USA > Ohio > Butler County > Hamilton in Butler County > The centennial anniversary of the city of Hamilton, Ohio, September 17-19, 1891 > Part 8
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"Inequality of social condition," is a familiar term, which expresses one of the bitterest facts of human experience, as well as one of the most trouble- some problems of thoughtful men. Classes of men are doubtless wider apart today than they were a hundred years ago. Is the unequal condition in- creasing ? Will it be greater in the future?
No; the chasm will be bridged. The peculiar development of the cen- tury in material industries have made this a peculiar experience. The present type of our civilization is intensely materialistic. The century was cradeled amidst inventions and discoveries, whose special work has been to subjugate nature. New sciences, newly applied from day to day, have made land and sea vastly move productive than they were. Machinery has mul- tiplied the working force of the world a thousand fold. The result is rapid and vast accumulation of wealth, of whose general benefits all men partake in an improved social condition, but which is not distributed in an equitable way.
But we do not fear for the future social condition. Much patience will be required from all classes. A way out will be found. It offends the first sense of human brotherhood, that children of the same family should be so wide apart in their fortunes. The chasm between social conditions will never be completely filled. We need look for no relization of any such com- munistic dream. But the chasm will be bridged. Labor and capital
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will come to understand better their interdependence, and public sentiment will see that justice and equity prevail. They will meet as Esau and Jacob amid the mountains of Gilead to be reconciled. Each may be selfish, but they will not destroy each other, and they will remember that they are brothers. Already we see signs of the improving condition. The tide has changed. We enter the century with a diminishing inequality in social con- dition ; and, best of all, with those intelligent forces at work which promise most certainly to make the future a time of plenty and of comfort for all.
Our hope for the future is not lessened, when we consider the educa- tional methods and institutions of the coming years. Our public schools are our pride. These guard us from that illiteracy, which is the necessary de- pendence of superstition and despotism. An immeasurable mass of ig- norance and superstition pours upon us from other lands and we sometimes grow faint hearted for our future; but we thank God and take courage in the fact, that "children of all nations of the earth go into our common schools, and come out Americans."
We know there are threats against our public school system. We are not blind to the fact, that it is assailed by insideous methods and political deals. But our common school system was never dearer to the heart of the people than now; and under no ignorant plea, that children must work at home or in the shop, and under no mask of devotion to liberty of conscience will we allow these nurseries of liberty and enlightenment to be tampered with. There are dangers, which call for the utmost watchful- ness, and that we guard with sleepless vigilance the common schools, the school funds, and the constitutional rights of all children in America, whether native or foreign born, to enjoy the advantages, and the American training, of these schools. The future must see our common schools not only open, but actually patronized by all our children, under the most effective compulsary laws. Enlightened, liberty-loving American Citizens must be trained in American Schools. Herein, more than multiplying our industrial agencies, lies the security of our future advancement, and the character of the nation. All children, who aspire to the high privileges and duties of American citizenship must be required by American law to receive the training of her public schools.
But more important than all else is the question concerning our future moral and religious condition. In the presence of prevalent immoralities and infidelity, some despair of the future. We refuse to sympathise with that sentiment. The signs of the times are altogether favorable. History has no record of a day, when the moral and religious facts have been so glorious as they are today, and when the signs have been so hopeful for the future.
No one can wisely discuss this subject at the close of the nineteenth century, as it was generally discussed in former years. Every movement now in morals, as well as in mechanics, has a world wide significance. No
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one lives to day where his father did, and no one thinks along the lines his father did. The stroke of a piston, a new thing in history, has brought about fraternity, and diffuse knowledge, liberty and religion over all the earth. The Englishman resides in India; the American makes his home in China; the Chinaman dwells in America; the German settles down in Africa; and they all transplant new ideas in their new homes. Old walls- are broken down. Until this present century, there was little travel. Men lived in isolated communities. A river or a mountain secluded tribes and nations. A foreignor was a sight for a gaping crowd ; a resident of the next town was unknown ; a stranger was not only suspected, he was an enemy.
