USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 22
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When the legislature met at Zanesville in December, 1-10, the cap- ital commissioners reported in favor of a site on the lands of John and Peter Sells, on the Scioto, a few miles west of Worthington, but the matter went over to the next legislature, when nine propositions were made by landowners to donate sites. One was from Henry Neville, of 150 acres on the Pickaway plains. Circleville tendered a cash donation, and James Kilbourne, of Worthington, offered the
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necessary grounds and buildings. But eventually Col. James John- son, Alexander McLaughlin, John Kerr and Lyne Starling were suc- cessful in securing the acceptance of their offer to donate twenty acres and expend $50,000 in building the statehouse, offices and peni- tentiary, on the high lands opposite the town of Franklinton. This was the beginning of the city of Columbus, the present capital of the State, in which the first lots were sold June 18, 1812. The tem- porary state capital was again established at Chillicothe until the new buildings were completed, and the legislature met but twice at the city of Zanesville.
According to the apportionment made under the census of 1810, Ohio had a great increase of representation in the lower house of Congress, from one to six representatives. The first delegation of six, was John McLean, John Alexander, Duncan McArthur, James Caldwell, James Kilbourn and John S. Edwards. McLean, then twenty-seven years old, was a native of New Jersey, who was brought west by his family in 1789, locating in Warren county ten years later. He studied law under the junior St. Clair and became a lawyer in 1807. John Alexander was an early settler of Greene county ; Dun- can McArthur we know, and also James Kilbourn. Caldwell was a Belmont county man. Edwards was a pioneer wool grower in the Western reserve. He resigned to lead a militia regiment in the war, and his successor Rezin Beall, of New Lisbon, a Marylander who had served under Harmar and Wayne, also resigned to command a brigade of militia. David Clendenin, of Trumbull, was the actual first representative from the Western reserve. McArthur also resigned for the war and his place was taken by William Creighton. Jeremiah Morrow, who was the solitary representative of Ohio in 1803-13, was elected to the United States senate to succeed Camp- bell and served six years.
The conveniences of travel to Ohio were not yet much improved by 1812. The great National road, that was to furnish access to the eastern seaboard, was being opened very slowly. It was to be built, as will be remembered, by a part of the receipts from sale of public lands in Ohio and the northwest. When the fund available for building east of Ohio, two per cent, amounted to about $12,000, in 1805, a move was made toward building a road, and Joseph Kerr, of Ross county, was appointed by President Jefferson as one of the three commissioners to locate it. A substantial road, sixty-six feet wide, was ordered, and $30,000 appropriated in 1806. The road, as marked and cleared of trees in 1808, followed in a general way, Braddock's route toward Pittsburg, crossing the Monongahela at Redstone. There was intense rivalry between Wheeling and Steu- benville for the terminus of the eastern division, but through the influence of Henry Clay the Virginia town won. Construction went on at the cost of $6,000 a mile, but it was not until 1818, some years
I-13
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after the period now under consideration, that mail coaches began to run over this magnificent road, from Washington to Wheeling.
With this highway incomplete and communication with the east very difficult and expensive, the Ohio and Mississippi rivers con- tinned to be the main outlet of the surplus of Ohio, but with the great inconvenience that while it was easy to to go down the river with flatboats and sail-rigged vessel, it was almost impossible to get back that way. For this reason most adventurers down the Ohio sold their craft on reaching New Orleans and returned overland. In 1812 a hundred boats loaded with Ohio products left Chillicothe for Natchez and New Orleans, and in the same year a vessel sailed from the mouth of the Scioto for foreign ports. There was similar com- merce on the Muskingum and Miami in the early years of the State, as well as from Cincinnati and Marietta, the principal ports. After Robert Fulton, in 1807, was successful in running a steamboat on the Hudson river, there began a new era of navigation on the rivers, but it was slower in development than might have been expected. In 1809, Mr. Roosevelt, of New York, the associate of Fulton, went down the Ohio to inspect the river as to the practicability of steam navigation, and as a result, the steamer New Orleans was built at Pittsburg. While the advent of this new marvel was expected in 1811, there was a great river event at Cincinnati, that was thus reported in the Baltimore Weekly Register:
"Cincinnati, May 29 .- Arrived at this place, on Sunday morning, the 26th inst., barge Cincinnati, Beatle commander, from New Orleans, with a cargo of sugar, hides, logwood, erates, etc. She sailed from New Orleans the 3d of March, arrived at the Falls the 9th of May, 68 days, remained at Falls 9 days, and sailed from thence on the 17th inst. This is the first rigged vessel that ever arrived at Cincinnati from below. She is but 100 feet keel, 16 feet beam, rigged sloop fashion, and burthen 64 tons. She was worked over the falls by 18 men, in half a day."
