WISCONSIN ANNIVERSARIES


from Michigan peninsula to the Rocky Mountains were becoming ex-
cited and restless. Accordingly, the war department in 1833-34, or-
ganized a frontier patrol, at first called Mounted Rangers and after-
wards the Mounted Rifle Regiment. Of this force Dodge was made
colonel and with it executed his famous western patrols of 1834 and
1835 going as far as the Rocky Mountains. He had barely returned
to his Wisconsin home in the spring of 1836 when he was summoned
to play an exalted political role.
  The question of a territorial organization for the area west of Lake
Michigan was bound up with the fate of a movement in Michigan
peninsula to secure admission to the union as a state. But the agita-
tion of a new territory began much earlier. By reason of the in-
convenience to the people of Wisconsin of the location of the capital of
Michigan at Detroit, the divergent commercial interests, especially
those of the lead region, which were with St. Louis instead of with
Buffalo and the East, as were those of Michigan proper, and because
the laws of Michigan had little currency west of the lake, the Wis-
consin district felt itself to be unequally yoked together with a con-
trolling population who sympathized little with its people and their
problems.
  Judge James Duane Doty of Green Bay was the prime mover for
a territorial government, beginning his agitation as early as 1824.
His ideas on the subject of boundaries for the new territory are in-
teresting, Doty manifesting very little modesty in his claims. He
naturally wanted all lands lying west of Lake Michigan which had
ever been assigned to Michigan Territory, but he also claimed northern
Illinois as belonging to 'the fifth state' to be carved out of the North-
west Territory. His south boundary would have run due east to
the south end of Lake Michigan from about Rock Island, thus giving
Wisconsin the entire Galena area, with the counties adjacent on the
east. He also contended for all or nearly all of the upper peninsula
of Michigan.
  Judge Doty was fertile in names, so we find him at times suggesting
Wiskonsin, again Chippewa, and also Huron as the name of the pro-
posed territory. At last, in 1834, a bill was brought forward in Con-
gress creating the territorial government of Wisconsin, assigning
boundaries which would have included the whole of the upper penin-
sula. Now, however, a violent dispute broke out between Michigan
and Ohio over the southeastern portion of the boundary line between
them. This grew more and more clamorous till in 1835 it threatened
war. In fact, Michigan and Ohio both embodied troops, but the so-
called Toledo War was ended without bloodshed. However, in settling
it Congress gave Ohio the advantage in the matter of the disputed
boundary, and then, in order to compensate Michigan for the loss
of a little territory on the south, bestowed upon her the whole of the
upper peninsula, thus depriving Wisconsin of the vast timber and
mineral wealth which would have been hers if the bill of 1834 had
passed unchanged.


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