Under such conditions, a nation necessarily had one settled order of thought; one marked, unchanged moral character for generations; one es- tablished religious dogma for centuries. Every community had its homog- enous life, socially and morally.
Mark now the changed conditions. Everybody has traveled ; every- body has crossed the seas and the continents. The term "stranger" can almost be marked obsolete in our dictionaries. Everybodies opinions, both in the occident and the orient, are published, translated, read. Awakening of intellect is the result ; a questioning of traditional beliefs follows ; change reconstruction is the outcome. The furnace waxes hot; from the seething mass, we behold poisonous vapors exhaling and leaving the earth forever ; and in the residuum we behold the refined gold of purified moral condition and religious faith ;- not alone for America and Europe, but for Asia and Africa and the Islands of the sea. As in the vision of the Christian Apostle,- we behold the city of God, adorned as a bride, in beautiful garments, descend- ing upon the earth. It is no "far-off, divine event ; " it is near.
If ever there were a happy, pure condition of life upon this earth since- Eden's gate closed, it was at most in some little Acadian valley, secluded from the great warring, illiterate, brutal world.
It requires no fanciful dreamer to see, that the world is already within the dawn of an improved moral condition and true religious faith. It re- quires no inspiration of prophet to foretell this. The spiritual forces at work demonstrate it,-these spiritual forces of the Christian religion, which now walk abroad among the habitations of all mankind. The past has seen no golden era ; the future will see it. The scale has changed. We move into the century with our statesmen and merchants recognizing that the Christian religion is the best aid of secular improvement, and the surest hope of world wide prosperity. In the face of appalling difficulties, the Christian Church has not only maintained herself, but increased in a ratio nearly six fold faster than the increase of our popalation. Where there was but one mem- ber of the Evangelical church a hundred years ago to each twenty-eight of population, now there is one to each five; where there were divided denom- inations with bitter antagonisms, now there is true fraternity of spirit, and
LUDOL SAMUEL COY
JUDGE JOSEPH COX.
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growing unity in organic life; while the scriptures are being planted on former foundations as the very inspired revelation of God, there is revision of creeds, bringing the church's statement of doctrinal beliefs into accord with her best spirit and life of missionaries have been sent into the pagan world, and tens of millions of dollars have been voluntarily contributed for this work, and numbers and amounts are greater this year than ever. The future means increase. Applied christianity is what the world waits for, and the century before us will feel its increased spiritual power. We fear naught. A spreading christianity with its multiplied moral and philanthropic agencies, will make all mankind sharers with us of the blessings of the Divine Father, through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Temporary reactions will not stop the mighty current. Progress, materially, socially, morally, re- ligiously, will be vastly accelerated. Opulent cities will fill our land ; ag -- riculture will cover our continent, and with us countries now barbarous will resound with all the industry of enriching work. while school house and church these hopes of freemen, will fill all lands. The Lord our God shall be with us, and all nations shall be blessed in him ; blessed be His glorious name forever,-the whole earth shall be filled with His glory.
ADDRESS
BY JUDGE JOSEPH COX.
Mr. Chairman Ladies and Gentlemen:
F IFTY-SIX years ago one of Ohio's most distinguished sons, Hon. Thomas Ewing, being invited by a committee of the native citizens of Hamil- ton to attend a celebration of the anniversary of Fort Hamilton, replied, "I like the spirit evinced by the native sons of the West in meeting to- gether to celebrate, and thus keep in remembrance those days which form important epochs in the history of our native land. "It is time we should feel we are a people and have a history." I would repeat this today with all the emphasis that the additional fifty-six years of our national history has added to our national glory, in that we have forty-seven states now, instead of only twenty-six then, our population increased from fifteen millions to more than. sixty-four millions, and our possessors cover a continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, more than one-eighth the distance round the world.
