USA > Ohio > Auglaize County > History of western Ohio and Auglaize County, with illustrations and biographical sketches of pioneers and prominent public men > Part 7
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I am, dear sir, with much regard, yours truly,
LEWIS CASS.
THE THIRD INTERMENT OF THE REMAINS OF THE HEROES OF FORT RECOVERY.
The pioneer associations of Western Ohio decided, as early as 1890, to hold a Centennial Celebration of the Battle of Fort Recovery. Assisted by the Ohio Historical Society and the patri- otic sentiment of the people of the Northwest, preparations were matured for holding a three days' celebration, commencing on Wednesday, November 14th, 1891. A few days prior to that date, the remains of the heroes were disinterred and placed in coffins, and removed to the Christian Church, in the southern part
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of the village. The writer was present on the second day of the exercises and examined the remains. A hundred years had passed, and yet an odor arose from the remains that filled the room. Many of the skulls had bullet holes in them, and the marks of the tomahawk and scalping knife were still plainly visible.
The remains of General Butler, discovered in 1876, reposed · in a separate coffin. His sword lay beside him, with his name and the crown of England engraven upon it.
On the day appointed, despite the threatening weather, there was a large attendance of people in the grove south of the village. The exercises of the day consisted of the speeches of Governor Campbell, of Ohio, and the magnificent historical address of Gen- eral E. B. Finley, of Bucyrus. Congressman F. C. Layton acted as the presiding officer. On Thursday the Celina German Aid Society took a conspicuous place in the parade. Ohio's famous orator, General Gibson, made the address of the day. He said it was remarkable to reflect that more people were there to do hom- age to the fallen heroes of St. Clair's Waterloo, than could then be found in the now great State of Ohio. On Friday, ten thou- sand people listened to the matchless eloquence of Judge Samuel F. Hunt, of Cincinnati. Could General St. Clair have revisited the scene of his irretrievable disaster during the week, and heard, how, after all these years, his memory had been perpetuated, per- haps he might have felt that his defeat had not been in vain, for it lives in history's pages more vividly than any conquest.
JUDGE HUNT'S ADDRESS.
It is said that for more than six hundred years after the bat- tle of Mortgarten the Swiss peasantry gathered on the field of battle to commemorate those who had fallen for freedom. We have assembled to-day in the same spirit to do honor to the gal- lant dead, who, one hundred years ago, gave their lives for their country on this fatal field, and over their hallowed ashes we per- petuate the story of their unselfish patriotism. A great Republic, mighty in its memory of every man, whether on land or on sea, who has lifted up his hand for his country and the glory of the flag.
We here reverently do honor not only to the memory of the gallant Butler and those who fell with him on that day of dread-
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ful disaster under St. Clair, but to those tried and patriotic men who followed Anthony Wayne and perished at last at Fallen Timbers, and those hardy pioneers who protected the frontier before civil authority was established and saved defenseless set- tlements from the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indian.
When George Washington, on November 25th, 1758, then in his twenty-sixth year, planted the British flag on the deserted ruins of the fortress at the junction of the Monongahela and the Alle- gheny rivers, the banner of England floated for the first time over the Ohio. This was the extreme western post of British rule in North America, and from the Gateway of the West there stretched toward the setting sun the solemn and mysterious forest. There was nothing but an endless space or shadowy woodland. The forests crowned the mountains from crest to river bed and ex- tended in melancholy wastes toward the distant Mississippi. It has been well expressed that the sunlight could not penetrate the roof-archway of murmuring leaves, while deep in its tangled depths lurked the red foe, hawk-eyed and wolf-hearted. Here and there were great prairies with copses of woodland, like islands, in the sunny seas of tall, waving grass. In all that solitude there was no sound save that of the woodman's ax.
The English had been driven from every cabin in the basin of the Ohio, France had her posts on each side of the lakes, and at Detroit, at Mackinaw, at Kaskaskia and at New Orleans, and the claim of France to the valleys of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence seemed established by possession. The flag of the Bourbon Dynasty, which floated from the battlements of Quebec, was the emblem of sovereignty over this vast territory.
