The History of Warren County, Ohio, Part 38

Author: W. H. Beers & Co.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1081

USA > Ohio > Warren County > The History of Warren County, Ohio > Part 38

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What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle with his old Cas- tilian master. His Bunker Hills and Saratogas and Yorktowns are there. The Mexican can say, There I bled for liberty, and shall I surrender that consecrated home of my affec- tions to the Anglo-Saxon invaders?

Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, had England's lion ever showed himself there, is a there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet him-is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood-is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battle-fields of liberty should have been wrested from us?

If I were a Mexican, I would tell you, "Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead men ? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable graves."

THE CIVIL WAR.

The record of Warren County in the rebellion is one which will ever be contemplated with pride by her people. No State in the Union was more prompt and thorough in her response to the call to arms than Ohio, and no county in Ohio exhibited more alacrity and patriotism in bearing her share of the burdens of the momentous struggle than Warren.

Until fire opened upon Fort Sumter, the mass of the people did not appre- hend civil war. Even after the inauguration of President Lincoln, with Jeffer- son Davis ruling at Montgomery-two Presidents with their cabinets, two Gov- ernments standing face to face-the people still seemed incredulous as to the imminence of a clash of arms .. While a minority of the people of the county were willing to see a civil strife begun as a means for the destruction of slav- ery, the great majority hoped for a happy and peaceful issue from the national complications Probably a majority were even disposed to favor such measures of conciliation as the repeal of the personal liberty bills in the Northern States which interfered with the enforcement of the fugitive slave law, and to give assurance that slavery should never be interfered with in any of the States where it then existed.

Thomas Corwin then represented the county in Congress. On the 14th of January, 1861, as Chairman of a Grand Select Committee of the House of Rep- resentatives, consisting of one from each State, Mr. Corwin made a report which perhaps met the approval of a majority of the people of the county. The re- port favored concession by recognizing the constitutional rights of the Slave States, and declaring that " all attempts on the part of the Legislatures of any of the States to obstruct or hinder the recovery and surrender of fugitives from labor are in derogation of the Constitution of the United States, inconsistent with the comity and good neighborhood which should prevail among the several States, and dangerous to the peace of the Union.". The report passed the House by a decided majority. There were throughout the county, however, not a few who regarded even a declaration of a purpose to respect the rights of the Slave States under the constitution as an effort, to use the language of Horace Greeley, " to disarm the sternly purposed rebellion by yielding without bloodshed a substantial triumph to the rebels."

President Lincoln's first call for 75,000 militia to suppress unlawful com- binations and to cause the laws to be duly executed was read in the daily news- papers Monday, April 15, 1861. On the evening of the next day, the first public war meeting in Lebanon was held. It was held in Washington Hall, and was attended by citizens of Lebanon and vicinity and other portions of the county. The meeting was marked by a general and enthusiastic approval of the President's proclamation. Whatever spirit of conciliation and concession had before existed, there was now no more talk of coaxing or pleading with traitors who had dared to aim their cannon at the flag of the Union. A. H. Dunlevy presided. A committee on resolutions was appointed, consisting of

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George R. Sage, Durbin Ward, James M. Smith, J. D. Wallace. William Cros- son, Simon Suydam and John C. Dunlevy. Earnest and forcible addresses were made by the President, Judge Belamy Storer, Durbin Ward and J. D. Wallace. Resolutions were adopted as follows:

Resolved, That we, the citizens of Warren County, most cordially indorse the action of the Government in its energetic measures to execute the laws, and to preserve the insti- tutions of our country.

Resolved, That we will stand by and support the Administration in the most vigorous efforts to put down rebellion and punish treason at whatever expense of men or money.

Resolved, That we recognize no party in the present crisis, but the party of the Union.

The band played " Hail Columbia," "The Star Spangled Banner " and " Yankee Doodle." Before the meeting adjourned, it authorized a dispatch to be sent to Gov. Dennison, pledging the county to raise promptly the quota of men required under the call of the President.

