Michigan (population 9,938,444 in 2000) is bounded to the west by Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Lake Michigan; to the north by Lake Superior; to the east by Lakes Huron and St. Clair; and to the south by Ohio and Indiana. Though well into the interior of the nation, its two peninsulas are formed by the Great Lakes in such a way that provides an extensive coastline. Known as the "automobile state," its history is far more diverse than that nickname implies.
Government and Strategy, 1622–1796
During the period of exploration and colonial rule, the Michigan area had strategic and commercial value derived from its position in the Great Lakes region. Under the French, and later the British, the area proved an important source of furs easily transported on the extensive natural waterways. Based on early travel accounts, historians know that Samuel de Champlain sent Etienne Bruûlé west along the upper parts of Lake Huron to search for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Sometime in 1622, they surmise Bruûlé reached the Sault Sainte Marie area. In 1668 the first formal settlement, a mission, was established by Rev. Jacques Marquette at the Sault, followed by a second at St. Ignace in 1671. Shortly thereafter, the French settlers claimed the land for Louis XIV. To secure their hold on the emerging and lucrative fur trade, the French Crown established forts at strategic points. Fort Ponchartrain at Detroit (meaning the straits), established in 1701, was the first permanent French settlement in the Lower Peninsula. Antoine de Cadillac established the fort and settlement as a fur center.
French control over the area passed to the British in 1763, who fortified Detroit and outposts at Michilimackinac. In 1780, in response to the revolution in the thirteen colonies, the British established a fortification at Mackinac Island that still stands today.
At the time of American independence, the area of Michigan was very much on the frontier. In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance made Michigan a part of the newly established Northwest Territory. In 1794, an American force under the command of Anthony Wayne defeated a British-inspired Native American confederacy. Although the British formally ceded the area of Michigan to the United States through the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the British did not actually leave Fort Mackinac and Detroit until 1796. Only then were the political institutions recognized by the Northwest Territory gradually implemented. By 1803, Michigan had become a part of the Indiana Territory. On 1 July 1805, in response to the petitions of Detroit residents, Congress authorized the creation of the Michigan Territory, with Detroit designated as its capital.
Agriculture and Market, 1796–1850
Though John Jacob Astor founded the American Fur Company with headquarters on Mackinac Island in 1808, the fur trade that had been the economic basis for European settlement in the Michigan area was already in decline. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, a project was begun to survey the lands of southern Michigan. Today's grid of townships was first laid out by the Surveyor General of the United States. Land offices opened in Detroit and Monroe, where settlers could purchase a substantial farm for a very modest cost. The value of this opportunity increased enormously in 1825 when the Erie Canal opened to traffic and linked Michigan lands to the lucrative markets of the Northeast. The response was dramatic, as many chose to move to Michigan from the exhausted lands of upper New York State and elsewhere. Between 1820 and 1840, the population of European origin in Michigan increased from 8,767 to 212,267. Most of the settlement was east to west in the lower part of the state along the Chicago Road, which was developed between 1825 and 1835. Ann Arbor, Marshall, and Kalamazoo were among the market towns that were established. The prospects for farming in Michigan were promoted abroad by real estate interests, which attracted a diverse group of settlers that included Irish, German, and Dutch immigrants. These settlers brought with them a variety of religious beliefs and institutions. This diversity would continue to increase in scope and complexity throughout the subsequent history of the state.
The rapid population growth propelled arguments for statehood, and in 1835 it was authorized by territorial election. However, contention over the border with Ohio, finally resolved by the so-called Toledo War, delayed statehood to 1837 and ensured the inclusion of the Upper Peninsula as part of the new state. Stevens T. Mason, who had been appointed at the age of 19 in 1831 to succeed Lewis Cass as territorial governor, was appointed first governor of the new state in 1837. The new constitution provided for a university to be established, and offers of land were received from a number of towns. Ann Arbor was chosen for the institution. In 1817, three Native American tribes donated lands to the territorial university established in Detroit, but were sold to benefit the new campus in Ann Arbor. The spread of population across the lower part of state made Detroit impractical as a state capitol, and, after considerable debate, the more centrally located city of Lansing was selected in 1847.
