History DB

HIS2113_Lesson6_ChallengesStatehood2.pptx

Michigan history

Challenges of Statehood

Identify political and social tensions between various people groups in Michigan’s early years as a state.

Understand and articulate how these tensions were (or were not) resolved.

Population Explosion

Two developments

Steam powered travel

Opening of the Erie Canal

Most immigrants were from New England, settling in SE portion of the state.

Immigrants from Indiana and Ohio settled in the SW portion of the state.

Two political and social cultures were established.

Settled in areas that could be more readily settled and farmed.

Cash crops

Temperance

1840s – Michigan legislature allowed (then disallowed) local governments to establish liquor licensing policy.

Michigan Temperance Society

First, moderation was goal.

Afterwards, full abstinence pushed.

Temperance meetings were religious affairs.

Laws were rescinded and re-established throughout 19th century.

Michigan and Slavery

Northwest Territory – conflict between 1787 Ordinance and Jay Treaty.

Michigan laws often gave protections to runaway slaves (without extending them civil rights).

Detroit “Insurrection” of 1833 – Thornton Blackburn

Liberty and Free Soil parties.

Underground Railroad

Network spanning country undermined the institution of slavery by providing safe passage to freedom.

Examples

Adam Crosswhite

Robert Cromwell

Politics

Lewis Cass

Fugitive Slave Act 1850

Personal Liberty Law

Mormans on Beaver Island

James Jesse Strang

Settled on Beaver Island and crowned himself King; Spoke out against “Gentiles”

Religious colony voted as a block and became a political force

Strang’s colony illustrates the power minority groups could have in frontier politics.

Legally defended on the basis that “America allowed religious freedom”