The British, too, were prepared to surrender Detroit. Britain was
actively negotiating a new treaty with the United States to settle still
outstanding matters from the treaty that had ended the Revolutionary
War. Even more important, Britain needed to keep the United States
neutral in the war it had begun with France in 1793. In Jay's Treaty, as
the final agreement was called, Britain pledged in good faith to
surrender Detroit and the other contested forts in the Northwest on June
1, 1796. On July 11, 1796, an advanced detachment of a regiment under
the command of Colonel John Francis Hamtramck finally reached Detroit
and assumed command of the outpost.
The United States' flag now flew over a city that had a most
curious social and economic structure. The vast majority of the
community's five hundred residents was French. These people had no
particular affection for either Britain or the United States. A small
group of British merchants who primarily sold furs to other dealers in
Montreal dominated the community's economy. With the arrival of
Hamtramck's troops, governance of the community now fell into the hands
of the Americans. They had good reason to dislike the British and no
understanding of the ways of the French. Indeed it appears that the
French treated the newly arrived American garrison much as it had the
departed British soldiers-as political masters who, the French believed,
had little or no real impact on day-to-day life and social customs.
The British traders, who had been slowly abandoning the city
since the mid-1780s, would eventually leave entirely, although not
quickly. Jay's Treaty had granted to British traders the right to
continue operating in Detroit and other posts in the American Northwest
and to export their fur pelts. And although the British military had
withdrawn from Detroit, it did not go very far. The British constructed
Fort Malden on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, just a few miles
south of Detroit. From there, the British continued their practice of
annual gift giving to various Indian tribes, regardless of which side of
the river they happened to live on. Thus the British retained
significant influence over Indian residents in the United States.
In the first years of American rule Detroit became a small
garrison town whose merchant elite was migrating across the river. Not
surprisingly, the community declined. In 1805 Congress, wrestling with
the implications of drawing boundaries for the territories that would
eventually become states, created a Michigan Territory with Detroit as
its capitol. Although Detroit had regained its status as a center of
government, the economic consequences of the decision were minimal. A
few civilian administrators joined the soldiers already at the fort.
Whatever hopes the inhabitants may have had for better times based on
the community's new status as a territorial capitol were likely laid low
by a devastating fire on June 11, 1805, that destroyed virtually every
building on the twenty acres or so of land that comprised the city. Only
the fort and a few naval buildings near the river survived.
Territorial governor William Hull and Judge Augustus Woodward
decided to take advantage of this disaster and build a planned
community. Woodward created a street plan based on the design of the
nation's new capitol, Washington, D.C. Woodward's plan featured grand
avenues two hundred feet wide built upon a spoke and hub system. In
1817, Governor Lewis Cass streamlined the plan, narrowing the streets to
sixty-six feet and revising some of the more unsatisfactory aspects of
the spoke and hub system, including eliminating a proposed street that
would have divided his own farm. Ultimately Woodward's plan was
abandoned altogether, and the more traditional midwestern grid pattern
of streets was used in Detroit. But components of the plan that had
already been built, particularly Grand Circus and the streets to the
south of this central point, remained.
The small settlement's French majority saw little need for
and considerable nuisance in a complicated street plan that called for
grand avenues two hundred feet wide. But Hull and Woodward simply
ignored the French. This proved to be typical of how the territorial
government would deal with the citizens of the capital city. Woodward
drew up and Hull promulgated a complex legal code for the territory that
imposed American notions of government on Detroit and ignored past
French practice. When French social customs, particularly the
longstanding French tradition of spending much of Sunday afternoon and
evening in social gatherings that often involved considerable drinking
and substantial gambling, came to trouble the American administration,
it enacted two dozen laws to limit French behavior. Although the
Americans did not necessarily connect the two, the French clearly linked
these new laws with the $20,000 appropriated shortly thereafter for a
new courthouse and jail.
The territorial government was no more respectful of
traditional land-use patterns that conflicted with its notions of
ownership. French land grants were made in a way that differed greatly
from the pattern legislated by the American Congress. Instead of using
the American grid pattern, the French had granted land in such a way as
to ensure each settler a small place on the riverfront with a narrow
plot of land extending several miles into the interior. In addition,
from the settlement's founding, the French had enjoyed a common area
outside the fort where food could be grown or animals grazed. In 1809
the territorial officers took it upon themselves to divide these common
areas into lots and sell them at auction. The French protested
vigorously. Despite the action's dubious legality, the territorial
officers who ordered the sale saw no reason to reverse their decision.
The distant federal government, to whom the French petitioned for
relief, was not willing to intercede in such a local matter. The French
residents of the city slowly came to realize that, unlike the British,
who had generally administered Detroit as a military outpost and
fur-trading center run along rules that imposed few real restraints on
past French practice, the Americans meant to recast the city in their
own image.