Yes, we are a people today, known and honored among all the nations of the earth, and we have a history of which any nation would be proud ; one of which this spot forms an interesting part. A history we should
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teach to our children, as the Jews of Old were commanded by God in regard to their great deliverence from the power of Pharaoh, "when we sit in our houses, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up, that the generation to come may know them. The building of Fort Hamil- ton a century ago, was no ordinary or trifling matter.
It was a necessary factor in the struggle of man to maintain the right to govern htmself and to shape his own destiny; a struggle reaching back beyond that of the English people to wrest the principles of Magua Charta from King John at Runnymede. Asserted by our 'Pilgrim Fathers at Leyden and Plymouth Rock; died for at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill; most emphatically proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and reasserted amid the blood and fire of battle for seven long years thereafter, until an apparent surrender was made by the British at Yorktown, and our nation became Independent. I say an apparent surrender by the British government. For although that government, then and there, ceased to fight us by her acknowledged armed forces, and recognized our independence, she yet covertly by means of ammunition and arms furnished by the traders, and Canadian and Indian allies, kept up all the horrors of war with Indian atrocities, until the treaty of 1795, made by Gen. Anthony Wayne with the Indians at Greenville, after he had completely broken their power by the victory of Fallen Timbers, August 20, 1794; and the war was until then, merely a continuation of the war of Independence. The part taken by the different Indian tribes in various wars, as coadjutors of the French and English, forms one of the most interesting and at the sanie time most mel- ancholy and tragical episodes in our history. Anxious to preserve the title and possession of the land, each tribe united and fought with the forces of that country which promised the most favorable advantages to them, and seemed for the time being, most able to fulfill its promises. In the war between the French and English beginning in 1755, when the English had control of the eastern part of the continent and claimed that bordering on the Ohio and Allegheny river, the powerful six nations leaving their homes in New York and other eastern parts of the land, sided with the English, while the numerous other tribes in the Northwest took part with the French and it was they who contributed to the defeat of Braddock's forces and so long kept the supremacy in the Allegheny country and held Fort DuQuesne afterward Fort Pitt.
But the peace of Paris in 1793 ended the war then between England and France, France ceding her entire dominions in North America to England. And now it was supposed that there would be peace with the Indians, but this was followed by a year of most bloody war and the destruc- tion of her frontier posts. A treaty of peace was at length effected with the Indians, but this was violated by them, and they continued their depre- dations on the western parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia ; and so it con-
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tinued until 1775 when Great Britain determining to subjugate the Colonies and more effectually compel them to submit to her arbitrary and unjust laws, the colonies rose in resistance. War ensued, and Great Britain by the influence of her traders, large donations and larger promises, engaged all the Indians of the Northwest on her side, to aid in devastating the frontiers. The Continental Congress by every means seeming feasible, en- deavored to appease the Indian tribes and avert the threatened calamity, and at a treaty held with the Delaware tribes at Pittsburg in 1778, proposed that a State should be formed to be composed of the Delaware's and other tribes, and contracted when so formed, to admit them into the confederacy on equal terms. But this tender of co-nationality was far outweighed in their eyes, by the profuse promises and gifts of arms and trinkets by the British, and their hostility was continued toward the Americans until the peace of 1784 was agreed upon between the English and Americans.
When the new government of the union was established, it claimed supremacy over the whole territory which before had been claimed by the French and British, except Canada. But this claim to that west of the Alle- ghenies was resisted by various tribes of Indians who set up different claims to different parts of it. By treaty and purchase at Fort Stauwix in New York in 1784 between the United States represented by Arthur Lee, Richard Butler and Oliver Wolcott and the six nations with the Wyandots and Dela- wares, Indian title in Pennsylvania was extinguished. Afterwards in 1785, Mr. Lee together with George Rogers Clark made a treaty at Fort McIntosh ; the nations represented were the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippe- ways and Ottoways. By this treaty the boundary line between the United States and the Delawares and Wyandots was fixed, beginning at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River (near Cleveland) running up that river to the portage between that and the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum, thence down that branch to the forks at the crossing above Fort Lawrence.