In the following October the expected steamboat came down the river from Pittsburg, watched by thousands and admired for the rapidity of its movement. Reaching Cincinnati at night the town was alarmed by the strange noise of escaping steam. The boat ran between Cineinnati and Louisville until high water enabled it to shoot the rapids. Then it proceeded to the lower Mississippi, on the way narrowly escaping destruction by the great earthquake of December, 1811, which changed the channel of the river, and was felt in Ohio and all parts of the United States. Two years later the second steamer went down from Pittsburg (the Vesuvius), and she attempted to make the return trip, but ran aground, and for some time it was not thought praetieable to run steamers above Natchez.
In addition to the hope of a broad highway over the mountains and better navigation on the great rivers there was talk of canals
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during the Meigs administration. Dewitt Clinton, of New York, highly esteemed in Ohio for his friendly attitude toward the admis- sion of the State, had already become a leader in canal agitation in the east, and in 1809 was one of a commission to survey a canal to connect Lake Erie and the Hudson. This was, of course, a matter of great importance to Ohio, as transportation matters were then, and the legislature in 1812 heartily joined in recommending national aid for the work. Much was expected from these artificial water ways, which, so far as modern history is concerned, were a new thing. Canal construction in England does not antedate the middle of the eighteenth century, and soon after it was proposed to unite in this way the cities of Hull and Liverpool, in 1777, Gouverneur Morris suggested the Erie and Hudson canal. George Washington at the same time advised the Virginia government to make such a connec- tion with the waters of the Ohio, and in 1784 both Washington and Thomas Jefferson suggested canals to unite the Ohio and Lake Erie, Washington continuing persistently to urge an investigation of the project. The fact that in wet weather there was complete water con- neetion between the Cuyahoga and Muskingum for the light craft of the Indians, suggested that route as the most promising.
An interesting glimpse of Ohio in 1811 may be obtained from a book of travels published by John Melish. The main towns were Cincinnati, with about four hundred houses and 2,283 inhabitants ; Marietta, with 1,500 people, and Chillicothe, with 1,360. Cinein- nati had thirty dry goods stores, while Chillicothe was an active manufacturing town, with two rope walks, cotton, woolen and nail factories, a pottery and several distilleries. Taverns were an impor- tant feature of town life. Zanesville, a much talked of town, because of its situation on the mail route from Wheeling to Kentucky, had eleven taverns, though the inhabitants numbered but twelve hundred. Coshocton had 140 people, and New Philadelphia, where the Penn- sylvania Germans were settling, did not exceed 250. The Western Reserve, where Warren was the main town, was noted for muddy and difficult roads. Continual malarial fevers had made the few settlers of the little hamlet of Cleveland pale and dejected, and completely checked its growth, of which there had been great expectations. There were sixteen dwellings, two taverns, two stores and one school in this place, already hopefully called a city. There were two sorts of malarial attacks prevalent here and in other parts of the State, the ague proper, in which the chills were of frightful violence, and the dumb ague, something like the malarial fever of later days. No one escaped, entire families being at times disabled, and clouds of mosquitoes kept the infection in circulation. It is indeed the truth, that mosquitoes were a more serious foe than the Indians to the early settlers of Ohio. Along the Ohio river, peaches were grown in great abundance for the manufacture of peach brandy, of which a gallon
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could be bought for three or four shillings. With very few excep- tions, this brandy, and whiskey, which was cheap, were freely nsed by all. Government land was selling at $1.64 eash, or $2 on four years' time, and of the earlier elaimants one might buy good land for five or six dollars an aere. A wild turkey could be bought for twenty-five eents, but salt was $1.50 a bushel. Coal was about five cents a bushel at Zanesville, and wood one dollar a eord. Flour was $4 a barrel, meats could be bought from two to four eents a pound, and fowls at half a shilling. Wages were 75 cents to $1.50 per day at Chillicothe.
