The state of Michigan just celebrated it’s one hundred and eighty eighth birthday over the weekend and for the first couple of those years Ohio and their younger sibling up north nearly went to war over a small strip of land that included Toledo – yes Toledo. A war was nearly fought between the states nearly thirty years before the start of the actual Civil War, and all because a young army officer named Bob couldn’t resolve a simple argument.

You see young Bob was kind of a problem in his short career in the Army Corps of Engineers. Though he was one of 48 other cadets who was able to graduate with no demerits from military school, his career thus far had seen him attempt to build a few forts in Virginia and the Carolinas, but nothing that could reasonably be called a success. Other, more experienced officers often had to come and bail Ole’ Bob out of one jam or another, like the time he tried to build a fort in a swamp and had to move every single one of his men, and cooks, and mules, and tents, and hard tack, and whiskey, and every other thing you can imagine under the sun over to the dry side of the river. The fort was built there, instead.

So, as a sort of punishment, they sent Ole’ Bob out to the frontiers of Michigan, to the wild west, to help maybe settle this boundary dispute. He and his commanding officer tried their best to make an agreeable line between Ohio and Michigan. But, unfortunately Bob wasn’t a great negotiator and Ohio had dispatched it’s State Militia in order to forcibly take over what they had determined was theirs. It wasn’t until President Andrew Jackson himself intervened that Toledo became part of Ohio, and Michigan gained a largely useless strip of rugged land called the Upper Peninsula, and was allowed into the Union.

So what became of our friend Bob? Well, he went on to serve with a future President in the Mexican-American war, but no one except Bob thought much of the young man called Sam from Galena, Illinois. Some twenty five years later Bob, now known as Robert, met Sam, now known as Ulysses on the battlefields of Virginia, and lost, in what was his final military command.

So now you know about Bob, who history remembers as Robert E. Lee, but we here in Michigan like to remember him as a young man named Bob who couldn’t get Ohio to see any sense.