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 7
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Our mining industries during this one hundred years have been developed until last year twenty-five thousand men were engaged in mining coal. They produced twenty million tons of coal of the value of twenty-three million dollars, free on board cars at the mines.
* Stenographer's report.
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Our manufacturing industries have progressed wonder- fully. One hundred years ago we were purely an agricultural community ; now a vast army of three hundred and forty-five thousand men are employed in our manufacturing establishments. Their earnings last year amounted to the sum of one hundred and forty-two million dollars and the things which they made were of a far greater value - the sum of eight hundred million dollars.
But it is not alone in these things that we have made won- derful progress. Our greatest glory arises from the fact that we have faithfully kept during these one hundred years all the precepts of the best law ever framed for the government of mankind - the great Ordinance of 1787. (Applause).
That ordinance provided that in the Northwest Territory and in the states to be erected from that territory no slavery should exist except for the punishment of crime. That precepť' you have kept. Not only has the institution of slavery never existed in the states of the Northwest Territory, but after cruel war it has disappeared from all this nation. (Applause).
Another precept taught us by our fathers in that ordi- nance was that education should be maintained for the benefit of the people. The government of Ohio has provided education for all her children. During the last thirty-five years she has devoted to the support of her common schools the sum, the vast sum, of three hundred and sixty million dollars; and dur- ing her history of one hundred years not less than a half bil- lion dollars have been expended by our people in this cause. (Applause.)
That ordinance also taught us that religion, as well as education, is necessary for the happiness of our people. This precept, too, has been faithfully kept. Wherever we look, whether in the North, or the East, or the West, or the South, we find ample means for the promotion 'of religious instruction.
Another vital provision was made in the Ordinance of 1787 when it was declared that the Northwest Territory and the states erected therefrom should forever remain a part of the United States of America. (More applause.)
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A sad crisis arose in our history when others differed from us in this respect. They differed from our fathers; they main- tained that this great union of states was a mere rope of sand from which any state could withdraw at will. Out of this controversy arose long continued war. The struggle went on from 1861 to 1865. Three hundred thousand gallant soldiers from Ohio enlisted in the cause of the Union and for the purpose of maintaining the theory which had been taught them by their fathers. (Applause.) After war, victory perched upon the banners of the Union. The edict of battle settled this controversy and declared that every state in this nation, as well as the states of the Northwest Territory, should forever remain a part of the United States of America. (Loud applause. )
This happy result is now acquiesced in by all the people of this country ; by the people of the South, by the people of the North, by the people of the East and by the people of the West, and they now unite in proclaiming the doctrine of our fathers - that all the states of this Union shall forever remain a part of the United States of America. In this fact they now all rejoice and all are united in saying that our beautiful banner shall forever remain the loved banner of all the people of the Republic. (Loud and long continued applause. )
Upon the things accomplished in our first one hundred years, not only for the state of Ohio, but for the entire country, I con- gratulate you.
Fellow-citizens, I have a story that I desire to tell you. It is a story of patriotic effort and yet it seems to me that it fur- nishes the best example of the ingratitude of republics of any that has come within my knowledge.
In 1758 there was a young Scotchman about to leave his home. He was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He was thoroughly educated, he was tall, handsome and twenty- three years of age. He enlisted in the army of the king of Great Britain and became an ensign in one of his regiments. He left his home in Scotland and came to America under Amherst. In the French-English War he served faithfully and bravely before the walls of Louisburg. For gallantry in that action he was promoted to the position of second lieutenant in his com-
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pany. Then a few years later he was joined to the command of the great and gallant Wolfe in the final struggle between the French and English, for the possession of Canada. Upon the Plains of Abraham, in the attack upon Quebec, he was one of the brave soldiers who followed the gallant Wolfe, who fell upon that bloody field. One of the color bearers fell, bearing down with him the colors of his regiment. This lieutenant seized those colors covered with blood and carried them bravely until the end of that conflict, which has been told in history and sung in song for nearly one hundred and fifty years.
That brave Scotchman was Arthur St. Clair (applause), the first governor of the Northwest Territory. (More applause and cheers.)
He resigned from the English army; he became the hus- band of a loved wife; he was endowed with ample fortune, and in 1766 he went to western Pennsylvania near Pittsburg and settled among her beautiful hills and became one of the leading pioneers of this western country.
Time went by; the Revolution for our freedom commenced and St. Clair was called upon by John Hancock in 1775 to raise a regiment to engage in our great struggle for liberty. He responded as a patriotic man always responds.
At this time he wrote to an intimate friend :
I hold that no man has a right to withhold his services when his country needs them. Be the sacrifice ever so great, it must be yielded upon the altar of patriotism.
