Michigan

MANY NATIVE AMERICAN tribes lived in Michigan before the arrival of French travelers in the 17th century. During the War of 1812, the British took Michigan, but it became American by 1821. A state government was formed in 1836, with Congress refusing to recognize it initially because of a boundary dispute with Ohio. Michigan was formally admitted to the Union on January 26, 1837.

The first governor was Stevens Thomson Mason, 24 years old when he was elected governor in the 1835 elections that led to the approving of the Michigan Constitution. His successor, William Woodbridge, a Whig, was elected in November 1839, coming to office in January 1840. After a year of his two-year term, he moved to the U.S. Senate, being replaced by J. Wright Gordon. In the elections of November 1841, John S. Barry of the Democratic Party was elected. He served three terms as governor, although the last one was not consecutive.

As the population of Michigan grew, the University of Michigan moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor. With the topic of slavery emerging as the major issue in American politics during the 1850s, Barry supported the Wilmot Proviso to stop the spread of slavery. At the same time, there was a curious political dispute in Michigan involving the appointment of a public printer. The initial plan allowed for the awarding of the state government contract to the lowest tender. This did not work well, and, in 1851, the state decided to award the contract based on a public election. This saw much political infighting between supporters of rival companies, and eventually the state returned to the competitive bidding process.

In November 1854, Michigan elected Kinsley S. Bingham, a Republican, as governor. He was one of the first Republicans to be elected governor of any state. He had been a Democrat, but had left the party because of their view on slavery. Bingham had supported the Wilmot Proviso before leaving to join in the Free Soil Party, and then helped form of the Republican Party. In 1858, Michigan voted for Moses Wisner, also a Republican, who won the gubernatorial election easily. In the 1860 U.S. presidential election, Michigan voted for Abraham Lincoln, giving him 88,481 votes (57.2 percent) against 65,057 votes (42 percent) for Stephen Douglas, and 805 votes for John Breckinridge and 415 for John Bell.

During the Civil War, Michigan strongly supported the Republicans, and elected Republican governors until 1882, when Josiah Begole was elected for the Democratic Party, which had an electoral alliance with the Greenback Party. He defeated Republican incumbent David Jerome by 7,000 votes. Begole was originally from New York and had joined the Republican Party because of his hatred of slavery, his son having been killed near Atlanta during the Civil War. Begole had served in the Michigan Senate and also the U.S. House of Representatives. He later moved to the Democratic Party, and was a keen supporter of extending the franchise to women, becoming the vice president of the Michigan Equal Suffrage Association in 1884.

...