USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume I > Part 9
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Nothing marked the course of the next two years, except the impeachment of three Judges of the Third Circuit Court of Common Pleas. The case was tried before the State Senate, sitting as a court, and was argued by competent jurists on both sides with marked ability. The particulars of the offense are here worthy of mention. The charges, under the articles of impeachment reported by the House Committee against Judge Pease, were an infraction of the fifth section of the act regulating the juris- diction of justices of the peace, in his deciding in favor of an appeal from the judgment of a justice
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for a sum exceeding twenty dollars, the Justice having no jurisdiction above that sum; an infraction of the twenty-ninth section of the same act by having allowed the plaintiff his costs of suit in an action for a sum between twenty and fifty dollars, commenced by original writ from the Court of Common Pleas ; and that, sitting as President Judge of his Court, he had on various occasions decided that that Court had full power to suspend, set aside, and declare null and void any act of the State Legislature, and that, in accordance with such decision, he had suspended, etc., the fifth section of the act defining the duties of justices. In answer, the seventh amendment to the United States Constitution was pleaded to the first count, and which says: "In suits at common law, when the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved;" also the eighth section of the eighth article of the State constitution, which declared that "the right of trial by jury shall be inviolate." These references so fully supported the decision upon which the first charge was founded that acquittal followed as a matter of course ; while conviction failed in the second charge from lack of the necessary two-thirds vote required ; and the Court decided, by a vote of sixteen to eight, that the third charge was insufficient to sustain impeachment.
Another interference by the Legislature with the judiciary took place in 1809-10. The terms for which the Judges had first been elected being about to expire, a resolution was passed declaring the judicial offices vacant, and thereupon the Legislature proceeded to elect Judges for the various Courts. In this operation they, in some cases, elected persons already commissioned for unexpired terms; but when the individual had become in any manner unsatisfactory, his office was given to another. At the same time they took occasion to reduce the number of Supreme Court Judges from four to three. The effect was to deprive of his office the Judge who had been duly elected and commissioned by the previ- ous Legislature. Much confusion and dissatisfaction naturally ensued in the judiciary department. Judges who held unexpired commissions refused to accept new commissions, and claimed their seats under the old. Such claims made divisions in the courts, and the course of justice was delayed and often prevented; but the Legislature never revised their proceedings or attempted any justification of their conduct in this matter.
The session of 1810-1I was held at Zanesville; but nothing extraordinary took place. The Indians, who since the treaty of 1795 had remained quiet, under the instigation of a new chief named Tecumseh, aided by British traders and military emissaries from Canada, began to commit acts of aggression upon the inhabitants of the State who were settled near the lines. In October, 1807, an act by Congress pre- vented the passage from our ports of any commercial shipping, and ordered home from abroad, imme- diately, all American vessels, that the seamen might be trained for the war that was plainly impending. This act proved a fruitful source of discussion in Congress for the following three years, and until the War of 1812 with Great Britain was declared, for which this embargo act was on our part the pri- mary cause. So hostile had the Indians under the lead of Tecumseh become, that, in the Spring of 1810, General William H. Harrison, then Governor of the Territory of Indiana, invited them to a coun- cil, to take place at Vincennes in August. Tecumseh attended with four hundred fully armed followers. The result of this council was that General Harrison believed it necessary to take all suitable precautions for war. In the Spring of 1811 the hostile savages began to roam over the Wabash country in small parties, plundering the white settlers and the friendly Indians. Harrison sent word to Tecumseh and his brother, called the Prophet, that this must cease, and that he was fully prepared with force to stop it. Tecumseh went to Vincennes, the seat of Indiana territorial government, and there saw seven hundred well-armed militia. After making solemn assurances of friendship, he went to the Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, and other Southern Indian tribes, and tried to induce them to join him, but without suc- cess, in a league against the whites. Meanwhile, with a much increased force at Vincennes, obtained from Kentucky and Ohio, General Harrison, late in September, 1811, marched up the Wabash Valley toward the town of the Prophet, so called, near the junction of Tippecanoe Creek and the Wabash River, and on the way built a fort near the present city of Terre Haute, and called it Fort Harrison. Here the troops encamped in a healthy elevation covered with oak-trees and almost devoid of under- brush, and the general was visited by the Prophet, his brother Tecumseh being absent. Suspecting treachery, the general, on the 6th of November, arranged his camp for any sudden emergency. He ordered that the infantry dispose themselves in a suitable manner, and in case of an attack should hold
