USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 8
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 8
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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
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disastrously defeated the chivalry of Kentucky in the Battle - of Blue Licks in 1782, that defeated General Harmar in two battles in 1790, that destroyed General St. Clair in 1791, that yielded for a time after General Wayne's terrific victory in 1794, that rose again under Tecumseh against General Harri- 'son at Tippecanoe, and again to their final overthrow by the same General at the Battle of the Thames. Notwithstanding all their heroic defense, who is there to mourn for the Shaw- nees? Not one. To dispute the courage of their dauntless resistance, is to lessen the name of their conquerors.
These, the Spartans of Ohio, mostly recruited from the Xenia and Chillicothe towns now or formerly in the congres- sional or judicial districts embracing Brown and Clermont counties were led to the mouth of the Kanawha and formed in the main division by their chief, Cornstalk, one of the great- est of Indian Generals. He commanded the most invincible and devoted Indian army that had ever gathered in America. Two young white hunters looking for deer came upon the Indians, at day break, moving into line for attack from where they had crossed the Ohio during the night. One was killed, but the other fled with the alarm. Three hundred men rushed to a skirmish line while the main line made ready. At sun rise the Indians opened fire for one of the most picturesque of battles, on a perfect day, and over a field of noble grandeur. Both lines of battle stretched from the Kanawha across to the Ohio, not more than twenty yards apart, and often nearer, "in an equal weight of action from wing to wing," from morn- ing till near the close of day. Through all, Cornstalk's mighty voice was heard shouting, "Be strong ! Be strong!" When the battle could not be won, his line withdrew their dead which were sunk in the rivers before they retreated to the Ohio for- est, while the night covered the first battle and one of the three great victories of the Revolution. For, without Point Pleasant, Saratoga and Yorktown would have little fame or none. When Cornstalk vainly tried to rally the warriors for `an attack on Dunmore's still larger division, from which their large loss at Point Pleasant may be inferred, he turned, struck his tomahawk with all his strength into the war post, and said : "I will go and make peace," to which the chiefs said : "Yes, yes." And they kept their word to Dunmore well into
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the third year, in spite of all blandishment. It is a pleasant record that the Shawnees, during that peace in 1775 and 1776, traded with other tribes for prisoners that were thereby re- stored to their friends.
In 1777 the British agents found much trouble in forming a confederation of the tribes for invasion, because of the peace- ful or rather neutral policy of the Shawnees and Delawares who still remembered Point Pleasant. Their occupation of Cen- tral Ohio gave them much strategic importance. Peace was strongly advised by the older men and most of all by their Sachem, Moluntha, who will have other mention in these pages in a most dramatic scene with General William Lytle. In that summer, Cornstalk, finding the younger faction becom- ing more popular than the peaceful or conservative, went to Point Pleasant, now a settlement, to warn the Americans of the gathering storm. Instead of a grateful reception, he was made a prisoner and held as a hostage. A few days later he and his son, Elenipsico, and Red Hawk. a Delaware chief, on the same mission, were basely assassinated. Then, "Revenge," for that awful crime became the Shawnee watchword and reply.
The liberal patriotism of the vicinity has perpetuated the memory of Cornstalk by a splendid monument on the scene of his great battle and near the place of his murder. It also marks a turning point in American history. The battle brought much benefit to the Sons of Liberty but the murders were a great victory for the British. The Shawnees took Cornstalk's toma- hawk from the peace post and rushed to a war that would have been ruinous to the Americans three years sooner. It came too late to thwart their liberty. Before the banded tribes could take the trail Saratoga was won and France came back to take a sweet revenge upon the British King. The brutally senseless murder of Cornstalk and the two young chiefs left the conservatives with neither argument nor disposition to hinder the schemes that hurried all factions into a war in which they could gain nothing and must lose all. It must not be understood that there was a semblance of modern security in the about to be broken peace that had been rife with the constant collision of the innate strife of races. But there was much difference between the occasional incursions of gangs
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that stole and killed and ran away, and the overwhelming hordes that filled the whole region with days of lurking fear and the nights with boding vigils. A most pitiful result was a fiercer opposition in a new direction not guilty of Corn- stalk's tragic death.
