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tIPlje Ciqpansion
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OHIO AND HER
WESTERN RESERVE

APPLETONS'
Expansion o! the Republic Series

The History of the Louisiana Purchase
By James K. Hosmer, Ph. D., LL. D.
Ohio and Her Western Reserve
With "A Story of Three States." By ALFRED
Mathews.
Rocky Mountain Exploration
By Reuben Gold Thwaites. In preparation.
The History of Porto Rico
By R. A. Van Middledyk. With an Introduction,
etc., by [-"rof. Martin G. Brumbaugh. In prep
aration. Proposed Volumes
The Purchase of Alaska
The Settlement of the Pacific Coast
The Founding of Chicago and the Develop
ment of the Middle West
John Brovirn and the Struggle in Karvsas
The Acqulsltiorv of the Southwest
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12 cents postage additional

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK

m-w^S:^

William Henry Harrison.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes. James Aeram Garfield.

Benjamin Harrison. William McKinley.
THE OHIO PRESIDENTS.

OHIO AND HER
WESTERN RESERVE
WITH A STORY OF
THREE STATES
LEADING TO THE LATTER, FROM CONNECTICUT, BY
WAY OF WYOMING, ITS INDIAN WARS AND MASSACRE

BY
ALFRED MATHEWS
MEMBER OF THE OHIO STATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, ETC.

fyiTH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1902"

Copyright, 1902
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

,/l

iyL • /^

Published November, 190^

©o tl)e iltuntors of ntg Iat\)cx,
THE LATE
SAMUEL HUNTINGTON MATHEWS, M. D.,
OF PAINESVILLB, OP CLEVELApD, AND OF CALIFORNIA
— ONE OF THE "ARGONAUTS OF '49," WHO ASSISTED
IN EXTENDING TO THE PACIFIC COAST THE PATH
WHICH THE GENERATION OF HIS ANCESTORS HAD
OPENED FROM NEW ENGLAND TO THE SHORES OF LAKE
ERIE — ONE OF THE FIRST-BORN OF THE PIONEERS,
AND, IN CULTURE, CONSCIENCE, COURAGE, IN MANLI
NESS AND MODESTY, A HIGH TYPE OF THE INCON
SPICUOUS BUT STERLING CITIZENRY OF THE PURITAN
CONNECTICUT STOCK IN THE WESTERN RESERVE,
THIS LITTLE BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE

The theme of these pages is twofold : a
duality of endeavors, exhibiting a contrast of
means, and yet reaching a community of out
come. Ohio — now arrrived at the centennial of
statehood — was resultant from the foregather
ing of a great number of diverse fragments
finally compacted and fused in a homogenous
whole by various causes. As the most com
posite State in the Union, it was formed by
the concentrated march of an army of occupa
tion from all of the States. These elements,
widely variant as they were, had one prin
ciple in common — an inherent conviction of
the righteousness of freedom, which led some
to dictate, and all to assent to, a basic law
against the extension of slavery.
The Western Reserve of Connecticut in
vii

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Ohio, the largest and most distinctly indi
vidualized and most influential of all the
varied elements in this composite jiopulatiou,
was resultant from the sole energy of the
people of a single State. Herein the history
of the Reserve forms a contrast with that of
Ohio. And both because of its intrinsic in
terest and the generally inadequate under
standing of the power and the peculiarity of
Connecticut's wonderful Western expansion,
which reached its culmination in the Reserve,
the subject is considered here — and, it is be
lieved, for the first time — in all of its conuec-
tious, from the inception of the ideas of liberty
and colonial expansion in old Connecticut,
through the strange, wild warfare in Wyo
ming, Pa., to the realization of the essential
ideals of a progressive Puritanism in the " New
Connecticut " of Ohio.
Ohio's remarkable rise from the position
of a pioneer and backwoods State to one of
power and prestige absolutely unequaled, for
a long period, by any other in the sister
hood of commonwealths, will be found by
final analysis to be prt-dicated, in the main,
unmistakably upon Law. By this is of course
viii

Preface
meant fundamental, creating, organizing, and
controlling Law as contradistinguished from
that irresponsible individualism of action
which, how ever much of enthusiasm and of
energy it may employ, however admirable it
may be in many of its aims and even out
comes, is nevertheless Anarchy.
Ohio was builded wiser than its builders
knew, upon the Ordinance of 1787, that sur
passingly wise enactment of early Congress,
which was only less important than the Con
stitution of the United States, and which may
not improperly be regarded as the " Ordinance
of Freedom " for the whole nation, rather
than merely for the old Northwest Territory,
if we look upon it as illuminated by the
glowing light of 1861-65, instead of in the
pale, but prophetic gleaming of a new dawn
in the primitive days of the nation and the
Northwest. If we reflect that the old Northwest Ter
ritory was made, morally, what it was by the
operation of the great ordinance ; that it was
primarily a force for the sifting out from the
people of the whole country of those opposed
to slavery, and their concentration and devel-
ix

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
opment in the Territory ; and then recall that
Ohio alone, the first State of the Territory
when the war came on that resulted in the
supj)ression of slavery, contributed more men
to the Union army than Great Britain ever
put in the field, even in the greatest and latest
of her wars, we begin to apprehend the vast
ultimate momentousness of the Ordinance of
1787. Those who were to become the very first
pioneers of Ohio dictated and secured the
passage of that ordinance, and its first effect
was in making a cosmopolitan commonwealth,
rather than a mere extension of a single col
ony, the population they pioneered into the
wilderness. Ohio, owing to the provisions of
the ordinance, was the first ground in the
United States on which met and eventually
merged the people of all the colonies — the first
on which the Cavalier and the Puritan and
the Quaker stood side by side ; the first on
which the differentiated strains of blood in
the sons of the Carolinas and Vircrinia, of
Maryland and Pennsylvania, of Massachusetts
and Connecticut, commingled in a common
people.

Preface
And not only did it obtain these many
valuable, because varied, elements of popula
tion, but, by the operation of the ordinance,
the hest of each — the more morally advanced,
as proved by their attitude toward slavery,
two generations before it had become a para
mount public issue.
It is along the development of these lines,
as a study in population and, in the larger
sense, of politics, also as an analysis of causes
and consequences extending down to the
chronicling of a great many definite results,
that the history of Ohio here proceeds, rather
than as a minute account of those minor inci
dents, interesting enough in themselves, but
which have little of causative significance.
The history of Ohio, as here related, is,
therefore, a consideration of many peoples in
one State, while the chapters which precede
those on Ohio proper, pertaining to the larg
est, though not the earliest single element
that found a home within, and heljjed to con
stitute the State, form a study of one people
in three States. That portion of the work
which treats of the Connecticut westward
expansion reveals, therefore, in this respect,
xi

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
as has been said, a contrast with the theme
of the other chapters.
But this is by no means the most imjjor-
tant contrast which is presented between the
subjects of the two sections of the work.
The settlement of Ohio proceeded in orderli
ness and peace and with huge attendant
rapidity, success, and prosperity, because it
was inaugurated deliberately upon an entirely
lawful and planned basis, -which prepared the
way for stability before the soil was pressed
by a pioneer footstep. In the other migra
tory movement, that tremendously vigorous
westward push by Connecticut people which
gave the initiative to the whole organized
internal colonial movement and which ulti
mately planted by all odds the largest and
strongest and most characteristic single, com
pact colony in the West (and the " last dis
tinct footprint of Puritanism "), there was at
the outset — in the Pennsylvania endeavor — a
marked lack of regard for safe legal initiative
and procedure, with consequent anarchical
conditions and a failure that fell not far
short of being complete.
It was a singular mistake for Connecticut

Preface
men to make ; altogether contrary to their pre
dominant characteristics of prudence and of
practicality. Its occurrence is, in the main, to
be attributed to preliminary conditions which
almost certainly would have misled any peo
ple, and to the non-existence of any precedent
whatever for the manner of execution of
their really heroic enterprise. But if they
partially failed once, in Pennsylvania, because
their pathway was not fully paved with law,
they splendidly atoned for it with their care
ful and elaborate preparation for the later
movement into that part of the Northwest
Territory which was to become Ohio, and
the losses of Wyoming were fully compen
sated in the Western Reserve.
If it may temporarily appear to any reader
that the other principal early elements of
Ohio's population suffer any injustice in these
pages through not being accorded a separate
treatment, the cause for dissatisfaction will
probably either wholly disappear or greatly
diminish, when they find that the story of these
elements is more intimately and inseparably
interwoven with the founding and the organi
zation of the State, and that they are given
xiii

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ample attention in the chapters devoted to it
where the chronicling of their respective
shares in the great work becomes not only
appropriate but imperative.
It was the people who formed the small
though sterling Massachusetts colony who
dictated the great ordinance and made the
first organized settlement within the limits
of the future State. It was the Virginia ele
ment, most of whose pioneers came to Chilli-
cothe by way of Kentucky, that was fore
most in founding the State under the aegis
of the Jeffersonian Democracy, and it was the
New Jersey element under General John
Cleves Symmes, the founder of Cincinnati,
who prominently seconded the successful en
deavors of the former. Both of these, and
the Massachusetts men who made at Majietta,
in 1788, the initial organized settlement
northwest of the Ohio River, are appre
ciatively and extensively treated in the State
chapters with which they are inveterately in
volved. But with the Western Reserve the case
is quite different. While indisj^utably the
largest of the several distinct elements, or

xiv

Preface
colonies, composing Ohio, it was also the
latest of the four principal ones, and had a
comparatively small part in the original for
mation of the commonwealth to which it
contributed later so largely of men and in
fluence. A suflficient reason for its specialized
treatment is its importance ; but its distinct
ness and strength of individuality also are
conducive to this procedure. It was for a
long time alluded to because of its radical
political character, and, now for its aloofness,
again for its aggressiveness, characterized as
"a State separate from Ohio," and indeed it
was never fully merged until 1860 with that
oneness of political opinion in paramount
principles to which Ohio then finally at
tained. Upon the simple cqjisideration of chrono
logical propriety and because of the initiative
of colonial expansion which it afforded, the
" Connecticut movement " is here given pri
ority of place ; not that in its own history
the Western Reserve is earliest, but that its
hugely important and inseparable antece
dents, without which it is not an understand-
XV

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
able entity, antedate any other portions of
the subject of the work.
These causative antecedents have here,
for the first time, so far as the author is
aware, been presented in their true and com
pelling connection mth the later subject.
Their somewhat elaborate presentation, as it
here appears, was originally set forth in A
Story of Three States, published in the April
and May (1902) numbers of Scribner's Maga
zine, to the proprietors of which, Messrs.
Charles Scribner's Sons, the author expresses
his gratitude for the privilege of reprinting
them. It may be added that the introductory
chapter, outlining Connecticut's history, espe
cially as regards her splendid pioneer serv
ices for civil liberty and internal colonial
expansion, appears very nearly in the form
in which it was delivered as the annual ad
dress before the W}oming Commemorative
Association, at Wyoming, Pa., on July 3,
1902. It is here reproduced as exhibiting the
inception in the seaboard commonwealth of
those ideas and moral and material forces
which found their fullest, most significant

Preface
expression in her colony in the old-time West
and on the way thither, and which to a con
siderable extent were formative causes of our
national I'epublicanism, our remarkable con
tinental expansion, and our unprecedented
prosperity. The Atithob.
Philadelphia, October 11, 1902.

xvu

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
( PAGE
Introductory — Connecticut's service for civil liberty anli
colonial expansion  • \ 3
CHAPTER II
Wyoming, or Connecticut militant in Pennsylvania — The
beginnings of " Expansion " — The Yankee invasion
and first series of " Pennamite Wars " . . .53
CHAPTER III
Battle and massacre of Wyoming and flight of survivors
through the " Shades of Death "  78
CHAPTER IV
Far-reaching results of war's horror at Wyoming — Rank
ing with Lexington and Concord in effect on the
fortunes of the Revolution — Effort to create a Yankee
State in Pennsylvania — Close of " Pennamite Wars "
adverse to Connecticut colonists — The Western Re
serve as a recompense for Wyoming .... 101
CHAPTER Y
The Western Reserve, or Connecticut triumphant in Ohio
— The largest evidence of our organized colonial
expansion and the last footprint of Puritanism . .' 139
xix

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

CHAPTER VI
PAGE
The Reserve a conservation of Connecticut, yet with dif
ferences — The old Puritan idea of liberty comes to
the fore in new form — Antislavery a logical outcome
of progressive Puritanism — Giddings and Wade, as
types of the people and as examples of heredity . . 158

CHAPTER VII
The Reserve's contributions to public service in states
manship — Literature — Culture — Colleges and public
schools — Famous educators — The reflex tide toward
Connecticut  190

CHAPTER VIII
Ohio and "the Great Ordinance " of 1787 — A huge moral
engine operating automatically for the selection of
the best elements of immigration — A study of
origins  215

CHAPTER IX
Ohio achieves statehood — Gained by the Jeffersonian
Democracy in a battle royal with the Federalists and
Gen. Arthur St. Clair — Some curious constitutional
consequences  236
CHAPTER X
Ohio's ascendency analyzed — An analysis reveals that it
was based largely on " selection " of population — The
ordinance of freedom massed here Southern as well
Northern antislavery forces — A State settled by all
the States — Results of the commingling . . . 261
XX

Contents
CHAPTER XI
PAGE
Ohio in the war and in national civil life — Remarkable
roster exhibiting the State's prestige — Causes of the
latter — Ohioans in literature, journalism, and the
arts  379
CHAPTER XII
Summary and conclusion — Causes of political prestige —
Ohio's vote — Population — Ohio's immense contribu
tion of population to Western States .... 307
Index  317

XXI

LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTKATIONS

PACING PAGE

The Ohio Presidents .... Frontispiece
The Rev. Thomas Hooker . . ... 16
Arrest of the Connecticut settlers . 70
' ' Queen Esther " (Catharine Montour) inciting the In
dians to attack Wyoming  88
Flight. of the Connecticut settlers through "the Shades
of Death"  98
Present aspect of the Wyoming battle-fleld . . 104
The Wyoming Monument, erected in 1833 near the
scene of battle and massacre ..... 134
How the Connecticut pioneers came into the Western
Reserve  139
Fort Harmar, on the Ohio River, at the mouth of the
Muskingum, built 1785-'86  315
Campus Martius, first home of the first settlers of Ohio,
at Marietta .... .337
"These are my Jewels" — "Favorite Sons" Monument
in Capitol grounds at Columbus .... 387

MAPS

page

Lands claimed by Connecticut in Pennsylvania and
Ohio .  59
The Western Reserve  . 167

OHIO AND HER WESTERN RESERVE

— But bolder they who first off-cast
Their moorings from the habitable Past,
And ventured chartless on the sea
Of storm-engendering Liberty.
Lowell.

CHAPTEE I
INTRODTJCTOEY  CONNECTICUT'S SERVICE FOR
CIVIL LIBERTY AND COLONIAL EXPANSION
Sometimes I have wondered if it is too
much to say that Connecticut was the most
radical, resistless, and destiny-laden outcome
of Puritanism in America. The old Bay State
— all honor to her noble history — -admittedly
excelled her in the production of results
greater in totality ; but if she was stronger,
she was also slower of moral movement — more
conservative — than Connecticut. The mother
colony lagged behind her eldest daughter in
the mental energy of initiative ; and, I think,
not alone in chronological primacy, but in the
vast moment of single acts, was the inferior of
her offspring.
Connecticut's, like all early Puritanism,
whether we find it in England or on the
shores of the new Western world, contained
3

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
those many rigid, unlovely, and reprehensible
doctrines which brought upon the peculiar
people the almost universal ridicule of the
rest of the world and much of bitter hatred.
But the one vast and vital ideal that Puritan
ism gave to the world, the one doctrine of
inestimable value and imperishable influence,
not England nor any of her colonies cher
ished more ctirefuUy and zealously, or pushed
more persistently into practical usefulness for
the advance of mankind than did Connecti
cut. This was the novel and startling doc
trine of human liberty which rose upon the
w^orld as a pale, ineffectual star, undistin-
guishable, save to the keenest vision, from
some ephemeral earth light, but growing,
glowing, in its slow rise to the meridian, with
the life-giving force and the celestial splendor
of a sun.
We are too ready to think of Puritanism's
seamy side ; too prone altogether, save in our
most thoughtful and searching moods, to look
back upon the Puritan of Old England and
of New England as a particularly grim and
gloomy Calvinist who ruthlessly renounced
eveiything in life that was joyous and beauti-
4

Introductory
ful. All of us, and all the time, remember
readily enough Macaulay's satirical remark,
which smacked more strongly of the sneers
made by his Elizabethan predecessors than
of the enlightened spirit of his contempo
raries of the middle nineteenth century. Yes,
we all recall the historian's mot that "the
Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it
gave pain to the bear, but because it gave
pleasure to the spectators," a witticism, by the
way, which Macaulay stole from Hume ; but
we do not so readily recall that both Macau-
lay and Hume, in sober earnest, bore testi
mony to the lofty character of the Puritans
and the priceless boon they fairly forced
upon a blind and reluctant people in two
continents. Hume, writing of the arbitrary nature of
Elizabeth's government, said: "So absolute
indeed was the authority of the crown, that
the precious spark of liberty had been
kindled and was preserved by Puritans alone ;
and it was to this sect whose principles ap
pear so frivolous and habits so ridiculous,
that the English owe the whole freedom of
their constitution." And again ; " It was only
5

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
during the next generation that the noble
principles of liberty took root, and spreading
themselves under the shelter of Puiitanical
absurdities, became fashionable among the
people." But the truth that Hume told was not
recognized even in his time, for he relates in
his autobiography that for his utterances he
"was assailed by one cry of reproach, dis
approbation, and even detestation" fi'om
every side and every party, for there was
general indignation abroad in the land at the
suggestion that English liberty began with
the growth of Puritanism. Hallam, though
he criticized some of the statements of Hume,
practically agreed with him upon the matter
we are here concerned with, sajdng that it
was the Puritans v^ho were " the dejoositaries
of the sacred fire" and who "revived the
smoldering embers."
Yet it needed a man of the insight, the
honesty, the fearlessness, and the sledge-
wielding strength of Thomas Carlyle, to first
properly characterize the greatest religious,
moral, and political force of modern times.
He called English Puritanism "the last of all
6

Introductory
our heroisms." He aflirmed that " few nobler
heroisms, at bottom, perhaps, no nobler hero
ism, ever transacted itself on this earth ; and
it lies as good as lost to us; overwhelmed
under such an avalanche of human stupidities
as no heroism before ever did. Intrinsically
and extrinsically it may be considered inac,
cessible to these generations. Intrinsically-
the spiritual purport of it has become incon
ceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Ex
trinsically, the documents and records of it,
scattered waste as a shoreless chaos, are not
legible." Elsewhere he says : " The resuscitation of
a heroism from the past time is no easy enter
prise," and then he enters upon and executes
it, giving the initiation to others, who in more
recent years have gone far beyond him in re
suscitating this "last of all our heroisms," and
convincing the world that — though it went
clothed in an awful and forbidding austerity ;
though it frowned upon much that was inno
cent and blithesome and beautiful in life ;
though it long time fostered hateful and hid
eous fanaticisms — it was in all verity as noble
a heroism "as ever transacted itself on this
7

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
earth " and that its invincible spirit, in spite
of the dross with which it was long laden,
gave England constitutional' liberty and
America political fi"eedom, self-government,
and the beginnings of its true democracy.
Having performed these momentous func
tions Pmitanism has such huge items to its
credit on the rolls of Clio, that the infinitesi
mal charges against it, innumerable though
they are, and forming a considerable aggre
gate, fall, by comparison, into nothingness.
To understand to-day the extreme severity
of the Puritans' view we must make our com
parisons, not with the present, but with the
past, and we should very minutely study the
conditions, religious, moral, social, and polit
ical, that obtained in England when the Puri
tans' protest was made. Puritanism -was born
in an age of governmental tyranny, ofiicial
malfeasance and all-pervading corruption,
which logically brought, in due time, a revo
lution. The Puritans have been blamed by the
superficial for their rejection of the literature
of their time. It is true that for the most
part they discountenanced and denounced it,
8

Introductory
but that was because it reflected the evil
spirit, the rapacity, the licentiousness, and
the reeking rottenness of the age. The great
writers of the time cared not a whit for the
sacred flame of liberty which lay in the sole
guardianship of the Puritans ; indeed, they
were uniformly and incessantly truculent to
ward the Puritans and toward the masses in
general, while most servilely truckling to the
aristocracy. The Puritans' attitude of aversion, then,
to the literature of their time was by no
means indicative of intellectual inferiority,
but of that uncompromising moral rigidity
which made them a mighty force in the
movement of civilization.
The name " Puritan " came into the lan
guage about 1564, soon after the accession
of Elizabeth. From time to time its strict
meaning changed, sometimes being used in a
religious, sometimes in a political sense. Its
popular employment was in a religious sense,
and it finally came to have a very liberal ap
plication, being extended to all who, either
by conduct or word, protested against the irre-
ligion and immorality of the time — in fact, " to
3 9

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
pretty nearly everybody who went to church
regularly and didn't get drunk." In the strict
sense of the appellation it denominated those
Calvinistic members of the English Church
who would work a reformation from within,
while those who left the Church were called
Separatists, Independents, Brownists, and the
like. To the former class belonged the great
majority of the colonists of New England,
but it was from the latter that came the Pil
grim fathers who settled in Plymouth, though
the majority of the Massachusetts settlers
w^ere of the strict Puritan sect ; and it -was
principally from the towns formed by a large
influx of this element in 1630 that Connecti
cut was settled in 1633-'36.
Now Puritanism, though it had set in
operation the forces that were most largely
insti'umental in making modern England, be
came there in due time an almost inert thing
— a frozen creed. The remarkable and mo
mentous fact is, that on the virgin soil of the
New World it thawed out, obtained a fi'esh
impetus of life, adapted itself to new condi
tions, and wrought gradually new w^onders,
which, after the passing of a century and a
10

Introductory
half, became the heritage of the whole Amer
ican people.
In a word, there was engrafted upon
Puritanism in America a new idea and a new
source of power. Unto Puritanism there was
added progressivism. Connecticut was its
best and first outcome and exemplar. She
led the new advance. It is the popular opin
ion that no people were less progressive or
more stubbornly conservative — " hide-bound "
is the vernacular of the condition — than these
Puritans. That is unquestionably true of
them in a hundred matters — civil, social, and
religious ; but it is equally true that in the
great fundamentals they made early, quickly,
and surely, colossal strides beyond all the
other colonists of America.
Let us look briefly upon the manner of
its doing, and see how and why Connecticut
led the vanguard of civilization in its newest
and mightiest march.
The passionate love of liberty that con
stituted the Puritan's predominant trait was
the leaven that, little by little, worked its
slow way toward its consummation, and
evolved from the Connecticut character the
11

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
greatest of Connecticut achievements. Yet
this was not accomplished through a simple
process. It was complicated — inveterately in
terwoven, one may say — with the Pui'itan's
religion. The settlement of Connecticut and
her early service for freedom, for self-govern
ment, for democracy, and ultimately for nation
ality, could not conceivably have come about
save for the fact that Puritan local govern
ment went hand in hand with religion.
To the now execrated " union of Church
and state," on a miniature scale, we owe in
part, at least, the remarkable progressivism
with which Connecticut imbued Puritanism.
The " town " and the church were practically
one. It followed naturally — and it w^as a
frequent occurrence, among a people who had
learned as no English-speaking people before
had done, to think and act for themselves —
that when schism arose in the church the
dissenting minority, fii-m in their conviction
of right, and unwilling to be coerced, moved
out and onward, and established a " town "
and church of their own.
Sometimes the incentive arose from the
regard for political rather than religious free-
12

Introductory
dom. But in either case the result was the
same. The seceders were naturally in moral
advance of those whom they left, and thus
it happened that each exodus from Massachu
setts into Connecticut planted in the latter
State some of the choicest souls from the
older colony. If Massachusetts " was sown
with selected grain," as has been truthfully
enough claimed, Connecticut was sown with
twice-winnowed grain.
Thus conscience, courage, love of religious
and civil liberty, in their influence upon char
acter (already made individually independent
and self-reliant by the very conditions under
which the pioneer Puritans of New England
lived), performed automatically, as it were, a
kind of silent, but incessant, and enormously
effective work of selection for the building
up of Connecticut, and her moral equipment
for that sublime service in which she took
the bold initiative.
The settlement of 1633, the first lawful,
organized English occupation of Connecticut,
was made by a little party of the dissatisfied
from Plymouth. They founded Windsor. It
was shortly after that another company from
13

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Massachusetts settled Wethersfield, and in
1636 a much larger party founded Hartford.
In the last-mentioned year a desire for a more
democratic form of government caused a con
siderable exodus from the mother colony, and
all three of these towns then received their
chief bodies of immigrants.
It was of immense importance that at
this juncture there came to Hartford one
Thomas Hooker, an English clergyman, driven

Grave of Thomas Hooker, in Center Church Cemetery,
Hartford, Conn.
The inscription reads: "In memory of the Ecv. Thomas Hooker,
who iu 1636 with his assistant Mr. Stone removed to Hartford
with about 100 persons, where he planted the first Church in
Connecticut. Au eloquent, able, and faithful Minister of
Christ. He died July 7th, 1647. iET. LXl."
from his native land for non-conformity, a
resident of Holland from 1630 to 1633, then
a settler of Boston, and finally, after three
14

Introductory
years there, being dissatisfied with the illib
eral spirit that prevailed, leading into the
wilderness the broader-minded men who were
willingly his followers, and among whom, in
their new home, he planted and nom'ished
the fundamental thought that was formulated
in an instrument on January 14, 1639, and
adopted by the three towns thus compacted
in a body politic. This was the first written
constitution known to history, with the pos
sible exception of the "Union of Utrecht,"
under which the Netherlands were then liv
ing, and which it is permissible to call a con
stitution, and it was absolutely the " first in
America to embody the democratic idea."
It is a popular fallacy that democracy
dawned upon America in the compact made
on the Mayflower — a compact that opened
with a formal acknowledgment of the king
as the source of all authority, and which con
tained no new political principle and no sug
gestion of democracy or liberty whatever.
Such democracy as Massachusetts had in its
early days was in reality accidental, and not
institutional, while that of Connecticut was
created consciously and deliberately ; and the
15

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
true democracy, to which the Bay State after
ward became so splendidly devoted, she owed
chiefly to the example set by her eldest daugh
ter, Connecticut.
There is now no question of Hooker's
authorship, at least of the idea, of this re
markable document of 1639. An abstract of
a sermon that he delivered in 1638, seven
months before the constitution was signed,
has been discovered in very recent years,
which puts the preacher's claim upon an
impregnable basis. He spoke from the text,
Deuteronomy i, 13-15 : " Take you wise men,
and understanding and known among your
tribes, and I will make them rulers over you
. . . cajjtains over thousands, and captains over
hundreds, over fifties, over tens," etc. ; and
with this as his basis, he pointed out "that
the choice of public magistrates belongs unto
the people, by God's own allowance ; that
the privilege of election, which belongs to
the people, must not be exercised according
to their humors, but according to the blessed
will and law of God ; that they who have
power to appoint officers and magistrates, it
is in their power, also, to set the bounds and
16

The Rev. Thomas IIookeh, Puritan preacher (1586-1647).
No authentic portrait of Thomas Hooker exists, but Nielians's statue in
the Conneeticnt Capitol is a carefully made composite based upon the like
nesses of various niembcrs of his lineal posterity and historical description.

Introductory
limitations of the power and place to which
they call them ; because (1) the foundation
of authority is laid, firstly, in the free con
sent of the people ; because (2) by a free
choice, the hearts of the people will be more
inclined to the love of the persons chosen
and more readily lend obedience."
Finally, the Puritan preacher spoke of
the " uses " of the text and the doctrine he
deduced from it, being such as " to persuade
us, as God hath given us liberty, to take it^''
and " as God hath spared our lives, and given
us them in liberty, so to seek the guidance of
God, and to choose in God and for God."
Herein, at Hartford, was lain down the
germinal idea of political liberty for the in
dividual, the beginning of democracy, and
the corner-stone, at least, of that foundation
on which the firm fabric of the American
commonwealth was slowly upreared. Herein
was the first practical assertion of the right
of the people not only to choose, but to limit
the powers of their rulers. There was neither
in the inspiring sermon of liberty-loving
Thomas Hooker nor in the constitution based
upon it, any allusion to a " dread sovereign "
17

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
nor any expression of deference to class. Ser
mon and constitution were alike instinct with
liberty and democracy.
It may seem like a little thing that was
gained on the banks of the Connecticut in
1638 and 1639 when we compare it with the
civil liberty we now enjoy, but the true his
torical methods of estimate is to compare
every movement of advance with what ex
isted before, and not with what came after,
and thus viewed the Connecticut Puritan
declaration of rights of a quarter of a mil
lennial since, in the very infancy of the colo
nies, was a giant stride in the history of human
liberty. The constitution, says one of the State
historians, provided "a system of complete
popular control, of frequent elections by the
people, and of minute local government," and
it remained throughout the confiscations,
modifications, and refusals of charters in other
colonies the exemplar of the rights of self-
government, which all colonies gradually came
to aim at more or less consciously.
A brief glance at some of the other en
actments with which these Puiitans benefited
18

Introductory
the whole people, and we have done with
Connecticut achievement in this line, and
pass to the consideration of other forms of
her evolutionary force. First of all, she
legalized, by the famous constitution of 1639,
the written ballot, in a form introduced by
Hooker, which was a great improvement upon
that adopted in Massachusetts ; and, unlike
some of the other colonies, kept it in per
petual use until it was fixed as an integral
part of the political system of the nation.
She established and maintained the " town "
system on a basis even more independent of
outside control than that of Massachusetts,
making it emphatically the unit of political
organizations, which, because it came nearest
to the peoj)le, won the recognition of Tocque-
ville as a leading factor in true democratic
government. More, too, than Massachusetts
she was influential in passing this invaluable
institution to the West, where it perpetuated
many of her principles, and became a potent
cause of the political supremacy of the regions
to which it was carried.
Connecticut by this same famous first
constitution practically indorsed Massachu-
19

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
setts's educational system, but exceeded the
mother colony in the strenuousness of its ad
vocacy, and made those towns which should
fail to maintain free schools subject to fine.
Finally, when the Constitution of the
United States was formed, through the pecul
iar position her delegates held in the conven
tion and by adroit management, she was
enabled to incorporate in it that measure for
the benefit of the small States which gave
equality of representation in the upper house
of Congress and a proportional representation
in the lower— a measure which was derived
directly from her own system of town repre
sentation established in 1639.
Even when apparently stationary, Con
necticut was constantly moving forward —
a pioneer in the lines of human liberty
and political righteousness — moving forward
mightily, though invisibly, in thought, until
she was ready for the conspicuity of vigorous
action, for she was constantly recruited by
the most advanced men of less liberal Massa
chusetts and of England.
We have said that Connecticut's signal
service to humanity along the pathway of
20

Introductory
liberty lay in her adding progressivism to
Puritanism. Many instances have been cited.
There remains one which all cavillers at
Connecticut's alleged conservatism should
bear in mind. In 1650, twelve years before
the union of Connecticut and the New Haven
colony, both colonies, which had similar laws,
reduced the number of crimes for which capi
tal punishment was inflicted from 160 to 15
— the number remaining formidable enough,
in all conscience. But let us look at that
England from which these Puritans had mi
grated. As late as 1819, over a century and
a half after her American offspring's action,
we find that she carried no less than 223
capital offenses upon her code. No commen
tary is needed, one may think, upon this in
dication of the comparative advance of hu
manity in Old and in New England.
The whole of this wonderful achievement
under the Connecticut Puritan constitution
of 1639, and a vast deal more that we can
not specify within our limitations, was the
outgrowth of the ever-evolving idea of liberty,
constantly quickened and fostered to early
fruition in Connecticut by the peculiar con-
21

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ditions in Massachusetts that the radical,
conscienceful character of some of her people
could not comply with. Massachusetts's illib-
erality continuously acted as an expulsive
force upon some of her foremost men, and
certainly her most progressive minds, and
thus built up the more progressive Puritan
ism of her neighbor.
Glancing swiftly over the field and across
the years, it would seem as if, in the language
of modern science, an immense idea evolved
through the minds of Puritan Thomas Hooker
and his Connecticut followers, as the vital
principle evolves through protoplasm, to form
a new order of life. But if, instead of the
cold locution of science, we employ the rever
ent language which the Puritan himself might
use, when we think of what the Connecticut
colonists did for liberty in those early years,
and coming down to the later ones, contem
plate their descendants, as we shall, when
they fought for liberty in 1776, and still
later made the idea of liberty apply to the
abolishment of black slavery, by moral agita
tion in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, and by martial
action in the '60s — if, as I say, thinking of
22

Introductory
all this, and of Connecticut men in Connecti
cut, joined by Connecticut men in Pennsyl
vania and in the Western Reserve, heroically
urging and soundly legislating for the propa
ganda of freedom, we should say, even as the
Puritan himself would say, that in the larger
affairs of men and nations — as in the raising
up of Oliver Cromwell and of Abraham Lin
coln — the hand of God in some mysterious
manner reaches directly down to humanity
and impels mankind forward in the march
of destiny. Let us turn now to another line of Con
necticut achievement, in which every episode
flomng, like those already considered, from
the fondly cherished idea of liberty, but in
fluenced also by varied moral and material
conditions, in some degree reacted upon,
modified, and remolded the original Con
necticut Puritan character in which they had
their inception. The reference here made is,
of course, to that altogether remarkable and
unparalleled colonial expansion of Connecti
cut which had its origin in the middle of the
eighteenth century, upon the ground since
23

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
made historic as Wyoming — the true Windsor
of the West — where heroic blood dyed the
Susquehanna in the same progressive cause
of liberty that had its first announcement on
the Connecticut.
The great westward pressure of Connecti
cut was in a measure resultant from the same
forces that governed the settlement of Con
necticut itself — that is, church secession and
the desire for a more democratic government,
both elements in the passion for freedom.
But material conditions also entered into the
complex cause of the exodus.
As early as 1680, when Connecticut had
already sent offshoots of population into New
Jersey and lower Pennsylvania, as well as
into some contiguous territory, the colonial
government, in obeying a request from Eng
land for a statement of its condition, re
sponded through a letter in the hand of
John Allyn, stating, among other things, that
the country was mountainous, full of rocks,
swamps, hills, and vales ; that most of it that
was fit for planting had been taken up ; and
that "what remaynes must be subdued and
gained out of the fire, as it were, by hard
24

