July 18, 2026 • 34 mins
In this week's Classic episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore how a misunderstanding of the geography of the Great Lakes started a feud, known as the Toledo War, between the state of Ohio and a territory called Michigan. Tune in to Ridiculous History to hear how the conflict between these lands was solved.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous historians. We are returning to you with this week's
classic episode special shout out to folks in Ohio aka
the Buckeye State, as well as Michigan. Noel, you've been
to Michigan.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Right, Ben, I have been to Michigan, and you bringing
up the Buckeye State reminded me of a conversation we
had just the other day about what a hoosier is.
It's actually kind of much hotly debated. Some people think
it's a connection to the who's here greeting, like who's here?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You know?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And then there's a dude named John Finley who popularized
the term in a poem called the Hoosier's Nest, And
then there are a couple.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Of other reasons.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But the word that I learned, Ben, was a demonym,
which is a word that is used to describe a
native or resident of a particular region. And hoosier is
a demonym. So I'm sorry, I just had to share
that with the class man.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I love you for that. We love a specific word.
English is full of them. Indiana is technically full of hoosiers.
Ohio being the Buckeye State, we learned the etymology of
that as well. In our earlier conversation, are the poisonous nut? Right? Yes,
a poisonous nut, as some of my ex girlfriends have
(01:18):
described me. We'll keep it. This episode, Noel is about
the time that Ohio and Michigan almost went to actual war. Yeah,
over some lakes, some great ones. Indeed, let's roll the tape, y'all.
(01:40):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. State Rivalries. One
(02:09):
of my favorite things about traveling around this fair nation
of hours is the regardless of what state you find
yourself in, you can find another state that most of
the people in that state hate. So if you go
to Alabama, you'll find a lot of people who hate Georgia.
If you go to Georgia, you'll find a lot of
people who hate Alabama. Hi. My name is Ben, Hi,
(02:30):
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I was just recently in Oregon driving around in a
rental car with California plates, and I was counseled that
I better tread lightly because that's not a good look.
And people from Oregon do not cottonto those city slickers
from California crossing over into their fair state.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And here's the problem.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
The car I was in was a big, giant suv,
so a real hog of the road and it had
a tear trigger horn, so I was constantly accidentally honking
at people in traffic and get some pretty nasty looks.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, listeners, super producer Casey Pegrim, and I can assure
you that that Noel is a responsible driver and you
don't just lay on your horn. You know, it's tough
when you're driving a rental car. And you're right. You're
right about California. A lot of people have been moving
to Oregon, especially the western part of the state by
(03:22):
the coast. And when I had spent time in Portland,
that's one thing everybody got behind. They were like, Oh,
he's Californians CANi coming in here taking over our state.
Stay on the four O five. So today's story is
a story about state rivalry, but it's not about that
(03:43):
kind of you know, funny. Let's tell a one liner
joke sort of rivalry. What do we mean by one
liner joke? I'll tell an example that makes fun of Georgia.
Since this is our state, of course, we don't want
to offend anybody. So let's say you're in Alabama, you're
in Florida, and someone says, hey, did you hear about
(04:05):
that hurricane that hit Savannah and they say, no, what happened?
So while it did like millions of dollars worth of improvements,
that's a that's a joke that you hear thrown around
a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Savannah's beautiful city, though, Ben, who would say that about Savannah?
Who would say that? I don't know, jerks, who are
these monsters? Well, they're jokes. Savannah is a town with
a lot of history. It's got a weird vibe.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
And there's a like a nuclear weapon lost off the
coast there. Did you know that? I didn't, but I
know there's a lot of ghosts there.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yes, yeah, it goes one of those ghosty port towns
like New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
M And it's oh, man, yeah, we should we should
go down there. We should go down there on a
ridiculous history field trip. We could do a ghost tour.
We could do a ghost tour. I think I think
it's in the budget. What do you say, let's do it?
Case he are you down for a ghost tour? I'd
love to do that.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, Savers going to Hawaii, they can at least send
us to Savannah for a ghost tour.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
That really Savers a food, lifestyle and travel show. It's
also involves food science.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
You check it out if you're at a chance see
your friends Lauren Vogel bamb In any race.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Who are going to Hawaii. That is true. I asked
them to bring back some spam for me. We'll see.
You know they still spam here in the States. Yeah,
but it's different. There are more flavors in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Okay, did you specifically ask for a flavor or just like,
gimme get weird with it?
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Say give me one that I can't get in the States. Sol.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
It's sort of like all those different flavors of kit
kats that you can only get in Japan.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, I have a bag of those if I desk.
I really like the green tea ones. Green tea is good.
I get hipped to banana. Also, Hawaii is, I think,
per capita, the world's largest consumer of spam. Remember when
we did an episode on spam with Nanny from Savor and.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
We talked about how they have to keep it under
lock and key because it's such a non perishable item
that they can just flip it out of their trunks
once they you know, do a big spam heist.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, I used to have spam in my go bag.
But the weight ratio is anyway anyway, anyway, State rivals rights,
state rivalries. Today's episode is about a state rivalry. It
is about the fair states of Ohio and Michigan, who
nowadays knowel neither of us are big football fanatics football football, yes,
(06:13):
American football tatics. Yeah, neither of us are huge American
football fanatics. Nowhere near as insane and rabbit about it
as Casey Pegrim is. But even we know that Michigan
and Ohio are famous for how much their college football
teams hate each other.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I only knew it because it says it right here
on this out line. Yeah, that's how you and I
know that that's right. But it's true, and who knows,
I mean, perhaps the rivalry in question today has had
a historical hold on the relationship between these two states
and has you know, I would say a football rivalry
or a little healthy joshing around between you know, rough
(06:51):
and tumble footballers, is a lot healthier and safer than
what has been described as the Till War, a clash
between Ohiolands. And I'm gonna go with my favorite Michiganders
because in our research material. Sometimes it says Michiganians, and
sometimes I Michiganders.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Michigan Michiganders.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, right in any Michigan folk, let us know what
ones you prefer. But this conflict took place in eighteen
thirty five, and it had to do with the fact
that both Ohio, which was a state at the time,
and Michigan, which was not yet a state at the time,
both thought they owned this little strip of land. It's
almost like a gaza strip kind of situation between two
(07:35):
warring nations, only this case it's you know, there's there's
states in a state, in a not quite yet state,
and there's this little strip of land between them that
each of them feel like they have a claim to,
right right.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
This was a long time in coming, and it's a
it's based on a series of misunderstandings. First off, I
love the name Toledo War. It sounds like it's the
name of an album. In seventeen eighty seven, the US
Congress drafted what they called the Northwest Ordinance, and the
Northwest Ordinance said that two hundred and sixty thousand square
(08:11):
miles of territory around the Great Lakes would be carved
into a handful of states. The law also said that
the border between Ohio and Michigan was to run on
a quote east and west line drawn through the southerly
bend or extreme of Lake Michigan until it intersected with
Lake Erie. However, they did a bad job. They did
(08:33):
a piss poor job because the problem is that the
maps they had were wrong. Lake Michigan's southern tip on
the map, one of the best maps at the time
that they used, which was called the Mitchell Map. You
can look it up today. The Lake Michigan that was
on the map was actually several miles north of where
(08:56):
it is in the world or on the planet. And
so so Congress got it wrong and they didn't know
in a minute Congress did what Yeah, I know, I know.
