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 20
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The following are the names of the colonels and com- manding officers of the Ohio military organizations in the Spanish War :
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Colonel Charles B. Hunt, Ist Ohio Infantry. Colonel Julius A. Kuert, 2nd Ohio Infantry. Colonel Charles Anthony, 3rd Ohio Infantry. Colonel Cyrus B. Adams, 4th Ohio Infantry. Colonel Cortland L. Kennan, 5th Ohio Infantry. Colonel Wm. B. McMaken, 6th Ohio Infantry.
Colonel Arthur L. Hamilton, 7th Ohio Infantry. Colonel Curtis V. Hard, 8th Ohio Infantry.
Colonel Henry A. Axline, Ioth Ohio Infantry. Major Charles Young, (Bat.) 9th Ohio Infantry. Major Charles T. Atwell, Ist Ohio Light Artillery.
Lieutenant-Colonel Matthias W. Day, Ist Ohio Cavalry.
Ist Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; George H. Thomas, Ga., and at Tampa, Fernandina and Jackson- ville, Fla.
2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; George H. Thomas, Ga .; Knoxville, Tenn., and Macon, Ga.
3rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; Tampa and Fernandina, Fla., and Huntsville, Ala.
4th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; George H. Thomas, Ga .; at Newport News, Va .; Arroyo, Guayama and San Juan, Porto Rico.
5th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camp Bushnell, Ohio, and at Tampa and Fernandina, Fla.
6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; George H. Thomas, Ga .; Knoxville, Tenn .; Cienfugos and Santa ·Clara, Cuba.
7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; Alger, Va., and Meade, Pa.
8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; Alger, Va .; and at Siboney, Sevilla Hill, San Juan Hill, Cuba, and Montauk Point.
9th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; Alger, Va .; Meade, Pa., and Marion, S. C.
Ioth Ohio Volunteer Infantry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; Meade, Pa., and Mackenzie, Ga.
Ist Ohio Volunteer Light Artillery was in Camps Bush- nell, Ohio, and George H. Thomas, Ga.
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Ist Ohio Volunteer Cavalry was in Camps Bushnell, Ohio; George H. Thomas, Ga .; Lakeland, Fla., and Huntsville, Ala.
Of these regiments the 4th saw service at Arroyo, Guayama, and San Juan, Porto Rico; the 6th at Cienfuegos and Santa Clara, Cuba; the 8th at Siboney, Sevilla, and San Juan Hill, Cuba.
The total deaths in all the Ohio volunteer organizations while in the United States service were 230, seven officers and 223 men.
From the declaration of war (April 21) to the peace protocol (August 12, 1898), 114 days, there was the greatest activity, and military and naval operations extended to Spanish posses- sions half around the world.
In this war Ohio's officers and soldiers, with others North, were organized into brigades, divisions and army corps with those from the South, and all proudly and loyally affiliated, often under officers who fought on opposite sides in the Civil War.
The formal treaty of peace (Paris) was not made until December 10, 1898, and an insurrectionary war broke out in the newly-acquired Philippine Islands in February, 1899, which required an army larger (both regular and volunteer) than had hitherto been deemed necessary. In its temporary increase Ohio, again furnished her full quota.
Now Brigadier-General Frederick Funston, U. S. A. (born at New Carlisle, Clark County, Ohio), successfully executed the plan for the capture of Aguinaldo, the chief insurgent, which brought his insurrection to an end.
And Ohio men participated in the Battle of Tsein Tsein, China, and were of those who marched to Imperial China's cap- ital and within its gates (1899), dictated the release of imperiled Christian missionaries and exacted guarantees for their future safety and the safety of native Chinese Christians.
For the duration of the war and the small amount of blood shed the results attained, physical and moral, in the Spanish- American War, were unparalelled.
The story of Ohio in the three wars, of which I speak, may be summarized thus :
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She, by the heroism and loyalty of her people, did her full share :
First - In the Mexican War, whereby 545,000 square miles of territory were acquired, and later dedicated to freedom.
