USA > Ohio > Ohio and her Western Reserve, with a story of three states leading to the latter, from Connecticut, by way of Wyoming, its Indian wars and massacre > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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
There had been prior to this time a strag- gling and sparse fringe of frontiersmen along the west bank of the Ohio, people who occupied the backwoods very much as did the pioneers of Kentucky ; but there was no organized settle- ment, and no legal settlement, because until the time of the Ohio Company's purchase there had been no law laid upon the land. Christian Frederick Post, the Moravian missionary, had in 1761 built a cabin on the Tuscarawas, which it is supposed was the first white man's house in the limits of the future Ohio ; and in 1785-'86 the government had built, at the mouth of the Muskingum, Fort Harmar, where a small garrison was maintained. This, though not a settlement, served admirably to protect that made at Marietta on the opposite shore.
Thus to all intents and purposes the be- ginnings of Ohio were made, as has been re- lated, by the New Englanders at Marietta. They began the progressive and permanent occupation of the region that was to become
227
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Ohio, and were the true pioneers of civilization within its limits. They immediately set up the institutions of local government, opened schools and a church, and prudentially en- closed their homes in a fort which they called " Campus Martius," and which afforded them a sense of security during the period of Indian hostilities-mostly far away. It was from these soldier settlers of Marietta, and in the very first days of their Ohio residence, that there came the favorite and famous nickname of the State. They were greatly admired by the Indians because of their generally high stature and erect and soldierly bearing, and one of them who was particularly the object of adulation, Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, who stood six feet four and as straight as the In- dians themselves, they called "Hetuck "-that x is, the Buckeye-which in Ohio, at least, was a tree conspicuous for its height and sym- metry. Gradually the name became a generic appellation for the early Ohioans, and finally, in the "log-cabin campaign " of 1840, was firmly fixed upon the State.
The enactment of the great ordinance had set others than the New Englanders upon the
228
The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
project of casting their fortunes in the West, and several movements were quickly made tending toward that end. John Cleves Symmes and associates, of New Jersey, in the same year purchased a million acres of land on the Ohio between the two Miami Rivers, and, spurred to emulation by the éclat with which the wild had been opened at Marietta, these people made three settlements within their tract before JOHN CLEVES SYMMES. the expiration of 1788, the second of which, founded December 24th, as Losantiville, became famous as Cincinnati, for nearly a century the metropolis of Ohio, and justly entitled the "Queen City of the West."
In the meantime, on July 15, 1788, was formally instituted at Marietta the first gov- ernment, save in a mere nominal sense, that had ever held sway over the vast Northwest Territory. Congress had on October 5, 1787,
229
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
elected its president, General Arthur St. Clair, as Governor of the Territory, but he had only now arrived in the settlement. Winthrop Sargent had been made secretary, Samuel Holden Parsons, James M. Varnum, and John Cleves Symmes judges. In their various nativities these men gave some suggestion of the composite nature of the population which was destined to characterize Ohio, to consti- tute one of its chief claims to uniqueness, and to figure as a leading source of its ultimate strength. St. Clair was a Scotchman, in America since the French and Indian War, and at the time of his appointment a Pennsyl- vanian. Sargent was from Massachusetts, Parsons from Connecticut, Varnum from Rhode Island, and Symmes from New Jersey.
The Territorial period abounded with oc- currences of important nature, only two or three of which, however, will be mentioned here, as either necessary to show the sequence of events or having a bearing upon the future of the State, among other causes, which it is purposed to set forth. Of the latter class, of what may be called causative happenings, were the Indian wars, of which the chief
230
The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
events were St. Clair's defeat and Wayne's victory. These were events in themselves of large importance, if we recall that the casu- alties in the former were far larger, and the results of the latter, greater than in any battle of the Revolution. But they were far more significant to the people of the West, in that they afforded a palpable demonstration that the Federal army was fighting for their bene- fit, and because of that reflection laying in the breasts of the frontiersmen a feeling of gratitude, and rendering deeper that dignify- ing sense of nationalism which had its begin- ning in the understanding of the principles of the great ordinance and the peculiar con- ditions of the cosmopolitan settlement of the country.
