CHAPTER I.
OHIOEARLY SETTLEMENTS.
Table of Contents
From the time the Mayflower landed at Fort Harmar (Marietta) in 1788 until 1795, emigration had not materially increased the population of the North-west, owing to the unstable and dissatisfied condition of the Indians.
All this time, the soldier, who had served his time in the cause of independence and been honorably discharged without pay:the poverty-stricken patriot, unable to procure subsistence for himself and family in the bankrupt colonies, had been listening to accounts of a land flowing with milk and honey, and was anxious to get there. It was described as a country fertile as heart could wish:fair to look upon, and fragrant with the thousand fresh odors of the woods in early spring. The long cool aisles leading away into mazes of vernal green where the swift deer bounded by unmolested and as yet unscared by the sound of the woodmans ax or the sharp ring of the rifle. He could imagine the wooded slopes and the tall grass of the plain jeweled with strange and brilliant flowers; but there the redman had his field of corn, and would defend his rights.
The success of General Wayne in procuring terms of peace with the warlike tribes of Indians in the spring of 1795, caused such an influx of emigration into the Ohio division of the North-west Territory, that in 1798 the population enabled the election of an Assembly which met the following year, and sent William Henry Harrison as a delegate to Congress. So rapidly did the country fill up with new settlements that the prospective state at the beginning of the nineteenth century was knocking at the door for admission, with all the pathways crowded by pedestriansmen, women, and childrendogs and guns; crossing the perilous mountains to reach a country where a home was a matter of choice, and subsistence furnished without money or price.
Where all these lovers of freedom and free soil came from, and how they got here, will ever remain a mystery next in obscurity to that of the Ancient Mound Builders. They brought with them the peculiarities of every civilized nation, and continued to come until Ohio became the beaten road to western homes beyond. They were Gods homeless poorthe file of a successful revolutionthe founders of a republic. As such they accepted pay and bounty in wild landsestablished homes of civilization, cultivated the arts and sciences, and soon increased in numbers, until they became a people powerful in war and influential in peace.
Men and women, the chosen best, of the entire world, by causes foreordained, were made the exponents of the axioms contained in the charter founding the great empire of freedom. They were strangers to luxuryunknown to the corroding influences of avarice, and unfamiliar with national vices. Their lives were surrounded with happiness, and they lived to a good old age, enjoying the pleasures of large families of children in a land of peace and plenty. These and their descendants are the Squirrel Hunters of history.
Kentucky had received her baptism into the Union in 1791, but afterward felt slighted and dissatisfied, looking toward secession, if the five proposed states, outlined by the act of 1787 as the North-west Territory, should constitute an independent confederacy. The opinion seemed to exist to no small extent, that the North-west was by necessity bound to become separated from the Atlantic States; and Kentucky was lending her influence to this end. Josiah Espy, in his Tour in Ohio and Indiana in 1805, says: In traveling through this immense and beautiful country, one idea, mingled with melancholy emotions, almost continually presented itself to my mind, which was this: that before many years the people of that great tract of country would separate themselves from the Atlantic States, and establish an independent empire. The peculiar situation of the country, and the nature of the men, will gradually lead to this crisis; but what will be the proximate cause producing this great effect is yet in the womb of time. Perhaps some of us may live to see it. When the inhabitants of that immense territory will themselves independent, force from the Atlantic States to restrain them would be madness and folly. It can not be prevented.
But the inhabitants of this immense territory had a better and clearer vision of the mission of this vast empire; it was to be the heart and controlling center of a great nation of freemen. And when Ohio, in 1803, entered the Union under the enabling act, binding the Government to construct a national highway from Cumberland to the Ohio river, and through the State of Ohio, as a bond of union between the East and West, no more was heard of secession until the rebellion of the sixties.
In 1821, a member of the Virginia legislature (Mr. Blackburn), in discussing the question of secession, claimed there ought to be an eleventh commandment, and taking a political view of it, said it should be in these words: Thou shalt not, nor shall thy wife, thy son or thy daughter, thy man-servant or thy maid-servant, the stranger or sojourner within thy gates, dare in any wise to mention or hint at dissolution of the Union. Mr. Blackburn did not live to see it, but the words of the commandment came sealed in blood and were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever.
Many persons at the very dawn of independence felt the weakness of a union of such conflicting sentiments and interests as those of freedom and slavery, and were free in the expression that either slavery or freedom must rule and control the destinies of the nationthat the two could not, nor would not, co-operate peaceably in the same field.
Francis A. Walker, in Making of the Nation, says: No one can rightly read the history of the United States who does not recognize the prodigious influence exerted in the direction of unreserving nationality by the growth of great communities beyond the mountains and their successive admission as states of the Union. And the author apprehends great danger from the aversion of Western people to measures proposed in the interests of financial integrity, commercial credit and national honor. Having a predilection for loose laws regarding bankruptcies and cheap money has been a constant menace and a frequent cause of mischief. This, however, we may regard as due to the stage of settlement and civilization reached.
No one, if he reads at all, can read otherwise than the prodigious influence of the Western States. To these the nation owes its freedom. Through this prodigious influence, slaves and slavery have been wiped out, national finance established with enlarged commercial credit, integrity and national honor. And if the history of the United States is correctly read, the country need fear no danger from any stage in the settlement and civilization of the North-west. The early pioneers of this lovely country brought with them from the South and East large stocks of patriotism perfumed with the firearms of a successful revolution; and it was prized more highly as it was chiefly all they had in a home where poverty was no disgrace, and a poor-house unknown in natures great empire. Their descendants inherited much, and increased their talents, and have under all circumstances been ready to render a favorable account and go up higher.
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