I thought they were infallible. It was the one time
Congress got it wrong, and they didn't know that they
got it wrong until eighteen o two years and years later,
(09:18):
And it was because of a fur trapper who said, hey, guys,
actually got the line wrong. This is going to come
back to bite you in the future. Listen to me.
I'm I'm a trapper. Professionally, I'm telling you you guys
are trapping yourselves and how did they react? Well, we
know it wasn't resolved. Well, first of all, I got
I got a backtrack slightly.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Let me ask you this, did this fur trapper with
you know, just just waltz into Congress and announce these findings.
Say hey, hey, you guys, it's me Raoul the fur Trapper.
I got something to tell you. Or was he employed
by them? Was he sent to what's the word survey
the land? Because the surveyors come in a little later.
(09:57):
Sorry if I'm getting caught up in semantics here, I
just can't pick sure. Raoul the fur Trapper just waltzing
into Connor and saying, listen here, this is going to
be a real problem.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
He did. I like the name Raoul, and we don't
have the exact name for this guy. Apparently delegates from
the Ohio Constitutional Convention received reports from him, so he
did not stroll into the halls of Federal Congers.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I see, he had a correspondence going on with him.
He was some in some form their representative, and he
had he had a lot of stuff going on already.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
You know what I mean. He can't watch every falling
sparrow or border dispute. But you said, you said there
there was another important thing happening here, which is that
these territories, these areas around the lakes were not states.
Ohio finally became a state in what eighteen oh three,
and so Ohio said, when it became a state, it
(10:54):
specified something about this border in its constitution. So the
fur trapper says, the line I actually falls south of
the Maumi River, and Ohio says, we own the land
around this no matter what future surveys show. And then
the Michigan Territory is formed and the government of the
Michigan Territory says, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Ohio, watch yourself,
(11:20):
because that Mitchell map is wrong. We have newer, better
maps and they show that this region is ours. This
is Michigan Territory, so step off seriously.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So things only got worse because in the eighteen tens
they sent a pair of land.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Surveyors well actually I guess one from each.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Side, yeah yeah, yeah, one from each side, and of
course they came to two different conclusions no way, yeah yeah,
about the location where this border would be. And that's
when this strip became a thing, this gaza strip esque
area of land a four hundred and sixty eight square
mile slice known as the Toledo Strip that was officially
(12:05):
being claimed very aggressively actually, as it would turn out,
by both Ohio and what was then called the Michigan Territory.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So, okay, sure, maps get things wrong. People are fallible.
Can't they just sit down together and work it out? Well,
they could if it were an arbitrary mistake. The problem
is they both have skin in the game. They both
have a horse in the race. They both want a
badger in the bag here, because they wanted to control
(12:43):
this area that it would later become Toledo and the river.
You see. By eighteen twenty five, the completion of the
Erie Canal linked the Great Lakes to the east coast
Ecteamo on the Arico.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Now that one, Yeah, it's an all song kind of
like in the company store. We're trying to ground it
and like you know lore, Yeah, and folks, folks, folks songs.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
No, this is very, very very valuable position to hold
in terms of trade. Right, yeah, absolutely, you're absolutely right.
So Toledo at this point is a growing village. It's
the largest port on Lake Erie's western side, and that
means it could be a financial windfall. So of course
(13:29):
both Michigan and Ohio want to tighten their grip on it.
And just like just like the border disputes we see
in more recent years, they try a number of things
right to legitimize their claim, both in the eyes of
the people living there and in terms of just pure infrastructure.
(13:51):
So the Michigan territory, because still not a state yet,
is constructing roads, it's sending people on purpose to live
there to sort of take over the land. It's holding election,
it's collecting taxes. Really put in the cart before the
old horse, there isn't it.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, like a boots flexing that claim, right. It is
not an ethical way to gain territory. It is an
unfortunately common way that human beings have done this in
the past and the modern day. Just say like, let's
if we send enough of quote unquote our people to
a place that we don't own and have them live there,
(14:28):
but eventually it's ours.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
This isn't the moon, you know. This isn't like a
far removed location. This isn't a colony that is completely
disconnected from day to day life. This is a very
small strip of land right between these two places where
presumably human beings live, and it became very evident that
both sides wanted to protect their claim physically if necessary.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Right, right, and Ohio. Ohio tries a different strategy. They're
doing some of the same things the Michigan territory, but
Ohio is already a state, so they have a pretty
pretty significant advantage. They go to Washington like that fur
trapper who never made it. Yeah. Right, Well, so they
(15:12):
go to the halls of federal power and they say, look,
a deal is a deal, is a deal. When we
became a state, we put this in our instruction manual
or their constitution. Rather, you guys screwed up. You guys
screwed up. That's not on us. Toledo is and will
always be a part of Ohio as God intended it.
(15:34):
In fact, in the early eighteen thirties, members of Congress
from Ohio blocked a Michigan petition for statehood and tried
to hold the Toledo strip, which they called it a hostage,
and they said, look, you can't be a state. They
didn't say give up Toledo. They said unless you admit
(15:56):
that Toledo is ours. I mean, if we're being honest here,
it's pretty scrappy of non state Michigan here, the way
they're flexing on this claim, knowing that they themselves don't
even have statehood yet, and that they're poking the bear
in more ways than one. Right, Yeah, exactly. In eighteen
thirty three, the US becomes divided on the issue the
(16:20):
entirety of Congress. So the Senate says, okay, we're team Ohio.
We side with Ohio. But the House of Representatives says, well, well, like,
we're not just going to go along with you, guys.
And then people say, Stevens Mason. That's his name, Stevens,
that's Stevens.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
We're gonna get into some other really amazing names in
this story later, but yeah, Stephens Mason.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, he's the governor of the Michigan Territory again still
not a state. And he says, hey, look, let's get
a commission together to try to work this out. I
think it's so funny, Stevens Mason. It should be flipped.
