USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 7
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 7
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
Made decisive by the report of his Adjutant, on January 16, that the Ohio grant would soon be forever lost, Governor Dinwiddie. hurried two hundred men through the mountain snow. Of these Virginia Volunteers, a party of forty under Captain Trent reached the Forks of the Ohio, and, on Feb- ruary 17, 1754, planted the first post in a stockade on the site of Pittsburgh. Before the fort was done, the French came in strength, forced its surrender on April 17, and gave it the name of Fort Duquesne. All the travel between Wills Creek or Cumberland on the Potomac and the Forks of the Ohio, a distance of one hundred and thirty miles, whether by Indians or with Gist as guide was over the Big Trail which had be-
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come a trace for pack trains. Over this trace, Washington, now Lieutenant Colonel, hastened west with the first seventy volunteers to aid Trent's men, but met them retreating to Cumberland. With no orders for such a contingency, the boy Colonel, for he was barely twenty-two, marched on to defend the Company's store house at the mouth of Red Stone on the Monongahela.
Hearing of the French advance through friendly Indians, Washington halted short to the east to construct a breast work. While his men were so engaged, he went forward with a small force that encountered Jumonville's party of whom all were killed or captured but one. Washington's command, "Fire," on May 28, 1754, kindled the anger of nations into open war, for which his name was heard in France with ut- most abhorrence. It was different twenty-five years later; but then, he so skillfully opposed a much larger force, that after a severe battle on July 3, he was granted the honor of retiring from Fort Necessity with all his arms and stores. On the fourth of July, 1754, the Bourbon banner waved alone in the Ohio Valley, but not long.
On February 20, 1755, Major General Edward Braddock arrived in Virginia from England with the pick of the English army. During the spring and early summer, he chopped and widened and smoothed the Big Trail into a way for artillery and wagon trains, that was known as Braddock's Road for fifty years to come. Lest the reader may think the story is long to hear or going far from the purpose, if he can trace a lineage to the early people of Old Clermont, I can but ask for a glance ahead along the way worn by our fathers toward the setting sun over their land of hope. For the chances are many to few that those who wagoned from the east came over the Big Trail. By 1802 the travel was so great that the neces- sity of improvement during the next twenty years involved an outlay of nearly $7,000,000 on what was henceforth to be called The National Road. Though obsoleted by railroads, this, the greatest of our historic highways, is returning to vogue as the pleasure path of the automobile, from the charms of the Chesapeake, by the beauty of Ohio, to the western wonderland. That "Touring Europe" will yield to such allur- ing travel at home is less than prophecy, and the meanest of
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the trip will not be the part from "Chillycothia on Sciota" over John Donnel's Trace through Brown and Clermont counties, to "Cincinnata." Therefore, we may continue the way, as- sured that our steps are on classic ground that should be made more familiar.
The ninth of July, 1755, made "Braddock's Defeat" at the end of his marching one of the woeful landmarks of Eng- lish and American history. Seven hundred and seventy-seven out of eighteen hundred men engaged fell before the hidden fire of a foe mostly gathered from Ohio. Compensation for the humiliation can be found in the education of Colonel George Washington, who there learned the discipline and tac- tics of larger forces, and also noted that the British army was not invincible. In vexation over the retreat it was his lot to conduct, he wrote his mother that, if in his power to avoid, he would not again go to the Ohio; but on the same day, Au- gust 14, 1755, he was chosen Commander in Chief of the De- fense of Virginia. The duty could not be declined until Ohio was rescued. On September 8, 1756, John Armstrong with three hundred Pennsylvanians destroyed Kittaning, the Del- aware town forty-five miles up the Allegheny. Except this, the years 1756 and 1757 passed in a constant defense against incessant raids from the West. In 1758 Washington in com- mand of "a really fine corps of nineteen hundred Virginians" was combined with Armstrong's corps of twenty-seven hun- dred Pennsylvanians, and fourteen hundred regulars, all under the British veteran, General Forbes. Notwithstanding the great force and preparation intended to conquer, and the ex- treme caution of Forbes, who advanced an average of a mile a day, the all important strategic point on the Ohio was not to be won without another costly sacrifice of life. On Sep- · tember 14 Major Grant with eight hundred Highlanders and Virginians in attempting to deceive the enemy was caught in an ambuscade, with the loss of himself and two hundred and ninety-five men. The command of the advance was given to Washington, without whose daring energy and the confi- dence of his men, the campaign must have failed. Finding no chance to waylay his vigilant approach, the Indians about Fort Duquesne disappeared in the silent forest, and the gar- rison of five hundred French in the night of November 24
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destroyed all that fire would burn and boated down the Ohio, bearing the lily flags of France forever away for a short stay in the forts far beyond the banks of Old Clermont where there was none to note that the death march of a long line of kings was going by. For the next generation was to see the royal blood of France flow from the guillotine, because of misfortunes that lost America.
