HUMBLE PI

 

I suspect the problem begins with the oft quoted but shockingly misunderstood phrase, “pi are squared.”  It is a fact that you cannot perfectly square a circle. Which is comforting for those of us who are math-impaired. Seems obvious. Seems logical. But prove it.

You can, but you have to use math. And in proving it you stumble across something very odd. There is a constant mathematical relationship between the length of the line forming a circle, divided by the distance across that same circle. And this relationship, no matter how large or small the circle,  always works out to be 3.141592653589793238…etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitas, add infelicitous, and never ever repeating. This makes Pi an irrational number, which is confusing again because I find all numbers irrational, even on Pi day.

To express the problem in another way,  A(rea) of a circle equals the radius of the circle squared. But you see...     

...you can never turn a circle into a square of the exact same size. Close, but never exactly the same size.  And it doesn’t matter if it is a great big circle or an itty-bitty one. Pi is always 3.141 etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, but never ending and never reaching zero no matter how many places beyond the decimal point you go.  It's been tried. And is still being tried.

If you are a math freak this is obvious, while the rest of us have to be satisfied with accepting that Pi is an irrational number and live with it. But I ask you, what is the value of knowing pi? 

I had a fourth grade teacher who was so obsessed with having her students memorize the value of Pi to twenty decimal places that she had us memorize the following poem: “Sir, I send a rhyme excelling, In sacred truth and rigid spelling, Numerical sprites elucidate, For me the lexicon’s full weight”. Each of the 20 words of that poem has the number of letters required to read out the first twenty digits of pi, in order.  I had to memorized that poem again in my thirties because as a ten year old I couldn’t spell the word Nantucket, and as a sixty year old I rely upon a spell checker to detail any word long enough to rhyme with  “elucidate”. So this poem was as much a mystery to me then as the number Pi remains.

But I am older now and I have grown so used to making mistakes in public that I hardly notice the embarrassment anymore. So I openly admit that I still find pi a puzzle. What's so special about pi? And why Pi, anyway?

Legend has it that the great Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse was struggling over the solution to pi when a Roman soldier blundered into his garden. The old man supposedly snapped, “Don’t touch my circles!”, whereupon the chastised legionary pulled his Gladius and separated Archimedes’ head from his face. I suppose that if Archimedes had been sitting in his bathtub, as he allegedly was when he discovered that displaced water could be used to measure density (Eureka!), something else might have been separated. But, suffice it to say that before computers, finding pi was a great big pain in the Archimedes. He managed to figure out that pi was somewhere between 3 10/71 and 3 1/7. He might have done better if he had invented the decimal point, first. But...

About the year 480 CE the Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi figured out that pi was a little more than 3.1415926 and a little less than 3.1415927. After that the decimal point zealots took over. The German mathematician and fencing instructor Ludolf van Ceulen worked out pi to 35 decimal places. And in 1873 the amateur geek, William Shanks, worked it out to 707 decimal places. But William made one tiny little mistake in the 528th number and that threw everything else off. But it was such a good try that nobody noticed his screw up until 1944. Today computers have figured pi out to one trillion digits to the right of the decimal point and still no repeatable pattern has been detected, and still it never quite reaches zero.  It is still a little bit less than 3.15 and a little bit more than 3.14. All that has changed is the definition of “a little bit”. It keeps getting smaller and smaller -  but it will never be zero.

But what does that mean? What does Pi mean, beyond its face value? Well, it turns you can find it in the  curve of the double helix of a DNA molecule, the chemical code of all living plants, animals and bacteria, and the behavior of light coming from distant galaxies, or out of our sun.  Einstein himself realized that if you want to describe why and how a river "meanders"  to the sea, you need to use Pi , because the actual length of a stream, with twists and bends, is usually between 1.3 and 1.4 times the straight line distance - called the "meander ratio".  It's always pi! All the geologists have to do is plug in the variables for soil type, and angle of slope and latitude and drawing rivers on a map becomes predictable. Pi is why why so many rivers look the same when seen from space or on a big map. Pi is what all rivers have in common with DNA. And airplane wings. And sewer pipes. And eye balls, human and otherwise. 

Pi reveals the underlying structure of the universe, the lines of force - magnetic,  gravity, chemical or electrical.  Even atomic. Pi is like a master key, that with a little jiggling, can be made to open just about any door. The mere fact that such a key exists, tells you that everything we can see, hear and feel is connected to everything else, even the stuff we can't see. Pi tells you the chaos inside an exploding super nova is governed by the same laws that control the budding of a flower. It is the mathematical proof that there is a logic to the entire universe, and that logic is 3.141592653589793238...etcetera, etcetera.        

