History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 52

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592

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The people of Kentucky complained that Indian murders had already cost them more than 1,500 lives. It was clearly evident that the treaties had failed and that force must be employed. The first attempt to chastise the savages, with which Cin- cinnati and Fort Washington were directly associated, was the expedition of Gen. Harmar, a most accomplished and high-minded soldier. On the 15th of July, 1790, Governor St. Clair issued his call for militia to the officers of Kentucky, and the western portions of Pennsylvania and Virginia. On the 19th of September when the troops were assembling at Fort Washington, he addressed a note of explanation and friendly assurance to the British commandant, notifying him of the expedition, and assuring him that it had no unfriendly significance toward Great Britain. By the 5th of October, the little army was on its march. Its destination was the Indian village near where the city of Defiance now stands. It took its course over the highlands, northward of the city, the line of march being east of the water-shed, between the two Miamis. The line passed not far from Lebanon. It ran between Dayton and Xenia, and then bearing a little to the west was directed to Defiance. The motley assemblage bore little resemblance to an army. There were 320 regular soldiers, and 1,133 raw militia, without drill or discipline, without camp equipage, or axes, or intrenching tools; with defective arms, and many of the soldiers withont the skill to remove and oil their gun locks, or even place the flints in the hammers.

On the 14th of October the advance guard reached the Indian villages, but the inhabitants had all fled. On the 17th, the main army arrived, and for four days the troops were employed in burning villages and cornfields. Five villages were destroyed, and more than twenty thousand bushels of corn burned. Before the return, however, detachments of the army, sent out to find the Indians, were involved in ambuscades, and suffered severely. The usual results of want of discipline were made manifest. On the part of some, great personal courage was shown, but on the part of the majority, only an eager desire to flee from danger. The losses were heavy, the army was demoralized, and the return march was resumed at once. The only effect of the expedition had been to exasperate the enemy, and to inflate him with pride in his superior prowess. The Indians fully believed that they had won a great victory, and were more than ever determined to prosecute the war. Want of preparation and discipline had brought the campaign through humiliating failures to an ignominious conclusion. The next year Gen. Harmar was fully exonerated by a court of inquiry, as he has been by the judgment of history. Nevertheless, he retired to his charming home near Philadelphia, and the government lost a most capable and patriotic officer. The government, in its haste and poverty, had sent him to certain disaster, and a proud soldier finds it hard to bear undeserved popular obloquy. He was too proud to complain, and too magnanimous to throw the blame upon those to whom it belonged.

Up to this time, the entire army of the United States consisted of but one regi- ment, which had never reached its maximum number. After the ineffectual cam- paign of Gen. Harmar, Congress authorized another regiment, the second of our army, and also an additional force of artillery. Preparations upon a larger scale were made for subduing the Indians. In the month of June an expedition of militia under Gen. Charles Scott, of Kentucky, marched from the mouth of the Ken- tucky river against the Indians on the upper Wabash. In August an expedition under Col. Wilkinson moved from Fort Washington northward, marching rapidly until it had reached the neighborhood of the Indian villages on the Maumee, then turned

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

due west, to attack the villages on the Wabash that had been harried by Gen. Scott a few months earlier. Neither expedition accomplished any permanent result, either in breaking the power or in overawing the Indians. The killing of a few warriors, the capture of women and children, the devastation of cornfields and the burning of villages only exasperated the savages, and made peace more remote.

Governor St. Clair had been appointed a major-general, and designated to com- mand the expedition against the Indians. He was given command of the two regi- ments of the army, with the artillery and an additional force of militia, which should have raised his army at least three thousand men. The General himself was a model of energy, courage and fidelity. He did all that was possible to prepare the expe- dition and make it efficient. The object of the expedition, as set forth in the instruc- tions given him by Secretary of War Gen. Knox, was to establish a chain of posts from Fort Washington to the Maumee river, at the mouth of the Auglaize. At the latter place it was designed to establish a strong fort in the heart of the Indian country to overawe the hostile Indians, and to strike as necessity might suggest.