It should be Mason Stevens. Yeah. It's the last name,
first name, first name, last name vibe very like more
than one. I have a I have a good friend
whose name is Jame. He's just like what one James.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, that was the name of Buffalo Bill in the
Sounds of the Lambs movie.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
His name was Jame. Gum, isn't that right? Casey Goodbye Horses,
That's right. Oh I thought it was James. No, it
was Jame. Oh weird. I just rewatched the chase scene
from that.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I just rewatched the.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
The mirror scene, the case, not the mirror see. Of course, the.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Mirror se That's the most iconic moment from that movie.
That's the one part everyone remembers. Good Bye Horses and
the mirror scene.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I I remember the lotion on the skin part. That's
also a good one. Did you know Anthony Hopkins is
only in that movie like fourteen or fifteen minutes? Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Absolutely, yeah's hes a, he's a I mean, but it's
it's a very powerful fourteen or fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
It's true, uh speak powerful powerful fourteen or fifteen minutes.
We have to wonder how long Governor Robert Lucas of
Ohio took to evaluate Mason's appeal. Not that long. He
pretty much instantly refused it. He said, we do not negotiate,
and then he said, furthermore, in eighteen thirty five. This
(18:12):
is when everything started to go really off the rails.
He said, We're going to form our own county on
the Toledo Strips. Now, don't call it the Toledo Strip now,
it's Lucas County, Ohio. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And then Michigan flexes back against against Ohio, against Lucas
and acts this series of laws called the Pains and
Penalties Acts. And that's in February of eighteen thirty five,
a law that said anyone found hanging out in said
strip that supported Ohio could be sent to jail for
up to five years and find a grand which at
(18:47):
the time would have been equivalent to about twenty five
thousand dollars. So Mason gets a thousand men a militia
and stations them right inside of this area. And then Lucas,
you know, maybe having access to fear men or thinking
that it wasn't that big a deal because they, you know,
we're big old state boys, sent six hundred men just
(19:07):
to make sure that there wasn't some sort of like
out and out blood bath.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
This is looking bad, really is oh Also, we should
mention the governor of the not quite a state, Michigan territory.
Stevens Mason. He is twenty three years old.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Don't they call him the boy King or something like that, Golden,
the Boy Governor, the boy Governor.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Okay, yeah, yeah. So so now we have military forces
moving in and this weird hearts and minds law supporting
the state of Ohio. What does that mean? That can
mean anything from being an official of the county they
proposed Lucas County to say, Hey, I live in Toledo
(19:48):
and I'm in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And also it's got that very kind of like gestapoy
kind of idea of like what if you're just caught
paling around with somebody from the other side. You know
what if someone names n and you're one of the names,
what gets name?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Next thing? You know, you're sitting in the clink for
five years and you're you know, one thousand dollars in
debt which will be incredibly difficult to pay off. So
the federal government tries to get these people to get along,
despite the fact they're already active militias in the area.
So on April ninth, eighteen thirty five, a posse led
(20:25):
by a sheriff from Michigan rode into Toledo, and they
did just what they were talking about. They arrested several
state officials from Ohio and then newspapers who you imagine
have to have loved the headline potential here. Newspapers said
that an Ohio flag was torn down, dragged through the streets,
and burned. People are poed. Really a lawless.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Zone here, you know, because no one knows who's in charge,
so everyone's kind of in charge, or it's kind I mean,
it really is like a Wild West.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Gone situation, but just in this little strip. So it escalates.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
My friend involves another sheriff from Michigan, this time a
man named Joseph Wood, who attempts to enforce this pain
and Penalties Act by arresting Major Benjamin Stickney, loving that
name because he voted in an Ohio election.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And this is fantastic the names. This is the name
Dickney's sons, who are named one Stickney and two Stickney
like the numbers O N E T W O. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
They join in with their pops Stickney Sr. And they
resist being arrested, and they they stab sheriff would with.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
A pocket knife, but not fatally. No, it's a it's
a but a flesh wound. Really right, tis only a scratch?
This but a scratch? Uh, funny story. I've got a
I had a great aunt whose name was nine. Really,
that's pretty cool. I like the idea of numbers for names.
Me too, I met I met a dude named seven
(22:04):
and he was so cool. He was not related to me.
I only have one number name in my family. I
like the name four. You like the name four? Huh?
I mean six? A character on Blossom? There's six Smith
in Cloud Atlas. Oh, okay, I haven't seen that. Yeah,
I don't know. I'm partially for some reason, I'm partial
(22:24):
to odd numbers for names. This has nothing to do
with Michigan. In Ohio's Toledo War, what do you think
is a great number for a name?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
There was a character named six on Blossom and he
was six Lemeur played by oh Jenna von Oi.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Another great name. These are great names. Yeah, I would
go with a I would go with a nine or
maybe a three. Yeah, I would go with the name three. Casey,
do you have a number that you you think would
make a good name? Twenty seven? I knew you were
gonna Okay, Casey on the case he's thought about it, folks,
He's thought about this lot. So this is the first
(23:07):
violent physical altercation when the Michigan Sheriff Joseph Wood and
Benjamin Stickney and co. Get beefed up, and now Sheriff
Wood is remembered as the one injury casualty in the
Toledo War. So the Ohio Governor Lucas announced his intentions
(23:30):
to hold the court session in Toledo. So they were
gonna hold a session in a court.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Of law, like I said, like a hearing kind of, right, yeah,
kind of like a kangaroo court.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It's not like he's going to have a stunning plot twist.
Karoo courts just seems so cute and fun to me idea,
but they're not at all. No, They're very railroady and
sort of a mockery of justice, right, right. Do you
know where that comes from? A lot of people think
it comes from Australia.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Predictably because the only not just to stereotype because of kangaroos.
I would have thought it maybe came from the fact
that it was a penal colony, right, and maybe you know,
it was the idea of giving someone not a fair
trial and throwing them onto a penal colony.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Is that not true? It's it's not true, which is
weird because it's it's something I believe for years too.
The first published instance of the term kangaroo court comes
from nineteen or eighteen fifty three rather, and it may
have been popularized during the California gold Rush because a
lot of Australians went to the California gold Rush and
(24:35):
then they would have, you know, accusations of claim jumping,
so claim jumping and hastily proceeding through the legal system,
perhaps by leaps and bounds like a kangaroo. That's right.
I'm like, yeah, they may leap and bound, right, so
they would jump over or ignore evidence that would be
(24:56):
in favor of the defendant. But people don't really know.
That's just another theory. I think the most widely believed
one is the penal colony, but apparently that's the timing
doesn't work out. Ben.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I just went down a bit of a mini internet
rabbit hole when I was looking into the origins of
kangaroo courts, and I discovered that in Germany, the Third
Reich would hold their versions of kangaroo courts, and you
know what they were called.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Ben what were they called. They were called the People's Court,
but not with Judge Wapner. I think I've seen this. Yeah,
you know what show I missed as well. I watched,
I listened to the I listened to the intro theme
song for it all the time. Night Court. I'll probably
never actually watch Night Court. It probably hasn't aged well
(25:37):
since Dan Fielding is pretty much in a Sexual Predator.