Thus pi is the “admirable number” according to the devilish little Polish poetess Wislawa Szmborska. While being infinitely long it includes “…my phone number, your shirt size, the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three, sixth floor number of inhabitants, sixty-five cents, hip measurement, two fingers, a charade and a code, in which we find how blithe the trostle sings!” (…and no, I have no idea what or who the hell a trostle is or what makes it blithe or unblithe. Do you?)

Daniel Rockmore, in the pages of "The Chronicle of High Education" for 12 March 1999, wrote that Pi was "Foreign, unpredictable, otherworldly, yet as common as a circle...it's easy to find, but hard to know. Among mathematicians there still rages a fierce, unsettled debate about whether pi is a "normal" number--that is, whether each of the digits 0 through 9 each occur on average one-tenth of the time in the never-ending decimal expansion of pi...making...Pi...a veritable poster number for the fashion world's ambiguous and androgynous advertising campaigns."  And you thought mathematics had no sex appeal  Why, if Pi was a plain old 3 or a dull old 4, there would be no sex. Sex is made possible by being 3.14159265358979.... etcetera, etcetera.. And it cannot be and will not be controlled. And certainly not owned.

A physician and a crackpot amateur mathematician from Solitude, Indiana named Doctor Edwin J. Goodwin,  thought that he had “solved” pi to the last digit - and none of this irrational numerical horse feathers for him!  And having achieved that which no other human had ever done, he decided to make Pi his own personal private property by copyrighting it. But in order to profit from his discovery (you know how wealthy the Pythagoras estate is) Dr. Goodwin needed a legal endorsement. And rather than subject his brainchild to the vagaries of the copyright peer review, the good doctor instead offered his theory as an accomplished fact to the local politicians. 

The proposal, Indiana House Bill 246, sponsored by Representative T.J. Record of Posey, Indiana, was  “…an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered…to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost…provided it is accepted and adopted by the official action of the Legislature…”. This insanity actually made it through the Committee on Canals and Swamps (Perfect place for it!) in record time, and was passed by the full Indiana house on 5 February, 1897, by a vote of 67 to 0.  Who says politicians don't spend time on important issues?

Unfortunately, in the Indiana Senate some wiseacre showed the bill to a visiting Purdue party- pooper, Professor of Mathematics C.A. Waldo. And now we at last know where Waldo was, at least was in 1897.  He was on the banks of the Wabash. The lawmaker asked if the professor would like the honor of meeting the amazing Dr. Goodwin, and Professor Waldo replied that he already knew all the lunatics he cared to know, thank you very much. And with that comment Dr. Goodwin’s brief bubble of fame was burst. On 12 February, 1897 any further vote on the bill to copywrite the perfect definitive solution to Pi was postponed indefinitely.  Hoosier lunatics have since moved on to more productive fields.

It was not a victory for logic so much as an avoidance of a victory for ignorance, which is pretty much the same thing that happened in Tennessee about 30 years later when they tried to make evolution illegal. Don't tell the whales. They'll have to go back to being dogs. 

Still pi remains one of the most popular mathematical equations, if mostly poorly appreciated by those of us who aren’t trying to generate a random number or navigate a jet plane across the North Pole, or predict the next stock market bubble, or launch a satellite, or run a radio station, or process an X-ray or a Cat-scan, drive a submarine, drill for oil, purify gold or etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitas, add infelicity.

Just trust me, and always trust pi. It lifts your spirit, gives you a sense of security and keeps your circles on the square. To share it just try singing..."Pi, Pi, Me oh my, Nothing tastes sweet, wet, salty and dry, all at once, ...oh my, I love pi!

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OH, HENRY!

 

I believe "anarchist" as a functional political label became passé with the invention of psychiatry. Of course it has stuck around as a vestigial etymological fossil, but any current criminal shrink can now vouch that the loonies who espouse anarchy (or libertarianism) are really pathological egotistical narcissists.  There is no more "cause" there, than in the activities of "Oath Keeper" on 6 January 2021. Just a desperate hunger for attention.

As proof  I now present you with the head of Emile Henri (above), who lost his head over the injustice he suffered because of another inarticulate Frenchman who sought to destroy the establishment and managed only to blow his nose at them.

