USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 16
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In July, 1793, there were only two hundred and thirty males over sixteen years of age in the Ohio Company country, exclusive of the French at Gallipolis, and the settlers were contraeted in narrow bounds for better protection. The men were organized in militia companies in the Muskingum and Miami valleys and did faithful serviee in keeping the prowling red men at bay. In April, 1794, an organization of citizens in Hamilton county offered rewards for Indian scalps, the highest being $136 for each sealp (with right ear appendant) of the first ten Indians killed before Christmas .* Safe communication with the east was kept up by two keelboats on the Ohio, gunboats, in faet, with bullet-proof eovers and portholes for the cannon they carried. These boats, propelled by oars up the river and steered down with the eurrent, made the trip between Cineinnati and Wheeling every two weeks, and formed the mail route of 1794-97.
In the early part of 1794 General Wayne continued his prepara- tions for oceupation of the Indian strongholds, though advised that the British had occupied the new post on the Maumee and that the Indians expected not only ammunition and guns from them but a re-inforcement of a thousand soldiers. Some of the red men, taught.
* St. Clair Papers.
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by experience, distrusted the English, and talked peace. The Wabash tribes were partly withheld from war by the Putnam treaty, and others who spied upon Wayne's work in training the troops became convinced that they would have no opportunity to surprise him. Wayne's tactics of delay were very much like those of General Forbes in his successful advance upon Fort DuQuesne. Little Tur- tle, however, remained undaunted, and on June 30, 1794, he sought to strike an effective blow by attacking Fort Recovery with a large party of warriors, aided by some British soldiers. It happened that Major McMahon with 140 men arrived at the same time, convoving a supply train, and they fought one day outside the fort and next day within it. Fortunately the Americans were able to repulse the attack, though they lost over fifty killed and wounded, and probably inflicted a severe punishment upon their enemy. The Indians expected to find St. Clair's cannon that they had hidden, said Gen- eral Wayne in his report, and turn them upon the garrison, but fortu- nately the American soldiers had taken care of these beforehand. About a month later, July 26th, Wayne was reinforced by Gen. Charles Scott, a Virginia veteran who had settled in Kentucky, with about sixteen hundred mounted men, among them Maj. William Clark (brother of the hero of Vincennes) who had fought with St. Clair and, in later years, made the famous exploration of the Rocky Mountains and another Northwest. Wayne made feints to deceive the enemy, sending detachments to cut roads to Kekionga and the foot of the rapids, while he should strike directly at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee, but a deserter gave the enemy warning, and when the army marched ont from Fort Greenville and reached its destination August 8th, the villages were found deserted. The line of march had been wisely chosen. A soldier wrote, "We have marched four or five miles in corn fields down the Auglaize, and there is not less than a thousand acres of corn around the town."* Gen- eral Wayne himself declared: "The margins of these beautiful rivers, the Miamies of the lake and Auglaize, appear like one contin- nous village for a number of miles above and below this place, and I have never before seen such immense fields of corn in any part of America from Canada to Florida." Availing himself of this abun- dance, Wayne took time to send out, as commander-in-chief of the federal army and commissioner plenipotentiary of the United States, another offer of peace to the hostiles, declaring that "the arm of the United States is strong and powerful, but they love mercy and kind- ness more than war and desolation." Little Turtle was inclined to make peace on receiving this message, but the war party overrode his judgment, and he went to the field with his people. Brant, with his Mohawks, was at some distance, sick, he said, and never reached the
* Journal of George Will.
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battleground. Waiting for an answer, Fort. Defiance was built where the city of Defiance now perpetuates its name.
Then starting down the Maumee, Wayne was met by his envoy returning with a request that he wait ten days more for an answer. The general wisely decided to push ahead. On the 12th, after an advance of forty-one miles along the north side of the Manmee, past numerous villages of Indians, Canadian French and renegade Eng- lishmen, all deserted, the army reached a point where there seemed to be indications of resistance. Halting, a fortified place was made for the baggage and supplies, called Fort Deposit, and thence the advance was made August 20th, with Major Price's mounted battal- ion a good distance in advance to give warning of danger, for the general was "vet undetermined whether the Indians would decide for peace or war." After proceeding about five miles Price met a heavy fire that drove him back. The Indians, under Little Turtle, about thirteen hundred strong (according to MeKee), had "formed in three lines within supporting distance of each other, and extending for near two miles at right angles with the river."# Tecumseh was there with the Shawanees, and there was a sprinkling of British to take part in the killing, as evidenced afterward by their own dead bodies on the field. The ground was well chosen, covered with fallen timber, torn up and scattered in every direction by a tornado, so that cavalry was useless immediately in front.