On the following day, November 25, 1758, when the ban- ners of England floated over the Ohio, the name of the spot was changed to Pittsburgh, in honor of him who had quickly changed defeat into victory and given England a new era of glory. The repossession of Fort Pitt gave much but not complete relief to the Ohio frontier of Virginia and Pennsyl- vania. The flag of France that waved them on drooped lower at Quebec, September 13, 1759, and finally fell at Montreal, September 8, 1760. On September 13, just four days after, Major Robert Rogers was detached from the besiegers of Montreal, with two hundred picked rangers equipped for dis- tant forest service, to seize the French trading stations and to proclaim that a continental empire had changed masters. On December 23 he left the British flag over Detroit which was for many years to be the base of supplies for a savage war against the pioneers of the Ohio Valley. From there he went by the Big Trail to the village on the "Maskongam" where Gist found Croghan ten years before, and there, as else- where, British protection was promised against the settlers' greed for game land. Then the party, of which a moving picture would be worth a fortune, passed on a week later to Fort Pitt. The proffered friendship of Rogers and his romantic rangers did not inspire general confidence in the untutored mind, and chief among the skeptic statesmen of the woods was Pontiac, whose story forms two of Parkman's most fascinating volumes.
In popular estimation in the middle, if not in all the col- onies, Washington was the American hero of the French and Indian War. As the consummation of his military ambi- tion, the recapture of Fort Pitt permitted him to resign his commission, and, just one week later, on January 6, 1759, to marry the lady of his choice, and retire to the ideal country life at Mount Vernon. The event had been waiting for the
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expiration of his military duties. Those duties covered a con- tinuous service of a little more than five years of most exact- ing attention and of the most exciting danger, all of utmost importance to the future of Ohio-a name in his thoughts only second to Virginia. This service was also the school that made him easily first in training for the Revolution. Yet, this just cause for local pride in a large share of his glory has received such scant notice that the present mention is apt to cause more surprise than appreciation. With neither tint nor glow from the after splendor of his achievement, his lead- ership in gaining Ohio for Anglo Saxon culture, measured by results, only lacks the mystery making haze of time for a com- parison with the epic tasks of classic heroes. Because of knightly poise with youthful grace, he was the herald to chal- lenge the French foray upon his people's promised land. And, because of intrepid caution, tranquil courage, surpassing dis- cernment, inflexible purpose and resolute decision, he was the leader in forcing France from the Ohio Valley. For this he deserves to be kept in special memory by all who inherit the good thereof. All this was accomplished before he was twen- ty-eight years old. After the repulsion at the slaughter of Braddock's army, when the world seemed too little for the cost, his love for Ohio wavered no more. Fortune in heaping his reward permitted him in the sunset of life to commit the defense of the Beautiful Land to one who had marched with him, nearly forty years before, to the ruins of Fort Duquesne, as a boy only thirteen years old, with the soon to be brilliant name of Anthony Wayne.
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CHAPTER V.
UNDER BRITISH COLORS.