It must not be imagined that amid these conditions of rawness, intellectual culture was altogether neglected. There were many excellent schools, taught by men of whom Franeis Glass, of Irish birth, is an example, a man who labored faithfully with the young ideas and in his leisure wrote in Latin a history of Washington, that he completed in 1823. In 1815 an edition of Pascal's "Of the Imi- tation of Christ," was printed at Wilmington, which may, for cur- iosity, be contrasted with that latter day Columbus edition of the "Rubaiyat," that is sought by book collectors.
At Steubenville a paper mill was established in 1812, about which and the woolen factory gathered a colony of English and Germans, among them young Thomas Cole, in later years one of the great artists of the world, and Joseph Howells, grandfather of William Dean Howells.
Though northwest Ohio remained in the hands of the Indians there were United States reservations for military purposes, sneh as that of twelve miles square at the foot of the Maumee rapids and of six miles square at the mouth of the river, where Fort Industry, built about 1800, marked the site of the future Toledo. These reserva- tions became the homes of settlers, beginning the remarkable though retarded development of that part of Ohio. Maj. Amos Spafford came from Cleveland to the foot of the rapids in 1810 as collector of the port of Miami, and just before war was deelared in 1812 there were sixty-seven white families living there. Among them were some remnants of the old French population, notably Pierre Navarre and his brothers, who served throughout the war as scouts for the Amer- icans, and Pierre Manor, who saved the settlers from massaere by a timely warning at the outbreak of hostilities.
But the Toledo site at this time was in the possession of the terri- tory of Michigan. When the Ohio constitution was framed, there was some discussion regarding the northwestern line of the state, which according to the enabling act of Congress was to be an exten- sion of a line drawn due east from the head of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie. According to Mitchell's geography, then the authority, such a line would ent the Detroit river, but old traders and hunters doubted this, and the founders of the State of Ohio provided that if
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such a line should not touch Lake Erie, or touch it east of the mouth of "the Miami river of the lake," the north boundary line should be drawn not due east, but north of east from the head of Lake Michi- gan to the most northerly cape of "the Miami bay." Congress accepted this constitution, and, as Ohio ever afterward contended, thereby ratified the amendment to the original plan of boundaries. But in 1805 Michigan territory was created with the southern boundary as originally specified, without any reference to the Ohio amendment.
In 1807 Governor Hull, of Michigan, acting for the United States, bought the land north of the Maumee as far west as the mouth of the Au Glaize and up beyond Detroit, from the Indians for $10,000, and this tended to confirm the establishment of the Maumee river as the northwest boundary of the Ohio country. As early as 1812 Michi- gan territorial officials were assuming authority in the Maumee country, exciting the jealousy of those who had settled there from Ohio. Collector Spafford, iu that year, appealed to Governor Meigs to extend the laws of Ohio over them and contest the claims of Michi- gan. The matter was also brought before Congress, and by resolu- tion of May, 1812, a survey was ordered as soon as the Indians should permit it, to determine the location of the due east and west line. But war came on and the doubtful region was quickly depop- ulated and of no importance except as a battleground.
During all this time, since the treaty of Greenville, Indians and whites had lived in peace. Though northwest Ohio was Indian country, white men traveled through it without molestation, and the red men were familiar figures in the white settlements. But occasionally there were outrages that threatened serious trouble, due to lawless elements in both races, and the race hatred entertained by many of the whites. Near Warren, for instance, some drunken Indians disturbed a white family in the absence of the husband. A party sought the Indian camp near by, hungry for vengeance. The Indian chief suggested with really chivalrous feeling that if there must be blood, he would meet one of the party to settle the matter, and was instantly shot down. Several other Indians, including women and children, were wounded. The red men fled and called a council, and a war was with difficulty averted. The Indians finally consented to let the whites punish the offenders, but when the trial was had, a mob compelled the acquittal of the murderers. West of Ohio were tribes not yet satisfied with the judgment of battle, who entertained the old hope of driving the Yengees across the Ohio if not into the sea. Those Indians also bore their wrongs with "aston- ishing patience," but "should the United States be at war with any European nation who are known to the Indians," Governor Harrison predieted as early as 1801, "there would probably be a combination against us, unless some means are made use of to coneiliate them."