Thence westwardly to the portage of the big Miami, thence down the southwardly side of the Maumee river to its mnouth, thence along the south shore of Lake Erie to the mouth of the Cuyahoga where it began ; saving and reserving to the United States six miles square at the mouth of the Maumee and the same at the portage of the Big Miami (near Fort Wayne, Indiana) the same at Sandusky, and two miles square on each side of the Rapids of the Sandusky and also the port of Detroit from the mouth of the River Racine six miles up the south bank of the river, six miles northwest and six miles west until it strikes Lake St. Clair at the port of Michele Mackinack and twelve miles square above the lake. Thus giving to the In. dian all right to settle and hunt on lands north of a boundary running from a line drawn from the Cuyahoga River to Sandusky, then to the rapids of the Maumee, then west to Fort Wayne, then up the Maumee river. Then along the south margin of the lake to Cuyahoga River, reserving lands at the
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mouth of the Sandusky and rapids of Sandusky, and all south of that being surrendered by the Indians to the United States.
On the 31st of January 1776, another treaty was made at Fort Finney, on the Ohio River near the mouth of the Great Miami River, between George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Samuel H. Parsons, commissioners of the United States and the Delawares, Wyandots and Shawanees by which the Shawanees acknowledged the United States to be the sole and absolute sovereign of all the territory ceded to them by the treaty of Peace between them and the kings of Great Britain January 15, 1784.
The Wabash Indians were not at this treaty growing out of a spirit of hostility among the savages fostered by the English sub-agents who were opposed to any treaty.
Those Indians who had not come in to sign the treaty were not disposed to cease hostilities and Congress on the application of the Governor of Virginia at once sent two companies down to the falls of the Ohio to protect the in- habitants ; and on the 30th of June authorized the raising of militia in Ken- tucky and the invasion of the country of the hostiles under command of a United States officer, and before winter a thousand men gathered at the falls under command of Gen. George Rogers Clark and marched to Vincennes on the Wabash. Here they remained inactive nine days waiting the arrival of provisions when becoming restive and losing confidence in the General whose mind seemed confined by some disability, they refused obedience to him and returned home.
Subsequently another expedition under General Logan marched against the Shawnees who had violated the treaty, wasted their crops and burned their towns.
Thus it will be seen that for years the United States had been continu- ally engaged in making treaties with the Indians, only to be broken.
A close examination of the history and title of the Indians to the North- western territory, I think will convince any unpredjudiced mind that none of them had any title or claim whatever to it, except such as they obtained it by the massacre of a weaker tribe which had no other titled than that of a squatter, a title which they were afraid to assert against a stronger and more warlike title, and so the whole extent of the territory was used as hunting and fishing grounds as by common consent, the only bond of union among them being when they united to resist the occupancy of the territory by the whites. The title of the United States was good without any treaty with the Indians.
In the meantime other complications of a most interesting and import- ant character had taken place. Spain had in 1780 asserted her determination to claim control of the Mississippi River, had attacked Fort St. Joseph and taken it and possession of the northwest in the nameof her king. On the 15th
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of February 1781, Congress instructed Mr. Jay the Secretary of Foreign Af- fairs at Madrid not to insist on the use of the Missippi River by America if a treaty could not be affected without giving it up, and through the year 1782 Spain backed by France, labored not only to induce the United States to give up the Mississippi River, but a great part of the west.
In 1785 Don Diego Gardoqui as a representative of Spain appeared be- fore Congress and Mr. Jay as Secretary of Foreign Affairs and was author- ized to negotiate, and negotiations were commenced.