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their ground until relieved, and the cavalry to parade dismounted, with pistols in belts, and act as the reserve. Then two captain's, guards, of fifty men each, were detailed to defend the camp. Thus pre- pared, the whole camp, except guards and sentinels, went to sleep. The Prophet, on his part and that of his followers, arranged that when the whites were asleep the Indians should rush in and murder them. To excite his followers he went through with various incantations, until he had every Indian wrought up to frenzy, when he gave the word to attack the camp. At four o'clock on the morning of the 7th, General Harrison being in the act of pulling on his boots, the crack of a sentinel's gun caused him to order the whole camp to be aroused, to receive the fire of the Indians and return it. A sharp battle ensued, which lasted until daylight, when the Indians were driven at the point of the bayonet, and pur- sued into the wet prairie that surrounded the encampment. In that battle there were killed and wounded, of the whites, one hundred and eighty-eight. The loss of the Indians crippled them from any other attempt subsequently to fight alone. On the return of Tecumseh from the South he found all his schemes to form an Indian confederacy frustrated by this act of his brother, and in the war that speedily ensued he joined the British, to whom he was an active friend.
In June, 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain. After the ignoble surrender of Detroit by General Hull, by which the Territory of Michigan was lost, Ohio became the scene of militia operations. This surrender was made on the ground that provisions were scanty, and supplies could not reach Detroit in season to render that place tenable. It was believed at the time that Hull had been bribed by British gold; but of this there was no proof. General Hull was, however, tried by court-martial for treason, and convicted. The sentence of the court was death by shooting; and it was confirmed by the War Department; but on account of his Revolutionary services, General Hull was pardoned by the President, and he retired to private life, where he died in obscurity.
General Harrison had succeeded Hull, and worked intensely, preparing for the Winter campaign, which the feelings of the people demanded. To do this required much labor. Block-houses had to be built and garrisoned along the way to Detroit, and magazines of provisions supplied and defended. But the work went cheerfully on. Kentucky sent militia freely, under the veteran General Shelby. The. yeomanry of Ohio and Indiana hastened to report themselves for military duty ; and, in fact, so numer- ous were the volunteers that orders were issued by General Harrison to stop the enlistment. He made the vicinity of the Maumee Valley, near the scene of General Wayne's victory in 1794, the place of general rendezvous, and from whence he intended to fall upon Malden and Detroit; and he designated the brigades from Virginia and Pennsylvania, and that of General Simon Perkins from Ohio, as the right wing, with the Kentuckians under General Winchester as the left wing, of his army. The latter, with eight hundred Kentuckians, reached the Maumee Rapids in January, 1813, where he learned that a force of British and Indians were occupying Frenchtown (now Monroe, Michigan), on the River Raisin, twenty miles south of Detroit. Having sent under Colonels Allen and Lewis a suitable detachment of his force to protect the inhabitants, he was advised, late in the evening of the 21st, that a foe was approaching ; but he did not believe it. Nevertheless it was a fact. And a repetition of St. Clair's surprise and butchery, on the morning of the 22d, was perpetrated by about fifteen hundred British and Indians at the River Raisin. Winchester was made prisoner, and concluded an agreement with the British com- mander to surrender, on condition that ample provision for the protection of his wounded should be made. The promise was given, and immediately violated ; for Proctor, the British commander, knowing that Harrison was near, hastened to Malden, leaving the prisoners behind, deprived of their arms and without a guard. The Indians followed him a short distance, when, turning back, they fell upon the prisoners, butchering and scalping without mercy those who could not walk, and driving before them those who could, as their prisoners, to be redeemed by ransom at Detroit. By the battle and this mas- sacre nearly the whole of Winchester's command, comprising the best of Kentucky's young men, were destroyed; and afterward, during the war, the cry "Remember the River Raisin !" became the war-cry of the Kentuckians. They never doubted that Proctor had instigated the return of the savages for the destruction of the defenseless prisoners.
