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From. John While Chodmeter
L
The Expansion of the Republic Series
OHIO AND HER WESTERN RESERVE
APPLETONS' Expansion of the Republic Series
The History of the Louisiana Purchase By JAMES K. HOSMER, Ph. D., LL. D.
Ohio and Her Western Reserve With "A Story of Three States." By ALFRED MATHEWS.
Rocky Mountain Exploration By REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. In preparation.
The History of Porto Rico By R. A. VAN MIDDLEDYK. With an Introduction, etc., by Prof. Martin G. Brumbaugh. In prep- aration.
Proposed Volumes The Purchase of Alaska The Settlement of the Pacific Coast The Founding of Chicago and the Develop- ment of the Middle West John Brown and the Struggle in Kansas The Acquisition of the Southwest
Each volume 12mo. Illustrated. $1.25 net 12 cents postage additional
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.
ULYSSES S. GRANT.
RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES.
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD.
BENJAMIN HARRISON.
WILLIAM MCKINLEY.
THE OHIO PRESIDENTS.
OHIO AND HER
WESTERN RESERVE
WITH A STORY OF THREE STATES
LEADING TO THE LATTER, FROM CONNECTICUT, BY WAY OF WYOMING, ITS INDIAN WARS AND MASSACRE
BY ALFRED MATHEWS
MEMBER OF THE OHIO STATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
.INTER.
D.A
FRUCTUS
FOLIA.
Gc 977.1 M42
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1902
COPYRIGHT, 1902 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Published November, 1902
648232
To the Memory of my father,
THE LATE
SAMUEL HUNTINGTON MATHEWS, M. D.,
OF PAINESVILLE, OF CLEVELAND, AND OF CALIFORNIA -ONE OF THE "ARGONAUTS OF '49," WHO ASSISTED IN EXTENDING TO THE PACIFIC COAST THE PATH WHICH THE GENERATION OF HIS ANCESTORS HAD OPENED FROM NEW ENGLAND TO THE SHORES OF LAKE ERIE-ONE OF THE FIRST-BORN OF THE PIONEERS, AND, IN CULTURE, CONSCIENCE, COURAGE, IN MANLI- NESS AND MODESTY, A HIGH TYPE OF THE INCON- SPICUOUS BUT STERLING CITIZENRY OF THE PURITAN CONNECTICUT STOCK IN THE WESTERN RESERVE,
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR.
Parker
FEB 1 1 1949
08%
PREFACE
THE theme of these pages is twofold : a duality of endeavors, exhibiting a contrast of means, and yet reaching a community of out- come.
Ohio-now arrrived at the centennial of statehood-was resultant from the foregather- ing of a great number of diverse fragments finally compacted and fused in a homogenous whole by various causes. As the most com- posite State in the Union, it was formed by the concentrated march of an army of occupa- tion from all of the States. These elements, widely variant as they were, had one prin- ciple in common-an inherent conviction of the righteousness of freedom, which led some to dictate, and all to assent to, a basic law against the extension of slavery.
The Western Reserve of Connecticut in
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Ohio, the largest and most distinctly indi- vidualized and most influential of all the varied elements in this composite population, was resultant from the sole energy of the people of a single State. Herein the history of the Reserve forms a contrast with that of Ohio. And both because of its intrinsic in- terest and the generally inadequate under- standing of the power and the peculiarity of Connecticut's wonderful Western expansion, which reached its culmination in the Reserve, the subject is considered here-and, it is be- lieved, for the first time-in all of its connec- tions, from the inception of the ideas of liberty and colonial expansion in old Connecticut, through the strange, wild warfare in Wyo- ming, Pa., to the realization of the essential ideals of a progressive Puritanism in the "New Connecticut " of Ohio.
Ohio's remarkable rise from the position of a pioneer and backwoods State to one of power and prestige absolutely unequaled, for a long period, by any other in the sister- hood of commonwealths, will be found by final analysis to be predicated, in the main, unmistakably upon Law. By this is of course viii
Preface
meant fundamental, creating, organizing, and controlling Law as contradistinguished from that irresponsible individualism of action which, however much of enthusiasm and of energy it may employ, however admirable it may be in many of its aims and even out- comes, is nevertheless Anarchy.
