A war that didn’t quite rage – in fact, a war in which only one injury was inflicted – was fought in 1835 over the location of the border between Michigan and Ohio.
A mistake had placed the line a few miles north of where it should have been. Because of the error, what would become the town of Toledo was in Ohio, not Michigan.
When an 1818 survey ordered by Michigan’s territorial governor found the error, the stage was set for conflict … 17 years later.
By 1835, Michigan’s territorial governor, Stevens T. Mason (who had been just 19 years old when he took office), tried in vain to negotiate over the “Toledo Strip” with Ohio's governor, Robert Lucas.
Mason rejected a federal proposal for temporary joint control of the area. A Michigan posse, after firing shots that hit no one, arrested members of an Ohio surveying group.
In short order, the Michigan and Ohio militias moved into positions for battle, but they floundered in swamps for a week and failed to locate each other.
The only blood shed in violence occurred when Michigan authorities arrested the family of Benjamin Franklin Stickney, a major in the Ohio militia who had sons named One and Two. Michigan sheriff's deputy Joseph Wood was stabbed by Two, but survived.
President Andrew Jackson removed the insubordinate Mason as governor, and Toledo remained in Ohio.
The end of the story? Not quite. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled against Michigan on where the boundary ran through Lake Erie. Ohio got half – that is, less than an acre – of Turtle Island.
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