Extracting Timber and Minerals, 1850–1910
Agriculture in Michigan flourished in the southern most part of the state. However, with the expansion of a rail network and a good supply of Great Lakes shipping vessels, the state was in an excellent position to move heavier raw materials with relative ease. The lands in the northern two thirds of the state remained largely untouched and covered with timber. By 1860, Michigan had more than 800 timber mills and was shipping forest products throughout the Northeast. At its peak, in the years around 1890, Michigan was producing more than $60 million in timber per year. The lumber industry was largely homegrown, which meant that the revenue generated would remain, for the most part, in the state. Such was not the case with minerals extracted in the upper part of the state.
One of the first acts of the new state legislature was to commission Douglas Houghton, professor at the state chartered university in Ann Arbor, to survey the geologic resources of Michigan. Houghton noted large deposits of copper in the Upper Peninsula. In 1844, iron was discovered. By the late 1860s, rail transport made it possible to move the iron and copper. The capital for many of the mines and the transport infrastructure came from the eastern states, most notably Massachusetts. Consequently, a significant portion of returns on those investments went east. By the late nineteenth century, copper and iron production nearly equaled the value of lumber production.
This extractive economy had a profound impact on the state. Whole cities were established to serve as centers for the finance and distribution of these raw materials. Bay City, Saginaw, and Traverse City, for example, were established as lumber centers. Houghton, Hancock, Marquette, and others were mining centers. The mines and the lumber trade drew immigrants from Italy, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and Ireland, among others.
The state's population was as diverse as any in the nation. As such, tensions were a part of the political landscape. In the mid-nineteenth century, nativist and anti Catholic sentiment led to internal dissension in both the Whig and Democratic Parties. In 1854, a new political coalition, the Republican Party, emerged more tolerant and opposed to the extension of slavery. This new party would dominate politics in the state until the depression of the 1930s. At the time of the Civil War, Michigan supported the Union cause, sending ninety thousand men into service.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, the state's population had surged to 2,240,982, with more than 40 percent foreign-born or children of foreign-born. There were tensions with in various groups. For example, the Dutch split between Christian Reformed and the Reformed Church in America in the mid-nineteenth century. The Polish community was split over the Kolasinski affair in the 1890s. There were conflicts with in the German community at the time of World War I, chronicled in the pages of the daily Detroiter Abend-Post.
Automobile and Manufacturing, 1910 to the Present
Many manufacturing centers had been established in Michigan before the appearance of the automobile in the state. Most notably, Grand Rapids had emerged by the 1870s as a national center for furniture. Drawing from local and imported sources of lumber, as well as a population of expert craftsmen, its furniture could be shipped by rail to most destinations in the country. Kalamazoo had paper manufacturers, Battle Creek had health food factories that became the foundation for its famed breakfast food industry, and Detroit had factories that made rail cars, stoves, and other goods. However, it was only with the emergence of the automobile that Michigan became known as an urban industrial state.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Ransom Olds, Henry Ford, Henry Leland, David Buick, and Roy Chapin were among many in the state working on the idea of attaching a motor to wheels to make a personal transport vehicle. There were others working with the concept out-side the state, but with well-established engine works and carriage manufacturers in Michigan, along with a transport infrastructure in place, the state was an ideal place to pursue these ideas on a large scale.
The auto manufacturers in Michigan came to dominate the industry through innovation and organization. Henry Ford's application of the assembly line so transformed the economies of production that what had been an expensively crafted luxury good became a mass-produced consumer good with in reach of a large segment of the population. This innovation, more than any other, led to the dominance of Michigan in the automobile industry. Several independent auto producers amalgamated under a corporate framework called General Motors (conceived by William Durant of Flint, Michigan), and it, too, realized economies of scale and market power that raised significantly the barriers to entry for new mass producers of automobiles. By 1920, the automotive industry in Michigan employed 127,000 and had an output valued at $1,330,000,000.
