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 16
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One reason, frequently given, is that they elect officers more amiable than efficient. Another cause assigned, is that short termed troops are never well instructed. But a more conclusive reason for the superiority of the national guardsmen of to-day over their military predecessors is that they are more intelligent
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and better educated, and finally, that they have more local and national pride.
Referring again to St. Clair's disaster, it may be said that there are few more tragic episodes than that of this Revolutionary hero, this veteran of many battles, carried back wounded and helpless in the rear of his defeated army-his reputation as a soldier and his influence as a man lost in one fatal hour.
Wayne met with no such misfortune. He secured the best scouts in the western country and took time to drill, instruct and discipline his army. He had, himself, experienced an unfortu- nate defeat in the Revolutionary War, at Peoli Mills, from a neglect of guard and picket duty ; being a sensible man, he did not have to learn the lesson twice.
There is one feature in the battle of Fallen Timbers which deserves a special notice. When the advance began, it never stopped. The enemy were given no chance to rally or reform their lines. The victory was so complete that it settled definitely the western boundary of Ohio.
In the treaty of Greenville we agreed to give, at once, for three-fourths of this state and a part of Indiana, goods to the value of twenty thousand dollars, and nine thousand five hun- dred dollars in five annual payments.
This year the assessed valuation of the real and personal property of Ohio is one billion nine hundred million dollars, and the estimated total value is six billion of dollars. If laid out in heaps, there would be six thousand piles of gold of a million dollars each, but the price paid was not all in bartered goods - but in blood and blows; in privations, self-sacrifices, in days of danger, sleepless nights, in the sweat of the brow, and tears of sorrow. The change wrought was worth the price, regardless of material gain. The bestiality of the wigwam gave place to the refinements of the civilized home; the incantations of the med- icine-man to the triumphs of science; the vendetta of the savage to tribunals of justice; the Ishmaelite gospel of hate to the Chris- tian evangel of benevolence.
The British lent their aid to the Indians because they wished to keep the whole western country as a hunting preserve for the fur trade.
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Tecumseh needed no urging; he saw that the conflict be- tween the red man and the pale face was inevitable. He was not contending only for a hunting-ground, but for the homes of his people. His claim, that the Indian held the American conti- nent in trust for his whole race, was a grand conception. His contention, that no tribe had a right to barter away its heritage, was a statesmanlike anticipation of our denial of the right of secession and our assertion of the indestructiblety of our Union.
When his brother, the prophet, precipitated the contest and lost the battle of Tippecanoe, Tecumseh had unwillingly to form an alliance with the British.
Then came the War of 1812, with its lights and shadows of victory and defeat.
It has been called the second war of independence, yet it was rather a contest for the possession of what we would now call the hinterland of the continent.
When the territory between the crest of the Alleghanies and the Mississippi was conceded to us by the treaty of Paris in 1783, the governing class in Great Britain did not anticipate that we would ever acquire the vast domain west of that river. But even before the Louisiana purchase the Hudson Bay Company had awakened to the fact that their interests had been jeopardized by a too liberal territorial concession. Hence it happened that the machinations of this powerful company had much to do in bringing about a renewal of hostilities. But back of all other considerations was the silent force of geographical gravitation, which would have ultimately drawn the two nations into a con- test for the sovereignty of this great inland empire.
The people of Ohio certainly felt less interest in the Brit- ish impressment of seamen and the right of search than they did in the territorial question. The promptness with which three regiments were raised in a new and thinly-populated state showed that the men of that period were influenced by a tangible inter- est, and not by a mere sentiment.
The campaign of 1812 began by the regiments of Finley, McArthur and Cass, under the command of General Hull, cutting: their way through the forests from Urbana to the lakes.
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This has been represented as quite an achievement, yet it took Hull nearly four weeks in summer to make this march of a hun- dred miles. He had two thousand men, and nearly all of them expert axmen. When we compare this with Sherman's march in mid-winter through the woods and swamps of the Carolinas, with sixty thousand men, from Savannah to Goldsborough, four hundred and twenty-five miles in forty days, the performance of our forefathers suffers by comparison. Next we find Hull re- treating from the Canada side against the almost insubordinate protests of his officers. After occupying Detroit, he sent back Van Horn to bring in Captain Brush with supplies ; then followed the battle of Maguagua. Cass and McArthur were then sent out to bring in Van Horn. In their absence Detroit was surren- dered and their commands included in the capitulation.