The victory of Wolfe over Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham, on September 9th, 1759, decided whether the vast cen- tral valley of North America should bear through all coming time the impress of French or English civilization. The continent was saved from French domination, and the dying hero praised God for the victory over the French as his spirit escaped in the blaze of its glory. The historian says that night, silence, the rushing tide, veteran discipline, the sure inspiration of genius, had been his allies ; his battlefield, high over the ocean-river, was the grand- est theater on earth for illustrious deeds ; his victory, one of the most momentous in the annals of mankind, gave to the English tongue and the institutions of the Germanic race the unexplored
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and seemingly infinite West and North. He crowded into a few hours actions that would have given luster to length of life; and fulfilling his day with greatness, completed it before its noon.
The Northwestern Territory, after the conquest of the French possessions in North America by Great Britain, was ceded to Great Britain by France by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. By an act of Parliament of Great Britain, passed in 1774, the whole of the Northwestern Territory was annexed to and made a part of the Province of Quebec, as established by royal proclamation of October, 1763, and by the treaty of peace signed at Paris Sep- tember 3d, 1783, the claim of the English monarch to the North- western Territory was ceded to the United States. The title claimed by Virginia, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut was vested in the United States by the several deeds of cession.
Congress now proceeded to perfect its title to the soil and jurisdiction by negotiation with the Indian tribes - the original owners and rightful proprietors - notwithstanding charters and grants and treaties of peace. The Indian title to a large part of the territory within the state of Ohio having been extinguished, it became necessary for Congress to provide a form of government for the territory northwest of the Ohio river. This led to the adoption of the Ordinance of 1787.
Society was then in a formative state ; land titles were to be fixed and property to be made secure from vexatious litigation. An extended frontier was to be protected and the territory must be governed and local jurisdictions were to be established. It was necessary that public sentiment should be molded and directed.
The great Ordinance was the most notable instance of legis- lation in the history of a free people. It determined forever the character of the men who should settle this great valley and per- manently established the social, political and educational institu- tions of the people who should inhabit this Imperial Territory. It fixed itself upon the soil while it was yet a wilderness, and its very impress'can be seen to-day in the laws and character, the social habits and material prosperity, of these great Northwestern states. With slavery in certain parts of the Union recognized and maintained, by a common sentiment it forever prohibited invol- untary servitude by express enactment - that element of discord in our political system that has since filled the land with widow- hood and orphanage.
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It prohibited the right of primogeniture, and declared that, religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good govern- ment and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education should be encouraged. It was the first embodiment of the obligations of contracts in written constitutional law, and pro- vided that the navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between them, should be common highways and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of the Territory as to the citizens of the United States. That sentiment is stronger to-day than when uttered. It thundered forth in every gun in the late war from the Mississippi to the seas. It was seen in the blazing campfires of every regiment of the Northwest as it hewed its way to the Gulf.
Arthur St. Clair, an officer in the old French War, Major- General in the Army of the Revolution, and President of the Con- tinental Congress, was appointed Governor of the Northwest Ter- ritory in 1788, with Winthrop Sergeant as Secretary, and who also acted as Chief Magistrate in the absence of the Governor. When St. Clair came to the Territory in July, 1788, the tribes on the Wabash were decidedly hostile. They continued to invade the Kentucky settlements while George Rogers Clark, at the head of the Kentucky Volunteers, in return, destroyed their villages and waged a relentless warfare against them. Immigration was re- tarded by the fear of the tomahawk and the scalping knife.
At the close of the Revolution the "regular army" had been reduced to less than seven hundred men, and no officer was re- tained above the rank of captain. This force was soon after reduced to twenty-five men to guard the mighty stores at Pitts- burg, and fifty-five men to perform military duty at West Point and other magazines.