General Harrison had advanced to the Maumee Rapids when he heard of the disaster at River Raisin; and there learning that Proctor had marched to Malden, he, at the Rapids, established a for- tified camp, near the site of the present town of Perrysville, opposite Maumee City, which he named
:
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Fort Meigs. There he was besieged for several days by Proctor and Tecumseh, who, with about two thousand troops and Indians, had come down from Malden in April; and, although he had confidence in the strength of the fort, it having bastions and several cannon planted, he dispatched a courier to General Green Clay, who was on his march northward with another body of twelve hundred Kentuckians. Clay received the courier in the Maumee Valley, and dispatched Captain Leslie Coombs, then nineteen years old, with four men of his company and a young Indian acting in the capacity of a scout, in a canoe, who, as they approached the Rapids, heard the roar of artillery. It was the Ist of May, and Proctor had begun to fire on the fort. Puzzled how to approach, much less enter an invested fort, Captain Coombs and his company, having safely passed the Rapids, rounded a point that brought them in full view of the besiegers and besieged, when Indians among the former, approaching the bank, fired a volley at them, killing one man and wounding two. This caused the captain to run his canoe to the opposite shore, and with his wounded men he escaped to the woods. In a short time they met the advance of the main body of General Clay's troops, under command of Colonel Dudley. Captain Coombs, being uninjured, at once took command of his company of riflemen, which were in the advance of Colonel Dudley's command, and, pressing forward, he attacked and captured the British battery, spiked most of the guns, and hauled down the British flag, while huzzas rang out from the ramparts of Fort Meigs. Captain Coombs's men having been signaled to fall back and cross the river, they fell into an Indian ambuscade, and were made prisoners. The savages then attacked the other men of Dudley's command as they followed him from the boats, and, of the eight hundred, killed all but one hundred and seventy, who reached the fort in safety. Meanwhile Colonel Boswell, with the rest of General Clay's troops, fought their way through the British and Indians toward the fort, where, being joined by a sallying party, they drove the enemy from their batteries, and dispersed them. Proctor then aban- doned the siege, and returned to Malden. Coombs and his companions were taken to old Fort Miami, then in possession of the Indians, where, being stripped nearly naked, they were made to run the gauntlet between two rows of savages, and thus many were killed. The survivors were placed inside the fort, where, but for the Indian chief Tecumseh, they would have all been murdered, as Proctor was so enraged at the termination of the siege, which had continued about ten days, that he made no attempt to stay the bloody disposition of the Indians.
When General Harrison was assured that Proctor and his allies had returned to Fort Malden, he left Fort Meigs in charge of General Clay, and, proceeding to Upper Sandusky, he there met Return J. Meigs, then Governor of Ohio, who, with a considerable body of Ohio militia, was pressing forward to his relief. He found, otherwise, the Ohio settlements so full of enthusiasm that ample assistance was to be had for the asking, and he at once began, with the consent of Governor Meigs, to enlist troops. Meanwhile Tecumseh had urged Proctor to renew the siege and capture Fort Meigs. Early in July the fort was again invested by another large British and Indian force, under Proctor and Tecumseh, well provided with artillery and all the necessary armament for a vigorous siege. The garrison was vastly inferior in numbers and strength to that of the besiegers, and moreover the stock of provisions was inad- equate for a protracted contest. General Harrison, then at Lower Sandusky, immediately dispatched a messenger to Governor Meigs, with a requisition for a large re-enforcement of militia, to aid him in com- pelling the enemy to withdraw. General Proctor at once began operations. He planted his batteries, and kept up a cannonade on the fort. Several spirited sorties were made from the fort, in one of which the enemy's cannon were taken and spiked.
