boon granted in 1836.

=Michigan.=--In accordance with a well-established custom, a free state
was admitted to the union to balance a slave state. In 1833, the people
of Michigan, a territory ten times the size of Connecticut, announced
that the time had come for them to enjoy the privileges of a
commonwealth. All along the southern border the land had been occupied
largely by pioneers from New England, who built prim farmhouses and
adopted the town-meeting plan of self-government after the fashion of
the old home. The famous post of Detroit was growing into a flourishing
city as the boats plying on the Great Lakes carried travelers, settlers,
and freight through the narrows. In all, according to the census, there
were more than ninety thousand inhabitants in the territory; so it was
not without warrant that they clamored for statehood. Congress, busy as
ever with politics, delayed; and the inhabitants of Michigan, unable to
restrain their impatience, called a convention, drew up a constitution,
and started a lively quarrel with Ohio over the southern boundary. The
hand of Congress was now forced. Objections were made to the new
constitution on the ground that it gave the ballot to all free white
males, including aliens not yet naturalized; but the protests were
overborne in a long debate. The boundary was fixed, and Michigan, though
shorn of some of the land she claimed, came into the union in 1837.

=Wisconsin.=--Across Lake Michigan to the west lay the territory of
Wisconsin, which shared with Michigan the interesting history of the
Northwest, running back into the heroic days when French hunters and
missionaries were planning a French empire for the great monarch, Louis
XIV. It will not be forgotten that the French rangers of the woods, the
black-robed priests, prepared for sacrifice, even to death, the trappers
of the French agencies, and the French explorers--Marquette, Joliet, and
Menard--were the first white men to paddle their frail barks through the
northern waters. They first blazed their trails into the black forests
and left traces of their work in the names of portages and little
villages. It was from these forests that Red Men in full war paint
journeyed far to fight under the _fleur-de-lis_ of France when the
soldiers of King Louis made their last stand at Quebec and Montreal
against the imperial arms of Britain. It was here that the British flag
was planted in 1761 and that the great Pontiac conspiracy