President
Thomas Jefferson appointed Woodward on March 3, 1805, as the
Michigan Territory's first Chief Justice. When Woodward arrived in
Detroit on June 30, 1805, he found the city in ruins from the devastating fire earlier that month on June 11. Few buildings were left standing. Woodward, with Governor
William Hull and associate Justices
John Griffin and
Frederick Bates, possessed all the legislative power in the Territory. Woodward and Griffin, along with the current Governor and a third judge, held this power from 1805 until the institution of a legislature in 1824. Woodward and Hull bickered almost constantly. One of Woodward's legacies is the
Woodward Code: a series of statutes serving as the basis of the Territorial Supreme Court legal procedures. During the
War of 1812, Governor Hull surrendered Detroit to the British without a shot being fired in the
Battle of Detroit. While Hull and Justices Bates and Griffin left, Woodward stayed and maintained his judicial status in Detroit during the
British occupation. The British offered him the office of Secretary of the Territory, but Woodward declined that offer. Eventually, he became a problem for the British. He was asked to leave the territory and was granted safe passage to
New York. The United States regained control of Detroit in 1813. Shortly after the formation of the
Territory of Michigan, Woodward was involved in reorganizing the territory's education system. As the territory's chief justice, he managed much of the legal work to consolidate the French Christian schools led by
Gabriel Richard and established it as the
Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, in 1817. The university initially had authority over all cultural establishments in the territory. Following the destruction of Detroit in the
Great Fire of 1805, it fell to Woodward and Hull to oversee the rebuilding of the then territorial capital. The resulting plan drew heavily from
Pierre L'Enfant's layout for
Washington, D.C. Woodward proposed a system of hexagonal street blocks, with the
Grand Circus at its center. Wide avenues, alternatively 200 feet and 120 feet, were designed to radiate from large circular plazas like spokes from the hub of a wheel. Most prominent of these are the construction of the six main "spokes" of Woodward,
Michigan,
Grand River,
Gratiot, and
Jefferson avenues and Fort Street. Though ambitious, Woodward's Plan for Detroit would ultimately be discarded in 1817 while he was away in Washington. Instead of following the pattern laid out by Woodward, then Territorial Governor
Lewis Cass platted 10,000-acres of the surrounding countryside into a more typical (for Midwestern America)
Grid Plan of 160-acre rectangular farms girded by rectangular roads. This new platting became the basis for the modern layout of Detroit. ==Later years==