With his characteristic promptitude, Governor Meigs, on receiving the general's requisition, at once called out, en masse, the two entire divisions of militia nearest that part of the frontier, with orders to march immediately to the relief of Fort Meigs. The order was obeyed with equal promptness, and in a very few days the entire two divisions, without tents, but well armed and provisioned, were on their march for Upper Sandusky. At Franklinton the regiments under General Robert Lucas, afterward Governor of Ohio, joined those which had already encamped at that place, several having previously gone forward to Sandusky. Here Governor Meigs received by messenger the following dispatch from General Har- rison, dated at his head-quarters in Seneca Town, August 2d, 1813: "The enemy have been, since last evening, before Lower Sandusky, and are battering it with all their might. Come on, my friend, as quickly as possible, that we may relieve the brave fellows who are defending it. I had ordered it to
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be abandoned. The order was not obeyed. I know it will be defended to the last extremity ; for earth does not hold a set of finer fellows than Croghan and his officers. I shall expect you to-morrow certainly." Upon arriving at Delaware, the Governor learned that Proctor had abandoned the siege and retreated towards the British lines-intimidated, no doubt, by the approach of the overwhelming force on the march against him. The expedition was not, however, abandoned, and the troops kept on their way to Upper Sandusky. Here they were all drawn out for review and muster on the adjoining grassy plains, and their number, ten thousand men under arms, presented a formidable array.
The necessity for so large a body of militia was past, and after enlisting as many troops as were needful for the military operations in Michigan and Canada, General Harrison ordered the disbandment of the rest. He wrote to the Governor: "I am alarmed at the astonishing consumption of provisions, particularly flour, at Upper Sandusky. I beg leave to urge an immediate explanation of the views of your excellency in retaining in service so large a militia force, which, from the very nature of their organ- ization and period of service, can not be permitted to accompany me to Canada." It may be that the Governor's aspirations for military fame were thus suddenly quenched ; but it is certain that he wrote an indignant reply to General Harrison before issuing orders for the troops to return to their homes.
Satisfied that he could not capture Fort Meigs, Proctor had raised the siege, and, with his white troops, embarked, July 28th, for Sandusky Bay; from there he proceeded toward Lower Sandusky, to attack Fort Stephenson. This was a regular earth-work, with ditch, circumvallating pickets, bastions, and block-houses, and was then garrisoned with one hundred and sixty men, under command of Major George Croghan, of the regular army, then a young man of but twenty-one years old. On the 31st, when the white troops in transports and gun-boats appeared at a turn in the river, about a mile from the fort, the woods were discovered to be swarming with Indians, who had come by land from Malden. Having demanded its surrender, Proctor accompanied his demand with the threat of Indian massacre in case of capture, of which, of course, he could have no doubt. The demand was met by a defiant refusal. This was at once followed by a persistent cannonade that continued all night from the howitzers which had been landed, and the gun boats on the river. The next day, Proctor having become impa- tient, and his savage allies uneasy, under the word brought them that re-enforcements for the besieged were on the march, he resolved to storm the fort. Hitherto the besieged had responded to the cannon- ade only with their single six-pound howitzer; but as the British marched in two columns from one direction, and in a third column, composed of grenadiers, who had feigned an attack on another point, the Kentucky riflemen, with which the fort was manned, as soon as the enemy came within easy range, opened a deadly fire that caused the advancing columns to waver ; but they soon rallied, and the first, pushing over the glacis, leaped into the ditch and attacked the palisades. "Cut away the pickets, my brave boys!" shouted their commander, a lieutenant-colonel named Short, "and show the damned Yankees no quarter !" In a block-house commanding the line of the ditch the only cannon of the fort was masked. When that ditch was crowded with men temporarily stopped by the pickets from advanc- ing farther, the mask was removed, the port flew open, and a discharge from the gun, loaded nearly to the muzzle with slugs and bullets, swept through them with awful effect. The second column leaped into the ditch but to meet a like reception, increased by a volley from the rifles of the besieged. A confused retreat followed, with one hundred and twenty men killed and wounded lying in the fatal ditch. The cowardly Indians, always afraid of cannon, had not joined in the assault.
For this gallant defense with inadequate arms Major Croghan received many honors. The ladies of Chillicothe bought and presented him with an elegant sword, and Congress passed a vote of thanks, to be followed, twenty-two years afterward, with a gold medal from that body. The defense had so dis- heartening an effect on Tecumseh and his Indians that they abandoned all hope of capturing the American forts, and lost confidence in the invincibility of the British troops.