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As for war with a Enropean nation, there was always opportunity during those days. It must be remembered that the period of sixty years, beginning with the shots fired in 1734 by George Washing- ton's men in the Pennsylvania wilderness, was practically a contin- ons war for dominanee in Europe and America, for the establishment of republican governments, or for the overthrow of ancient dynasties. After American independence was achieved, nominally at least, in 1783, the struggle was soon resumed in Europe, with France and England as the chief antagonists. Then the problem for America was to restrain her sympathies for each of these powers, keep out of the fight and strengthen her independence. Washington managed to hold down the French sympathizers, and Jefferson, though lean- ing toward France, adopted a policy of eoquetry toward the hostile nations, using the opportunities of the situation to gain territory for the United States. But when the rival powers attacked the great shipping interests of the United States, with arbitrary edicts and confiscations, Jefferson, with all his ability, was compelled to deelare an embargo on ocean trade, as retaliation. This ruined the com- merce all along the coast. New York, in 1808, resembled a city hushed under the ban of some great pestilenee. Jefferson went out of office, leaving conditions that made war inevitable, and his eoun- try erippled so as to make the war promise humiliation. Madison, a man of less ability, could not eope with the situation. The states- men of his school made the country more unready for war by putting an end to the United States bank. Meanwhile a group of young men like Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun came to the front demanding war for American honor, to avenge the insults and oufrages com- mitted by the French and English upon American shipping and sailors. It was doubtful which country would be chosen as an antag- onist, but the leanings of the party in power were toward France as an ally. Furthermore, the British were not only oppressive at sea, but were aceused of again encouraging trouble among the Indians. When the American frigate President and the British sloop Little Belt turned their guns on each other in the Atlantic, and the Indians fell upon Harrison's eamp in Indiana, the country could no longer resist the ery for war with England.
The Indians of the West were at this time under the influence of one of the greatest men who rose among them from the beginning of the white invasion-Teenmsel, a native of the old Shawanee town of Piqua on Mad river. His father had fallen in the famous battle at Point Pleasant, and before he was thirty years old, the young warrior had experience in the hostilities that were ended by the treaty of Greenville. His brother, Ellskwatiwaw, became a medi- cine man, or "prophet," of great renown, and brought to the aid of Tecumseh all the influenees of Indian religion. It was his special effort to repress drunkenness, to save the squaws from the degrada-
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tion of frontier license, and encourage a national spirit. It was Tecumseh's ambition to unite the red men, put a stop to the piece- meal bargains, by which they lost their hunting grounds, and compel the United States to treat with the whole people for the lands.
Governor Harrison continued to narrow the Indian area west of Ohio by the objectionable sort of treaties, and Tecumseh, as early as 1808, having made his home in Indiana, met the governor with fre- quent and angry remonstrance. The situation had almost reached the intensity of war in 1810, and Tecumseh determined to enlist all the Indians from the lakes to the gulf in a great effort to stop the wave of white settlement. Harrison justified his eneroachments upon the red men by the argument that the country was destined for civilization, and could not be left in a state of nature to accommodate a "few wretched savages." When a wealthy Seotehman of Vin- eennes accused him of cheating the Indians out of their lands, the governor went to law and obtained a judgment of damages against his daring eritic.
Tecumseh went south in 1811, among the Creeks and Cherokees, and incited an Indian war there that demanded all the energy of Andrew Jackson to control. In the south as well as in Indiana and Michigan it was deelared by the warriors that the British would become their allies and furnish them guns and ammunition. In the south Pensacola, and in the north Brownstown, on the Detroit river, opposite the British post, Fort Malden (Amherstburg), became the place of resort of the war plotters. Harrison had called for assist- ance, and the Fourth United States regiment and a Kentneky mounted battalion were sent to Vincennes in the summer of 1811, with which he marched up the Wabash and approached the Prophet's town on Tippecanoe creek, in the absence of Tecumseh. It was expected that the Indians collected there would disperse, but instead they made a fierce attack at four o'clock in the morning of Novem- ber 7th, some of them breaking through the lines and fighting among the tents. Fortunately, the troops were not seriously surprised, and managed to repel their enemy, though nearly a third of the little army were killed or wounded. Harrison was made famous by the victory, which was a very narrow escape from another St. Clair dis- aster. The Indians scattered and their town was destroyed.