Introductory
blowes and for small recompence." If this
was the truth in regard to the then existing
condition in Connecticut, it was no less a
correct prophecy of what was awaiting the
settlers at Wyoming a century later. To
subdue and to gain " out of the fire, by hard
blowes and for small recompence," was indeed
the usual lot of the Puritan in Connecticut
and the Puritan patriot in Pennsylvania. It
was to this circumstance that was attributable
the development of a very unusual spirit of
enterprise and an indomitable courageousness
in a character already well equipped with
other sterling virtues.
Now Connecticut, which had when Allyn
wrote his description in 1680 a population
of only 10,000 to 12,000 souls, and was poor
in property, though rich in the quality of its
men, weak in actual fighting strength, though
strong in the stout hearts and independence
of its people (as was shown half a dozen
years later by their secreting the royal grant
of their colony in the Charter Oak rather
than surrendering it to the British Govern
ment), grew steadily, though slowly, in popu
lation. Trumbull estimates its people at
4 25

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
17,000 in 1713, and the Board of Trade at
100,000 and Bancroft at 133,000 in 1755.
At the latter date older and larger Massa
chusetts is estimated to have had 207,000,
and vast Virginia only 168,000 population.
Thus it will be seen Connecticut held no
mean position in the group of colonies. In
proportion to its territory, it was perhaps the
most populous of all of them, and long be
fore 1762, when all of the soil had been
allotted into towns, the people had mani
fested *a disposition to swarm from a hive
that seemed to them too small to accommo
date their liberal views of life.
The Delaware Company was first in the
field with its settlement at Cushutunk in
1757, and the Susquehanna Company fol
lowed in 1762, after the close of the Indian
War. Pennsylvania, but for the blind or
misconceiving policy of its people, largely
influenced by the interested proprietaries,
might have had as a result of this settle
ment as large an influx of the best popula
tion in America as Ohio afterward received.
But an indiscriminate and incessant opposi
tion deprived the very State which most
26

Introductory
particularly needed it of nine-tenths of the
body which would probably have come on
conditions of fair terms and friendliness.
One result of this deflection of immigra
tion was exhibited in the founding of a
settlement of Connecticut men in the far
South, which has been generally neglected
by Connecticut historians. This was the set
tlement in 1776 (projected at Hartford in
1772) of Natchez, Miss, (then included in
West Florida), made by several hundred
New England families, mostly from Con
necticut, There were some among these
people who scantily sympathized with the
political revolt in New England, but Justin
Winsor has said : " There was enough, how
ever, of the Revolutionary fervor of the
Atlantic seaboard in others to make the set
tlement an important factor in shaping the
destiny of this Southern region." And we
deem it eminently deserving of a place in
the list of Connecticut's achievements in the
line of colonization.
If Wyoming was the settlement made and
maintained under the most strenuous exer
tions and heroic sacrifice, almost literally
27

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
"subdued and gained out of the fire by hard
blowes and for small recompence," the West
ern Reserve in Ohio was the settlement made
most easefuUy and successfully— absolutely
without any expenditure of blood within its
limits — and most fully and continuously stood
as an expositor in the West of all that was
admirable in Connecticut.
But we must not forget that Wyoming,
so to speak, sounded the inspiring music and
set the pace for the westward march ; that
Wyoming really influenced the settlement of
a great number of Connecticut men in other
parts of Pennsylvania than by the Susque
hanna's waters ; and last, but not least, that
the blood of the Wyoming martyrs, shed a
century and a quarter ago, in reality paid the
unnamed price for the Connecticut Western
Reserve. Nor must we fail to recognize the impor
tance of those unorganized and scattering set
tlements with which Connecticut dotted Ver
mont and western New York, southern Mich
igan, northern Indiana and Illinois, Iowa and
Kansas, and even California and the Pacific
Slope. Further let us bear in mind that it
28

Introductory

was Moses Austin, a Connecticut man tem
porarily settled in Missouri, who conceived
and his son, Stephen F. Austin, who ex
ecuted a considerable scheme for the " Amer
icanization " of far-off Texas, and in the sec
ond decade of the last century diverted
from the natural westward course a sufficient
number of mixed Connecticut and Missouri
men to found auspiciously the fiourishing
city of Austin. Thus we see that while
Connecticut, like a mighty vine, shot its main
stem 600 miles westward, stanch and strong,
through three States — Pennsylvania, New
York, and Ohio — the tendrils, so to speak, of
that vine touched the widely remote shores
of the great Gulf and the Golden Gate.
It is to this wide dispersion of Connecti
cut men, caused by the discontent with the
conditions in the old colony which their own
progressivism gave birth to, and to the pre
dominance of capacity and energy in their
characters that we must ascribe the influence
of Connecticut in the affairs of other States
and in the nation and the great number of
individual Connecticut men who rose to
positions of honorable conspicuity in the
29

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
middle region of the West. One historian
says that as early as 1857 the single county
of Litchfield was noted as the birthplace of
thirteen United States senators, twenty-two
representatives from New York, fifteen Su
preme Court judges in other States, nine
presidents of colleges and eighteen other
professors, and eleven governors and lieuten
ant-governors of States. If we were to at
tempt a similar list for the whole State and
bring it down to the present time, we should
find that it would contain thousands of names
of ' men eminent in public life from Chief
Executives down to congressmen.
One can appreciate the feelings of the in
quiring foreigner who hearing constantly that
this or that great man, though a resident of
Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or New York, was born
in Connecticut, went to the atlas to loot up
the wonderful region that was so prolific of
men of power, and was most wofuUy disap
pointed to find that Connecticut, after all, was
" nothing but a little green spot on the map."
Another notable effect of the whole west
ward movement from Connecticut was that
upon the men who took part in it. While
30

Introductory
in the original colony progressive liberalism
in civil and religious thought moved by
inches, we find — whether it was owing to
some subtle alchemy in the aroma of the
new soil and of the wild wood, or to the
simple fact that those who became pioneers
were naturally more advanced than their
stay-at-home contemporaries — that progress
was made by leaps and bounds, surpassing
all precedent. Particularly was this true in
the outward aspect of religion. Formality
to a great extent was relinquished.
In the first settlement of Ohio, made at
Marietta, principally by Massachusetts men,
we find that the unnatural and awe-compel
ling dignity of the New England clergyman
had so far fallen from him, that he run a
foot-race on the Fourth of July and distanced
his competitor, a lawyer, a circumstance that
the local poet preserved in the allusion : —
It was a fact, they all gave in,
Divinity could outstrip Sin.
And there was a similar relaxation of
sacerdotal severity with similar retention of
power to triumph over sin in Wyoming and
the Western Reserve. 31

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
The probability is that the Yankee idea,
long growing, though unobserved, the quali
ties of thriftiness and shrewdness under the
hard conditions, and the increasing compe
tition for livelihood in Connecticut, had finally
added a beneficial practicality to progres
sive Puritanism. And did not this practi
cality include an advance in that commercial
capability for which this people became
noted? At any rate, it is safe to say that
the Connecticut Yankee in the West evinced
with surprising unanimity and certitude that
if he conformed his life to the exhortation
" Be thou fervent in spirit ; not slothful in
business ; serving the Lord," he regarded the
second clause of the injunction as equally
with the first and the final one calling for
his obedience.
The general statement is true that Con
gregationalism, which had in 1742 been
made the established religion in Connecticut,
was v/ithin the old colony, and even in the
mother State, a kind of congealed creed, con
taining much of the debris of an effete Cal
vinism, with the cold purity that formed its
really majestic mass ; but in the frontier set-
32

Introductory
tlements much of the former was liberated
by a general melting process. The Yankee
in his new homes engrafted practicality upon
his religion as he did upon all things, and
gradually the amenities and humanities of a
wholesome life displaced the asperities and
austerities of Calvinism without any notice
able abatement of the splendid moral force
that had originally moved the people with
the idea of liberty.
Indeed a deep reverence for religion was
the prevalent characteristic of the Western
settlements of Connecticut, and, combined
with the passion for education which every
where reared free schools among the forest
homes; with the political vantage inherent
in the operation of the " town meeting " ;
and the federative idea, which was the foun
dation of democracy, constituted Connecticut's
best benefaction to the always advancing
borderland of civilization, which, in turn, was
to grow old and pass its influence onward to
the younger West.
Connecticut's contributions to the cause
of education, to the material progress of the
33

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
country, to invention, and to manufacture,
great as they were, we must pass with a
word, but in viewing Connecticut's achieve
ment as the outcome of Connecticut charac
ter, we can not fail to dwell upon the wars in
which the Yankee Puritan fought for that
same freedom, in advanced form, for which he
had thought and wrought with patient per
sistence from the dawn of the primitive idea
of liberty and its declaration in the constitu
tion of 1639.
Passing over the French and Indian War,
in which the men of Connecticut performed
a large service and gained fighting experience
which served them well in the later and
greater struggle, we find, naturally enough,
that in the Revolution, more than in any for
mer exigency which Connecticut faced, she
exhibited that judicial consideration, com-"
bined with conscience, which renders people
strong in the execution of an enterprise once
carefully weighed and undertaken.
Religion was a strong factor in the war
achievements of the colony and the State.
The righteousness of opposition to the Eng-
34

Introductory
lish government was tried by standards of an
orthodox, but evolutionary, Puritanism in
every pulpit in Connecticut, and most delib
erately and earnestly discussed by the lay
men of every community. It was true, as
Macaulay said, that the Puritan " brought to
civil and military affairs a coolness of judg
ment and an immutability of purpose which
some writers have thought inconsistent with
religious zeal, but which were in fact the
necessary effects of it."
It was characteristic of the Connecticut
Puritan to insist upon being right before he
went ahead, and his persistency in all endeav
ors and success in most of them was largely
due to his determination to be sure of the
sagaciousness, practicability, and the moral
legality of an object before bending to its
service his really terrible tenacity of purpose.
A very curious and interesting item of the
secret history of the Revolutionary move
ment in Connecticut may be cited in illustra
tion of this truth. When the contest was
drawing on, the governor called a secret
session of the legislature, which on assem-
bKng appointed six of the leading jurists of
35

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

the colony — three to argue the cause in favor
of the right of Parliament to tax the colo
nies, and three against it. These arguments
were continued through long sittings for two
or three days, when the conviction became
universal among the
members that the
parliamentary right
did not exist, and
that the colonies
might therefore law
fully resist.
Thereupon the
question of right be
ing decided and a ju
dicial estimate of the
prospect of success
assuring the people
that the cause was no longer Quixotic or
chimerical, the Connecticut Puritans having
hitherto exercised a prudent self-restraint
under every provocation, abandoned them
selves unreservedly to action.
How sagacious, efficient, pertinacious, and
heroic that deliberate action was, the lives of
Connecticut's most illustrious patriots and
36

Introductory
the prosaic but proved statistics of history
abundantly tell.
Connecticut had as her first " war gov
ernor " Jonathan Trumbull, one of the lead
ing friends and most valued counselors of
the commander-in-chief— the man to whom
Washington's familiar mode of address was
" Brother Jonathan " — the original of the
personified typical American in our vernac
ular. She had her signer of the Declaration,
Samuel Huntington, who was also President
of the Continental Congress ; and she had
wise counselors and legislators by scores and
hundreds, and in the field such men as Israel
Putnam, David Wooster, Joseph Spencer,
Ethan Allen, Nathan Hale, Wolcott, Knowl-
ton, Grosvenor, Meigs, Huntington, Hum
phreys, Sears, and Douglas — and also, it must
candidly be said, Benedict Arnold ! who
though a native, Connecticut historians and
orators have carefully, on all occasions, shown
to have been of Rhode Island descent and
commissioned by Massachusetts !
Connecticut was instant in action and
unremitting in vigilance and vigor through
out the war, sagaciously aggressive and un-
37

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
sehdshly patriotic, as an early instance of
which we have her effective offensive move
ment against Ticonderoga for the relief of
Massachusetts, when she was not herself as
sailed nor in imminent danger. This was
planned in Connecticut and supported from
her public treasury before the Continental
Congress in 1775 had assembled, and "before
the blood had grown cold that was shed at
Concord and at Lexington."
Although the principal theater of the war
was outside the State, Connecticut contrib
uted most magnificently to its prosecution
in men and money, and at one time one-half
of Washington's army in the operations
about, and the defense of New York was
composed of her sons. But the totals of
troops furnished by the several colonies tells
most compactly and convincingly the story
of Connecticut's intense patriotism and of
her burning passion for political freedom.
She sent into the field 31,959 officers and
men, including large detachments from her
Wyoming settlements, being second only to
Massachusetts (inclusive of Maine), with
more than twice her population ; largely ex-
38

Introductory
ceeding Pennsylvania, which had nearly twice
as many people ; still further exceeding the
contribution of Virginia, which had more
than three times her population, and almost
doubling that of the really more numerically
powerful New York.
It was peculiarly characteristic of Con
necticut that at first almost whoUy, and all
through the war to
a considerable extent,
the measures for or
ganizing and putting
the soldiery in the
field and for sustain
ing the army were en
acted by the " towns."
Almost equally was
this condition true
nearly a hundred
years later when that other conflict came on
in 1861, in which the descendants of those
who had fought to preserve liberty and cre
ate a nation battled with the same valor,
though in greatly augmented numbers, to
preserve that nation from destruction.
As a State, Connecticut could not at once
39

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
furnish the single regiment of militia for
which the General Government called. The
Commonwealth was met by an emergency
unprovided for by law, but the patriotic
people were not disturbed in the least, and
fell back upon the resources of the " town "
system, precisely as they would have done
two centuries before, and had done in the
Revolution. Governor William A. Buckingham, one
of the galaxy of great " war governors," who
was to Connecticut in the war of the rebel
lion very much what Trumbull was during
the Revolution, it is true, usurped power in
calling for troops, for he was full of faith that
the people, through the Assembly, would vin
dicate him, as they did ; but the actual agita
tion for volunteering and the intense activity
entered into for the contribution of funds
was carried on by the " towns." And they
bore — and some still bear, I believe, to this
day — the burden of the debts they so readily
and resolutely incurred.
That the management of war affairs was
thoroughly effective is evidenced by the fact
that a population containing in 1861 only
40

Introductory
80,000 voters and about 50,000 able-bodied
men put into the service of the Union, in
all its branches, 54,882 volunteers of all terms
of service ; or, if the terms are all reduced
to a three years' average, over 48,000, exceed
ing the quota by between six and seven thou
sand. If the percentage of volunteers was
very high — excelled, indeed, by only one or
two States^the character and efficiency of
Connecticut's troops were surpassed by those
of no other State.
Her rosters were filled by men to an
unusual degree typical of the best strains
of blood in the State and of those who had
helped to make its proud history. Theodore
Winthrop, the first of Connecticut's sons to
fall upon the field, was descended from Puri
tan John Winthrop, the first governor of Con
necticut. Ellsworth, Ward, and Lyon, those
other early martyrs of the war, were all of
Connecticut stock.
One has only to recall the names of the
Connecticut generals and other officials to be
reminded of the earlier history of the colony,
and to be convinced that the Puritan families,
like Puritan principles, were still alive and
5 41

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
active. To the navy Connecticut contributed
its Secretary Gideon Welles, Rear-admirals
Andrew H. Foote and F. H. Gregory, and
Commodores John and C. R. P. Rogers and
R. B. Hitchcock. In the army her major-
generals were Darius N. Couch, Henry W.
Benham, John Sedgwick, Alfred H. Terry,
J. K. F. Mansfield, Joseph A. Mower, Joseph
Hawley, H. W. Birge, Henry L. Abbott,
Alexander Shaler, Joseph G, Totten, Henry W.
Wessels, A. S. Williams, Horatio G. Wright,
and R. O. Tyler ; while among the brigadiers
were Nathaniel Lyon, O. S. Ferry, Daniel
Tyler, Edward Harland, Luther P. Bradley,
Henry B. Carrington, William T. Clark,
Henry M. Judah, William S. Ketchum, R, S.
Mackenzie, James W. Ripley, Benjamin S.
Roberts, Truman Seymour, H, D. Terry, and
A. von Steinwehr.
If we look below these illustrious men
we shall find many more Connecticut men
of capacity and heroism, and the rank and
file of her soldiery, largely descendants of
the Puritans, and all as invincible as Crom
well's Ironsides. If we look, on the other
hand, far above the roster of Connecticut's
42

Introductory

officers we have named, and take into consid
eration not alone the old Connecticut but the
New, and the sterling strains of blood which
Connecticut pioneers had carried into Penn
sylvania, Ohio, and the farther West — if we
let our view comprehend not alone the native-
bom, but the descend
ants of Connecticut
stock — we shall dis
cover, indeed, a great
er and more glorious
galaxy of generals and
commanders in our
latest war for liberty.
And most lustrous of
the stars in that ever-
shining galaxy we shall "^i-r^ i^? i^/fua..T7i-
see two men whom we
may call grandsons of Connecticut — one near
the war's close leading that herculean, historic
march from Atlanta to the sea; the other,
greatest of all, holding Lee in his inexorable
grasp upon the James, and finally receiving
magnanimously his surrender at Appomattox.
All of this — and more — must have its
place in history's sum total of Connecticut
43

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
achievement, growing logically out of Con
necticut character.
And yet the people of the Commonwealth,
and those descended from them in Wyoming,
in New York, and in the Western Reserve,
were far from being a people who placed a
high estimate upon strictly soldierly glory.
Theirs was always the moral rather than the
martial idea. They had, in fact, a positive
aversion to war. They must first have a
cause for which to fight, and know that cause
to be founded on immutable justice.
'Tis true, something of soldierly submis
sion to discipline, of soldierly hardihood, and
indifference to death when they were once
embattled — qualities beaten into some of their
ancestors by the iron hand of Cromwell —
may have descended to them ; but far more
powerful a factor in forming their fighting
strength — indeed, almost the supreme influ
ence to Avhich they were susceptible — was
that which flowed from devotion to fixed
principle, the impassioned love of liberty,
and the deep-seated Puritanical conviction
that they must follow whithersoever duty
led. 44

Introductory
As the mind of the honest man studying
history goes back of Cromwell's time to the
beginning of English Puritanism and the
birth of civil liberty, and takes a sweeping
view downward through three centuries, he
can not conceive of the outcome of Con
necticut achievement as being wrought by
any power other than that of its vigor
ously progressive and adaptive Puritanism
— an absolutely new, virile religious idea,
practically applied to and controlling man's
conduct in every - day life, and especially
inculcating the doctrine of the right to
liberty. As we glance along the opening years of
Connecticut's Puritan history — so poor, so
sparse in many of the elements that appeal
to and fascinate the superficial and the lover
of the merely romantic — we see a figure,
plain, prosaic, with a face perchance not
comely in the world's way, and we hear a
voice, possibly in the despised and ridiculed
nasal tone ; but the figure rises, looms up
ward, the face lights and glows with the in
spiration of a great idea for the benefit of
45

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
humanity, present and to come; and the
voice, even if nasal, takes on a triumph
ant, trumpet tone that rings across the cen
turies. The figure and the face and the voice are
those of Thomas Hooker, Puritan preacher
of Connecticut, 1638, And the voice pro
claims : " And, lastly, as God hath given us
liberty, let us take it" — an utterance more
momentous, more pregnant of mighty result,
than the mouthings of a host of puppet kings
and the deeds of 10,000 melodramatic heroes
who may vainly have imagined they were
making history. His hearers, exalted, im
passioned, by the plain preacher's exhorta
tions, do indeed take, in their constitution of
1639, just a little of that liberty which he
has implored them to seize — so pitifully little,
it now seems, though large for the time — and
democracy and freedom have their beginning
on the American continent.
Almost a century and a half later, the
descendants of Thomas Hooker's hearers, and
others of their kind, take vastly more of man's
heritage of liberty — for the Revolution is
truly a Puritan measure in inception, if not
46

Introductory
in execution — and now the splendid spirit of
freedom is abroad in the land.
Almost another century glides slowly into
the immutable past, and now the idea of'
liberty takes to itself, under the tutelage of a
revived and vivified progressive Puritanism, a
new and wondrous form. It has long been
a blessing to its possessors, and now becomes
a boon which it is their imperative duty to
extend to an alien race. We hear the ad
vanced doctrine preached by Charles B.
Storrs, a Connecticut man of the Western
Reserve ; thundered in the nation's Capitol
by Wade and Giddings ; and helped on its
slow way by the " Proviso " of Wilmot, a Con
necticut man of Pennsylvania ; and after many
years there is warfare in which the descend
ants of Thomas Hooker's hearers and their
Connecticut brothers. East and West, take up
the gage of battle, not for martial glory, but
for the cause of freedom and the preservation
of an imperiled Union, fought for and founded
on the ground of human liberty by their fore
fathers. Liberty is no longer a little thing for some
favored few to enjoy, but, "subdued and
47

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
gained out of the fire by hard blows " — even
as was the land and sustenance of the Con
necticut Puritan — it has become an ines
timable right to be given to all men and to
cover the width of the Western world.
It is the new and legitimate projection of
an old idea that the sons of the Connecticut
colonists are fighting for, and they are actu
ated, as were their forefathers, by the quick
and stern conscience of the Puritan, that
knows no flinching when once it has deliber
ately devoted itself to duty. Religious con
viction and patriotism with him, as of old, go
hand in hand in the Puritan character, and
thus, by dual influence, contribute to the
glorious culmination and crown of Connecti
cut achievement.
For the progressive Puritan, whether of
the Commonwealth or its colonies, is pro
foundly moved by the solemn spirit and
heroic resolution which has been formulated
in a strophe of reverent and patriotic poetry
by a woman of Puritan ancestry, and he goes
sternly forth to battle consecrating himself to
liberty, even as did Cromwell's soldiers, while
the still, small voice of conscience is sound-
48

Introductory
ing in his soul the majestic import, if not the
words :
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me ;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

49

Through a long warfare rude,
With patient hardihood,
By toil, and strife, and blood.
The soil was won. Lewis J. Cist.

51

CHAPTER II
WYOMING ; OE, CONNECTICUT MILITANT IN
PENNSYLVANIA
If we attempt to follow in detail the se
quence of events constituting the most marked
of Connecticut's achievements in the material
line — her prodigious pioneering in the work
of the organized colonization of the West —
we shall find that it develops a strange, true,
thrilling story of three States, and that ulti
mately this story reveals the persistence of
the moral idea of civil liberty and human
freedom to which, as we have seen, Con
necticut gave the initiative in her constitu
tion of 1639.
It is purposed to relate in this story the
really astounding expansion of Connecticut
in the eighteenth century, and the most re
markable movement of internal colonization
in the whole history of the country. It will
53

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
be. found the story of Connecticut militant
in Pennsylvania, and of Connecticut trium
phant in Ohio ; of long warfare at Wyoming,
and peaceful concjuest in the Western Re
serve. The beginning' of Connecticut's bold
bodily projection westward, six hundred miles
into the wilderness, was Cushutunk, on the
Delaware ; and its end — so far as it is defi
nitely marked — is Cleveland, on Lake Erie,
now become the chief city of Ohio, and the
" Reserve " lying round about it, peopled by
that expansive movement of Connecticut, as
large, as populous, almost as characteristically
Connecticut as is the mother State.
Who ever heard of Cushutunk? Who
has not heard of Cleveland ? They w^ere the
products of one and the same force. Of the
half-century of time and the strange warfare
in the wilderness that lay between them, and
of the final vicarious reward of victory in
Ohio, this story tells.
Cushutunk's humble being was begun on
a soft day in June, 1757, when the solitude
and solemn quiet of the valley of the upper
Delaware were rudely broken by the re.
sounding strokes of axes sturdily swung —
54

Wyoming
always the first signal of the forest conquer
ors' coming — and a cluster of rude log cabins
arose in the tiny niche which a band of Con
necticut pioneers had chopped in the wall of
fresh foliage on the western bank of the
river, far up toward the north line of Penn
sylvania. Penn's province was well settled
to the southward, but all west of this hand
ful of adventurers was a wilderness, clear to
the setting sun. It was only a minute dot
of civilization which these " Yankees " placed
in the present county of Wayne, in Penn's
dominion, and some five years later, when
Wyoming was planted, it had but thirty
families; but it involved most momentous
issues. It was the first, the pioneer settlement of
the Connecticut people within the boundaries
of Penn's province. It represented the first
overt act of an intercolonial intrusion; the
initial movement of that persistent, general,
systematic invasion which resulted in the
settlement of Wyoming and the establish
ment of a Connecticut colony and a Connect
icut government on Pennsylvania soil ; a de
termined effort to dismember the State and
55

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
to create another, to be carved from the ter
ritory of Pennsylvania ; and aU of the varied
acts, the dissension and strife, armed conflict
and frequent bloodshed of what have been
commonly called the " Pennamite Wars."
But beyond these effects, the action of the
" Yankee " invaders of a coveted land, to
which they believed themselves rightly en
titled, became inextricably interwoven in
cause and consequence with that darkest deed
of the border warfare of the Revolution, the
bloody massacre of Wyoming. This, in turn,
had a marked effect in England in creating
sympathy for the colonies. The fame of
Wyoming went far abroad, but the effects of
the movement, of which the massacre was an
episode, became immensely important at
home. The half -century of contention opened
with the Yankee invasion proved almost too
much for colonial ability to adjust; and it
became an embarrassing legacy to the young
Union, which it was feared by many prudent
patriots might demonstrate a fatal weakness
in its cohesive quality. It was amicably set
tled, however, in a way which not only
avoided disaster but helped to cement the
56

Wyoming
confederation; and when the long linger
ing clouds of the Pennamite Wars had been
finally dispersed, it was found that the prac
tical results of Connecticut's persistent colo
nization project had been the incorporation
of a small but beneficial element of Yankee
blood in the body politic of Pennsylvania;
and, on the part of Connecticut, the proud
possession of what equaled a State — more
than ten times as much ground as she had
fought for in Pennsylvania — but beyond her
borders, in that then No Man's Land, the old
Northwest Territory by the shore of Lake
Erie, the famous " Western Reserve," in the
future State of Ohio. And thus, after long
tribulations, ended in triumph the strangest
and most strenuous organized movement in
the whole history of Western colonization.
So much, in brief, for the Omega of the
movement, which had its tangible Alpha at
old Cushutunk, on the Delaware.
Cushutunk and Wyoming were established
under the auspices of two separate companies
organized in Connecticut, and actuated by a
common purpose — the colonization of the
westward-lying lands covered by Connecti-
6 57

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
cut's charter — ^in other words, northern Penn
sylvania. Wyoming was founded by what
was known as the Connecticut Susquehanna
Company, and Cushutunk by the Delaware
Company. Both had precisely the same basis
of claim, and both sought to attain their ends
by precisely the same methods, but the Sus
quehanna Company, because the stronger,
became prominent in history, while the Dela
ware Company was left in comparative ob
scurity. All this contention about the possession
of a part of the Quaker province with its
far-reaching consequences, it will be recalled,
had its origin in the ignorance and indiffer
ence of the British monarchs concerning
American geography and the confusion that
ensued from carelessness in the granting of
royal charters to the several colonies. Several
of them overlapped, and thus caused conflicts
of authority in regard to ownership.
Connecticut's charter, which was granted
by Charles II in 1662, confirming and com
bining former charters and deeds, conveyed
to that colony all of the territory of the
present State, mid all of the lands west of
58

Map showing (by shading) parts of Middle States involved in the claim of Connecticut to lands extend
ing indefinitely westward between the projected north and south bounds of her original charter.

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
it to tlie extent of its breadth, from sea to
sea, or "to the South Sea." This would
have brought Connecticut's western extension
nearly or quite down to the 41° of north lati
tude — almost to the Delaware Water Gap, and
thus (had the claim been maintained) Pennsyl
vania would have been diminished to the ex
tent of over two-iifths of its present territory.
Connecticut, in her strenuous endeavor to
realize her early dreams of territorial expan
sion, was obliged by certain conditions in her
charter to pass over the lovely valley of the
Hudson and other territory of New York,
which must have caused her acquisitive peo
ple a sharp pang of regret; but, curiously
enough, she did not let this interruption of
her claim bar her from seizure of the lands
still farther west. Many of her sons looked
with an intense longing to Wyoming, and
some may have seen with prophetic vision
the rich reward that awaited the meek in the
inheritance of that part of the earth in the
future State of Ohio which ultimately became
the " Connecticut Western Reserve." The
promised land was not to be relinquished
without a struggle. 60

Wyoming
Pennsylvania's claim to the lands lying
about Wyoming, the subject of the Connecti.
cut contention, was as sound and just as to
any within her charter limits.
The charter granted to Pennsylvania,
upon the north, territory extending through
the 42° or to the beginning of the 43° north
latitude, thus overlapping by 1° the grant
made to Connecticut by the same sovereign
nineteen years before. Sir William Jones,
the attorney of the Crown, had reported
that : " The tract of land desired by Mr. Penn
seems to be undisposed of by his Majesty,
except the imaginary lines of New England
patents, which are bounded westwardly by
the main ocean, should give them a real,
though impracticable, right to all of those
vast territories." Thus the seed of strife was
sown far away across the ocean ; and fate so
generously nourished the troublesome trans
planted nettle here, that the Quaker husband
man labored in vain for half a century to
clear it from the soil.
The peace-loving Quaker colony had been
assaulted on all sides. Maryland and Virginia
had endeavored to despoil her on the south,
61

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
and New York, and even New Jersey, had
successively sought to secure a fraction of
her dominion. These efforts were all brief,
bloodless, without result.
But now Connecticut began, with well-
organized system, persistent purpose, and
strong promise of permanent success, what
with the other colonies had been mere casual
and ephemeral aggressions. The little Yankee
colony seemed possessed of an irrepressible
expansive spirit, which made it impossible
for her to rest content within her bounds.
As early as 1653 she had made a bold bluster
of armed attack upon the placid Dutch of
Manhattan Island, and threatened to annex
certain towns on Long Island. The same
restless pioneering and colonizing spirit which
eventually led the Connecticut men to Wyo
ming, and caused the settlement of western
New York and northern Ohio, had been
active, fully forty years before the coming
of Penn, in planting settlements on the Dela
ware. There was thus nothing particularly new
in Connecticut's purpose regarding the inva
sion of Pennsylvania. It was merely a later
62

Wyoming
manifestation of an old-time tendency turned
in a new direction, a trifle more carefully
planned, and very much more pertinaciously
prosecuted. Spies were sent to spy out the land, and
it is probable that in the summer of 1750
some of these for the first time looked down
from its flanking mountain wall upon the fair
virginal valley of Wyoming. Three years
later the Susquehanna Company was formed,
and under this organization (consisting of 840
persons, afterward augmented to 1,200) it
was proposed to occupy the coveted ground.
The company, as its first step to this end,
sent agents to Albany in 1754, to purchase
from the Indians of the Six Nations the land
in the Wyoming Valley. The Pennsylvanians
had been alert to the danger that was men
acing the province, but their protests were
unavailing against the Susquehanna Com
pany's offer of £2,000 of New York money ;
and the Connecticut men went away tri
umphant in the possession of the Indian title
to the land, which they regarded as complet
ing the legal title of their colony. Governor
Hamilton of Pennsylvania about this time
63

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
wrote to the Governor of Connecticut remon
strating against the proposed settlement at
Wyoming. Governor Wolcott of Connecti
cut answered in a non-committal but per
suasive way, and at the same time touched
upon what was really the key-note of the
" Pennamite War," although it has very gen
erally been lost sight of, even by usually
careful historians, in viewing the complicated
contention which ensued. Ignoring any re
sponse to the request that he should restrain
the "invaders," he urged that those who be
came settlers should be made "freeholders,"
artfully arguing upon the inestimable value
of ready and resolute defense to be rendered
by men whose vital interest was thus en
listed, in case of French aggression. They
should have something " to fight for of their
own." Now the heirs of William Penn owned
the lands of the province in fee simple, and
their policy was to settle the best of them
under leases. Thus one of the worst features
of feudalism was planted upon the soil of
Pennsylvania. The question whether those
who cultivated the acres they dwelt upon
64

Wyoming
should be serfs or freeholders really underlay
the whole Wyoming controversy.
This explains, in a large measure, the
sympathy which came to be extended to the
Connecticut settlers by a considerable element
among the Pennsylvania people. The " Yan
kee " settlers were of precisely the kind that
the proprietors did not Avant, for they cer
tainly were not of such character as to offer
any promise of tractability or subservience
to those ideas which governed the landed
aristocracy. Herein lay the secret of the
motive for the constant resort to official and
military demonstrations by which the Penns
sought the forcible expulsion of the settlers,
rather than the employment of diplomacy to
secure their recognition of the proprietary
civil jurisdiction and the peaceful settlement
of the northern boundary dispute.
Indian war intervening, the Susquehanna
Company effected no settlement during all
the years between its organization and 1762.
But if idle, so far as outward appearances
went, it was storing strength, and in the
meantime the Delaware Company, having
come into existence and bought an Indian
65

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
title, had settled Cushutunk, as we have seen,
in 1757. This first act of aggression aroused the
Penns to a conviction that there would ensue
a veritable invasion, and they took steps to
fortify their title. They obtained from
Charles Pratt (afterward Lord Camden), the
attorney of the Crown, an opinion adverse
to Connecticut's claim ; but the Yankees were
even better grounded in the law, for they
had, not from one only, but from four emi
nent London barristers opinions against
Pennsylvania. Measures of coercion were resorted to by
the Penns against the little colony at Cush
utunk, proclamations issued, sheriffs' officers
sent there with warnings, and a series of
actions followed which constituted a prelude
to the long contention at Wyoming.
The Delaware Indians, w^hose home was
in Pennsylvania, complicated affairs by con
tending that they had been victimized by
their old-time enemy, the Six Nations, who
had " sold their lands from under their feet ";
that they themselves, the real owners, had
sold none at all. 66

Wyoming
Such was the situation when in the early
spring of 1762 about 200 Connecticut men
made the first settlement, under the auspices
of the Susquehanna Company (about a mile
above the site of Wilkesbarre) in the Wyo
ming Valley. This term was then, as now,
applied to a stretch of the Sus(.]uehanna bot
toms about 21 miles long and averaging
3 miles in width, shut in by actual moun
tain walls 1,000 feet in height. Fertile
and fair as heart could wish, abounding in
the richest growth of all that was natural
to the clime, watered by the broad river and
by innumerable cascades that leaped down
the verdure-clad hills, it must, in its primeval
condition, have seemed to those pioneers
a veritable garden of the gods.
Though the Delaware Indians demanded
of the Governor of Pennsylvania their im
mediate expulsion from the new-found Eden,
nothing was done, and tranquillity reigned in
the lovely land for two seasons. But it was
only such calm as lulls to a false sense of
security. A storm was portending. The Indians
were sullen. Their great chief, Teedyuscung,
67

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
had been mysteriously burned to death in
his cabin by some of his Indian enemies
among the Six Nations, but Indian cunning
threw suspicion upon the poor Yankees.
The Delawares, brooding for months upon
the murder, and obtaining no satisfactory
answer to their repeated demands that the
settlers should be driven out of the country,
at last, on the night of October 15th, fell in
fury — but silently, without a single warning
whoop — on the little village, and murdered
20 of its people. The rest fled, some to
the lower settlements in Pennsylvania, some
to Connecticut. This was the first massacre
of Wyoming, not indeed an incident of the
"Pennamite War," but an example of Indian
ferocity in the resentment of real or imagined
wrong, and an experience sufficient to deter
forever any less pertinacious people than the
Connecticut settlers from returning to the
scene of its occurrence.
It did indeed keep Wyoming a wilder
ness for half a dozen years. But in 1769 the
natural charms of the region had so far over
come the horrors enacted there, that the
Yankees were constrained to possess them-
68

Wyoming
selves again of the valley. In February
came a body of 40 determined men, sent
out by the Susquehanna Company to occupy
the- country and defend it at all hazards
against the Pennsylvanians. They were to
be reenforced by 200 more and they were
given land and money liberally for their serv
ices. They were commanded by a native
of Connecticut, a resolute soldier, a hero of
the French and Indian wars, who had gained
honors also at the taking of Havana in 1762
— Colonel Zebulon Butler. He and his men
built "Forty Fort," so called from their
number, a mere blockhouse, but destined to
be famous — the site of which is still jwomi-
nently identified.
In the meantime the Penns had induced
the Indians to repudiate their sale to the
Yankees, and, on the principle that posses
sion is nine points of the law, had founded a
settlement in Wyoming, under one Captain
Amos Ogden, an Indian trader from New
Jersey, whose armed band Butler was not a
little surprised to find there ready for resist
ance. And now commenced a hand-to-hand con-
69

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
test for the lovely, fatally alluring valley,
and practically for all that part of Pennsyl
vania between the forty -first and forty -second
parallels of latitude — one of the strangest
struggles in the history of the country — a
contest having many of the elements of an
opera-bouffe war, but unfortunately, a pleni
tude of tragedy, too.
Ogden opened the war by the arrest of
the Yankee leaders, whom he marched
through the woods to Easton jail, 60 miles
away. They were speedily released on bail
furnished by their followers and by some Penn
sylvania sympathizers. Then Ogden arrested
the whole 40, and the little jail received a
glut of prisoners that fairly strained its walls,
but again all went free on bail and trooped
triumphantly back to Wyoming. By the
next summer the settlements contained over
300 men, while more were constantly coming.
Some of the later arrivals erected Fort Dur-
kee, named in honor of their captain. Again
Ogden appeared on the scene, this time with
200 men, and after he had captured Durkee
by strategy, and sent him in irons to Phila
delphia, the rest surrendered, possibly awed
70

Arkbst of the Connecticut settlers.