The Territorial government had for some- time little to do in a civil way, for the great influx of people had not yet set in, and it was estimated that in 1790 the whole vast Terri- tory had a population of only about 4,300 souls, of whom nearly one-half were in the remote French settlements of Kaskaskia, Vin· cennes, and Sault Ste. Marie.
But the year 1796 marked the beginning
231
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
of big accessions, and was one of the most im- portant in the history of the State It was then that, Wayne's victory and treaty having dispelled all apprehension of Indian hostility, settlers came more numerously into that part of the Territory that in less than a decade was to be carved into Ohio. And it was then that the remarkable compositeness of popula- tion heretofore alluded to was to be carried a few steps farther in its inclusion of variety. Its settlements formerly consisted mainly of Massachusetts men (at Marietta) and of New Jersey men (in and about Cincinnati) ; but now were thrown open to incomers the huge tracts reserved respectively by Virginia and Connecticut, the former including more than 4,000,000 acres, known as the Virginia Military District, shaped like a wedge, with its broad base resting on the Ohio, and its point extending northward between the Scioto and Miami Rivers, to the very heart of the State; and the latter consisting of nearly 3,000,000 acres extending in an oblong, 120 miles from the boundary of Pennsylvania along Lake Erie. The first of these, reserved by Virginia for the rewards of its Revolution-
232
The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
ary soldiers, was settled this year at Chilli- cothe by a company from Kentucky (although they were originally Virginians) led by Gen- eral Nathaniel Massie ; and the Connecticut Reserve, held by the Yankee State for the benefit of her school fund, was settled by a little band of her own colonists led by Gen- eral Moses Cleaveland, who left his name upon the geography of Ohio, in the town which he founded, now become the chief city of the State. In the meantime the Symmes settlements had been extended to Dayton, and the lands lying across the Ohio west of Pennsylvania and Virginia-and between the Ohio Company's purchase on the South and the Connecticut Reserve on the North, which had been surveyed as the "Seven Ranges," the first of all the Congress lands in the whole public domain-were receiving their share of immigration, mainly from the contiguous ter- ritory across the river. And so it came about that by the year 1796 the future State had five separate bodies of population, and of as many distinct elements or origins.
Of all of these, the Virginia element, which had, from the first, men of marked 17
233
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ability in its midst, more attracted others, and partly because of the bestowal of land upon its Revolutionary officers, and partly because these lands were of an excellence which made them desirable to settlers, who readily pur- chased them, grew most rapidly, and by the time Ohio came to be ushered into organic being as a State, dominated not only its founding, but for a considerable period its destinies. Chillicothe, as a daughter of Vir- ginia, with a certain poetical propriety, be- came the mother of governors and the nour- isher of robust politicians.
These Virginians formed the nucleus of the new Western Democracy, and rallying around them the sympathizers with their faith to be found scattered here and there through the other settlements, taking advantage of the rise of the Jeffersonian Republican party in national affairs and the political exigencies of its leader, which would be well served by the creation of a new State-taking advan- tage, too, of that spirit of advanced and pro- nounced democratic feeling always evident on the frontier, and more than all else, of the increasing personal unpopularity of Governor
234
The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
St. Clair-they overruled the opposing Feder- alists who had their strongholds in the less populous settlements of the Ohio Company and in the Western Reserve, and created the State of Ohio.
The Massachusetts and New England Federalists of Marietta before their feet touched the soil had given the region that they were to make their home a marvelous and far-reaching fundamental law, providing for the exclusion of slavery forever and the " support of religion and learning," but it remained for the Virginians (with a small sprinkling from some of the other elements of the composite population) to give the terri- tory statehood.
235
X
CHAPTER IX
OHIO ACHIEVES STATEHOOD
IF Ohio has experienced a prominence more conspicuous in the field of politics than in any other, it has come naturally by that peculiar form of prestige, for it was born, so to speak, at the close of one of the most adroit and intricate political schemings, and in one of the fiercest of political fights, and if the State has been determinedly devoted to politics, its choice may be very appropriately ascribed to the mysterious influence of pre- natal impression.