Mr. Jay had asked special instruction of Congress, as while he urged the great importance of a commercial treaty with Spain, yet he was strongly opposed to surrendering the navigation of the Mississippi River to her, and the Spanish Ambassador said Spain would never surrender the right to ab- solute control over it. Mr. Jay then proposed making a treaty for twenty- five or thirty years and during that time (without abandoning our claim,) yielding the use of the river to Spain below the boundary of the United States. This was bitterly opposed in Congress, but the opponents were overthrown and Mr. Jay authorized to continue the negotiations without in- sisting on the immediate right to the river. But Mr. Jay would not consent to surrendering our right exclaiming, "poor as we are, yet I know we shall be rich ; I would rather ogree with Spain to buy at a just price the whole of her right to the Mississippi River, than sell a drop of its water. A neighbor might as well ask me to sell my street door."
Franklin wrote to say "Spain has taken four years to consider whether she will treat with us or not ; give her forty and let us in the meantime mind our own business."
During these attempts at negotiations the wildest excitement prevaded the whole west. The people were determined that the right to navigate the Mississippi should never be surrendered to Spain or any other nation. Under the direction of Gen. Clark it was determined to garrison Vincennes; Spanish property was seized ; soldiers enrolled and steps taken to hold a peace council with all the Indian tribes.
A circular addressed to Congress, embodying the views of the people and their determination was distributed. "It declared our situation is as bad as can be; therefore every exertion to retrieve our circumstances must be manly, eligible and just."
We can raise twenty thousand troops this side of the Allegheny and Apalachean mountains, and the annual increase of them by emigrants from other parts, is from two to four thousand. We have taken all the goods be longing to the Spanish merchants of Port Vincennes and the Illinois, and determined they shall not trade up the river, provided they will not let us trade down it. Preparations are now making here (if necessary) to drive the Spanish from their settlements at the mouth of the Mississippi. In case we are not countenanced and succored by the United States (if we need it
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our allegiance will be thrown off, and some other power applied to. Great Britain stands ready with open arms to receive and support us. They have already offered to open their resources for our supplies. When once united to these relations, farewell, a long farewell to your boasted greatness." "The Province of Canada, and the inhabitants of these waters, will be able to conquer you."
You are as ignorant of this country as Great Britain was of America. These are hints, which if rightly improved, may be of some service ; if not blame yourselves for it."
On the 26th of April 1787 Congress disavowed the taking possession of Vincennes and ordered the troops of the United States to disperse the un- authorized intruders and take possession. Kentucky and Virginia having passed strong resolutions against giving up the right to the Mississippi River, the people so bitterly opposing it and Jay refusing to make a treaty on that ground, no further steps were taken in that regard. But a treaty was subsequently made by Washington with Spain, by which the free navigation of the Mississippi was secured.
Congress by resolution of September 16th, 1776 and August 12th 1780, had promised land bounties to the officers and soldiers of the Revolu- ionary army who should continue in the service until the close of the war, or until discharged by Congress. After peace had been declared in 1783, Gen. Rufus Putnam sent to President Washington a memorial signed by a large number of Revolutionary officers and soldiers, asking that their lands might be given to them out of the Northwest territory and suggested to Washing- ton that they would prove the most useful settlers of that region. That as the Indians were yet very troublesome on the frontiers, it would be wise to have a line of fortifications extending from the Scioto River to the Lakes, and these manned by old and tried Revolutionary veterans would serve the double purpose of keeping the Indians in subjection, while they themselves would aid in opening up the forest to cultivation, and thus induce further in- crease of population from the East to a more productive soil and c'imate. Washington in a message to Congress endorsed these views. But as Virginia and other states claimed to have some interest in the territory, Congress re- fused to do anything toward furthering the interest and wishes of the me- morialists until these claims were relinquished. At length they were sur- rendered, the ordinance of 1787 adopted, providing that slavery should never exist in the territory nor in any state carved out of it. That morality and religion should form the foundation of the territory and states therein and that schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged, that the territory might be divided into six states, and providing for Legislative, Judicial and Executive officers to govern it.
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