So ended the most humiliating chapter in our national an- nals. Lossing, in his history, tries to palliate Hull in his disgrace- ful surrender, yet he had a fair trial by a court-martial made up of the most prominent officers then in the service. Major- General Henry Dearborn was president of the court, Martin Van Buren was judge-advocate, the proceedings were reviewed by Alexander J. Dallas and approved by President Madison. He was justly sentenced to be shot, but the members of the court recommended him to clemency on account of his age and Rev- olutionary service.
Yet he was only fifty-nine years of age when he surrendered to an inferior force without resistance. He was of the same age as Major Robert Anderson when he defended Fort Sumter. He was just of the age of Admiral Dewey when he sank the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. He was one year younger than Scott when he took the city of Mexico, and eleven years younger than Moltke when he defeated the French at Sedan.
As our Ohio regiments had been made prisoners, our north- ern border would have been left defenceless if Kentucky had not come to the rescue and sent three regiments of volunteers to the front.
It was then that the hero of Tippecanoe appeared on the scene. The campaign of 1813 opened with our defeat at the river Raisin. This compelled Harrison to stand upon the de-
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fensive ; he hurried to the rapids of the Maumee and built Fort Meigs, which he twice defended against the British and Indians under Proctor and Tecumseh. Major George Croghan made a defense of Fort Stevenson which is historic .*
The danger of invasion seemed so imminent that Governor Meigs directed General McArthur, who was then major-general of the Ohio militia, to call out all men capable of bearing arms. McArthur made what is known as the general call. This was also an historic episode. It may not have been so picturesque as the assembling of the Scotch clans, on the call of the fiery cross, but like the minute men of New England, the men of Ohio left the plane on the bench, and the plow in the furrow, took down their rifles and powder-horn, and started for the front. As the sun- shine shimmered down through the waving boughs of the forest upon this hurrying array of earnest men, it fell upon the flag of thirteen stripes and seventeen stars. The last star was that of Ohio, which from that time on has led the men of the Buckeye state from victory to victory, and from glory to glory.
When the head of our column neared the Maumee, Proctor retreated to Malden. It may seem strange that Harrison did not follow him. The reason he did not is because the force that reported to him came upon an emergency call, and when the dan- ger was averted these men had to return to their homes, where only aged and infirm men and women and children had been left.
* Major Croghan's defense of Fort Stephenson with 160 men and one six-pounder field-piece against 500 Canadians with a siege train and 800 Indians was justly considered a most creditable feat of arms. As a des- perate defense it does not compare with General Sandy Forsyth's desperate fight against a thousand Sioux warriors at Bloody Island. But far more depended upon the result of Croghan's fight. Time was required to bring up reinforcements and to organize an offensive movement, and the sacrifice of the garrison of Fort Stephenson would have been justifiable under the circumstances. George Croghan, (pronounced Crawn), was a major of the 17th Infantry, lieutenant-colonel 2d Rifles, and assistant in- spector-general of the Army. He was born in Kentucky and died in 1849. He was a son of Major Wm. Croghan of the Continental Army. His mother was a sister of General George Rogers Clark, Colonel Jonathan Clark and General Wm. Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He was a first cousin of General Thos. Jessup and General Robert Anderson. His son, Colonel George Croghan, Jr., was killed in the Confederate army at Cornifex Ferry in 1861.
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Even after Harrison received more permanent reinforce- ments he could not assume the offensive while the British held the command of the lakes. Perry's victory at Put-in-Bay was fought and won on the tenth of September, 1813. There were many Ohio men in the tops of Perry's ships, whose unerring aim drove the British gunners from the decks of their vessels. This, the only naval battle fought within our borders, was as pictur- esque as it was decisive. Perry's message to Harrison: "We have met the enemy and they are ours," became as famous as Cæsar's veni, vidi, vici.
The battle of the Thames, which was fought a little over a month later, may be briefly described as three thousand red coats and red men defeated in three minutes. So far as I know, it was the only battle fought on this continent decided by a charge of cavalry.