It was estimated that all the tribes in the Territory at this time numbered twenty thousand souls. They were continually inflamed by British emissaries and agents, and a feeling of hos- tility enkindled. These emissaries and agents made their head- quarters at the frontier forts which had not been given up by Great Britain, according to the terms of the treaty with the United States. The military force of the Territory consisted of about six hundred men under the command of General Harmar, who had been appointed a Brigadier General on the 31st day of July, 1787.
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In the early part of 1789 Governor St. Clair held a council at Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum, with the chiefs and sachems of the Six Nations, and with the representatives of the Indian tribes from the Mohawk valley to the Wabash, when old agreements were confirmed and boundaries established. Many of the tribes refused to acknowledge the treaty as binding; and within a short period after the council at Fort Harmar bands of marauding Indians threatened the frontiers of Virginia and Kentucky.
It became evident that permanent peace with the Indians was an impossibility. They waylaid the boats and wounded and plundered the immigrants all along the river from Pittsburg to the Falls of the Ohio. General Harmar endeavored to chastise them, but his expedition was a disaster, and his command defeated at the Maumee ford in October, 1790.
The Federal Government proclaimed that the occupation of the Territory meant peace and friendship and not war and bloodshed. These appeals were only answered by renewed dep- redations on the part of the Indians, who were largely instigated by the infamous Simon Girty, a renegade white man, at the mention of whose name for more than twenty years the women and children of the Ohio country turned pale.
The tribes of the West under Little Turtle, the chief of the Miamis, Blue Jacket, chief of the Shawnees, and Buck-ong-a- helos, chief of the Delawares, now confederated to resist the whites and drive them, if possible, beyond the Ohio river, which the Indians regarded as the boundary of their territory. Corn- planter, a famous chief, at the table of General Wayne, at Le- gionville, in 1793, said: "My mind is upon that river," pointing to the Ohio. "May that water ever continue to run and remain the boundary of lasting peace between the Americans and Indians on the opposite side."
The expeditions of Harmar and Scott and Wilkinson were directed against the Miamis and Shawnees, while the burning of their towns, the destruction of their corn fields and the captivity of their women and children only seemed to exasperate them and aroused more desperate efforts to defend their hunting grounds and to harass the invaders. In the meantime preparations were going forward for the main expedition of St. Clair, the purpose of which was to secure control over the savages by establishing
·
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a chain of forts from the Ohio river to Lake Erie, and especially by securing a strong position in the heart of the Miami country. The defeat of Harmar proved the necessity of some strong check upon the Indians of the Northwest.
Indeed, the main object of the campaign of 1791 was to build a fort at the junction of the St. Mary and the St. Joseph rivers, which was to be connected by other intermediate stations with Fort Washington and the Ohio. The importance of this position was recognized in a letter of General Knox, Secretary of War, to St. Clair, dated September 12th, 1790, and the Sec- retary of War, in his official report of St. Clair's defeat, dated December 26th, 1791, says "that the greatest object of the late campaign was to establish a strong military post at the Miami village Maumee, at the junction of the St. Joseph and the St. Mary. This object, too, was to be attained, if possible, even at the expense of a contest which otherwise he avoided.
The Secretary of War, under the authority and direction of President Washington, issued full and complete instructions to General St. Clair for the conduct of the campaign. It was declared to be the policy of the General Government to establish a just and liberal peace with all the Indian tribes within the limits and in the vicinity of the territory of the United States; but if lenient measures should fail to bring the hostile Indians to a just sense of their situation, it would then be necessary to use all coercive measures to accomplish the result.
General St. Clair was informed that, by an act of Congress, passed September 2d, 1790, another regiment was to be raised and added to the military establishment, and provision made for raising two thousand levies for the term of six months for the service of the frontiers. It was contemplated that the mass of regulars and volunteers should be recruited and rendezvoused at Fort Washington by the Ioth of July following, so that there would be a force of three thousand "effectives" at least, besides leaving small garrisons on the Ohio, for the main expedition.