The time allotted to Gen. St. Clair was too short for the purpose, even if he had at his command a disciplined army. The work of building the forts and transport- ing provisions through a difficult country could not by possibility have been exe- cuted within the time allowed. From the first, ill omens seemed to warn him of impending disaster. It was not until the 7th of September that Gen. Richard Butler, the second in command, reported at Fort Washington. On the same day the chief quartermaster made his appearance, and the chief commissary did not appear at all, except at the Treasury Department in Philadelphia. There was no time given for discipline or drill, or forwarding military stores. In order to protect the army from the drunkenness and disorder about Fort Washington, Gen. St. Clair early moved a portion of his command twenty-five miles to the north, and established Fort Hamilton. Even while the troops remained at Cincinnati, the place of encamp- ment was fixed three miles to the northwest of Fort Washington. The precise spot is unknown, but it must have been near that part of the city still known as Camp Washington. From the first, desertions were almost daily occurrences. Adj. Denny, in his Journal of the Campaign, states: "On the 3d of October a sergeant and twenty-five militia deserted. On the 4th a sergeant and nine militia;" and so on with the dismal record.

Gen. Harmar declined to take any command, and warned Gen. St. Clair that he was going out to certain overthrow. His experience of the previous year had been sufficient warning to him to keep away from coming doom. On the 4th of October the army moved from Fort Hamilton by way of Eaton and Greenville. A stockade fort was erected near Eaton, and another six miles south of Greenville, called Forts St. Clair and Jefferson. Desertions continued to increase until, five days before the final slaughter, the General was compelled to detach the first regiment, the best in his command, to march to the rear and guard the supplies from being plundered by deserters. This veteran regiment was not in the action at Fort Recovery. The second in command became seriously offended with Gen. St. Clair, and held no communication with him. Under such conditions, the army, being reduced by deser- tions and detachment to 1,400 men, on the 4th of November the great slaughter at Fort Recovery took place. The undisciplined militia fled at the first fire, and the camp was shortly in confusion. It affords some relief to the dismal picture, that personal courage and a very limited discipline held the bulk of the soldiers to a desperate fight for more than three hours. But the retreat was a rout in which nothing but speed was desirable. The army, which had moved forward at the rate of seven miles a day, was able on the retreat to reach Fort Jefferson, twenty-nine miles from the field of action, before nightfall on the day of the battle. It had required thirty days to move from Fort Hamilton to the battlefield, but the return was made in forty-eight hours. When the army reached Fort Jefferson on its retreat, not a

A.W. Machung

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

single ration had reached that point. The flight from the enemy was of necessity changed to a hurried and eager race for food.

Another expedition had failed, more imposing and better armed than Gen. Harmar's, but in other respects not better prepared. Want of discipline, of sup- plies, of all things needful for an army of conquest or occupation, had led to the most deplorable slaughter ever witnessed in the United States.

In November, 1791, at the time when the remnants of St. Clair's army were drifting homeward through Cincinnati, William H. Harrison, a young ensign, who was to be a conspicuous figure in the history of this region, appeared on the scene. The youth, fresh from his stately home at Berkeley and from the society of Phila- delphia, was appalled at the dissipation and drunkenness he witnessed in the embryo city. He says: "I certainly saw more drunken men in Cincinnati in forty- eight hours than I had ever seen in all my life."

Searching official inquiry acquitted Gen. St. Clair of blame, but the hero of a disaster rarely escapes popular odium. The slaughter at Fort Recovery was the end of hasty movements and half preparation. Congress at last became aware of the gravity of the situation. Great Britain on the north and Spain in the south and west eagerly watched the infant republic, and their agents fomented Indian hostilities. International questions of the gravest character were pending between the United States and the two unfriendly powers. Evidently a crisis was at hand. The army was raised to 5,168 men, and Gen. Wayne was appointed to the command. He dictated his own conditions, and made them wholly different from those imposed , upon St. Clair and Harmar. He would have no raw levies, no more six-months. soldiers, no more hurried incursions into a hostile country. All was careful, delib- erate, comprehensive. Every preparation was thorough, and every movement indi- cated permanent occupation and final results.