Wyoming
by the appearance of a little foui'-pounder
cannon which the warlike Ogden had un-
limbered before the fort. The poor settlers
were peremptorily put on the road to Con
necticut. Ogden now went to Philadelphia to re
ceive applause after this first act of the
drama, but he had scarcely heard the first
congratulations of the proprietaries when
news came that the little garrison he had left
to guard the valley had been as summarily
ejected as were the Yankees a few days
before. And the worst of it was that the
aggressors were Pennsylvanians, of the class
who sympathized with the Connecticut peo
ple. They were under Captain Lazarus Stew
art, and had moved with a spirit stimulated
by the presentation of a whole township of
land from the Susquehanna Company.
In this entry upon the scene of Stewart
and his men we have a suggestion of one
secret of the long continuance of the Penna
mite Wars. They were not the only Penn
sylvanians who actively sympathized with
and succored the Yankees; and there were
still more who, while they had no particular
71

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
love for the intruders, had none whatever
for the Penns. These conditions made it
well-nigh impossible for the proprietaries to
sweep back, and keep back, the rising tide of
immigration. It was not the powerful prov
ince of Pennsylvania, but the mere private
family of William Penn, impoverished and
unpopular, which was opposing the invasion.
Had it been a matter of colony against
colony, Pennsylvania would doubtless have
prevailed over the intruders in one grand de
cisive action, and so summarily have ended
the strife.
But, as it was, there followed a tedious
and trying succession of strategic movements,
skirmishes, sieges, counter-sieges, sorties, sal
lies, captures, capitulations, and evictions of
one party or the other, all without perma
nent result.
The first blood flowed soon after Stew
art's appearance in the valley, when, he hav
ing restored Wyoming to the possession of
the Yankees, they were in turn attacked by
Ogden's posse and one of the Connecticut
men was killed and several wounded. This
gave to future clashings of the two parties
72

Wyoming
an increased ardor, and from thence onward
there were many sanguinary conflicts in this
miniature war. Once after Ogden had been
long besieged, and had finally to surrender,
there came a period of five months of peace.
Colonel Butler returned, recruits came with
a rush, and there were new life and activity
in the valley. But Ogden was again sent by
the alarmed Penns to break up the settle
ment. A battle ensued in September, 1770,
and several of the Connecticut men were
killed, many prisoners taken, and all who
could do so made their way to their old New
England homes. This was the fourth time
that Connecticut in Pennsylvania had totally
ceased to be.
But the Yankees, as promptly and cheer
fully as if nothing had happened, came back
in the spring with bluff Colonel Butler again
at their head, and hostilities reopened in
earnest, which involved enough of thrilling
adventure to constitute a w^hole Odyssey of
woodcraft war. Finally, after Ogden had
been summarily defeated, with the loss of
nine men, an interval of peace ensued which
lasted four years.

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Up to this time Connecticut as a colony
had not, at least openly, taken any part in
the Wyoming controversy ; but now, when
there was for the first time some reason to
think that the Penns had succumbed to the
inevitable, the colony sought to extend gov
ernment over the territory so long fought for
by its subject, the Susquehanna Company.
Accordingly, in January, 1774, Wyoming,
Pa., was included in a county of Connecticut,
under the name of Westmoreland, and shortly
afterward a " town " was established, practi
cally coextensive with the former, and of the
same name. The principal settlement was
duly named Wilkesbarre, in honor of John
Wilkes and Colonel Isaac Barre, champions
of the colonies in the British Parliament.
The "town-meeting" idea, of New^ England
root, flourished from the first, and soon burst
into full bloom. Elections were held, and
representatives sent to the Connecticut legis
lature. The great county of Westmoreland
extended from the river Delaware westward
15 miles beyond Wyoming, and in extent
from north to south was the whole width of
the charter bounds. It thus included Ciishu-
74

Wyoming
tunk (as we have already seen, the first set
tlement of the Connecticut people) and other
settlements on the Delaware.
All told, some 6,000 people had now come
into Yankee Pennsylvania. Peace had pre
vailed longer than the Connecticut men had
ever before experienced it. But the isolation
of one of the new, outlying settlements
tempted a revival of Pennsylvania authority ;
and the success which attended the expedi
tion of one Plunkett in destroying it made
him such a hero that he was given a far larger
force with which to strike a supreme blow at
the stronger settlements.
There were other and entirely new cir
cumstances, however, which combined to pro
duce this action. The fate of Wyoming was
still, indeed, in some sense, involved in the
affairs of the Pennamite Wars, but the little
ripples on the local sea of trouble were fast
being swallowed up in the great ground-swell
of the Revolution. Wyoming had for a time
enjoyed peace because of the Revolution ;
that is, because the Penns, aware of its ap
proach, and long cognizant, too, of the fact
that their regime was not to the liking of a
75

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
majority .of the people, had desisted from
demonstrations which would attract to them
undesirable attention. But now the rumblings
of the Revolution, which had given Wyoming
peace, brought it a revival of the Pennamite
War ; that is, of the Pennamite War with all
of the Penn animus plus that of entirely new
interests. In explanation, it must be said
that the Penns had begun in 1771 to sell
lands in Wyoming which theretofore they
would only rent. Many Pennsylvanians had
purchased, and so had strong personal motive
for the expulsion of the Yankee settlers under
Connecticut's claim.
And now came the year 1775 and the
battles of Lexington and Concord. The war
was begun. If it should end favorably to
the colonies, there would attach to Wyoming
a new and far greater value than that it
had possessed under a feudal proprietorship.
Therefore, many more Pennsylvanians became
interested, and where it had formerly been a
slow and difficult task to raise 100 or so men
for one of the Ogden expeditions, 700 were
quickly enlisted for Plunkett's. Men who
until then had been entirely indifferent to
76

Wyoming
the welfare of Wyoming — such prominent
Pennsylvanians as Morris, Meredith, Biddle,
Shippen, Tilghman — were liberal contributors
to the fund raised for the ecj^uipment of the
expedition. An army of 700 men, led by as plucky a
commander as Plunkett, would at any time
prior to this period have routed the Yankees
from Wyoming, and a permanent garrison of
half that number would have kept them for
ever from returning, but now it was too late.
Plunkett marched bravely up with his
700, a formidable train, and a field-piece or
so ; but Butler, with only half as many fight
ing men, beat him off in a decisive battle, and
the Pennsylvanians hopelessly retired. Thus,
by force of arms and with the blood of her
sons, Connecticut had sealed the claim she
believed just to the soil of a sister colony,
and the Wyoming men now settled down to
enjoy the loveliness of that land they had
conquered and clothed with law. But their
roseate hopes were doomed to a deep and
speedy disappointment.

77

CHAPTER III
BATTLE AND MASSACRE OF WYOMING
Notwithstanding the fact that the Revo
lutionary War was in progress, and that many
of the leaders and able-bodied men were
withdrawn from the settlement, having patri
otically entered the Continental army, Wyo
ming was blessed with peace and prosperity.
Its people realized pretty closely the condi
tion of those in the fanciful " Happy Valley "
of Rasselas. So they. might have continued
to do, as far as any molestation from their
old enemy, the Pennamites, was concerned ;
but a new terror was taking form. A great
storm was gathering in the North, which was
soon to shut the sunshine from the basking
valley, and bring down in its place such dark
ness and devastation as, vdth all its tribula
tions, it never yet had knowm.
The powerful Iroquois, or Six Nations,
78

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
with other Indians, allies of the British, had,
until the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga,
been held in the northern region ; but now
they were released, and their war-roused pas
sion was to be wreaked on the defenceless
border settlements.
The full fury of the savages was seemingly
reserved for fated Wyoming.
There was a partial reason for this in one
of the facts which linked with the Wyo
ming massacre, as an event of the Revolution,
the miniature Pennamite War. The intense
patriots in the limits of the Connecticut claim
had, in 1775, aroused a general enmity among
the Tories by expelling from Wyoming some
forty of their number (mostly Dutch and
Scotch-Irish of the Mohawk region) ; and of
course they had incurred the most active and
implacable animosity of the individuals whom
they had cast out. These now added the
venom of their vindictiveness to the compos
ite malevolence brewing as in a caldron.
They were associated with the Indians in all
of their maraudings on the border; one of
their number actually built a blockhouse in
the upper part of Wyoming Valley to assist
79

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
in masking the incursion, and it has been
thought by many that their machinations
were the chief influence in drawing the In
dians thither.
As to the Indians who were regularly in
the employ of the British, it is a curious fact
that they had been long dominated — speaking
in a broad way — -by Sir William Johnson,
and he in turn had been influenced to a con
siderable extent by one of their number — his
mistress, Molly Brant, whose brother, Joseph,
was the great captain of the Six Nations.
But Sir William was now dead, and what
ever of his old-time influence was continued
came into operation through his son and
nephew and Molly Brant.
As the signs of danger increased at Wyo
ming in the early summer of 1778, wives
besought their husbands to return from the
army, and the people generally clamored for
protection, calling alike upon the Continental
Congress and the Pennsylvania authorities;
but no effective measures were taken by
either for their aid. Finally, a number of
the officers sent in their resignations, and a
score or so of the privates deserting, they
80

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
hurried to the threatened settlements. Among
them was Colonel Zebulon Butler, who by
common consent became commander. There
was not only lack of men, but lack of ammu
nition ; and as danger grew daily nearer.
Colonel Butler, having already employed all
of the males in scouting, strengthening the
forts, and generally preparing for the threat
ened attack, now set the women all at work
in a most strange undertaking — the actual
manufacture of much-needed gunpowder, to
which, even with the crude conveniences at
hand, Yankee ingenuity proved equal. And
while they leached saltpeter from the soil in
the blockhouses, prepared charcoal, bruised
quantities of each with pestle and mortar,
blended them, cast bullets and rifle-balls —
while the situation daily and hourly grew
more tense, and no tidings of relief came —
the enemy was rapidly massing in the North
for an attack which the Wyoming people
knew was inevitable.
The Indian and British and Tory forces
were concentrated at Tioga toward the close
of June, 1778, while its leaders sent a dele
gation of Seneca chiefs to Philadelphia to
81

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
put Congress off its guard, and at the same
time sent spies down to Wyoming to ascer
tain, under the guise of friendship, the exact
situation there and to disarm suspicion. But
one of them (who was purposely made drunk)
revealed enough to confirm positively the
worst fears of the settlers — though even the
holders of the extremest of these were far
from foreseeing the sweeping, all-surpassing
horror that was swiftly to fall.
And now, while this army — so soon to
bring to Wyoming its crowning calamity and
to engage in a sweeping butchery that was
to appal the whole world — lies idle at Tioga,
let us look at its composition and command
ers. Surely no more heterogeneous herd of
murderous soldiers and savages ever assem
bled in America. It has three elements, and
in each many varieties. Its total is not far
from 1,200 fighting men. First, there are 400
British provincials, consisting of Colonel John
Butler's Rangers and Sir John Johnson's Royal
Greens, with a rabble of Tories from New
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Then
there are not far from 700 Indians, chiefly
Senecas, with detachments from the Mohawks
82

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
and other tribes. The enemy is in almost
every conceivable dress, and in appearance of
every varying degree, from the martial dig
nity of the trained soldiers down to the ruffian
type of the most abandoned and depraved of
the Tories. The regulars are in smart uni
forms — Butler's Rangers in rich green ; the
Tories and renegades in every form of back
woods rusticity and tattered motley ; the In
dians half naked or in savage attire, with their
warpaint and barbarous adornment, varied
with the martial trappings of soldiers slain in
northern battles. With them swarms a band
of squaws, if possible more bloodthirsty
than their masters. Three classes, indeed ;
but well-nigh 1,000 diverse, fantastic figures,
all actuated, however, by a single animus — a
ferocious appetite for blood and the possibili
ties of paltry loot in the humble cabins of
the doomed frontiersmen.
But if the rank and file and rabble of
this nondescript assemblage are unparalleled
in the border war of the Revolution for its
complexity, the personalities of its command
ers offer contrasts as strange and startling
and incongruous. The expedition is avow-
83

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

edly under command of Colonel John Butler
(a remote connection of Colonel Zebulon
Butler, in command at Wyoming). He cer
tainly led the British troops, and probably
the Indians, at the actual time of the battle
and massacre ; but the
great Mohawk chief
tain, Joseph Brant,
now in his prime —
aged thirty -six — the
dignified and able
semicivilized brother
of Sir William John
son's mistress, and the
virtual head of the
Six Nations, was with
the force at Tioga
Point shortly before
it reached Wyoming,
and, while he did not
descend the river from
that place and go into the fight, at least had
some hand in assembling the Indians for the
expedition. He had attained considerable
education, and had translated the Bible into
the Mohawk tongue. 84

J^i/.^r^^^^^

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
Colonel John Butler, commonly called at
this time " Indian " Butler, offers a curious
contrast to Brant, and is one of the most
singular of the sanguinary characters engaged
in the great strife. In Brant we see a superb,
semi-tamed Indian, for the most part now
reverted to savagery, but in whose naturally
superior soul some sparks of humanity, en
gendered by contact with civilization, still
glimmer. On the other hand, in Butler there
is exhibited, in all that extreme reversion of
the type of which the human is capable, the
brutalized white man. He was a representa
tive of a more than usually cultivated and
gentle line, who had perversely sought sav
agery, and become more savage than the In
dian himself ; and now he was called " Indian "
Butler, partly to distinguish him from his
kinsman. Colonel Zebulon Butler, and partly
for the simple reason that the sobriquet seemed
supremely fit. "Indian" Butler was a de
scendant from a no less personage than that
James Butler who was the great Duke of
Ormond (1610-'88), of the ancient Anglo-
Irish family which traced its genealogy to
the dukes of Normandy before the Conquest.
85

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
He was, perhaps, the ablest, certainly the
most atrocious, Tory leader of the period, and
had figured as the commander of a motley
band of marauding whites and Indians in
1776 ; had fought at their head in the battle
of Oriskany, and had otherwise sought fame,
and gained infamy.
Fat, and squat of figure, with round,
rough visage, he was not in appearance an
ideal leader, nor a man of prepossessing per
son ; yet he was noted for his success in the
former capacity, and he was not without
agreeable traits as a heritage fi'om his high
ancestry, that not even his long life among
scenes of bloo,d, and his abandonment to more
than savage cruelty, could wholly obliterate
or conceal. In preparation for the proposed
onslaught at Wyoming he was exceedingly
active, and no detail escaped him. He was
seemingly everywhere at once, never still,
nervously but effectively bustling among sol
diers, guerrillas, and savages alike, inciting
them afresh from hour to hour, yet ceaselessly
cautioning and exercising control.
If there was contrast between the digni
fied savage Brant and the excitable, degen-
86

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
erate scion of nobility, " Indian " Butler, the
final element of the incongruous and grotesque
was reached in a third person of sinister and
subtle influence in this strangely mixed mass
of harsh humanity. This was a woman, no
less than the redoubtable, eccentric enthusiast,
"Queen Esther." Catharine Montour was
the real name of this picturesque and grue
some figure in the strangest scene of the
drama of the Revolution. She was a half-
breed, and the reputed daughter of one of
the French governors of Canada. She had
been liberally educated — possessed refine
ment, indeed — and the best society of colo
nial Philadelphia, of Albany, and New York
had petted and feted her as a romantic and
engaging young woman, in whose veins coursed
a mingling of cultured and savage blood. Soft
hands had caressed her, and she was keenly
sensible to the gentility of her frequent sur
roundings, and, in a sense, fitted for them ; yet
such are the contradictions of wild nature, how
ever restrained temporarily, that this dusky,
one-time favorite of stately drawing-rooms was
the Hecate of the most horrible occurrence in
the entire annals of savage war in America,
87

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Queen Esther was a widow now — the
widow of a chief — enjoying the repute of a
seeress. At all times the possessor of a
strange power over the people of her race,
but now inflamed by the losses of her kin
dred, and very recently of a son, she had
become a veritable fury, who swayed her
followers into the utmost extravagances of
fanaticism, .Even the bloodthirsty Butler,
the scourge of the border patriots, though he
probably would hesitate at nothing in the
way of rapine and murder, feared, upon pol
itic grounds, the supreme ascendency of this
fiery, insanely vengeful " Queen," and hence
his activity among his troops, Tory rangers,
and their red allies. That he did not wholly
succeed was shown by the fact that when the
final advance was made, Queen Esther became
the actual leader of the Indian contingent of
the army.
The wild aggregation led by " Indian "
Butler and Queen ¦ Esther, 1,200 men — sol
diers, Indians, renegade whites, all brutalized
by three years of fierce frontier warfare ; a
majority by lifelong savagery ; many incited
88

' Queen Esther " (Catharine Montour) inciting the
Indians to attack Wyoming.
Brant and Indian Butler in backj^round.

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
by bitter personal animosity, and some by
simple thirst for blood ; energized by cupidity
and cruelty ; goaded by race hatred and by
human hatred ; urged on by all the craft of
" Indian " Butler and the crazed cries of the
zealot queen — finally advanced as if animated
by a single will upon doomed Wyoming.
The Indians descended the Susquehanna,
their flotilla of canoes, in long, sinuous lines,
following the current to a point a score of
miles above the settlement, where they took
to the shore to continue their advance. To
the solitary Wyoming scout, who from his
lofty mountain station watched every move
ment of this approach of the enemy, it may
easUy have seemed that some serpent monster
passed the great curves of the stream and
drew its slow length over the hills and along
the plains — a monster, mightier and more ma
lignant than the fabled ones of the medieval
forests — moving slowly and inexorably, upon
its prey. It was highly characteristic of the hardy
frontiersmen at Wyoming, that though they
were fully aware that they were to be at
tacked by superior numbers and had only

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
vague hope of the arrival of reenforcements,
the idea of flight seems never to have occurred
to them. Their forces numbered, all told,
only about 300 men, and nearly all of these,
according to the inscription on the monument
erected in their honor, were "the undisciplined,
the youthful, the aged." There were 230 " en
rolled men " — many, in fact, minors — and the
remaining seventy were all either boys or old
men. They embraced six companies, and
were mustered at Forty Fort, on the west
side of the river, where the families of the
settlers on the east side had taken refuge.
Such was the situation on that memorable
day, the 3d of July, 1778, when the British
and Indians, having advanced deliberately
down the valley, feeling sure that their vic
tims could not escape them, were finally met
in battle. They had destroyed everything in
their way. Jenkins's Fort had capitulated,
a score of murders had been perpetrated,
and Wintermoot's (which, as was afterward
learned, had been built to aid the incursions
of the Tories) had at once opened its gates to
the invading host.
The settlers, with a desperation of courage
90

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
rarely equaled in the history of war, resolved
to put suspense at an end, actually marched
forth to meet the enemy that outnumbered
them four to one. Some few had counseled
delay, and Colonel Zebulon Butler was of
that minority, but he acquiesced in the ver
dict of the majority and led them out, the lit
tle force of 300, in the middle of the after
noon, with drums beating, colors flying, and
in true military array.
There were six companies, and the officers
of the little force, under Butler, were Colonels
John Durkee and Nathan Dennison, Lieu
tenant-Colonel George Dorrance, Major John
Garrett, Captains Dethic Hewitt, Asaph
Whittlesey, Lazarus Stewart, James Bidlack,
Jr., Rezin Geer, and Aholiab Buck. There
were other officers in the battle which en
sued, but without definite commands, as Cap
tains Samuel Ransom, Robert Durkee, and
William McKarrican. They marched up the
valley, wjith the river upon their right. On
coming up with the enemy the column de
ployed to the left and formed in line of bat
tle, with its right resting on the high bank
of the river and its left extending across the
91

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
plain to a swamp. Colonel Butler, supported
by Major John Garrett, commanded the right
wing, and Colonel Dennison, supported by
Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrance, commanded the
left. The enemy then advancing, the colonel
gave the order to fire, and a volley rang out
along the entire line with precision and some
effect. The British flinched and actually fell
back before the Yankee spartans, but it was
only for a moment, and they pressed forward
again. Then with quick alternations of the
orders "Advance ! " — "Fire ! " the brave But
ler performed the almost impossible feat of
moving his thin line slowly forward against
the overwhelming force that faced it. But
this well-nigh incredible resoluteness was all
in vain, for even as the line advanced the
Indians slipped singly and by dozens into the
brush of the swamp and flanked its left.
On the side of the invaders "Indian"
Butler, his subordinate officers, the Seneca
chiefs, and even Queen Esther in person di
rected the fight in different quarters. Butler,
divested of his usual Indian finery, and vrith
a flame-colored handkerchief bound round his
92

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
head, darted among his men, shrieking in his
high voice orders to rangers and red men alike,
and wildly evinced his delight as he saw the
certainty of success, while his round face, red
with his frantic excitement and intense activ
ity, shone with a devilish triumph. The Wy
oming men's left became confused, though
the old men and boys did not retreat, and the
Indians, seizing the opportunity, rushed for
ward with their frightful whoops and toma
hawked right and left those still left standing.
Many had already fallen under the murder
ous fire of four times their number. Lieu
tenant-Colonel Dorrance and Major John Gar
rett were killed ; every captain commanding
a company and nearly every lieutenant was
dead. The little band melted like wax be
fore a fire. The Indians pressed the surviv
ors toward the river, along the bank of which
wives and mothers of the brave fighters had
crowded in agonized watchfulness. Some
swam over and escaped. Others were pur
sued and tomahawked in the water or shot
from the shore. A few, promised quarter,
returned, only to be treacherously struck
down as they climbed the bank. Several
93

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
found concealment on Monocacy Island, and
others sought it only to be discovered and
cut to pieces in their hiding-places, or dragged
forth to be tortured at the leisure of their
captors. It was there that one Tory killed
his own brother, and that several other al
most unbelievable horrors attested the atro
cious fury of the assailants of these poor
patriot settlers.
Massacre began when battle left off. One
hundred and sixty men had been killed, and
140 had escaped — some only to be subse
quently captured. Crack marksmen among
the Indians had brought down officers and
conspicuous fighters by breaking their thigh
bones or otherwise incapacitating them, so
that they could by no possibility escape, and
thus were reserved for torture a hundred
times worse than death. Captain Bidlack
was thrown alive on blazing logs, pinned
down with pitchforks that happened to be at
hand, and so held in spite of his powerful
paroxysms until death relieved him. William
Mason, a boy captain of a boy company, was
similarly slain.
A debauch of blood followed for the
94

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
especial delectation of Queen Esther. That
seemingly insane savage ordered a score of
the prisoners brought before her for torture,
and her followers, springing to obey, quickly
assembled them around a great boulder,
known to this day as "the bloody rock."
They were bound and compelled to kneel
about the rock, and then this fanatic fury,
who had once graced drawing-rooms and been
the admiration of gentle dames, seized a heavy
tomahawk, and, raising a wild song, swept
swiftly aroung the circle and dashed out the
brains of sixteen victims, while the warriors,
crowded close about the scene of butchery,
leaping and yelling, expressed their fierce joy.
Four escaped from sacrifice at the hands of
the savage queen, but fell not far away, for
they were pursued by a hundred fleet-footed
Iroquois. After all was over, there were dis
covered near bloody rock nine more corpses,
all mutilated and scalped.
When night came on, the still insatiate
savages built fires, and stripping the remain
ing prisoners naked, drove them back and
forth through the flames, finally thrusting
them on the embers with their spears, when
95

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
they fell from exhaustion, until all were de
spatched. Altogether, in the battle and after, nearly
300 men were killed. Of the wretched
people remaining, there were made that day
in the vaUey 150 widows and nearly 600
orphans. But a flight had already been begun while
the massacre was in progress ; and on the
next day — after the arrival of ineffectually
small reenforcements, and the surrender of
the detachments of militia at Pittston and
Forty Fort, and when the entire valley had
been given over to the pillage of the Indians
(whom Butler afterward said he could not
restrain) — all the survivors of the tragedy
followed in the footsteps of those who had
fled at first.
The Indians, dividing into small bands,
passed up and down the valley, burning every
building and slaughtering all the inhabitants
they found — except some children whom
they carried into captivity. Finally, they
rendezvoused and withdrew to the north
ward in a swarming, savagely triumphant
body, the squaws bringing up the rear on
96

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
stolen horses, their bridle-reins hanging heavy
with strings of sodden scalps. As often the
ludicrous treads hard on the heels of tragedy,
so here with garish ghastliness these furies
appeared fantastically garbed in the raiment
of the slain settlers' wives and daughters —
which they had abandoned in taking flight —
while household spoils, pans, pots, kettles,
ladles, and the like, clattered on the flanks
of their horses, and added to the discordant
din amid which the wild horde departed.
Desolation reigned supreme throughout
the valley. In all directions there were only
the charred ruins of cabins and the unburied
dead, lying stark under the serene sky and
pitiless sun of that 4th of July, 1778, where
had so lately been happy homes and throng
ing, varied, busy human life.
In the meantime the wild flight of the
survivors, begun while the battle still raged,
or at least before the massacre, streamed
through the wilderness to the Delaware and
Lehigh settlements — chiefly to the safety
afforded by Fort Penn, built by Colonel
Jacob Stroud, where Stroudsburg now stands,
near the famous Water Gap. This place of
97

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
refuge was only 60 miles distant, but the
way lay over mountains and through almost
impenetrable swamps, in a region absolutely
uninhabited — ^the wildest part of eighteenth-
century Pennsylvania. Frantic with fright,
exerting every faculty, impelled by the one
intense impulse of eluding the savage, of
escaping death or awful torture, and with
the vivid scenes of the horror in the valley
ever before them, these pitiable refugees —
men, women, and children — fled onward into
the blessed protection of the forest and the
hiding of night. This forlorn flight led into
and through the great "Dismal Swamp of
the North," or, as it was then, and is some
times to this day called, "the Shades of
Death." This was, and is yet to-day, a
swamp upon a mountain-top, the vast, wet,
marshy plateau of the Pocono and Broad
mountains, an area still unreclaimed, included
now in three counties, and surrounding the
head waters of the romantic Lehigh. Over
the greater part of this singular, saturated
table-land there was a dense growth of pines
and a tangled, almost impenetrable under
growth, the whole interspersed here and

Flight of the Connecticut settlers through
"the Shades of Death."

Battle and Massacre of Wyoming
there with expanses of dark, murky water,
often concealed by a lush growth of mosses
or aquatic plants, and swarming with creep
ing things, even as the matted forest abounded
with wild beasts. But the terrors of the
" Shades of Death " were as nothing now to
these poor fugitives.
Women, more than men, made up the
throng. In one band upon the old "War
rior's Path" there were nearly a hundred
women and children, with but a solitary man
to advise or aid them. All were without
food, many scarcely clothed, but they pressed
on, weak, trembling, and grovring constantly
worse from their unaccustomed labor through
the thickets, mire, and ooze. The aged sank
by the side of the rude trail. One by one
the weakest gave out. Some wandered from
the path and were lost, some fell from ex
haustion, some from wounds incurred in the
battle, but the majority maintained life in
some miraculous way and pressed on. The
only manna in that wilderness was the whor
tleberry, and this they plucked and eagerly
devoured without pausing.
Children were bom and children died in
99

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
the fearful forced march. One babe that
came into the world in this scene of terror
and travail was carried alive to the settle
ments. At least one which died was left
upon the ground, while the agonized mother
went on. There was not time nor were there
means to make even a shallow grave. One
woman bore her dead babe in her arms for
20 miles rather than abandon its little body
to the beasts. Finally, the refugees reached
Fort Penn and the towns of the good Mora
vians, where, half-famished, they were given
food, and those who needed it tender care,
until they could go to their old homes or find
new ones.

100

CHAPTER IV
FAR-EEAOHING EESULTS OF THE MASSACRE
It needed no exaggeration in the story of
Wyoming to fire the hearts of the colonists
with a new zeal against the enemy under
whose auspices the appalling deed of that
July day had been committed. But in the
meantime Wyoming was silently working in
the minds of men far away a vaster result.
The significance of events — the relation
of cause and consequence — is seldom seen
contemporaneously, and sometimes not fully
recognized when time has finally unrolled the
scroll on which it is written, so slow are men
to read aright. But in this case it did not
take long to reveal the fact that Wyoming
had won the heart of the world for the strug
gling colonies of America, against whom the
mother country had armed and arrayed savages
who could perform such atrocities as were
101

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
now told. What was of vastly more practical
importance, it became apparent that the mas
sacre had struck confusion into the camp of
the Tories in England, who had to endure
the odium of employing the Indians in sub
duing the rebellion ; and finally, when men
had gone far enough from the event to see
clearly its meaning, they read that what had
seemed at first an unmitigated disaster was
in reality a disguised victory, and that Wyo
ming must take rank with Lexington and
Concord and Bunker Plill in effect upon the
long fight for freedom. The victims who fell
in the valley before British muskets in Indian
hands, and those slain by the tomahawks of
savages who were British allies and com
manded by a British officer, deserve a prouder
monument than the one erected to their
memory on the battle-field. They were really
the marked martyrs of the Revolution, and
the blood of the martyrs was the seed of
independence and of the republic. These
men — "the undisciplined, the youthful, the
aged" — who marched out to battle against
great odds, with guns poorly loaded with
powder and ball made by their besieged
102

Results of the Massacre
women, in the awful deaths they died, sup
plied a mass of telling ammunition of fact
to Edmund Burke and the Earl of Chatham
which they employed against the Tory ranks
in Cabinet and Parliament until the party
tottered. Another and later effect of the massacre
abroad, was that for the first time an Amer
ican subject engaged the pen of a British
poet, and Thomas Campbell's Gertrude of
Wyoming confirmed the renown of its au
thor. It was not published until 1809, but
long before that time it was given to the co
terie which assembled at Holland House, and
the tragic event which inspired the produc
tion, having become universally familiar to
the English, had carried with its horrors the
fame of the region which was its theater.
The Wyoming Valley was the Yosemite of
those days, but with the added interests of
tragedy and romance, of the pastoral, and all
the charms of sylvan solitude, so that it is not
strange it appealed to the poetic mind and
became in the imagination of Coleridge and
Southey, the Lloyds and Charles Lamb, the
ideal planting-ground for that projected ex-
103

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
periment in communal life which they called
Pantisocracy, and for a long time cherished.
With all that was written of Wyoming it is
curious that its charms were not overdrawn,
but they were not ; and when in later years
Halleck and Drake and Bryant and scores of
prose writers came to dwell upon the beauties
of the spot, each in turn seems to have been
surprised that more had not been said in song
and story of the most romantic region in all
known America.
The bodies of the murdered men of Wyo
ming remained where they had fallen, a prey
for the wolves and for the elements, until Oc
tober 22d, nearly four months, when a mili
tary guard repaired there, and collected and
buried them in one huge grave.
The blood of the martyrs cried aloud for
retribution, and slowly but surely prepara
tions were making to shatter the whole sys
tem of the hostile Indian alliance in New
York. The once struggling settlement of the
Susquehanna Company, looking only to its
own people and indirectly to Connecticut for
sympathy and support, now that it was struck
104

Present aspect of the Wyoming battle-field.
A portion of Atiraliani''6 Plains, Exeter Township, Wyoming Valley.

