1805. MICHIGAN TERRITORY. 137 that called Orleans, had been made. At the very opening of the session the men of the Illinois country, who hated Harrison and longed for slaves, entreated Congress to cut their country off from Indiana and join it to Louisiana. A month later the people who dwelt about the Mobile, the Tombigbee, and the Alabama rivers, sent in a paper praying for a division of the Mississippi territory. But the only petition that was heard with favor came from the people about Detroit. In the Senate. their prayer had many friends, and by them a bill was passed providing for a new Territory in the Northwest. In the House a committee considered and reported against it. The bill would, they said, if passed, open the door for like appeals from all parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. But the House threw out the report, called the Territory Michigan, and came within one vote of passing the Senate bill. At the next session it did pass, and the lower peninsula and part of the upper peninsula of Michigan were cut off from the public domain and made a Territory of the first grade.*. In an evil hour Jefferson sent out William Hull to govern it. His qualifications for this post were his revolutionary services, for his career as a soldier in the Continental army had been most honorable and enviable. When the Revolution opened, Hull was a young man of two-and-twenty, just beginning the practice of law. But he instantly quit his profession, raised a company of infantry, and hurried to the help of Washington at Cambridge. Thenceforth no military event happened north of the Potomac but Hull bore a part. He saw Howe evacuate Boston. He marched with the army to New York. He was present in the battle of Long Island, and in the retreat up the Hudson, was wounded in the battle of White Plains, and among the few who escaped capture when Lee so shamefully surrendered in * The boundaries described in the act are: "All that part of the Indiana Territory which lies north of a line drawn east from the southerly bend, or extreme, of Lake Michigan, until it intersect Lake Erie, and east of a line drawn from the said southerly bend through the middle of said lake to its northern extremity, and thence due north to the northern boundary of the United States, shall, for the purpose of temporary government, constitute a separate Territory, and be called Michigan." Act approved March 11, 1805. It is clear, from the words "thence due north," that part of the northern peninsula was included; yet on no map of the time is this fact indicated. December, 1776. Having once more joined Washington, Hull was with him in the passage of the Delaware, fought at Trenton and at Princeton, and spent some weeks in the camp at Morristown. From Morristown he was sent to recruit at Boston, and from Boston, in April, 1777, he set out to join St. Clair at Ticonderoga. Driven from Ticonderoga, he retreated through the woods of New York to the army of Schuyler on the Hudson, went with Brooks to the capture of Fort Stanwix, and was with Gates at the surrender of Burgoyne. After the surrender he again returned to Washington, passed the terrible winter at Valley Forge, took part in the pursuit of Howe, fought at Monmouth, and the next winter commanded the advanced posts near New York. For his conduct under Wayne in the glorious capture of Stony Point, Hull was made lieutenant-colonel in the Massachusetts line, and in 1783 led the American troops on their entrance into New York city. Services so signal deserved and received a signal reward, and when the Territory of Michigan was formed in 1805, Hull was chosen to govern it. For a while he hesitated. He was an old man. Life on the frontier was severe. To go west would cost him many comforts. But his vanity was touched. He accepted, and, with all the speed he could, set out for Detroit, the capital city. From Boston to Detroit the journey may now be made with almost absolute certainty in twenty hours. In 1805 it could not be made with any certainty in twenty days. Every rain that swelled the streams, every drought that dried them, every calm on the lakes, was sure to delay the traveller. The western road then began at Albany. To Albany, therefore, Hull repaired, went up the Mohawk valley to Rome, crossed the portage to Woods Creek, went down the creek to Oneida Lake, down the lake to Oswego river, and down Oswego river to Lake Ontario. A sailing vessel carried him thence to Lewiston. Passing around Niagara Falls to Black Rock, he once more took boat and sailed up Lake Erie to Detroit. It was on the first of July that he came in sight of the place and beheld from the deck of the ship a scene of utter desolation. No troops were drawn up to receive him with military honors. No crowd gathered at the landing place to bid him welcome. There were no salutes, no 1805. BURNING OF DETROIT. 139 cheers, no triumphal entry. Indeed, there was no city. Three weeks before, a fire swept over Detroit and, save a warehouse and a bakery, not a building remained. Some of the inhabitants were living on charity in the French settlements across the straits. Some were with the settlers on the Raisin and the Rouge. Some were dwelling in tents hard by the ruins of what had lately been their homes. The city on the day of its destruction consisted of a mass of wooden houses, covering a few acres of ground, parted by a few streets fifteen feet wide, and surrounded by a strong and high palisade. To rebuild on the old plan would, it was admitted by every one, be the height of folly. But to rebuild on any other plan seemed impossible; for the land outside of what had once been the palisade was public domain, and no man in the Territory had authority to sell it. A meeting of the people was accordingly held to determine what to do. Some were for going back to the old sites and the old