condition of admission plainly became acquiescence in the claims of Ohio. A full account of the claims of Ohio and Michigan, together with the report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, covering fifty pages, is found in the Senate Documents of 1836. Thomas Ewing presented the claims of Ohio, and Messrs. Lyon, Norvell and Crary, those of Michigan. While in the reports of House Committees, Volume II, 1836, are also found all the conflicting claims, maps, State papers and correspondence relating to the controversy, covering 124 pages. If you, in making your verdict, desire further facts, I most respectfully refer you to these tomes. I can assure you, however, that if you care to pursue this subject further you will be deeply interested in these reports.

Congress, to settle the matter, offered to admit Michigan to the Union on condition of her resigning the disputed tract and accepting in lieu thereof, a much larger territory, the Upper Peninsula, which included valuable iron and copper mines and immense forests. The belligerant feeling in Michigan, however, was too strong and the proposition was rejected in convention, held in September, 1836. Apparently, settlement was as far off But the President was strongly in favor of this settlement, and his party was growing in power. A presidential election was imminent and the would-be office holders wanted to take their seats in Congress and elsewhere. They wanted their share of the federal patronage, and as a public distribution of land was to take place, they wanted Michigan to have her share.

as ever.

Finally, a sort of rump convention, purporting to represent a majority of electors, was held at Ann Arbor, December 6, 1836, and this convention assumed sovereign power and accepted the proposition of Congress. People ridiculed the convention, and it received the appellation of the "frost bitten convention." But the President's influence with the members of his own party in Congress was such that they accepted the action of this so-called ' convention, and on January 26, 1837, Michigan was solemnly declared to have accepted the proposition of Congress and was admitted to the Union.

Campbell, in his "Outlines of the Political History of Michigan," says: "Many of the reminiscences of the campaign par

take of the ludicrous. It is not desirable nor necessary to regard the many personal incidents and misadventures. Michigan had a skeleton in her own closet in the shape of a claim of Lewis E. Bailey, for a horse lost in the service of the State in defending the supremacy of its laws. Year after year from 1836 to 1846, this claim was regularly presented and regularly rejected, until in the latter year, it dawned upon the minds of the legislators that it was better to pay fifty dollars and interest from January 1, 1836, than to waste time and printing enough to have cost more than a regiment of horses, and they surrendered to a siege that paralleled in duration that of Troy. Time has healed the other griefs, and if the historian is compelled to discuss them, it is not with the pathetic lament of Queen Mary over the loss of Calais, nor the hankering for territory which has made Alsace and Lorraine a debatable ground so long. However doubtful the bargain was originally by which Ohio obtained the spoils, it has been ratified too thoroughly to be disputed, and our only present emulation is friendly and neighborly."

In February, 1846, eleven years after this gory contest, the Legislature of Ohio authorized the payment of three hundred dollars to our old friend, Major Stickney, for damages to his person and property on account of depredations committed on him during the war, and further authorized the Auditor of State to pay all costs and expenses incurred by him on account of his arrest and imprisonment spoken of before. In present day parlance, he must have had a "pull" with the Legislature."

In looking back through the mist of years, it is pleasant to remember that only two lives were lost in this conflict, those of horses, a valiant Ohio steed slain by Major Stickney through mistake, and one lost in some unknown way, wandering forth in the world, for which the State of Michigan paid Mr. Bailey. The Sheriff's officer stabbed by Two Stickney recovered in the due course of time, and I am quite sure that those who suffered personal grievances had in the after years sufficient to repaythem in the happy consciousness of having adventures to talk about around the tavern fire.

I cannot close this paper without making a quotation from the witty book of our former townsman, Hon. S. S. Cox,—“A

Search for Winter Sunbeams," in which, while at Toledo in Spain, he musingly draws a comparison between that Toledo and Toledo, Ohio.

"Old Toledo was the subject of many a fray, bloody and bitter as your Maumee Valley war, when mad Anthony Wayne waged his Indian warfare, and as New Toledo was when as disputed ground in the 'Wolvering War' between Ohio and Michigan, she witnessed the destruction of watermelons and corn whisky. The sweat which then flowed, and the feathers which were then ruined, are known to the old inhabitants of Ohio. Then I was a youth, but I have the recollection of hearing valiant colonels, in my own native Muskingum hills, addressing the militia drawn up around them in hollow squares, inspiring them to rescue the realm of quinine and hoop-poles from the grasp of the insatiate Michiganders! The recollection makes my heart tremble. Ah! That was a war, whose adventures no Cid has dared yet to celebrate! The passions then engendered even yet vibrate in the cornstalks of the Maumee Valley! A remarkable War! When soldiers retreated before a foe not pursuing and ran through almost impassable swamps, guided by the battle-fires of their own flaming eyes. The dead and wounded of that war were never counted. Both sides fought for a boundary line and both ran that line with the same exactitude and compass. Their lines were both straight. I said I was a boy then; but the tympanum of my ear even now at this distance and age echoes to the rataplan of that sanguinary war."