Political Results of the French and Indian War-The Spectre of Independence Haunts the British Mind-Repressive Pol- icy-The English Crown Takes the Place of the French- Settlers Forbidden to Go West of the Mountain Crest- Pontiac's Conspiracy-The Battle of Bushy Run-Bouquet's Expedition-The Treaty of Fort Stanwix Made the Ohio a Boundary Between the Races-The Odious Act of Que- bec-The Ohio Valley a Hunting Ground for Savage Pleas- ure-Rebellion Rampant along the Mountains before it was Whispered on the Coast-Washington again Goes West on the Big Trail-Dunmore's War-The Battle of Point Pleasant, the First Battle of the Revolution-The Shawnees -Cornstalk-Daniel Boone-First Surveying on the Ohio- Colonel Bowman's Expedition-George Rogers Clark- Clark's Conquest-The American Revolution as Told Is Mainly an Eastern Tale-The Western Side of the Revolu- tion-Clark's Expedition in 1780-The Strife Along the Eastern Ohio-Fort Laurens-Official Report of British Governor De Peyster - The Avowed British Policy Was War on the Inhabitants of the West and South -The Massacre of Wyoming-The Massacre of Colonel Lochry's Command-The Massacre of Gnadenhutten- Crawford's Defeat-The Siege of Bryant's Station and the Battle of Blue Licks-The Last British Battle Flag Seen from Clermont-The Last Siege of Fort Henry, the Last Battle of the American Revolution-General Clark's Retal- iating Expedition in 1782-What Might Have Been With Modern Inventions-The Motives of France and Spain in Making Peace-Franklin's Success in Treaty Making- Thirty-two Years Between Gist's Exploration and Inde- pendence.
Although the fury of the war in America ceased with the French surrender in 1760, peace was not declared in Europe
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till February 10, 1763. This, instead of bringing satisfaction, produced a sudden and violent revulsion of feeling among the Indians, in Great Britain, and in the colonies. The Indians long accustomed to the fraternal companionship of the French were enraged at the aggressive arrogance of the victors who claimed their hunting lands and fishing waters. They knew no distinction and understood no difference between the Great English Father beyond the sea and his greedy children near at hand. This Indian patriotism found quick and terrible and all but successful expression in the famous Conspiracy of Pontiac.
The spirit and aptitude for war displayed by the Americans alarmed the thoughtful among the British with visions of rebellion, whenever the growth of the Colonies should prompt them to defy the distant crown. To lay the specter of inde- pendence that was haunting the stage of English politics was now a chief concern with those who managed the conscience of the King, in his great love for his American subjects. In the wisdom of their council a plan was devised that bade the colonies to stop growing and be clamped in their present too sufficient limits. A military government was assumed and imposed over the conquest from France, and the agents of that government were ordered to take the place of French rule with the least possible friction, so that the new Dominion should be a restraint, and not a succor for the English speak- ing turbulents to the south. The Indians were to be changed into allies of the crown by a practical concession of all they asked. That alliance was consummated and controlled the Indian vote for a hundred years-always favorable to the Eng- lish government-always hostile to the settlers. Trading posts were to be maintained at points convenient for the various tribes. The fur trade was to be conducted on a scale to reach the remotest wilds, just as before except the profits were to be collected in London instead of Paris. Above and beyond all, no settlements were to be made on any streams flowing west or north beyond the Alleghanies. The bound- less realms of the Ohio and the Lakes were to be a hunt- ing ground for savage pleasure. Proclamation to this effect was made on October 31, 1761, by Colonel Henry Bouquet of the Royal army, who was Commander and virtual Mili-
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tary Governor at Fort Pitt. Such was the contumelius re- ward of the Motherland for the loyal service of the Colonies in humbling her enemies as never before or since.
It was the most arrogant among the many proud periods of England's conquering chase for power. What Europe calls the Seven Years War added Great to the name of Fred- eric and founded the German Empire. It placed Plassey on the roll of decisive battles, gained India from the East, and half of North America from the West. It planted the earth with English garrisons and posts of trade, circled the seas with English homes and spotted their waves with English sails. But it brought dismay to the people in the Colonies, for, in the blood purchased conquest, not a soldier of them all could lawfully hunt a deer or make a home.