plan. The majority were for laying out a great and splendid city, taking so much of the public land as was needed, and trusting to Congress to approve the act. The meeting was held on the first of July, the very day on which the territorial government was to go into force. As the Governor had not then arrived, the people were addressed by the Chief Justice, who had reached the Territory two days before. He reminded them that the new government would soon be in force, told them that Governor Hull would soon come, and urged them to be patient a little longer. They took his advice and agreed to do nothing for two weeks. That evening the Governor arrived. His first work was to lay out the new city and cut it up into lots. The lots were then put up for sale at public auction, and, when enough were taken to satisfy the immediate needs of the people, the sale was stopped. For the best seven cents the square foot was paid. Four cents was the average price. If the buyer owned land in the old city he exchanged the old lots for new, foot for foot, and paid for the excess, if there was any. Most of the people, having been tenants, now seized with eagerness the chance to become the owners of land and houses. They were reminded, however, that the action of the Governor was without the sanc tion of law; that he had no right to take the public lands for a city, no right to cut it up into building-sites, no right to offer it for sale, and that they could not get a title without an act of Congress. Great as was the risk, the people gladly took it, began at once to put up houses, and despatched an agent to Washington to urge their suit before Congress. The Governor and the judges made a long report to Jefferson; Jefferson sent it to Congress, and Congress soon passed an act for their relief. To every person who, on the day of the fire, owned a house, or lived in a house in Detroit, who was seventeen years of age, and who owed no allegiance to any foreign power, was given a lot of five thousand square feet. Whatever more he wished he might buy, and the money arising from such sales was to be used to build a court-house and a jail. To satisfy this grant, ten thousand acres were set apart in addition to the area of old Detroit. The Governor and the judges were made a board to lay out the new town, and performed their duty in a manner worthy of pedagogues. For the plan they selected an equilateral triangle, with perpendiculars let fall from the three angles to the sides opposite. One of the sides was to form the street along the river, and was to be run due north and south. One of the perpendiculars would therefore be due east and west. At the angle where it met the two sides was to be an immense circular space seven hundred feet in diameter, called the Grand Circus. In the centre of the triangle, where the three perpendiculars met, was to be another common, called the Campus Martius. Much of the original plan was long since obliterated; but enough still remains to enable the stranger in Detroit to locate with ease the Circus, the Campus, and the sides of the great triangle. Small as the area set apart for the town now seems, it was more than enough, for there were not then four thousand white people in the whole of Michigan. A few families were at Michilimackinaw, a few at Fort Miami, and a few scattered over the Territory. The rest were strung along the east coast from the Ohio boundary to Lake Huron, or along the rivers Rouge and Raisin. Their farms, after the fashion of the country, were laid out with the greatest regu 1805. LAND TITLES IN MICHIGAN. 141 larity. The road ran close to the water's edge. Along the road, side by side, were the farms, each forty French acres deep and from two to five French acres wide. Close to the road was the house. Back of each house was an orchard, and back of each orchard just as much grain as the needs of the family required. The whole number of such farms in the Territory was four hundred and forty-two.* Of these, but eight had clear and regular titles. The right of a few claimants went back to grants made by the old French governors, and confirmed by the French King. Some held under grants made by the governors but not confirmed by the King. Some had taken up their lands by leave of French military commanders, but had no grants nor written instruments of any kind. The rest were squatters of three sorts: those who, without leave of anybody, had settled on the land when Michigan belonged to the French, or when it belonged to the English, or after it became the property of the United States. So long as the settlements were mere outposts of civilization the people troubled themselves but little concerning title deeds and grants. But now that the community began to put in force the essentials of civil government, the question of ownership became very serious. Courts had been opened. Laws were to be enforced. The rights both of the Government and the individual were to be more carefully guarded. What, then, it was asked, was to become of men who, without a shadow of legality, had entered on the domain of the United States? What of men who, taking the law into their own hands, had made treaties with the Indians, had extinguished the native right to the soil, and had built houses and laid out farms on the land so obtained? The people, in their anxiety, repeatedly urged the Government to do something. Grand Jury after Grand Jury presented addresses on the need of a quieting act. Hull dwelt at length on the matter in his first report to Jefferson. The *Between Detroit and Lake St. Clair were sixty-three. In the Indian country north of St. Clair were one hundred and twenty-three. South of Detroit to the Raisin, mostly at Frenchtown, were one hundred and sixty-three. South of the Raisin, along Lake Erie, were seventy-five. The rest were scattered over the Territory. |