In order that no means might be neglected to secure peace, the government entered upon further negotiations. Two of its emissaries, bearing flags of truce, were assassinated. One, under the guidance of the missionary Heckewelder, reached Vincennes and held an ineffectual conference. Three commissioners. reached the northwest by courtesy of the governor of Canada, and were entertained at the mouth of the Detroit river in the house of a British subject. All the nego- tiations ended in nothing. The Indians demanded the Ohio river as the perpetual boundary line. This the United States could not grant.

While Fort Washington was the strong defense of the settlers, there were block- houses at Ludlow Station, at Colerain, at Columbus, at North Bend, and, possibly,. elsewhere. These heavy log structures, loop-holed for rifle practice, with over- hanging second story to permit a vertical fire by the garrison, were a safe refuge in danger. They were impregnable to Indians, except against blazing arrows. Captures and murders of settlers, hairbreadth escapes, and attacks upon block- houses, kept in mind that the war was actual and its dangers always imminent. A vigorous attack upon Colerain Station was long remembered, and its stirring inci- dents told at frontier firesides. The name of Bloody Run perpetuates the memory of a stubborn miniature battle near Carthage between a few Indians and whites, in which the percentage of casualties far exceeded our bloodiest battles. It was only an obscure skirmish, but it illustrated the personal courage that defied death, a courage that did not depend upon oaths, or discipline, or the commands of officers. There seems to have been generally peace and quiet about North Bend, a result ascribed to the wise conduct of Judge Symmes. In July, 1792, Rev. John Hecke- welder, the good missionary of the Moravians, writes: " The most singular circum- stance is that for two years they have been troubled with no Indian raids" (at. North Bend); and he adds: "Judge Symmes, who is looked upon as a father by this people, has, by his kind treatment of the Indians, who at first came here very 22

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

frequently, gained their friendship, and this has proved a better protection than a regiment of soldiers,"

During the winter of 1792-93 Gen. Wayne had his army in a camp of instruc- tion twenty miles below Pittsburgh. In the month of April, 1793, he reached Cin- cinnati. He called his encampment "Hobson's Choice," because on account of the river being very high it was the only encampment possible at the time. It was situated near the foot of Fifth street. The cavalry of his army was sent to the Kentucky side of the river, where Covington now stands, and during the following summer both the cavalry and infantry were continually drilled and practiced in all the evolutions and exercises that might fit them for their work. On September 17, 1793, he took up the march to Greenville, where he established a strong fort, and supplied it with ample provisions. True to his original determination, he left no means unemployed that might show to the enemy that he was able and eager to seize and hold. In December he took possession of the battlefield of St. Clair, twenty-three miles beyond Greenville, and erected Fort Recovery. During the autumn he had been reinforced by a thousand mounted men from Kentucky under Gen. Charles Scott. They were employed in guarding wagon trains and in scout- ing the forest. When he put his army in winter quarters he dismissed the Ken- tucky horsemen with orders to return the following season.

In June, 1794, the Indians made an attack upon Fort Recovery, which was characterized by unusual fierceness and persistency; but after a struggle of two days they were driven away with heavy loss. This was the first serious check suf- fered by the confederated Indians of the Northwest. Gen. Wayne had taken no . backward step. Every foot of ground once occupied was held, and he had defiantly pushed his posts into the enemy's country. On the 28th of July he moved from Greenville, fully prepared to bring the war to a decisive end. Before this time he had been rejoined by the Kentucky mounted troops under Gen. Scott, and his army was in the highest state of efficiency. Fort Defiance was erected almost upon the ground recently occupied by Indian villages, and from this fact it received its name.

On the 20th of August was fought the battle of Fallen Timbers, near the rapids of the Maumee river, and in one hour the Indian confederacy was hopelessly broken and dissolved. It was a victory of far-reaching consequence. It aided greatly in securing a treaty with Great Britain in the following year, which settled the most dangerous questions in controversy. It gave to the Spanish power, in the west and south, a new idea of the vigor and patriotism of the young republic.