Results of the Massacre
from physical being, had suddenly become a
subject for general consideration. Washing
ton himself was at the head of the movement
for avenging its great wrong, and General
John Sullivan, one of the best soldiers and
most picturesque personages of the Revolu
tion, being selected to " chastise and humble "
the Six Nations, most effectuaUy performed
that duty.
Almost any other people than the Con
necticut Yankees would now have abandoned
Wyoming for all time, but these pioneers
seemed not only to have been filled with the
spirit of New England enterprise, but to have
developed extra determination through long
time opposition. Many of them returned to
the valley even in the autumn of the year for
ever made memorable by the massacre. They
built a little fort and took up again their old
manner of life, which was one of calm, matter-
of-fact defiance of danger and death. The
Indians made a notable raid in November,
but the majority of the settlers never appear
to have been greatly disconcerted. The tide
of immigration was renewed and bore in a
great throng. With the rank and file came
9 105

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
new leaders, among them Colonel John Frank
lin, destined to be one of the conspicuous char
acters in the militant new Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, during the Revolution, had
made no attempt to renew hostilities nor to
repeal the invasion, for the colony had been
urged by Congress to remain inactive until
the greater struggle was over. But as the
Revolution drew to a close she prepared to
resist aggression. The lands now belonged
to the State instead of a private family, and
there was an access of general interest in their
disposal. A greater change in the situation,
however, lay in the fact that there was a new
power to appeal to for settlement — the Con
gress of the Confederation. There was im
patience to have the question of ownership
decided, and only a fortnight after Cornwallis's
surrender, on November 3, 1781, a petition
was presented to Congress asking that the
case be adjudicated by that body, under the
clause of the Articles of Confederation relat
ing to disputed boundaries. It was finally
agreed that the subject of jurisdiction should
be left to a board of commissioners to be se
lected by the delegates from the two colonies,
106

Results of the Massacre
and those agreed upon were William Whip
ple, of New Hampshire ; Welcome Arnold, of
Rhode Island; David Brearly and William
Churchill Houston, of New Jersey; Cyrus
Griffin, Joseph Jones, and Thomas Nelson, of
Virginia. On November 12, 1782, the court
opened at Trenton, N. J. Distinguished coun
sel, including on both sides men then or after
ward famous for service as soldiers, statesmen,
and legislators, appeared before the tribunal
— Eliphalet Dyer, William Samuel Johnson,
and Jesse Root for Connecticut ; and William
Bradford, Joseph Reed, James Wilson, and
Jonathan D. Sargeant for Pennsylvania.
It is a remarkable fact that although this
court held a session of forty-one judicial or
working-days, heard voluminous arguments
from the full array of able attorneys — of
whom one spoke for four days — and deliv
ered a momentous decision, scarcely any rec
ord exists of its deliberations, nor in the cen
tury since has it transpired just what were
the arguments made nor on precisely what
ground was the verdict rendered. The judges
had announced in advance that they would
not make public the reasons which guided
107

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
them to their decision, and they kept their
secret inviolable. The verdict was flatly for
Pennsylvania. " We are unanimously of opin
ion that Connecticut has no right to the lands
in controversy," declared the judges, and they
added: "We are also unanimously of opin
ion that the jurisdiction and preemption of
all territory lying within the charter of Penn
sylvania, and now claimed by the State of
Connecticut, do of right belong to the State
of Pennsylvania." While it is reasonable to suppose that all
of the old contentions concerning the charter
claims were most minutely gone over, it
amounts almost to a certainty that the tedious
and dangerous dispute was decided more on
the matter of imtent than on the literal ren
dering of the fundamental documents, and
that expediency was paramount in the minds
of the judges to all other considerations com
bined. On its face, taking everything as lit
eral, Connecticut's " real, though impracticable
claim " would doubtless, in the estimation of
an unbiased judge, have appeared better than
Pennsylvania's ; and yet that Connecticut
should have jurisdiction over the great slice
108

Results of the Massacre
of Penn's province lying westward of her
border, and so continuing westward " to the
South Sea," would have been not only mon
strously absurd, but dangerous to the public
interest. A new nation was entering upon the crit
ical period of its formation, and its young life
was imperiled by the conflicting claims of the
very States that went to compose it. Massa
chusetts had a claim for millions of acres in
western New York, on the same ground that
Connecticut claimed a portion of Pennsylva
nia. Virginia and other States had similar
imaginary mortgages on the West. Conten
tion and bloodshed had already ensued, and
the future threatened worse results than the
past had developed. Somewhere a sacrifice
must be made — a sacrifice of individual inter
ests, or even rights — for the common good.
The case in hand was that of Connecticut
against Pennsylvania. Why not begin here ?
Such, in brief, it seems sure was the most
weighty argument in the minds of the judges,
and dictated the Trenton Decree. The opin
ion of public men, in surprisingly unanimous
approval of the verdict, was strong testimony
109

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
to its wisdom and practical justice. It was
a first, firm, forward step in nationality.
Another curious question that arises from
the finding of the Trenton Court is : Did not
the judges enter into a tacit and secret under
standing with the Continental Congress that,
in recompense for being deprived of her claim
in an existent sister State, Connecticut should
be allowed a grant from the lands farther
west, which would inflict loss upon no single
colony, because they were the common heri
tage of the new nation as a whole ? Again
there is not an iota of legal evidence on which
to reply, but an affirmative answer is, never
theless, almost compelled by the conditions
which existed. Such supposition is rational,
leaves nothing to be accounted for, satisfies
one's sense of justice toM-ard a long-suffering
people, and is given strong support of a nega
tive nature in the partial secrecy of the pro
ceedings of Congress relating to the prelimi
naries of the grant to Connecticut of the West
ern Reserve, in Ohio.
The Wyoming men acquiesced quietly in
the decree, but a new trouble arose. Juris
diction had been securely vested in Pennsyl-
110

Results of the Massacre
vania, but the question of private ownership
had not been touched upon, and therein lay
the seed of a new contention which brought
on a third "Pennamite War" — ^for, though
the Penns were eliminated from the equation,
the old name was retained. Pennsylvania,
however near the right formerly, was now
clearly in the wrong. Her people would not
even allow the question of private ownership
to be settled by a tribunal provided for in the
Articles of Confederation. Thomas Jefferson
sought in Congress to have such a solution of
the problem resorted to, but a spirited re
monstrance from the Pennsylvania Assembly
put an end to the proceedings. In lieu of
Jefferson's wise measure, the Pennsylvanians
proposed an immediate relinquishment of half
the Yankees' possessions, and an early relin
quishment of all (with a slight time indul
gence for the benefit of " the widows of those
who had fallen by the savages "). These terms
they resolved to enforce, and when the Yan
kees rejected the offer the matter was put for
execution into the hands of that same Captain
Alexander Patterson who. had been conspicu
ous in the former contentions, and with two
111

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
companies of militia he repaired to the long-
troubled valley. His first act was the sum
mary arrest of Colonel Zebulon Butler, the
old hero of Wyoming, and Colonel John
Franklin. A flood assisted the designs of the
Pennsylvania claimants and land jobbers. It
swept away many buildings and obliterated
some landmarks. Patterson's men did the
rest. They proceeded to lay out the lands in
accordance with the Pennsylvania survey, cre
ated new civil divisions, and even replaced the
cherished name of Wilkesbarre with that of
Londonderry. In the middle of May the work of wiping
Wyoming from the map was ruthlessly com
pleted. The scenes that followed the mas
sacre were now reenacted. The soldiery
marched out and at the point of the bayonet
dispersed at least 150 families, in many in
stances setting fire to their dwellings. Five
hundred of the evicted — men, women, and
children, infants in arms and old men — were
literally driven from the valley, mostly on foot,
poorly provided with food. They tramped
through the mountainous wilderness toward
the Delaware, only less miserable than the
112

Results of the Massacre
thronging refugees from the scene of the mas
sacre six years before. Some died in the for
est. Others reached the settlements only to
succumb there to the rigors of their seven
days' forced march — semi-starvation, exposure,
and exhaustion. This was the seventh time
the Connecticut people had made an enforced
exodus from the valley.
The Pennsylvanians were in possession,
but their high-handed method of procedure
had alienated the sympathy of the right-
minded of their own State. Shame and in
dignation led to the sending of a sheriff's
posse to restore order, and the hasty recall of
the evicted settlers. Patterson remained suf
ficiently in power to extend to the first who
returned a warm reception, but finally, as the
refugees rallied in greater force, Colonel John
Franklin took command of them, and they
went through the valley like a scourge, dis
possessing the Pennsylvanians wherever they
came upon them. Patterson, gathering his
followers in a fort, stood at bay. A battle
ensued in which men were killed on both
sides. And so civil war again crimsoned the
country. To quell this. Colonel John Arm-
113

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
strong — the same who was the author of the
celebrated " Newburg Addresses " which had
brought Washington's army to the verge of
mutiny in the Revolution — was ordered with
400 militia to the scene of disturbance. It
was the expectation that he would act im
partially as a peace officer, but, like his col
league, Patterson, he hated the Yankees, and
it was these only that he disarmed ; and hav
ing done so, immediately declared them pris
oners, manacled them in couples, and marched
them to prison.
It is probable that now, but for the in
tervention of a peculiar Pennsylvania institu
tion, the Council of Censors, and John Dick
inson, who together created a new system for
the Yankee settlers and mitigated the rigors
of their prosecution, the colony of Wyoming
would once more have been stricken from
existence. But most of Armstrong's prison
ers escaping, or being released, they swarmed
back to the valley with that indomitable per
sistency they had exhibited for a quarter of
a century, and resumed the defense of their
homes. The conflict was now carried on in
a desultory but determined way for years,
114

Results of the Massacre
and many lives were lost, both through the
predatory Indian methods of war, involv
ing the scouting of sharpshooters, and in
collisions of considerable forces, before the
war closed.
But cessation of armed hostilities in this
case did not mean any improvement in the
situation. Every change in the Pennamite
Wars seems to have been to something worse.
And now, while there was a respite from
fighting, it was only because of the with
drawal of Armstrong and Patterson's sol
diery ; and the Connecticut men, who had so
long battled for homes in Pennsylvania with
numbers augmented by fresh arrivals and em
boldened by partial success, were preparing
for a cou/p which, had it been carried out,
would have convulsed the country, and made
its history read very differently from that we
now have.
Civil war at the beginning, instead of
seventy-odd years afterward, would very prob
ably have rent the Confederation and possibly
have precluded the formation of the republic
itself ; but civil war — and of very formidable
dimensions, and over an issue well calculated
115

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
to shatter faith in the success of a democratic
government — was precisely what the Connect
icut people now meant.
The formation of a new State — it might
have been the State of Franklin or Susque
hanna — was not only contemplated, but actu
ally commenced, and that it would have been
consummated had not Pennsylvania finally
accorded tardy justice is beyond doubt. Con
sidering their experience with Pennsylvania
and their long siege of complicated troubles, it
is not strange that the Connecticut settlers at
last conceived the idea of severing themselves
from connection with the Quakers, and found
ing a new and independent State of which
Wyoming should be the nucleus, and which
they would probably have so carved as to
contain all of Pennsylvania originally claimed
by Connecticut ; that is, all north of the forty-
first parallel of latitude. By 1787 the new-
State idea amounted to a furore in Wyoming,
and there was an enthusiastic backing for the
project in New England and New York. The
plan was immediately upon its declaration to
rush in a great mass of immigrants, to each
of whom should be granted 200 acres of land,
116

Results of the Massacre

and maintain its existence and integrity against
all assaults. Colonel Ethan Allen, with the fresh pres
tige of leading the " Green Mountain Boys "
to success, came
out to Wyoming
in the summer,
and it has always
been supposed
was not only
there to lend en
thusiasm to the
undertaking, but
with a view to
conducting a cam-
paign of arms
when the action
of the long - op
pressed settlers should precipitate attack.
It is significant that he had been presented
with several thousand acres of land by the
Susquehanna Company.
Another remarkable man of the times.
Colonel Timothy Pickering, also appeared,
but he came as one of the Pennsylvania com
missioners, and it was largely owing to his
117

^^^,,2^ .^.^-^^S^H^

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
skilful and astute handling of affairs that the
most serious situation that ever confronted
tortured Wyoming, and in fact equally threat
ened Pennsylvania and the country at large,
was eased by diplomacy combined with judi
ciously decisive acts. He showed here much
of that ability which enabled him in later
years to adorn successively the high offices of
Postmaster-General, Secretary of War, and
Secretary of State, and to render acceptable
service as Member of Congress and Senator
of the United States from Massachusetts.
He was originally from that State (to which
he returned), and was chosen for that reason
by the Pennsylvania Government, for it was
believed that a New Englander could more
effectively labor with the Connecticut jnen
than could a Pennsylvanian. Pickering went
among the Wyoming folk intent on making
an equitable settlement of the vexed question
and authorized to promise, in the name of the
Government, that their lands should be con
firmed to the settlers in clear title. Pennsyl
vania came reluctantly but of necessity to this
concession, for her leading men had grown to
fear that the unjust course which had been
118

Results of the Massacre
persisted in would bear bitter fruit. So it
was with a mingling of the patriotic and pol
itic in motive that the shrewd Pickering went
on his mission. He took up lands under Con
necticut title, cultivated the people, talked
conciliation and conces
sion, and almost at the
outstart made an adher
ent of brave old Zebulon
Butler. Simultaneously with
Pickering's progress, very
important work of a di
verse nature went on in
the States of Pennsylva-
nia and Connecticut. The ''C^^^iJj'C^***^!^.
former passed what be
came famous as " the Confirming Act of
1787," expressly to disrupt the new-State
movement ; and at the very time, though
the Quakers did not know how far it had
gone, the Connecticut schemers were actually
drawing up a j)lan of government for the
proposed new State. Oliver Wolcott, of
Connecticut, had written its constitution,
while Major William Judd, of the same
119

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
State, had been decided upon for the first
governor and Colonel John Franklia for
lieutenant-governor. Thus close had the new State come to
bursting into being, when the legislative act
of Pennsylvania and the diplomacy of Pick
ering averted the danger. But the colonel,
redoubtable in peace as he had been in war,
was still unable to swerve all of the Wyoming
men to acceptance of hip proposition. Not
being able to conciliate his old companion in
arms. Colonel Franklin, he forcibly captured
him, put him in irons very promptly, and
sternly hustled him off to Philadelphia, where
he was clapped into prison and long languished
under the charge of treason. As a sequel to
this. Colonel Pickering was in June, 1788, ar
rested in retaliation, held as a hostage, and
hurried from place to place by his Yankee
captors, who for weeks eluded four compa
nies of militia, a troop of horse, and a sheriff's
posse. Long before this the Connecticut settlers
held a typical New England " town meeting "
to discuss the question of accepting or reject
ing the Compromise Act of 1787, which re-
120

Results of the Massacre
vealed the fact that a majority of them were
in favor of accepting Pennsylvania's terms.
Those opposed argued that the act confirming
their titles had only been passed to stop the
new-State movement, and time proved they
were right, for in 1790 the Legislature re
pealed it as being unconstitutional. But the
land-jobbing projects of the holders of Penn
sylvania titles, who had brought about the
repeal, gained nothing by the measure. There
was in the act so much of wisdom and good
policy, so much of justice to the long-suffering
Connecticut men who had bought in good
faith those Wyoming lands and expended
their blood in defending them, that the spirit
of the law actually survived and was potently
active, even when the body of the act was
dead and destroyed — stricken from the stat
utes. The settlers continued to hold their
lands and were not again molested, though
the legal war continued for years. The
" Yankees " eventually made the State a tri
fling payment for the lands, and finally the
last vestige of injustice toward them was
wiped out by an act passed in 1807, exactly
half a century from the date when Connecti-
10 121

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
cut's pioneers came to Cushutunk on the Del
aware, and almost as long since the initial set
tlement at Wyoming.
What, now, were the ultimate results to
Pennsylvania and rewards to Connecticut
flowing froin this unique invasion and un
paralleled contention?
In a certain sense Pennsylvania was the
chief gainer. Already having a more hetero
geneous population than any State in the
Union, she received still another distinct ele
ment, and the Yankee people who came among
the Germans and Scotch-Irish either with or
as a result of the Connecticut invasion — ^not,
however, all locating at Wyoming — were by
no means the least useful and influential
citizens of the so-called Quaker State, as be
comes evident on reflection that among the
representative men of this blood were such
statesmen as David Wilmot, of " Proviso "
fame (who, in 1846, became a conspicuous
flgure in the great congressional campaign
against slavery, in which, as we shalL.see, his
Ohio compatriots of Connecticut origin were
already engaged) ; Hon. Galusha A. Grow,
Pennsylvania's veteran congressman-at-large,
122

Results of the Massacre
whose career covers half a century ; Governors
William F. Packer and Henry M. Hoyt ; such
able commanders of industry, colossal philan
thropists, and college founders as Asa Packer
and Ario Pardee, and such sterling city found
ers as the Scrantons.
Aside from the Connecticut contribution
of men to Pennsylvania, thus merely indicated,
perhaps the most important service that the
Yankees rendered Pennsylvania lay in its
initiative and example of the common-school
system. They had been at Wyoming — as, in
deed, wherever the New England colonies
were planted — the pioneers of public schools-
and when Pennsylvania came tardily to es
tablish these institutions she was influenced
by the Connecticut element and found models
on the Susquehanna which had existed for
more than half a century.
With these facts in view, it is apparent
that there were results of far-reaching good
growing out of Connecticut's contest for Wy
oming, which it is gratifying to chronicle ; for
without these there would appear a peculiarly
pathetic and irreconcilable inadequacy of out
come for all those fifty years of stubborn strife.
123

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
As for the Yankee colonists, they secured
clear title eventually to what is called "the
seventeen townships " or about 300,000 acres
of land, including the beautiful valley they
had fought for for fifty years, from which they
had seven times been evicted, and in which
their people had twice been massacred. They
had coveted and contested this ground for its
agricultural worth and its picturesqueness ;
and curiously enough their heirs found the
value of the lands doubled or deci-multiplied,
and the loveliness of the land for the most
part destroyed by one and the same cause —
the discovery of anthracite coal therein, and
the development of the most extensive mines
in all America.
But the greater reward that came to the
Connecticut people lay not in the country for
which they had carried on their heroic, even
if mistaken contest, but in the Western Re
serve, which is a region a trifle larger than
Connecticut, possessing a population almost
equaling it at the last census, and exercising,
in some respects, a power surpassing it.
In the granting to Connecticut of that
huge tract — unquestionably influenced, as be-
124

»Mps#S;il¥

The Wyoming Monument.
Erected in 1833, near the scene of battle and massacre of July 3, 177S.

Results of the Massacre
fore explained, by the idea that some measure
of mercy, if not of justice, was due in com
pensation for its being deprived of possession
in Pennsylvania — in its superb colonization
and the consequences flowing therefrom — is
to be found, historically speaking, the justifi
cation for the warfare at Wyoming.
The reward which Connecticut received
in Ohio, for her otherwise well-nigh profitless
persistency in Pennsylvania, was a reward of
victory vicariously bestowed, inasmuch as it
came, for the most part, to other men than
those who had toiled in the Quaker State —
and even to another generation — but it re
dounded hugely to the advantage of the
State ; and her people, as a whole, improved
the opportunity newly opened to them to the
very utmost.

125

New England well may boast
The band that on her coast,
Long years ago,
Their Pilgrim anchor cast —
Their Pilgrim bark made fast —
Mid winter's howling blast
And driven snow.
Long since hath passed away,
Each Pilgrim hoar and gray,
Of that lone band ;
Yet where their ashes lie
Sprang seeds that shall not die,
While ever yon blue sky
Shall arch our land !
Sons of that Pilgrim race
Were they from whom we trace
Our Buckeye blood.
Lewis J. Cist.

127

CHAPTER V
THE WESTERN RESERVE, OR CONNECTICUT
TRIUMPHANT IN OHIO
Connecticut heroically, even if mistakenly
militant in Pennsylvania, where her sons had
tried to carve a State from the territory which
royal carelessness had bestowed both on Wil
liam Penn and her own founders, became
Connecticut completely triumphant in Ohio.
A great host of her sons, undeterred by re
peated disaster in warfare with the " Pennam
ites " for possession of the lovely valley of
Wyoming, made an invasion of northeastern
Ohio (while it was still a portion of the old
Northwest Territory) every bit as peaceful
and prosperous as that of the preceding gen
eration had been troublesome and, so far as
immediate result was concerned, almost profit
less. They came in swarming thousands,
absolutely unopposed save by the elements
129

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
and the wilderness, and theirs was here, in
reality, the majestic march of a peaceful con
quest most profound in consequence, because
giving a mighty impulse to interior develop
ment. The contrast between the prompt and
complete success of the Ohio settlement and
the long baffled and only partial prosperity
of the attempts at colonization in Pennsyl
vania was caused by the fact that in the
later project Yankee shrewdness, profiting
by early experience, had the way perfectly
paved with law before her pioneers set foot
in the coveted field. The Western Reserve,
unlike Wyoming, was to them not merely a
" promised land," but one actually conveyed
by deed, signed, sealed, and delivered.
The settlement was hugely significant in
several ways, but in none more so than in the
fact that the pioneers of that vast army of
occupation planted in the " New Connecticut,"
or Western Reserve, the last organized and
distinct colony of Puritanism, which, as such,
made a deep and historic impression upon
the conscience of the country.
In the critical period of the old confeder
ation preceding and preparing the way for
130

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
the formation of the United States, one of
the most portentous problems that patriotic
statesmen had to solve was the vestiture of
all land claims in the General Government —
the surrender of private pretensions for the
public good. This problem — constituted by
confusion in regard to the ownership of the
Northwest Territory by the several colonies
bordering it or lying easterly in the same
latitude — -darkened the prospects of the
American Union, retarded the ratification
of the articles of confederation, and threat
ened the very existence of the colonies. Thus
menaced by grave dangers within, after suc
cessfully withstanding those from without,
the country had arrived at a crucial stage
when Congress appealed to the claiming
States to make such sacrifices as should avoid
discord and avert disaster. It was successful.
New York responded first, and ceded her
western claims to the United States in 1780.
Virginia followed in 1784, but with a reser
vation, and Massachusetts in 1785 ; Connecti
cut coming last, reluctantly, tardily, and
thriftily. Finally, by an act dated May 11,
1786, she relinquished "all her right, title,
131

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
interest, jurisdiction, and claim " to lands
within her chartered limits " h/ing west of a
line 120 miles west of a/nd pa/)'allel with the
western boundary line of the State of Penn-
sylvaniar But all within her chartered limits
for 120 miles westward from Pennsylvania,
and lying between latitudes 41° and 42° 2'
north, she reserved from conveyance, and
hence came in time the name " Western Re
serve of Connecticut." Congress after a pro
tracted debate accepted the cession on May
26th, and it was duly confirmed by deed on
September 14th, following.
As the Yankee colony's charter claim ex
tended "westward to the South Seas" (as
is shown with other details in Chapter II), it
was vast enough surely, but it was vague ;
and she therefore simply and shrewdly sur
rendered a huge, uncertain claim, impossible
of support, attenuated almost to an abstrac
tion, for something concrete, conveniently
condensed, specific, positive, and practical. It
was as if she had relinquished a few thousand
miles of atmosphere, elusive, intangible, for
sure title to a tract of solid ground with
definite boundaries, as large as the mother
132

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
State (and at this day sustaining almost as
great a population). This was certainly a
bargain of the proverbial Yankee trader kind
raised to its highest power.
Now, why, at a time when the public
lands were regarded with an intense jealousy,
was Connecticut thus gratuitously granted
such a broad and bountiful domain ? Her
title, strictly interpreted, was clearly insuffi
cient to secure her in possession. She had
already been divested of it in Pennsylvania,
where she had brought it to definite issue.
But was not the blood of her martyrs, mis
taken as they were, considered in the final
account ? And were there not questions of
public policy involved which had weight in
the consideration ?
The acquiescence of Congress in the terms
by which this vast and valuable tract of land
was " reserved " by Connecticut only receives
full explanation when we glance back to the
decision of the Trenton court of 1782, and
see that Connecticut was then divested of
title and jurisdiction in Pennsylvania, not-.
withstanding her charter claims, long time
possession, and the patient, persistent, blood-
133

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
expending bravery of the men of Wyoming.
That the decision, both by intention and in
effect, was for the general good is indisput
able, but that the heroism and appalling
losses of the Yankee invaders was entirely
ignored is inconceivable. Thus the theory
that, as an offset for the deprivation then
necessarily inflicted upon her, and as a mark
of recognition of her struggles at Wyoming,
a secret compact was made with Congress
that Connecticut should in the future receive
a grant from the public domain, affords the
only elucidation at once of that court's action
and the surprising smallness of congressional
opposition to the bestowal of what amounted
virtually to a State upon the colony formerly
dispossessed. That such an understanding
was entered into is argued from the very
absence of all record concerning the deliber
ations of the court and its reasons for the
handing down of the decision ; also by the
paucity of report upon the proceedings of
Congress in the matter of granting the de
sired lands to Connecticut.
In the absence of a solitary scrap of posi
tive information upon the subject of a com-
134

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
pact, it is as probable as any surmise that can
be made in history that the compact did
exist, and that supposition almost, if not
quite, universally entertained by students, not
only explains all the existing circumstances,
but accords to the court and the Congress
of the Confederation that unfortunately rare
blending of common sense with broad, un-
technical justice and saving shrewdness which
constitutes true statesmanship.
One strong piece of presumptive evidence
that Connecticut's Pennsylvania experience
figured as a factor in her favor when the
granting of the Reserve was under considera
tion, lies in the fact that it was definitely
stated that the boundaries had been so set
as to make the grant equal to the amount
of lands of which Connecticut had been di
vested in the Susquehanna country. Then, too,
Pennsylvania voted from the first for the ac
ceptance of the cession, which equally meant
the allowance of the Reserve. There was
some opposition, but all the States save
Maryland came to the support of the measure,
and it was passed in a fortnight from the
time of its introduction. In addition to the
135

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
desire of Congress to render to Connecticut
justice which was at once poetic and practi
cal, that patriotic and businesslike body was
keenly alive to the desirability of putting the
public domain in the market for the purpose
of revenue. Washington was opposed to the allowance
of the Reserve. So were the Virginians in
Congress, though they ultimately voted for
it. It was with something of ill grace that
they sought to defeat the measure at any
stage of the proceedings, for Virginia herself
already had quite as large a reservation in
Ohio as that sought by Connecticut. But,
as will be duly shown, one great Virginian,
John Marshall, afterward rendered important
service to the people of Connecticut's Re
serve, and so became connected with its
history. The reasons that finally swayed the Vir
ginia Congressmen to approve the grant, says
Mr. Grayson, one of the Old Dominion's dele
gation, writing to Washington, were "that
the claim of a powerful State, although un
supported by right, was under the present
circumstances a disagreeable thing ; that sac-
136

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
rifices must be made for the public tranquil
lity as well as to secure an indisputable right
to the residue " of lands ; that Connecticut
would settle her reservation "immediately
with immigrants who would form a barrier
not only against the British but the Indian
tribes " ; and that the settlement would " en
hance the value of adjacent territory " — all of
which was good logic and not very far amiss
as prophecy. The effect was, in general, such as was
hoped and predicted. After necessary pre
liminaries, involving the perfection of Indian
title and the adjustment of some of its do
mestic affairs by the company, a strong current
of Connecticut immigration — long checked
at Wyoming, but gathering strength as a
stream does to surmount or evade a barrier
thrust in its way — flowed onward like a great
surging tide into the Ohio country. The
grant to Connecticut helped to foster the sale
to the New England Ohio Company, composed
mostly of Massachusetts men, that organiza
tion which through its agent secured the pas
sage of the " Ordinance of Freedom," laid the
fundamental law upon the land, and planted
11 137

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
the first settlement northwest of the Ohio
River. The Indian tribes were threatening, and
the same Brant whom the Yankees had suf
ficiently known at Wyoming — though he had
no personal share in the work of massacre —
the master mind of the whole red race at that
time, as he had been in the border wars on
the New York frontier, was at their head.
But in the summer of 1795 General Anthony
Wayne, having the year before most severely
chastised the allied hostiles, concluded with
them the treaty at Greenville which released,
among others, the greater part of the lands in
the Reserve — and, happily, was never vio
lated. Thus the last vestige of impediment to
immigration being removed, the Yankee State
put its lands in the market. Indeed, she had
anticipated the outcome, so that the extin
guishment of Indian title and the sale of the
lands were practically simultaneous.
Most important of the steps anticipatory
of the sale was Connecticut's reservation from
the sale of her own Reserve of half a million
acres of land constituting the western end of
the tract. This she had, in 1792, in response
138

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
to numerous urgent petitions, set apart for
bestowal upon her citizens who had suffered
by " incursions of the enemy during the late
war," and the tract was therefore then called
the " Sufferer Lands," but later (because most
of the sufferers were losers by fire, in the Con
necticut towns burned by the British) it was
given the name it bears to this day — "the
Fire Lands " — of which further mention will
be made. The resolution authorizing the sale of the
Reserve — excepting the haK million acres of
Sufferers' Lands — passed the Legislature at
a session held in Hartford in May, 1795, and
shortly afterward the committee appointed
for the negotiation effected a sale in sepa
rate contracts with forty-eight individuals,
realizing for the State the sum of $1,200,000.
The amounts paid varied from eight or ten
up to $168,180, and each grantee became an
owner of such a proportion of the entire pur
chase as the amount of his contract bore to
the total sum. Thus Pierpont Edwards, who
engaged to pay $60,000 toward the purchase,
received a deed for sixty thousand twelve-
hundred thousandths, or just one-twentieth of
139

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
the Reserve, The forty-eight purchasers, in
the autumn of the same year, with a few oth
ers, formed the Connecticut Land Company,
the membership of which was ultimately in
creased to several hundred.
Right here a mere glance at the names of
the original purchasers and early members of
the land company is alone sufficient to reveal
the fact that the western movement of Connect
icut, which realized its largest result in Ohio,
was, from the start, one of high character and
distinguished personnel, and that while it en
listed at the outset the interest of the leading
capitalists of Connecticut, thej^ were not merely
men of financial force, but represented in vari
ous forms the very van of the varied active
ability of the time. Several of them were
already noted ; others destined soon to be
come so. Moses Cleaveland was a patriot of
the Revolution, and he became the founder of
the chief city in the Reserve. The names of
others, as Coit, Austin, Newbury, Ely, Kelly,
were eventually written upon the geography
of the Reserve to remain forever. Caleb At-
water was one of the leading scientific author
ities of the time ; Samuel Mather, who rep-
140

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
resented in the purchase a number of associ
ates in Albany, N. Y., represented in heredity
the clerical family of Cotton, Increase and
Richard Mather — certainly an appropriate
line for the perpetuation of Puritanism in the
New Connecticut. Gideon Granger, who had
$80,000 worth of stock in the great land pur
chase, was to fill the office of Postmaster-Gen
eral for fourteen years, dating from 1801, and to
gain a Junius-like reputation in political writ
ing over the signature of " Algernon Sidney."
Oliver Phelps, the nabob of the company, who
was interested to the amount of over $200,-
000—1168,000 individually and the balance
in a partnership subscription with Gideon
Granger — was a great merchant, and heavily
interested in New York lands, for the dispo
sition of which he had opened at Canandaigua
the first land office established in America.
He was the leading land speculator of the
time. Pierpont Edwards, though bom in
Massachusetts, was a son of that stanch Con
necticut metaphysician and theologian Jona
than Edwards, was himself a patriot and an
able lawyer, a member of the Congress of the
Confederation, and as the founder of the " Tol-
141

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
eration Party" in Connecticut, which had made
him extremely unpopular with the Calvinists,
might be regarded as a kind of a personal
forerunner of the larger liberality with which
the original essence of Puritanism came to be
diluted, and its asperities in some measure dis
placed by amenities in the New Connecticut,
The descendants of Pierpont and of Jonathan
Edwards were among the pioneers, and the
family — with those of several other of these
notable personages among the purchasers —
is prominent in the New Connecticut to-day.
Such, in brief, were a few of the fathers
of the westward expansion movement of Yan
kee spirit. They practically furthered by
money and influence the settlement of the
Reserve, while the State, with the $1,200,000
which they paid into her treasury, in those days
when a million was yet a mighty sum, thrift
ily turned around and bestowed the bounty
upon her schools. Not all of them werd"
among the immigrants, but it is safe to say
that the families of nearly all were repre
sented, and the names of most of them figure
in the annals of the Reserve and are promi
nent in the affairs of the present day.
142

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
The lands having been purchased, the next
thing in order was their survey, and for the
accomplishment of this the company sent out
an expedition in May, 1796. It consisted of
fifty men and two women — fis:e_surveyors, a
physician, chainmen, axmen, hunters— ^ all
able-bodied, energetic, eager for the sight
of the promised land,
the fame of which had
been alrea,dy industrious
ly spread through the
mother State and New
England. The Moses who led
these children of Connec
ticut through the wilder
ness was General Moses ^^^^^e^^^.-a-Titv^?
Cleaveland. In this stur
dy commander of the half hundred surveyors
we have the first actual pioneer — one of the
most prominent characters of the colony and
the founder of its future metropolis. It is
notable, too, that like so many others who
had a part in the beginnings of the New
Connecticut, he was an officer of the Revo
lutionary army. He was a man of culture,
143

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
too, a graduate of Yale, a lawyer by profes
sion. He was born in Canterbury. Windham
County, in 1754, and died there in 1806.
The expedition was a formidable under
taking. The party rendezvoused at Schenec
tady, N. Y., whence they ascended the Mo
hawk in four flat-bottomed boats. Their way
led by Oswego, Niagara, and Queenston to
Buffalo. Besides the toilsomeness of the jour
ney they encountered some opposition from
the British at the frontier forts, who had not
yet been officially apprised of the passage of
Jay's treaty, which made the navigation of the
lakes free to American vessels, and they had
to resort to a little strategy to get by. Then
at Buffalo, where the navigators to their sat
isfaction met the overland contingent of their
force which had been entrusted with the
bringing on of their horses and cattle, they
also met Seneca and Mohawk Indians, with
Brant and Red Jacket as their leaders, to
whom they made presents. Then the fifty
surveyors went on by way of Lake Erie, hug
ging the shore and admiring the bluff, forest-
clad banks, until they reached the mouth of
a little creek now known as Conneaut, and
144

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
here they landed fii'st on the soil of the Re
serve marking the Plymouth of the western
Pilgrims. This vanguard of the army of occupation
made its arrival on July 4th, and from this
circumstance they named the place Port In
dependence, and with the spirit of the day.
heightened by their generally prosperous pas
sage to the West and the golden prospect held
before them by the new land, they proceeded
to celebrate. They fired the national salute
with half a dozen fowling-pieces, pledged eacl
other in the sparkling liquid from the lake-
called down blessings upon the land many ol
the little company had assisted in wresting
from the British grasp, made glowing predic
tions of the future greatness of the new nation
and the colony they were about to plant, and
sat down with thankfulness to a bountiful
dinner in which were many reminders of the
old Connecticut, while their imaginings wan
dered forth to the new. It is doubtful, how
ever, if any of them conceived possibilities
approaching the actual realization that Time
was holding in store for the region stretching
as an absolutely virginal wilderness a hundred
145

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
and a score miles westward from their camp
ing-place. Among the toasts they drank were " The
President of the United States," " The Con
necticut Land Company," and " The State of
New Connecticut," the last of \vhich would
indicate that the spirit of Yankee expansion
did not stop short of State-making — an idea
which had its inception during the troublous
times of Wyoming. But scarcely had they
finished feasting when the Indians came upon
them again — not, indeed, with tomahawks as
in the old days in Pennsylvania, but with
questions and demands, as at Buffalo — asking
why the white man encroached upon the red
man's hunting-ground ? — a question which was
not answered, but peaceably parried with some
beads and a keg of rum.
Cabins having been built for the survey
ors. General Cleaveland left them to their work,
and with a few of his staff coasted westward
in an open boat along the south shore of Lake
Erie, their objective point being the mouth
of the Cuyahoga, which they duly reached,
and were greatly gratified by the prospect
afforded by the high ground, luxuriantly tim-
146

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
berecl, which lay between the river and lake,
on the eastern bank of the former, and fronted
both with bold bluffs. The leader gave orders
that this site, possessing almost all possible nat
ural advantages, should be surveyed into city
lots, which was speedily done, and the mem
bers of his party proposing that it should be
named in honor of their commander, he ac
cepted the compliment, and the city of Cleve
land was thus founded.
The Moses of this march, if he smote nc
rock to bring forth water, yet performed ar
act there in the wilderness in that summer oi
1796 the consequences of which have flowed
on in an increasing tide of prosperity foi
more than a century, and in the present me
tropolis of the New Connecticut, with its
400,000 people, has more than realized the
fondest hope of its founder — for his extremesi
prophecy was only that the town would ulti
mately equal Windham, Conn.
Colonel James Kingsbury, with his wife
and three children, seeking a home in the West.
had joined the surveying party at Buffalo, and
theirs was the first family settled upon the
site of Conneaut, and consequently the first
147

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
in the Reserve. Another child which came
to this family was the first born of the new
colony, and its little life succumbed to the
rigors of the winter succeeding its birth.
Thus in a single round of the calendar the
cardinal events of human experience were
enacted in the vast lonely wilderness, a few
years hence to teem with busy life. The
Kingsbury family's experience of one winter
alone in the woods was such as to make them
yearn for a little human companionship, and
as they could expect this at the mouth of the
Cuyahoga, they went on there, and in June,
1797, became the first permanent settlers of
Cleveland. The only predecessor of Kingsbury as an
actual resident of the Reserve had been that
eminent Revolutionary character General
Samuel Holden Parsons, of Lyme, Conn., who
as the grantee of the " Salt Spring Tract " of
25,000 acres had become, in 1788, the first in
dividual land-owner, but he had lost his life
in 1789 upon his property, in what is now
Mahoning County.
Lorenzo Carter with his family became
the first neighbors of the Kingburys, and the
148

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
total population of the settlement, comprised
in two families, amounted to nine persons.
A family named Stiles had wintered here, and
General Edward Paine, who afterward located
farther east, sojourned with them ; but to all
intents and purposes the Kingsburys and Car
ters were the pioneers, and became the first
permanent residents of Cleveland and of the
Reserve. This same Carter was a character of
marked interest in the little community. He
may be considered as the founder of Cleve
land's commerce, and as a bom trader and the
possessor of a peculiar backwoods diplomatic
ability, he was invaluable in the management of
the Indians who flocked about the settlement —
a service in which great native shrewdness was
supplemented by the almost invariable em
ployment of whisky distilled upon the spot
as early as 1798 by one of the pioneers.
He overshadowed the more highly educated
and dignified Colonel Kingsbury, notwith
standing the fact that the latter, in 1800, was
made the first Judge of the Court of Common
Pleas and Quarter Sessions, and in local influ
ence and usefulness even surpassed Samuel
149

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

Huntington, a learned lawyer of aristocratic
bearing, the nephew, namesake, and protege
of that Governor of Connecticut who was a
signer of the Declaration of Independence,
and who himself became the second Governor
of Ohio. But this gifted son of Connecti
cut, with his intense ac
tivity, his elegant man
ners, probably gained in
France, the leading rep
resentative, in the re
gion, of the dying but
proud Federalist party,
probably only prevent
ed by his own untimely
death from holding an
even more exalted office
than that of chief ex
ecutive of the State, was
for his time the dominant public character of
the New Connecticut. He helped to give the
State its earliest impetus of political prestige,
though he could not stem the tide of the Jef
fersonian Democracy which here as elsewhere
ultimately swept all before it. In the War of
1812, when the fortune of American arms in
150

Samuel Huntington.