Oh yeah, but but that intro music is so great.
I wish we could play it anyhow. So he has
this kind of fake court set up to supposedly legitimize
Ohio's claim. This is the governor. This is the Governor
Lucas of Ohio, and the boy Gov Stevens. Mason's hears
(26:02):
about this, and he marches twelve hundred militiamen called Wolverines
onto the Toledo Strip and they are prepared, the Michiganders,
to use violent force to stop this court session from
taking place. They get there on September seventh of eighteen
thirty five, and then they find out they have been outsmarted.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It's true because the Ohioans had already done these court
proceedings in secret at the witching hour. It was a
midnight court session and then just booked it out of
there because they didn't want to get slaughtered right right.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So, according to history dot com, the court incident marked
the last gasp of armed hostilities in the Toledo War.
Uncle Sam's representatives say, hey, Ohio, Michigan, why don't you
guys jointly govern the territory until Congress can make a
permanent decision on the issue. Ohio says, all right, cool, dope,
(27:05):
let's do that. But at the same time, while they
said that was okay, they authorized three hundred thousand dollars
to the Ohio militia to seize the territory if Michigan
said no. And Michigan said no, so the Ohio militia
moved to the south bank of the river and faced
(27:26):
off with Michigan's military on the north side. And then
the president had had enough. Andrew Jackson, president at the time,
said this is bonkers. This is bananas, this is malarkey.
I am removing slash firing the boy governor. Ooh, how
do you do that?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
That's a bit of a legal reach, isn't it just
to say I unequivocally, as the President, remove you from
your duly elected office. Didn't seem like that would go
over very well. And then installm and to install my guy.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right, that's right. It does seem like an overreach of
you know, but that's what happened, and Mason was replaced
by a fellow named John Horner. John Horner, I don't
know if we would say completely mended the offences, but
he worked with the Ohio governor to reach a okay
(28:17):
conclusion to the dispute, and Ohio was happy. The people
of Michigan were not. They hated this guy. They despised him.
They would see him in the street and verbally abuse him.
They hanged effigies of him on multiple occasions, and they
immediately voted Stevens. Mason, the boy governor, back into office.
(28:43):
So this debate raged on, and a lot of it
focused on Michigan's you know, ongoing plea to be made
a state. And that was really the deciding factor here
because on December fourteenth, eighteen thirty six, Michigan did eventually
accept a congressional compromise and they said, okay, we will
(29:05):
give up the Toledo Strip if we are admitted to
the Union as the twenty sixth state. And with that
Toledo became part of the state of Ohio. Michigan didn't
just give that up for statehood. They also got some
land right in the upper Peninsula.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, it's between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. The thing is,
though the Michiganers weren't super thrilled about this.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
They thought it was kind of.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
A raw deal because the Detroit Free Press at the
time had categorized this Upper peninsular area as a barren
waste land of perpetual snows. But you know, as history
has a tendency to do, kind of softened things a
little bit when they discovered some precious mineable materials in
(29:54):
the form of copper and iron ore. So it turned
out to be not a not a bad trade, not
a complete wash.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
And there we have it, folks. The Toledo War, nowadays
is remembered as the most ferocious conflict in Ohio Michigan history,
even worse than the college football rivalries. But this was
not the last time the states clash over their borders.
These folks have legitimate boundary issues. The precise location of
(30:23):
their land boundary was still a constant subject of contention
argument until nineteen fifteen. They had to have a new
government survey, and the governors celebrated the resolution by shaking
hands across the border. See and in nineteen sixty five
the lieutenant governors repeated the ceremony.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
That's nice, like many hands across America thing hey, and
here will come full circle. You know, there were occasional
legal battles between the states up until nineteen seventy three,
when a Supreme Court ruling resolved any claims to the
waters of Eerie. Now those tensions, as historical tensions are
(31:05):
pretty much dealt with in those college football rivalries we
talked about at the top of the.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Show, the Toledo War. There you have it. So this
ends today's episode, but not our show. We would love
to hear some of your favorite stories of state rivalries
in the US, or you know, country rivalries, county province
rivalries anywhere throughout the world, because as we know, at
(31:34):
least here in the States, it's a huge ongoing issue
and every state has at least one other state that
they despise for one reason or another. You can let
us know on our email. We are ridiculous at iHeartRadio
dot com. You can find us on Instagram and You
can find us, most importantly your fellow listeners on our
(31:55):
Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, and you can check us out individually on Instagram
if you like, follow our various exploits.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I am at embryonic insider. I am at Ben Bolin
with a lot of stuff on there that's probably gonna
ruin my political ambitions later in life.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Oh surely not, Ben, surely not. You're just a full
human person, very rich life experiences.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
That's very kind. I, like many people do, try to
emulate Casey Pegram Oh, speaking of that guy, Hey, Casey,
thanks so much for, as always, saving the show. We'd
also like to thank Gabe, our research associate.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I would like to thank Alex Williams who composed our theme,
Christopher Hasiotis who is here in spirit, and Jonathan Stricklam
the Quister, and as usual, Ben Bolland thanks to you
for being a friend and all the other lyrics to
the Golden Girl theme that I will never never remember.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Why don't you ever remember it's a great song.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
You said it wasn't that great a song, and it's
the full song is not great, But the TV version
just for the intro is spot off. Pretty heartwarming, especially
when paired with the you know clips of these women
and their anti It really does warm the cockles.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
And I'm gonna say this even though it's late and
we probably should have said it earlier. You know, it's
here in the US. Mother's Day happened this weekend, and
I just want to say thanks to all the moms listening. Yes,
thanks to everyone with the mom. And you know, if
(33:22):
you didn't get a chance, you didn't get a chance
to call her. This is maybe a week a week
late now that you're hearing this, but if you didn't
get a chance to say hello, just just give her
a ring, drop by and see her. We both hung out, well,
all three of us hung out with our moms recently
and had a heck of a time. No, my mom
(33:42):
even almost came to my improv show, which was a
weird flex Ben.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I would have come to your improv show as well
if I wasn't already entertaining my mom and daughter.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
You know, and my daughter's ten.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I don't think the improv stuff you guys would have
don would have been quite age appropriate her. But very soon,
when she's I'm going to say thirteen, you can go
to our first improv show.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Okay, all of us listening now who have ever done
improv know that it can be it can be tiresome
to continually invite your friends to improv. So never feel,
you know, we improvise enough together on the show, Noll.