It may seem somewhat surprising that so few of the men conspicuously identi- fied with the early campaigns about Cincinnati made that city their home. Gen. Harmar retired to Philadelphia. Gen. St. Clair, as soon as he had discharged his duties as governor of the Northwest, returned to Ligonier Valley, in Westmoreland county, Penn., where he lived in extreme poverty, caused by the sacrifices he had made for his country, and by the neglect of Congress to repay him the money he had actually advanced out of his private fortune. Gen. Wayne died shortly after the treaty at Greenville, at Erie, Penn., on his return eastward. Gen. Charles

Scott and other Kentuckians returned to their own homes. George Rogers Clarke lived at Louisville, neglected and disregarded until his death in 1818.

A notable exception, however, is the case of Maj. David Zeigler, who was the first mayor or president of Cincinnati, as the office was then styled. A native of Germany, an experienced soldier in his native land, he came to this country in 1775, for the purpose of entering the army of Independence. He was almost continu- ously in the military service until after the campaign of St. Clair, when he settled in Cincinnati. He became a prosperous merchant, and, from his experience and culture, he was easily one of the leading citizens of the village. In 1804 he was appointed the first United States Marshal of the District of Ohio, and from 1809 to his death he was surveyor of the port.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

Ephraim Kibbey, one of the original company that settled Columbia, was captain of the famous forty scouts who kept Gen. Wayne accurately informed of every move- ment of the enemy. He retained his legal residence at Columbia, but continued in the military service, and dying at St. Charles, Mo., in command of that military fort, about 1812, his remains rest in the old cemetery at that place. Some of his descendants still live in Cincinnati, among whom Thomas S. Royse may be named. His widow, Rachel (Stites) Kibbey, daughter of Benjamin Stites, the founder of Columbia, died in 1864 at the age of eighty-one, and was buried in the old Columbia graveyard.

By far the most distinguished acquisition brought to Cincinnati by these wars was Gen. William Henry Harrison, who was first ensign, then a lieutenant serving on Wayne's staff, during his campaign; then secretary of the Northwest Territory, then governor, and in the next war a distinguished and successful commander.

During these years of war and danger, Cincinnati was only a cluster of cabins attached to a garrison, the inhabitants never exceeding five hundred. None of the arts of peace was possible, and there was nothing to attract thrifty and virtuous citi- zens. The people lived by the military expenditures of government, and suffered all the ill effects of uncertain occupation, and the disorders that attach to a floating and irresponsible population. All accounts agree in presenting a dismal picture of an idle, drunken population, whose vices were neither relieved by refinement, nor awed by public reprobation. Peace brought change, but the growth of the city was scarcely noticeable until after the turn of the century. In 1800 the population was only 750-with few houses except log cabins. Even in this modern Sardis there were those who kept their garments clean. It is noteworthy that the gentle ministry of women was not wanting among the soldiers- anticipating by more than half a century the work of Florence Nightingale-forerunners of thousands, who, three- quarters of a century later, gave themselves to the work of mitigating the hardships of war.

The embryo city slowly took on the habits and practices of peace. The corrupt- ing influences of armies and garrisons ebbed away. The modifying influences of law, and of a more exacting public opinion, restrained vice or drove the incurably lawless to the receding frontier. The country to the north and south rapidly filled up with a hardy and industrious population. The forests, year by year, went down before the axe, and disappeared in flame. The plow furrowed the fertile soil-ere long selling and buying demanded a common point of exchange, and the growth of the city had fairly begun.

WAR OF 1812-14.