Statehood was not achieved by a stroke. Even its immediate causes commenced their operation fully five years before the consum- mation was reached. They were complicated ; and it is difficult to follow the chief ones through the tangled skein, but a little time may, perhaps, be profitably taken for unravel-
236
Ohio Achieves Statehood
ing the inveterately involved strands of causa- tion which led a century ago to the creation of one of the greatest of the United States.
Of the first, we have already seen some- thing in the circumstantially favored develop- ment of the democratic settlements at Chilli- cothe. This was the more significant as it came coincidentally with the rise of the Re- publican and Democratic power in the nation, at the beginning of the century. The central location of this settlement was a powerful factor in the whole movement, as it led to its aspiration to become a capital-first of the Territory, and then of a permanent govern- ment-and so organized and energized the political powers of its people.
A subsequent contributory cause was to be found in the advance of the Territory to its second phase-involving an elective As- sembly in addition to the Governor's Council -to which it became entitled in 1798, by the number of its male inhabitants reaching 5,000. This and the close following reduction of its territory by the erection of Indiana Territory, (which left the old Northwest Territory in- cluding little besides the present State of
237
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Ohio, plus half the lower peninsula of Michi- gan, embracing Detroit), were momentous moves potently influencing the ascendency of the Democracy, the downfall of Federalism, and the creation of Ohio as a State.
The earliest of these measures had brought prominently to the front in civil life the first of the "Ohio Presidents," William Henry Harrison, already famed in war, hav- ing served at Fallen Timbers as Wayne's aide, and destined to be the hero of Tippecanoe. He was chosen as the first Territorial Dele- gate to Congress and rendered valuable serv- ice, especially in land legislation. On the erection of Indiana Territory in 1800, he was made its Governor, and his popular fulfil- ment of the duties of that position made St. Clair, who was still Governor of the dimin- ished Northwest Territory, suffer from com- parison. But the diminution of the original territory had already hurt St. Clair sufficiently to insure his political demise. It was a Re- publican measure and designed to accomplish, among other things, that end.
Animosity toward Arthur St. Clair un- doubtedly hastened the creation of the State.
238
Ohio Achieves Statehood
It seems pitiful that the degradation of this doubly unfortunate, but pure and lofty man, should have been inseparably associated with the rise of a great State, but such was the case. And St. Clair was not only ignomini- ously beaten and deposed from his high posi- tion, but the progress of the whole propaganda resulting in his defeat and the triumphant bourgeoning of Ohio was accompanied by bitterness of spirit and vituperativeness of utterance, reaching a climax in riotous dem- onstrations and threats of violence and death.
The whole trouble arose from the fact that as Governor of the Territory St. Clair had rather large powers, and he was so constituted as not only to make the most of them, but to enlarge upon his prerogatives in a manner that was military and foreign rather than civil and in accordance with the new Ameri- canism which now more than ever, and in the West more than elsewhere, was trending away from aristocracy and autocracy and to- ward democracy. He was especially charged with a frequent autocratic and tyrannical ex- ercise of the veto power. St. Clair was by birth a Scotchman and by education a soldier.
239
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
He was a Federalist, but it defines him better to say that he was an aristocrat rather than a democrat. Unlike Harrison, he was utterly out of touch with the Western character. He had ability, but no adaptability, and contact with the rough and ready men of the frontier democracy
whom he distrusted and sought to govern autocratically only de- veloped keener irrita- tion and deeper dis- like upon both sides. He was intensely
My Clair loyal to the party which had placed him in office and to his old commander, Washington, and there exists not the slightest ground for doubt that he be- lieved that he only did his duty and labored for what he sincerely regarded as the best interests of the country, but he went down under a storm of obloquy, in a large measure undeserved, and he merited far better treat- ment than he received-alike from the pioneer
240
Ohio Achieves Statehood
Ohioans, the people of the country, and the Government. When he died, in poverty and obscurity, at his retreat near Ligonier, Pa., in 1818, it could be said that the man who first administered the laws of the United States in the most important Territory it ever organized was an honest man and a gen- tleman to the last.