Never feel obligated or anything other than invited to that
kind of that kind of outside of workstick you know
(34:22):
what I mean, I do.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Indeed, we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous historians. We are returning to you with this week's
classic episode special shout out to folks in Ohio aka
the Buckeye State, as well as Michigan. Noel, you've been
to Michigan.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Right, Ben, I have been to Michigan, and you bringing
up the Buckeye State reminded me of a conversation we
had just the other day about what a hoosier is.
It's actually kind of much hotly debated. Some people think
it's a connection to the who's here greeting, like who's here?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You know?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And then there's a dude named John Finley who popularized
the term in a poem called the Hoosier's Nest, And
then there are a couple.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Of other reasons.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But the word that I learned, Ben, was a demonym,
which is a word that is used to describe a
native or resident of a particular region. And hoosier is
a demonym. So I'm sorry, I just had to share
that with the class man.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I love you for that. We love a specific word.
English is full of them. Indiana is technically full of hoosiers.
Ohio being the Buckeye State, we learned the etymology of
that as well. In our earlier conversation, are the poisonous nut? Right? Yes,
a poisonous nut, as some of my ex girlfriends have
(01:18):
described me. We'll keep it. This episode, Noel is about
the time that Ohio and Michigan almost went to actual war. Yeah,
over some lakes, some great ones. Indeed, let's roll the tape, y'all.
(01:40):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. State Rivalries. One
(02:09):
of my favorite things about traveling around this fair nation
of hours is the regardless of what state you find
yourself in, you can find another state that most of
the people in that state hate. So if you go
to Alabama, you'll find a lot of people who hate Georgia.
If you go to Georgia, you'll find a lot of
people who hate Alabama. Hi. My name is Ben, Hi,
(02:30):
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I was just recently in Oregon driving around in a
rental car with California plates, and I was counseled that
I better tread lightly because that's not a good look.
And people from Oregon do not cottonto those city slickers
from California crossing over into their fair state.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And here's the problem.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
The car I was in was a big, giant suv,
so a real hog of the road and it had
a tear trigger horn, so I was constantly accidentally honking
at people in traffic and get some pretty nasty looks.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, listeners, super producer Casey Pegrim, and I can assure
you that that Noel is a responsible driver and you
don't just lay on your horn. You know, it's tough
when you're driving a rental car. And you're right. You're
right about California. A lot of people have been moving
to Oregon, especially the western part of the state by
(03:22):
the coast. And when I had spent time in Portland,
that's one thing everybody got behind. They were like, Oh,
he's Californians CANi coming in here taking over our state.
Stay on the four O five. So today's story is
a story about state rivalry, but it's not about that
(03:43):
kind of you know, funny. Let's tell a one liner
joke sort of rivalry. What do we mean by one
liner joke? I'll tell an example that makes fun of Georgia.
Since this is our state, of course, we don't want
to offend anybody. So let's say you're in Alabama, you're
in Florida, and someone says, hey, did you hear about
(04:05):
that hurricane that hit Savannah and they say, no, what happened?
So while it did like millions of dollars worth of improvements,
that's a that's a joke that you hear thrown around
a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Savannah's beautiful city, though, Ben, who would say that about Savannah?
Who would say that? I don't know, jerks, who are
these monsters? Well, they're jokes. Savannah is a town with
a lot of history. It's got a weird vibe.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
And there's a like a nuclear weapon lost off the
coast there. Did you know that? I didn't, but I
know there's a lot of ghosts there.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yes, yeah, it goes one of those ghosty port towns
like New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
M And it's oh, man, yeah, we should we should
go down there. We should go down there on a
ridiculous history field trip. We could do a ghost tour.
We could do a ghost tour. I think I think
it's in the budget. What do you say, let's do it?
Case he are you down for a ghost tour? I'd
love to do that.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, Savers going to Hawaii, they can at least send
us to Savannah for a ghost tour.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
That really Savers a food, lifestyle and travel show. It's
also involves food science.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
You check it out if you're at a chance see
your friends Lauren Vogel bamb In any race.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Who are going to Hawaii. That is true. I asked
them to bring back some spam for me. We'll see.
You know they still spam here in the States. Yeah,
but it's different. There are more flavors in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Okay, did you specifically ask for a flavor or just like,
gimme get weird with it?
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Say give me one that I can't get in the States. Sol.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
It's sort of like all those different flavors of kit
kats that you can only get in Japan.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, I have a bag of those if I desk.
I really like the green tea ones. Green tea is good.
I get hipped to banana. Also, Hawaii is, I think,
per capita, the world's largest consumer of spam. Remember when
we did an episode on spam with Nanny from Savor and.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
We talked about how they have to keep it under
lock and key because it's such a non perishable item
that they can just flip it out of their trunks
once they you know, do a big spam heist.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, I used to have spam in my go bag.
But the weight ratio is anyway anyway, anyway, State rivals rights,
state rivalries. Today's episode is about a state rivalry. It
is about the fair states of Ohio and Michigan, who
nowadays knowel neither of us are big football fanatics football football, yes,
(06:13):
American football tatics. Yeah, neither of us are huge American
football fanatics. Nowhere near as insane and rabbit about it
as Casey Pegrim is. But even we know that Michigan
and Ohio are famous for how much their college football
teams hate each other.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I only knew it because it says it right here
on this out line. Yeah, that's how you and I
know that that's right. But it's true, and who knows,
I mean, perhaps the rivalry in question today has had
a historical hold on the relationship between these two states
and has you know, I would say a football rivalry
or a little healthy joshing around between you know, rough
(06:51):
and tumble footballers, is a lot healthier and safer than
what has been described as the Till War, a clash
between Ohiolands. And I'm gonna go with my favorite Michiganders
because in our research material. Sometimes it says Michiganians, and
sometimes I Michiganders.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Michigan Michiganders.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, right in any Michigan folk, let us know what
ones you prefer. But this conflict took place in eighteen
thirty five, and it had to do with the fact
that both Ohio, which was a state at the time,
and Michigan, which was not yet a state at the time,
both thought they owned this little strip of land. It's
almost like a gaza strip kind of situation between two
(07:35):
warring nations, only this case it's you know, there's there's
states in a state, in a not quite yet state,
and there's this little strip of land between them that
each of them feel like they have a claim to,
right right.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
This was a long time in coming, and it's a
it's based on a series of misunderstandings. First off, I
love the name Toledo War. It sounds like it's the
name of an album. In seventeen eighty seven, the US
Congress drafted what they called the Northwest Ordinance, and the
Northwest Ordinance said that two hundred and sixty thousand square
(08:11):
miles of territory around the Great Lakes would be carved
into a handful of states. The law also said that
the border between Ohio and Michigan was to run on
a quote east and west line drawn through the southerly
bend or extreme of Lake Michigan until it intersected with
Lake Erie. However, they did a bad job. They did
(08:33):
a piss poor job because the problem is that the
maps they had were wrong. Lake Michigan's southern tip on
the map, one of the best maps at the time
that they used, which was called the Mitchell Map. You
can look it up today. The Lake Michigan that was
on the map was actually several miles north of where
(08:56):
it is in the world or on the planet. And
so so Congress got it wrong and they didn't know
in a minute Congress did what Yeah, I know, I know.