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
the West seemed irrevocably shattered, he
accompanied Lewis Cass to Washington, and
he was second only to him in securing funds
for the relief of the dissatisfied soldiers and
the restoration of military spirit and an invin
cible front in the whole lake region.
The settlements gradually extended. Gen
eral Edward Paine, who had been a sojourner
among the pioneers at the mouth of the Cuya
hoga, soon selected a beautiful site thii'ty miles
east of that locality, where John Walwoith
had already located. He founded the town
of Painesville and a family prominent in the
varied walks of life which gave to the Union
army in the civil war two very able generals.
Hither, too, came Samuel Huntington, whom
we have seen at Cleveland, and here he ulti
mately made his home, and died in 1817.
Prior to this, probably in 1798, came the
first pioneers to the township five miles west
of Painesville, perhaps the highest type of the
Ohio farming community. Mentor, destined
to be made famous as the home of the first
President whom the Reserve gave to the na
tion. About the same time John Young, the
founder of Youngstown, located in the south-
151

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
eastern part of the Reserve, and tiny improve
ments — little openings in the dense forest
where the sun was permitted to reach the
rich SOU shaded for centuries while it gath
ered strength for the husbandman — began to
appear at long intervals in all directions.
An event of importance occurred on the
10th of July, 1800, when the region was given
a government. The State of Ohio was still
two or three years in the future, but it was
characteristic of the Connecticut settlers that
they should want and move actively for the
establishment of law and order, and hence
they secured the erection in one immense
county of the whole Reserve, which is now
divided into a dozen counties. This was
Trumbull County, of the Northwest Terri
tory, named in honor of Jonathan Trumbull,
then Governor of Connecticut, and son of the
original " Brother Jonathan." Its seat of jus
tice, where court was held the same summer,
and also the first electioc was Warren, one
of the half-dozen principal settlements, and,
save Youngstown, the only one far inland.
This civil organization had only now be
come possible through the settlement of a
152

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
curious and troublesome tangle in the matter
of jurisdiction over the lands of the Reserve
between Connecticut and the United States.
The solution of the difficulty (which was em
barrassing the land company by clouding its
titles and so retarding sales and settlement)
devolved upon John Marshall, of Virginia,
who, as chairman of a committee of Congress
exhaustively reviewed Connecticut's claims,
and recommended the acceptance of her ces
sion of jurisdiction by Congress, and the re
lease to her by the United States of all right,
title, and claim to the soil. This was duly
accomplished by the passage of what was
called the "Easement Act," and thus it was
that John Marshall, of Virginia, who in a
few months was made the first Chief Justice
of the United States, became entitled to the
gratitude of the Connecticut men for the in
stitution of law in the Reserve and the re
moval of the last bar to its development. The
stimulus of assured civil order and of cloud
less titles gave a new and powerful impetus
to immigration, and during the next decade
the population of the Reserve bounded from
1,300 to a little over 16,000 souls.
13 153

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

In connection with this matter, other
causes of growth may be briefly noted. Per
ry's victory off the shore of the Reserve
brought a new attention to the region, and
when the War of 1812 was ended immi
gration was renewed with a rush, and the
epoch of true prosperity
was begun in New Con
necticut. It was a piece
of wonderful poetic pro
priety and eloquence by
which, a few years later,
the same guns that had
thundered aboard Perry's
fleet were employed to
proclaim the opening of
the Erie Canal. Placed
along its lines, about ten
miles apart, their resounding boom, one after
another in quick succession, carried the news
from Buffalo to New York that an all- Ameri
can waterway was open from Lake Erie to
the sea. This was a consummation of con
sequence to the Reserve which had thereto
fore only an imperfect outlet for its surplus
crops by way of Pittsburg. The completion
154

O^^^'k^e^.

£^f-ry

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
of the Erie Canal gave another powerful im
petus to immigration, but, even better than
that, it suggested the Ohio Canal, which
eventually connected the lake with "La belle
riviere," and even when completed, in the
late twenties, as far as Akron, became not
only of immense influence in the improve
ment of the country, but a potent stimulus
to the commercial prosperity of its future
metropolis, the city of Cleveland.
Returning now to the time of the pioneers,
say to 1800, it must be noted that in some
respects their experience was peculiar. It is
rather to moral conditions than to backwoods
adventure that one must look for the charac
teristics of early-day life in the Reserve.
Only the very earliest of the settlers — the
actual vanguard — encountered the perils, or
even the worst hardships, that we are accus
tomed to associate with the pioneering life.
There never existed here anything like that
incessant, ever-lurking deadly danger from
Indian hostility which those earlier Connecti
cut adventurers had experienced in Pennsyl
vania. There was, to be sure, an indefinite
sense of danger, a vague apprehension, but it
155

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
soon wore away, for the few isolated cases of
violence were only such as might occur from
sporadic lawlessness in older communities, and
the general impression which the Reserve re
ceived of the red man's character was a favor
able one. Even the wild animals of the great
unknown forest (though sometimes a cause
of fear and trembling to the women and chil
dren in their lonely log cabins, especially
when the prolonged and dismal howling of
the wolves was to be heard at night) were
regarded upon the whole as a providential
blessing rather than an evil, for from the va
rieties most numerous the family larder was
provided with much of its meat. Governor
Huntington, it must be admitted, was attacked
by wolves and well-nigh dragged from his
horse (and, too, right where is now the most
sophisticated and elegant part of famous
Euclid Avenue) ; but such occurrences were
rare, and the annals of the Reserve are rather
painfully lacking in stirring story.
Pioneer life in this part of Ohio was
peaceful, and almost from the first held out
not only the promise but the substance of
prosperity. Still, it contained those elements
156

Connecticut Triumphant in Ohio
of rude but idyllic rusticity, that romance of
the remote and isolate, which came with long
looking into the solemn solitudes of the vast
forest, which all people of the olden time
have endeavored, and usually in vain, to de
fine.

157

CHAPTEE VI
the reserve a conservation of CONNECTICUT
Gradually the wilderness got the insti
tutions of civilization. These were generally
of the Connecticut brand, and bore its strong
characteristics until modifying influences ac
complished their work. Thus the early relig
ion of the Reserve was Congregationalism
slightly relaxed from the coldness and auster
ity of Connecticut's. Such bookish culture as
there was — and it was far more conspicuous
here than in most frontier communities — bore
the odor of Yale. Up to 1800 the Reserve
had neither church nor school, but it was very
soon to possess both and in abundance. The
pioneer preacher was the Rev. Joseph Badger,
a native of Massachusetts, who was not located
over any special flock, for the very good rea
son that when he arrived there were not enough
people in any one settlement to form a church
organization ; but he belonged to the whole Re-
158

A Conservation of Connecticut
serve, and went about on horseback, visiting
all in turn — a typically stalwart and zealous
but more than usually learned backwoods
missionary. He made his advent and began
his large labors in 1800, and in 1801 we find
him a jpioneer of education as well as of
religion. It is a remarkable fact, and one illustra
tive of the distinguishing tendency of the
Connecticut colony, that only five years after
the first settlers entered the unbroken forest
they should be seeking to plant there not
merely a primitive district school, but an in
stitution of advanced learning — an academy.
It is more significant than any other isolated
circumstance we can chronicle that, in 1801,
when the population. of the entire Reserve did
not number over 1,500, a petition prepared
by Minister Badger was presented to the
Territorial Legislature praying for a college
charter. It was not granted, but when the
State had been organized and the first Legis
lature assembled, it passed an act incorpo
rating, where but eight years before the Indians
roamed without ever seeing a pale face, " The
Erie Literary Society." The Rev. Joseph
159

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Badger was one of the incorporators, and
David Hudson was another, and the school
they with their fellow pioneers established
was the germ from which grew up at the
town of Hudson, Western Reserve College —
"the Yale of the West" — of which more
anon. The Erie Literary Society established,
the first school of the kind in the New Con
necticut, located, it should be mentioned, at
Burton, where such families as the Hitchcocks
and Fords — who were both to become promi
nent in Ohio history — were the pioneers.
The New Connecticut had now representa
tives of almost every element of population to
be found in any part of the country at the
opening of the nineteenth century. There
were farmers, here as well as in the old Con
necticut constituting the truly " respectable "
class, and of course the majority of the peo
ple ; but there were also merchants, mechan
ics, land speculators, surveyors, the repre
sentatives of the law and of medicine, and, as
we have seen, of the Church. Yet the people
were probably a more hornogeneous and truly
democratic one than was to be found then or
since anywhere on the frontier. A fair edu-
160

A Conservation of Connecticut
cation was almost universal. Culture was
not uncommon. There were a considerable
number of college graduates, mostly from
Yale ; and not alone among these but among
the common people it is probable that there
existed more knowledge of literature and
that more books were to be found than in the
midst of any people who had ever journeyed
as far as they into the wilds, and by as prim
itive means. These books were, of course,
not numerous save in a relative sense. Be
yond the Bible and the New England
Primer, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and
Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest, Butler's
Analogy, Watts on the Mind, and Watts's
Hymns seem to have been the mental food
of the men of those early days in the west
ern woods. Occasionally the classics or the
English poets of the descriptive and didactic
schools were to be met with. In nearly every
house some books were to be found, and every-
bodv read more or less.
Even the local "character" of the New
Connecticut was not an illiterate. Even poor,
kindly, wit- wandering Jonathan Chapman, or
" Johnny Appleseed," as he was known to all
161

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
the early residents of the Reserve, not only
read, but, it is traditionally affirmed, read
Rousseau ! A passing tribute must be paid
to him who was incidentally the Reserve's
first colporteur, but who got his nickname
from the perhaps more practical occupation
of planting apple-seeds in the wilderness.
Surely if he who makes two blades of grass to
grow where but one grew before is worthy
of praise, much more so was mild-mannered,
melancholy, unfortunate "Johnny Apple-
seed," for he made a million apple-trees to
grow where not one was before, and the first
orchards of northern Ohio were of trees raised
in the several little nurseries that he cleared
the ground for and patiently tended without
recompense year after year. It was the com
mon belief that this harmless, hapless, weird,
but practically altruistic eccentric had lost
his reason through a misadventure in love ;
but, alas ! historical investigation ruthlessly
calls a check upon imagination, dispels ro
mance, and reveals the hard fact that it was
to the less poetic but equally potential cause,
the kick of a mule, that poor Johnny's mind
was deflected from the normal course. How-
162

A Conservation of Connecticut
ever it came to him, " Johnny Appleseed's "
misfortune was the provocation of frequent
discussion among the pioneers of the enigma
of good and evil, of predestination, and the
doctrines of Calvinistic theology in general.
But one result became clear in all the mys
tery that enveloped his " call." A thousand
backwoods farms would have remained long
years fruitless but for the strange mania that
made him famous.
For the most part the conditions and cus
toms which prevailed during the pioneer tim(
were those which forecast the future, buu
there were at least two tendencies of the pe
riod which fortunately did not become per
manent characteristics. These were a marked
prevalence and malevolence in the midst of
the generally religious community of an as
sertive, scoffing infidelity, and an enormous
consumption of whisky. Both eventually
passed without leaving much trace. The first
was a part of the license which accompanied
the propulsion of the huge wave of liberty
from the then recent French Revolution,
greatly to the scandal of the godly.
The inordinate use of spirits was more in
163

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
accordance with the times and conditions of a
new country, but it was excessive even for
such, and the especial cause is to be found in
the fact that poor transportation facilities left
the farmers no alternative but to turn their
surplus cereals into whisky, which was easily
turned elsewhere. The day came when the
whole Reserve underwent a revulsion and
had to make the mighty effort of the reform
ing toper. Whisky came into universal use,
socially and in private, everywhere, at all
times, by all classes — including preachers;
was employed in the mechanic arts — such as
barn raisings ; became the standard of value
and medium of exchange, and was employed
in almost all transactions. There is, perhaps,
no record of a preacher receiving his pay in
whisky, but it is well attested that school
teachers' accounts were thus liquidated, for
two young Yankee Puritans (elder brothers
of Ohio's great Senator, "Ben" Wade) are
mentioned in the records of 1821 as teaching
for a few months in the towns of Madison
and Monroe and receiving in recompense
therefor one six and the other five barrels of
whisky. 164

A Conservation of Connecticut
As the settlements each year dotted the
wilderness a little more numerously, the very
names written upon its geography were suffi
cient to denote the nativity of its inhabitants.
Not all were Connecticut names, but the ma
jority spoke unerringly of New England ori
gin. The Reserve soon had its Plymouth and
its Hartford, its Wyndham and Windsor, its
Concord, Amherst, and Andover.
But Connecticut names came to the fore
in profusion when the " Sufferers " or " Fire
Lands " were surveyed. This region — half a
million acres of the extreme western end of
the Reserve (now included in the counties of
Huron and Erie) — was peopled a little later
than the eastern part, but when it did become
settled it fairly bristled with historic Connect
icut appellations. It was as if the immigrants
had combined to emphasize Connecticut here,
that there might be no mistake as to where
they came from. The Connecticut towns
burned by the British in the Revolution —
those whose inhabitants were the " Sufferers "
here recompensed pound for pound, pence
for pence, even to the minutest loss — were
New Haven, East Haven, New London, Nor-
165

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
walk, Greenwich, Fairfield, Danbury, Ridge-
field, and Groton. All of these sprang into
being in the development of the land scheme,
which provided for awards to the fire suffer
ers, and among them Norwalk became one of
the largest towns of " the Fire Lands," as well
as one of the most notable in the Reserve for
its thrift and beauty — a brilliant Ohio Phoe
nix arisen from Connecticut ashes.
It is worthy of note that in these " Fire
Lands," which perpetuated Connecticut names
(and in the greater part of the Reserve), the
very manner of survey or subdivision for local
government here, as throughout the Reserve,
helped to the transplanting of a famous New
England institution. The lands were divided
into "towns," as they were called in New
England, or more properly townships, five
miles square, except where the irregular line
of the lake shore made " gores " and fractional
townships. This regularity and convenience
of size was of consequence to the Connecticut
people, wonted as they were to the " town
meeting," and enabled them to perfect the ,
system and make the " town " a unit of gov
ernment to a degree which to-day prevails
166

A Conservation of Connecticut
nowhere else as it does in northern Ohio, save
in those States which were the original home
of the idea.
As the survey progressed it was found
that the entire Reserve of Connecticut, includ
ing " the Fire Lands " (500,000 acres), " the
Salt Spring Tract " of General Parsons (25,450
acres), Kelley's and the several Bass Islands,
lying in the lake off the western end of the

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Map showing (by shading) the Western Reserve of
Connecticut.

reservation (5,924 acres), contained a total of
3,366,921 acres — an excess over the area of i
the mother State of 173,921 acres.
167

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
It may be remarked here that the Reserve
includes ten whole counties and fractions of
four others, two of which have the bulk of
their area in the Reserve. The ten entire
counties are Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga, Cuya
hoga, Lorain, Huron, Erie, Medina, Portage,
and Trumbull. Two-thirds of Mahoning and
all but two townships of Summit are in the
Reserve, while of two other counties it has
small fractions only — three and two town
ships, respectively, of Ottawa and Ashland.
Enough has been said to show that the
New Connecticut reproduced the old. In its
zeal for the Church, the school, the college, its
people were exhibiting the cherished fond
nesses of Connecticut and of New England.
They imported the " town meeting," the man
ners and morals of the mother State. Even
in the nomenclature they impressed upon the
soil they reared monuments to the memory of
their old homes.
The local color of Connecticut prevailed
through all of the formative period of the col
ony's existence. It was patriotic, Presbyterian
(or Congregational), Puritanic, yet all of these
with a difference, as we shall see presently.
168

A Conservation of Connecticut
That Connecticut should have been re-created
here was only natural from the primal cause that
the pioneers were predominantly from Connect
icut (though with an intermingling from her
sister States). Even in much later years, when
a majority of the immigrants came from New
York, they were none the less of the same
people — the Empire State, in the direct path
way to the West, being but a sojourning-place
upon the way, in which an individual might
remain a few years or a family for a genera
tion. Scarcely a man among those who early
became prominent in the Reserve in states
manship, literature, the learned professions, or
as captains of commerce or industry, but
who was native to New England or born of
Yankee parents. It was a distinct and ho
mogeneous colony, as direct a progeny of the
Puritans as New England itself, and even
down to the present, notwithstanding the
admixture of a cosmopolitan population,
consequent to large growth, it preserves
the outward and material characteristics of
its original in a more marked manner than
does any other community in the whole
country. 13 169

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
The community owes this circumstance,
and the unquestionably great power exerted
by its comparatively small population, to
two conditions generally recognized by stu
dents of sociology, but here perhaps exhibited
more unmistakably than elsewhere. In the
first place, the pioneers of the New Connect
icut, like pretty nearly all pioneers, were the
hardiest, the most resolute, and most enter
prising of their race ; and, secondly, the first
born 01 the pioneers had the benefits, so to
speak, of being reared upon a virgin soil, and
so adding a new force to old tendencies. It
is from this, says Lowell, alluding to the be
ginnings of States, that men, " like some agri
cultural products," are produced " better than
cultivation can make them afterward. Wheth
er it is in the vigor and freshness which at
tend the youth of a State, like the youth of a
life, or whether such emergencies bring to
the surface and into conspicuity a higher order
of men — whatever the reason may be, the fact
remains, the fathers are larger than the chil
dren." Ancestry and environment, the world-old
powerful pair of formative causes, were at
170

A Conservation of Connecticut
work. The descendants of patriots and Puri
tans, of preachers, scholars, capable men of
affairs, coming early to the new land or born
within it, environed by obstacles, but by ob
stacles which it was possible to overcome
through the putting forth of power, and with
a broad outlook upon the boundless poten
tialities that lay in the pure, pristine wilder
ness to fire their imagination and serve them
with incentive, the rugged first comers and
first born of the Western Reserve could not
fail to perpetuate the principles that had pre
vailed in the home of their fathers, nor to
give them a greater vigor in their own, which
was to become the heritage of their sons.
The colonists were a peculiarly persistent
people, and as they were not called upon here,
as at Wyoming, to expend their strength in
ceaseless contention, it flowed naturally into
the perpetuation of types and the conserva
tion of cherished principles.
Puritanism, Presbyterianism, patriotism
formed the triad of the Connecticut settlers'
mental equipment of traits and tendencies.
But, as has been intimated, these qualities
and the general character of the Yankee in
171

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
the West had undergone considerable of a
differentiation from the parent stock.
Curiously, even paradoxically, the com
munity which was the most conservative in
the whole western region became also the
most progressive, and in fact radical one, in
the country. There was perhaps a more
bracing breeziness in the moral atmosphere
of the south shore of the Lake than on the
north shore of the Sound, and this, with the
virgin forces of the new country working
their mysterious but mighty influences — all
brought to bear upon the most vigorous spir
its of their race— created a new energy which
must have new and enlarged outlets of
action. Puritanism was far too deeply ingrained
in these men to fall into disuse as a directing
force, but it became a progr^sive Puritanism
— vigorous, virile, with the strength of the
Young West, to put forth in new-found and
multivarious avenues its old-time influence.
Here, as of old, Puritanism meant preemi
nently conscience, and the courage to assert
conscience — to act upon it. And here it in
spired men, as of old, mth unchanged prin-
172

A Conservation of Connecticut
ciple, but impelled them with irresistible force
along absolutely new lines^ in new issues.
The church religion of the Connecticut
pioneers underwent a similar change, and.
while there was no abatement of the piety ol
the old-time Connecticut Congregationalism.
the ancient congealing coldness of Calvinism,
as gracefully as it could, yielded to a general
softening process, which in part was evident
within the denomination, and in some measure
went toward the forming of new sects whicl
had been rigorously restrained in the old in
flexible social order of the mother State. But
while dogma was degraded to something like
its proper relative position, and a liberalism
prevailed which was looked upon with undis
guised horror in Connecticut, and regarded as
rank heresy from which naught but evil could
ensue, in time those who had abhorred the
apostasy of the young western child of the
Puritan Yankee were forced to the admission
that moral fiber had been wonderfully stif
fened even while doctrine had been relaxed.
There was thus a revived sectarian religion
as well as a new political and social Puritan
ism, and the practical application of aggressive
173

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Christian ethics to newly propounded or newly
recognized problems was the inevitable net
result. It was thus that it came about that the
Westem Reserve was, as early as 1830, a hot
bed for the propagatiqn_of3ntisLax£a:y._sjanti:
ment. Charles Backus Storrs, the trae pio
neer here of advanced learning, as President
of Western Reserve College, was inculcating
this doctrine of the new conscience as early as
1832, and when he died, two years later,
Whittier testified to the esteem in which he
was held by the New England abolitionists,
in his touching elegy beginning :
Thou hast fallen in thy armor,
Thou martyr of the Lord !
Oberlin College, with its new theology,
carried on the propaganda of which the la
mented Storrs was the pioneer, and Joshua
R. Giddings began its battles in Congress
when he had no coworker there but John
Quincy Adams. The whole Reserve practi
cally became an integral part of the little army
which began the battle for freedom and car
ried it on, with augmented numbers, to its
finish. But it was for a long time a curiously
174

A Conservation of Connecticut
isolated integral of the antislavery army, oc
cupying a position that was advanced (phys
ically and morally) perilously near the frontier
of the enemy's country, and performing pio
neer duty that demanded the utmost courage.
It is not too much to say that the region was
the most conspicuous and detested piece of
abolition territory in the United States, and
that in zeal and accomplishment the Puritans
of northern Ohio equaled, if they did not sur
pass, the Puritans of New England and the
Quakers of Pennsylvania. The Reserve un
questionably maintained more stations of the
secret "Underground Railroad" than any
equal district in the country.
Another exemplification of the new pro
gressivism which had taken hold upon the
people was afforded when Oberlin set forth
the first exhibit in the world of coUe^ate^ co
education, which she pushed very quickly
from tentative experiment to successful expo
sition, in due time indorsed by the imitation
of at least two-thirds of the colleges and uni
versities of the old Northwest, which founded
its educational institutions, to a great degree,
upon the initiative afforded by the Reserve.
175

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
But that, with all of their progressiveness,
and even radicalism, the Yankee colonists ad
hered pretty closely to the fundamental prin
ciples of the old Puritanism or to a certain
broad ethical orthodoxy, must be admitted by
the fair-minded observer. For the more ultra
" isms " of other " doxies," from first to last,
they had little sympathy, and were apt to
speedily consign them to that condition in
which they were ready for the doxology.
Witness, for instance, the short shrift they
accorded to Mormonism, transplanted to their
soil, flourishing for a time and rearing upon
it a costly temple, and yet cast out completely
in half a dozen years.
The savor of conscience and courage and
of sound morals was in most of the measures
which enlisted their sympathies. Seriously
speaking, the colonists, like the older Puri
tans, werej, serious jgeople. They had " con
victions." And with them convictions amount
ed almost to organic things. They performed
functions in the moral life of these people and
were forces in all their greater private and
public achievements.
To the older Puritanism the Connecticut
176

A Conservation of Connecticut
Ohioans added something of humor without
abating its earnestness one jot or tittle ; but
more important than that as a factor in the
differentiation was their spirit of spontaneity ;
and far above all other additions was that
shrewd Yankee practicality that they brought
to bear in the propagation of their ideals. It
was through the exercise of this faculty, cou
pled with a stem sense of duty and an inher
ited inability to ignore its dictates, that they
entered upon a political fight instead of ease-
fully remaining mere theorists and dreamers,
and assisted in the ascendency of a great po
litico-moral idea.
Puritanism mingled with pure patriotism
may be said to have constituted the unwritten
but inexorable code of moral aggression or
which the great political battles of the mid
century were fought, and they nowhere had
fuller sway than here. The old-time Puritan
ical sense of justice and regard for freedom
had come by a marvelous stride in liumar
understanding to include justice and freedom
for the man who was black as well as for the
man who was white ; and from the day thai
idea dawned on men until the end had beer
177

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
attained, there was no thought in the West
ern Puritan's mind, with its inflexible sense
of duty, but to fight for its realization.
From, and before, the days when Storrs
had preached his philippics against slavery at
Hudson until freedom was made a political
issue under Giddings and Wade — who simply
put the old Connecticut Puritan idea of lib
erty into a new and potent form — the mass
of the people were constantly growing more
fervent in zeal, until they constituted, uncon
sciously, an army eager for the fray and only
awaiting a commander.
The same slow evolution of forces to
which Thomas Hooker, Puritan preacher of
Connecticut, had given an initial impulse in
1638 had by 1850 wrought the mass of Re
serve citizens to a realizing sense of the in
iquity of slavery, and by the operation of
happy laws of heredity those who were to be
the captains in the country-wide contest had
been slowly preparing for their great work.
The deep but silent, smoldering conviction of
the former was finally aroused and organized
for action by the fulminating words of the lat
ter, which ultimately fired the whole country.
178

A Conservation of Connecticut
But long before that result was reachec
the society of Puritan pioneers found itsel:
marked with a peculiar and proud distinction
The virile, uncompromising moral and polit
ical spirit of the people, as it began to exer
cise its destined dominance, provoked fron
their opponents of the press and stump th(
sneering assertion that the Connecticut Re
serve was " a State separate from Ohio." Ii
did virtually constitute a separate State, oi
the equal of a State, in sovereignty and ii
splendid isolation — a State in all save actua
organization. Its people had come to possess
and exert a power, probably, in proportion tc
their numbers, greater than any other in th(
nation, certainly greater than any in the West
and more than any other of their relativelj
small number they impressed the conscience
and swayed the destiny of the nation. Fron
the time of the Free-Soil movement to th(
close of the antislavery fight the Westen
Reserve of Connecticut was a literal fortress
of freedom and an exhaustless base of supplj
for the battle at the front.
The early leaders of this Western Puritar
force in its fight for freedom, the greatest mer
179

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
whom the Reserve contributed to the service
of the nation — Joshua Reed Giddings and
Benjamin Franklin Wade — were perfect types
of the Puritan pioneer society of which they
became the political representatives. As such
it is interesting to glance at their antecedents
and achievements ; for all that has been said
of the influence of ancestry and of moral idea
— of the persistence of Puritanism in the
class — finds forceful confirmation and apt il
lustration in their individual careers.
Giddings and Wade, the twin giants of
the Reserve, were of one backwoods county,
which they brought into national fame — huge
Ashtabula, the political Gibraltar of_ihe
Western abolitionists. These two stanch, un
polished statesmen were partners in the pro
fession of law, lifelong friends, colleagues in
Congress, one as Representative, the other as
Senator. Their origins and early experiences
were very like those of thousands of the early
comers to the Puritan colony. They had his
tories strangely similar to each other, and
they were typical of the times and the land
they lived in. Both were of the Puritan pa
triot stock and of distinguished lineage, as
180

A Conservation of Connecticut

ancient almost as the settlement of New Eng
land would admit. The Giddings family pro
genitor immigrated to Massachusetts in 1635,
and removed to Lyme, Conn., less than a cen
tury later. Their genealogy shows service
by some members in the French and Indian
War, the Revolution, the War of 1812, and
the war for the Union,
and it reveals the names
of distinguished Ameri
cans, such as Rufus Choate
and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The parents of Joshua R.
Giddings were very early
Connecticut settlers in
Pennsylvania, and it was
there — at Tioga Point —
that he was born, in 1795.
Eleven years later he was
brought to the newly opened Reserve, near
the site of Jefferson, which was destined to
become famous jointly as his and " Ben "
Wade's home.
Wade, like Giddings, was of very old fam
ily, the first American forbear becoming a
resident of Medford, Mass., in 1632. It takes
181

Joshua R. Giddings.

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
nature a long time to make a man of Benja
min Franklin Wade's stature, and evoluting
protoplasm and mysterious mind pass by many
strange meanders to perform the function.
Massive, rugged, a warrior born, if ever there
was one, Wade had strains of blood from two
poets — gentle Anne Dudley Bradstreet, daugh
ter of Governor Dudley, born 1612,. the fa
mous "Tenth Muse" and first poetess of
America; and austere, profoundly puritanic
Michael Wigglesworth, whose quaintly dismal
and abysmal Day of Doom gave Cotton
Mather pious delight, which he evinced by
prophesying that it " would be read in New
England until its pictures were realized by
the event." The Dudleys were a great peo
ple in the history of old England and of New
England, and so were the Uphams, who con
tributed to the molding of the Yankee Puri
tan Ohio Senator, while the Wades themselves
were not wanting in honor or fame, for sev
eral of them were officers in the patriot army,
and one a privateer of most remarkable ad
ventures. Of the complex yet homogeneously
Puritan and patriot blood, the son of poets
and fighters, Benjamin Franklin Wade was
182

A Conservation of Connecticut

born at " Feeding Hills," now in Springfield,
Mass., in the year 1800. He was next to the
youngest of eleven children, the younger
brother, beside himself the only one destined
to fame, being Edward Wade the future Con
gressman. " Ben " Wade, or " Frank," as he
was commonly called at his Ohio home, and
Edward Wade came to
the Reserve in 1821.
There, in Ashtabula
County, and eventually in
Jefferson, its seat of jus
tice, became united in fast
fellowship of political con
victions and general intel
lectual sympathy the lives
of the two strongest men
of their time in the West-
em Reserve. They were
not the first, but they were the foremost of a
succession of men of ability which this Con
necticut settlement sent to Congress. One,
at least, and probably both of them were
students at that famous old-time private law
school of the region which graduated many
great lawyers and several statesmen — the law
183

Benjamin Franklin
Wade.

