a general feeling that
Wisconsin would be much too large unless trimmed. The result was that
when she was finally admitted as a State, the St. Croix River was, in
large part, made her northwest boundary; Minnesota in this manner
acquired a vast stretch of country, including the thriving city of St.
Paul.
Wisconsin was thus shorn of valuable territory on the south, to please
Illinois; on the northeast, to favor Michigan; and on the northwest,
that some of her settlers might join their fortunes with Minnesota. The
State, however, is still quite as large as most of her sisters in the
Old Northwest, and possesses an unusual variety of soils, and a great
wealth of forests, mines, and fisheries. There is a strong probability
that, had Congress, in 1848, given to Wisconsin her "ancient limits," as
defined by the Ordinance of 1787, the movement to create the proposed
state of "Superior" would have gathered strength in the passing years,
and possibly would have achieved success, thus depriving us of our great
northern forests and mines, and our outlet upon the northern lake.