I thought they were infallible. It was the one time
Congress got it wrong, and they didn't know that they
got it wrong until eighteen o two years and years later,
(09:18):
And it was because of a fur trapper who said, hey, guys,
actually got the line wrong. This is going to come
back to bite you in the future. Listen to me.
I'm I'm a trapper. Professionally, I'm telling you you guys
are trapping yourselves and how did they react? Well, we
know it wasn't resolved. Well, first of all, I got
I got a backtrack slightly.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Let me ask you this, did this fur trapper with
you know, just just waltz into Congress and announce these findings.
Say hey, hey, you guys, it's me Raoul the fur Trapper.
I got something to tell you. Or was he employed
by them? Was he sent to what's the word survey
the land? Because the surveyors come in a little later.
(09:57):
Sorry if I'm getting caught up in semantics here, I
just can't pick sure. Raoul the fur Trapper just waltzing
into Connor and saying, listen here, this is going to
be a real problem.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
He did. I like the name Raoul, and we don't
have the exact name for this guy. Apparently delegates from
the Ohio Constitutional Convention received reports from him, so he
did not stroll into the halls of Federal Congers.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I see, he had a correspondence going on with him.
He was some in some form their representative, and he
had he had a lot of stuff going on already.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
You know what I mean. He can't watch every falling
sparrow or border dispute. But you said, you said there
there was another important thing happening here, which is that
these territories, these areas around the lakes were not states.
Ohio finally became a state in what eighteen oh three,
and so Ohio said, when it became a state, it
(10:54):
specified something about this border in its constitution. So the
fur trapper says, the line I actually falls south of
the Maumi River, and Ohio says, we own the land
around this no matter what future surveys show. And then
the Michigan Territory is formed and the government of the
Michigan Territory says, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Ohio, watch yourself,
(11:20):
because that Mitchell map is wrong. We have newer, better
maps and they show that this region is ours. This
is Michigan Territory, so step off seriously.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So things only got worse because in the eighteen tens
they sent a pair of land.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Surveyors well actually I guess one from each.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Side, yeah yeah, yeah, one from each side, and of
course they came to two different conclusions no way, yeah yeah,
about the location where this border would be. And that's
when this strip became a thing, this gaza strip esque
area of land a four hundred and sixty eight square
mile slice known as the Toledo Strip that was officially
(12:05):
being claimed very aggressively actually, as it would turn out,
by both Ohio and what was then called the Michigan Territory.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So, okay, sure, maps get things wrong. People are fallible.
Can't they just sit down together and work it out? Well,
they could if it were an arbitrary mistake. The problem
is they both have skin in the game. They both
have a horse in the race. They both want a
badger in the bag here, because they wanted to control
(12:43):
this area that it would later become Toledo and the river.
You see. By eighteen twenty five, the completion of the
Erie Canal linked the Great Lakes to the east coast
Ecteamo on the Arico.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Now that one, Yeah, it's an all song kind of
like in the company store. We're trying to ground it
and like you know lore, Yeah, and folks, folks, folks songs.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
No, this is very, very very valuable position to hold
in terms of trade. Right, yeah, absolutely, you're absolutely right.
So Toledo at this point is a growing village. It's
the largest port on Lake Erie's western side, and that
means it could be a financial windfall. So of course
(13:29):
both Michigan and Ohio want to tighten their grip on it.
And just like just like the border disputes we see
in more recent years, they try a number of things
right to legitimize their claim, both in the eyes of
the people living there and in terms of just pure infrastructure.
(13:51):
So the Michigan territory, because still not a state yet,
is constructing roads, it's sending people on purpose to live
there to sort of take over the land. It's holding election,
it's collecting taxes. Really put in the cart before the
old horse, there isn't it.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, like a boots flexing that claim, right. It is
not an ethical way to gain territory. It is an
unfortunately common way that human beings have done this in
the past and the modern day. Just say like, let's
if we send enough of quote unquote our people to
a place that we don't own and have them live there,
(14:28):
but eventually it's ours.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
This isn't the moon, you know. This isn't like a
far removed location. This isn't a colony that is completely
disconnected from day to day life. This is a very
small strip of land right between these two places where
presumably human beings live, and it became very evident that
both sides wanted to protect their claim physically if necessary.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Right, right, and Ohio. Ohio tries a different strategy. They're
doing some of the same things the Michigan territory, but
Ohio is already a state, so they have a pretty
pretty significant advantage. They go to Washington like that fur
trapper who never made it. Yeah. Right, Well, so they
(15:12):
go to the halls of federal power and they say, look,
a deal is a deal, is a deal. When we
became a state, we put this in our instruction manual
or their constitution. Rather, you guys screwed up. You guys
screwed up. That's not on us. Toledo is and will
always be a part of Ohio as God intended it.
(15:34):
In fact, in the early eighteen thirties, members of Congress
from Ohio blocked a Michigan petition for statehood and tried
to hold the Toledo strip, which they called it a hostage,
and they said, look, you can't be a state. They
didn't say give up Toledo. They said unless you admit
(15:56):
that Toledo is ours. I mean, if we're being honest here,
it's pretty scrappy of non state Michigan here, the way
they're flexing on this claim, knowing that they themselves don't
even have statehood yet, and that they're poking the bear
in more ways than one. Right, Yeah, exactly. In eighteen
thirty three, the US becomes divided on the issue the
(16:20):
entirety of Congress. So the Senate says, okay, we're team Ohio.
We side with Ohio. But the House of Representatives says, well, well, like,
we're not just going to go along with you, guys.
And then people say, Stevens Mason. That's his name, Stevens,
that's Stevens.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
We're gonna get into some other really amazing names in
this story later, but yeah, Stephens Mason.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, he's the governor of the Michigan Territory again still
not a state. And he says, hey, look, let's get
a commission together to try to work this out. I
think it's so funny, Stevens Mason. It should be flipped.
It should be Mason Stevens. Yeah. It's the last name,
first name, first name, last name vibe very like more
than one. I have a I have a good friend
whose name is Jame. He's just like what one James.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, that was the name of Buffalo Bill in the
Sounds of the Lambs movie.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
His name was Jame. Gum, isn't that right? Casey Goodbye Horses,
That's right. Oh I thought it was James. No, it
was Jame. Oh weird. I just rewatched the chase scene
from that.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I just rewatched the.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
The mirror scene, the case, not the mirror see. Of course, the.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Mirror se That's the most iconic moment from that movie.