Wayne formed his legion in two lines, the right wing under Gen- eral Wilkinson and the left under Colonel Hamtramck, but even as he was doing so the red men, while keeping up an effective fire from the front, pushed out their line to flank the Americans on the left. The general made his plan of battle in an instant; and his aides-de- camp, among them Lieut. William Henry Harrison, were busy carrying orders to the subordinate commanders. The second line was ordered up to support the first, and Scott was directed to take the whole force of mounted volunteers by a circuitous route against the enemy's right flank. To meet the flank movement of the enemy, next the river, where there was a chance to advance the horsemen, he sent his own trained cavalry under Captain Campbell, and the front line of infantry was ordered to charge directly into the face of the fire, with trailed arms, ront the enemy from cover with the bayonet, then fire at elose quarters, and charge again, loading as they ran. The men were trained to do this and they did it. The second line did not have time to take part in the battle : the flank maneuvres were left far behind, and in an hour the Indians had been driven two miles by the nine hundred infantry that went after them in such a daring and effective manner.
Wayne's loss in this deeisive victory, known as the battle of Fallen
* General Wayne's report.
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Timbers, was 33 killed, including five officers, and 100 wounded. It was Wayne's opinion that the enemy lost more. He reported that "the woods were strewed for a considerable distance with the dead bodies of Indiaus and their white auxiliaries, the latter armed with British muskets and bayonets."
General Wayne's victorious advance brought his troops almost within cannon range of the British post, and next day Maj. William Campbell, the commandant, sent a request to be informed "in what light he was to view this approach" to a post of his majesty the king of Great Britain. Wayne retorted that the British commander must have been able to hear the reason of his approach in the accents of his small arms the day before, and if the defeated Indians had taken refuge in a British fort on American soil it would not have made much difference in the progress of his victorious command. The major returned next day that he was anxious to prevent war, and had foreborne to resent the insult to the British flag of armed parties com- ing within pistol shot, but if the insult should continue he should be obliged to have recourse to harsh measures. Wayne responded that the only aet of hostility between Great Britain and America within his purview was Campbell's presumption in occupying a post on American soil, and ordered him to withdraw forthwith. Campbell replied, in a mneh milder tone, that his duty compelled him to re- main; and thus the correspondence ceased. After burning the houses and laying waste the cornfields all about the fort, Wayne marched back to Fort Defiance, sweeping the country elean for many miles on each side of the Maumee. Fort Defiance was strengthened and garrisoned, and on September 14th the army marched for the Kekionga village, where Fort Wayne was then constructed. The Kentneky volunteers were soon sent home, and early in November the main part of the legion was baek at Fort Greenville.