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
office of Whittlesey & Newton, at Canfield,
in Mahoning County, The senior of this firm
of perhaps the ablest lawyers in the whole
settlement, Elisha Whittlesey, had already
entered Congress — he served from 1823 to
1838 — and Eben Newton went later,
Giddings succeeded Whittlesey in the
House of Representatives in 1838, and began
that wonderful career of twenty-one years in
Congress, in which, when the mantle of the
dying John Quincy Adams fell upon his
shoulders in 1840, he became, and remained
for a decade, the preeminent leader of the
antislavery forces in the House, The end
toward which his unceasing and herculean
labors tended was freedom ; and the means
by which that end was attained can be more
justly attributed to his foreseeing sagacity
than to any other single personal cause. He
laid down the principle on which the Free-
Soil party planted itself in 1848, and embod
ied it in the Republican platform of 1856 in
the resolution declaring the extension of
slavery unconstitutional. This was the fun
damental article of faith, and of ultimate
force, upon which organized political action
184

A Conservation of Connecticut
against slavery was started, and that author
ity upon our political history. Von Hoist,
testifies that " to Giddings more than to any
other person belongs the credit of having
with full consciousness made it the constitu
tional basis of the entire warfare against the
slave power, and of having applied it with a
consistency never before attained, to all ques
tions to which it was pertinent."
Wade supplemented in the Senate the
great work of Giddings in the House, coming
into the battle in its heat and remaining long
enough to be gratified by the complete vic
tory — which was not permitted to Giddings.
He served continuously for eighteen years
(1851-69), and became President of the Sen
ate. But a prouder distinction than that was
his in being second only to Giddings in the
struggle for freedom. In some respects he
was his superior.
Neither of these men, it must be noted,
were great orators in the true meaning of the
term, though both sometimes arose to heights
of eloquence which might fairly entitle them
to be so classed. Their immense power and
momentous achievement must be accredited
14 185

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
to the burning earnestness of their convic
tions, their indomitable spirit, and irresistible
aggressiveness. To this must be added the
intelligence and the temper of their constitu
encies, which, with that intense, vital practical
ity (heretofore alluded to as the Western
pioneers' paramount addition to Puritanism),
persisted in keeping men once proved able and
honest at the front of the fight as their cham
pions—a sapient policy, by the way, not to
be underestimated as a factor in the political
prestige not only of the Western Reserve, but
of the State of Ohio.
Both Giddings and Wade represented the
best of New England. The mind and morals
of Puritanism and an exalted patriotism found
convincing utterance through their personal
ities. But they were as representative of the
pioneers — as good examples' of the potential
ity of the " plain people " — as they were of
New England. Their education was of the
backwoods, and their gigantic growth of
physical and moral stature was gained there.
They could handle the rifle with the accuracy
of experts, and they learned to fell trees be
fore they studied Blackstone. Giddings
186

A Conservation of Connecticut
chopped wood and split rails, like Abraham
Lincoln, and Wade worked on the Erie Ca
nal, as Garfield did upon that in Ohio, Both
were stately, stalwart men, six feet or more
in stature, whose every motion displayed
power of mind and body. Both were mor
ally made up from the full trinity of ances
tral influences, supplemented by Western
vigor and radicalism. They had alike the
New England genius for general reform, rec
ognized its new needs in the West, and both
came early to oppose alcoholic intemperance,
as they did slavery, when the doctrine was
exceedingly unpopular.
The graves of these two friends, constant
companions, coworkers, as they were through
life, fittingly lie close together in the little
cemetery of the green and quiet village of
Jefferson, which their lives and works made
historic ground. Relics of the two fearless,
sturdy statesmen abound in the town. Their
quaint old law offices are preserved, and
these and the graves of Giddings and Wade
are alike the Mecca of pilgrimages of grateful
gray-headed black men who were one time
slaves, and of reverent readers of history.
18'7

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Something of the powerful personality of
these heroic men seems still to pervade the
shaded and hushed streets where once they
walked. The very quietude and simplicity
of the surroundings conforms to the character
of the men who fared forth from this rural
village ; but what a contrast it suggests to the
stern strenuousness of their careers and the
resounding clash of conflict they brought
about ! They were not the mere pioneers of
a place and people, but the resolute pioneers
of a vast moral revolution. Yet, practically,
the training of these warriors of world-wide
fame had its inception here in one of the ob
scurest villages of a young colony. They
were the greatest product of the Connecticut
Reserve, and its greatest giftjothe nation. It
was through them that the distinctive char-.
acter of the colony made its chief impress upon
the country and gained public fame. Reflec
tion upon their achievement and their influ
ence in molding the national mind compels
appreciation of the enormous significance of
the settlement and the truest triumph of Con
necticut in the West.
These men represented a terribly strong
188

A Conservation of Connecticut
and yet a morally restrained radicalism ; but
John Brown, also of the Reserve, a fierce and
fanatical radicalism. He, whom Fate hurled,
a human firebrand, to light the actual and
consuming conflagration in the already smok
ing flax, was brought here from Connecticut
as a child of flve years, and it was from here
that he and his sons went into "bleeding
Kansas," and he, ultimately, to that death
which has given him in history an equivocal
position between hero and fanatic.

189

CHAPTEE YII
THE reserve's CONTRIBUTIONS TO PUBLIC
SERVICE
Nothing denotes more decidedly than its
relatively large number of fanjpus men the
intellectual energy of a community. As the
old Connecticut was made conspicuous in the
first half of the nineteenth century by the
multitude of its prominent men (as is set forth
in Chapter I), so the New Connecticut became
noted in later generations for its prolific pro
duction of . men who became notable as law
yers, legislators, statesmen, soldiers, authors,
educators, scientists, inventors ; and thus, in
this respect, as in many others, asserted her
self the most worthy daughter of a wonderful
mother State.
There were other Congressmen than Wade
and Giddings in the Reserve's list who shed
luster upon it and performed valuable service
for the nation. Jacob Brinkerhoff, the fore-
190

Contributions to Public Service
runner of a family conspicuous in Ohio, and
one of the very few not of New England ori
gin, but of Hollandish and Huguenot stock
for many generations in America, came early
to Plymouth, on the extreme southern border
of the Reserve, and as a Congressman from
1843 to 1847 assisted the work of a Con
necticut-Pennsylvania colleague, David Wil
mot, the original draft of whose famous
" proviso " he drew. A relative, Henry R.
Brinkerhoff, went to Congress from one of
the western counties of the Reserve ; but
more noted of those from that region were
Eleutheros Cooke, Joseph M. Root, and James
Monroe, of Oberlin. Among those from the
eastern and middle districts there should not
pass unmentioned Peter Hitchcock, Elisha
Whittlesey, Jonathan Sloan, Sherlock J. An
drews, Edward Wade, Sidney Edgerton, John
Hutchins, Albert Gallatin Riddle, Rufus P.
Spalding, William H. Upson, Ezra B. Taylor,
Tom L. Johnson, and Stephen A. Northaway.
Of Senators not otherwise mentioned there
are the pioneer Harley Griswold, the latter-
time Henry B. Payne, and, latest of all, Mar
cus Alonzo Hanna. 191

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
James A. Garfield, it must also be borne
in mind, was a long-time Congressman, and
for a very short period Senator, before he was
President. This typical man of the Reseiwe,
who turned the eyes of the whole nation to
ward it, like Wade and Giddings, of the long-
lined New England stock from Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and New Hampshire, was born
at Orange, educated (in part) at Hiram, and
went to the White House from Mentor.
William McKinley, the second President of
the United States furnished by the Reserve,
like Garfield long time a Congressman, was
born at Niles.
Then, too, among men of note who have
entered the halls of national legislation from
other States, but who had earlier homes in
the Reserve, there should be mentioned Sen
ator and, earlier. Representative, Bishop W.
Perkins, who succeeded Preston B. Plumb,
from Kansas ; Senator John P. Jones, of Ne
vada ; Congressman Horr, of Michigan, who
emigrated from the westem, and Senator Ju
lius Caesar Burrows, of the same State, from
the eastern, portion of the Reserve (who left
two brothers of not less ability and of equally
192

Contributions to Public Service
classic names in his old home). It may be
remarked en passant that the apportionment
will only admit of a very minute percentage
of those natives of the Reserve who have the
requisite ability entering Congress directly
from this phenomenally favored region, and
so some of the most aspiring must seek less
crowded, if more roundabout, paths by way
of other localities. Altogether, the Reserve
has supplied the nation with two Presidents,
five Senators, and its full complement of Con
gressmen, besides members of the Cabinet,
foreign ministers, and United States district
judges. When it is borne in mind that the
Reserve is but little more than one-seventh
of the State of Ohio, it will be seen that she
has supplied men of national note in excess
even of the large proportion for which Ohio
has deservedly held high repute.
But her contributions to the civil roster
of the State have been scarcely less important
and indicative of her prominence as an inte
gral part of the commonwealth than have those
to the nation. She has furnished a full score
of its Supreme Court judges, among them
perhaps more than her share of Chief Justices
193

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
(of whom one not heretofore mentioned was
Judge Rufus P. Ranney, a jurist of national
reputation), and no less than six chief exec
utives, including the "war Governors." Of
these the pioneer Samuel Huntington — to
whom tribute has already been paid — was
her first. He was the second elected Gov
ernor of the State, and served from 1808 to
1810. Later came Seabury Ford (1848-'49),
and Reuben Wood (1850-'51), both, like
Huntington, New Englanders. When the
war broke out David Tod, of the old Connect
icut settlement of Youngstown, was elected
Governor in the autumn of 1861, and gave the
State an efficient administration, which made
it one of the strong forces in the prosecution
of the war. In the campaign of 1863 another
candidate from the Reserve was put forward
— John Brough, a native, indeed, of that other
New England settlement, Marietta,, but then
a resident of Cleveland, a "war Democrat,"
who had years before been a popular and
powerful leader, and he was triumphantly
elected over Vallandigham. Brough died in
the summer of 1865, and was succeeded by
the Lieutenant-Governor; but at the fall
194-

Contributions to Public Service
election still another Western Reserve candi
date Avas put forward in the late Major-Gen
eral Jacol) Dolson Cox, who was essentially
a "war Governor," though after war time.
The most distinguished Ohio soldier who
went into the war without military education
or experience (whose close second was Gar
field, also a major-general from civil life) was
overwhelmingly elected, and was the sixth
representative of the Connecticut corner of
the State in the executive office. Later, Gen
eral Cox was Secretary of the Interior iu
President Grant's first Cabinet, and still later
a member of Congress.
If we pursue the list of civil war gen
erals contributed by the Reserve we find that,
besides Garfield and Cox, there were the two
Paines — Halbert E. and Eleazar A. (the latter
a graduate of West Point) — both major-gen
erals, Q. A. Gillmore, Russell A. Alger, Emer
son Opdyke, Joel A. Dewey, and J. W. Reilly.
But not alone in politics, statesmanship,
and martial glory have the matron's jewels
shone. The domains of literature and art and
the department of education and general cul
ture in the country at large have received re-
195

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
peatedly the impetus of some reenforcement
from the intellectually fresh and fecund West
ern Reserve, though in the latter cause it may
perhaps be admitted that she has done more
for her own sons and daughters than for those
of her neighbors.
As the child of Connecticut who could
find no better use for the price paid for the
lands of this district than to devote it to her
_public_schools, it was natural that the young
Connecticut should foster education. She did
so from the outstart. Not only the common
schools, but institutions of higher learning
sprang up with surprising quickness, and flour
ished with astonishing vigor, in some cases, to
most gratifying fruition.
Of several academies in the new settle
ment, one developed into Western Reserve
College, located at Hudson. The germ was
planted in 1803, and the college came into
existence in 1826. The strong ]3redilection
of the people was expressed in the pet patro
nymic bestowed upon this institution — " the
Yale of tlie_ W_est " — and that, too, defined
the aim and ambition of its founders. It at
tained dignity and thoroughness, and with a
196

Contributions to Public Service
faculty containing from the first some famous
educators soon became an institution of con
siderable worth in developing culture and
character in the New Connecticut.
It was preeminently the college of the
first-born of the pioneers, and many of the
more well-to-do and aspiring among them
laid there the foundations for future useful
ness and success. It put forth at an early
day a medical department, which obtained
wide recognition. This was planted in Cleve
land, to which city the entire institution, now
known as the Western Reserve University —
of which Adelbert College, nobly endowed, is
the chief factor — was removed in 1882. An
exception from the first to the rule that small
colleges are feeble and sorry institutions, it
has constantly risen toward ideal standards as
it has increased in attendance and general
prosperity. A great impetus was given its
ascendancy by the reorganization effected
under Rev. H. C. Haydn, and now under
the presidency of Rev. Charles F. Thwing it
has perhaps a thousand students, a large fac
ulty containing many educators of more than
local note, and a noble libraiy, with all de-
197

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
partments housed in stately, scholastic archi
tecture. But in one respect it remains un
changed since it was the Yale of the pioneers'
sons : although unsectarian, a great prepon
derance of its students are of the Presby
terian and Congregational faiths, which pre
vailed among their fathers.
As we have already seen, it was an early
president of this college who was the pioneer
of antislavery agitation in the West. The in
stitution became famous largely through his
radicalism, but the marked ability of its fac
ulty also contributed to its repute. Many of
its members attained distinction there or else
where, Laurens P. Hickok, its first Professor
of Theology, becoming President of Union
College, New York, and others being called
to the larger Eastern colleges.
Hiram and Wooster — the former known
principally to fame through the presidency of
that sound scholar the late Burke A. Hins
dale, D. D., subsequently of Michigan Univer
sity, and the fact that it was the school which
Garfield attended ; and the latter kept in the
minds of men by its medical department, ri
valing in Cleveland that of the Western Re-
198

Contributions to Public Service
serve — were two more meritorious institutions
which attested the zeal of the young colony
in education. Oberlin came into being, and still stands
for an idea about equally embodied in town
and college, both rather curiously created and
maintained by one force. It had its origin in
1833 in an evangelistic movement, and may
be regarded as an extra-condensed concretion,
or crystallization, of the ultra-radical religious
element in the Reserve, just as " the Yale of
the West " was of the more conservative mind.
Oberlin carried coeducation to a convincing
success with a rush, and it may be looked
upon as demonstrating equally well another
coeducation than that combining the sexes —
a coeducation in Congregationalism and secu
lar science. It represents radicalism in .prac
tical application (even to the prohibition of
tobacco), the most marked demonstration of
which was in the old-time abolition movement
and its service as a station of the " Under
ground Railroad." It affords a liberal train
ing to thousands — it has about 1,400 stu
dents — and sends them into the world as
well equipped with religious and philosoph-
199

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ical ideas of the " benevolent theory " as with
more worldly knowledge. Its great names
were those of Finney and Keep — Rev. Charles
G. Finney and " Father " John Keep — but its
greatest that of ex-President James Harris
Fairchild, all of New England, and the last-
named probably the foremost educator of the
Western Reserve.
Of the other advanced educational insti
tutions. Lake Erie College, founded at Pains-
viUe, in 1856, for the education of young
women, is peculiarly of New England initia
tive, being the eldest daughter of Mount
Holyoke. Besides all these, there is Buchtel
College at Akron, Baldwin and German
Wallace at Berea, and various normal and
special schools, as the Case School of Applied
Science, in Cleveland.
Education flourished so well on the fresh,
strong soil to which it was transplanted that
some of the best seed was carried back to
replenish the old garden from whence the
stock came, or, to change the metaphor, a
reflex tide set in, and Connecticut, which had
long supplied teachers for her colony, some
years ago began to receive them from it. The
200

Contributions to Public Service
Western Reserve became a recruiting ground,
and Western Reserve University, especially,
a recruiting station, for the faculty of Yale.
George Trumbull Ladd, D. D., LL. D., who
a score of years ago became identified with
Yale, and is now its Professor of Psychology,
went from Painesville, where he was born,
and though not indeed by way of the uni
versity mentioned, he was probably the pio
neer of the native-born in reverse movement
from West to East, and to his success may
be attributed Yale's predilection for Ohio
professors. He enjoys a world-wide reputa
tion, and has lately been made the recipient
of unusual honors in Japan, India, and other
far countries. His is perhaps the subtlest
mind the Western Reserve has contributed
to the educational world and the domain of
pure thought.
Even the common schools of the New
Connecticut are of uncommon excellence.
President Eliot, of Harvard, has commended
those of Cleveland as an example worthy the
emulation of Boston. Those throughout the
Reserve are equally well organized and con
ducted. 15 201

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

The Rev, I, Jennings was the author of
what was known (from the place of his resi
dence) as " the Akron plan," which was ap
plied eventually to the schools of the whole
State, and, indeed, of numerous other States ;
and Hon, Harvey Rice, of Cleveland, from
his zeal in forwarding its adoption by the
Legislature, became popularly known as the
"Father of the Ohio
School System."
But it was to anoth
er resident of the Re
serve, the late Thomas
W. Harvey, more than
to any other single citi
zen, that the schools of
Ohio came to owe the
elevation of their stand-
HoN. Thomas W. Harvey, ard and that general
effectiveness of system
which gave them fame even in Boston ! A
New Hampshire Yankee who looked like
the ideal German professor and had the
poise of a Greek philosopher, nearly the
whole of his long life was spent as a superin
tendent of several favored schools of the Re-
202

Contributions to Public Service
serve until his fitness for the position, long
masked by modesty, led to his election as
State school superintendent. He was the
author, too, of text-books used in half the
States of the Union, and altogether the most
useful and popular educator which the re
gion ever supplied to the common-school
system of the State.
To the literature of the country, it may
be briefly said, the Reserve has probably
contributed far more than its quota of au
thors, and among them several of first rank.
One of the first, in a chronological sense at
least, was curiously enough a woman, and
one not usually accredited to the Reserve or
to the West — Delia Salter Bacon, born at
Tallmadge, 1811, the original exponent of
the theory of the Baconian authorship of the
poems and dramas usually ascribed to one
William Shakespeare.
Albert Gallatin Riddle, lawyer and mem
ber of Congress, formed a connecting link
between statesmanship and author-craft, and
to him must be given the title of the novelist
of the Western Reserve, while Howells will,
of course, be acclaimed the leading fictionist
203

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

and general man of letters frowy the same
favored region. Riddle's Bart Ridgley and
The Portrait will live at least in the land
they vividly picture.
William Dean Howells is inseparably as
sociated with the town of Jefferson (where
his father, also an author, spent most of his
life), and upon the mere
mention of his name
some suggestion of his
easeful grace, his gen
tleness and literary ge
niality, merges with the
sterner memories of the
rugged statesman who
lived there. As if in
apprehension of a pos
sibility that some few
souls in the whole round world of fiction
lovers should not rise to the refined realism
of the Reserve's first literary artist, the same
county which contributed Howells to the
country kindly made it a present of antipo
dal character in Edward S. Ellis, the father
of the dime novel and of many better things.
Miss Edith Thomas, most classic of all
204

/ro^:?^^^^.^ ,

Contributions to Public Service
our women singers, comes also from Ash
tabula County. So, too, do Judge Albion
W. Tourgee, Thomas Jay Hudson, and Am
brose Bierce.
But other sections of the Reserve have
not been without literary light — and lights.
The late Prof. Burke A. Hinsdale was as
eminent an author as educator, and labored
to good effect in controversial, critical, and
historical lines of literature. General Jacob
Dolson Cox obtained fame as a writer upon
the civil war, as well as an actor in it, and
Prof. George Trumbull Ladd, of Yale, con
joins authorship with college duties.
James Ford Rhodes, author of that mon
umental work The History of the United
States from the Compromise of 1850, which,
as it has progressed through four large octavo
volumes, has revealed rare judicial qualities
as well as brilliancy of style, is of Cleveland
birth and New England parentage. Sarah
C. Woolsey, better known as "Susan Coo-
lidge," was bom and spent her youth in the
same city, and the latter clause is true of
Sarah Knowles Bolton. Constance Feni-
more Woolson's whole literary life was also
205

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

spent there, as was also most of that of John
Hay before literature suffered a loss that
diplomacy might derive a gain. George
Kennan, of Russian -travels fame, was bom
at Norwalk. G. Frederick Wright, author
as well as scientist, and the breezy Alfred
Henry Lewis, are among those who claim the
Reserve as birthplace.
In the realm of art there are fewer emi
nent names to boast, but they are not totally
lacking. James H. and
William H. Beard, the
famous painters (who
made animals the me
dium of subtlest satires
of men), were originally
of Painesville and the
sons of David Beard, of
the surveying party of
1796. Among younger
artists who call the Re
serve home, probably
the best known is Ken-
yon Cox, born at Warren; and Frederick
Opper, the cartoonist, comes from Madison.
If we seek to chronicle the names of those
206

Jay Cooke.

Contributions to Public Service

other men of the Reserve whose lights have
shone for the nation or the whole world, our
task becomes too great. At most only a few
can be mentioned of the many who have
fame, but the list must
include first of all the
veteran financier Jay
Cooke — the Robert
Morris of the rebellion
— born in Sandusky,
in 1821, and the latest
survivor of all the
Ohioans who were of
the first rank of use
fulness in the period
of the civil war. Mr.
Cooke then, and ever
since, a citizen of Philadelphia, financed the
Federal operations to the amount of $2,000,
000,000, raising funds where others failed,
and thus making possible the successful pros
ecution of the war. There were also those
twin masters of electricity, Thomas A. Edison
and Charles F. Brush, born respectively at
Milan and Euclid ; Piatt R. Spencer, the in
ventor of the Spencerian system of writing ;
207

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
and such scientists as Jared P. Kirtland,
John Strong Newberry, Charles Whittlesey,
and G. Frederick Wright.
Thus the Western Reserve is shown to
have become a community of which the out
goings, rather than the incomings, are now
of paramount concern. She gives more than
she receives.
Cleveland, her metropolis, which had only
seven souls in 1800, had by the middle of
the century — largely owing to the location of
the Ohio Canal terminus there, through the
agency of Alfred Kelley — a population of
over 25,000 ; in 1860, 43,838 ; in 1870, 92,829 ;
in 1880, 160,146; in 1890, 261,353; and in
1900 reached 381,768.
But not alone in numbers is the accumu
lated strength of this people to be expressed.
Men like Henry Chisholm and Joseph Per
kins gave it the initials of impetus which,
continued by others, have created a lake com
merce five-sixths as large as the entire coast
wise and foreign commerce of New York,
which is 12,000,000 tons per year, and have
made it in ship-building (if the construction
of war-vessels at Philadelphia be excepted
208

Contributions to Public Service
from the computation) second only in the
whole world to the Clyde. And these same
men, and others, as Leonard Case, J. H.
Wade, and Amasa Stone, by their munifi
cence have adorned the city with college
buildings, libraries, and parks, so that grate
ful evidences of philanthropic expenditure
are as conspicuous as the gigantic commercial
apparatus for the getting of gain.
Cleveland long ago passed beyond the pos
sibility of being properly compared with the
chief city of Connecticut. She is not the New
Haven, nor the Hartford, but the Boston of
the West — Boston-like in the conservatism of
her financial institutions, in her commercial
vigor, her character and culture.
But if Cleveland has its prototype in Bos
ton, its environing Western Reserve still pre
sents the moral contour and color of the
mother State. Bearing in mind the fact that
it is about 175,000 acres, or, say, a couple of
thousand farms, larger than Connecticut, and
knowing that it has as a whole kept fairly
apace with its metropolis in population, one
is not surprised to find it only lacking about
9,000 of the 700,000 mark in 1890, and reach-
209

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ing in 1900 the round number of 884,445,
which comes within a few thousands of the
population of Connecticut. Thus while only
a fraction — scarcely more than a seventh — of
the big Buckeye State, the New Connecticut
surpasses in people several of the important
commonwealths. It has fully four times as
many as little Delaware, more than twice as
many as Rhode Island or Vermont or New
Hampshire, while it handsomely exceeds the
great State of Maine and almost equals the
population of West Virginia.
It becomes thus apparent that in numbers,
commercial importance, geographical extent
— in all save mere formal organization — the
Connecticut Western Reserve constitutes the
equivalent of a State ; while in its unity of
purpose and power of influence it has unques
tionably exercised in the affairs of the nation
and in the broad interests of the people a
sway such as few States, large or little, have
equaled. It is in this achievement, in the perpetua
tion of principles and of an individual charac
ter as complete as if bounded by State lines,
or lofty mountains and wide rivers, and in the
210

Contributions to Public Service
unquestioned fact that more than any other
similar body of people west of the AUeghe-
nies it "has impressed the brain and con
science of the country," that the perseverance
of the Connecticut colonists who planted Wy
oming and vvere for a half century militant in
Pennsylvania was finally rewarded and ren
dered triumphant in Ohio. Persistent dream
of colonial expansion had never in our his
tory more palpable, if less theatric, realiza
tion in more peaceful conquest.

211

" What constitutes a State ?
Not high rais'd battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate ;
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ;
Not bays and broad armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ;
Not starr'd and spangled courts
Where low browed baseness wafts perfumes to pride.
No : Men, high-minded men.
Men, who their duties know,
But know their rights and knowing dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow.
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain.
These constitute a State." Sir William Jones (1746-1794).
States are not great
Except as men make them ;
Men are not great except they do and dare ;
But States, like men,
Have destinies that take them —
That bear them on, not knowing why or where.
Eugene F. Waee.

213

CHAPTEE VIII
OHIO AND THE "GREAT ORDINANCE" OF 1787
That commonwealth into whose unorgan
ized territory Connecticut, by the most ener
getic and momentous movement of internal
expansion that the Western world ever wit
nessed, thrust six hundred miles from her
own borders, the largest distinct organized
colony to be found in the whole nation, has
now rounded a century of statehood. By
reason of that fact, because, too, of many
conjoining links between them, because both
of certain similarities and contrasts in their
histories, it becomes appropriate, if not im
perative, to chronicle here some of the essen
tials of her curious origin and great career.
The reader is asked, therefore, to pass
from the comparatively simple story of one
people in three States to the consideration of
the more complicated study of many peoples
215

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
in one State — a State historically the most
cosmopolitan in the Union and absolutely
unique in the entire aggregation, as to origin,
upbuilding, and influence.
Ohio, which leaped from nothingness to
third place in the Union in the brief space of
forty years, and held that position for half a
century, has furnished Chief Executives for
the United States for a total period of more
than twenty years, and furthermore it has
contributed legislators, jurists, soldiers, states
men neither in number, influence, nor general
value of public service secondary to those of
any State in the sisterhood, while it has been
also one of the stanchest bulwarks for the
preservation of our political integrity, and one
of the strongest agencies for our material
prosperity. A swift survey of the means through
which the remarkable ascendency of this
State in the affairs of the nation was attained,
through the wise and fortuitous laying of her
foundations, together with a recounting of
some of its important services for the nation,
will reveal a plexus of causes for the prestige
the State possesses fully as interesting to con-
216

Pi<
K Pio

How the Connecticut pioneers came into the Weste in Reserve.

The "Great Ordinance*' of 1787
template as is the net result to which they
have tended.
Looking backward from the vantage-point
of what has been accomplished, it is easy to
detect what were the chief formative influ
ences in the projection of the State. As is
everywhere apparent in political retrospects,
one will readily see that in this instance while
many of the means by which the State ar
rived at its peculiar prominence have been
what must be called adventitious ones — the
inexorable flow of a great group of beneficent
results from fixed and favoring causes, unin
fluenced by the wisdom or the action of man —
others are traceable to the sagacity of states
men (of the early Union and to some extent
of the State) and the general diffusion of a
high intelligence among the people at large —
the citizens of the State.
To say that the causes of this common
wealth's healthful growth to prosperity and
robust usefulness were various, is to repeat
one of the veriest commonplaces of history.
But the happy conjunction of causes, the con
spiring of diverse influences of man and nature,
toward a single end, has rarely had so perfect
16 217

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
an illustration in the whole fleld of history
as that which Ohio's founding and develop
ment affords. Geographical conditions and
the greed of man supplemented the far-seeing
and unselfish measures of patriots. If there
are " psychological moments " in the lives of
nations as well as in those of men, one of
those moments or periods must have been
seized for the movement which resulted in
Ohio. Its settlement projected by patriots
under the personal counsel of Washington ;
its fundamental law conceived in a spirit
which seemed almost superhuman in its far-
seeing (though its adoption was accomplished
by very human craft) ; reaching statehood
largely through the urgent political necessities
of the new Jeffersonian Democracy ; its popu
lation contributed to in the firf t flush of their
independence and new-found strength by the
people of the whole nation — every episode of
the times favored, and it seemed almost as if
the very elements themselves fostered its be
ginnings, and indeed, as if all nature was es
pecially lubricated for the occasion of this ori
gin, as was fltting enough should be the case,
for the launching of such a ship of State.
218

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
The Ordinance of Freedom, or the Ordi
nance of 1787, was, of course, the great favor
ing first cause in the destiny of Ohio (as well
as of the four other States of the old North
west Territory to which it equally applied).
This, too, was the first and chief of those
formative causes operating on Ohio, which
involved thought, foresight, purpose, and ulti
mately distinguished Ohio as a State very
different from the sporadic growths lying to
the southward. Kentucky and Tennessee may
be said, like Topsy, to have " just growed."
They were resultant simply from the vague,
aimless, undirected and lawless individual
pioneerings of the Virginian and Carolinian
people. But Ohio had parents. It had pro
genitors, projectors. It was the child of pur
pose. Its career was most kindly conserved
and promoted by destiny and by fortuitous
circumstance, but it owed much to good birth.
The Ordinance of 1787 clothed the soil with
law before the footprint of an authorized set
tler fell upon it.
The establishment of freedom forever in
the Northwest Territory, through the Ordi
nance of 1787, has employed hundreds of
219

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
able pens, and never ceases to be the favorite
theme for eloquent tongues ; but another phase
of the operation of the great ordinance para
mount to its prohibition of slavery seldom or
never receives its proper meed of praise.
And this is a vital one in the consideration of
Ohio's foundation and upbuilding. Let the
student who seeks to understand Ohio first
of all come to a realization of the fact that in
the prohibition of slavery from the territory
northwest of the Ohio River the ordinance be
came the agency for the selection of the people
who were to ultimately settle that vast land —
and earliest of all Ohio. The prohibition
of slavery within the territory was, of course,
an emphatic exclusion of the slaveholder, but
it was an equally emphatic invitation to all
those, whether of North or South, who op
posed slavery. And that meant the men of
firmest moral stamina in the whole country,
especially the South — the men who morally
and politically were three-quarters of a cen
tury in advance of their fellows.
This is a topic which will be hereafter re
verted to for the sake of some specific proof
and illustration of the effective working of the
220

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
measure in the matter alluded to ; but in this
connection it must suffice to say that the man
ner in which through the passing years the
Ordinance of Freedom went on its work of
sifting from the whole country the primal
population of Ohio marks its greatest service
to the State. It is as a stupendous moral en
gine, working automatically, silently, with
ceaseless strength, through a long period, al
most as perfectly as nature's own inflexible
law of evolution, for the formation of a State
by selection of the best from all States, that we
must view the ordinance in its mighty, mold
ing force upon Ohio, and finally upon the na
tion. A far broader effect, of course, the or
dinance had in its bearings upon the destiny
of the country at large. It prepared the
way by making the great Northwest free-soil
territory for the overthrow of slavery in
America, virtually deciding the battle before
the birth of the soldiers who fought it. But
the fact remains that it was more specifically
in the ways here set forth that it affected the
State which forms the subject of present con
sideration, and of whose phenomenal plant
ing and rise in the sisterhood of States it
221

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
was the first humanly plarvned and purposed
cause. The ordinance, which was really the con
stitution of the old Northwest Territory, and
marked its legal beginning, was the culmina
tion of a long series of endeavors in the direc
tion of wise and beneficent measures tend
ing toward the nationalization of the West,
involving the deepest concern of the leading
statesmen of the time, and vying inmomentous-
ness Avith the formation of the Union itself.
To Maryland is due the credit for the initial
movement, or what one searching student of
history has called " the pioneer thought," in re
gard to the nationalization of the lands north
west of the Ohio, ultimately accomplished by
the cession of State claims. Then came the
consideration of providing for and planting
government in the domain thus vested in the
nation. Four ordinances had been brought
before Congress in turn, and finally one had
been passed, after the expiration of three
years ; but even that was a nullity, and was
ultimately repealed by the Ordinance of Free
dom. This came into force with surprising sud-
222

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787

denness after the long and tedious delays and
the successive failures of the preceding meas
ures. Why ? Because a land company had
been formed in New England — the Ohio Land
Company — the outgrowth of a conference at
the close of the War of Independence, in
1783, between General Jedediah Huntington
and General Rufus Putnam ; and the agent of
this company was offer
ing to purchase a large
body of lands— 1 , 5 00,000
acres — northwest of the
Ohio and plant there a
colony, if Congress would
enact such legislation for
the territory as would be
satisfactory to the pro
posing purchasers.
This agent, the Rev.
Manasseh Cutler, LL. D.,
of Ipswich, Mass., Con
gregational clergyman, got into his gig, and
rolling leisurely down to New York, accom
plished in one week what had baffled others
for three years. He secured the passage of
the immortal ordinance on July 13, 1787.
223

Rev. Manasseh Cutler.

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
As to the authorship of the document, now
very generally claimed for him, it was prob
ably a composite labor. He wrote some por
tions of it. So also very likely did Nathan
Dane, for whom Webster claimed the au
thorship, and Rufus King ; so, too, perhaps
Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson.
Thomas Jefferson had much to do with it,
or rather with a former and in some re
spects similar ordinance, which had con
tained a clause for the ultimate prohibition
of slavery, but which had failed of passage.
Whatever the doubts concerning Cutler's
authorship of the ordinance, it is incontestable
that he was the agent who secured its passage,
and that, too, with its clause absolutely, and
from the date of enactment, prohibiting
slavery, whereas the great infiuence of Jeffer
son had been insufficient to secure the passage
of a far weaker one not long previously. The
truth was the Rev. Manasseh Cutler was a
prince of diplomats and the pioneer of lobby
ists, and he had a strong cause to plead be
fore a body so favorably disposed toward the
acceptance of his general proposition — so
keenly alive to the benefits that would accrue
224

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
to the country through its acceptance — that
they were willing to make some concessions
to insure its carrying out. The company he
represented was composed almost entirely of
New England officers of the patriot army,
288 in number, all personally known to
Washington and generally to the Congress
and country. Such a colony as they would
plant on the Ohio was precisely what the
sagacious among public men had long sought.
Thus far the West was in the most unsat
isfactory condition — a menace to the Union
rather than an assurance of safety. Wash
ington had not long before this said : " The
Western States stand, as it were, upon a pivot
— the touch of a feather would turn them any
way " — and he had advised the applying of
" the cement of interest to bind aU parts of
the Union together by indissoluble bonds."
The fact that the character of the men pro
posing to plant a colony on the Ohio was be
yond question, and that their ability and dis
position gave double guarantee that they
would bind the West to the East " by indis
soluble bonds," constituted the inducement
that moved Congress almost unanimously and
225

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

with startling celerity to pass the ordinance.
Thus a mere handful of intending settlers of
Ohio dictated and secured the fundamental
law for the whole Northwest Territory, and
made it free soil forever. Seldom in all his
tory has so momentous a result proceeded
from so relatively an insignificant cause.
The next year — on April 7, 1788 — the pio
neer contingent of the New England Ohio
Company — led by
General Rufus Put
nam, of Massachu
setts, a distinguished
officer of the Revo
lution, and nephew
of General Israel
Putnam — dropping
down the " beautiful
river " from Pitts
burg in a rude
boat, appropriately
named the May
flower, landed at the
mouth of the Muskingum and founded Mari
etta, the first organized, lawful English set
tlement in a State which, so far from ever
226

Gen. Rufus Putnam.