Tecumseh, the great chief of the Shawanees, and a brigadier- general in the British army, was killed in this engagement. With the exception of Grant and Sherman he was, in my opinion, the greatest warrior born within the borders of Ohio. He was more than a mere fighter, he was a diplomatist, orator and a natural leader of men. He waged what he knew was a hopeless contest, but fought bravely to the last ; he was idolized by his own follow- ers, and respected by his foes.
After the battle of the Thames, Harrison returned with his army to Detroit. There he received an order from the sec- retary of war to muster out the Kentucky volunteers and to proceed to the Niagara frontier. After complying with this or- der, and before he was given a command, he received letters from General Armstrong, secretary of war, severely criticising his ad- ministration of the Eighth Military District. General Harrison resented this censure, and after an ascetic correspondence he received, unasked, a leave of absence; upon this he resigned and returned to his home in Ohio.
General Armstrong has published a history of the War of 1812. From this it appears that he found fault with General Harrison in several particulars. First, that he habitually over- estimated his opponents' numbers and resources. That he stood upon the defensive, when a more aggressive policy might have
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been adopted to his advantage. That he should either have with- drawn Major Croghan's command, or have supported him with his entire force. The secretary dwelt with greater emphasis upon his lavish expenditure of money, and finally he reminded him that he had never sent a single report to the War Depart- ment while in command of the Western Department .*
Unquestionably General Harrison's administration was open to criticism. He was a brave man, but not a bold leader; yet it must be said of him that he was a successful commander under very trying circumstances.
It is reported in an executive document, sent to the Twenty- fourth Congress that Ohio furnished 24,703 men of all classes in the war, but these were enlistments, and it is known that many Ohio men served several enlistments. The numbers who actually went to the front probably did not exceed 14,000.
General McArthur and his brigade were also ordered to the Eastern Department. His command was transferred to Erie by water, and marched from there to Sackett's Harbor, in New York. From there McArthur went as a witness before the Hull court-martial at Albany. After giving his testimony, he was placed in command of the district of the Northwest. In the summer of 1814, he was directed to call upon the state of Ohio for five hundred mounted volunteers, and for as many from Ken- tucky. Of this number only seven hundred reported; with this force, and an addition of seventy friendly Indians, he dispersed a band of Pottawatamies which were threatening Detroit. Orders were then received to cross over into Canada to make a diversion in favor of the army under General Brown, then operating on the Niagara frontier. With this object this small brigade marched up the valley of the Thames, as Harrison had done the year be- fore. This command, however, went much further and finally reached Grand River at a point only twenty-five miles from the head of Lake Ontario. There they had a battle with the Ca- nadian militia at Malcolm's Mills, on the fifth of November, 1814.
*In Burr's Life and Times of Wm. H. Harrison, an additional reason is given for General Harrison's resignation. It seems that Sec- retary of War Armstrong gave orders direct to one of General Harrison's subordinates, a Major Holmes, without transmitting them through the regular channels. Upon this Harrison at once resigned.
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The Canadian loss was one officer and seventeen men killed, and as many wounded. Two hundred were taken prisoners. Here McArthur learned that General Izard had retreated to the Ameri- can side. He therefore, necessarily, had to abandon his intention of joining him at Fort Erie. After destroying all the mills and other contraband of war in that vicinity the expedition returned to Detroit.
McAfee, in his history of the "War in the West," concludes his account of this campaign with this remark: "Thus termi- nated an expedition which was not surpassed in the war in bold- ness of design nor in the address in which it was conducted. General McArthur, who conceived and conducted it, displayed great bravery and military skill."
This compliment seems well deserved when we consider that it was the only command in the war that penetrated two hundred and twenty-five miles into the enemy's country.
It only remains now to refer to the final result of the contest, so far as the Indians were concerned. By a treaty made on the part of the national government by General McArthur and Cass, in 1817, the Wyandots, Senecas, Delawares, Pottawatomies, Ot- tawas, Shawanees and Chippewas sold and relinquished their right and title to all lands north of the Ohio River and agreed to move beyond the Mississippi. The consideration ran variously, from four thousand dollars in perpetuity to the Wyandots to a single payment of five hundred dollars to a Delaware. Verily McArthur and Cass drove a shrewd bargain with those native Americans, yet they did not fare so badly, after all, for they were given the best land in the Indian Territory.