Through the following winter Colonel Simcoe, who ealled the Indian chiefs together and urged them to continue hostilities, lost in influence, and Wayne gained. The Manmees whose villages and fields had been ravaged were dependent on the British altogether for food, and listened to Simeoe. The Shawanees and Ottawas were also for war, but the other tribes were divided, and the parties from beyond the Mississippi soon returned to their homes. Jolin Jay, meanwhile, was making progress with a treaty, and Simeoe was dis- gusted by orders to remain quiet. In January, 1795, the same month that it was known in America that Jay had concluded a treaty, the chiefs of the hostile tribes met Wayne at Greenville to make the pre- liminary talk for peace. The poor creatures could do nothing else, for they were on the verge of starvation and their cattle were dying of hunger. In the following June, while the senate of the United States was considering the treaty with England, which provided, among other important features, for the evacuation of the British
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posts and a northwest boundary, Buckongehelas and Little Turtle and their parties were trailing in to Greenville. In August the chiefs of the northwestern tribes, with contending emotions, signed the terms agreed upon with Wayne, and in the same month President Washington, in spite of a terrific elamor against Jay's treaty, a clamor that Hamilton called "a mere ebullition of ignorance, of prej- udice and of faction," signed the paet with England. This treaty could not really be effective until the house of representatives had voted an appropriation to carry it into effect in the Northwest, and when the house was asked to do so in the spring of 1796, there was more probability of nullification of the treaty and war with England than there was of peace. "The great triumph was won by Fisher Ames, a Massachusetts Federalist, in a speech before the house on April 28th, whose effeet is kept alive even today among the grandehil- dren and great-grandchildren of those who heard it and those who witnessed its effeet throughout the land."" Ames stoutly maintained that the alarm about concessions to England in the treaty was the product of imagination and prejudice. He appealed to the sense of interest. The western lands must be held and settlement encouraged that the sales of land might pay the national debt. He appealed to sympathy for the victims of the savage Indian, for protection to the families of the settlers; and finally sought to awaken a sense of national honor. "On a question of shame and honor, reason is some- times useless and worse. I feel the decision in my pulse; if it throws no light upon the brain it kindles a fire at the heart." In those days an orator always had to compete with classic models, but Fisher Ames was said to have equalled Demosthenes and Cieero. Better yet, the vote taken after the speech showed a majority of two in favor of taking possession of the West according to the terms of the Jay treaty. By this narrow margin it was settled that the West should be saved, and that the elamor that would have thrown the United States under the influence of her most dangerous enemies, France and Spain, should vield to the firmness of Washington.
The treaty made by General Wayne provided for an Indian bound- ary in Ohio as established by the treaty of Fort Harmar. Between the Cuyahoga and Tusearawas and the Maumee and Miami, south to the line from Fort Laurens to Loramie's store, the Indians were to retain possession, and besides that they were to hold the title to all the rest of the country, west of a line from Fort Recovery to the mouth of the Kentucky river, and west and northwest of the Maumee, except Clark's grant on the Ohio river and certain reservations about Detroit and the forts in Ohio and other parts of the Northwest, with the understanding that when they should sell lands, it should be to the United States alone, whose protection the Indians acknowledged,
* Winsor's Westward Movement.
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and that of no other power whatever. There was to be free passage along the Maumee, Auglaize, Sandusky and Wabash rivers and the lake. Twenty thousand dollars worth of goods were at once deliv- ered to the Indians, and a promise was made of $9,500 worth every year forever.
A treaty with Spain about the same time opened the Mississippi to the river boats from the Ohio, and provided a place of deposit at New Orleans, but while this satisfied the demands of the Kentucky people, there was danger in the situation. Freedom of trade on the Mississippi might increase the disposition to separate the nation along that formidable barrier to trade and travel, the Alleghany ridge. The French, aroused in national spirit by the victories of the republic, were looking with longing eyes at their ancient province of Louisiana. "The possession of Louisiana by the French," said Rochefoucault Liancourt, "would set bounds to the childish avarice of the Americans, who wish to grasp at everything." In 1796, the French minister sent Gen. Vietor Collot down the Ohio to view the situation. The philosopher Volney earnestly denied that he was a spy, but he happened along about that time also, and Michaux, the noted French botanist, had been studying the trees of the Ohio valley. If the French gained control of the country west of the Mississippi, it was seriously to be feared that Kentucky and Tennessee, influ- eneed by the strong French sentiment of the "Jacobins," would make a union with that domain. There was also talk of British ambition in the valley. Dr. Conolly again appeared, examining a route for an expedition against New Orleans, England having declared war against Spain in October, 1796, and a little later, Senator Blount, of Tennessee, was expelled from Congress for alleged complieity in a British plot in the west.