While Michigan was well known as a manufacturing state by the 1920s, it was only in the 1940s that the world would come to realize the enormous industrial capacity of the state. In 1940, at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Knudsen, then president of General Motors, directed the changeover of the auto plants to war production. The production output of tanks and planes earned the state the appellation "arsenal of democracy."
The transformation of Michigan from an agricultural and extractive economy to one of the leading industrial economies of the world was not without stress and cultural tensions. The demand for labor to work in the new auto factories and then to sustain production during two world wars brought a huge influx of workers into the state. These were from nearly every country in the world, but most notably Canada, Poland, and Germany. In response, many in the state embraced new ideas of the Progressive Era, which manifested in programs of change and reform as well as restriction and control. Hazen Pingree, as mayor of Detroit in the 1870s, was an early proponent of government regulation of public transport and utilities. Chase Osborn, a Progressive governor (1911–1912), introduced the concept of workers' compensation to the state, among other reform measures. The Detroit Citizens League, the Grand Rapids Furniture Manufacturers Association, and other groups formed to protect the interests of the urban elite in the face of changes brought on by rapid urban industrial growth.
The Detroit Urban League, along with a host of ethnic and church-based associations, helped maintain individual and group identities. These organizations structured urban and town life with a focus on assimilation. The demand for workers was so strong during World War II that many people, both white and African American, migrated from the South to work in the factories. Though always a diverse state, Michigan by 1940 was among the most diverse in the country. With boom and bust cycles in the industrial economy, combined with cultures of intolerance, the population had its stresses—most notably manifested in the Detroit racial disturbances of 1943. There was also an elegance that emerged in Detroit and other cities in the 1920s. Detroit, a prosperous city and the fourth largest in America, built monuments, parks, museums, libraries, office towers, and great estates. During this time, stately houses were built in Grosse Pointe, Flint, Pontiac, Grand Rapids, and other industrial towns emblematic of the fruits of the new automobile industry. With railroads and highways leading north, grand houses and hotels appeared on the lakeshore along the coastline of Upper Michigan, a precursor to the vigorous travel industry that would emerge in the later half of the twentieth century.
As the industrial capacity of the state developed, so, too, did the size of the labor force. There had been tensions from the start, as indicated by the Grand Rapids Furniture strike of 1912, and the attempts to unionize the cereal industry in Battle Creek. Michigan became a real bulwark for the labor movement, with the establishment of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) in 1935. There had been a series of strikes and protests brought on by the severe economic depression of the 1930s. However, the "sit-down strike" of 1936–1937 in Flint was the event that brought recognition to the UAW as the sole bargaining representative for workers at General Motors. Soon thereafter, the union represented all workers employed with Ford Motor Company and other smaller firms.
By the 1930s, Michigan had an enormous industrial capacity. As a result, the effects of the depression were particularly difficult. A variety of voices emerged in the state. Frank Murphy became an early advocate of New Deal reform, first as mayor of Detroit (1930–1933) and later as governor (1937–1938). He eagerly worked with Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish governmental assistance to the many unemployed and dislocated. Another voice that arose from Detroit was that of Rev. Charles Coughlin. This Roman Catholic priest, from his pulpit in Royal Oak, Michigan, gained a huge national following for his radio broadcasts. At first a supporter of the New Deal, he was later discredited as his critiques became more harsh and anti-Semitic. Henry Ford, too, weighed in with extensive critiques in his Dearborn Independent, pushing his own particular notions of American values, which he was able to exemplify in his three-dimensional recreation of the ideal American environment at his museum he called "Greenfield Village."