The animosities toward Great Britain caused by the war of the Revolution had never been allowed to cool. The unfortunate and exasperating failures to comply with the requirements of the Treaty of Paris, with their charges and counter charges of bad faith, would have been sufficient to prolong distrust and alienation; but the continuation of the border wars for twelve years brought the frontiersmen to a frenzy of hatred and resentment. They were in no mood to weigh the counter claims of Great Britain. They knew only of murderous forays and desolated homes. They heard of Elliott, McKee and the Girtys, renegades who lived among the Indians, and were reported to receive British pay and to move according to British inspiration. When that evil influence was ended by the Jay treaty with Great Britain, and the treaty of Greenville with the Indians, the wars of the French Revolution were rag- ing, and the ends of the earth soon felt the shock of nations in battle array.

The disturbance, caused by this unequal upheaval, could not be confined to the eastern continent. As the contest deepened and intensified, the two giant gladia- tors seemed to divest themselves of everything but deadly weapons, and to struggle without regard to the rights or comfort of spectators. The contention between the

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

United States and Great Britain arose about the practice of searching American ships for contraband goods, and for British subjects, who might be pressed to ser- vice in the British navy. For years these aggressions continued, both the great belligerents partaking in them, each according to his means and opportunities. There is reason to conclude that hostile feeling toward Great Britain was too val- uable a party capital in those days, to be either dissipated by a treaty of peace, or risked in war. Thus a condition between peace and war, without the advantages of either, with more than the rancor of war, but without its seriousness or dignity, con- tinued more than a decade.

Not the least striking feature of the history of that period is the fact, that the feeling of resentment, and the demand for war, was strongest in the West, among a people whose goods were in no danger of seizure, and whose neighbors were not ex- posed to impressment. It was also a general feature of the strife throughout the whole country, that the political party, seemingly in favor of war, was opposed to. preparation, while the party that favored peace urged vigorous armament as a. means of securing peace, or, if the worst came, to make war effective.

In Cincinnati there seems to have been a unanimous clamor for war. The pub- lications of that day, and the items of information preserved in the only newspaper, all point to the same conclusion. Every aggression of Great Britain was exploited, and many were announced with no better support than the tongue of rumor. Every aggression of France was palliated or explained away. If a British regiment landed at Quebec, the fact was carefully noted, and a deduction made plain. If a squad of Indians was seen in the woods north of Greenville, their passage was chronicled, and a sinister meaning intimated. Party zeal and national hostility were fed with the same exciting food. The diplomatic correspondence between the two govern- ments was largely published. A rupture in the cabinet of Mr. Madison-Robert Smith, Secretary of State, resigning because he differed from the President about. the negotiations with Great Britain-is more fully discussed, with more documents, letters and comments, than would now be accorded to a similar affair by our huge daily papers. Constant efforts were made to impress the popular mind with the belief that England was exhausted, moribund and tottering to her fall. It was asserted that the old King, "blind, and lame and crazy," was a complete represen- tative of the government. The battle of Tippecanoe, fought November 7, 1811, was taken as full confirmation of every charge made against the British, and added greatly to the spirit of war. Congress was called to meet in 1811, a month earlier than the prescribed date. The British minister and the Secretary of State had dropped the courtly circumlocution of diplomacy, and were bluntly making " demands" upon each other.

In Cincinnati, people met at the "Columbian Inn," on the southwest corner of Main and Second streets. or at the " Wheat Sheaf Tavern," and drank toasts as hot as their liquors. We read that on Sunday the 19th of May, 1812, one month before the declaration of war, "the Cincinnati Troop, commanded by Capt. James W. Sloan, with a great concourse of people assembled at the stone meeting-house, and listened to an eloquent discourse by Rev. R. W. Burke from the text: 'Prepare for war; wake up the mighty men; let them come up; beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong.'" If anything was wanting to the furor of war, it could be supplied from that text.

The government ordered the army to be increased by an addition of twenty-five thousand men. Out of the whole number of officers to command this army, Ohio was allowed one lieutenant-colonel, one major, seven captains, seven first lieutenants, seven second lieutenants, six ensigns, and one surgeon. Such distribution of offices would hardly be satisfactory to the Ohio men of the present day. Congress also authorized the President at his discretion to accept the services of the militia of the different States, not to exceed fifty thousand in number. About this time war songs,

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History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 52

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1592

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592