Ohio was builded wiser than its builders knew, upon the Ordinance of 1787, that sur- passingly wise enactment of early Congress, which was only less important than the Con- stitution of the United States, and which may not improperly be regarded as the " Ordinance of Freedom" for the whole nation, rather than merely for the old Northwest Territory, if we look upon it as illuminated by the glowing light of 1861-'65, instead of in the pale, but prophetic gleaming of a new dawn in the primitive days of the nation and the Northwest.
If we reflect that the old Northwest Ter- ritory was made, morally, what it was by the operation of the great ordinance ; that it was primarily a force for the sifting out from the people of the whole country of those opposed to slavery, and their concentration and devel-
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
opment in the Territory ; and then recall that Ohio alone, the first State of the Territory when the war came on that resulted in the suppression of slavery, contributed more men to the Union army than Great Britain ever put in the field, even in the greatest and latest of her wars, we begin to apprehend the vast ultimate momentousness of the Ordinance of 1787.
Those who were to become the very first pioneers of Ohio dictated and secured the passage of that ordinance, and its first effect was in making a cosmopolitan commonwealth, rather than a mere extension of a single col- ony, the population they pioneered into the wilderness. Ohio, owing to the provisions of the ordinance, was the first ground in the United States on which met and eventually merged the people of all the colonies-the first on which the Cavalier and the Puritan and the Quaker stood side by side; the first on which the differentiated strains of blood in the sons of the Carolinas and Virginia, of Maryland and Pennsylvania, of Massachusetts and Connecticut, commingled in a common people.
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Preface
And not only did it obtain these many valuable, because varied, elements of popula- tion, but, by the operation of the ordinance, the best of each-the more morally advanced, as proved by their attitude toward slavery, two generations before it had become a para- mount public issue.
It is along the development of these lines, as a study in population and, in the larger sense, of politics, also as an analysis of causes and consequences extending down to the chronicling of a great many definite results, that the history of Ohio here proceeds, rather than as a minute account of those minor inci- dents, interesting enough in themselves, but which have little of causative significance.
The history of Ohio, as here related, is, therefore, a consideration of many peoples in one State, while the chapters which precede those on Ohio proper, pertaining to the larg- est, though not the earliest single element that found a home within, and helped to con- stitute the State, form a study of one people in three States. That portion of the work which treats of the Connecticut westward expansion reveals, therefore, in this respect,
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
as has been said, a contrast with the theme of the other chapters.
But this is by no means the most impor- tant contrast which is presented between the subjects of the two sections of the work. The settlement of Ohio proceeded in orderli- ness and peace and with huge attendant rapidity, success, and prosperity, because it was inaugurated deliberately upon an entirely lawful and planned basis, which prepared the way for stability before the soil was pressed by a pioneer footstep. In the other migra- tory movement, that tremendously vigorous westward push by Connecticut people which gave the initiative to the whole organized internal colonial movement and which ulti- mately planted by all odds the largest and strongest and most characteristic single, com- pact colony in the West (and the "last dis- tinct footprint of Puritanism "), there was at the outset-in the Pennsylvania endeavor-a marked lack of regard for safe legal initiative and procedure, with consequent anarchical conditions and a failure that fell not far short of being complete.
It was a singular mistake for Connecticut
xii
Preface
men to make; altogether contrary to their pre- dominant characteristics of prudence and of practicality. Its occurrence is, in the main, to be attributed to preliminary conditions which almost certainly would have misled any peo- ple, and to the non-existence of any precedent whatever for the manner of execution of their really heroic enterprise. But if they partially failed once, in Pennsylvania, because their pathway was not fully paved with law, they splendidly atoned for it with their care- ful and elaborate preparation for the later movement into that part of the Northwest Territory which was to become Ohio, and the losses of Wyoming were fully compen- sated in the Western Reserve.
If it may temporarily appear to any reader that the other principal early elements of Ohio's population suffer any injustice in these pages through not being accorded a separate treatment, the cause for dissatisfaction will probably either wholly disappear or greatly diminish, when they find that the story of these elements is more intimately and inseparably interwoven with the founding and the organi- zation of the State, and that they are given xiii
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ample attention in the chapters devoted to it where the chronicling of their respective shares in the great work becomes not only appropriate but imperative.