Everything about Auguste Vaillant (above) screams irony. He was a kin of Lee Harvey Oswald, a little man who wanted to be important, but lacked the necessary attention span. He claimed to be the leader of a socialist group which seems to have had only one regular member. Him. While waiting for the revolution he was ludicrously employed in sewing expensive handbags and wallets for the wealthy to carry their money around.

Concerned about justice for the poor, Vaillant had abandoned a wife and two children - leaving them in poverty - and then moved in with a deaf woman. For a political revolutionary to be living with a woman who could not hear his rants against capitalism passes into the realm of absurdity. 

And that is where we find Auguste Vaillant on Saturday,  10 December, 1893 entering the public gallery above the Chamber of Deputies (above), the French congress, carrying a sauce pan bomb in his overcoat. Ce n'est pas ironique, c'est le plus absurde. 

Auguste had constructed two sauce pan bombs, but discarded the larger one after realizing he could never sneak a 3 quart sauce pan past security. Spotting his intended target, the French President, standing on the Chamber floor, Auguste uncovered and armed his 1 quart sauce pan (above). This attracted the attention of the woman sitting next to him. (“Excuse me, but is that a sauce pan bomb in your pocket or are you just unhappy to see me?”).  She was able to deflect his throw so that the sauce pan bounced off a decorative cornice and never made it onto the chamber floor before exploding,

The blast shattered Auguste’s right arm. The nuts and bolts packed around the explosive, shrapnel intended to kill 150 politicians, instead lacerated Auguste’s own neck and chest. And the explosion blew his nose completely off his face. Unfortunately, the quick acting heroine was also badly wounded, as were at least 20 of the intended targets. But the only person who died, if not immediately, was Auguste. Ce n'est pas tragique, c'est le plus absurde.

Auguste’s trial was brief. And on 3 February, 1894, the guillotine finished what Auguste’s own bomb had started. His last words, before the blade severed the rest of his head from his body, were, “Mort à la société bourgeoise! Vive l’anarchie!” The translation would be, “Death to the Bourgeoisie! Long live Anarchy!” Even his last words turned out to have been ironic, since he barely lived long enough to utter them, and given his position, he shouted them into the pavement.  But then, like most humans,  he had always been lecturing mostly to himself, but mostly not listening.

But there was one lunatic who was envious for Auguste's death scene; that 21 year old nobody anarchist fanatic, Emile Henri,   After all, just over a year before,  had not Henri stricken a much more effective blow against the bourgeois but had received little of the press coverage afforded to the now headless incompetent dead man? 

Henri had decided to strike his blow for striking miners. He packed 20 sticks of dynamite into a sauce pan - 20! -  and rigged it to explode if it was jostled. He then carefully left this “infernal device” outside the second floor offices of a mining company just before lunch on 8 November, 1892.  

A lowly porter noticed the sauce pan, and realized immediately it was probably not somebodies' lunch. But rather than evacuating the offices he ordered an office boy to carry the suspect sauce pan down to the street. Somehow the office boy made it in once piece, but he felt a uneasy about leaving it on the sidewalk, in case a passing pedestrian should be injured. 

So the humanitarian alerted a nearby school crossing guard. She called the police, and two patrol officers responded. And, instead of evacuating the area and calling in experts, they tied a napkin around the bomb and then the three of them, the cops and the office boy, carried the bomb suspended between them to  the rather mis-named Rue des Bon Enfants (Street of the wonderful children), to the police station.  

Once inside, where the explosion could be concentrated, the 10 sticks of dynamite exploded, killing four cops and the diliegent office boy.

Henri had to lay low for awhile, and he was still living in anonymity in a crummy apartment with his deaf girlfriend when he opened his anarchist newspaper on 4 February, 1894 to read of Auguste’s dramatic speech at his execution. And Henri was green with envy.  Now, there might be some who feel my tone slights the victims of these attacks; to which I reply, "baloney". 

Murder has been anathema for at least six thousand years, when the ancient Egyptians made “Thou shalt not kill” their first commandment, predating Moses by at least a thousand years. If a human being is murdered by a serial killer, a lunatic at the controls of a hijacked jet, a deluded doctor, a drunk at the wheel of a car or a waiter too busy to wash their hands, the result for the victims is the same; tragedy. Fundamentalist Islamic-Christian-Marxist- Socialist-cultural-political justifications matter only to the perpetrator; I say again, baloney.

As if to prove my point, one week after the glorious execution of Auguste, Henri entered the restaurant at Hotel Terminus, next to the Gar Saint Lazare train station in Paris (above). He had stopped at two other bars earlier but, he claimed later, they weren’t crowded enough to justify his and the victim's sacrifices. My guess is he had not yet drunk enough courage. 