At the time of the advancement of the Territory to its second form of government St. Clair and his Federalist upholders-the chief of whom were Jacob Burnet of the Cin- cinnati settlement, and the Marietta men- had sought to have the eastern territory con- sist only of the lands between the Ohio on the east and the Scioto on the west, which would have completely eliminated Chillicothe, and established a territory half the size of Ohio, which could have no hope of statehood for many years, and would pretty surely re- main under St. Clair's dominion.
In 1801 they still stood by these lines on which their opponents had once defeated them. But the creation of a State rather than a Territory had now become the issue. Whether they were altogether sincere or not
241
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
is now impossible to determine, but at all events the Federalists, who had then a ma- jority in the Territorial legislature, in Novem- ber, 1801, passed a bill for the erection of a State on the lines they had formerly proposed for a Territory-that is, making the eastern boundary of the State those of Pennsylvania and Virginia along the Ohio, and the western one the Scioto, and a line drawn from its in- tersection with the Indian boundary line, northeastwardly, to the west corner of the Connecticut Reserve. It is needless to say that had this scheme succeeded Ohio would never have become "one of the principal di- visions of the earth," nor would it have achieved the particular prominence which has characterized it, for it would have been less than one-half its present size.
St. Clair and his followers in urging these narrow limits possibly thought they would create a State which they could control ; but more probably their aim was to project one that would fail of creation, thereby prolong- ing the existence of the Territorial government until a period possibly more propitious for a change in their own interests. The narrow
242
Ohio Achieves Statehood
limits which they prescribed were not alto- gether within the spirit of the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, which declared for the creation of from three to five States from the Territory ; but, on the other hand, they did not represent an absolute innovation of idea, for Timothy Pickering and Thomas Jefferson had early favored a plan of subdivision which would have carved the Northwest Territory into ten, instead of the present five States. Jefferson just at this juncture, however, had a desire for a very different kind of State than the little one which St. Clair and the Federalists proposed presenting to the Union, and he was destined to have it in due season, but not entirely without difficulty.
Right on the heels of the bill for their little Federalist State the followers of St. Clair rather injudiciously put through an- other for the removal of the Territorial capital from Chillicothe to Cincinnati. To be left out of the future State and to lose in the present the capital was altogether too much for the Virginia democracy of Chillicothe to endure passively. They resented it, and the full fury of their resentment fell suddenly.
243
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
They held St. Clair chiefly responsible for both measures, and his attempted tampering with the Territorial lines had previously aroused their enmity. It had long smol- dered, but this fresh assault upon their inter- ests, capped by the capital removal, fanned their anger into flaming outburst which well- nigh proved fatal to the hated Governor.
A mob rioted through the streets of the frontier capital on the night after the passage of the last of the offensive measures, and under the leadership of one Michael Baldwin, a brilliant but turbulent character, whose counterpart has existed in every Western set- tlement, sought to force its way into St. Clair's lodgings, presumably to drag him forth and inflict violence upon his offensively august person. But St. Clair was saved from such indignity and danger by the better ele- ment of his own bitterest opponents, Thomas Worthington-a future Ohio Governor --- and others. That these men did not lose their heads during the whirlwind of passion, was testified to by the Governor himself, who put himself on record by allusion to the " splendid exertion " of Mr. Worthington, "who was
244
.
Ohio Achieves Statehood
obliged to go so far as to threaten him [Bald- win] with death."
This, of course, was the action merely of the lower class of the enraged partizans-the class which usually acts first and thinks after- ward. But the better class were not much slower of action, for a crisis had arisen, and with a foresight that was creditable to them, the Republican-Democrats saw that the ship of State might be launched and they left ashore ! They not only wanted to be aboard the good ship Ohio, but to have a hand in fashioning her and setting her sails and serv- ing at the wheel. So Thomas Worthington went on to the national capital to see what could be done there. £ That the riotous Michael, surnamed Baldwin, was regarded in the light of something more than a mere brawler and mob leader, we shall see again, but for the present it was sufficient demon- stration of his worth that Worthington took him with him to Washington. Possibly he was afraid to leave him at home during his absence, for fear he might fall upon the Gov- ernor.