It was the people who formed the small though sterling Massachusetts colony who dictated the great ordinance and made the first organized settlement within the limits of the future State. It was the Virginia ele- ment, most of whose pioneers came to Chilli- cothe by way of Kentucky, that was fore- most in founding the State under the ægis of the Jeffersonian Democracy, and it was the New Jersey element under General John Cleves Symmes, the founder of Cincinnati, who prominently seconded the successful en- deavors of the former. Both of these, and the Massachusetts men who made at Marietta, in 1788, the initial organized settlement northwest of the Ohio River, are appre- ciatively and extensively treated in the State chapters with which they are inveterately in- volved.
But with the Western Reserve the case is quite different. While indisputably the largest of the several distinct elements, or
xiv
Preface
colonies, composing Ohio, it was also the latest of the four principal ones, and had a comparatively small part in the original for- mation of the commonwealth to which it contributed later so largely of men and in- fluence.
A sufficient reason for its specialized treatment is its importance ; but its distinct- ness and strength of individuality also are conducive to this procedure. It was for a long time alluded to because of its radical political character, and, now for its aloofness, again for its aggressiveness, characterized as " a State separate from Ohio," and indeed it was never fully merged until 1860 with that oneness of political opinion in paramount principles to which Ohio then finally at- tained.
Upon the simple consideration of chrono- logical propriety and because of the initiative of colonial expansion which it afforded, the " Connecticut movement " is here given pri- ority of place; not that in its own history the Western Reserve is earliest, but that its hugely important and inseparable antece- dents, without which it is not an understand-
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
able entity, antedate any other portions of the subject of the work.
These causative antecedents have here, for the first time, so far as the author is aware, been presented in their true and com- pelling connection with the later subject. Their somewhat elaborate presentation, as it here appears, was originally set forth in A Story of Three States, published in the April and May (1902) numbers of Scribner's Maga- zine, to the proprietors of which, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, the author expresses his gratitude for the privilege of reprinting them.
It may be added that the introductory chapter, outlining Connecticut's history, espe- cially as regards her splendid pioneer serv- ices for civil liberty and internal colonial expansion, appears very nearly in the form in which it was delivered as the annual ad- dress before the Wyoming Commemorative Association, at Wyoming, Pa., on July 3, 1902. It is here reproduced as exhibiting the inception in the seaboard commonwealth of those ideas and moral and material forces which found their fullest, most significant
xvi
Preface
expression in her colony in the old-time West and on the way thither, and which to a con- siderable extent were formative causes of our national republicanism, our remarkable con- tinental expansion, and our unprecedented prosperity.
THE AUTHOR.
PHILADELPHIA, October 11, 1902.
xvii
2
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Introductory-Connecticut's service for civil liberty and
colonial expansion .. 3
CHAPTER II
Wyoming, or Connecticut militant in Pennsylvania-The beginnings of "Expansion "-The Yankee invasion and first series of " Pennamite Wars" 53
CHAPTER III
Battle and massacre of Wyoming and flight of survivors through the "Shades of Death " . ·
78
CHAPTER IV
Far-reaching results of war's horror at Wyoming-Rank- ing with Lexington and Concord in effect on the fortunes of the Revolution-Effort to create a Yankee State in Pennsylvania-Close of " Pennamite Wars" adverse to Connecticut colonists-The Western Re- serve as a recompense for Wyoming · 101
CHAPTER V
The Western Reserve, or Connecticut triumphant in Ohio -The largest evidence of our organized colonial expansion and the last footprint of Puritanism . . 129
xix
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
The Reserve a conservation of Connecticut, yet with dif- ferences-The old Puritan idea of liberty comes to the fore in new form-Antislavery a logical outcome of progressive Puritanism-Giddings and Wade, as types of the people and as examples of heredity . . 158
CHAPTER VII
The Reserve's contributions to public service in states- manship-Literature-Culture-Colleges and public schools-Famous educators-The reflex tide toward Connecticut . . 190
CHAPTER VIII
Ohio and "the Great Ordinance " of 1787-A huge moral engine operating automatically for the selection of the best elements of immigration-A study of origins . . 215
CHAPTER IX
Ohio achieves statehood-Gained by the Jeffersonian Democracy in a battle royal with the Federalists and Gen. Arthur St. Clair-Some curious constitutional consequences . . 236
CHAPTER X
Ohio's ascendency analyzed-An analysis reveals that it was based largely on " selection " of population-The ordinance of freedom massed here Southern as well Northern antislavery forces-A State settled by all the States-Results of the commingling . 261
XX
Contents
CHAPTER XI
PAGE
Ohio in the war and in national civil life-Remarkable roster exhibiting the State's prestige-Causes of the latter-Ohioans in literature, journalism, and the arts . 279
CHAPTER XII
Summary and conclusion-Causes of political prestige- Ohio's vote-Population-Ohio's immense contribu- tion of population to Western States . . 307
INDEX .