On May 1, 1769, Daniel Boone and five others started from the banks of the Yadkin in North Carolina "in quest of Ken- tuckee" where they were to find a tract of the richest land and finest game in the world-so they had heard. They hunted and wandered "with great success for a year," except that John Stewart was killed by Indians strolling like themselves. Boone returned to the Yadkin with stories of a marvelous land. Won by his descriptions, about eighty men, women and chil- dren started with him in September, 1773, for the newly dis- covered paradise, but they were forced back by a larger party of Indians with the loss of four killed and five wounded. In spite of the King's order forbidding settlements west of the mountain crest, Lord Dunmore permitted bounty lands to be located during 1772 along the Kanawha and the Ohio. In 1773, Thomas Bullitt, the three McAffee brothers, James Douglass and others went down the Ohio, the first English, not traders, to make the trip. In August Bullitt laid off a town site by the Falls of the Ohio, and also marked off sev- eral fine tracts for Dunmore whose craving for choice lands exceeded his fear of the King so far away. In June, 1774, James Harrod built the first cabin in Kentucky, but he and Boone were drawn away to the Battle of Point Pleasant.
After Dunmore's peace, Boone returned with others and by June 14, 1775, the palisade at Boonesborough was occupied as the first white man's fort in Kentucky. Either because of Dunmore's peace or the inattention of the Indians, the building of these forts was not greatly hindered till 1776, and then by scattered bands rather than by a combined attack. But in 1777 the severity of the raids became very oppressive. Boonesborough alone was besieged twice in April and once in July, each time by a large force. In February, 1778, Boone and twenty-six men were captured at one time. This calamity had compensation, for during his captivity, a grand council of the confederated tribes was held at "Old Chillicothe," near Xenia. This council determined on an immense invasion,
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which, after much discussion, was directed against Kentucky. Boone moved from place to place by his captors heard the plans, and saw the hundreds of war decked braves in their gathering at the Old Town, as the place by Xenia is yet called. Impelled by personal hope and fear for his people, Boone made a marvelous escape by the most direct course, which could not have differed much from the old Xenia Road through Clermont county by Williamsburg, almost due south about one hundred and fifty miles to Boonesborough. Stop- ping only to give warning, and planning to delay and divide the attention of the invaders, Boone and nineteen companions hasted away and made a most daring raid on the Indians living along Paint creek and towards the Scioto. This ex- pedition judged by the direct course and by subsequent move- ments must have trailed to and fro by or near Ripley. From this service, rash, dangerous, never repeated and yet curiously significant of the men, Boone's party returned to share the greatest of all the many perils of their settlement.
On August 8, 1778, the awful horde of four hundred war- riors, with the Shawnees in front seeking vengeance for the pacific Cornstalk, under a British flag that had been car- ried down the Little Miami along the western edge of Cler- mont, began the memorable but comparatively fruitless nine days' siege of Boonesborough. Yet, eighty-one scalps and thirty-four prisoners were reported at Detroit for bloody booty. In July, 1779, the Kentuckians retaliated for the first time in full force with a march, under Colonel John Bowman, up and down the trial along the Little Miami, against the Xenia towns, with results that were disappointing if not hu- miliating. The meager success was probably due to the cau- tion against ambuscades. For Bowman and several subor- dinates had been selected for the duty because of recent con- spicuous service in another enterprise, that for risk, courage, skill and results has no superior in authentic romance.
