BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 233665 e. 1. PREFACE. THE changes of sovereign as well as of subordinate jurisdiction have been greater in Michigan than in any other part of the American Union. France, Great Britain, and the United States have successively had dominion over it, and under the United States it was part of the Northwest Territory and of the Territory of Indiana before it became the Territory of Michigan. As Michigan Territory it passed through all the grades of subordinate jurisdiction, and the circumstances attending its admission to the Union made its history at that period quite unique. Altogether it seemed appropriate that in the series of American Commonwealths the history of Michigan should be sketched as a history of governments; but this would be incomplete without a summary view of the relations of States to the Union at the time Michigan was received into it, or without some notice of the remarkable changes which have been going on since that time, and which have so greatly affected constitutional questions and the political habits of mind and tendencies of the American people. It was also thought proper to present the financial history of the State with some fullness, because it was believed to inculcate a lesson of more than local importance. But no attempt has been made to give the annals of the State as a substitute for other histories, nor, with the field so well occupied as it now is with Judge Campbell's Political History, was any such attempt thought desirable. |