O ¦ a

IS

tpi ' a

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
being open to the imputation of standing
" upon a pivot," was speedily to become and
forever remain one of the firmest buttresses
of the Federal Union.
There had been prior to this time a strag
gling and sparse fringe of frontiersmen along
the west bank of the Ohio, people who occupied
the backwoods very much as did the pioneers of
Kentucky ; but there was no organized settle
ment, and no legal settlement, because until the
time of the Ohio Company's purchase therehad
been no law laid upon the land. Christian
Frederick Post, the Moravian missionary, had
in 1 761 built a cabin on the Tuscarawas, which
it is supposed was the first white man's house
in the limits of the future Ohio ; and in 1 785-86
the government had built, at the mouth of
the Muskingum, Fort Harmar, where a small
garrison was maintained. This, though not
a settlement, served admirably to protect that
made at Marietta on the opposite shore.
Thus to all intents and purposes the be
ginnings of Ohio were made, as has been re
lated, by the New Englanders at Marietta.
They began the progressive and permanent
occupation of the region that was to become
227

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Ohio, and were the true pioneers of civilization
within its limits. They immediately set up
the institutions of local government, opened
schools and a church, and prudentially en
closed their homes in a fort which they called
" Campus Martius," and which afforded them
a sense of security during the period of Indian
hostilities — mostly far away. It was from
these soldier settlers of Marietta, and in the
very first days of their Ohio residence, that
there came the favorite and famous nickname
of the State. They were greatly admired by
the Indians because of their generally high
stature and erect and soldierly bearing, and
one of them who was particularly the object
of adulation. Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, who
stood six feet four and as straight as the In
dians themselves, they called " Hetuck " — that
is, the Buckeye — -which in Ohio, at least, was
a tree conspicuous for its height and sym
metry. Gradually the name became a generic
appellation for the early Ohioans, and finally,
in the "log-cabin campaign" of 1840, was
firmly fixed upon the State.
The enactment of the great ordinance had
set others than the New Englanders upon the
228

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787

project of casting their fortunes in the West,
and several movements were quickly made
tending toward that end. John Cleves
Symmes and associates,
of New Jersey, in the
same year purchased a
million acres of land on
the Ohio between the
two Miami Rivers, and,
spurred to emulation by
the eclat with which the
wild had been opened
at Marietta, these people
made three settlements
within their tract before
the expiration of 1788,
the second of which, founded December 24th,
as Losantiville, became famous as Cincinnati,
for nearly a century the metropolis of Ohio,
and justly entitled the " Queen City of the
West." In the meantime, on July 15, 1788, was
formally instituted at Marietta the first gov
ernment, save in a mere nominal sense, that
had ever held sway over the vast Northwest
Territoiy. Congress had on October 5, 1787,
229

John Cleves Symmes,

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
elected its president. General Arthur St. Clair,
as Governor of the Territory, but he had only
now arrived in the settlement. Winthrop
Sargent had been made secretary, Samuel
Holden Parsons, James M. Varnum, and John
Cleves Symmes judges. In their various
nativities these men gave some suggestion of
the composite nature of the population which
was destined, to characterize Ohio, to consti
tute one of its chief claims to uniqueness, and
to figure as a leading source of its ultimate
strength. St. Clair was a Scotchman, in
America since the French and Indian War,
and at the time of his appointment a Pennsyl
vanian. Sargent was from Massachusetts,
Parsons from Connecticut, Varnum from
Rhode Island, and Symmes -from New Jersey.
The Territorial period abounded with oc
currences of important nature, only two or
three of which, however, will be mentioned
here, as either necessary to show the sequence
of events or having a bearing upon the future
of the State, among other causes, which it is
purposed to set forth. Of the latter class, of
what may be called causative happenings,
were the Indian wars, of which the chief
230

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
events were St. Clair's defeat and Wayne's
victory. These were events in themselves of
large importance, if we recall that the casu
alties in the former were far larger, and the
results of the latter, greater than in any battle
of the Revolution. But they were far more
significant to the people of the West, in that
they afforded a palpable demonstration that
the Federal army was fighting for their bene
fit, and because of that reflection laying in
the breasts of the frontiersmen a feeling of
gratitude, and rendering deeper that dignify
ing sense of nationalism which had its begin
ning in the understanding of the principles of
the great ordinance and the peculiar con
ditions of the cosmopolitan settlement of the
country. The Territorial government had for some
time little to do in a civil way, for the great
influx of people had not yet set in, and it was
estimated that in 1790 the whole vast Terri
tory had a population of only about 4,300
souls, of whom nearly one-half were in the
remote French settlements of Kaskaskia, Vin-
cennes, and Sault Ste. Marie.
But the year 1796 marked the beginning
231

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
of big accessions, and was one of the most im
portant in the history of the State It was
then that, Wayne's victory and treaty having
dispelled all apprehension of Indian hostility,
settlers came more numerously into that part
of the Territory that in less than a decade was
to be carved into Ohio. And it was then
that the remarkable compositeness of popula
tion heretofore alluded to was to be carried
a few steps farther in its inclusion of variety.
Its settlements formerly consisted mainly of
Massachusetts men (at Marietta) and of New
Jersey men (in and about Cincinnati) ; but
now were thrown open to incomers the huge
tracts reserved respectively by Virginia and
Connecticut, the former including more than
4,000,000 acres, known as the Virginia
Military District, shaped like a wedge, with
its broad base resting on the Ohio, and its
point extending northward between the Scioto
and Miami Rivers, to the very heart of the
State ; and the latter consisting of nearly
3,000,000 acres extending in an oblong, 120
miles from the boundary of Pennsylvania
along Lake Erie. The first of these, reserved
by Virginia for the rewards of its Revolution-
232

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
ary soldiers, was settled this year at Chilli-
cothe by a company from Kentucky (although
they were originally Virginians) led by Gen
eral Nathaniel Massie ; and the Connecticut
Reserve, held by the Yankee State for the
benefit of her school fund, was settled by a
little band of her own colonists led by Gen
eral Moses Cleaveland, who left his name
upon the geography of Ohio, in the town
which he founded, now become the chief city
of the State. In the meantime the Symmes
settlements had been extended to Dayton,
and the lands lying across the Ohio west of
Pennsylvania and Virginia — and between the
Ohio Company's purchase on the South and
the Connecticut Reserve on the North, which
had been surveyed as the " Seven Ranges,"
the first of all the Congress lands in the whole
public domain — were receiving their share of
immigration, mainly from the contiguous ter
ritory across the river. And so it came about
that by the year 1796 the future State had
five separate bodies of population, and of as
many distinct elements or origins.
Of all of these, the Virginia element,
which had, from the first, men of marked
17 233

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ability in its midst, more attracted others, and
partly because of the bestowal of land upon
its Revolutionary officers, and partly because
these lands were of an excellence which made
them desirable to settlers, who readily pur
chased them, grew most rapidly, and by the
time Ohio came to be ushered into organic
being as a State, dominated not only its
founding, but for a considerable period its
destinies. Chillicothe, as a daughter of Vir
ginia, with a certain poetical propriety, be
came the mother of governors and the nour-
isher of robust politicians.
These Virginians formed the nucleus of
the new Westem Democracy, and rallying
around them the sympathizers with their faith
to be found scattered here and there through
the other settlements, taking advantage of
the rise of the Jeffersonian Republican party
in national affairs and the political exigencies
of its leader, which would be well served by
the creation of a new State — taking advan
tage, too, of that spirit of advanced and pro
nounced democratic feeling always evident on
the frontier, and more than all else, of the
increasing personal unpopularity of Governor
234

The "Great Ordinance" of 1787
St. Clair — they overruled the opposing Feder
alists who had their strongholds in the less
populous settlements of the Ohio Company
and in the Western Reserve, and created the
State of Ohio.
The Massachusetts and New England
Federalists of Marietta before their feet
touched the soil had given the region that
they were to make their home a marvelous
and far-reaching fundamental law, providing
for the exclusion of slavery forever and the
" support of religion and learning," but it
remained for the Virginians (with a small
sprinkling from some of the other elements of
the composite population) to give the terri
tory statehood.

235

CHAPTEE IX
OHIO ACHIEVES STATEHOOD
If Ohio has experienced a prominence
more conspicuous in the field of politics than
in any other, it has come naturally by that
peculiar form of prestige, for it was bom, so
to speak, at the close of one of the most
adroit and intricate political schemings, and
in one of the fiercest of political fights, and if
the State has been determinedly devoted to
politics, its choice may be very appropriately
ascribed to the mysterious influence, of pre
natal impression.
Statehood was not achieved by a stroke.
Even its immediate causes commenced their
operation fully five years before the consum
mation was reached. They were complicated ;
and it is difficult to follow the chief ones
through the tangled skein, but a little time
may, perhaps, be profitably taken for unravel-
236

Ohio Achieves Statehood
ing the inveterately involved strands of causa
tion which led a century ago to the creation
of one of the greatest of the United States.
Of the first, we have already seen some
thing in the circumstantially favored develop
ment of the democratic settlements at Chilli
cothe. This was the more significant as it
came coincidentally with the rise of the Re
publican and Democratic power in the nation,
at the beginning of the century. The central
location of this settlement was a powerful
factor in the whole movement, as it led to its
aspiration to become a capital — first of the
Territory, and then of a permanent govern
ment — and so organized and energized the
political powers of its people.
A subsequent contributory cause was to
be found in the advance of the Territory to
its second phase — involving an elective As
sembly in addition to the Governor's Council
— to which it became entitled in 1798, by the
number of its male inhabitants reaching 5,000.
This and the close following reduction of its
territory by the erection of Indiana Territory,
(which left the old Northwest Territory in
cluding little besides the present State of
237

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Ohio, plus half the lower peninsula of Michi
gan, embracing Detroit), were momentous
moves potently influencing the ascendency of
the Democracy, the downfall of Federalism,
and the creation of Ohio as a State.
The earliest of these measures had
brought prominently to the front in civil life
the flrst of the " Ohio Presidents," William
Henry Harrison, already famed in war, hav
ing served at Fallen Timbers as Wayne's aide,
and destined to be the hero of Tippecanoe.
He was chosen as the first Territorial Dele
gate to Congress and rendered valuable serv
ice, especially in land legislation. On the
erection of Indiana Territory in 1800, he was
made its Governor, and his popular fulfil
ment of the duties of that position made St.
Clair, who was still Governor of the dimin
ished Northwest Territory, suffer from com
parison. But the diminution of the original
territory had already hurt St. Clair sufficiently
to insure his political demise. It was a Re
publican measure and designed to accomplish,
among other things, that end.
Animosity toward Arthur St. Clair un
doubtedly hastened the creation of the State.
238

Ohio Achieves Statehood
It seems pitiful that the degradation of this
doubly unfortunate, but pure and lofty man,
should have been inseparably associated with
the rise of a great State, but such was the
case. And St. Clair was not only ignomini-
ously beaten and deposed from his high posi
tion, but the progress of the whole propaganda
resulting in his defeat and the triumphant
bourgeoning of Ohio was accompanied by
bitterness of spirit and vituperativeness of
utterance, reaching a climax in riotous dem
onstrations and threats of violence and death.
The whole trouble arose from the fact
that as Governor of the Territory St. Clair had
rather large powers, and he was so constituted
as not only to make the most of them, but to
enlarge upon his prerogatives in a manner
that was military and foreign rather than
civil and in accordance with the new Ameri
canism which now more than ever, and in the
West more than elsewhere, was trending
away from aristocracy and autocracy and to
ward democracy. He was especially charged
with a frequent autocratic and tyrannical ex
ercise of the veto power. St. Clair was by
birth a Scotchman and by education a soldier.
239

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

He was a Federalist, but it defines him better
to say that he was an aristocrat rather than a
democrat. Unlike Harrison, he was utterly
out of touch with the Western character. He
had ability, but no adaptability, and contact
with the rough and
ready men of the
frontier democracy
whom he distrusted
and sought to govern
autocratically only de
veloped keener irrita
tion and deeper dis
like upon both sides.
He was intensely
loyal to the party
which had placed him
in office and to his
old commander, Washington, and there exists
not the slightest ground for doubt that he be
lieved that he only did his duty and labored
for what he sincerely regarded as the best
interests of the country, but he went down
under a storm of obloquy, in a large measure
undeserved, and he merited far better treat
ment than he received — alike from the pioneer
240

yf^^A^

Ohio Achieves Statehood
Ohioans, the people of the country, and the
Government. When he died, in poverty and
obscurity, at his retreat near Ligonier, Pa.,
in 1818, it could be said that the man who
first administered the laws of the United
States in the most important Territory it
ever organized was an honest man and a gen
tleman to the last.
At the time of the advancement of the
Territory to its second form of government
St. Clair and his Federalist upholders — the
chief of whom were Jacob Burnet of the Cin
cinnati settlement, and the Marietta men —
had sought to have the eastern territory con
sist only of the lands between the Ohio on
the east and the Scioto on the west, which
would have completely eliminated Chillicothe,
and established a territory half the size of
Ohio, which could have no hope of statehood
for many years, and would pretty surely re
main under St. Clair's dominion.
In 1801 they still stood by these lines on
which their opponents had once defeated
them. But the creation of a State rather
than a Territory had now become the issue.
Whether they were altogether sincere or not
241

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
is now impossible to determine, but at all
events the Federalists, who had then a ma
jority in the Territorial legislature, in Novem
ber, 1801, passed a bill for the erection of a
State on the lines they had formerly proposed
for a Territory — that is, making the eastern
boundary of the State those of Pennsylvania
and Virginia along the Ohio, and the western
one the Scioto, and a line drawn from its in
tersection with the Indian boundary line,
northeastwardly, to the west corner of the
Connecticut Reserve. It is needless to say
that had this scheme succeeded Ohio would
never have become "one of the principal di
visions of the earth," nor would it have
achieved the particular prominence which has
characterized it, for it would have been less
than one-half its present size.
St. Clair and his followers in urging these
narrow limits possibly thought they would
create a State which they could control ; but
more probably their aim was to project one
that would fail of creation, thereby prolong
ing the existence of the Territorial government
until a period possibly more propitious for a
change in their own interests. The narrow
242

Ohio Achieves Statehood
limits which they prescribed were not alto
gether within the spirit of the provisions of
the Ordinance of 1787, which declared for the
creation of from three to five States from the
Territory ; but, on the other hand, they did
not represent an absolute innovation of idea,
for Timothy Pickering and Thomas Jefferson
had early favored a plan of subdivision which
would have carved the Northwest Territory
into ten, instead of the present five States.
Jefferson just at this juncture, however, had
a desire for a very different kind of State
than the little one which St. Clair and the
Federalists proposed presenting to the Union,
and he was destined to have it in due season,
but not entirely without difficulty.
Right on the heels of the bill for their
little Federalist State the followers of St.
Clair rather injudiciously put through an
other for the removal of the Territorial capital
from Chillicothe to Cincinnati. To be left
out of the future State and to lose in the
present the capital was altogether too much
for the Virginia democracy of Chillicothe to
endure passively. They resented it, and the
full fury of their resentment fell suddenly.
243

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
They held St. Clair chiefly responsible for
both measures, and his attempted tampering
with the Territorial lines had previously
aroused their enmity. It had long smol
dered, but this fresh assault upon their inter
ests, capped by the capital removal, fanned
their anger into flaming outburst which well-
nigh proved fatal to the hated Governor.
A mob rioted through the streets of the
frontier capital on the night after the passage
of the last of the offensive measures, and
under the leadership of one Michael Baldwin,
a brilliant but turbulent character, whose
counterpart has existed in every Westem set
tlement, sought to force its way into St.
Clair's lodgings, presumably to drag him forth
and inflict violence upon his offensively
august person. But St. Clair was saved from
such indignity and danger by the better ele
ment of his own bitterest opponents, Thomas
Worthington — a future Ohio Governor — and
others. That these men did not lose their
heads during the whirlwind of passion, was
testified to by the Governor himself, who put
himself on record by allusion to the " splendid
exertion " of Mr. Worthington, " who was
244

Ohio Achieves Statehood
obliged to go so far as to threaten him [Bald
win] with death."
This, of course, was the action merely of
the lower class of the enraged partizans — the
class which usually acts first and thinks after
ward. But the better class were not much
slower of action, for a crisis had arisen, and
with a foresight that was creditable to them,
the Republican-Democrats saw that the ship
of State might be launched and they left
ashore ! They not only wanted to be aboard
the good ship Ohio, but to have a hand in
fashioning her and setting her sails and serv
ing at the wheel. So Thomas Worthington
went on to the national capital to see what
could be done there. That the riotous
Michael, surnamed Baldwin, was regarded in
the light of something more than a mere
brawler and mob leader, we shall see again,
but for the present it was sufficient demon
stration of his worth that Worthington took
him with him to Washington. Possibly he
was afraid to leave him at home during his
absence, for fear he might fall upon the Gov
ernor. The potential Ohio was now projected
245

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
into national politics, already a seething and
hissing caldron,
Jefferson had been admonished by the
narrow margin of his election over Burr that
a few more electoral votes to look to in the
future would be a comfortable thing, and that
the party might actually need them for a con
tinuance in power. The Western Republican-
Democrats in all of their efforts toward the
creation of a State planned primarily for
one that should be Democratic. That would
mean three more presidential electors and
two more Senators. Success on the side of
the Federalists meant just as much to them.
Neither cared a whit for a State unless it
could be the kind of State they should dic
tate. Each ached for it with an intense pas
sion if it could be made to their own desire.
In the end it proved that the Federalists only
aspired — though they continued to ache — and
the Democrats achieved and enjoyed. Viewed
nationally, the new State might make or un
make a President and decide the balance of
the great parties and policies ; and thus in
the meantime Ohio was a hugely important
political makeweight even before it had
246

Ohio Achieves Statehood

issued from the limbo of the problematic into
the arena of the actual.
Thomas Worthington, the able and active
Jeffersonian, to whom more than to any other
one man the final establishment of Ohio was
due, soon found that the temper of Congress
was such as not only to
repudiate the Federalist
movement for a feeble
State (excluding one-
half of the present
Ohio), but that the
body would go further
and consider the claims
for statehood of the
larger Territory that the
Republicans favored.
Paul Fearing presented
the Federalist legisla
tive enactment to Congress on January 20,
1802, and the opposition to it on the part of
the Jeffersonians immediately began to be
vigorously made manifest. While Worthing
ton labored in Washington his adherents car
ried on a tumultuous campaign in the Terri
tory, and forwarded formidable petitions to
247

Thomas Worthington.

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Congress in support of their greater State
proposition. The battle in the Territory was compli
cated and given an additional heat by the
fervid opposition to St. Clair, who sought
statehood fully as much for his elimination
from their political life as they did for the
benefits of the measure itself. In fact, most
of their invective was directed against him.
They called him and his adherents " Tories "
and declared the Territorial government an
oppressive one, and St. Clair, whom they
dubbed "Arthur the First," a "tyrant who
must be curbed." The country was filled
with a clamor " to shake off the iron fetters
of aristocracy" and bring about "the down
fall of the Tory party in the Territory," while
the mild measures which had been resorted
to to induce President Adams not to re
appoint St. Clair were succeeded by more
vigorous ones seeking his dismissal from office
by the newly elected Republican President.
The latter action, as we shall see, was an
extreme from which Jefferson held himself
aloof until St. Clair, who was evidently
goaded to desperation by the inevitableness
248

Ohio Achieves Statehood
of his downfall, himself precipitated it by
intemperate utterance.
The upshot of all this war in the West
by the Republicans and labor in Congress by
Worthington was that the act of the Fed
eralist Legislature was rejected in the House
by a vote of 81 to 5, which showed con
clusively how offensive it was. The Rev.
Manasseh Cutler, M-ho had been instrumental
in framing the Ordinance of 1787, was now a
member of Congress and one of the five who
voted for the limited State in violation, as to
boundaries, of the very ordinance he had
secured the passage of. But he was a pro
nounced Federalist.
The Jeffersonians followed up this victory
to secure its fruits, and under the lead of
Breckenridge in the Senate and Giles in the
House passed a bill which became a law
April 30, 1802, by the President's approval,
known as the " Enabling Act," the first of
its kind in our legislation and the model for
many in the future, paving the way for the
admission of Ohio to the Union, and consti
tuted precisely as it now is, save for a slight
difference in the Michigan boundary.
18 249

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
It is significant of the attitude of the
Southern and Middle States toward the West
at this time, that of 47 votes cast for the
admission of Ohio into the Union 26 came
from the South, 14 from the Middle States,
and only 9 from New England. Virginia
voted solidly for the measure ; Massachusetts'
vote was equally divided ; Connecticut was
0 for and 5 against the establishment of the
State. Thus in a few months the tables were
completely turned against the Federalists, and
the Republicans were well advanced toward
final victory. It only remained for the peo
ple to clinch what had been gained.
The "Enabling Act" had authorized a
convention of delegates from all that part of
the Territory proposed for statehood — all ex
cept Wayne County, including the eastern
half of the lower peninsula of Michigan — to
be held November 1st, at Chillicothe, to
determine if it was expedient to establish
a State government, and, if so, to proceed
to frame a constitution and form a govern
ment, or to call another convention for that
purpose. A hotly contested campaign for
250

Ohio Achieves Statehood
the election of delegates ensued, the issue
being State or no State. There were multi
tudinous objections on the part of the Feder
alists, and all of the old charges against St.
Clair were made to do duty again by the
Jeffersonians, as well as new arguments setting
forth the benefits to be derived from a State
government. The strongest contention of the
Federalists was that the Territory had not yet
the 60,000 population required by the ordi
nance to entitle it to statehood ; but this had
little effect, and only proved their own in
sincerity in moving, as they had done, for a
State of far smaller bounds. It was true
that a census taken in January, 1802, showed
but 45,028 people of both sexes and all ages
in the Temtory, but the Republicans argued
that the population would reach the required
figure by the time that statehood was achieved,
and it was obvious enough that a State which
included the Chillicothe and Cincinnati set
tlements would sooner reach the required
population than one which did not. One of
the ludicrous objections of the Federalists,
which, of course, seems even smaller now
than it did when made, was that the Teiri-
251

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
torial government only cost about $5,000 per
year, and that the expenses of a State govern
ment would be fully $15,000 ! But the op
position soon weakened.
When the convention assembled it was
overwhelmingly Republican. It not only
quickly decided the question of statehood for
Ohio, but that it would itself prescribe the
constitution for the State instead of leaving
that task to a second convention, and went
ahead with the work so expeditiously that it
adjourned on the 29th of the month, having
completed its duties.
What might be called the last protest of
the Federalists was also the final gasp of its
leader, poor Arthur St. Clair. He asked
permission to address the convention, and
although fourteen members voted against his
doing so, he made a most injudicious speech,
in which he inveighed against the " Enabling
Act " as " an interference by Congress in the
internal affairs of the country, such as they
had neither the power nor right to make, not
binding on the people and in truth a nullity,"
with much of contempt, and when this had
been promptly conveyed to President Jeffer-
252

Ohio Achieves Statehood
son, there soon came like a thunderbolt to the
old Governor a curt communication from Sec
retary of State James Madison (acting under
orders from President Jefferson) alluding to
his " intemperance and indecorum of language
toward the Legislature of the United States,"
his " disorganizing spirit and tendency of very
evil example," and peremptorily dismissing
him from his high office. Thus after fourteen
years of service General Arthur St. Clair was
cut short in his incumbency in an office which
was itself to end in a few months, and the
letter containing his dismissal was handed
him by his secretary and bitter enemy, now
made his successor. But there was little
sympathy for St. Clair among the triumphant
Republicans in convention assembled and
about to launch Ohio.
Another episode of the convention, pecul
iar and significant of the fact that the battle
for free soil in Ohio and the old Northwest
was not wholly nor immediately won by the
ordinance of freedom, consisted in the actual
attempt made to introduce, constitutionally,
a limited slavery. The integrity of the ordi
nance was first attacked in Ohio, as it was
253

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
afterward and more persistently in the other
two Ohio River States of the Territory. An
effort was made in the Committee that framed
the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to in
troduce a clause favoring a form of slavery
in which male slaves might be held until
thirty-five years of age and females until
twenty-eight years old, and it was alleged by
the delegate offering this provision that one
of the greatest men of the nation (it was
believed the allusion was to Jefferson) thought
that " this would be a great step toward a
general emancipation of slavery " in the whole
country. But there was upon this committee,
as a Federalist delegate from the Marietta
district, Ephraim Cutler, a son of Dr. Manas
seh Cutler, credited with the antislavery
provision of the ordinance, and he made
radical objection to slavery being allowed a
foothold in the State, framed a clause of the
constitution in the very language of the ordi
nance, and, rising from a sick bed, fought it
to adoption, though it was saved both in
committee and convention by a majority of
only one. On this action I'ests Judge Cutler's
title to the gratitude of the people of the
254

Ohio Achieves Statehood
Northwest, a title exceeded by that of no
other man, and only equaled perhaps by the
splendid service of Edward Coles, of Illinois
(who was, by the way, of Southern birth).
The stand taken by Cutler in reaffirming the
sixth compact of the ordinance exerted an
influence early and late, repeatedly, as other
States and Territories sought, in the interests
of Southern immigration, to evade it. Not a
twelvemonth had elapsed when the people
of Indiana Territory urging Congress to set
aside this article, John Randolph answered
them nay and held up Ohio as an example of
what a State might become without the aid
of slavery. The constitution adopted at Chillicothe
was the work of many hands. It is tradi
tionally asserted that the same swashbuckling
but brilliant Michael Baldwin whom we have
seen leading the mob against St. Clair was
its principal author, and that he used a
whisky barrel as a desk on which to write
it, and some of the contents as the spirit of
literary inspiration. But there is a prepon
derance of probability amounting almost to a
certainty that the real author of the instru-
255

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

ment was Judge Jacob Burnet, of Cincinnati,
a native of Newark, N. J., born 1770, a grad
uate of Princeton, the leading lawyer of the
State, and "the Lycur-
gus of the West." Orig
inally a Federalist, and
later a Whig, he was
successively Supreme
Court Judge and United
States Senator, and no
man made a deeper im
pression upon the his
tory of Ohio.
The present President
of the United States has
called it a " foolish " con
stitution, but it was wise in one provision —
viz., against the possible contingency of any
Governor becoming too strenuous in the exer
cise of an unpopular policy. It went to the
democratic extremity of limiting the Govern
or's powers to almost nil, and conferring all
the patronage on the Legislature.
When "Tom" Cor win was Governor he
remarked, after a week's occupation of the
office, that " reprieving criminals and appoint-
256

Judge Jacob Burnet.

Ohio Achieves Statehood
ing notaries were the sole powers of the pre
rogative." The truth was that the shadow
of St. Clair fell athwart the making of the
Ohio constitution and influenced the limita
tion of the executive power. Even after the
lapse of half a century, when Ohio, having
in the meantime thrived very well under the
original, made a new constitution, the memory
of the stiff old autocrat was still a restraining
force, and the State to this day is one of the
four in the whole Union in which the Gov
ernor has no veto.
Ohio was never formally admitted, as all
other States since the original thirteen have
been, to the Union ; and it has been a matter
of much contention as to which one of half a
dozen dates is the true one from which to
compute her age. That of April 30, 1802, is
not the correct one. It is simply that of the
passage of the " Enabling Act." A better one
would be that of November 29th, in the same
year, when the constitution was adopted, or
January 11, 1803, when the first election was
held ; but these and several others are unsup-
portable for various reasons. On February
19, 1803, Congress passed an act "for the
257

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

execution of the laws of the United States
within the State of Ohio," and this was the
nearest approach to the "act of admission,"
from which the existence of the other States
is dated. This date has been generally sanc
tioned by the historians as the true one. But
the Legislature first assembled on March 1,
1803, and the Ohio Archeological and His
torical Society has officially decided that date
to be the proper
one of the State's
origin, and it is
therefore now gen
erally so accepted.
The new ultra-
democratic State,
which had been
protesting against
the survival of
English methods
in its colonial gov
ernment, elected as
its first Governor
British - born Ed
ward Tiffin, who had presided over the con
stitutional convention, and with the exception
258

Edward Tiffin.

Ohio Achieves Statehood
that one place on the Supreme Court judi
ciary was given to a Federalist — Samuel
Huntington, of the Connecticut Reserve —
the spoils of office naturally went to the
Jeffersonians, who held dominion over their
own creation for more than twenty years.
Thomas Worthington received substantial re
ward for his great services as a State founder
in being made one of its first United States
Senators, his colleague being John Smith ;
and Jeremiah Morrow was elected and re
mained for ten years the sole Representative
in Congress. Of all the measures accompanying the
advance to statehood, by far the most impor
tant, because powerfully affecting the settle
ment, and consequently the rapid rise of the
State in every way, was a clause inserted by
Albert Gallatin in the "Enabling Act" of
Congress (and having all the force of a con
tract, when accepted, as it was, by the people
of the State), which provided that the United
States should grant one-twentieth of the pro
ceeds of all lands sold in the State to the
construction of roads connecting tide-water
with the Western waters. This was the real
259

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
beginning of internal improvements in this
country, and resulted in the building of the
famous National Road to and through Ohio,
a work costing several millions, and fully as
important in its time as the construction of
the transcontinental railroad in a later and
larger era. The Ohioans were never in dan
ger of becoming " separatists," like the people
of their Southern neighbors — as was indicated
by Burr's finding them " too plodding for
his purpose " ; but Gallatin's far foreseeing
cemented them even more firmly to the
Union, and the inauguration of the policy
of public improvements put the settlements
of Ohio fully twenty years ahead.

260

CHAPTER X
Ohio's ascendency analyzed
The remarkably rapid progress of Ohio's
settlement constitutes one of the most won
derful chapters in the history of the nation,
and taken together with the cosmopolitanism
that characterized it, gives to the State its
best title to be considered, at least in one
respect, absolutely unique among the sister
hood of States, as has already been claimed
in a preceding chapter. That the distinction
is true, and not a mere figure of speech, be
comes apparent upon even a slight examina
tion of the facts.
Cutler's construction and passage of the
Ordinance of 1787 have been dwelt on as
constituting the first great humanly planned
cause of Ohio's early auspiciousness of condi
tion. Taken in conjunction with the first
great fortuitous cause of rapid settlement, her
261

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
geographical position, these two were suffi
cient to work seeming wonders, but Gallatin's
stroke of economic statesmanship came as a
third great formative cause, supplementing
and enormously enhancing the effect of the
others. Geographically, Ohio stood, a great
body of desirable, nationalized ' land, as the
focusing-point of a cordon of settled States,
naturally looked to by all as a field of settle
ment. Then came the ordinance operating
automatically for selection of the best from
these. And finally Gallatin's great provision
for preparing a highway for the march of
civilization. It was all exactly as if the con
centrating march of a vast army of occupa
tion had been directed upon Ohio as a huge
strategic movement planned by a supreme
commander of sublime intelligence and fore-
seeingly carried forward as a single gigantic
operation — engineering measures and all —
from the first to the finish. But if the result
of several statesmen's sagacity, all building
wiser than they knew, and singularly favored
by the fortuitous, the end was the same.
It has been tritely told that New England
was sown with selected seed from Old Eng-
262

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
land. But Ohio was sown with selected seed
from New England and all the colonies. Her
uniqueness, historically speaking, lies in the
fact that hers was the first soil settled by the
United States.
New England was peopled by the Puri
tans (and others) from old England; New
York, by Dutch and English ; Pennsylvania,
by Quakers and Germans and Scotch-Irish ;
Virginia, again by English, but quite dif
ferent from those of Massachusetts and Con
necticut ; Maryland, by still another element ;
and so on. Of the States not included among
the original thirteen, but admitted to the
Union before Ohio, Vermont was settled by
Massachusetts and New York, Kentucky by
Virginia, and Tennessee by North Carolina ;
but Ohio was settled by all of these — by
elements from each and every State in the
confederacy; in other words, Ohio was set
tled by the people of the United States,
Hers was the first territory to be repre
sentative of the entire people. Within her
borders the hitherto racially different or long-
separated consanguineous elements — in some
instances estranged, in others emasculated or
263

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
enervated through dearth of fresh blood —
came into contiguity — finally to be blent into
a homogeneous whole, and so to advance by
another stage — and a huge one — the evolu
tion of a race. It would savor of extremism
to go further and to say that these once
widely dissevered and dissimilar elements
coming together in a virgin land not only
advanced an old, but founded a new race ;
and yet, what were those elementary frag
ments in the old States but colonies of Eng
lish Puritans and Cavaliers and Quakers, of
Scotch-Irish and Germans ? And, in a cer
tain sense, were not the Ohioans truly the
first Americans ?
A slight analysis of this surprisingly va
ried population is interesting, both because
of the reminders it affords of the origins of
some prominent Ohio personages, and its
revelation of the influence of the old States
in building a new one.
No two or three States can be credited
with a preponderating contribution to Ohio
if its whole history is taken into account, but
because of its territory lying in the zone of
Virginia's and Pennsylvania's natural emigra-
264

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
tion westward, and because these States were
nearest and most populous, it was their pio
neers who dominated the new State during
the years that it was new. This fact is at
tested by the prevalence of men born in those
two States, among the constitution makers
and early Congressmen of Ohio. Of twelve
men in the convention of 1802 whose his
tory is known, six came from Virginia, one
each from Pennsylvania, Maryland, North
Carolina, and Connecticut, and two from
Massachusetts. Of Congressmen prior to
1830, out of thirty-three whose nativity is
known, nine were Pennsylvanians, six Vir
ginians, six also each from Connecticut and
New Jersey, three from New York, and one
each from Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
and Kentucky.
Virginia gave the State the first of its
presidential contributions — William Henry
Harrison. It gave it, too, its chief of founders,
Thomas Worthington, later Senator and Gov
ernor, and those other sterling early Govern
ors, Allen Trimble and Robert Lucas; its
eminent jurist, Noah H. Swayne, Justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States ; its
19 265

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
pioneer and founder of the State capital, Lu
cas Sullivant and Lyne Starling ; its famous
Ewing family and Allen G. Thurman — with
many more almost equally influential men.
Pennsylvania in the early days was not
far behind Virginia as an Ohio builder. She
sent over her western
border General Wil
liam Lytic, the found
er of an influential
Ohio family, of whom
the poet-soldier. Gen
eral William H. Lytle,
was a representative
of the third genera-
—^ ^ tion ; Joseph Vance,
twice a strong mem
ber of Congress and
twice Governor ; Jeremiah Morrow, sole mem
ber of Congress from Ohio, 1803 to 1813, and
last of the pioneer Governors ; that strangely
named Quaker abolitionist, Achilles Pugh ;
General Thomas Lyon Hamer, the only rival
of Corwin, martyr hero of the Mexican War,
and the Congressman who sent Grant to
West Point ; John A. Bingham, Congress-
266

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
man and foreign minister, and variously
prominent in the nation ; the father of Gen
eral William S. Rosecrans ; " the fighting
McCooks' " progenitors ; the nearest ancestry
of General Grant ; and the parents of the late
President McKinley.
New Jersey, small
er and more remote,
did less, but still
much. What she did
is suggested, rather
than told, in the
names of her pioneers,
among whom, besides
John Cleves Symmes,
the founder of Cincin- ^x?^^,/^^^^^^,^
nati, were Jacob Bur
net, " the Lycurgus of the West " ; the Zanes,
highest types of the frontiersmen ; Benjamin
Lundy, the journalistic pioneer of antislavery
agitation in State and nation ; John McLean,
of the United States Supreme Court, who
dared to dissent from Taney on the Dred
Scott decision ; the Piatts, of poetic fame ;
Nicholas Longworth, philanthropist and mu
nificent patron of art ; and the father of Wil-
267