Great excitement was caused in Ohio by this battle, and by the debate in Congress in the following month regarding the policy of invading Canada. The legislature in December discussed the situa- tion and adopted resolutions deploring the ontrages and aggressions of the belligerent powers of Europe. "A retrospective view of the sufferings, injuries and insults which have flowed to this country, from a peculiar system of maritime depredation," they said, "must elevate the mind of every American to a posture of unyielding resist-
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ance." At the conclusion it was pledged for Ohio, "We will at the call of our country rally round the standard of freedom."
But there were many who opposed the war. Ohio's two senators voted against it. In New England the opposition was so strong that an element threatened secession from the United States, which a British emissary intrigued to encourage. But even with the warn- ing of such opposition at home the administration seemed incapable of preparing to make the inevitable war a creditable one. To com- mand the proposed invasion of Canada in the west, Governor Hull, of Michigan, was chosen, a man who had been a gallant subordinate officer in the Revolution, but had not evinced, in his Michigan admin- istration, such strength or tenacity of purpose as is essential to suc- cess as a general. He was asked to invade Canada from Detroit, while General Dearborn should advance from Lake Champlain and Van Rensselaer from Niagara.
It seems amazing that the government should have planned an invasion of Canada without a warship on the lakes. The necessity was realized, and the first steps were taken toward the building of a navy on Lake Ontario. Near Detroit there was a small frigate in the yards that soon fell into the hands of the British. If the build- ing of a navy had been begun earlier and vigorously, its mere pres- ence on the lakes, threatening British dominion in Canada, might have served all the purpose of the costly and miserable war that began in 1812. Until a navy was built an invasion of Canada would be fruitless, with such a small army as was called out. Governor Hull repeatedly reminded the government of this before he accepted the responsibility of the movement from Detroit, but in vain.
There was a mystery about the first Canada campaign, that some people explained by a secret understanding that vigorous measures should be restrained, for fear Canada should be overrun and added to the Union, disturbing the balance of power between the free and slave states. It is more likely that the administration, naturally weak and politically prejudiced against a strong army and navy, but driven into war by popular clamor before it was ready to fight, vacil- lated between opposing impulses, sacrificing the soldiers to its own incompetence and the popular impatience.
CHAPTER IX.
WAR AND HARD TIMES.
GOVERNORS RETURN JONATHAN MEIGS, 1812-14 - OTHNIEL LOOKER, 1814 - THOMAS WORTHINGTON, 1814-18 - ETHAN ALLEN BROWN, 1818-22.
F OR THE occupation of Detroit the Washington authorities proposed to withdraw from Indiana the little regiment of regulars that protected the frontier from the Indians, and send them with a small body of Ohio volunteers through a wilderness that had never been penetrated by a wagon. Ohio yielded with patriotic devotion to the demand upon her resources for this amateur war. She would willingly and easily have raised an army large enough to be effective. The State had 35,000 militia enrolled and had arms of one sort or another for 10,000 or more. In the spring of 1812, with the prospect of war becom- ing more and more certain, the Ohio major-generals of militia ordered their men together for drill and inspection, and when Governor Meigs, in obedience to the president, called for twelve hundred volunteers, there was a prompt response. Dayton was selected as the place of rendezvous, and companies were there assem- bled in May from the three southern divisions and organized in three regiments, of four or five hundred men each. Of the First regiment, from the Scioto valley, Duncan MeArthur was elected colonel, and James Denny of Cireleville, and William Trimble of Highland, majors. The colonel of the Second regiment, from the Miami country, was James Findlay, and the majors were Thomas Moore and Thomas Van Horn, The Third regiment, mainly from the Muskingum country and eastern Ohio, with some men from the Scioto and Miami valleys, chose Lewis Cass as colonel, and Robert Morrison and Jeremiah Monson as majors. In the organization of regular troops two field officers were assigned to Ohio-Col. John Miller, an editor at Steubenville, who was made colonel of the Nine- teenth United States regiment, and George Tod, lately judge of the supreme court, who was commissioned a major in the same regiment. William MeMillan became lieutenant-colonel of the Seventeenth, in
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