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Toledo War

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This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page unless you are renominating the article at TFAR. For renominations, please add {{collapse top|Previous nomination}} to the top of the discussion and {{collapse bottom}} at the bottom, then complete a new nomination underneath. To do this, see the instructions at {{TFAR nom/doc}}.

The result was: not scheduled by  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:49, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Per Brian (and as I mentioned below)

"Mitchell Map" of the region, from the late 1700s, used to create the Ordinance Line of 1787. Note that the southern tip of Lake Michigan is depicted as being farther north than Lake Erie.

The Toledo War was a nearly bloodless territorial dispute that was caused by a border dispute. Thanks to poor surveying and conflicting legislation, the US state of Ohio and territory of Michigan both claimed sovereignty over a 468 square miles (1,210 km2) strip of land extending west from the edge of Lake Erie. Drawing its name from the then-prosperous city of Toledo, the war began when the governors of Michigan and Ohio raised militias to forcefully stake their claim to the disputed territory. President Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party could not afford to lose the electoral votes of Ohio, so Jackson moderated several deals that defused the conflict in Ohio's favor. Michigan agreed at the "Frost-bitten Convention" of December to sacrifice Toledo for statehood and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan—which was considered worthless at the time but would later be an important copper and iron mining center. Vestiges of the dispute persisted for 137 years and were ended only with the help of the national Supreme Court. Today, the Toledo War is still fought, albeit on a contracted annual basis. (Full article...)

"Mitchell Map" of the region, from the late 1700s, used to create the Ordinance Line of 1787. Note that the southern tip of Lake Michigan is depicted as being farther north than Lake Erie.

The Toledo War was 'fought' in the United States between Ohio and the Territory of Michigan in 1835 and 1836. They tussled over a five-to-eight-mile-wide (8 to 13 km) strip of land mainly because few understood the geography of the Great Lakes (inaccurate 18th-century map pictured), and both governments thought the land was theirs. The conflict began with political maneuvering, as Ohio used the dispute to block Michigan's bid for statehood, before attempting to legislate the other into capitulating. When these failed, their militias were mobilized to taunt each other across the Maumee River. In the only military confrontation, Michigan militiamen fired shots into the air and captured Ohioan surveyors; the war's only casualty was a wounded sheriff, stabbed with a penknife. Eventually, the US Congress proposed that Michigan would receive statehood and the completely undeveloped Upper Peninsula in exchange for the strip, which included the then-prosperous eponymous city of Toledo. Michigan accepted the deal in the "Frost-bitten Convention" of December 1836, but it was only solved 137 years later with the help of the national Supreme Court. Both sides won, to some extent, as the Upper Peninsula was later exceedingly valuable, though occasionally volatile. Today, the Toledo War is still fought, albeit on a contracted annual basis. (Full article...)

  • Support some version of the alternate blurb. One was written a few years ago, and I think it's a bit funnier without being untrue. Notes: because of piped links, it might be longer than 1,200 characters of wikicode, and I've often wondered why we penalize editors' usage of piped links by counting characters of wikicode over characters of displayed text. If necessary, the coordinators should feel free to trim the displayed text down to accommodate size constraints, but relying on the raw code character count is not an accurate reflection of the displayed length on the main page. Imzadi 1979 → 05:34, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ah! I thought I had seen a blurb before. While true, I don't think we can use the Wisconsin sentence unless we have a RS (I removed it—it read "The entirely uninvolved Wisconsin, on the other hand, was the real loser, as the Upper Peninsula would otherwise probably have become part of that state.") That said, the rest of it is pretty good. I made a few edits to make it formal enough for today's TFA climate, and really like the closing line. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:07, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • I adopted a bit of the language for the original proposal. I don't mind either one. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 10:25, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Imzadi1979, where have you got the idea that "we penalize editors' usage of piped links by counting characters of wikicode over characters of displayed text" from? The instructions—which are in a big highlighted box at the top of this page, not hidden away in an obscure WP:MOS page somewhere—say total length of blurb when previewed (including spaces) as close as possible to 1,200 characters maximum, which to me is unequivocal in saying that it's the character count as viewed that's counted, not the character count in the edit window. – iridescent 11:27, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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