Second - In the Civil War, whereby human slavery in the United States was abolished (and since, as a consequence, largely throughout the civilized world) and a purer and better civiliza- tion succeeded; the Union of the States has been made secure, it is to be hoped through all time, and wherein the political equality of man is vouchsafed under organic law; and,
Third - In the Spanish War, whereby the inhumanity of Spain towards her American and other of her colonial subjects has been ended, and the "Gem of the Antilles" - Cuba - has become free and independent, and other of Spain's possessions have not only become free, but made parts of our Republic, and thereby entitled to the protection of our constitution and laws, under the banner of the Union, where, let us hope and pray, they may enjoy the blessings, in the providence of God, of prosperity, contentment and peace.
OHIO IN THE NAVY.
MURAT HALSTEAD.
There is more concern as I understand this occasion, that we should speak chapters of the early history of the state, (the older the better for the days we celebrate), than follow with for- mal care the texts of the topics set down to be treated. If there is one spot in North America the heart of the mighty progress of the continent, that is the home of the "world power," foremost of the nations of the earth, it is here in the central city of the Scioto Country ; and so vast and varied is the theme, that if expres- sions reflects the general, generous impulse of this year and the day and hour, we cannot go astray from the widespread splendors of the first cen- tury of our young state, whose sov- MURAT HALSTEAD. ereignty is in the blood, bone and brain of our countrymen, whether north or south of the Ohio River, or east or west of the Mississippi.
The subject "Ohio in the Navy" opens with each hour given to the understanding of it - and we find Ohio's naval story is full of glory, and that her four thousand fighting men, during the war in the sixties for holding the Mississippi valley with her wonderful river system, had hard and desperate work to do, and did it bravely and brilliantly, in fighting down the tributaries to the father of floods, from the Cumberland and Tennessee, with almost incessant skirmishing and a dozen thunderous and bloody battles, until they met Farragut with the prows of his victorious battle boats up stream. "Ohio in the Navy" deserves as compre-
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hensive and adequate treatment, as "Ohio in the War," in White- law Reid's history. Such is the wealth of material suitable for the historical celebration of Ohio's centenary in the old classic, historic and romantic first capital at Chillicothe, that the em- barrassment in the preparation of all the addresses was that of riches; and this splendid theme was the most pressing of all, on account of the affluence of the records of the sudden creation of the navy to go down the greatest of rivers in the world for resources, to the gate of the heart of the continent opening to the Mexican Gulf, the American Mediterranean.
The boundaries of the United States are east, west and south, the salt seas that extend from pole to pole, and the Amner- ican mid-ocean on the north, are the unsalted seas, and the Can- adian wheat, fruit and iron lands, where the seasons are alternately lands of snow and lands of sun.
We, of Ohio, from the beautiful river on the south to the splendid lake on the north, are dwellers in no mean cities, and we may not truly sing, or say, of the green valleys and the green and yellow fields, and the woods that through the procession of the seasons lend the glories of all the colors of the landscape - "There is a land that is fairer than this." There is no fairer land.
I have family history, records and traditions, that my ances- tors were immigrants from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and that they journeyed from the shores of the Albermarle Sound and the Susquehanna, to the Great Miami ; and made it conven- ient for me to be born at Paddy's Run, in old Jackson county of Butler, the county seat of which was named for Alexander- Hamilton. Chillicothe is such an ancestral city that one's thoughts. turn here to the forefathers.
I had a talk on one of the battle-fields of the war of our states and sections, that closed with "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," with a group of Confederate prisoners of war, and asking what state they hailed from, they answered by naming the birthplace of my father. My mother's birthplace was in the Scioto country, beside Paint Creek, and there was some relationship - or a temporary halt on the way from the Hocking the first aim of the Pennsylvania folks - to the town strangely named Tarlton. The old county has been so cut
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up and the old papers sent to Columbus and somewhere and some- how lost in the shuffle of the removal of the Capital. My mother's parents James Willits and Amy Allison, his wife -after the birth of my mother Clarissa, moved west to the last white water branch of the Great Miami-and after some years moved to Green's Fork near the national railroad, Wayne County, Indiana.