In order to prevent the Indians from spreading themselves along the line of the frontiers, in the event of the refusal of peace, Brigadier General Charles Scott, of Kentucky, was authorized to make an expedition against the Wea or Aniatenon towns, with mounted volunteers, or militia from Kentucky, not exceed- ing seven hundred and fifty, officers included.
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In his advance to the Miami village St. Clair was directed to establish such posts of communication with Fort Washington on the Ohio, as should be deemed proper, while the post at the confluence of the St. Mary and the St. Joseph was intended for the purpose of awing and curbing the Indians in that quarter, and as the only preventive of future hostilities. It was necessary that it should be made secure against all attempts and insults of the Indians. The garrison to be stationed there was not only to be sufficient for the defense of the place, but always to afford a detachment of five or six hundred men, either to chastise any of the Wabash or other hostile Indians, or to secure any convoy of provisions.
It was left to the discretion of the commanding general to employ, if attainable, any Indians of the Six Nations, and the Chickasaws or other Southern Nations, with the suggestion that probably the employment of about fifty of each, under the direc- tion of some discreet or able chief, might be advantageous. There was a caution that they ought not to be assembled before the line of march was taken up, for the reason that they soon became tired and would not be detained.
The Secretary of War presumed that disciplined valor would triumph over the undisciplined Indian. In that event the Indians would sue for peace, and the dignity of the United States Gov- ernment required that the terms should be liberal. In order to avoid further war it was thought proper to make the Wabash. and thence over to the Miami - the Maumee - and down the same to its mouth at Lake Erie, the boundary, except so far as the same might relate to the Wyandots and the Delawares, on the supposition of their continuing faithful to their treaties. But if these tribes should join in war against the United States they: should be removed beyond this boundary.
There was also a discretion given to General St. Clair to extend the boundary from the mouth of the river Au Panse of the Wabash in a due west line to the Mississippi, since but few Indians, besides the Kickapoos, would be affected by such a line. but there was an admonition that the whole matter should be tenderly managed. The policy of the United States dictated peace with the Indians, for peace was of more value than mil- lions of uncultivated acres.
It was thought possible that the establishment of a post at
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the Miami village might be regarded by the British officers on the frontier as a circumstance of jealousy. It was suggested, therefore, that such intimation should be made at the proper time as would remove all such dispositions. It was the judgment of the Secretary of War that such intimations should rather follow than precede the possession of the post.
It is interesting, after the lapse of a hundred years, to know the feeling entertained by the Federal Government toward Great Britain in the campaign of the Northwestern Territory. Within twenty-one years after the defeat of St. Clair on this fatal field there was a formal declaration of war between the United States and Great Britain, and within twenty-one years General Harri- son heard the thunder of Perry's guns as they proclaimed that the American arms had undisputed possession of Lake Erie.
In the very instructions to which we have alluded it was declared that it was neither the inclination nor the interest of the United States to enter into a contest with Great Britain, and that every measure tending to any discussion or altercation should be prevented. General Knox said, "The delicate situation, there .- fore, of affairs, may render it improper, at present to make any naval arrangements upon Lake Erie. After you shall have effected all the injury to the hostile Indians of which your force may be capable, and after having established the posts and gar- risons at the Miami villages, and its communications, and plac- ing the same under the orders of an officer worthy of such high trust, you will return to Fort Washington, on the Ohio."
"It is proper to observe," continued the Secretary of War, "that certain jealousies have existed among the people of the frontiers relative to a supposed interference between their inter- est and those of the marine states; that these jealousies are ill- founded, with respect to the present government, is obvious. The United States embrace, with equal care, all parts of the Union, and, in the present case, are making expensive arrange- ments for the protection of the frontier, and partly in the modes, too, which appear to be highly favored by the Kentucky people. The high station you fill of Commander-in-Chief of the troops and Governor of the Northwestern Territory, will afford you pregnant opportunities to impress the frontier citizens of the ·entire good disposition of the general government toward them
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in all reasonable things, and you will render acceptable service by cordially embracing all such opportunities."