The war spirit was soon aroused throughout the county. The national flag was run up on the court house, and was seen floating from stores, work- shops and residences. The whole country was filled with the noise and excite- ment of military preparation. Three companies from the county were soon raised, commanded respectively by Capt. Rigdon Williams, of Lebanon; Capt. John Kell, of Franklin; and Capt. J. D. Wallace, of Morrow. The sight of real soldiers was new to most of the people, and the marching to camp of a company for the three-months' service made more ado than afterward the de- parture of a regiment who left their homes for three years or during the war. Capt. Williams' company, on Tuesday, April 23, marched from Lebanon to the railroad, intending to take their departure for Camp Jackson at Columbus Stores and shops were closed, and the people turned out to bid the soldiers adieu. The procession of soldiers and citizens on the road from Lebanon to Deerfield was nearly a mile in length. At the railroad station, the Captain re- ceived a dispatch that Camp Jackson was full, and the company returned to Lebanon and encamped at the fair-grounds. The company was mustered into the service of the United States for three months, at Columbus, on May 5; was re-organized and mustered into service for three years at Camp Dennison on the 19th of June, as Company F, Twelfth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Jabez Turner, of Harveysburg, a member of this company, killed at Scarey Creek, W. Va, July 17, 1861, was the first man from Warren County who lost his life in the war of the rebellion.

Capt. John Kell's company, which, before the war, had been organized as a militia company, called the " Franklin Grays," was the first company to leave the county for service under the telegraphic call for troops.

Durbin Ward was the first man in the county to sign an enrollment paper for troops in the civil war. When the President's proclamation reached Leb. anon, he was trying a case at the court house. He hastily drew up a paper containing something like the following: "We, the undersigned, hereby ten- der our services to the President of the United States to protect our national flag." He signed it, and proceeded with his case. It was soon signed by Mil- ton B. Graham. Only one or two other names were obtained until after the war meeting at Washington Hall, on the evening of April 16. Gen. Ward went into the army as a private, declining a captaincy. He came out a Briga- dier General. He was a Democrat, and a decided opponent of the election of Lincoln, yet, when the national flag was fired upon, he at once offered his serv. ices to support an adminstration whose elevaton to power he had opposed. His example and influence did much to unite all parties in the support of armed measures for the suppression of the rebellion.

The volunteers from Warren County belonged to no one party. Repub- licans and Democrats and Bell-Everett men, Conservatives and Radical Aboli-

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tionists, who had been almost willing " to let the Union slide," all forgot their past differences and gave their services to support the Constitution and the Union.

The women of the county were earnest in their ministrations to the sol- diers. From the beginning until the close of the war, they were constant in their efforts to supply those comforts and delicacies needed in the field, and still more in the hospital, and which no government does or can supply.

On May 3, the President issued his first call for men to serve three years or during the war. Then began the serious work of enlistment. Early in the war, there was appointed in each county of the State a standing military com- mittee, which had the charge and direction of the military matters of the county. The raising of funds for bounties, enlisting recruits and looking after the fam- ilies of those who were absent in the army, and many other duties, devolved upon the committee. The Governor consulted with this committee before com- missioning military officers. The war called for so large a proportion of. the entire male population that the quota of the county was not in all cases filled without difficulty. Drafts and the offer of large bounties to volunteers were found necessary. Liberal provisions were made for the support of the families of soldiers and marines in active service. Of the men who filled the quota of Warren County, all, except an inconsiderable fraction, were volunteers. With- in eighteen months after the first call for three-years' men, the county, with a total militia enrollment of 5,352, Rent into the service 2,140 men, of whom only 52 were drafted.