At first, the assignment to speak for Ohio in the Navy seemed to have a faint flavor of humor, but a few moments' reflection made plain the wisdom of those who called one from south- western Ohio, to speak for the Navy when we meet to celebrate the first century of Ohio history on land and sea. The American boys who have the grandest passions for the ocean are those born a thousand miles from the ebb and flow of the salty tides. When an Ohio man sees the ocean, he has put ajar the golden gates of the world, and there are no other such worlds to conquer.
When one looks through the Virginian capes, into the sun- rise, he remembers that far off, along the path of light, but cer- tainly "yonder," were Rome and Greece, Carthage and Tyre, Athens, Jerusalem and Damascus, and there is history in the luminous air.
The heart of the country is sound on the question of a great navy, for we must have a commanding sea power on the three oceans - south, east and west, of the Ohio, Mississippi, Mis- souri, the Colorado and Oregon - our channels of mighty waters that still rival and supplement the trans-continental roads of steel.
The interior states are the sovereign friends of the navy, and the canal that is to unite the two oceans, from whose shores that are ours we can front on the one hand Asia and Africa, and on the other all Asia; while, if the Gulf of Mexico is not to be ranked as an ocean, it is the great Southern American lake, a part of our canal that is to be part of an equatorial commercial channel, that surrounds the globe where the trade winds wafted the fathers and mothers of the people, that labor might master the rude rich continent so long reserved for the culmination of nations, the white labor coming free, the black labor forced.
Our Ohio point of view is central. We have had a part of distinction in the work well done on this continent. More than
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once we have fought for northward expansion, and the efforts of our armies, from the fall of Montgomery to the victories of Harrison on the Wabash and the Thames, while they have sus- tained the boundaries made by the sword of George Rogers Clark and the pen of Benjamin Franklin, have not expanded our north to the aurora borealis. But the combat of American and British fleets in Ohio waters, gave us the glory and the fame of suprem- acy in war and peace on the great lakes, that, like oceans, limit the conquests of nations. Perry's tenth of September we shall all remember, as the shouting song of glorious memory declared as a promise has been kept as a festival.
The signal of the retreat of the French from the eastern slopes of North America, was the fleet of canoes floating down the Ohio, when the fork of the Ohio was abandoned; and the line of posts, to restrain the English speaking people from pos- sessing North America - the line that was to join the head waters of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence - was broken forever.
The word Miami meant, in the tongue of the Ottawa In- dians, "Mother." In Western Ohio were three Miami rivers. The two Southern Miamis - the Great and the Little - flow into the Ohio, with the Cincinnati country, John Cleves Symmes, be- tween. The Maumee is the Miami of the lakes. On its banks the land was so dark with stored riches, that the popular name for it was "The Black Northwest," and it was deeply reddened in the British and Indian wars with the blood of brave men.
The tributary streams forming the Great Miami and the Miami of the Lakes, watered a country marvelously endowed with oil and its gases, as easily convertible into gold as the golden rocks and sands that need but fire for transformation. In the southern rivers of the State, a shell fish abounded, the lining of whose shell was pearly in color and lustrous as any found in the famous oysters of the deep southern seas ; and if the pioneers could have had sound disposing knowledge, in the Ohio river shells were pearls of great beauty and price. It is a pity the rivers have so changed under the spoiling hand of civilization, that we have no pearl fisheries.