. 317
xxi
LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
The Ohio Presidents
FACING PAGE
Frontispiece
The Rev. Thomas Hooker 16
Arrest of the Connecticut settlers 70
" Queen Esther" (Catharine Montour) inciting the In- dians to attack Wyoming 88
Flight of the Connecticut settlers through "the Shades of Death " 98
Present aspect of the Wyoming battle-field . 104
The Wyoming Monument, erected in 1833 near the scene of battle and massacre . 124
How the Connecticut pioneers came into the Western Reserve 129
Fort Harmar, on the Ohio River, at the mouth of the Muskingum, built 1785-'86 215
Campus Martius, first home of the first settlers of Ohio, at Marietta 227
" These are my Jewels"-"Favorite Sons" Monument in Capitol grounds at Columbus 287
MAPS
Lands claimed by Connecticut in Pennsylvania and
PAGE Ohio . 59
The Western Reserve
167
xxiii ·
OHIO AND HER WESTERN RESERVE
1
-But bolder they who first off-cast Their moorings from the habitable Past, And ventured chartless on the sea Of storm-engendering Liberty. LOWELL.
2
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY - CONNECTICUT'S SERVICE FOR CIVIL LIBERTY AND COLONIAL EXPANSION
SOMETIMES I have wondered if it is too much to say that Connecticut was the most radical, resistless, and destiny-laden outcome of Puritanism in America. The old Bay State -all honor to her noble history-admittedly excelled her in the production of results greater in totality; but if she was stronger, she was also slower of moral movement-more conservative-than Connecticut. The mother colony lagged behind her eldest daughter in the mental energy of initiative ; and, I think, not alone in chronological primacy, but in the vast moment of single acts, was the inferior of her offspring.
Connecticut's, like all early Puritanism, whether we find it in England or on the shores of the new Western world, contained
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
those many rigid, unlovely, and reprehensible doctrines which brought upon the peculiar people the almost universal ridicule of the rest of the world and much of bitter hatred. But the one vast and vital ideal that Puritan- ism gave to the world, the one doctrine of inestimable value and imperishable influence, not England nor any of her colonies cher- ished more carefully and zealously, or pushed more persistently into practical usefulness for the advance of mankind than did Connecti- cut. This was the novel and startling doc- trine of human liberty which rose upon the world as a pale, ineffectual star, undistin- guishable, save to the keenest vision, from some ephemeral earth light, but growing, glowing, in its slow rise to the meridian, with the life-giving force and the celestial splendor of a sun.
We are too ready to think of Puritanism's seamy side; too prone altogether, save in our most thoughtful and searching moods, to look back upon the Puritan of Old England and of New England as a particularly grim and gloomy Calvinist who ruthlessly renounced everything in life that was joyous and beauti-
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Introductory
ful. All of us, and all the time, remember readily enough Macaulay's satirical remark, which smacked more strongly of the sneers made by his Elizabethan predecessors than of the enlightened spirit of his contempo- raries of the middle nineteenth century. Yes, we all recall the historian's mot that "the Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators," a witticism, by the way, which Macaulay stole from Hume; but we do not so readily recall that both Macau- lay and Hume, in sober earnest, bore testi- mony to the lofty character of the Puritans and the priceless boon they fairly forced upon a blind and reluctant people in two continents.
Hume, writing of the arbitrary nature of Elizabeth's government, said: "So absolute indeed was the authority of the crown, that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was preserved by Puritans alone ; and it was to this sect whose principles ap- pear so frivolous and habits so ridiculous, that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution." And again : "It was only
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
during the next generation that the noble principles of liberty took root, and spreading themselves under the shelter of Puritanical absurdities, became fashionable among the people."