He nursed two drinks for an hour at the Terminus, and then as he staggered out the door, tossed his bomb back into the café, where it exploded, killing one person.

 A waiter ran after Henri, who shot him. Two policemen took up the chase. Henri shot one of them. The other knocked him down and restrained him. Henri’s toll was now eight dead – five at the police station  the year before and three more at the restaurant.

At his trial Henri was defiant and bombastic, until his attorney put Henri’s mother on the witness list. Henri objected. He told the judge, “It never occurred to me to inflict such pain on my mother.” In fact I suspect Henri was more concerned about his image. It would be difficult to remain an anarchist hero with your mummy explaining to the court how hard it was to get you toilet trained. 

According to the New York Times, On 21 May, 1894 at “4:07 a.m.…the iron doors swung apart…Henri was ghastly white, but walked with a firm step. 

As he approached the platform he shouted, “Courage comrades. Long live anarchy.” His voice…trembled noticeably…As they pushed him against the plank he shouted again, “Courage comrades. Long live anarchy.”  He had evidently worked this out and wanted to be quoted exactly. The click of the knife was heard the next moment, and Henri’s head dropped to the ground. The blood from his trunk spurted high as the head revolved into the basket. (The executioner) himself picked up the head from the sawdust and threw it viciously into the basket with the body.”

Anarchy as a viable theology, it turned out, was not long lived, either. History proved it to be a temporary delusion, to join those other temporary delusions people have claimed as justification for random murder; communism, fascism, Black power, White power, the Basque Independence Party, the Irish Republican Army, the John Birch Society, the Confederacy, and the myriad other stupid self-justifications invented by humans to demand their get their way over the majority of citizens.

Hatred is a lot like all ideology in this respect - reduced to its core it is always about self.

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HOLY TOLEDO - FIGHTING OVER SWAMPLAND

 

I would say 1835 was, like most years, a revolutionary year in America. North of the Rio Grande  pro-slavery gringo emigrants rebelled against Mexican anti-slavery laws. In Boston, five thousand  white supremacists broke into a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, and dragged abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison through the streets at the end of a rope (above, center).

 In South Carolina 36 slaves and one 60 year old free-black carpenter were hanged for allegedly organizing a slave revolt (above). Meanwhile, far to the north, along the shores of Lake Erie, free whites did their very best to start a civil war over possession of 268 square miles of a swamp known as “The Toledo Strip”.

In truth, the Great Black Swamp was what film maker Alfred Hitchcock would call a "magoffin'. It was not what people were really fighting over, even though it was what people said they were fighting over. It was not even much of a swamp by Louisiana standards.

It was great only because it occupied a swath of land 40 miles wide and 120 miles long, in the northwest corner the new state of Ohio – which was a little far north for a swamp.

It was a remnant of the ice ages, a collection of ponds and marshes interspersed with drumlins, all filled and drained by the 130 mile long Maumee River, which rose from the high ground around Fort Wayne, Indiana and fed into Lake Erie, which formed the northern border of Ohio.  It's only claim to fame was that it formed a natural barrier between the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan. The Great Black Swamp provided a bumper crop of mosquitoes each summer, and they, and the malaria they carried, made life difficult for any intrepid surveyors who might set up their theodolites upon such soggy ground.

The first real attempt to draw the border through this "mish marsh" was made in 1817, when Former Ohio Territorial Governor and U.S. Surveyor General Edward Tiffin (above), hired surveyor William Harris to mark the southern boundary of the new Michigan Territory.

According to the “Harris Line” the mouth of the Maumee River was in Michigan, and just blow the northern edge of the swamp.  In 1818 Ohio responded by hiring John Fulton to survey the border, which he found five miles further north, avoiding the swamp by going above it. 

Taken together the two lines bracketed the head of Great Black Swamp. And while the desire of each surveyor to avoid all those mosquitoes was understandable, the residents of Ohio and Michigan were confused as to where the border between them actually lay. They appealed to Washington, D.C.  But abiding by the political rule that whatever you do will make somebody angry, the Federal politicians decided to do nothing. After all, nobody would fight for ownership of a swamp.