The subsequent resistance to British tyranny by the pa- triots of the seaboard is common fame. The spirit of the Boston Tea Party and the protests against the Stamp Act were trifles light as air in comparison with the scornful wrath of the Virginians who were hindered thus from their hard won rights beyond the Alleghanies or across the Ohio. The lowlanders opposed taxation without representation from prin- ciple with no large sense of great personal loss. But those who gazed westward from the hills were looking for a stolen treasure that was to be recovered upon the first occasion. The crown had ordered Bouquet to proclaim more than man could enforce. His warning was scorned. Rebellion was ram- pant in the mountains, and Revolution began on the streams of the Ohio before it was whispered on the Concord. The west- ward course of the settlers was forced back upon the moun- tains by Pontiac's War which overwhelmed all but those in Detroit and Fort Pitt. Colonel Bouquet hastened west- ward in the summer of 1763 with five hundred men to the rescue of Fort Pitt. On August 5, he won the Battle of Bushy Run only twenty-five miles away, but the victory cost the loss of nearly every third man. In 1764 General Brad- street reached Detroit by sail with three thousand men. In October of the same year, Colonel Bouquet came out from Fort Pitt with fifteen hundred men over the Big Trail to the Muskingum Trail and thence down to Coshocton, where the over awed Indians promised peace which was probably
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kept by the great chiefs. Pontiac's confederacy of nine thou- sand warriors dissolved before such arrays, and he, the most notable Indian of that day, ceased to prophesy that their French brothers were waiting on ships for the Great Father- the gaudy and detestable Louis-to bring them again to their own. The less responsible warriors remembered the profit- able pilferings and did not forget and could not forego the fell fury of the fierce foray. Therefore the trails from the east were the woeful ways for captive trains from plundered homes. But still, the advance guards of the white race came fighting down the westward flowing streams; for neither the King's command nor the whoops of war could hold them from answering the call of the wild that lured them into the forest, some to wealth and station, and some to hapless grief or fiery death.
Some betterment was expected for the western settlers in 1768 by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix now known as Rome. New York. For six thousand dollars, the Iroquois relin- quished their claim between the crest of the Alleghany Moun- tains and the Ohio river in width, and between the Allegheny and Tennessee rivers in length. The difference between the scope of country and the amount paid reveals not the ignor- ance of the Iroquois but the vanity of the claim. The Treaty stipulated that the Ohio should be the boundary between the races, and left other tribal claims unsettled. Every public effort toward an occupation of the region was thwarted. The King would not abate his repressive policy. Petition and remonstrance availed nothing. The King had proclaimed that westward settlement was pernicious. The land between the mountains and the rivers was to be a neutral zone that neither of the hostile races should pass. Therefore, Long live the King !
With little boding of the tempest and no conception of its fury, the issue raised by a stupid tyrant was referred by a cringing ministry to the servile parliament of 1774, which presumed a final and triumphant settlement on June 22, by passing the Act of Quebec. Of all the hateful legislation of that venal Parliament noted beyond all others for insolent disregard of colonial rights, none was more odious than the Act of Quebec, which robbed the Conquest from France of
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every semblance of liberty, and instituted every form of royal prerogative and imperial absolutism. Then, to cut under and forever end the charter claims of several colonies and of Vir- ginia in particular. the Province of Quebec was enlarged and defined to include all that the French had claimed and fought for north and west of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers. Every vote for the Act. and that was nearly all, ignored or scorned every westward claim of the English colonists. This, with the neutral zone extending to the mountain crest. was to be ruled by a military force responsible only to the King. The Indians in possession, for the good of the fur trade, by im- plication, became a forest ranging police with full power to easily, speedily, secretly and legally deal with every unlicensed intruder. The game laws protecting the royal parks of Great Britain were to be enforced against the Virginia poachers on the lands promised them for the service that won it all. The peril of the border was not greater when the French were victorious. The nefarious iniquity of the cunning scheme that was to gather and smother the aspiring Colonies between shores controlled by invincible fleets and the mountains held by scalping cannibals armed with British steel and powder is beyond present belief. The upshot of the attempted coer- cion is found in the Declaration of Independence wherein the King is charged with this as chief among his many tyrannies. The question was not so vital in New England, but where water flowed to the Ohio, a wrath grew that three genera- tions did not efface. The descendants of some such Vir- ginians within memory amid the intelligence of even Brown and Clermont counties, protested that their children should not study English grammar because of the hated name.
