USA > Ohio > Ross County > Chillicothe > Ohio centennial anniversary celebration at Chillicothe, May 20-21, 1903 : under the auspices of the Ohio State Archaelogical and Historical Society : complete proceedings > Part 13
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vanians into the horrors of savage warfare, that it might in- timidate the Americans and cause them to pause in their pur- suit of liberty. Dunmore would thus strike a double blow ; one for the restricted rights of his colony and one for the continued supremacy of his Majesty's government. View it as you choose, the Dunmore War was the prelude, the opening occasion of the American Revolution. The dramatic battle of that war was fought at the mouth of the Kanawha on the Virginia banks of the Ohio, by General Lewis and fifteen hun- dred Virginia backwoodsmen against Cornstalk, chief of the Shawanees, and the federation of the Ohio Indian tribes with an equal number of chosen braves. The battle, fought October 10, 1774, was, from the nature of the circumstances, the first battle of the Revolution. The Indians were the suborned subjects, the hired Hessians of the British. The troops under Lewis were not British regulars, nor militia, but the forest volunteer co- lonial heroes in homespun and buckskin. They contended for rights denied them; that of settlement north of the Ohio. The savages were vanquished and Lewis crossed the Ohio and joined Dunmore's division at his camp just northeast of the historic town of Chillicothe. Peace was made with the Indians. The blow of that battle was twofold. It struck the arbitrary power of Britain, while it staggered his ally, the Indian. Again it gave courage to the American colonist that he could cope with savage foes. But the conspicuous significance of that war was the incident at Fort Gower at the mouth of the Hocking River, where the army encamped on its return home. There on Novem- ber 5 was held an historic meeting of the Virginia officers. The welcome message was brought them of the patriotic action taken by the Continental Congress then in session at Phila- delphia, and these Virginia officers resolved "That we will bear the most faithful allegiance to His Majesty, King George the Third, whilst His Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free people; that we will, at the expense of life, and every- thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in support of his crown, and the dignity of the British Empire. But as the love of lib- erty and attachment of the real interests and just rights of America outweigh every other consideration, we resolve that we
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will exert every power within us for the defence of Ameri- can liberty, and for the support of her just rights and privi- leges; not in any precipitate, riotous and tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen."
That was a public, formal, spontaneous declaration of Ameri- can freedom announced by Virginia colonists on the banks of the Hocking and the Ohio in the future Buckeye state more than a year and a half before the Liberty Bell, in the Quaker city, rang forth the glad tidings of national independence. The American Revolution followed. Of the graphic and potent events of that war in the New England colonies we have naught to do. But the doings in the Ohio Valley, related to the Ameri- can Revolution, command our intense interest and attention. The puny and plucky rebelling colonies found the western tribes. arrayed against them. As England had employed the mer- cenary Hessians to battle for her at the front in New Eng- land, she engaged the merciless redman of the forest to plunder and murder for her in the rear of the colonies, on the western frontier. The Northwest Territory was the great background of the Revolution. The fiendish proposal of the British ministry to secure the scalping knife and the tomahawk in aid of the mother country against her rebellious child, called forth from the elder Pitt another of his immortal bursts of eloquence. But the British power would not abandon its brutal plans. The mili- tary posts of the British, on the lakes and the rivers of the Illinois country, were rallying centers for the western savages, who were provisioned, armed and infuriated against the Ameri- cans and sent forth on expeditions of massacre and rapine. Deeds of bravery and patriotism were enacted in the Ohio Val- ley more romantic than the often rehearsed events in the Atlantic colonies. The soil of Ohio was the scene of a large share of the struggle for existence of the new-born republic. The career of the colonists from Lexington and Concord was chiefly a series of victories during the years 1775 and 1776 to the autumn of 1777, when the clouds grew heavy and the storm gathered in the South. The northern army of Gates had disbanded after the surrender of Burgoyne (October 17). Howe occupied Phila-
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delphia and comfortably quartered his army therein. With his soldiers the winter of 1777-78 was a period of exultant gaiety. He only awaited the milder weather of spring that he might dispatch a few regiments to Valley Forge and disperse or destroy the remnant forces of Washington that were well nigh ex- hausted by the hunger and cold of that terrible winter. The 'cause of human liberty seemed doomed to inevitable defeat. General Howe held the Americans at bay east of the Alle- ghanies. The British cause was being strengthened in the north- west. General Hamilton in his headquarters at Detroit, proposed to annihilate any assurance of success the Americans might hope for beyond the Alleghanies. But there was a Washington in the West as well as in the East. He was George Rogers Clark, a huntsman of the trackless forest interior of Kentucky, who with the soul of a patriot, the bravery of