Most of the recruits, on being mustered into the service, received a consid- erable bounty. Under the last calls of the President, the local bounties were unusually large, amounting to upward of $500, while still larger sums were paid to acceptable substitutes. In this way an enormous sum was expended. The money for this purpose was raised in part by taxation, under the authority of law, but more largely by the voluntary contributions of the stay-at-home citizens. The large bounties were a great incentive to desertion, and it was es- timated that of the recruits enlisted to fill the quota of Ohio under the call of July, 1864, more than ten thousand deserted. The deserters would present themselves at a new recruiting station, or, with a change of name, to the same station, be again mustered in, receive a second large bounty, and again desert. To put a stop to this "bounty-jumping," the plan was adopted of withholding . the bounty until the recruit had reached his regiment.

The soldiers from Warren County were scattered through so large a por- tion of the United States Army, and in so many regiments and branches of the service, that the record of the county can only be given in the record of Ohio in the rebellion. Such a record, to be complete, should exhibit the military his- tory of every soldier and officer-name, age, rank; when, where and by whom enrolled; when, where and by whom mustered into service; the nature and date of every promotion; date of death, discharge, muster out, transfer or desertion -in short, everything pertaining to the soldier's military career. The impor- tance of such a record for the whole State is evident from the numerous appli- cations made at the Adjutant General's office by soldiers or their relatives, heirs or attorneys, and the departments of the United States Government requesting certificates of service. There are on record at the court house in Lebanon only a few hundred soldiers' discharges. The military records of the Adjutant Gen- eral's office at Columbus, though incomplete, supply most of the information necessary for the full war record of every soldier in an Ohio regiment during the rebellion.

Warren County claims its full share of the glory in the record of Ohio in the rebellion. Whitelaw Reid, in his " Ohio in the War," says:

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"Ohio soldiers fought on well-nigh every battle-field of the war. Within forty-eight hours after the telegraphic call, two Ohio regiments were on their way to the rescue of the imperiled capital in the spring of 1861. An Ohio bri- gade, in good order, covered the retreat from the first Bull Run. Ohio troops formed the bulk of the army that saved West Virginia; the bulk of the army that saved Kentucky; a large share of the army that took Fort Donelson; a part of the army at Island No. 10; a great part of the army that, from Stone River, and Chickamauga, and Mission Ridge, and Kenesaw, and Atlanta, swept down to the sea, and back through the Carolinas to the Old Dominion. They fought at Pea Ridge. They charged at Wagner. They campaigned against the Indians at the base of the Rocky Mountains. They helped to redeem North Carolina. They were in the siege of Vicksburg, the siege of Charleston, the siege of Richmond, the siege of Mobile. At Pittsburg Landing, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, at Corinth, in the Wilderness, before Nashville, at Five Forke, at Appomattox Court House-their bones reposing on the fields they won, are a perpetually binding pledge that no flag shall ever wave over these graves of our soldiers but the flag they fought to maintain."

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CHAPTER VIII. THE DISTINGUISHED DEAD.

SEVERAL of the following brief sketches are the only biographies ever given to the public of their subjects. If some of them appear meager, it should be remembered that the facts stated in the most imperfect sketches were only obtained after patient research. It is believed that these brief sketches will be found to possess something more than a local interest. The subjects were men who either took a prominent part in the early settlement of the Miami country, or participated in the early conflicts with the Indians or in the last war with England, or were prominent in civil affairs. Some of them were men of na- tional renown, of whom no complete biographies have ever been published. To the writer, the preparation of this chapter, which is intended to preserve the names and to record the services of some of the departed worthies of a county which, in its early history at least, was celebrated for the number of its great men, has been a labor of love.

ROBERT BENHAM.