Before the machinery for enforcing the Act of Quebec could be set in action. the long American conflict for human rights that began at the landing of the Pilgrims was again' wrapped in smoking battle. Undaunted settlers had appeared on the western slopes as far as the banks of the Ohio in spite of Bouquet's proclamation. The three Zane brothers came to the site of Wheeling with others and built stockaded cabins. The name of Zane has had much fine mention in Ohio. March 5, 1770, was made memorable by the Boston Massacre by which Americans on the coast learned the personal peril of their
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liberties. On October 21, 1770, Colonel George Washington, Colonel George Croghan, Colonel William Crawford, Dr. Craik, Joseph Nicholson, Robert Bell, William Harrison and Charles Morgan reached Logstown on a visit to Ohio. A good deal of United States History can be learned by a thor- ough investigation of these names. Aside from the social satisfaction in the little noted fact, the incident is valuable in proof that after eleven years, Washington rode again through the scenes of his western campaign, with leisure to study the experience, shortly before assuming the great re- sponsibilities of guiding the Revolution. We may be sure that he noted and remembered the fatal facility for attack from the northwest through the Big Trail by which the havoc of thousands of warriors from Detroit and beyond could be made decisive. The war party in Great Britain relied on this sav- age alliance for the suppression of rebellion as only second to their naval advantage on the coast side.
In anticipating the rebellion meditated by the boldest. and in recounting the anxieties endured, the thoughtful student, while .shuddering at the loss, will thrill with suspense at the question, why the British with such ample chance did not inflict still greater harm. A fatalist may say the end was the result of infinite balancings. The explanation is found in a maze of incidents that astonished and perplexed contemporary opinion, and still puzzle and baffle inquiry. Out of the con- fusion that involved Lord Dunmore, the royal Governor of Virginia, in a suspicion of avaricious duplicity to both King and people; that cursed the name of John Conolly, the com- mander at Fort Pitt, with malicious treachery ; that soiled the memory of Michael Cressap with an indefinite agency in a fiendish massacre; that gave Logan, the Mingo, first reputa- tion among Indian orators ; that brought Simon Girty into the pale of humanity ; that charged Colonel John Gibson with lit- erary imposture; that introduced the names of Daniel Mor- gan, George Rogers Clark and Andrew Lewis to American admiration-out of all this and out of the strange negotiations at Camp Charlotte near Chillicothe, Ohio, where three thou- sand conquering Virginians grew suspicious of Dunmore ; and from a cloud of other obscuring details, these facts remain clear : the Battle of Point Pleasant, on October 10, 1774, began
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the American Revolution, nullified the Act of Quebec, and broke the power of the Indians to the northwest at the outset of the war in which they were to have played so great a part.
Whatever Dunmore's purpose might have been, he could hardly have done more for America and yet keep his breath in England. The Virginians clamored for pledges against raids to come. The exaction of hostages would have been annulled by the King. As it was, the crafty and rapacious Scotchman kept his immense grants in the neutral zone and made the promise of peace depend upon Shawnee pride. That personal promise was so kept that none could win them to war in the east until the crisis was past. In those days their towns were Wakatomika on the Muskingum, the Pickaway Plains by the Scioto, and near Xenia, Piqua and Bellefontaine on the Miamis. In August, 1774, Colonel Angus McDonald with four hundred men from West Virginia destroyed Wakatomika. Dunmore with the central division marched for the Scioto. The left or southern division under General Andrew Lewis to the number of eleven hundred canoed down the Kanawha and camped at its mouth on the northern bank. The men were the bravest of Virginia. Against them came an equal number of Indians equally armed to fight for their homes. Each army was worthy of their foe's best steel. Of all men, the stock of Virginia is proud of a reputation for courage under fire. Of all Indians, the battle record of the Shawnees is the most conspicuous for fierce action, stubborn resistance and a long roll of victory. Out of much wandering they held together and disdained other Indians. From position and hatred, they were long the first in opposition against the whites, of whom they killed, so they boasted, ten times more than any other tribe. Although seldom exceeding five hun- dred warriors, they showed "the mettle of their pasture," and were the "Ohio Men".of their date. The Shawnees were the backbone of the forces that defeated Braddock in 1775, that overwhelmed Major Grant's Highlanders in 1758, that plucked every fourth man from Colonel Bouquet in 1763, that made Kentucky "The Dark and Bloody Ground," that annihilated Major David Roger's command by the mouth of the Licking in 1779, that destroyed Colonel Lochry's force nearby in 1781, and thwarted General Clark's campaign against Detroit, that
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