But the truth that Hume told was not recognized even in his time, for he relates in his autobiography that for his utterances he "was assailed by one cry of reproach, dis- approbation, and even detestation " from every side and every party, for there was general indignation abroad in the land at the suggestion that English liberty began with the growth of Puritanism. Hallam, though he criticized some of the statements of Hume, practically agreed with him upon the matter we are here concerned with, saying that it was the Puritans who were "the depositaries of the sacred fire" and who "revived the smoldering embers."
Yet it needed a man of the insight, the honesty, the fearlessness, and the sledge- wielding strength of Thomas Carlyle, to first properly characterize the greatest religious, moral, and political force of modern times. He called English Puritanism "the last of all
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Introductory
our heroisms." He affirmed that "few nobler heroisms, at bottom, perhaps, no nobler hero- ism, ever transacted itself on this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us; overwhelmed under such an avalanche of human stupidities as no heroism before ever did. Intrinsically and extrinsically it may be considered inac, cessible to these generations. Intrinsically- the spiritual purport of it has become incon- ceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Ex- trinsically, the documents and records of it, scattered waste as a shoreless chaos, are not legible."
Elsewhere he says: "The resuscitation of a heroism from the past time is no easy enter- prise," and then he enters upon and executes it, giving the initiation to others, who in more recent years have gone far beyond him in re- suscitating this "last of all our heroisms," and convincing the world that-though it went clothed in an awful and forbidding austerity ; though it frowned upon much that was inno- cent and blithesome and beautiful in life ; though it long time fostered hateful and hid- eous fanaticisms-it was in all verity as noble a heroism "as ever transacted itself on this
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
earth " and that its invincible spirit, in spite of the dross with which it was long laden, gave England constitutional liberty and America political freedom, self-government, and the beginnings of its true democracy.
Having performed these momentous func- tions Puritanism has such huge items to its credit on the rolls of Clio, that the infinitesi- mal charges against it, innumerable though they are, and forming a considerable aggre- gate, fall, by comparison, into nothingness.
To understand to-day the extreme severity of the Puritans' view we must make our com- parisons, not with the present, but with the past, and we should very minutely study the conditions, religious, moral, social, and polit- ical, that obtained in England when the Puri- tans' protest was made. Puritanism was born in an age of governmental tyranny, official malfeasance and all-pervading corruption, which logically brought, in due time, a revo- lution.
The Puritans have been blamed by the superficial for their rejection of the literature of their time. It is true that for the most part they discountenanced and denounced it,
8
Introductory
but that was because it reflected the evil spirit, the rapacity, the licentiousness, and the reeking rottenness of the age. The great writers of the time cared not a whit for the sacred flame of liberty which lay in the sole guardianship of the Puritans; indeed, they were uniformly and incessantly truculent to- ward the Puritans and toward the masses in general, while most servilely truckling to the aristocracy.
The Puritans' attitude of aversion, then, to the literature of their time was by no means indicative of intellectual inferiority, but of that uncompromising moral rigidity which made them a mighty force in the movement of civilization.
The name "Puritan " came into the lan- guage about 1564, soon after the accession of Elizabeth. From time to time its strict meaning changed, sometimes being used in a religious, sometimes in a political sense. Its popular employment was in a religious sense, and it finally came to have a very liberal ap- plication, being extended to all who, either by conduct or word, protested against the irre- ligion and immorality of the time-in fact, "to
3
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
pretty nearly everybody who went to church regularly and didn't get drunk." In the strict sense of the appellation it denominated those Calvinistic members of the English Church who would work a reformation from within, while those who left the Church were called Separatists, Independents, Brownists, and the like. To the former class belonged the great majority of the colonists of New England, but it was from the latter that came the Pil- grim fathers who settled in Plymouth, though the majority of the Massachusetts settlers were of the strict Puritan sect; and it was principally from the towns formed by a large influx of this element in 1630 that Connecti- cut was settled in 1633-'36.
Now Puritanism, though it had set in operation the forces that were most largely instrumental in making modern England, be- came there in due time an almost inert thing -a frozen creed. The remarkable and mo- mentous fact is, that on the virgin soil of the New World it thawed out, obtained a fresh impetus of life, adapted itself to new condi- tions, and wrought gradually new wonders, which, after the passing of a century and a
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