I remember, as a boy, seeing the last of these Ohio Indians passing Chillicothe on canal boats on their way to their new res- ervation. I have since seen some of their descendants loafing about railway stations, the men dressed in slopshop clothes and smoking cinnamon cigars, and the squaws in gaudy raiment, chewing tutti fruti.
Men of my cloth are not much given to moralizing, yet there are a few deductions, so obvious from this review of our his- tory, that they seem to suggest themselves. The first is, that our people are warlike but not military; we are belligerent enough,
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but do not like discipline and preparation. There was a Saxon king, known as Athelstan, the unready. In military matters we are like him. We probably never will be ready for war. As Wash- ington's advice, that we should in peace prepare for war, has been persistently ignored, it is hopeless to convince the American people that any preparations for war are necessary. Our Ohio people are more than usually incredulous to this. It has been our fortunate experience that no large battles have ever been fought within our borders. The battles referred to in this monograph seem small by comparison with a number which have been seen by many here present. It is strange, yet true, that very many of the decisive battles of the world have been small battles. Mara- thon was a small affair, so was the battle of Hastings, which de- cided the destiny of England. Washington's army at Yorktown would now be considered a small division. At the battle of Fal- len Timbers we only had about one thousand men engaged. San Jacinto, which freed Texas, was fought by a handful of reckless men. But of all events in our strange, eventful history, Clark's conquest of the great inland empire, with his small band of dar- ing adventurers, was the most remarkable. In the history of the world there is nothing to compare with this when we consider the apparent insignificance of their means in the relation to the results achieved. The conquest of Mexico and Peru appeal more to the imagination, but the area covered by Clark's conquest has a population greater than that of Mexico and Peru combined ; and compared to the wealth of Ohio alone, the treasures of the Montezumas and the Incas sink into insignificance.
So endeth the first lesson. The second will show you the glorious fabric raised upon the solid foundations laid by our pioneers. They labored wisely and well. How well, may be seen, not only in our present prosperity, not only in our marvelous con- quests of the powers of nature, but also in the production of such men as stand in enduring bronze in the front of our capitol.
To revert for a moment to my military text, have you never noted how many of our presidents have military antecedents ? Washington, Monroe, Jackson, W. H. Harrison, Taylor, Pearce, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benj. Harrison, Mckinley and Roosevelt.
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Have we proved worthy of our sires? It is not for us to say ; yet in our late wars no American soldier is known to have turned his back upon the foe. I have seen Old Glory with its constella- tion of stars go up high in the southern heavens while the por- tentous banner of Spain came fluttering down like a wounded vulture to the ground.
"Grim visaged war has smoothed his wrinkled front," and now on every side we see the triumphs of Art, the wonders of Science, the monuments of Wealth. We are, to-day, proud, pros- perous and confident. Capua is more pleasant than the camp. Yet, in its pleasures, let us beware, lest we lose the manly quali- ties which make ambition virtue, and a nation great.
REFERENCES : - Lossing's Field Book of the War "'12." Niles Reg- ister. Atwater's History of Ohio. King's Ohio. In American Common- wealth. McMaster's History of the American People. Braman's Official Letters. Peter Porcupine's Letters. Atherton's Narrative. John Arm- strong's History. McAfee's War in the Northwest. The Dartmoor Prison. Sundry pamphlets of the Bancroft Collection. Life of W. H. Harrison. Drake's Life of Tecumseh. English's Life of George Rogers Clark. Alphabetical List of Battles. Wilson's Treaty of Greenville. McDonald's Sketches. Butterfield's History of the Girtys. Parkman's. Pontiac.
THE MILITARY HISTORY OF OHIO,
FROM
THE WAR OF 1812, INCLUDING THE CIVIL AND SPANISH WARS.
