How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [67]
As passions subsided, so too did the esteem in which Stevens T. Mason had been held. The legislature had voted to raise funds for roads and canals through the sale of bonds, for which Mason had entered into agreements with brokers just as the Panic of 1837 sent the nation into an economic depression. Funds had been committed based on the bonds, but with the sale of the bonds stalled by the depression, Governor Mason was held aloft as Michigan’s leading scapegoat in the 1840 election and was not reelected.11
Months later, Mason moved with his wife to her hometown, New York City, where he practiced law. His career was cut short when he died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-one. But Stevens T. Mason was not to be forgotten. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the people of Michigan dusted off his reputation. His speech to the legislature when Michigan faced its ultimatum from Congress now conveyed its full meaning:
To preserve unstained the institutions of our country is one of the first duties of every citizen. Will we hazard these stakes now, or will we present to the world an example of compromise of opinion and feeling, dictated by a spirit of patriotic forbearance, even when injustice demands it? The federal government was the great work of a spirit of compromise, and it is only by the exercise of the same spirit by the states that it is to be perpetuated.
In 1905 Mason’s remains were moved to Capitol Park in Detroit, where a statue was erected of Michigan’s first elected governor.
IOWA, MISSOURI, MINNESOTA
ROBERT LUCAS
Ohio Boundary Champ Takes on Missouri and Minnesota
Ex-Governor Lucas [of Ohio] is one of the most deserving men in the party, and we doubt not will prove a good Governor of the new Territory [of Iowa]. He is far from being a brawling supporter of the administration. He is an old fashioned, honest, intelligent, western pioneer.
—CLEVELAND DAILY HERALD, JULY 16, 1838
When Colonel of the regiment and something younger than he is now, Lucas seduced a young lady, who sued him for breach of marriage contract and got judgment against him, and when he had put all his property out of his hands so that nothing could be got, he was put to jail for the debt, and then issued his orders for his regiment to come and rescue him from the custody of the law.
—LETTER TO THE EDITOR, SCIOTOGAZETTE (CHILLICOTHE, OH), SEPTEMBER 26, 1832
Whether or not Robert Lucas was a wily scamp or an honest western pioneer—or matured from the one to become the other—this much is certain: he was a tough opponent. As governor of Ohio, he had led the state through its boundary dispute with the territory of Michigan and—despite the fact that Ohio claimed a boundary that violated what Congress had stipulated—Lucas won. When Lucas then became governor of the territory of Iowa, he inherited a nearly identical boundary dispute with Missouri—except that now his was the powerless territory challenging a formidable state. As if that contest were not enough, Lucas also sought a boundary with what would become Minnesota that triggered a conflict influencing the borders of seven future states.
Robert Lucas (1781-1853) (photo credit 21.1)
The foot Lucas first set in Iowa in 1838 was the wrong foot. He and the territory’s legislature were immediately at odds. “Strife has arisen between Gov. Lucas and the Iowa Territorial legislature on the question of power,” the Cleveland Herald informed his former constituents in Ohio. “The Governor insists that all laws and resolutions must be approved by him before they are of any force. The Legislative body contests this position … [and] all public business is delayed in consequence.”
Lucas was not one to back down. But neither were Iowa’s legislators. Six months after Lucas took office, an item in the New York Spectator revealed the progress these like-minded personalities had made: “The difficulties between [Iowa’s territorial legislature] and Governor Lucas have resulted in an application