an American soldier and the mind of a statesman, hastened on foot, through six hundred miles of wilderness, to Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia. There he obtained audience with Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia. Clark proposed to strike the vast power of Great Britain in the northwest and save that magnificent territory to American independence. His plans were appreciated and ap- proved, but troops could not be spared him from the Continental army ; they were needed to a man in the East. Clark gathered two hundred Virginia and Pennsylvania backwoodsmen and while the sun of spring was melting the snows of Valley Forge and hope and courage were again animating the heart of Wash- ington, Clark set out on that famous expedition for the cap- ture of the interior northwest posts of Great Britain. It was the campaign of the "rough riders" of the Revolution. It was the dash of Sheridan in the Shenandoah. It was Sherman's "march to the sea," through the interior of the enemy's country. That campaign of Clark broke the backbone of British strength in the west. The British posts of Illinois and Indiana were all taken save Detroit. The Northwest was secured and preserved to the United States.
The theater of events now shifted to the very center of Ohio. The Illinois campaign of Clark in 1778-79 was followed by innumerable and important contests in the valleys of the
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Miamis, the Maumee, the Sandusky, the Scioto, the Hocking, the Muskingum, the Tuscarawas and other rivers of Ohio. We have time only to enumerate the more conspicuous of those Ohio campaigns. They were events of romance and tragedy.
These forest isles are full of story; -- Here many a one of old renown First sought the meteor light of glory, And midst its transient flash went down.
The Continental Congress early in the year 1778 began to. appreciate the danger that lay in the Northwest, and compre- hended the necessity of aggressive warfare in that vast territory. Detroit, the western capital of Great Britain, must be wrested from her possession. The Ohio Indians, the allies and main- stay of the enemy, must be crushed. Congress (June, 1778), re- solved upon a trans-Alleghany campaign. The war should be- carried into Africa. For this offensive and perilous undertaking, which included the capture of Detroit, three thousand Continental militia were "voted" and an appropriation of some three-quarters of a million dollars made to defray the expense. General Lach- lin McIntosh was selected to direct these important operations. But it was one thing to vote men and money, another thing to raise either. The powers of the young republic were fully taxed in other directions. The western warfare as projected had to be indefinitely postponed. However, preparatory to this proposed invasion of the enemy's country, Fort McIntosh was built on the. present site of Beaver (Pa.), and a few months later, in the fall of 1778, seventy miles farther west on the banks of the Tusca- rawas, near the present village of Bolivar, was erected Fort Laurens, so named in honor of the then president of Congress, Henry Laurens. It was the first fort erected by Americans within the confines of Ohio. The fort was built by a detachment of one. thousand men under the command of General McIntosh. After the completion of the fort this force, with their leader, returned to Pittsburg, leaving the stockade in charge of Col. John Gibson and a garrison of one hundred and fifty Continental soldiers. This most western outpost of the American army was the scene of many fierce attacks by and bloody encounters, with the hostile:
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Indians, equipped and encouraged by the British authorities at Detroit. The winter of 1778-79 was one of the most severe and stormy that the Ohio country had experienced in many years. The plucky soldiers in Fort Laurens suffered from hunger and cold to a dreadful degree. It was a Valley Forge on the Tus- carawas. The odds were finally too great for the unreinforced garrison. In August, 1779, following an attack and seige by Indians, supported by a small detachment of British soldiers, all under command of Lieutenant Henry Bird of his Majesty's army, the fort was abandoned. This fight for, and failure of, the American cause at Fort Laurens, was an event in, and insepa- rable from, the Revolution no less than the contemporaneous campaign of the successful Sullivan in Pennsylvania and New York. While Col. John Gibson's handful of soldiers were yield- ing the fort on the Tuscarawas, General John Sullivan (in the summer of 1779), collected a large body of soldiers in the Wyo- ming Valley, marched up the Susquehanna and sucessfully at- tacked, at their Chemung fortifications, the combined force of British regulars under Captain McDonald, the Tory partisans under Colonel John Butler and the Iroquois Indians under the famous Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant. Sullivan followed up his victory by the destruction of many Indian villages in the New York country. But his successes only aroused the Ohio Indians to greater enmity, fury and cruelty. The series of events on either side of the Alleghanies is, from this time on, replete with striking parallels and equally important results. Ohio was thence- forth to become the hotbed of Indian attacks and repulses under the instigation, armament and direction of British officials. From the commencement of the Revolutionary War, the British, at Detroit, in Canada, and at various Indian stations, were particu- larly active in exciting the tribesmen to hostility. Space does not permit us to follow the thrilling details of these bloody and brutal encounters. The Revolution in the East was with civilized soldiery. In the West it was with infuriated savages.