This pioneer and soldier, whose name is familiar to readers of the early history of the Ohio Valley, was born in Pennsylvania in 1750, He was an officer in the Revolutionary war, and, after the close of that struggle, became one of the early settlers in Symmes' Purchase. He is said to have built, in 1789, the first hewed-log house in Cincinnati and to have established the first ferry over the Ohio at Cincinnati February 18, 1792. He served under Harmar in his campaign against the Indians, was in the bloody defeat of St. Clair and shared in Wayne's victory. About the commencement of the present century, he settled upon a farm southwest of the site of Lebanon, which was his home until his death. He was a member of the first Legislature of the Northwest Territory and of the first Board of County Commissioners of Warren County; in the latter capacity, he served several years. Judge Burnet, who served in the Legislature with him, says: "He was possessed of great activity, muscu- lar strength and enterprise; had a sound, discriminating judgment and great firmness of character. He was the grandsire of the accomplished Mrs. Harriet Prentice, of Louisville." Joseph S. Benham, his son, became a distinguished lawyer and orator of Cincinnati, and delivered the oration on the reception of La Fayette at Cincinnati. Robert Benham died early in the spring of 1809, and was buried at Lebanon, a troop of cavalry following his remains to the grave.

The most interesting event in the life of Capt. Benham is his survival after being wounded at Rodgers' defeat, and his life on the battle-field. Strange as this story is, its truthfulness has been indorsed by Judge Burnet and other careful historians. The account below is from "Western Adventures:"

" In the autumn of 1779, a number of keel-boats were ascending the Ohio under the command of Maj. Rodgers, and had advanced as far as the mouth of Licking without accident. Here, however, they observed a few Indians stand- ing upon the southern extremity of a sand-bar, while a canoe, rowed by three others, was in the act of putting off from the Kentucky shore, as if for the purpose of taking them aboard. Rodgers immediately ordered the boats to be .

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made fast on the Kentucky shore, while the crew, to the number of seventy men, well armed, cautiously advanced in such a manner as to encircle the spot where the enemy had been seen to land. Only five or six Indians had been seen, and no one dreamed of encountering more than fifteen or twenty Indians. When Rodgers, however, had, as he supposed, completely surrounded the enemy, and was preparing to rush upon them from several quarters at once, he was thunderstruck at beholding several hundred savages suddenly spring in front, rear and upon both flanks. They instantly poured in a close discharge of rifles, and then, throwing down their guns, fell upon the survivors with the tomahawk. The panic way complete and the slaughter prodigious. Maj. Rodgers, together with forty-five others of his men, were quickly destroyed. The survivors made an effort to regain their boats, but the five men who had been left in charge of them had immediately put off from shore in the hind- most boat, and the enemy had already gained possession of the others. Disap- pointed in their attempt, they turned furiously upon the enemy, and, aided by the approach of darkness, forced their way through their lines, and, with the loss of several severely wounded, at length effected their escape to Harrodsburg. " Among the wounded was Capt. Robert Benham. Shortly after breaking through the enemy's line, he was shot through both hips, and, the bones being shattered, he fell to the ground. Fortunately, a large tree had lately fallen near the spot where he lay, and, with great pain, he dragged himself into the top and lay concealed among the branches. The Indians, eager in pursuit of the others, passed him without notice, and, by midnight, all was quiet.

"On the following day, the Indians returned to the battle-ground, in order to strip the dead and take care of the boats. Benham, although in danger of famishing, permitted them to pass without making known his condition, very correctly supposing that his crippled legs would only induce them to tomahawk him upon the spot in order to avoid the trouble of carrying him to their town. He lay close, therefore, until the evening of the second day, when, per ceiving a raccoon descending a tree near him, he shot it, hoping to devise some means of reaching it, when he could kindle a fire and make a meal. Scarcely had his gun cracked, however, when he heard a human cry, apparently not more than fifty yards off. Supposing it to be an Indian, he hastily reloaded his gun, and remained silent, expecting the approach of an enemy. Presently, the same voice was heard again, but much nearer. Still, Benham made no reply, but cocked his gun and sat ready to fire as soon as an object appeared. A third halloo was quickly heard, followed by an exclamation of impatience and dis- tress, which convinced Benham that the unknown person must be a Kentuckian. As soon, therefore, as he heard the expression, 'Whoever you are, for God's sake answer me!' he replied with readiness, and the parties were soon together. "Benham, as we have already observed, was shot through both legs. The man who now appeared had escaped from the same battle with both arms broken. Thus each was enabled to supply what the other wanted. Benham, having the perfect use of his arms, could load his gun and kill game with great readiness, while his friend, having the use of his legs, would kick the game to the spot where Benham sat, who was thus enabled to cook it. When no wood was near them, his companion would rake up brush with his feet and gradually roll it within reach of Benham's hands, who constantly fed his companion and dressed his wounds, as well as his own, tearing up both their shirts for that purpose. They found some difficulty in procuring water at first, but Benham at length took his own hat, and, placing the rim between the teeth of his com- panion, directed him to wade into the Licking up to his neck and dip the hat into the water (by sinking his own head): The man who could walk was thus enabled to bring water by means of his teeth, which Benham would afterward