General St. Clair proceeded to organize his army under these instructions. He was in Pittsburg in the following April, toward which point horses and stores and ammunition were going for- ward. On the 15th of May St. Clair reached Fort Washington [now Cincinnati], and at that time, the United States troops in the West amounted to but two hundred and sixty-four non-com- missioned officers and privates fit for duty. On the 15th of July the first regiment, containing two hundred and ninety-nine men, reached Fort Washington.
General Richard Butler, who fell in the engagement, and for whom Butler county was named, was appointed second in command, and during the months of April and May was en- gaged in obtaining recruits, but when obtained there was no money to pay them, nor to provide stores for them. There was great inefficiency in the quartermaster's department. Tents, pack saddles, kettles, knapsacks and cartridge boxes were all de- ficient, both in quantity and quality. The powder was poor or injured, the arms and accoutrements out of repair and not even proper tools to mend them. Of six hundred and sixty-five stands of arms at Fort Washington, designed by St. Clair for the militia, scarcely any were in order; and with two traveling forges furn- ished by the quartermaster, there were no anvils. The troops gathered slowly at Fort Washington, and there were vexatious detentions at Pittsburg and upon the river. Intemperance pre- vailed to a great extent. St. Clair then ordered the soldiers re- moved, now numbering two thousand men, to Ludlow Station, about six miles from the fort.
The army continued here until September 17th, 1791, when, being two thousand three hundred strong, moved forward to a point on the Great Miami river, when Fort Hamilton was built, the first in the chain of fortresses.
On September 13th St. Clair reconnoitered the country and selected the ground to erect another fort for the purpose of a deposit. Two hundred men were employed the following day under direction of Major Ferguson, at the new fort. This was the second in the chain of fortresses and was called Fort Jeffer- son. The army took up the line of march on the morning of the 24th and pursued an old Indian path leading north through a fine
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open woods, and, after advancing six miles, encamped along the. bank of a creek with a large prairie on the left. This camp was afterward called Fort Greenville by General Wayne, and marks. the site of the town of Greenville.
On the third day of November the army encamped on pleas- ant, dry ground, on the bank of a creek about twenty yards wide, said to be the Pickaway fork of the Omee, but known since to be- a branch of the Wabash. This was ninety-eight miles from Fort Washington. It was later than usual when the army reached the ground that evening, and the fatigue of the men prevented the General from having some works of defense immediately erected. Major Ferguson, commanding officer of the artillery, was sent for and a plan agreed upon for work to commence early next morning. Indeed, it was the intention of St. Clair to leave the heavy baggage at the place and move on with the army to the- Miami village. The high, dry ground was barely sufficient to encamp the army, so that the lines were contracted. The front line was parallel with the creek, which was almost twenty yards. wide. There was low, wet ground on both flanks, and along most of the rear. The militia advanced across the creek about three hundred yards. The frequent firing of the sentinels through the night had disturbed the camp, and excited some concerir among the officers, while guards had reported the Indians skulk- ing about in considerable numbers. At ten o'clock at night Gen- eral Butler, who commanded the right wing, was directed to send out an efficient officer and party for information. There was. much bitter controversy on this subject afterward. An aid-de- camp to General St. Clair stated that he saw Captain Slough, with two subalterns and thirty men parade at General Butler's. tent for that purpose, and heard General Butler give Captain Slough very particular orders how to proceed. The aide-de- camp, with two or three officers, remained with General Butler until a late hour, and then returned to the Commander-in-Chief who was unable to be up, and whose tent was at some distance on the left. General St. Clair had been indisposed for several days past with what at times appeared to be "a bilious colic, some- times a rheumatic asthma, and at other times symptoms of the gout."
In the Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, an offi- cer in the Revolutionary and Indian Wars, and an aid-de-camp
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to General St. Clair, published by the Historical Society of Penn- sylvania, will be found, perhaps, the best account of the engage- ment itself.
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