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Those western Pioneers an impulse felt, Which their less hardy sons scarce comprehend; Alone, in Nature's wildest scenes they dwelt;
And fought with deadly strife for every inch of ground
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The Kentucky country south of the Ohio, which was at this ·date part of Virginia, was settled by Virginians who had estab- lished permanent and secure stations on the Ohio and the inland Kentucky rivers. Kentucky, therefore, no less than Virginia and Pennsylvania, supplied plucky pioneers and brave patriots to do ibattle in the Ohio country for the struggling American Republic. Historians both great and small have done scant justice to the warlike operations in Ohio bearing upon and during the Revo- lutionary period.
While the dashing Wayne was engaged in his brilliant as- sault upon Stony Point in the summer of 1779, Captain John Bowman, the former companion of George Rogers Clark, was (July) making a bold incursion into the heart of the Indian settle- ments in Ohio. Bowman, with Captain Logan as second in command, enrolled one hundred and sixty Kentucky volunteers, marched from Harrodsburg, crossed the Ohio at the mouth of the Licking and proceeded up the Little Miami Valley to Old Chillicothe, the Indian stronghold of the Shawanees. The Indian town was burned and much devastation wrought in the land of the redmen, but the expedition was compelled to return leaving the fierce forest warriors in "no degree daunted or crippled." The expedition was not without its effect, however, for it checked in another quarter, the movements of the British and Indians. Captain Henry Bird, following the abandonment of Fort Laurens, had collected two hundred Indians at the Mingo town and was about to start for Kentucky when the news of Bowman's attack on Chillicothe reached Bird's camp. Quickly Bird's Indians dis- solved in a panic, many hastening to defend their towns; some even desired to make peace with the Americans.
The earlier part of the year 1780 was a disastrous and de- pressing one for the colonists, especially on the southern sea- board. While matters were progressing slowly in the North, Sir Henry Clinton, in the South, invested Charleston, which in April surrendered to its British besiegers. Savannah was already in the possession of the enemy and thus Georgia and South Carolina seemed lost to the Americans. The defeat of Gates by Cornwallis at Camden, N. J., (August) was followed by the trea- sonous attempt of Arnold to betray West Point (September). But
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the fortitude and bravery of the Americans would not falter. In the wilderness of Ohio they were likewise sturdily struggling against great odds. If the American affairs were going badly in the New England and the southern states, the Virginian settlers in Kentucky were maintaining the cause of liberty on the battle- field of Ohio. Had the Ohio and Kentucky sections been lost to the colonists at this time the whole course of the Revolution might have been changed.