That's the one part everyone remembers. Good Bye Horses and
the mirror scene.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I I remember the lotion on the skin part. That's
also a good one. Did you know Anthony Hopkins is
only in that movie like fourteen or fifteen minutes? Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Absolutely, yeah's hes a, he's a I mean, but it's
it's a very powerful fourteen or fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
It's true, uh speak powerful powerful fourteen or fifteen minutes.
We have to wonder how long Governor Robert Lucas of
Ohio took to evaluate Mason's appeal. Not that long. He
pretty much instantly refused it. He said, we do not negotiate,
and then he said, furthermore, in eighteen thirty five. This
(18:12):
is when everything started to go really off the rails.
He said, We're going to form our own county on
the Toledo Strips. Now, don't call it the Toledo Strip now,
it's Lucas County, Ohio. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And then Michigan flexes back against against Ohio, against Lucas
and acts this series of laws called the Pains and
Penalties Acts. And that's in February of eighteen thirty five,
a law that said anyone found hanging out in said
strip that supported Ohio could be sent to jail for
up to five years and find a grand which at
(18:47):
the time would have been equivalent to about twenty five
thousand dollars. So Mason gets a thousand men a militia
and stations them right inside of this area. And then Lucas,
you know, maybe having access to fear men or thinking
that it wasn't that big a deal because they, you know,
we're big old state boys, sent six hundred men just
(19:07):
to make sure that there wasn't some sort of like
out and out blood bath.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
This is looking bad, really is oh Also, we should
mention the governor of the not quite a state, Michigan territory.
Stevens Mason. He is twenty three years old.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Don't they call him the boy King or something like that, Golden,
the Boy Governor, the boy Governor.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Okay, yeah, yeah. So so now we have military forces
moving in and this weird hearts and minds law supporting
the state of Ohio. What does that mean? That can
mean anything from being an official of the county they
proposed Lucas County to say, Hey, I live in Toledo
(19:48):
and I'm in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And also it's got that very kind of like gestapoy
kind of idea of like what if you're just caught
paling around with somebody from the other side. You know
what if someone names n and you're one of the names,
what gets name?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Next thing? You know, you're sitting in the clink for
five years and you're you know, one thousand dollars in
debt which will be incredibly difficult to pay off. So
the federal government tries to get these people to get along,
despite the fact they're already active militias in the area.
So on April ninth, eighteen thirty five, a posse led
(20:25):
by a sheriff from Michigan rode into Toledo, and they
did just what they were talking about. They arrested several
state officials from Ohio and then newspapers who you imagine
have to have loved the headline potential here. Newspapers said
that an Ohio flag was torn down, dragged through the streets,
and burned. People are poed. Really a lawless.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Zone here, you know, because no one knows who's in charge,
so everyone's kind of in charge, or it's kind I mean,
it really is like a Wild West.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Gone situation, but just in this little strip. So it escalates.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
My friend involves another sheriff from Michigan, this time a
man named Joseph Wood, who attempts to enforce this pain
and Penalties Act by arresting Major Benjamin Stickney, loving that
name because he voted in an Ohio election.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And this is fantastic the names. This is the name
Dickney's sons, who are named one Stickney and two Stickney
like the numbers O N E T W O. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
They join in with their pops Stickney Sr. And they
resist being arrested, and they they stab sheriff would with.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
A pocket knife, but not fatally. No, it's a it's
a but a flesh wound. Really right, tis only a scratch?
This but a scratch? Uh, funny story. I've got a
I had a great aunt whose name was nine. Really,
that's pretty cool. I like the idea of numbers for names.
Me too, I met I met a dude named seven
(22:04):
and he was so cool. He was not related to me.
I only have one number name in my family. I
like the name four. You like the name four? Huh?
I mean six? A character on Blossom? There's six Smith
in Cloud Atlas. Oh, okay, I haven't seen that. Yeah,
I don't know. I'm partially for some reason, I'm partial
(22:24):
to odd numbers for names. This has nothing to do
with Michigan. In Ohio's Toledo War, what do you think
is a great number for a name?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
There was a character named six on Blossom and he
was six Lemeur played by oh Jenna von Oi.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Another great name. These are great names. Yeah, I would
go with a I would go with a nine or
maybe a three. Yeah, I would go with the name three. Casey,
do you have a number that you you think would
make a good name? Twenty seven? I knew you were
gonna Okay, Casey on the case he's thought about it, folks,
He's thought about this lot. So this is the first
(23:07):
violent physical altercation when the Michigan Sheriff Joseph Wood and
Benjamin Stickney and co. Get beefed up, and now Sheriff
Wood is remembered as the one injury casualty in the
Toledo War. So the Ohio Governor Lucas announced his intentions
(23:30):
to hold the court session in Toledo. So they were
gonna hold a session in a court.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Of law, like I said, like a hearing kind of, right, yeah,
kind of like a kangaroo court.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It's not like he's going to have a stunning plot twist.
Karoo courts just seems so cute and fun to me idea,
but they're not at all. No, They're very railroady and
sort of a mockery of justice, right, right. Do you
know where that comes from? A lot of people think
it comes from Australia.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Predictably because the only not just to stereotype because of kangaroos.
I would have thought it maybe came from the fact
that it was a penal colony, right, and maybe you know,
it was the idea of giving someone not a fair
trial and throwing them onto a penal colony.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Is that not true? It's it's not true, which is
weird because it's it's something I believe for years too.
The first published instance of the term kangaroo court comes
from nineteen or eighteen fifty three rather, and it may
have been popularized during the California gold Rush because a
lot of Australians went to the California gold Rush and
(24:35):
then they would have, you know, accusations of claim jumping,
so claim jumping and hastily proceeding through the legal system,
perhaps by leaps and bounds like a kangaroo. That's right.
I'm like, yeah, they may leap and bound, right, so
they would jump over or ignore evidence that would be
(24:56):
in favor of the defendant. But people don't really know.
That's just another theory. I think the most widely believed
one is the penal colony, but apparently that's the timing
doesn't work out. Ben.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I just went down a bit of a mini internet
rabbit hole when I was looking into the origins of
kangaroo courts, and I discovered that in Germany, the Third
Reich would hold their versions of kangaroo courts, and you
know what they were called.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Ben what were they called. They were called the People's Court,
but not with Judge Wapner. I think I've seen this. Yeah,
you know what show I missed as well. I watched,
I listened to the I listened to the intro theme
song for it all the time. Night Court. I'll probably
never actually watch Night Court. It probably hasn't aged well
(25:37):
since Dan Fielding is pretty much in a Sexual Predator.