He raised a regiment of Pennsylvanians. He joined in the expedition of Arnold against Montreal for the capture of Can- ada. He was there barely in time to save the army of Arnold from utter rout. Then he was called by Washington to New Jersey. He was then made a major-general in the Revolutionary army. He engaged with Washington in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. There he gave advice to our gallant chief which was esteemed most highly. After those victories he returned to the northern territory and with his command sought to stay the invasion of Burgoyne. He was through all those conflicts which finally resulted in the surrender of Burgoyne and his
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army. Then he joined Washington, again became his faithful ·adviser, was a favorite of Alexander Hamilton, was a friend of LaFayette, the brave Frenchman who came to our rescue. By them all he was esteemed and honored. At Valley Forge, Wash- ington called upon this brave general, with his fortune to come to the rescue of his army. With his own money he assisted in feeding Washington's soldiers; with his own money he partially clothed them; by his patriotism he impoverished himself.
Later, when the war was over, he became president of the Continental Congress. He was its president when the Ordinance of 1787 was framed. In the making of its provi- sions he took an active part. That ordinance became the law of this territory. Then the Continental Congress saw fit to elect Arthur St. Clair as the governor of the territory, whose or- dinance he helped to frame. For fourteen years he remained here as the governor of the Northwest Territory. His labors were very irksome. The value of what he did for our pioneers can never be over-estimated. At length there came the time in 1802 when he must retire from office. He went back to his beloved Pennsylvania hills.
He was an old man, yet he sought to recuperate the fortune which he had lost. He pleaded with Congress to restore the money to him which he had expended upon the army that gave us our liberties ; but that Congress, poor and impoverished, too, made the lame excuse that St. Clair's claims were outlawed, and they were not paid.
He went back to his home in Pennsylvania and lived in a hovel with his widowed daughter. At last one day, with some truck that might give him the sustenance of life, he started with his pony and cart to a nearby town and on the way a wheel fell into a rut. The aged general was thrown from his cart upon the stony ground and severely injured. There he lay nearly a day before he was discovered and rescued. In a few days he died. He was by his Masonic brothers buried in a little country graveyard at Greensburg. They erected a plain, brown sandstone monument over his tomb and inscribed upon it these words :
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The earthly remains of General Arthur St. Clair are deposited be- neath this humble monument; which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one, due from his country.
It is too late to do justice to St. Clair, but we can honor his memory by erecting over that lonely grave the monument which is due from his country.
And, now, fellow-citizens, I propose, if you concur in the proposition, in my next message to the General Assembly of Ohio, to ask that body to appropriate a sufficient sum to erect a monument over the grave of St. Clair, the patriot and the first governor of the Northwest Territory. (Loud and long-continued applause and cheers.)
GENERAL KEIFER, the chairman : I move - and the Gover- nor shall put the motion-that it is the sense of this assemblage that the Governor ask the State to erect a monument to Gov- ernor St. Clair.
Motion seconded and unanimously carried.
GOVERNOR NASH: It is carried, and I will convey your will to the General Assembly of the State.
The remarks of Governor Nash were followed by a song by the children's chorus. The enthusiasm of the young singers was unbounded and their voices rang out with joyous spirit, that clearly expressed their patriotism and civic pride. The numbers they rendered during the morning were: "Hurrah for the Schools of Ohio," "Ohio Beautiful" and "The Buckeye." The words and music of all the songs were the product of Ohio authors. The youthful singers were skillfully directed by Miss Florence Purdum, the music directress of the public schools. At the close of the first song Governor Nash introduced Hon. Jud- son Harmon, of Cincinnati.
THE HISTORY
OF THE
NORTHWEST TERRITORY TO THE MARIETTA SETTLEMENT.
JUDSON HARMON.
Evidence has been found that men existed in this region while the glaciers were pushing their way over it. After its hills, were raised up and its plains and val- leys formed it became the home of a numerous race, as the thousands of their earthworks and relics show. But the story of these peoples remains untold.
Then came the red men whose vague and conflicting traditions give only confused glimpses of warfare and migration.
There were very few white men and hardly anything that could be called organized society or govern- ment north of the Ohio River before the settlement at Marietta, so that the JUDSON HARMON. history of this region before that time, so far as it can be said to. have one, is chiefly an abstract of title. But it is a title which finds its origin in daring enterprise and perilous adventure, its muniments in fire and blood and its chain in the compacts of the greatest nations of the world.
The charters of the colonies of Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut did not fix their western boundaries, and they accordingly insisted that their territory reached as far as the royal domain. But there was nothing to define the extent of that domain. No rule of international law established the limits
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of title by discovery in such a case, for no continent had ever been discovered before since the nations were formed. There was no rule of reason which would push such title back, from the coast actually discovered and occupied, beyond the natural boun- daries recognized among nations. These, in this case, were the Alleghany mountains and the sources of the rivers flowing into the sea.