The potential Ohio was now projected 245
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
into national politics, already a seething and hissing caldron.
Jefferson had been admonished by the narrow margin of his election over Burr that a few more electoral votes to look to in the future would be a comfortable thing, and that the party might actually need them for a con- tinuance in power. The Western Republican- Democrats in all of their efforts toward the creation of a State planned primarily for one that should be Democratic. That would mean three more presidential electors and two more Senators. Success on the side of the Federalists meant just as much to them. Neither cared a whit for a State unless it could be the kind of State they should dic- tate. Each ached for it with an intense pas- sion if it could be made to their own desire. In the end it proved that the Federalists only aspired-though they continued to ache-and the Democrats achieved and enjoyed. Viewed nationally, the new State might make or un- make a President and decide the balance of the great parties and policies ; and thus in the meantime Ohio was a hugely important political makeweight even before it had
246
Ohio Achieves Statehood
issued from the limbo of the problematic into the arena of the actual.
Thomas Worthington, the able and active Jeffersonian, to whom more than to any other one man the final establishment of Ohio was due, soon found that the temper of Congress was such as not only to repudiate the Federalist movement for a feeble State (excluding one- half £ of the present Ohio), but that the body would go further and consider the claims for statehood of the larger Territory that the Republicans favored. Paul Fearing presented THOMAS WORTHINGTON. the Federalist legisla- tive enactment to Congress on January 20, 1802, and the opposition to it on the part of the Jeffersonians immediately began to be vigorously made manifest. While Worthing- ton labored in Washington his adherents car- ried on a tumultuous campaign in the Terri- tory, and forwarded formidable petitions to
247
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Congress in support of their greater State proposition.
The battle in the Territory was compli- cated and given an additional heat by the fervid opposition to St. Clair, who sought statehood fully as much for his elimination from their political life as they did for the benefits of the measure itself. In fact, most of their invective was directed against him. They called him and his adherents "Tories " and declared the Territorial government an oppressive one, and St. Clair, whom they dubbed " Arthur the First," a " tyrant who must be curbed." The country was filled with a clamor "to shake off the iron fetters of aristocracy " and bring about " the down- fall of the Tory party in the Territory," while the mild measures which had been resorted to to induce President Adams not to re- appoint St. Clair were succeeded by more vigorous ones seeking his dismissal from office by the newly elected Republican President. The latter action, as we shall see, was an extreme from which Jefferson held himself aloof until St. Clair, who was evidently goaded to desperation by the inevitableness
248
Ohio Achieves Statehood
of his downfall, himself precipitated it by intemperate utterance.
The upshot of all this war in the West by the Republicans and labor in Congress by Worthington was that the act of the Fed- eralist Legislature was rejected in the House by a vote of 81 to 5, which showed con- clusively how offensive it was. The Rev. Manasseh Cutler, who had been instrumental in framing the Ordinance of 1787, was now a member of Congress and one of the five who voted for the limited State in violation, as to boundaries, of the very ordinance he had secured the passage of. But he was a pro- nounced Federalist.
The Jeffersonians followed up this victory to secure its fruits, and under the lead of Breckenridge in the Senate and Giles in the House passed a bill which became a law April 30, 1802, by the President's approval, known as the "Enabling Act," the first of its kind in our legislation and the model for many in the future, paving the way for the admission of Ohio to the Union, and consti- tuted precisely as it now is, save for a slight difference in the Michigan boundary.
18 249
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
It is significant of the attitude of the Southern and Middle States toward the West at this time, that of 47 votes cast for the admission of Ohio into the Union 26 came from the South, 14 from the Middle States, and only 9 from New England. Virginia voted solidly for the measure ; Massachusetts' vote was equally divided ; Connecticut was 0 for and 5 against the establishment of the State.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.