In December, 1796, General Wayne, on his way from Detroit to Philadelphia, was taken with fever and died in a cabin at or near Presque Isle ( Erie), at the age of fifty-one. He was succeeded by Gen. James Wilkinson, lately devoted to the eanse of Spain. Caron- delet, the governor of Louisiana, counseled by Chief Justice Sebas- tian, of Frankfort, Ky., a man in the hire of Spain, sent an emissary into the Ohio valley to ascertain the disposition of the people toward the formation of a new and independent republic, which Carondelet had no doubt that Wilkinson, "through vanity." would be glad to promote. "The people are discontented with the new taxes," said Carondelet. "Spain and France are enraged at the connection of the United States with England ; the army is weak and devoted to Wilkinson ; the threats of Congress authorize me to succor, on the spot, and openly, the western states ; the money will not be wanting; nothing more will be required but an instant of firmness and resolu- tion to make the people of the west perfectly happy." Ten thousand
I-10
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dollars, in sugar barrels, were to be sent to General Wilkinson. Thomas Power, the emissary, visited Wilkinson at Detroit with an official communication that masked his errand, but he found the Ken- tuekians indisposed to revolt. The government at Washington, being informed of his mission, ordered his arrest, but he was escorted to the frontier by an officer. Wilkinson soon afterward received a remit- tanee of specie, which was said to be the returns from a tobacco ven- ture. Another messenger with money was murdered on the way. One must study this complicated situation and comprehend the real dan- ger at that time that Ohio and the Northwest would be detached from the Union, to realize the value of Wayne's conquest of Ohio, and the treaties with England and Spain. One may also with such prepara- tion read with some understanding the great farewell address of George Washington, delivered September 17, 1797, with its elabor- ate argument for union of the country in a nation, and for a decent self-respeet among the people that should prevent them lending themselves to the intrigues of foreign nations. To the West he pointed out that "it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlet for its own productions to the weight, the influ- enee and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation." This league of East and West and commercial unity, preached by Washington, was in later years perfected by the intro- duction of canals, lake steamers and railroads, and saved the Union from its greatest danger. "Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength [seeession], or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious."
By this time the fruit of the policy of Washington had ripened. Nothing more was heard of British invasion. Congress was able to set up the territory of Mississippi, to which Winthrop Sargent was sent as governor, William Henry Harrison, now a captain and eom- mandant at Fort Washington, who had married Anna, daughter of Judge Symmes, succeeding him as secretary of the Northwest ter- ritory. General Wilkinson, who must have smiled at his situation, took possession of Natchez in the name of the United States, and another great step was completed in the struggle for freedom from foreign control.
CHAPTER VII.
FROM TERRITORY TO STATE.
PROGRESS OF SETTLEMENT-THE CONNECTICUT RESERVE-OPPO- SITION TO ST. CLAIR-BEGINNING OF REPRESENTATIVE GOV- ERNMENT-MOVEMENT FOR STATEHOOD "MONARCHISTS AND JACOBINS"- THE ENABLING ACT-CONSTITUTIONAL CONVEN- TION-END OF ST. CLAIR'S ADMINISTRATION.
W ITHI the treaty of Greenville concluded and the probabil- ity that it settled forever the status of the Indians in the Northwest, the Pennsylvania "whiskey" rebellion squelehed in 1794, peace with England assured by the Jay treaty, and a promise from the Spanish government in the same year to yield free use of the Mississippi, the United States was at greater liberty for peaceful development toward the close of Wash- ington's administration. Consequently there was a considerable revival of immigration in Ohio.
In April, 1796, a Presbyterian colony collected from Bourbon county, Ky., and Pennsylvania, under the leadership of Rev. Rob- ert W. Finley," having sold or freed such slaves as they owned, rein- forced the Massie settlement in the Virginia traet, and in the same year Massie platted the town of Chillicothe, on the west side of the Seioto, where by fall there were twenty eabins. These pioneers were reinforced, notably in the spring of 1798, from the Shenan- doah valley.
Edward Tiffin, born at Carlisle, Eng., January 19, 1766, came to Philadelphia in boyhood with his people, studied medicine, and began his practice where his father had settled, at Charleston, in the valley of Virginia. His bouyant spirits, handsome person and ele- gant manners made him very popular, and in 1789 he married Mary, daughter of Col. Robert Worthington, a wealthy planter. With his
* In the previous year. while Wayne was treating with the Indian chiefs. Finley and a party of sixty, while going into Ohio, had attacked a camp of Indians, and after some fighting were compelled to return to Kentucky. General Wayne wrote a sharp letter to St. Clair about it. This was the last of the Indian fights.