Within a few years after the founding of our colonies, while they were struggling for existence near the sea and long before the foot of an Englishman had climbed the mountains, enter- prising and daring Frenchmen made the circuit of the great lakes and established missions and trading-posts along their shores. Theirs were the first sails the lake breezes ever filled and theirs the first white faces the red men of the interior ever saw.
They explored the rivers, the Cuyahoga, the Sandusky, the Maumee, discovering the short portage from the latter to the Wabash, descending the Wabash to the Ohio and that to the Mississippi. They went up the Chicago River, carried their canoes across to the Illinois, paddled to the Mississippi and down the Mississippi and back against its swift current, all among unknown and often hostile savages. And along many of these rivers, also, their missions and posts were founded.
They were for a time kept back from the upper Ohio and its tributaries by the Iroquois whom, alone of all the Indian tribes, they had the misfortune to make lasting enemies. But at length they found their way from the shore of Lake Erie to the head waters of the Alleghany, and La Salle in 1670 went down that river and the Ohio to the falls.
Parkman and others have, with great research among the archives of France and elsewhere, given to history the stories of La Salle, Marquette, Joliet, Hennepin and their comrades and successors, the discoverers and explorers of the Northwest Ter- ritory. The heroism, devotion, endurance and enterprise they displayed were never surpassed by any race in any age, and the fine statue of Marquette in his priestly robes has been fitly placed in Statutory Hall in Washington by one of the states which sprang from that territory.
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But the contrast was painful between these men and their government, in whose name and on whose behalf they toiled, suf- fered and achieved. Clinging to a system bad in every feature, loaded with debts foolishly incurred, embarrassed by ground- less wars and governed by kings who were in turn ruled by the whims of dissolute women, France was destined to lose what Frenchmen had won. The slower but more persistent Saxon was to make his home in the great Northwest and give it a gov- ernment founded on the will of the individual citizen and con- trived so as to multiply his power by reducing his burdens and preserve to him the fruits of his efforts.
In spite of the claims of title in which the British long persisted, derived from alleged discovery and from cession by the Iroquois of their pretended rights by conquest from other tribes, the true source of title to the Northwest is the treaty of 1763 following the war which opened with Braddock's defeat and closed with the fall of Quebec. France thereby ceded to- Great Britain the entire country east of the Mississippi.
The region we are now considering was then wholly unset- tled, beyond the few sparse French villages which had sprung up around some of the posts and missions along the Wabash, Illinois, Mississippi and Detroit Rivers and the straits of Macki- naw, and King George did not propose to acknowledge the vague claims of his colonies. So he forthwith, by proclamation, de- clared it royal domain and forbade further settlements in it or purchases from the Indians. This was done partly to restrict the growth of the colonies, with which trouble was already- brewing, and partly on the demand of the commercial interests which represented to him that "The great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America has been to improve and extend the commerce, navigation and manufactures of this king -. dom. It does appear to us that the extension of the fur trade depends entirely upon the Indians being undisturbed in the possession of their hunting-grounds, and that all coloniz- ing does in its nature and must in its consequences operate to, the prejudice of that branch of commerce."
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Some of the royal governors and others also warned the king that the settlement of the interior would surely lead to ultimate independence of the colonies.
The entire territory was soon after, by act of Parliament, made part of the Province of Quebec which was and has ever since remained loyal to the crown.
This seeming hardship and injustice proved to be one of the many mercies of God to the American people, like the fall on the Plains of Abraham of General Wolfe, who, as Thackeray suggests, would otherwise doubtless have led the king's forces in our War of Revolution. It was one of the provocations which led to the Revolution. And if, instead of leaving this region to the savages, it had been settled by loyalists from Canada or England, we should have had the enemy in the rear and the result of the war might have been different. Success would cer- tainly have been harder to win, while the territory would almost certainly have remained British, at least until another struggle should ensue.
The right of the British government to act thus was un- doubted. Whatever limitations there may have been with respect to vested private titles, there were none upon its power to re- strict, alter or revoke colonial charters so far as they conferred authority over unoccupied territory. So whatever rights the colonies might have had in the West were terminated.
A clear title to the Northwest Territory has thus been traced to King George. How did we get it from him? Not by the Declaration of Independence, although we made it good by force of arms, because Canada, of which it was then lawfully part, did not join in the declaration. The door was opened to Canada by the Articles of Confederation, but the settlers there preferred British rule then as now.
So far as national results can ever be traced to particular men and what would probably have been can be inferred from what was, this country owes its ownership of the Northwest Territory to two men.
Virginia still persisted in her claims which, under the pecu- liar terms of her charter, she made embrace the entire North- west. Traders had already begun to penetrate beyond the Ohio,
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as well as the peculiar class of adventurers who had a touch of the outlaw in that they preferred the utter freedom of the forest to the restraints of society. It was men of this class who were responsible for many of the atrocities committed on and by the Indians. They greatly resembled the French woodsmen, except in their relations with the Indians. They passed on into the wilderness beyond when the real settlers came with wife and child, Bible and hymn book, to found permanent homes and establish liberty under law.