After the victory on Lake Erie, September 10th, by which the whole British fleet was captured and destroyed by Commodore Perry, whose statue in commemoration of that event adorns the principal public square in Cleveland, General Harrison, aided by General Shelby, resolved to cross the lake to Malden, and march from there to Detroit, ivith the intention of capturing the latter. On learning this, which in some way he did, the British commander, Proctor, after setting fire to Fort Malden and the store houses and dwellings at Amherstburg, deserted and passed into Canada, greatly to the disgust of
-
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Tecumseh and his Indians. On the arrival of General Harrison he was met by a troop of well-dressed, modest women, who implored mercy and protection. Proctor's rear guard had been gone but an hour when Harrison arrived. On the 2d of October the pursuit, led by Colonel Richard M. Johnson's mounted Kentuckians, began, and Detroit was reached just after Proctor had gone with Tecumseh toward the Mo- ravian town, eighty miles east of Detroit. There the American force overtook and attacked the fugi- tives, where they were formed in an open wood, with a little stream called the Thames protecting them on one flank and a deep swamp on the other. The Indian chief, Tecumseh, was here slain, and his fol- lowers fled to the shelter of the swamp, while Proctor escaped in his carriage, with a guard of a few mounted Indians and dragoons, and made his way to the western shore of Lake Ontario. Of the death of Tecumseh the late Isaac Hamblin, of Bloomfield, Indiana, gives the following account. He says he was standing but a few feet from Colonel Johnson when he fell, and in full view, and saw the whole of that part of the battle. He was well acquainted with Tecumseh, having seen him before the war, and having been a prisoner seventeen days, and received many a cursing from him. He thinks that Tecumseh thought Johnson was Harrison, as he often heard the chief swear that he would have Har- rison's scalp, and seemed to have a special hatred toward him. Johnson's horse fell under him, he him- self being also deeply wounded. In the fall he lost his sword, his large pistols were empty, and he was entangled with his horse on the ground. Tecumseh had fired his rifle at him, and when he saw him fall he threw down his gun, and bounded forward like a tiger sure of his prey. Johnson had only a side pistol ready for use. He aimed at the chief over the head of his horse, and shot near the center of his forehead. When the ball struck, it seemed to him that the Indian jumped with his head full fifteen feet into the air. As soon as he struck the ground, a little Frenchman ran his bayonet into him, and pinned him fast to the ground. Harrison's victory was complete, and, returning, he took posses- sion of Detroit. Six brass field-pieces, taken from Hull at Detroit, when he surrendered in 1812, were recaptured, on two of which were engraved the words, "Surrendered by Burgoyne, at Saratoga." These guns are now at the Military Academy of West Point. Congress gave Generals Harrison and Shelby each a gold medal, and the thanks of the nation.
This was an important victory, as it left Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana free from Indian and British raiders; and the frontier being secured by it, General Harrison, leaving Colonel Lewis Cass, with a garrison of a thousand regulars, Military Governor of Detroit, October 23d, 1813, proceeded with the remainder of the troops of his command to join the Army of the East. Being badly treated shortly afterward by General Armstrong, the Secretary of War, General Harrison resigned, and returned to the governorship of Indiana. This Territory being admitted as a State in 1816, he retired from public life to his home at North Bend. Not having occasion to do so, Ohio no longer took any part in the War of 1812-15. In every vicissitude of this contest she was eminently patriotic. When the necessities of the National Government compelled Congress to resort to a direct tax, Ohio cheerfully and for successive years promptly paid her quota of such tax from her State treasury. Her citizens volunteered freely, and endured patiently service in a warfare maintained in great part by savages, and no battle occurred in the Northwest in which some of her brave men did not seal with their blood their devotion to their country.
With the close of the war, commercial intercourse, so long interrupted, was restored, and an exces- sive importation of foreign goods and a great influx of immigration followed. Of the latter, a great portion passed into the new Territories ; but the population of Ohio was also greatly increased. The numerous banks, which had been chartered before the war, supplied an abundant circulating medium ; but speculation stimulated the people, as was the case forty years afterward, to sudden desire for riches, and led to wild and extravagant excesses. In the general rush of such business the banks beame deeply involved, and, unable to keep up their coin reserve to redeem their notes, the latter, consequently, began to depreciate in value.
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