J. WARREN KEIFER.
With the close of the War of 1812 with Great Britain, so glorious to the United States in achievements on land and sea, in which Ohio soldiers and sailors bore an honorable part, came also peace, in large part, with the In- dian tribes that had so long held back the border settlements within Ohio's limits. Farther west, Indian wars of a more or less desultory, yet bloody, kind, continued almost to the end of the nineteenth century. In these and the notable Florida Indian War, last- ing about eight years (1835-1843), the bloodiest and most costly of all our Indians wars, Ohio did not par- ticipate, save by her contributions to the regular military forces, though her restless sons were ever moving with the frontier borders, as civilization ad- J. WARREN KEIFER. vanced through forest and over prairie and plain, penetrating and crossing the Rocky mountain ranges, and stopped only by the shores of the Pacific.
Excluding the Indian wars, there was, after the close of the War of 1812, a long interval (31 years) of peace - the longest in the history of the Republic except the one (33 years) follow- ing the Civil War. Then came the war with our sister republic of Mexico.
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The annals of our still young country have been bloody, hence eventful. From Lexington (1775) to Appomattox (1865) - ninety years - sixteen years, more than an average of one year in every six, were (Indian wars excepted) devoted to wars with foreign powers and to the Civil War, in each of which Ohio gave her devoted sons, as regulars and volunteers, both to the army and navy; and, Indian wars excepted, ten years of the nineteenth century were years of war. A marvel of the ages will ever be the fact that colonies, started on a newly-discovered continent infested by hostile tribes, and soon at war with a mother country powerful both by sea and land, and endangered by the baleful institution of human slavery, which had there been planted and fostered by the connivance and the avarice of mon- archical countries of the old world, all of which were jealous of their free institutions, grew into a nation, within the span of of a century, to stand and to be acknowledged first among the powers of the world, and, from its birth, in population, from 3,000,000 of a somewhat heterogeneous people, now to about 80,- 000,000 of a largely homogeneous people, though springing from almost all the races, and coming, originally, from almost all the countries of the earth, speaking every tongue. No less marvelous is the fact that in a trackless wilderness, occupied by the most warlike of the hostile tribes of Indians, a settlement (in Ohio) was made very late in the eighteenth century, and grew, amid massacres and constant Indian wars, to a scattered population, mainly on lake and river, in 1800, of 45,365 to, in 1850, 1,980,329,, and, by the end of the century, to 4,157,545, meantime furnish- ing hundreds of thousands of her sons, mainly as volunteers, to fight the battles of her country, thereby making it both glorious and great, and this while on its borders, in the early part of the century, its inhabitants had to fight for the defense of their im- mediate firesides. Many thousand of Ohio's sons and daughters. emigrated to other states, principally to the West, though they are found in large numbers in all the states of the Union, especially in the great business centers, and in the important coast and other cities between the Atlantic and Pacific. Many have re- moved to foreign lands.
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I.
OHIO IN THE MEXICAN WAR, 1846-1848.
It is usual to say this war was commenced by the hostile acts of the Mexican general, Arista, crossing (April 24, 1846) the Rio Grande to attack the United States forces under General Zachary Taylor, then maneuvering his troops on the left bank of that river, in what was claimed. to be a part of Texas, but then recently (December 29, 1845) annexed as a state in our Union. That war closed with the treaty of Guadaloupe Hildago, signed February 2, 1848, by which we acquired both the then provinces of Upper California and New Mexico, now California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and part of Colorado.
This is the only war in which the United States forces in- vaded foreign soil and took a hostile country's capital.
This conquest resulted in the acquisition (though in form a purchase) of 545,000 square miles of territory - almost 100,000 more in square miles than the area of the original thirteen states ; and a later (1853) acquisition by the Gadsden Purchase followed.
Of the causes or purposes of the Mexican War I am not here to speak. If this war was not justified by the acts of the Mex- ican government, and if it was entered upon to acquire more ter- ritory with a view to its dedication to human slavery, its ultimate fruits and the moral and material results attained, in the light of subsequent events, may, in some sense, be a justification of the war. A higher civilization swept over a vast empire of terri- tory, and millions of human beings have been given political, commercial and religious advantages and freedom, and which other unborn millions are likewise to enjoy. Gold was discovered (1848) in California, and the world seems to have been the gainer by the acquisitions made. Even Mexico, though humiliated by the conquering armies of Scott and Taylor, has risen to a better civilization, and her people seem to have become freer and hap- pier than before that war.
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