Washington in 1770 went down the Ohio, from Fort Pitt to the Kanawha, casting his appreciative eye over the rich bot- tom lands on both sides of the river despite the royal warning off the premises.
In 1778-79, soon after the war broke out. George Rogers Clark, of Kentucky, then part of Virginia, under authority of Governor Patrick Henry, raised a small force with which, by the very highest qualities of courage, endurance and leadership he captured and held the posts at and around Kaskaskia and Vın- cennes. He planned the seizure of Detroit also, but his force was too small and no help was to be had.
Virginia at once proceeded to assert authority over the en- tire region west of the Ohio by making it the county of Illinois. The inhabitants "professed themselves subjects of Virginia" and "took the oath of fidelity."
The act of 1778, by which this was done, declared it imprac- ticable to extend the laws of the commonwealth there until the inhabitants should become familiar with them "by intercourse with their fellow-citizens on the east side of the Ohio." It pro- vided "a temporary form of government adapted to their cir- cumstances," to be carried on according to the laws to which they were accustomed, under local officers to be chosen by them- selves and a "county lieutenant or commander-in-chief" ap- pointed by the governor. Their existing rights, property and religion were to be respected.
These settlers, who were all French, had lived for a hun- dred years under control of the priests, with no government at all. They had then been under the dominion of the Province of
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Louisiana for a time during which Kaskaskia, by charter of Louis XV., became the first incorporated town in the west.
On the cession of Great Britain many of these French settlers moved across the Mississippi so that the whole population of the entire Northwest was estimated at only six hundred families. These seem to have reverted to the rule of the priests. An attempt of the British commandant, in 1768, to establish civil government failed. General Gage, the commandant in 1772, issued a proc- lamation declaring that the settlers on the Wabash were "with- out government and without laws," and ordering them to leave the country. And a memorial from Quebec to the king, in 1773, stated that there were no courts whose jurisdiction reached the western country, so that agents sent there who proved dishonest remained out of reach, making the posts "harbors for rogues and vagabonds."
The Quebec act in 1774 permitted the settlers to be gov- erned by their own laws and customs and was, no doubt, the precedent for the course taken by Virginia.
After the time fixed by the Virginia act of 1778 for the temporary government established by it had expired, there was no authorized government in the territory during the remaining years of the period covered by this address, although that govern- ment appears to have continued, at Vincennes at least, for some time longer, occupying itself with granting lands, largely to its own members. There was then no English or American settle- ment anywhere in the region and none of any sort within what is now Ohio.
Clark maintained his military occupation throughout the Revolution, making several expeditions up the Miami Rivers to suppress threatened Indian uprisings. He showed diplomatic tact equal to his military talents by making and keeping the settlers and most of the tribes friendly. So, in spite of the efforts of the British at Detroit, we were practically unmolested from that quarter until success was assured.
To accomplish this Clark had to pledge his own property and credit, which resulted in beclouding his later years. What was finally done for him was too little and too late.
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Congress was determined to insist on the Mississippi as our boundary and to secure its free navigation to the Gulf. Yet it had at first, under the French ambassador's persuasion, au- thorized our commissioner to Spain to yield the right of navi- gation, if necessary, to secure a loan and bring Spain into the alliance. It then instructed our peace commissioners to insist on that boundary and right, but authorized them to yield, if yield they must, on everything but independence.
Spain had ceded the Floridas to Great Britain by the treaty of 1763, receiving from France, by secret treaty, the region west of the Mississippi. Spain was again at war with King George and had retaken the Floridas as well as made some con- quests in the region of Lake Michigan on which she founded claims to territory there.
Spain, like France, had a Bourbon king and Vergennes, the French minister, wished to favor Spain at the expense of the colonies, which he, naturally perhaps, thought should be satisfied with independence. He therefore intended that in the negotia- tions for peace the Ohio should be recognized as the boundary of Canada. By making this concession to the British he hoped to gain their assent to the claims of Spain and secure for her full control of the Mississippi.
The more surely to accomplish his purposes he secretly com- menced a separate negotiation with the British so as to leave our commissioners nothing to do but accept the terms so fixed.
Our interests were at first in charge of Franklin, who was minister to France and one of the peace commissioners. He admired the French people, of whom LaFayette was to him the type, and did not fully realize the selfish motives which had led the king to come to our aid. Franklin was then an old man and his nature was too frank for the wariness and suspicion without which French diplomacy could not be safely met by friend or foe.
Then John Jay, another commissioner, arrived from Spain, where he had been detained. He was only thirty-seven, but had already been president of Congress. His ancestors had been driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ..
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