In May of this same year (1780) the British at Detroit de- cided upon an expedition through Ohio to Kentucky. The pur- pose being to break up the settlement south of the Ohio and drive the American pioneers back over the mountains. Major A. S. De Peyster was the British commandant at Detroit under whom the arrangements were perfected. The pretentious plan was, that the Indian, Canadian and British regular forces, provided with artillery, under command of Captain Henry Bird, should march directly to Louisville, on the Ohio, and after its destruc- tion, take the other stations in regular order. Kentucky was to be rescued from the pioneer patriots. Captain Bird with a force of nearly a thousand men and six small cannon, deviating from the route first outlined, proceeded from Detroit by way of the Miamis across Ohio to the Licking River. The small stock- ades at Ruddle's and Martin's stations (Ky.) were seized, the settlers taken prisoners and scalped and massacred or carried off by the Indians, whose inhuman propensities Bird could not re- strain. Bird had not the hardihood to follow up his success, but beat a retreat to Detroit by the route which he had come. It was the John Morgan raid of the Revolution in Ohio. The alarm was sounded at once through the Kentucky settlements, and a retaliatory invasion of the Shawanee towns on the Mad River and Little Miami was agreed upon. George Rogers Clark hastened from Fort Jefferson, which he had built on the banks of the Mississippi, to the scene of action in Kentucky. As with the Scotch hero of old "one blast upon his bugle horn was worth a thousand men." Clark summoned every sturdy backwoods- man to his expedition; "four-fifths of all the grown men were drafted and bidden to gather instantly for a campaign." They turned out almost to a man, leaving the boys and women to guard
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the home stockades until they should return. The troops were gathered at the mouth of the Licking to the number of nine hundred and seventy. Benjamin Logan was Clark's second in command. Many famous frontiersmen, including Boone, Kenton, Harrod, Floyd and others were in that little army, a regiment going forth in the cause of freedom no less than did the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont under the enthusiastic and daring Ethan Allen. Clark led this force up the Miami to the old Chilli- cothe,* which was reached early in August. The Indians had forestalled the enemy's arrival and had burned and deserted their town. Clark proceeded some twelve miles northwest of Piquat (Pickaway), on the north bank of the Mad River.
Piqua at this time was quite an Indian village, with many wood huts and a rude log fort within its limits, surrounded by pickets. Here Clark successfully attacked the Indian forces, per- haps a thousand strong. The redmen stoutly defended their stronghold but could not withstand the cannonading of Clark's little three pounder. The savages fled, the town was destroyed as were some neighboring villages and many fields of crops. Clark and his Kentucky recruits returned to their southern homes, having been away less than a month. This expedition was a great blow to the Indians and a decided discouragement to their friends and backers, the British.
So, as a matter of fact, during the year 1780 the Revolution was vigorously prosecuted in the Ohio country. Detroit was the western headquarters of the British. Fort Pitt was the western headquarters of the Americans. Ohio lay midway between. It was therefore the arena of the contest. Kentucky was the re- cruiting ground for the Americans, Ohio the battle-field. From Detroit emerged French-Canadians, English Tories and British regulars with small and large Indian bands to burn and kill, or worse, in behalf of His Majesty, King George. About this time
* Old Chillicothe was located about three miles north of the present Xenia.
+ Piqua is claimed as the birthplace of Tecumseh, who with his mother was doubtless here at Clark's attack. Tecumseh was at this time about eleven years old and it was doubtless his first experience in witnessing the race war in which he was later to enact so conspicuous a part.
o. c .- 9
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an official report from Detroit to Lord Germaine, British min- ister of war, read: "It would be endless and difficult to enumer- ate to your lordship the parties that are continually employed - by the British - upon the back settlements. From the Illinois country to the frontiers of New York there is a continual suc- cession the perpetual terror and losses of the inhab- itants will, I hope, operate powerfully in our favor." The hideous and inhuman war was conducted against not only armed settlers, but non-combatants, women and children. The British policy was that of extermination of the American colonists west of the Alleghanies.
On October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown and the War of the Revolution in the East was at an end. Not so in Ohio. It continued there with unabated, even increasing fury and horror. Detroit still remained the British western capital, and the purveying depot of supplies for hostile Indians.
In the year 1782 occurred the memorable expedition of Colo- nel William Crawford for the purpose of dispersing the Indians rendezvousing near Upper Sandusky, and of destroying their town, in order to give "ease and safety to the inhabitants of this (Ohio) country" and prepare the way to an attack upon De- troit .* Upper Sandusky had become the chief rallying center for the British Indians before setting out upon their border attacks.