History tells of few men who have seen and served their country's need more completely than the First Great General of the Northwest. George Rogers Clark, a native of Al- bemarle, Virginia, with a slight acquaintance with books, be- came a surveyor. In his twenty-second year he was with a company on the Kanawha who were fired upon before the
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Battle of Point Pleasant. Six months later he was a fellow scout with Michael Cressap, Simon Kenton and Simon Girty for Dunmore's army. In 1775 he appeared among the Vir- ginians in Kentucky, and earnestly advised an effort for civil recognition. He was chosen a delegate for that purpose in 1777, and as such he insisted on the institution of the county of Kentucky, and urged supplies for its defense. He further urged that the surest defense of their settlements would be found in attack, of which, the proper object was the French- English forts in Illinois. The plan of the young hunter, big as a giant and quick as a panther, with a mind to match, cap- tured the imagination of Governor Patrick Henry and Con- gressman Thomas Jefferson. Through their influence a force of three hundred and fifty men with five hundred pounds of powder was alotted for the purpose. After long and vex- atious delay, during which Clark mortgaged his property beyond its value, two hundred men were recruited, whom he led on foot to Pittsburgh in January, 1778, and then by boats to the Falls of the Ohio. Some weeks were spent in drilling and in building a fort for a base at Louisville, manned by those unwilling to go farther. In the midst of the total eclipse of June 24. 1778, his boats started down the Ohio to Fort Massac by the mouth of the Cumberland. Then they began the marvelous marching to and fro across Southern Illinois, amid which Fort Kaskaskia was captured and the Stars and Stripes planted on the Mississippi on July 4, 1778. That is one of the most significant of many notable events coincident with Independence Day. In the remote distance from other thrilling action and with little more than ru- mors with tardy confirmation no large notice was gained at that time.
Now, a writer thoughtful of the philosophy of events will place that achievement in comparison with the restoration of the Flag of the Union over Vicksburg by Grant on July 4, 1863, by which the Father of Waters was again permitted to flow unvexed to the sea. For, without the Conquest made by Clark, the Americans had no title that would have gained the least attention from the aroused jealousies of France and Spain who were our allies in the war that promised to lessen the importance of England, but our steady opponents
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in the Treaty for anything that would strengthen the Amer- icans against the remaining Spanish and recent French pos- sessions beyond the Mississippi or along the Gulf. Without the title of conquest and the occupation of the forts, the same powerful doctrine of "in statu quo" that prevailed over the manifest reluctance of our own allies would have been invin- cible for the crown of England and would have made the current of the Ohio as firmly British as the tides of the St. Lawrence. Even at that day of reckoning for the past and in forecasting things to be, France deprecated the continental energy that attained her Louisiana Territory twenty years later; and Spain contemned the aggressive nationality that has eventually driven her flag from America.
Other forts were surprised and captured in quick succes- sion, and on August I the American flag was raised at Old Vincennes. When the news came to Detroit, Governor Ham- ilton was planning a vast expedition to capture Fort Pitt. Instead, he hastened to retrieve the losses in the Southwest, and on December 16, easily regained Vincennes, where, be- cause of floods and the trouble of wintering such a host, he went into fort and dismissed the Indians to their homes. In reporting this situation, Clark now in his twenty-sixth year wrote: "I must take Hamilton or he will take me." On February 24, 1779, Clark and his one hundred and thirty ragged heroes, after an attack for which history has no par- allel, took Hamilton and seventy-nine British soldiers from the fort and sent them prisoners to Virginia, while the Amer- ican flag was raised to fall no more, to this day, at Old Vin- cennes. In these days, February 6, 1778, when Clark's star was dawning, France acknowledged our independence and started her fleets and armies to make it good. Thereupon, Clinton, the British commander in chief, collected and con- centrated for the defense of New York Bay. Washington then gathered the continentals in the Highlands nearby, while the brunt of the war shattered the South and shocked the West.
The American Revolution, the dawn of a regenerated race, and the natal date of an era that gladdens earth with brighter hopes than bards had sung or prophets dared to dream, has alike become the sage's boldest theme and the school boy's
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choicest tale. But it is mainly a tale of Lexington and Bos- ton Harbor, of Valley Forge and Jersey raids, of Independ- ence Hall and West Point's gloomy fame, of Palmetto Pine and Cowpen's mountain strife, of Saratoga Plain and York- town Heights, of Andre's doom and the glory gained by the Youth from France, of the gallant Wayne and the graver Greene, and of the deeds of Washington, the matchless hero of the world. It is a story told by those who grew in the living presence of their past, and who had not seen or learned and did not apprehend the greatness elsewhere wrought-by those who had the leisure of art denied to men of restless action-by those whose rhetoric had small room and scanty grace for what unto them seemed an endless slaughter with- out plan or philosophy-by those so absorbed in the contem- plation of the grandeur of the eastern battle that there was no comprehension of the wrath on the western frontier that gathered in a raging line of fire from the Allegheny to the Tennessee, that all but drove the patriot pioneers from fair Kentucky and Old Vincennes and beautiful Ohio and all the boundless plains to the west, without which the Atlantic side would have been a "Pent up Utica." With leisure to perceive and wealth to encourage, the time has passed for such incompletion of the story of our freedom, and the day has come to form a better perspective of our historic rela- tions. When that is rightly done, the student shall learn without doubt and the people will know without question, that saving the East and keeping the West were equally import- ant, and that neither may rejoice without the other.
