Woodward's legacies is the Woodward Code: a series of statutes serving as the basis of the Territorial Supreme Court legal procedures. Woodward protected the free status of Michigan Territory in regard to slavery. In 1807 as Territorial Justice, he refused to allow the return of two slaves owned by a man in Windsor, Upper Canada (present-day Ontario). Woodward declared that any man "coming into this Territory is by law of the land a freeman." Detroit became a station on the Underground Railroad, by which fugitive slaves escaped from the South. After Canada had abolished slavery, many went across the river to escape slave catchers who operated even in the northern border areas. During the War of 1812, Governor (and later Brigadier General) 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. Planning of Detroit Following the destruction of Detroit in the 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. Cornell University professor of city planning John William Reps writes that this original 1807 design for Detroit was "one of the most unusual city plans ever devised.” Woodward Avenue in Detroit, originally called Court House Avenue and other names, was popularly named after the justice's work in city planning and rebuilding. Woodward, somewhat in jest, claimed the road's name was simply related to the fact that it traveled toward the wooded area to the north of the city. The alignment of Woodward Avenue seems to coincide with the axis of