Michigan Once Passed a Law That Allowed Any Ohioan to be Jailed on Sight with No Trial

You don't need yet another article published that tells you about the Toledo War - the conflict between the state of Ohio and the Michigan Territory over a strip of land near Lake Erie that was settled by giving Toledo to Ohio and the Upper Peninsula to Michigan.

There is, however, an interesting little historical tidbit from the conflict that gets very little coverage and that's the Pains and Penalties Act - a law passed by Michigan's territorial legislature that allowed authorities to arrest and jail anyone from Ohio who crossed into Michigan and do so without benefit of a trial.

The act was one of the precursors to the Toledo War as the Pains and Penalties Act was used by Michigan by arrest Ohio citizens.

READ MORE: Michigan's Southern Line May Be the Last Contested Border in America

It happened shortly after the law's passage in 1835. A posse of men from Michigan captured a group of surveyors south of Adrian who were attempting to survey the border from Ohio's perspective. They Ohioans were jailed in Tecumseh. Those arrests are considered the first acts of aggression in the Toledo War.

In the end, Michigan got what it wanted - namely statehood - and the added bonus of an entire peninsula many, many times larger than tiny strip of Toledo land it gave up to Ohio,

Michigan's first Constitutional Convention got underway in May of 1835, a few months after the passage of the Pains and Penalties Act. Article One, Section 21 of that constitution states that all acts passed by previous legislatures were to be considered void. The constitution was ratified in October of that year.

Because the Pains and Penalties Act was passed in February of 1835, it was likely only for that half-of-a-year in 1835, Ohioans could be arrested for crossing their northern border.