Finally, we cannot but feel that the solution of the boundary question by Congress was a happy one, in view of its later results. Although when proposed, it most obviously favored Ohio, yet time in its changes has brought about an equitable distribution of spoils. Had Michigan's claims been favored, she would have lost that invaluable territory which has become a great source of wealth to her, and is destined in the future to yield even an hundred-fold more. Whether the beautiful city of Toledo would have ever risen to her present proud position, it is impossible to speculate upon; but looking back over the actual results of the Boundary War, Ohio and Michigan can clasp hands and say, "It has resulted wisely for us both."

SAMUEL FINLEY VINTON.*

BY MADELENE VINTON Dahlgren.

It was peculiarly characteristic of the patriotic unselfishness that was the dominating principle of the public career of Samuel F. Vinton that he never paused, while laboring with unremitting zeal for his country, to prepare any journal, or written notes of any kind, that might assist the biographer to give the story of his own life.

Unaided, therefore, by that light which he himself could. best have thrown upon the record of a service that was singularly useful to the nation, one must look elsewhere for the desired information.

In so far as the facts that meet the common eye are concerned, the Congressional records give the official history, but back of this, and forever screened by his reticence regarding himself, stands after all the real man, the impelling motives, the essential qualities, that moulded all his acts into one consistent whole.

It may seem startling to say so, but his absolute lack of personal ambition, which repeated the severest types of the ancients, was to my apprehension unfortunate in its consequences. For, had Mr. Vinton grasped as most men do the opportunities of the power that high station gives, of the occasions which were offered to him, and from which he turned aside, it is safe to say, that an influence that was never exerted but for the right would have vastly broadened.

Ambition properly regulated is for the American citizen a divine right of sovereignty! In this connection I desire to quote from some remarks made by the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop at a

*This interesting and valuable sketch of Mr. Vinton was written by his daughter, Mrs. Dahlgren, of New York City. It was prepared at the request of the Secretary of this Society for publication in this volume. Mr. Vinton's argument on the boundary line between Ohio and Virginia appears elsewhere in this volume and is one of the ablest legal pleas ever made before an American court.-E..O. R.

meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, held in October, 1890, when Mr. Winthrop said of Mr. Vinton:

"He was a man of eminent ability, of great political experience and wisdom, and of the highest integrity and personal excellence. He might at one time have been Secretary of the Treasury had he been willing to accept that office. He might have been Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States in 1847 had he not positively declined the nomination."

Are these not offices which, as Mr. Webster said of the Presidency, "should be neither sought for nor declined"?

Reverting to the "Vinton Memorial," compiled by the Rev. John Adams Vinton, I find that the subject of this sketch was the direct descendant in the sixth generation of John Vinton, of Lynn, Massachusetts, who emigrated to America in 1648. The traditions of the race all confirm the idea that the founder of the family in this country was a descendant of the de Vintonnes who were exiled from France in the seventeenth century, on account of being Huguenot.

Samuel Finley was born at South Hadley, Massachusetts, September 25, 1792, and called after his great uncle, Dr. Samuel Finley Vinton, whose name appears, as also that of his grandfather, in the Massachusetts archives as one of the "minute men," that marched on the "Lexington alarm" in 1775.

Abiathan Vinton, the father of Samuel Finley, was an adopted son of Dr. Vinton, who bequeathed to him most of his estate. He is spoken of in the "Vinton Memorial” as “a substantial farmer in easy circumstances." He married in 1791, Sarah Day. The progenitor of the Day family emigrated from England to New England in 1634. In the Day genealogy occur the names of a President of Yale and a Secretary of State of the State of Connecticut, and this honorable record continues to be sustained. We would especially mention a first cousin to whom Mr. Vinton was greatly attached, Mr. Henry Day, of New York City, who is conspicuous as an able jurist.

Samuel Finley being the oldest of seven children, it was the intention of his father to train him as a farmer, so that he might be of assistance in the labors of the farm. But from an early