Oh yeah, but but that intro music is so great.
I wish we could play it anyhow. So he has
this kind of fake court set up to supposedly legitimize
Ohio's claim. This is the governor. This is the Governor
Lucas of Ohio, and the boy Gov Stevens. Mason's hears
(26:02):
about this, and he marches twelve hundred militiamen called Wolverines
onto the Toledo Strip and they are prepared, the Michiganders,
to use violent force to stop this court session from
taking place. They get there on September seventh of eighteen
thirty five, and then they find out they have been outsmarted.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It's true because the Ohioans had already done these court
proceedings in secret at the witching hour. It was a
midnight court session and then just booked it out of
there because they didn't want to get slaughtered right right.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So, according to history dot com, the court incident marked
the last gasp of armed hostilities in the Toledo War.
Uncle Sam's representatives say, hey, Ohio, Michigan, why don't you
guys jointly govern the territory until Congress can make a
permanent decision on the issue. Ohio says, all right, cool, dope,
(27:05):
let's do that. But at the same time, while they
said that was okay, they authorized three hundred thousand dollars
to the Ohio militia to seize the territory if Michigan
said no. And Michigan said no, so the Ohio militia
moved to the south bank of the river and faced
(27:26):
off with Michigan's military on the north side. And then
the president had had enough. Andrew Jackson, president at the time,
said this is bonkers. This is bananas, this is malarkey.
I am removing slash firing the boy governor. Ooh, how
do you do that?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
That's a bit of a legal reach, isn't it just
to say I unequivocally, as the President, remove you from
your duly elected office. Didn't seem like that would go
over very well. And then installm and to install my guy.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right, that's right. It does seem like an overreach of
you know, but that's what happened, and Mason was replaced
by a fellow named John Horner. John Horner, I don't
know if we would say completely mended the offences, but
he worked with the Ohio governor to reach a okay
(28:17):
conclusion to the dispute, and Ohio was happy. The people
of Michigan were not. They hated this guy. They despised him.
They would see him in the street and verbally abuse him.
They hanged effigies of him on multiple occasions, and they
immediately voted Stevens. Mason, the boy governor, back into office.
(28:43):
So this debate raged on, and a lot of it
focused on Michigan's you know, ongoing plea to be made
a state. And that was really the deciding factor here
because on December fourteenth, eighteen thirty six, Michigan did eventually
accept a congressional compromise and they said, okay, we will
(29:05):
give up the Toledo Strip if we are admitted to
the Union as the twenty sixth state. And with that
Toledo became part of the state of Ohio. Michigan didn't
just give that up for statehood. They also got some
land right in the upper Peninsula.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, it's between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. The thing is,
though the Michiganers weren't super thrilled about this.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
They thought it was kind of.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
A raw deal because the Detroit Free Press at the
time had categorized this Upper peninsular area as a barren
waste land of perpetual snows. But you know, as history
has a tendency to do, kind of softened things a
little bit when they discovered some precious mineable materials in
(29:54):
the form of copper and iron ore. So it turned
out to be not a not a bad trade, not
a complete wash.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
And there we have it, folks. The Toledo War, nowadays
is remembered as the most ferocious conflict in Ohio Michigan history,
even worse than the college football rivalries. But this was
not the last time the states clash over their borders.
These folks have legitimate boundary issues. The precise location of
(30:23):
their land boundary was still a constant subject of contention
argument until nineteen fifteen. They had to have a new
government survey, and the governors celebrated the resolution by shaking
hands across the border. See and in nineteen sixty five
the lieutenant governors repeated the ceremony.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
That's nice, like many hands across America thing hey, and
here will come full circle. You know, there were occasional
legal battles between the states up until nineteen seventy three,
when a Supreme Court ruling resolved any claims to the
waters of Eerie. Now those tensions, as historical tensions are
(31:05):
pretty much dealt with in those college football rivalries we
talked about at the top of the.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Show, the Toledo War. There you have it. So this
ends today's episode, but not our show. We would love
to hear some of your favorite stories of state rivalries
in the US, or you know, country rivalries, county province
rivalries anywhere throughout the world, because as we know, at
(31:34):
least here in the States, it's a huge ongoing issue
and every state has at least one other state that
they despise for one reason or another. You can let
us know on our email. We are ridiculous at iHeartRadio
dot com. You can find us on Instagram and You
can find us, most importantly your fellow listeners on our
(31:55):
Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, and you can check us out individually on Instagram
if you like, follow our various exploits.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I am at embryonic insider. I am at Ben Bolin
with a lot of stuff on there that's probably gonna
ruin my political ambitions later in life.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Oh surely not, Ben, surely not. You're just a full
human person, very rich life experiences.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
That's very kind. I, like many people do, try to
emulate Casey Pegram Oh, speaking of that guy, Hey, Casey,
thanks so much for, as always, saving the show. We'd
also like to thank Gabe, our research associate.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I would like to thank Alex Williams who composed our theme,
Christopher Hasiotis who is here in spirit, and Jonathan Stricklam
the Quister, and as usual, Ben Bolland thanks to you
for being a friend and all the other lyrics to
the Golden Girl theme that I will never never remember.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Why don't you ever remember it's a great song.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
You said it wasn't that great a song, and it's
the full song is not great, But the TV version
just for the intro is spot off. Pretty heartwarming, especially
when paired with the you know clips of these women
and their anti It really does warm the cockles.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
And I'm gonna say this even though it's late and
we probably should have said it earlier. You know, it's
here in the US. Mother's Day happened this weekend, and
I just want to say thanks to all the moms listening. Yes,
thanks to everyone with the mom. And you know, if
(33:22):
you didn't get a chance, you didn't get a chance
to call her. This is maybe a week a week
late now that you're hearing this, but if you didn't
get a chance to say hello, just just give her
a ring, drop by and see her. We both hung out, well,
all three of us hung out with our moms recently
and had a heck of a time. No, my mom
(33:42):
even almost came to my improv show, which was a
weird flex Ben.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I would have come to your improv show as well
if I wasn't already entertaining my mom and daughter.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
You know, and my daughter's ten.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I don't think the improv stuff you guys would have
don would have been quite age appropriate her. But very soon,
when she's I'm going to say thirteen, you can go
to our first improv show.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Okay, all of us listening now who have ever done
improv know that it can be it can be tiresome
to continually invite your friends to improv. So never feel,
you know, we improvise enough together on the show, Noll.
Never feel obligated or anything other than invited to that
kind of that kind of outside of workstick you know
(34:22):
what I mean, I do.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Indeed, we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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