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The French were truthful, as well as tasteful, when they named the Ohio "The Beautiful River." In the grand old days of the wilderness, the "game" crossed the famous stream, finding fords in the absence of floods. The buffalos that roamed through the shady paradise, between the great river and the lake, knew well the wide water that divided and united the valley; and their mighty feet made roads for the herds to seek, wading or swim- ming to the salty waters they loved, and the blue grass that was agreeable in its nutritious assimilation. The dainty families of the Virginian deer were pleased to sport in the bright streams. The southern squirrels gathered in armies and invaded the north, and, in frisky array, their noses and tails telling that they held steadily on their appointed course. Their tails were very help- ful sails - for squirrel squadrons. There were "bear wallows" on the clay hills, where the vigorous animal made bath tubs for his personal use. The bear was the predecessor of the hog. In the deep woods there was showered an ample supply of acorns and beech nuts, hickory nuts and walnuts, and haws, red and blue; vines loaded with the grapes named for their fond lovers, the fox and the crow. There were wild crab apples that only the frosts could mellow, and pawpaws, the temperate zone banana of the color of golden butter ; and the surveyors of the new lands of promise, reported (and the story grew as it spread) that the legs of their riding horses were crimsoned with the blood of raspberries that stood on the slopes among the sugar trees. Some of the berries were red and some were yellow, and all had a delightful flavor. The May apples blossomed white over the brown fallen leaves, that each year added to the fruitfulness of the land. There were two tall and delicate trees, held in high favor and having an almost oriental reputation as it seemed they should have been the pride and luxury of the tropics. The mulberry and persimmon are witnesses testifying in Ohio that there is no monopoly of sweetness in the forests of the torrid zone. One ought not to forget that the Ohio woods, before they were des- poiled, held groves of the slippery elm tree, which, however, was more than matched by the fragrance of the sassafras and the blazing tints of the red buds, seeming luminous growth of the American beauty roses, that lit up the hill sides with a spring
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time glory surpassing the exquisite firs the frost kindles in Octo- ber. Beside the red bud, whose name is most inadequate (for it is worthy the gardens of Persia the poets paint) stood the dog- wood, a gnarled and sturdy undergrowth, blossoming in the sunshine of spring as if the trees were of wands bursting into enchanting bloom, when the fires of summer poured white light to illumine saplings bending under fairy snow drifts, gathered on the boughs burdened with beauty.
There is no history of the building of a State in the wilder- ness with more simplicity and dignity than Ohio. The people were representative of all the original English colonies. The land was won from a wilderness, whose swarms of savages were im- placable. The Ohio country was the battle ground for a genera- tion between civilization and barbarism. Of the three armies sent by Washington to clear the Path of Empire, two were mur- derously defeated. The men of Virginia and New England united. George Washington, whose mission received command from the governor of Virginia to order out the French from the lands of the king of England, along the beautiful river and her bountiful tributaries, was the best informed of English speaking men of the quality of the land of the people.
March 12, 1611, a remarkable paper was signed by the King of England, addressed to the "Treasurer and Company for Vir- ginia." It was called "The Third Charter of Virginia," and opened in the devout terms following :
"James, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, defender of the faith; to all to whom these presents shall come greeting. 'Whereas, at the humble suit of divers and sundry loving subjects, as well adventurers as plant- ers of the first colony of Virginia, and for the propagation of Christian religion, and reclaiming of people barbarous to civility and humanity, we have, by our letters of patents, bearing days, at Westminster, the three and twentieth day of May, in the seventh year of our reign of England, France and Ireland, and the two and fortieth of Scotland, given and granted unto them, that they, and all such and so many of our loving subjects, as should from time to time forever after, be joined with them, as planters or adventurers in the said plantation, and their successors, forever,
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should be one body politic incorporated by the name of, The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and planters of the city of London for the first colony in Virginia."
The chief Indian town in Ohio was Chillicothe. The whites paid the Indians the compliment of locating the state capital on the old Indian site, where it would have remained if it had not been that public opinion favored the center of the state for the capital, and the ancient city was on the central river of the state, the Scioto. There the Indian corn stalks were loaded with roasting ears in their season. The fields of corn of Indian cultivation were the most extensive in the northwest, perhaps the finest in the world.
The Kentuckians returned the compliment by expeditions invading the Scioto hunting grounds, celebrated for deer, as the name of the river implied. The hardest blow dealt the Indians was the destruction of their shining cultivated farms just when the roasting ears were full of milk.