Then in 1825 the Erie Canal (above) opened, connecting the port of New York City with the Great Lakes. It proved to be such an economic revolution that plans were immediately drawn up for a port at the mouth of the Maumee River, and a canal past the swamp to the high ground at Fort Wayne, Indiana - Hoosier statehood having been granted in 1816. The dreamers then envisioned a canal from Fort Wayne southwest to the head of navigation on the Wabash River, at Lafayette. From there boats could carry the bounty of Hoosier farms to the Ohio River, thence to the Mississippi, New Orleans and the world.   

Those canals would make the port at Toledo (above, which had been established at the mouth of the Maumee River) as the hub of transportation for the entire center of the continent. A Toledo lawyer, John Fitch, noted that already it was the general opinion that “no place on the lake except Buffalo will rival it.” 

Michigan politicians became convinced Ohio politicians were plotting to steal Toledo, Michigan from them. Which was true.  And Ohio politicians found they could raise money and votes by denouncing the thieves from Michigan. Whereupon the wolverine con men copied the buckeye conmen. And things quickly escalated.

The politics finally solidified when hot-headed 23 year old Stephen Thompson Mason (above) was appointed territorial secretary and acting governor of Michigan Territory. He was a gift from President Andrew Jackson, a man who appreciated hot heads.

Mason (above, left,  in the dark top hat)  rallied his followers by saying, "...we are on the side of justice…we cannot fail to maintain our rights against the encroachments of a powerful neighboring state.” And on 12 February, 1835,  Governor Mason issued the “Pains and Penalties Act”,  making it illegal for a non-Michigan resident to enforce Ohio law in Toledo, Michigan Territory.

The Cleveland, Ohio newspapers called the Michigan claim to Toledo “as absurd as it is ridiculous.” And on 23 February, the defiant Ohio General Assembly, playing to their own base, voted to “run the border” of the Fulton Line -  meaning to mark it again as Toledo, Ohio, with stone posts that clearly said so. 

Then on April Fool’s day Michigan held  elections in the Toledo Strip. One week later, on 6 April, Ohio held competing elections in the Toledo Strip. Somebody was going to have to disappoint their supporters.

Two days later a Michigan Country sheriff and an armed posse of 40 men rode into Toledo to enforce the Penalties Act. Several men snuck into the home of Benjamin Franklin Stickney (above), a major in the Ohio militia, who was either an “Ohio patriot” or a "Phio Nut" - depending on which side of the border you lived on.  

Now, even allowing for dysfunctional parenting, the level of strangeness displayed by Benjamin Stickney is staggering.  This respected member of the Ohio community and one of the founders of Toledo, named his eldest son “Number One” and his younger son “Number Two”. Stickney also had a daughter, but we can just call her “Light Sleeper”.

You see, on the night of 8 April, 1835,  Miss Stickney was awakened by a noise, and stepped into the hall to investigate. A creeping Michigan deputy clamped a hand over the startled child’s mouth, and held her silent, lest she shout a warning to her father.  Alas, Benjamin Stickney would not have heard her, as he was not at home. So two of his house guests were arrested and taken north for arraignment. Two days later they were released on bail. Or ransom, depending your state of residence and mind.

In handbills and letters to Ohio newspapers Major Stickney inflated the posse to 300 men “armed with muskets and bayonets".  He claimed the deputies had tried to gouge out his eyes (he wasn't there)  and had “throttled” his daughter.  He urged his fellow buckeyes to “turn out en masse to protect  their northern border and restrain the savage barbarity of the hordes of the north.”  You see, Major Stickney had a lot of money invested in Toledo, Ohio. 

Ohio Governor Robert Lucas (above), another Jackson Democrat, sent 40 men to guard his two surveyors "running" a new border line" - 29 year old Colonel Jonathan Emmerson Fletcher, and Colonel Sebried Dodge. 

The governor then went further and ordered the 100,000 members of the state militia to assemble in the tiny town of Perryville, Ohio (above), just up the Maumee River from Toledo. Only 10,000 actually responded,  and most of them never got to Perryville, because they got lost in the swamp.

Meanwhile on Sunday, 21 April 1835,  a 30 man Michigan posse caught the Ohio “line runners” relaxing in camp at a cross roads bordering a field owned by Michigan Militia Colonel Eli Phillips (above).   Most of the buckeyes broke for the woods and escaped, but nine were caught in the open. And when the badgers fired a volley over their heads the buckeyes wisely surrendered. 

All nine were arrested for violating the “Pains and Penalties Act”.  And on Monday morning six were granted bail and two more were released with just a warning to behave.  The only Ohioan who remained in jail was Jonathan Fletcher, the hot headed surveyor, who refused to post bail “on principle.”  In the annals of Michigan this encounter was memorialized as the “Battle of Phillip’s Corner” (above). 