The end of World War II brought a rebirth of the strength of the Democratic Party in the state. Neil Staebler was the architect of a new strategy of reaching out to each segment of the population, combined with a high sense of morality in politics. G. Mennen Williams, known as "Soapy" because he was heir to the Mennen soap fortune, was the party's candidate for governor in 1948. Narrowly elected, he was able to establish the newly defined party and stay in office for six consecutive terms through 1960. Among his many achievements was the completion of the bridge at the straits of Mackinac in 1957, which linked the two peninsulas of the state.
Unionization proved an economic benefit for the state and set the foundation for middle-class prosperity that had a huge impact on Flint, Pontiac, Ypsilanti, as well as Detroit and its suburbs. The post–World War II economy was booming, bringing higher wages, new roads, and the automobile, significantly changing the urban and social landscape of the state. Many people in the cities relocated to the newly developed suburbs. The movement involved prosperous white residents almost entirely, leaving older residents and those of African American descent with in the city limits. This exacerbated a racial divide that increasingly defined city and state politics. The population of Detroit began to decline until, in the year 2000, it was nearly half its high point of 1,849,568 in 1950. New shopping malls siphoned the retail trade from the city centers. The once elegant streets of downtown Flint, Grand Rapids, and Detroit became relatively sparsely populated.
This isolation of race and poverty with in the cities erupted in a series of violent confrontations in 1967. Detroit's riot captured national attention; there were also disturbances in Pontiac, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Kalamazoo, all of which further encouraged the abandonment of the cities. At the same time, throughout the latter half of the twentieth century the state population steadily grew, mostly in new suburban subdivisions, to the point that cities such as Southfield, Birmingham, Troy, Ann Arbor, and East Grand Rapids took on functions formerly associated with older urban downtowns. Also, a general prosperity in the Midwest increased the demand for lakefront property. A continuing building boom transformed Petoskey, Harbor Springs, Charlevoix, Traverse City, and Alpena.
The prosperity of the state, however, suffered in the later decades of the twentieth century. The lumber was exhausted, as were the mines of the Upper Peninsula. The value of agricultural production was at the same level as in the 1920s. The furniture industry had moved south, and foreign competition had severely challenged the automotive industry. Michigan became the very symbol of the "Rust Belt," with aging factories and a seeming inability to compete in a new global economy. Under George Romney and William Milliken, the Republican Party controlled the governorship from 1963 through 1983. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the state's economy was in deep recession. A split in the state's Republican Party led to the election of the Democrat James Blanchard as the state continued a struggle to regain competitiveness in its old industries, while trying to diversify its economic base. In 1990, Republicans regained the governorship under John Engler, a representative of the more conservative wing of the party. His program of vigorous cost cutting and welfare reform, combined with the general economic boom in the country as a whole, restored Michigan to the point that, in 1993, it had achieved more growth than any industrial state in the union.
By the turn of the twenty-first century, the economy had rebounded due to the internationalization of the automobile industry, the development of high-tech activities, and the persistent growth of the tourist industry based on the state's extensive lakeshore. Michigan contained a large number of prosperous towns, characterized by new office buildings and a high rate of new residential construction. There were important initiatives to revive old downtowns, most notably with new cultural facilities in Grand Rapids and Detroit; the latter city also built a new stadium for major league baseball. The new century, however, brought new challenges. A stalled economy revived the need for cost cutting in state government and in the corporate sector. The effects of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on 11 September 2001 had a particular impact on the state of Michigan, which, in Dearborn, had the largest Arab American community in the country. The slowed economy, coupled with the national tragedies, again focused attention on the diversity of Michigan's population and on the historic reliance of the state on a single industry.
Bibliography
Dunbar, Willis, and George May. Michigan: A History of the Wolverine State. 3d rev. ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1995.
Kern, John. A Short History of Michigan. Lansing: Michigan Department of State, 1977.
Hathaway, Richard J., ed. Michigan: Visions of Our Past. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989.
Poremba, David Lee, ed. Detroit in Its World Setting: A Three-Hundred Year Chronology. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2001.