The campaign that extended the control of Virginia and the Republic to the Mississippi justly ranks with any Amer- ican achievement. The reality of the heroic incidents so far transcends the fancies of fiction that the reader ceases to wonder more. But Clark purposed more. "With three hun- dred good men I should have attempted it," were the words in his report to Governor Patrick Henry concerning the capture of Detroit, after taking Vincennes. The bold proj- ect was postponed until a promised battalion should come. Louisville under his command became to the western part of the border what Fort Pitt was on the eastern end. But his
. care did not hinder the destruction of Major Rogers and his
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command of nearly a hundred men in the thickets above New- port across from Eastern Avenue in Cincinnati, in a single hour of an October afternoon of 1779. In 1780 De Peyster, the successor of Hamilton as Governor at Detroit, fitted out two thousand warriors to raid the American settlements. Of these some six hundred under the British Captain Byrd came down the Miami Trail in May with six small pieces of can- non with which they forced the surrender of Ruddle's and then of Martin's Stations, in Kentucky which was utterly defense- less against artillery, and doomed if the foe had kept on ; but after capturing or killing over three hundred and forty peo- ple, they stopped, and, glutted with gore, hurried back to the pleasures of the torture scenes. Clark, now a full commis- sioned general at the age of twenty-eight, returned a counter blow with nine hundred and ninety-eight men who marched in four parallel and equal columns with the pack train in the center and all at such distance apart that, at command, the inner lines could wheel to front and rear and quickly form a hollow square fully protected against surprise by scouts on every side. With such precaution Clark's. men feared no ambush. The march was timed to be in August in order to completely ruin the growing crop of corn and vegetables. The fields and towns wherever found were laid waste, so that hunting for food instead of war for pastime occupied the Shawnee mind for many moons to come.
The strife along the eastern Ohio was equally horrifying .. The first blow of the savage alliance following the ever to be regretted murder of Cornstalk was felt in the siege of Fort Henry or Wheeling under Colonel Ebenezer Zane, on August 31, 1777, by a force of three hundred Indians and a company of white rangers with fife and drum under a British flag from Detroit, over the Big Trail. The restrain- ing influence of the Shawnee failure at Point Pleasant can be measured by the long delay of this attack. In the light of a history that now includes the final conquest of the American Indians after four hundred years of strife, the Bat- tle of Point Pleasant stands forth as the largest, the most decisive, and the most nearly approaching the conditions of scientific war of all in the long list of Indian strife. The outcome of that British attack on Wheeling was the action
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of Congress for protection by a force under General McIn- tosh on the Ohio and by Fort Laurens on the Tuscarawas, to guard the Big Trail and to be a base for a movement on Detroit. Such opposition made the enemy wary in that di- rection, while elsewhere meditating upon Burgoyne's Surren- der and French intervention. After that, however great the discouragements of the patriots, the modern mind gives little speculation to the possibilities of defeat. As the clouds of war went by and the eastern prospect grew brighter, the west darkened ; and the story of Fort Laurens is a record of disap- pointment for those who hoped much from the project. Gen- eral McIntosh accomplished the structure with much diffi- culty because of insufficient strength and deficient supplies. The garrison left under Colonel Gibson-the same who had served with Dunmore-was harassed with constant attack or lurking danger for every one that left the gates or sought their protection. The scanty stores spoiled and failed when most needed. The distance beyond the weak line of settle- ments was too great. It appears, at least, that the post was abandoned without orders. The walls left by the builders were not disturbed because the British hoped to use them in their own plans. The power of the Continentals was not equal to an expedition against Detroit, where the trouble was to vex another generation. But the boldness that planted Fort Laurens as the northwestern corner of the Revolution proves the overwhelming peril from the dreaded Northwest.
