"The first low wash of waves where soon

Shall roll a human sea."

The population swelled rapidly, until in 1830 it numbered upwards of thirty-two thousand. But in the following year the territory lost its chief magistrate, who was summoned to a seat in the cabinet of President Jackson. The loss was not made good by the appointment of Mr. George B. Porter of Pennsylvania to the vacancy, for the new appointee was slow in coming to his government, and was much absent from his post afterwards. Under the law, in his absence, the duties were performed by Mr. Stevens T. Mason, the territorial secretary, who, when the responsibilities of government devolved upon him, was still a boy, without legal capacity to buy a horse or give a note of hand. But the acting governor was ambitious and able, and he shortly became leader in a movement for state government. In 1835 the population was found to exceed sixty thousand, and under a claim that this, by the Ordinance of 1787, entitled the people to organize as a state, a constitution was formed and adopted by popular vote and a full complement of state officers elected and installed, with Mr. Mason as governor.

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Had there been no opposing interests, it is probable that these ceedings, though plainly irregular, would have been sanctioned by congress and the state received into the Union. But a boundary controversy with Ohio, involving territory of which the chief value centered in the rising town of Toledo, complicated the situation; the military were called out to defend the respective claims, and for a time the Toledo war raged. But the war was in prudent hands, and, though drums were heard, not a funeral note brought sorrow to any household. Ohio had the advantage of position, for she was already in the Union with voting power, and President Jackson, who could appreciate this, disallowed the claims of Michigan to state government, and sent John S. Horner on as secretary, to be acting governor and restore peace. The secretary, on coming on, found no government awaiting him, and people only ridiculed his pretensions. There was thus a state government repudiated at Washington and a territorial government rejected at home, when congress intervened with the compromise proposition that Michigan, in exchange for the territory in dispute, should accept the upper peninsula. The offer was emphatically rejected; but an irregular convention of the people having subsequently voted to accept, the authorities at Washington pretended to be satisfied with this and declared the state admitted to the Union with its present boundaries. It was a piece of sharp practice and

people protested; but, even while protesting, they acquiesced, satisfied in their hearts that for all that was taken from them princely compensation was made. And thus the Toledo war came to an end. One belligerent had won all that it contended for and the other a great deal more, and Franklin's aphorism that there never yet was a good war was proved to admit of exception.

The state was received into the family of the American Union on January 26, 1837. The occasion invites some notice of the people as they then were; of their antecedents and characteristics, that we may the better judge of the motives underlying and permeating the social and political community.

The motives which in past ages have led to colonization have not commonly been such as strict morality could approve, and in history we have many stories of great wrong, and very few in which the motive apparent was higher than National ambition or greed. The colonization of New England was exceptional, but it has been overpraised, as if it were a planting of states on the great principle of freedom in religious worship. This it was not and could not have been, for the world was not then ready for such a planting. What our New England forefathers did was to brave the hardships and privations of the wilderness that they might establish civil and religious liberty for themselves, and this was noble, even though they invited and desired no participation by others.

Religious motive in the ordinary sense had nothing to do with the colonization of Michigan. The early explorers were missionaries, but the French settlers came for trade and barter, as did also those of early nationalities. The later immigrants were for the most part men of very limited means, who in their plain way would answer an inquiry for their motive in coming west with the common response that they had come west to better their condition and in order that their children might "grow up with the country.'

The motive as thus stated seems commonplace and, to a degree, selfish. We hear it with a certain degree of respect, but we are not thrilled by it, or excited to high admiration, as we are when we read how some self-sacrificing, patriotic or religious motive has inspired a great movement or led to notable deeds. But a motive may seem commonplace, or even selfish, and yet be grounded in the noblest sentiments of human nature. In the building of great states of vigorous and wealth-creating people selfishness comes first, though philanthropy may come later, and the selfishness is blamable only when excessive. The greatest of the apostles in his pointed condemnation of the man

who provides not for his own, "and specially for those of his own house," has shown us in what category he places this duty, and reason, as plainly as the preacher, declares that the duty to place those whom nature has committed to our care above the want that causes suffering and breeds repining is not social merely, but religious also. In performing it we may lift those dependent upon us into that condition of comfort and content from which shall spring the sentiment that life is a beneficent gift from the Creator, to be acknowledged with continuous gratitude and well-doing.

It can justly be said of the pioneers of the state that they performed faithfully and well this duty of care for their own, and in doing so they demonstrated the harmony of their aims and their labors with the purposes of the Creator. The foundations of a great state were laid in industry, frugality and the domestic virtues.