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dispose of as was necessary, In a few days, they had killed all the squirrels and birds within reach, and the man with the broken arms was sent out to drive game within gunshot of the spot to which Benham was confined. Fortunately, wild turkeys were abundant in those woods, and his companion would walk around and drive them toward Benham, who seldom failed to kill two or three of each flock. In this manner they supported themselves for several weeks, until their wounds had healed, so as to enable them to travel. They then shifted their quarters and put up a small shed at the mouth of the Licking, when they encamped until late in November, anxiously expecting the arrival of some boat which would convey them to the falls of the Ohio.

"On the 27th of November, they observed a flat-boat moving leisurely down the river. Benham hoisted his hat upon a stick and hallooed loudly for help. The crew, however, supposing them to be Indians, at least suspecting them of an intention to decoy them ashore, paid no attention to their signals of distress, but instantly put over to the opposite side of the river, and, man- ning every oar, endeavored to pass them as rapidly as possible. Benham be- held them passing him with a sensation bordering on despair, for the place was much frequented by Indians, and the approach of winter threatened them with destruction unless speedily relieved. At length, after the boat had passed him nearly half a mile, he saw a canoe put off from its stern and cautiously approach the Kentucky shore, evidently reconnoitering them with great sus- picion. He called loudly upon them for assistance, mentioned his name and made known his condition. After a long parley, and many evidences of reluc- tance on the part of the crew, the canoe at length touched the shore and Ben- ham and his friend were taken on board.

"Their appearance excited much suspicion. They were almost entirely naked, and their faces were garnished with six weeks' growth of beard. The one was barely able to hobble upon crutches, and the other could manage to feed himself with one of his hands. They were taken to Louisville, where their clothes (which had been carried off in the boat which deserted them) were restored to them, and, after a few weeks' confinement, both were perfectly restored."

It is stated in " Western Annals," that Benham afterward bought and lived upon the land where the battle took place. His companion, whose name is given as John Watson, afterward lived at Brownsville, Penn.

FRANCIS DUNLEVY.

This distinguished pioneer was born near Winchester, Va., December 31, 1761. His father, Anthony Dunlevy, emigrated from Ireland about the year 1745, and afterward married Hannah White, a sister of Judge Alexander White, of Virginia Of this marriage, there were four sons and four daughters, Francis being the eldest of the sons. About the year 1772, the family removed from Winchester to what was then supposed to be Western Virginia, on the west of the Alleghany Mountains, and settled near Catfish, in what is now Washington County, Penn. In this frontier settlement, during the Revolu- tionary war, there was great exposure to Indian depredations. The men of the new settlements were frequently called upon as volunteers, or by drafts, to serve in longer or shorter terms of military duty for the protection of the frontiers. Young Francis Dunlevy served no less than eight different times in campaigns against the Indians before he was twenty-one years old.

He volunteered as a private October 1, 1776, before he was fifteen years of age. His company erected a chain of block-houses on the Ohio River, above what is now Steubenville, and scouted in pairs up and down the Ohio River

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The History of Warren County, Ohio, Part 38

Author: W. H. Beers & Co. Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1081

Author: W. H. Beers & Co.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1081