After Fort Laurens was deserted, the capture of Fort Pitt was still more greatly desired at Detroit; yet no great force was soon sent that way. But the sum of the pillage and butchering by small bands was prodigious. The condition may be better presented by quoting British authority. Before, during, and after the Revolution, the British thoroughly un- derstood their strategic advantage at Detroit. In his Report of the Campaign for 1780, Governor and Colonel De Peyster wrote: "It would be endless and difficult to enumerate the parties continually employed on the back settlements"-of the rebels. "From the Illinois Country to the frontier of New York there has been a continual succession of attack. The perpetual terror and losses of the inhabitants will, I hope, operate powerfully in our favor."
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No American writer, and many have tried, has as yet por- trayed the atrocity of the savage side of the British war on the American "Inhabitants" with such convincing accuracy as has been frankly avowed in these fifty, terse, official words, evidently intended to fix the attention of his. superiors upon the faithful diligence of the writer, who is said to have been an accomplished gentleman-after the style of King George's American service. This report and the debates in Parlia- ment furnish clinching British proof that the ministry pur- posed to execute the King's order even to the utter exter- mination of all the American settlements west of the Alle- ghany crest. Their entire action proves that this was the intended course of their expected victory. That throttling purpose long pursued made the magical natural beauty of the Miamis a frightful battle ground. The heroism of the first settlers cannot be appreciated by a reader at any time failing to remember or comprehend that the Indian atrocities were not hindered but approved, frequently ordered, rewarded, and always supported by the agents of the crown. The pleasure would be great if only good could be told of all who opposed the tryant King. But, alas for human weakness, we must note brands of shame on pages that should have been pic- tured with honest pride.
Memory shrinks from recalling the barbarities following if not consequent upon the cruel assassination of Cornstalk. The consummation of the British-Indian League aided by that foul murder included the six nations about the lakes in New York. On the night of July 3, 1778, only a few hours before Clark captured Kaskaskia without blood, five hundred or more Iroquois commanded by a British Colonel and under a British flag, burned a thousand homes and made the Mas- sacre of Wyoming. From that on, the British policy in America was a punitive war of marauding expeditions against the most defenseless of the West and South. The western campaigns of 1781 were equally offensive and indecisive. Encouraged by the results of the expedition against the Shaw- nee towns, and hoping to accomplish his chief ambition, Gen- eral Clark hurried to urge the Virginians and Pennsylvanians to undertake the capture of Detroit and so stop the dreaded incursions upon their western border. His plans were again
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accepted by Governor Jefferson and approved by General Washington. He was commissioned, on January 22, 1781. to command an "Expedition westward from the Ohio." But all his genius to persuade and to command could not obtain an adequate force. While waiting for more men, some al- ready enlisted began to doubt their dangerous service and to desert. His boats were therefore started down the Ohio, and orders were sent to Colonel Archibald Lochry to hurry after with one hundred and twenty-five full equipped Pennsylvanians who, on July 25, had started from West- moreland county. Events proved that their voyage was closely watched by a large force of Indians on both sides of the Ohio from above and through the Miami region. Having safely passed the mouth of the Great Miami and thinking the danger escaped, vigilance was relaxed in an evil hour on August 24; and, a few miles above what is Aurora, Ind., by a creek with the misspelled name of Laughry, they were trapped in an ambuscade from which only eight returned to claim pay for their peril. The slaughter of Lochry's command defeated Clark's plans, and Detroit un- harmed continued to be the market for scalps regardless of age or sex. On October 18, 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered the army that had devastated the South. That event at Yorktown made Washington first in America. The Revolu- tionary War was over in the East, but not in the West. There. the merciless, pitiless, continuous, hideous barbarity went on to the blind, outrageous wickedness that shrouds the name of Gnadenhutten with the most revolting crime that blackens the pages of American History.
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