The whiff of gunpowder brought a temporary degree of sanity back to "Boy Governor" who was not really a governor. Thomas Mason, suddenly discovered he was pretty far out on a political limb. And in the spirit of good will he temporarily suspended enforcement of his Pains and Penalties Act. 

But now it was the Ohio legislature’s turn to appease their base. Kidnapping was already illegal in Ohio, but buckeye politicians now felt it necessary to pass a new law providing hard labor for kidnapping anyone from Ohio. And they made Toledo (above) the capital of a new Ohio county.

In Toledo one observer noted “Men (were) galloping about – guns getting ready – wagons being filled with people and hurrying off, and everybody in commotion “ The little town of just 1,250 citizens had become a magnet for every nut case, political hot head and pugnacious drifter in the old Northwest Territories, looking for a fight.

 In July, two Michigan deputies tried to hold an auction of property seized for non payment of Michigan taxes, and a gang of Ohio “patriots”, led by Number Two Strikney, broke up the auction.  So, on 12 July 1835 a Michigan arrest warrant was issued for the son-of-a-patriot, for disturbing the peace.  Number Two, upon learning of the warrant, sent a message to the Michigan Sheriff to stay out of Toledo, Ohio, if he wanted to live.

That threat set Michigan Governor Mason off again. He ordered 250 men into Toledo, under Deputy Sheriff Joseph Wood, to arrest Number Two and his "gang".  Most of the Ohio “patriots” ran safely for the Maumee River border, but Number Two didn’t make it. 

When Sheriff Wood physically grabbed Number Two, the deuce displayed what in Ohio was called a pen knife and in Michigan was described as “a dirk”.  Whatever the size of the blade,  “Two” stabbed the sheriff in the leg and then disappeared across the Maumee River (below). 

The wound was minor and the sheriff was able to ride home that night, having paused to finally arrest Number Two’s father, the infamous Major Stickney, and drag him back to Michigan, tied to the back of a horse. But before leaving town the Michiganders also smashed the offices of the pro-Ohio Toledo Gazette, behaving, claimed the paper, worse than an “Algerian robbery or Turkish persecution.” It seemed the residents were finally running short of hyperbole. What was left but gunpowder?

It was at this point that Andrew Jackson finally stepped in. How dare these common political jackasses act as if they were by God Andrew Jackson himself!  On 29 August, 1835 the President removed Mason as governor of Michigan Territory.  Party leaders let it be known that Michigan would only be allowed to become a state when they accepted that Toledo was a town in Ohio. It was a bitter pill for the Badger rabble to swallow, particularly after all that rabble rousing.  But in that instant the heat seeped out of the issue.

As a sop for hurt badger feelings, the federal government granted Michigan the additional territory now known as the Upper Peninsula. Michigan was finally admitted into the union as a state, sans Toledo, on 26 January, 1837.

So Ohio won. The canals were dug, and the buckeyes benefited from the taxes paid by the port at the mouth of the Maumee River.  In 1842 1,578 barrels of flour and 12,976 bushels of wheat were shipped through Toledo, and taxed by Ohio.  By 1852 the totals were a quarter million barrels of flour and almost two million bushels of wheat. 

But Toledo did not become the transportation hub for the Midwest, because canal technology was superseded by the railroads, and Chicago superseded Toledo; which the Ohio patriots might have predicted in 1835 if they had calmed down and calmly thought about it for a few moments.

Meanwhile, in 1844, another party of surveyors were investigating and staking out the second place prize for Michigan, the Upper Peninsula,  when they found their compasses spinning wildly. This was caused by one of the largest concentrations of iron ore ever found on the planet Earth, which was surrounded by one of the largest concentrations of copper ore ever found on the Earth. 

Beginning in 1847 and continuing over the next one hundred and fifty years, over a billion tons of iron and several billion tons of copper were removed from the Huron Mountains of the U.P.. It is figured 85% of all the steel which allowed America to win World War II came from iron stripped out of those hills.  None of the Michigan or Ohio patriots of 1835 could have predicted that. 

The truth was the future contained a bounty beyond the imagination of the patriots who willing to kill each other in 1835, all for possession of a swamp – and not a great swamp at that. It has long since been drained for farmland.  And it is a basic rule of human history - That which people are willing to murder for today, they may consider worthless tomorrow.   Folks, you might remember that rule, next time a hot head starts calling for a war. Stop and think before you start shooting. 

- 30 -