JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF OHIO.
In February, 1871, and just after session of the General Assembly of that years had terminated, I received a communication from his Excellency, R. B. Hayes, Governor of Ohio, transmitting to me a joint resolution of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio in relation to the construction and maintainence of the Wabash and Erie Canal within the State of Indiana, and requesting me to communicate the same to the General Assembly of this State. I accordingly herewith submit for your consideration the said joint resolution, with the letter of Gov. Hayes transmitting it to me.
I beg leave to say that the Ohio joint resolution assumes the making of a compact or stipulation by Indiana to or with Ohio that Indiana would perpetually keep in repair and in good navigable order, so much of the Wabash and Erie Canal as is situated in Indiana, and calls upon this State to perform the supposed compact. The answer to this complaint is that the assumption that such a compact ever existed or was made by Indiana, is unsupported by the facts. No such compact ever was unmade by Indiana with Ohio. The agreement made in 1820, by Jeremiah Sullivan on the part of this State, and Wyllys Silliman on the part of Ohio, recited in the Ohio joint resolu- page: 285[View Page 285]tion, never was ratified by either of said States,and, therefore, never took effect or became binding on said States, or either of them. The only agreement or arrangement of any kind between the two States is that contained in the joint resolution of the General Assembly of Indiana, of February 1, 1834, and in the acceptance of the arrangement proposed thereby the joint resolution of Ohio, passed February 24, 1834. By the Indiana joint resolution, this State relinquished and conveyed to the State of Ohio certain lands ceded to this State by Congress, in consideration and on condition that Ohio should construct and keep in repair a canal from the Ohio and Indiana line to a point as low down the Maumee river toward Lake Erie as the towns of Maumee and Perrysburgh, and in consideration that Ohio should perform divers other stipulations contained in the Indiana joint resolution. Ohio, by the joint resolution of February 24, 1834 accepted the terms of the Indiana joint resolution, and the two joint resolutions contain the only contract made between the two States. This contract was wholly an executed contract on the part of Indiana, and executory on the part of Ohio; and it was impossible for Indiana ever to be guilty of a breach of the contract, because it was wholly executed, as far as she was concerned, the moment it was made. I therefore recommend the passage of a joint resolution, in response to the Ohio joint resolution of February 21, 1871, respectfully denying the existence of any such compact as the one of the supposed breach of which she complains.