* It was in the spring of this same year (1782) that occurred the Gnadenhutten massacre. The Moravian missionaries had made converts of the Delaware Indians at Gnadenhutten and other nearby points, on the Tuscarawas. These Indians did not believe in war and so refused to aid either the British or the Americans in their warfare. They were therefore subjects of suspicion by both parties. In 1778 the Detroit com- mandant sent them word they must take up arms for the British or he would destroy their missions. In 1781 a troop of 300 warriors, mainly Wyandots, led by Captain Pipe and the British Captain Elliott, took pos- session of the Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten, destroyed their property and forcibly took them to Upper Sandusky. They were later taken to Detroit where the British commander tried to atone for the injustice done the Moravians. They were permitted to return to Gnadenhutten. They were now believed to be in league with the British. A military band of about one hundred Virginians and Pennsylvanians, under Col. David Williamson, in March 1782, proceeded to Gnadenhutten, by treachery
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The town was located on the head waters of the Sandusky. From these headwaters to those of the Scioto was but a short portage .* The town was therefore a main station on one of the principal highways or waterways connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio, and Canada and the Mississippi. It was a pivotal point in the travel, migrations and war preparations of that period. At this Wyandot town the Indians received their allowances, supplies, arms, am- munition and directions from the British authorities. Both Wash- ington and General Irvine, the latter the commander at Fort Pitt, earnestly sought the dislodgement of the Indians at this quarter and its control by the Continental forces. An expedition of extermination was decided upon and Colonel William Crawford was selected as its leader. Crawford was the life-long personal friend of Washington .; As boys they had been companion sur- veyors in the western forests. Crawford served under Dun- more in the latter's Ohio invasion, he also served under Wash- ington in Braddock's defeat; with him had crossed the Delaware on the famous Christmas Eve; he fought at Brandywine, Ger- mantown and elsewhere with distinguished service. He was Washington's choice for the hazardous undertaking. "The pro- ject against Sandusky was as carefully planned as any military enterprise in the west during the Revolution." Late in May (1782), some five hundred volunteers from the Pennsylvania and Virginia militia took up their march from the Mingo Bottom} and on the evening of June 3 encamped on the Sandusky Plains. The following day they encountered the enemy on Battle Island, an elevated grass-covered opening in the forest. The British and the Indians had rallied for the conflict. Their force was about equal in numbers to the Americans. It was a confederated army of Wyandot, Delaware, Shawanee and "lake Indians" with
disarmed the Indians and then foully and cruelly murdered some hun- dred of the peaceful and guiltless Indians. They died like Christian martyrs. .
* In the dry season perhaps three or four miles; in the rainy season perhaps less than a mile.
+ William Crawford was born in Orange (present Berkeley) County, Virginia, in 1732, same year as birth of Washinton.
Į Mingo Bottom was on the Ohio, two and a half miles below Steubenville.
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their warrior chiefs and a company of Detroit rangers, the united army under command of Captain William Caldwell, a cool and daring British officer, and several British lieutenants. The battle was waged with varying results on three successive days. The Americans were compelled to give way, abandon the field and beat a retreat from the Ohio country. The American loss was some seventy killed, wounded and captured. In the latter was Crawford, the commander. His awful fate at the hands of the fiendish savages, who burned him amid indescribable tortures at the stake, is all frightful and familiar history to Ohio readers. Was there ever a greater immolation upon the altar of human liberty and national independence? The poet wrote "for our country 'tis a bliss to die" and many a hero has sought a glorious death upon the battlefield "amid the pomp and circumstance of war," but Crawford's dreadful doom was that of the martyr amid the fagot's flames. No spot in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" should be more sacred than that upon the banks of the Tymochtee where the soil of Ohio was hallowed with the ashes of William Crawford. The battle of the Sandusky is often alluded to by writers as "the only battle of the Revolution fought within the present confines of Ohio." It was merely the most con- spicuous one. There were many others no less part and parcel of the great Revolutionary contest.
The year 1782 was the year of blood and disaster for the Ohio country. The American cause had triumphed in the East but the British western stations were not surrendered nor were Britain's allies, the Indians, subdued. The British at Detroit strained every nerve to continue hostilities in the West and drag into the war the entire Indian population. They fondly believed the West might yet be saved to British domain. It has been estimated that some twelve thousand savages were immediately tributary to De- troit. They must be continued in. their contest against the Americans. Another incursion across the Ohio and into Kentucky was sent forth from Detroit. In August (1782) Captain William Caldwell, flushed with his victory at San- dusky, heading a party of British rangers and several hundred Indians, marched across Ohio and entered Kentucky. Several small stockaded towns were taken, when Blue Licks on the
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