If we look into the social conditions of the period we behold an exceedingly primitive society, in which wants were few and the measure of strict economy ample for their gratification. The older towns of the state were still largely French in population. Among these were all grades of intelligence and all conditions of worldly prosperity; and while some took up business in a large way and with ample means, others were content with the small gains and meagre fare of trappers and fishermen. But the majority of the people had found their tedious way into the territory from other states in the heavy, tented wagons which then plowed the ruts of every forest road, but are now as much unknown in Michigan as the buffalo or the beaver. They had come with an inspiration as absorbing as that which moved the old crusaders, and far more intelligent and elevating-an inspiration to seize the golden moment when peacefully, with their small means, they might possess themselves of homes where prudence and economy, after some discipline of pioneer hardship and deprivation, would be sure of just rewards, and where ample means for the nurture and education of a hardy and vigorous offspring should be within the reach of every industrious citizen. Never before in the history of the world, and in no other country but America, was such tempting promise held out for the acceptance of honest industry. It was a hard life the pioneers led in the woods, but every acre which they brought under cultivation added to the value of their possessions, and they could forego without repining many of the most ordinary comforts of life when the future promised such abundant compensation. And hard as it was for husbands and brothers, it was for vives and sisters still harder. Many of them had been reared in

competence and accustomed to luxuries; but they had left these behind them without repining, and had brought to the west no notions which would preclude their giving effective assistance in any labor, indoors or out, to which the feminine strength was equal. And it must be said that there were few tasks to which it was found unequal, for the willingness to be helpful begat the strength necessary for the purpose; and the happiest days of many an honored woman's life were when she was piling and burning the brush in her husband's clearing, and as the sun went down refreshing him and herself with supper from the brimming milk-pail which she brought from the pasture. If she was a lady in her eastern home, she was not the less so with rougher hands and coarser garments and heavier burdens, but with equally buoyant spirits, in the woods, where only her husband's ax woke the reverberating echoes. She wore no diamonds and no laces; she may have known little and cared less for fashion; but she did her full share in giving to the new state the muscle and the brain, the industry and the strength of character, that in a few short years were to bring to it both wealth and greatness. The song of the spinning-wheel in the log cabin was as cheerful then as is now the melody of musical instruments in many thousand happy homes, which owe their abundant comforts to the patience, the self-denial, the industry, the energy and the endurance of those who first opened the forest to the sunlight. The men felled the trees, and the women, "keepers at home," made the home worth the keeping. In that day of small things it was woman's mission, which woman faithfully performed, to

'—bring to her husband's house delight and abundance.
Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children."

But if the pioneers could dispense with many comforts they could spare none of their accustomed institutions. They must, therefore, have the common schools, which in their view were a necessity to both the social and the civil state. But the provision for these was on a scale of economy corresponding to that which governed domestic expenditures, and often the child had to travel a tedious distance to school, where the instruction awaiting him was still more tedious. Then, too, those were the semi-barbarous times when every "master of the district school" was "brisk wielder of the birch and rule." But poor as they were, these pioneer schools were harbingers of better things-the rude forerunners of a system not surpassed in the world and seldom equaled. All education must be largely a pro

cess of self-training, and the child of inquiring mind, with only the most imperfect help at first, may make all things about him, animate and inanimate, his teachers, finding "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks," to instruct him. In these primitive schools many a boy acquired such elementary instruction as enabled him in time to become a man of mark in the state; and they should be mentioned with respect, for places of honor and trust, from lowest to highest, have been filled with their graduates, who in many cases wielded visely and well an extensive and valuable influence.

The early settlers in Michigan were for the most part young men, who first entered upon the stage of independent action in their new home. This was in some resp. cts a great advantage to the state, for the vigor of youth inspired all industrial and political life, and made itself effectively useful where a conservatism which comes in later years might not have ventured. But in the confident and restless energy of youth may lurk dangers also; and as these young men contemplated the material advantages and resources of the state, hope told a flattering tale of the rapidity with which it might be made great and wealthy by prompt and efficient development, and pictured results so alluring and so apparently attainable that sober reason for the time was mastered.

General causes greatly magnified the dangers. When the state government was formed, an eager spirit of speculation pervaded the country. Wild lands seemed to offer the best means for its gratification. The Erie canal had been constructed, railroad building had begun, the west was brought within easy reach of the sea-board, and the emigration to it must be large and continuous. Land in the west must immediately begin to advance in value, and the advance must continue until prices should approximate those in the eastern states. Such was the confident and not unreasonable expectation. Wild lands, therefore, became the chief object of speculation, though by no means the sole object.

Some faint idea of the prevailing rage may be had from the state ment that in 1834 fifty per cent. more public land was sold than in any prior year; that three times as much was sold the next year, and the quantity sold in 1836 equaled all the sales from 1821 to 1833 inclusive. The hurricane of speculation swept across the country, but the cyclone struck here. The state was easily accessible, and immigration poured over it in such a torrent that it seemed like the concocted migration of a great people. In the three years following 1834, though the tide was greatly checked in 1837, the population