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brother-in-law, Thomas Worthington, and their families, he came to Chillicothe in 1798, and the two at onee became leaders in the set- tlement, and friends of Massie, then the greatest landowner in Ohio. Worthington had "a little army of negroes, who had been freed, but who were brought as servants to the new home .*
In 1796 Ebenezer Zane made a contraet with the national govern- ment to ent a road for a mail route from Wheeling to Limestone on the Ohio, his compensation for the same and maintaining ferries to be three sections of land on his road, which he selected, one opposite Chillicothe, one at "Standing Roek" on the Hoekhoeking, determin- ing the site of Laneaster, and the other on the Muskingum, at the site of Zanesville. For some time afterward the road was passable only for horsemen.
Franeis Baily, an English astronomer, came down the Ohio soon after the visit of Volney (1797), and found Cincinnati a town of three or four hundred houses, mostly frame, and busy as the great military depot and capital of the west. The traet of country between the two Miamis was the "only properly settled country on the north side of the Ohio," he declared. "There are a few scattered planta- tions along the banks of the Ohio and on some of the rivers that run into it, yet they are too widely diffused to assume any corporate form, or to vie with each other in a spirit of industry and civilization. This little Mesopotamia may be said to be the most attractive part of the whole Northwest territory."
Judge Symmes, though his purchase had been reduced to less than 300,000 acres, was selling lands far to the north, and Governor St. Clair, Generals Jonathan Dayton and James Wilkinson and Israel Ludlow purchased a tract on which was platted the city of Dayton, which was settled in April, 1796. There was no right on Symmes' part to convey, but Congress granted the settlers pre-emption rights in 1799.
In Clermont county there was a notable settlement of people from south of the Ohio who disliked slavery, largely dominated by Francis McCormick, a soldier of the Revolution, who founded the first Meth- odist church, and preached with great force as early as 1797. With him was associated Philip Gateh, a Methodist preacher from Mary- land who had suffered the martyrdom of tar and feathers, and was elected to the first constitutional convention of Ohio because he opposed slavery.
By the Jay treaty the British posts were to be abandoned on or before June 1, 1796, and in July, when the United States demanded a fulfillment of the treaty, the transfer was made and General Wayne moved his headquarters to the neighborhood of the great lakes, In the absence of Governor St. Clair Secretary Sargent went
*Chelocothe Souvenir," by a granddaughter of Worthington.
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FROM TERRITORY TO STATE.
to Detroit, and on August 15, 1796, proclaimed the county of Wayne, which ineluded, besides what is now parts of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, the north part of Hamilton county, includ- ing the Indian country in Ohio. There had been great activity in this region, as has been noted, in acquiring Indian titles to land. In 1795 a scheme was brought before Congress to sell the whole of lower Michigan to a syndicate, but as bribery was attempted noth- ing but a scandal resulted. The son of John Askin attempted to take part in the treaty of Greenville as a proprietor in northwestern Ohio, but was seized and held in the guardhouse until the treaty was concluded. Afterward he built a house within the present limits of Cleveland, west of the river, and assumed ownership, and intrigued with the Indians to defeat the purchase of land by the promoters of settlement in the Western Reserve.
Connectient had made in 1792 a grant of 500,000 acres in the Reserve for the benefit of those people, mainly of London, Norwalk and Fairfield, Conn., whose homes had been burned by the British during the Revolution, and in 1793 the legislature of that state offered the remainder for sale, with the provision, afterward reseinded, that the proceeds should go to the support of the church in Connectieut. In May, 1795, the legislature again offered the land, decreeing that the proceeds should be appropriated to the main- tenance of schools, and a sale being effected under that law, the school fund of Conneetient was thereby founded. The sale occurred in September, without survey or measurement of the land, to thirty- five purchasers who severally promised to pay sums aggregating $1,200,000, each of the thirty-five purchasers, who represented a larger number of people, to receive a deed for as many twelve hun- dred-thousandths of the land as he agreed to pay dollars. The area was estimated at four million aeres, and though it turned out to be less than three million, it was the largest land sale ever perfeeted in Ohio. It will be noted that the plan rested upon individual respon- sibility, not upon the speenlative ability of a company, as in the case of the Ohio and Miami companies, and performance was made of the contract.
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