From the beginning in Ohio, there was a tendency to the organization of social communities, but the social ideas were exceedingly kind. The Moravian massacre was one of the dark- est tragedies in the strange stories of mankind. The Indian vic- tims were the converts of German missionaries. Their doctrine was an intense Quakerism, with the supernatural faith of the Christian Scientists of modern days. It was not possible for them to be perfectly neutral, as between the red Indian warriors and the equally war-like white men, seeking good land and warring for Divine right beyond the Atlantic to the American wilderness. The Moravians believed in the protection by infinite power if they surrendered themselves to the cause of Christ. They made enemies instead of winning friends among the implacable belliger- ents; and warned of imminent danger, gave not the slightest heed, except in more frequent and fervid prayers. When the enemies came to destroy the people of peace, the submission of the martyrs was perfect. They asked time to pray and were slaughtered, dying meekly and lamb-like, as they had lived.
There have been queer associations of people, here and there in the State ever since, on model farms and in villages, all voting one way or not at all, happy in their gardens, with dreams of an
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immortal Eden, especially endowed or superior to the good works or the woes the wicked could inflict.
Wednesday, November 10, 1802, in the state convention, assembled at Chillicothe, a motion was made and seconded that Mr. Nathaniel Willis be appointed printer to the convention. And on the question thereupon, it resolved in the affirmative - yeas, 27 ; nays 5. A committee was "appointed to contract with Mr. Nathaniel Willis, printer, of Chillicothe, for the printing of seven hundred copies of the Journal of the convention, and one thou- sand copies of the constitution, now framing in the octavo, on the terms proposed by the said Willis."
The printer of the Ohio convention was the father of Nathan- iel Parker Willis, the poet and editor of distinction.
The boundaries of Ohio were fixed in this form:
SECTION 2. And be it further enacted, That the said State shall consist of all the territory included within the following boundaries; to wit: Bounded on the east by the Pennsylvania line, on the south by the Ohio river, to the mouth of the Great Miami river, on the west by the line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami aforesaid, and on the north by an east and west line drawn through the southerly ex- treme of Lake Michigan, running east after intersecting the due north line aforesaid, from the mouth of the Great Miami until it shall intersect Lake Erie on the territorial line, and thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line aforesaid.
ACT OF CONGRESS RECOGNIZING THE STATE OF OHIO - 1803.
An act to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States within the State of Ohio.
Whereas the people of the eastern division of the territory north- west of the river Ohio did, on the twenty-ninth day of November, one thousand eight hundred and two, form for themselves a constitution and State government, and did give to the said State the name of the "State of Ohio," in pursuance of an act of Congress entitled "An act to enable the people of the eastern division of the territory northwest of Ohio to form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and for other purposes." whereby the said State has become one of the United States of America; in order, therefore, to provide for the due Execution of the laws of the United States within the said State of Ohio -
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SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Represen- tatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that all the laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the some force and effect within the said State of Ohio as elsewhere within the United States.
Further sections provide a District Court of the United States, the judge of which should hold three sessions annually, the first to begin the first Monday in June, 1803; and the two cther sessions were ordered "progressively on the like Monday of every fourth calendar month afterward, and the Ohio district judge was to exercise the same jurisdiction and powers given the judge of the Kentucky district, and appoint a clerk with the same salary as the Kentucky clerk. The salary of the judge was fixed at one thousand dollars, payable quarterly.
It was further provided that there should be appointed "in the said district a person learned in the law to act as attorney for the United States, who shall, in addition to his stated fees, be paid by the United States two hundred dollars annually, as a full compensation for all extra services."
It is a tradition that seems to have troubled even studious and faithful historians, that Congress never formally accepted Ohio as a state! We have quoted from the official papers, that the admission of the state to the Union was perfectly provided for in the order for the United States Court.
The Virginia act of cession is dated 1783, sixteen years be- fore the death of Washington. It reads in part :
SECTION 1. Whereas, the Congress of the United States did, by their act of the 6th day of September, in the year 1780, recommend to the several States in the Union, having claims to waste and unappro- priated lands in the western country, a liberal cession to the United States of a portion of their respective claims for the common benefit of the Union.
SECTION 2. And, whereas, this commonwealth did, on the 2nd day of January, in the year 1781, yield to the Congress of the United States, for the benefit of said States, all right, title and claim, which the said commonwealth had to the territory Northwest of the river Ohio, subject to the conditions annexed.
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