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

liam Dennison, one of the triumvirate of the
State's great " war Governors."
Kentucky contributed the peerless "Tom"
Corwin, Governor and Senator of the United
States, equally famous as sound statesman and
brilliant vvit ; Gen
eral Irvin McDowell,
and — strangely exem
plifying the automatic
working of the great
ordinance — James G.
Bimey, pioneer of ab
olition. Maryland sent to
the State, as the most
prominent of her pio
neers, Charles S. Ham
mond, the great edi
tor and lawyer, and as the most prominent of
later-day citizens, Hugh J. Jewett, financier.
From North Carolina, though far away,
came many who achieved eminence them
selves or were the parents of eminent men.
Among the former, the ancestors of Edwin
M. Stanton, the iron War Secretary, and of
Murat Halstead, and among the latter Wil-
.268

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
liam Allen, Congressman and most famous
of Ohio's Democratic Governors ; also — again
illustrating the function of selection in the
ordinance — Levi Coffin, most prominent of
emancipators, who freed from two to three
thousand slaves by personal exertions, and
passed into history as
the " reputed presi
dent of the Under
ground Railroad."
New England,
aside from the Mari
etta settlement, com
posed principally of
Massachusetts men,
and including the
Putnams and Cutlers,
whose great services
to the State have been shown, and Return
Jonathan Meigs, an early Governor and Ohio's
first of a long series of contributions to the
Cabinets, — did not figure so largely in the
early weaving of the Western social fabric as
did the Middle and Southern States. But
New England made up for this omission when
the Connecticut Reserve was opened to settle-
269

j^^<-<<^^i*—

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ment. Connecticut men naturally predomi
nated there, as we have already seen. Sam
uel Huntington, one of the first judges of the
Ohio Supreme Court and second Governor
of the State, was of the vanguard of her
pioneers. Here also came from the same
Yankee State the father of David Tod, sec
ond of the " war Governors." But Connec
ticut's contribution was not all bestowed on
her Reserve. Alfred Kelley, of Columbus,
"the father of the Ohio canal system," was
of Connecticut derivation, as was the late
Governor George Hoadley, of Cincinnati, and
so also Morrison R. Waite, of Toledo, Chief
Justice of the United States, and the Sher
man family of the central part of the State,
whose name was made illustrious by the
longest-serving Senator of the United States
and its most famous financier, John Sher
man, and by General William Tecumseh
Sherman. To Massachusetts must be accredited
"Ben" Wade and Joshua R. Giddings, the
twin political giants of the Reserve (although
the latter was born, where the family a short
time sojourned, in Pennsylvania). Garfield,
270

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
of the same region, also came remotely of
mingled Massachusetts and Connecticut stock.
Vermont "Green Mountain" vigor was
exhibited in a goodly immigration, which
bore in, among others. Governor Reuben
Wood, and the father
of President Ruther
ford B. Hayes, of Fre
mont. Rhode Island
would have been well
enough represented
even had she sent to
the new State no oth
er of her sons than
the lofty Whig lead
er, Samuel F. Vinton.
New Hampshire con
tributed Lewis Cass,
whom Ohio lost to Michigan's gain, and Sal
mon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treas
ury and Chief Justice of the United States.
New York added to this composite popu
lation, among a host of useful and famous
citizens. General Duncan McArthur, one of the
pioneer Governors ; the great jurist, Joseph
R. Swan ; Attorney-General Henry Stanberry ;
271

'<y>'^£/'?r'3-^^^..t^,¦^^^_

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Major-General Jacob D. Cox; Eleutheros
Cooke, the father of Jay Cooke ; also the
fathers of General McPherson and James A.
Garfield. If we go further and consider nationalities,
we find that these added to the complexity
of population and contributed elements of
power. Of the Germans, it is sufficient to
say, look at Cincinnati, with its musical and
art fame ! But of this people there came
even the despised Hessians, and behold the
son of one of them was the brave cavalry
man Custer ! If we turn to the English of
immediate immigration, we are reminded that
of these were Tiffin, the first Governor of the
State, and John Brough, the greatest of its
war Governors. From the British isle of
Guernsey, on the French coast, came enough
people to decide the naming of a county after
their native island. Even the Frencli, who
were a small element, brought some fine
strains of blood, of which one comes down to
to-day in the literary elegance of Mrs. Made
line Vinton Dahlgren. The pure Dutch gave
the State the able Brinkerhoffs, and the na
tion, through the State, one of its greatest
272

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
generals, William S. Rosecrans, whose fame
grows brighter with the passing years. The
Scotch-Irish, always strong in the frontier
settlements, contributed the Covenanter stock
of which Whitelaw Reid came ; that of Gov
ernor Joseph Vance; of Generals McDowell,
McPherson, and Steedman ; that of the " fight
ing McCooks," fifteen in number, all famous ;
and the blood on his father's side of U. S.
Grant. As for the straight Irish, they here
lost no time in showing their proneness to
politics and fighting. First of them all was
Michael Baldwin, whom we have seen riot
ing at Chillicothe in the period of the State's
formation, and who was also the first Speaker
of the Ohio House. Wilson Shannon, the
first native-born Governor, was an Irishman ;
and so, too. General Phil Sheridan, and the
brilliant war correspondent Januarius Aloys-
ius MacGahan, the " Bulgarian liberator."
The exceedingly diversified elements of
population which have been indicated under
went the first great step toward homogeneity
in the stirring times of the War of 1812. The
intensely patriotic and energetic spirit of the
pioneers was splendidly attested when a popu-
273

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
lation which cast a total vote of about 19,000
contributed over 20,000 men to the military
service. Here occurred the first demonstra
tion of Ohio's usefulness to the nation, and
in the War of 1812, with its swift mingling
of the men of the State and its soldierly dis
cipline, we find the first internal coMse of
the remarkable upbuilding of her people's
power, soon to be made variously evident.
A second cause of Ohio's rapid rise in
political power was the really wonderful de
velopment of a moral tone of profound ear
nestness in their political principles which
gradually came to dominate the mass of the
people. This began with the planting of
the antislavery doctrine, the propagation of
which was, owing to the operation of selec
tion through the Ordinance of 1787, pushed
forward fully as much by Ohioans of South
ern as by Ohioans of Northern or New Eng
land birth. It was to have been expected
under any circumstances that the New Eng
land settlements would have their agitators
like Charles B. Storrs, the President of Hud
son College, in the Western Reserve, its Fin
ney, and " Father " Keep, and Fairchild, its
274

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
firebrand John Brown, and its political war
riors Giddings and Wade. It was to have
been expected that Pennsylvania would fur
nish its Quaker abolitionists, like Achilles
Pugh, and New Jersey its Benjamin Lundy,
but that Virginia and Kentucky and the
Carolinas should have supplied an equal, or
a superior contingent, to the forefront of the
fight against slavery, can only be accounted
for on the ground that the " Ordinance of
Freedom " was one of the most perfect work
ing and beneficently effective pieces of moral
and legal machinery ever evolved from the
mind of man. The New England and Penn
sylvania and New Jei'sey antislavery men
simply " went West " on the indicated path
of empire, but the Southern-born friends of
freedom were diverted from the natural path
of immigration, as if by a magnetic attrac
tion, and instead of becoming Kentuckians or
Tennesseeans, they helped to found Ohio, and
to foster, even more than the Northerners, a
great colony favorable to freedom, vitally pro
gressive and aggressive, and finally victorious.
Clermont County, on the Ohio River,
and its neighborhood, settled by Virginians,
275

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

was as strong an antislavery citadel as was
the Reserve, on Lake Erie, settled by Con
necticut and Massachusetts mien. Gatch and
Sergent, who were its delegates to the Con
stitutional Convention of 1802, were elected
" because they were Virginians, the strongest
of antislavery men.

and practical eman
cipators." Here,
too, came the Rev.
John Rankin from
Tennessee, Obed
Denham, of Vir
ginia, and that su
perb national lead
er of antislavery,
James G, Birney,
who was twice the
candidate of the
Presidency of the

Liberty party for the
United States, from Kentucky — all because
they abhorred slavery and sought a home
where it was prohibited. And here came
Thomas Morris, of Massachusetts descent,
to be sure, though his mother was a Vir-
who, like other settlers from the
276

gmian.

Ohio's Ascendency Analyzed
South, had to attest a love for freedom by
relinquishing the slaves she inherited; and
Morris — as one of the very first champions of
freedom in the United States Senate, answer
ing Calhoun's and Clay's pleadings for the
"peculiar institution," and electrifying the
Senate and nation by the prediction that the
negro should be free — was simply the voice
of the virile sentiment of those Southern anti-
slavery men in Ohio.
It was through the molding effect of the
early, persistent, unremitting antislavery agi
tation, and the very fact that it had the
Southerners as well as the Northerners among
its foremost champions and strongest sup
porters, that there was developed that pre
ponderating and tremendously vigorous moral
sentiment which penetrated the masses, and
making Ohio the force that it was in the war
of the rebellion, established its high prestige
in the nation.
It was a full generation from the first anti-
slavery agitation in pioneer Ohio to the days of
the civil war in which its tremendous progress
became apparent. In the meantime, the forces
of the ordinance, of Gallatin's great internal-
277

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
improvements measure, of popular education,
and of public works, had been furthering the
population, prosperity, and general moral as
well as material well-being of the State. It
had progressed from a trifle over 42,000 pop
ulation and eighteenth place in rank, at the
time of its founding, to 230,760 and thirteenth
place in 1810 ; to 581,295 and fifth place in
1820; to 937,903 in 1830; to 1,519,467 and
third place in 1840; to 1,980,329 in 1850;
and to a population of 2,339,511 in 1860 —
still holding third place in the sisterhood of
States — and destined to hold it for thirty
years more.

278

CHAPTEE XI
OHIO IN the war and IN CIVIL LIFE
When the civil war came it would seem
as if the sapience of statesmen, the labors of
legislators, the forces of man, and the circum
stances of time and nature — the drift of des
tiny — had all been directed toward the sole
result of building up Ohio as a fortress for
the Union, at the very place where the loyal
land was narrowest, between armed rebellion
and British territory. There was no nobler
showing of stamina and strength than hers.
She resisted invasion, helped to create, raise
up, and protect a loyal State upon her border,
and sent into the strife enough men to consti
tute a vast army of her own, more than half
of her adult population, half again larger than
the greatest army Great Britain ever put in
the field, and one-ninth of the entire Federal
force engaged in the war — a total of 340,000
279

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

men, or, reduced to a three years' basis, 240,-
000 men. Her total dead (24,564) were
4,000 in excess of all losses on both sides in
the Revolutionary War.
But not less indicative of Ohio's service
in the war for the Union than her numbers
of troops was the
length of her offi
cers' list and the
distinction of its
personnel. Of command
ing generals be
longing to Ohio
there were, first
of all, Ulysses S.
Grant, born at
Mount Pleasant,
Clermont County,
April 27, 1822;
William Tecumseh Sherman, born in Lancas
ter, 1820; and Philip H. Sheridan, born in
Albany, N. Y., but brought in infancy to
Somerset, Perry County, Ohio. Of major-
generals born in the State and entering the
service from it there were thirteen — viz.,
280

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life

Don Carlos Buell, George Crook, George A.
Custer, Quincy A. Gillmore, James A. Gar
field, James B. McPherson, Irvin McDowell,
Alexander McD. McCook, William S. Rose
crans (born in Kingston, Ohio, 1819), David
S. Stanley, Robert C. Schenck, John Wager
Swayne, and Godfrey Weitzel. Of the brig
adier-generals of Ohio
birth who went from
the State there were
thirty - five (many of
them brevetted major-
generals) — viz., William
T. H. Brooks, William
W. Burns, Henry B.
Banning, C. P. Bucking
ham, John Beatty, Joel
A. Dewey, Thomas H.
Ewing, Hugh B. Ew
ing, James W. Forsythe, Robert. S. Granger,
Kenner Garrard, Charles Griffin, Rutherford
B. Hayes, J. Warren Keifer, William H.
Lytle, John S. Lee, John S. Mason, Robert
L. McCook, Daniel McCook, John G. Mitchell,
Nathaniel C. McLean, Emerson Opdycke,
Benjamin F. Potts, A. Sanders Piatt, James
20 281

/v^ .e?!^./S>'2-€ ^so--z;€.<^^

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
S. Robinson, Benjamin. P. Runkle, J. W.
Reilly, William Sooy Smith, Joshua Sill,
John P. Slough, Ferdinand Van DeVeer,
Charies R. Woods, Willard Warner, William
B. Woods, Charies C. Wolcutt, and M. S.
Wade. But this
by no means tells
the story of all
that the State is
entitled to, for
there should be
included a num
ber, smaller than
the native-born
but still a con
siderable show
ing, of those who
though born else
where were resi
dents of the State. Of such were Major-
Generals Jacob D. Cox and M. D. Leggett
(New York), William B. Hazen (Vermont),
George B. McClellan and Jacob D. Steedman
(Pennsylvania), O. M. Mitchell (Kentucky) ;
and of Brigadiers Jacob Ammen, B. W.
Brice, and John S. Tibball (Virginia), Samuel
282

{^^J^^^hyLuJc

£^ CCH..'A

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life

Beatty and George W. Morgan (Pennsyl
vania), Ralph P. Buckland and Thomas Kil-
bey Smith (Massachusetts), H. B. Carrington
(Connecticut), George P. Este (New Hamp
shire), Manning F. Force (Washington, D.C.),
. John W. FuUer (England), Charles W. Hill
(Vermont), August V. Kautz (Germany), E.
P. Scammon (Maine), John W. Sprague and
Erastus B. Tyler (New York), and August
Willich (Prussia).
It is obviously
unfair, having fol
lowed the forego
ing basis of classifi
cation, to lay claim
to the generals of
Ohio birth who at
the time of enter
ing the service
were residents of
other States, but
if such were in
cluded, the list would be swelled by the
names of Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana;
Halbert E. Paine, of Wisconsin ; Eleazar A.
Paine, of the regular army ; Robert B. Mitch-
283

jiM.,...!/^.

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ell, of Kansas ; and others. Ohio also made
two notable contributions to the navy, Ad
miral Daniel Ammen and Rear-Admiral
Joseph N. Miller.
On the civil side, both in the State and in
the nation, Ohio was not a less forceful or
effective factor in the subduing of rebellion
than upon the military. Her " war Gover
nors " — Dennison, Tod, and Brough — were
any and all worthy to stand between Morton
in the West and Curtin and Dix in the East.
The fact that Tod and Brough were Demo
crats, though elected on the " Union " ticket,
was perhaps more indicative of the practical
wholeness of Ohio's loyalism than if they had
been Republicans. Brough's opponent was
Clement L. Vallandigham. There was a
rousing campaign, which resulted in the
triumphant election of "rough, bluff John
Brough " by the then unprecedented major
ity of over 100,000 votes. The issue had
been distinctly "the vigorous prosecution of
the war," and the position of Ohio was most
emphatically declared. John Sherman is on
record as pronouncing the election of Brough
as an important influence in favor of the
284

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life

Union cause, and " equal to that of any battle
of the war."
Ohio in the conduct of the war at Wash
ington, however, far more than equaled Ohio
at Columbus ; for there stood next to Lincoln
Stanton and Chase,
Wade, Sherman, and
Jay Cooke.
Of the eight Ohio
ans who were colossal
powers on the civil
side of the service for
the Union, all but two
were native-born. Sal
mon P. Chase, who had
been Governor of the
State and Senator of
the United States, was
Secretary of the Treasury during nearly the
whole of the war period — that is, from March,
1861, to March, 1864 ; and Benjamin F. Wade,
long time Senator, became chairman of the
Committee on the Conduct of the War, in which
capacity his service was invaluable. Chase
was born in New Hampshire and Wade in
Massachusetts, but both came to Ohio in their
285

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

very early years. The six others whose serv.
ices were in importance fully abreast of these
were Ohio-born. First of all, perhaps, was
the stern, unflinching Edwin M. Stanton (born
at Steuben ville, 1814), who was Secretary of
War from January, 1862, until August, 1867.
John Sherman (born
at Lancaster) was the
controlling member of
the Finance Commit
tee of the Senate. Jay
Cooke (born at Sandus
ky) was special agent
of the United States
Treasury Department
for the negotiation of
bonds. As to the three
" war Governors," they
were from three ex
treme corners of the State — William Denni
son, born at Cincinnati ; David Tod, born at
Youngstown; and John Brough, bora at
Marietta. The time had come in the war for the
backwoods to bourgeon, and for the seed sown
and nurtured in the wilderness by the nation
286

CqAaaa^ 'vAa. ^X(

.GyWCo-

' These are my Jewels.'

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
to bear its first great fruit. No State has
had more numerous or more notably useful
"favorite sons," and none has been more
frankly proud of them. Ohio points to the
Presidents and statesmen and great generals
she has reared with the conscious and con
summate pride of the Roman matron, in
alluding to her sons, saying with her, " These
are my Jewels " ; and she has inscribed this
legend upon a noble monument erected to
their memory in the Capitol grounds at
Columbus. Ohio went splendidly to the front in the
military service of the nation, and it has re
mained pretty solidly at the front in the con
duct of civil affairs for more than a generation.
The State, which had been built by the na
tion, had proved one of the firmest fortresses
of the nation in the time of its siege and as
sault, and now it began to contribute freely of
its best product, its native-born sons, to the
councils and the supreme control of the coun
try at large. It was a case of the child long
cared for and cherished coming in maturity
to be the staff and support of the sire.
The State, to be sure, had contributed a
287

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
President in 1840, and its first Cabinet mem
ber as early as 1814; but she now gave the
country three Presidents in succession and
Cabinet officers in profusion, to say nothing of
hosts of lesser officials, at the same time main
taining, by the high ability and sterling char
acter of her delegates, that conspicuity which
lono: before the war had attached to Ohio in
Congress. While Ohio was strongly in evidence at
Washington nearly all the time for forty
years, there were special periods when the
prevalency of the Buckeye man was particu
larly noticeable and a source of pride to her
people and of mingled amusement and mild
irritation to the remainder of the United
States. The time when Garfield came to the
presidency (1881) was one of these periods of
predominancy which circumstances conspired
to make extra conspicuous. The men made
prominent by the war had not yet reached re
tirement, and the civilians had come to keep
them company. Just as Garfield was about
to leave Mentor for the inauguration he re
marked tentatively to a New York politician,
" I suppose Ohio has received about all she is
288

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
entitled to ? " to which the Eastern man an
swered sententiously, " She's got as much as
the other States will stand, at any rate." The
scene at the inauguration was of a nature to
substantiate this view. There were gathered
on the east portico of the Capitol, in a com
pact group, the principal characters of the
day — the retiring President, Rutherford B.
Hayes, of Ohio ! the President about to be in
ducted into office, James A. Garfield, of Ohio !
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who
administered the oath of office, Morrison R.
Waite, of Ohio ! while close by them, as the
most-honored spectators, stood the Secretary
of the Treasury, John Sherman, of Ohio !
next to him the General of the Army, William
T. Sherman, of Ohio ! and by his side the
second in command, Lieutenant-General Sher
idan, of Ohio !
Almost any time during the subsequent
decade the Ohioans were to be found in good
force at the front in all branches of the Gov
ernment, and in 1886, in conformance with
this general predominance of her sons, could
have been observed the rather startling fact
that the State had no less than ten Senators
289

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
in the higher house of the national Legisla
ture. There were two as her very own regu
larly elected members, and no less than eight
accredited to various farther Western States,
but all born in Ohio, and ready to a man to
stand by her interests. The House of Rep
resentatives at the same time held some forty
or fifty Ohio-born Congressmen — about half
of whom went from Ohio districts, and the
others from constituencies in Indiana, Illinois,
Iowa, Kansas, and various States, which it
was now most pertinently made manifest Ohio
had been helping to build.
But the most surprising and amusing evi
dence of the Ohio man's ubiquitousness came
at the close of this same decade, when Benja
min Harrison, a citizen of Indiana, born in
Ohio, assumed the duties of the presidency
of March 4, 1889. The nation felt relieved
when his Cabinet was announced, for instead
of the Ohioans, who had been overwhelmingly
predominant under most former administra
tions for thirty years, appeared such men as
Windom, of Minnesota ; W. H. H. Miller, of
Indiana ; John W. Noble, of Missouri ; Jere
miah M. Rusk, of Wisconsin ; and (later)
290

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
Stephen B. Elkins, of West Virginia. But
lo, this was only a most superficial pretense
of avoiding the Buckeye as material for Cab
inet-making, for every man of them was born
an Ohioan ! And Charles Foster, who was an
undisguised Ohio man, had a place later,
making this altogether the strongest Ohio
Cabinet of the whole series.
Some idea of the full fruition of Ohio in
a political sense during the prolific post-bellum
period, and that of lesser outcome before
the war, is afforded by a summary of her
offerings to high officialdom, which have in
cluded six Presidents if we count William
Henry Harrison (1841) born in Virginia,
or five if we count only those native to the
State: Ulysses S. Grant, 1869-'77 ; Ruther
ford B. Hayes, 1877-81 ; James A. Garfield,
1881 ; Benjamin Harrison, 1889-'93 ; William
McKinley, 1897-1901, and 1901, March 4 to
September 14. One Vice-President, Thomas
A. Hendricks, 1885. Three presidents of the
Senate {pro tem.), \az., Benjamin F. Wade,
Allen G. Thurman, John Sherman. Seven
Justices of the Supreme Court, two of them
Chief Justices, viz., Salmon P. Chase (Chief
291

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Justice), 1864-'73; Morrison R. Waite (Chief
Justice), 1874-'87 ; Noah H. Swayne, 1862-
'81; Edwin M. Stanton, 1869; Stanley J.
Matthews, 1881-'89 ; William B. Woods,
1880-'87. Two Secretaries of State: John
Sherman, - William- R. Day. Six Secretaries
of the Treasury: Ewing, Corwin, Chase,
Sherman, Windom, and Foster. Seven Secre
taries of War : McLean, Stanton, Grant.
Sherman, Taft, Elkins, and Alger. Four Sec
retaries of the Interior : Ewing, Cox, Delano,
Noble, Five Attorney-Generals : Stanberry,
Taft, Stanton, Miller, and Harmon. Four
Postmasters-General : Meigs, McLean, Denni
son, Hatton. And one Secretary of Agricul
ture, Rusk.
The large extent to which the Cabinets
have been built of Buckej^e timber is far bet
ter revealed by the following list, arranged
chronologically by administrations :
Administration of James Madison, 1809-
'17: Postmaster-General, Return Jonathan
Meigs, March 17, 1814.
Administration of James Monroe, 1817-
'25 : Postmaster-General, R. J. Meigs (reap
pointed) ; John McLean, June 26, 1823.
292

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
Administrations of William Henry Harri
son, 1841, and John Tyler, 1841-45 : Secre
tary of the Treasury, Thomas Ewing, March
5, 1841 ; Secretary of War, John McLean,
September 13, 1841.
Administrations of Zachary Taylor, 1849-
'50, and Millard Fillmore, 1850-'53 : Secre
tary of the Treasury, Thomas Corwin, July
23, 1850 ; Secretary of the Interior, Thomas
H. Ewing, March 8, 1849.
Administration of James Buchanan, 1857-
'60 : Attorney-General, Edwin M. Stanton
(born in Ohio, appointed from Pennsylvania),
December 20, 1860.
Administrations of Abraham Lincoln,
1861-'65, and Andrew Johnson, 1865-'69 :
Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase,
March 5, 1861 ; Secretary of War, Edwin M.
Stanton, January 15, 1862; U. S. Grant (ad
interini), August 12, 1867; Edwin M. Stan
ton (reinstated), January 14, 1868, to May
28, 1868; Attorney-General, Henry Stan
berry, July 23, 1866, to July 15, 1868 ; Post
master-General, William Dennison, Septem
ber 24, 1864, to July 25, 1866.
Administration of Ulysses S. Grant, 1869-
293

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
'77 : Secretary of War, William T. Sherman,
September 9, 1869, to October 25, 1869;
Alphonso Taft, March 8, 1876, to May 8,
1876 ; Secretary of the Interior, Jacob D. Cox,
March 5, 1869, to November 1, 1870 ; Colum
bus Delano, November 1, 1870, to October
19, 1875 ; Attorney-General, Alphonso Taft,
May 22, 1876.
Administration of Rutherford B. Hayes,
1877-81 ; Secretary of the Treasury, John
Sherman, March 8, 1877.
Administrations of James A. Garfield,
1881, and Chester A. Arthur, 1881-'85 : Sec
retary of the Treasury, William Windom
(born in Ohio, appointed from Minnesota),
March 5, 1881, to October 27, 1882; Post
master-General, Frank Hatton (bom in Ohio,
appointed from Iowa), October 14, 1884.
Administration of Benjamin Harrison,
1889-'93: Secretary of the Treasury, William
Windom (born in Ohio, appointed from
Minnesota), reappointed March 7, 1889 ;
Charles Foster, February 21, 1891 ; Secretary
of War, Stephen B. Elkins (born in Ohio, ap
pointed from West Virginia), December 4,
1891, to March 6, 1893 ; Attorney-General,
294

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
W. H. H. Miller (born in Ohio, appointed
from Indiana), March 7, 1889 ; Secretary of
the Interior, John W. Noble (born in Ohio,
appointed from Missouri), March 7, 1889 ;
Secretary of Agriculture, Jeremiah M. Rusk
(born in Ohio, appointed from Wisconsin),
March 7, 1889.
Administration of Grover Cleveland, 1893-
'97 : Attorney-General, Judson Harmon, June
7, 1895, to March 5, 1897.
Administration of William McKinley,
1897-1901, 1901: Secretary of State, John
Sherman, March 5, 1897, to April 26, 1898;
William Rufus Day (former Assistant Secre
tary), April 26, 1898, to September 30, 1898
(resigned) ; Secretary of War, Russell A.
Alger (born in Ohio, appointed from Michi
gan), March 5, 1897, to August 1, 1899
(resigned). Besides these there are, of course, a very
large number of assistant secretaries and
bureau chiefs ; and the State's phenomenal
productivity of men fitted for public duty
has been constantly attested by the presence
of Ohioans in high diplomatic positions ; but
the limitations of this volume preclude men-
295

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
-tion of them, and in pursuance of the original
purpose of showing the character rather than
the fuU extent of Ohio's contribution to the
public service of the nation, the presentation
must be confined to those only who have
occupied the very highest offices.*
Ohio in the Nation's Senate
Following is a list of the Ohio members
of the United States Senate, preceded by the
* a certain luster, too, has been reflected upon the State by
those of her citizens who have found honor far beyond her
borders, as, for instance, Samuel Sullivan ("Sunset") Cox,
who successively represented Ohio and New York in Congress
and the United States as Minister to Turkey ; Senators Julius
CfBsar Burrows, of Michigan ; Daniel W. Voorhees, Joseph E.
McDonald, David Turpie, and C. W. Fairbanks, of Indiana;
William B. Allison and James F. Wilson, of Iowa ; Preston B.
Plumb, of Kansas ; Thomas H. Carter, of Montana ; and Will
iam M. Stewart, of Nevada.
And besides these, there can be mentioned as Ohioans
who have performed important service the late General James
M. Ruggles, of Illinois, one of the committee (the others being
Abraham Lincoln and Ebenezer Peck) who drafted the plat
form on which the Republican party was organized, and Gen
eral James W. Denver, after whom Denver, Col., was named,
afterward Governor of Kansas, as was Thomas Carney, in war
times, and Lyman U. Humphrey. Later still, another Ohioan
who became a Western Governor was G. P. Morehouse (Mis
souri) ; and at the same time Iowa had an Ohio man — J. H.
Rothneek — as its Supreme Judge. 296

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
delegates under the brief second stage of Ter
ritorial government :
OHIO DELEGATES TO UNITED STATES CONGRESS
William Henry Harrison (Hamilton Coun
ty), 1799-1801.
William McMillan (Hamilton County),
1799-1801. PaulFearing (Washington County), 1801-
1803. UNITED STATES SENATORS FROM OHIO
Thomas Worthington (Ross County),
1803-'09. Reelected 1809 to serve to 1815.
Resigned December 8, 1810, to accept the
office of Governor.
John Smith (Hamilton County), 1803.
Resigned. Edward Tiffin (R,oss County), 1807-'ll.
Return Jonathan Meigs (Washington
County), 1807-11 {vice Smith, resigned).
Alexander Campbell (Brown County),
1809-'13. Stanley Griswold (Cuyahoga County),
1809-'ll. Jeremiah Morrow (Warren), 1813-'19.
31 297

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Joseph Kerr (Ross County) (vice Wor
thington, resigned).
Benjamin Ruggles (Belmont), 1815-'33.
William Trimble (Highland), 1819-'23.
(Died 1822 from the effects of a wound re
ceived at battle of Fort Erie, 1812,)
Ethan A. Brown (Hamilton County),
1822-25 {vice Trimble, deceased),
William Henry Harrison (Hamilton Coun
ty), 1825-'29, (Resigned 1828, to accept
appointment as Minister to Colombia.)
Jacob Burnet (Hamilton County), 1827-
'31 {vice Harrison, resigned).
Thomas Ewing (Fairfield County), 1831-
'37. Reelected for term 1849-'51 {vice Cor
win, deceased).
Thomas Morris (Clermont), 1833-'39.
William Allen (Ross County), 1837-'49.
Benjamin Tappan (Jefferson County),
1839-'45. Thomas Corwin (Warren County), 1845-
'49. Died 1849, previous to convening of
Thirty-first Congress, to which he was elected.
Salmon P. Chase (Hamilton), 1849-'55.
Reelected 1863. (Resigned to accept ap
pointment as Secretary of the Treasury.)
298

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
Benjamin F. Wade (Ashtabula), 1851-
1869. George E. Pugh (Hamilton), 1855-'61.
John Sherman* (Richland), 1861-77.
Resigned 1877 to accept appointment as Sec
retary of United States Treasury. Reelected
1881. March, 1897.
James A. Garfield (Lake County), January
11, 1880. (Declined the office January 18,
1881, having in the meantime been elected
President.) Allen G. Thurman (Franklin County),
1869-'81. Stanley Matthews (Hamilton County),
1877-79 {vice Sherman, resigned).
George H. Pendleton (Hamilton County),
1879-'85. Henry B. Payne (Cuyahoga County),
1885-'91.

* John Sherman's first service, from March 23, 1861, to
March 8, 1877, made 15 years, 11 months, 15 days. Entering
again March 4, 1881, he had on June 16, 1894, surpassed the
term of Thomas H. Benton (December 6, 1821, to March 3, 1851,
29 years, 2 months, 27 days). From that time on his service
was in excess of Benton's 2 years, 8 months, and 16 days, or a
total service of 31 years, 11 months, and 13 days in the United
States Senate. 299

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Joseph B. Foraker (Hamilton County),
1897-1903. Marcus A. Hanna (Cuyahoga), 1899-1905,
Governors of the State
1803, Edward Tiffin, Ross County, three years
and a half,
1807. Thomas Kirker, Adams County (ap
pointed), six months.
1808. Samuel Huntington, Trumbull County,
two years.
1810. Return Jonathan Meigs, Washington
County, three years and a half.
1814. Othniel Looker, Hamilton County, six
months.
1814. Thomas Worthington, Ross County,
two years.
1818. Ethan A. Brown, Hamilton County,
three years and a half.
1822. Allen Trimble, Highland County, six
months.
1822. Jeremiah Morrow, Warren County, four
years.
1826. Allen Trimble, Highland County, four
years. 300

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
1830. Duncan McArthur, Ross County, two
years.
1832. Robert Lucas, Pipe County, four years.
1836. Joseph Vance, Champaign County, two
years.
1838. Wilson Shannon, Belmont County, two
years.
1840. Thomas Corwin, Warren County, two
years.
1842. Wilson Shannon, Belmont County, one
year and a half.
1844. Thomas W. Bartley, Richland County,
six months.
1 846. William Bebb, Butler County, two years.
1848. Seabury Ford, Geauga County, one year
and eleven months.
1850. Reuben Wood, Cuyahoga County, one
year and a half.
1853, William Medill, Fairfield County, two
years and a half,
1855, Salmon P, Chase, Hamilton County,
four years,
1859, William Dennison, Franklin County,
two years,
1861, David Tod, Mahoning County, two
years, 301

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
1863. John Brough, Cuyahoga County, one
year and seven months.
1865. Charles Anderson, Montgomery County,
five months.
1865. Jacob Dolson Cox, Trumbull County,
two years.
1867. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Hamilton
County, four years.
1871. Edward F. Noyes, Hamilton County,
two years.
1873. William Allen, Ross County, two
years.
1875. Rutherford Bii-chard Hayes, Sandusky
County, a year and three months.
1877. Thomas L. Young, Hamilton County,
six months.
1877. R. M. Bishop, Hamilton County, two
years.
1880. Charles Foster, Seneca County, four
years.
1883. George Hoadley, Hamilton County, two
years.
1885. Joseph B. Foraker, Hamilton County,
four years.
1890. James E. Campbell, Butler County, two
years. 302

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
1892. William McKinley, Stark County, four
years.
1895. Asa Smith Bushnell, Clarke County,
four years.
1899. George Kilbon Nash, Franklin County
— ^I'eelected 1901 — present incum
bent of office.
But it is not alone in politics, but in the
world of science, literature, journalism, and
art that Ohio has been phenomenally prolific
in her forthputtings. More noise has been
made about the "Hoosiers," but the native
" Buckeye " authors of recognized standing
outnumber them more than three to one.
Indiana is accredited with 55, Illinois with
47, Michigan with 36, but Ohio has a roster
of 174 names, or only seven less than those
of the three States named, and all of the
other Western States combined. Since the
days of Otway Curry and Alice and Phoebe
Cary there have been among them many vo
taries of the Muse, of whom the most promi
nent (not to mention William A. Gallagher
and Coates Kinney, commonly attributed to
Ohio because of long association, but not na-
303

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
fives) have been the Piatts, General Lytle,
and Miss Edith Thomas. Of course, William
D. Howells stands out first of all in anybody's
recalling of Ohio authors ; but there are
many others of fine quality, if of less universal
renown, as A. P. Russell, A. J. Fullerton
(who sent to the Atlantic the first literary
contribution from the West), Delia Bacon (of
Bacon-Shakespeare fame), Ambrose Bierce,
Judge Tourgee, George Kennan, Prof. George
T. Ladd, Thomas Jay Hudson, Sarah C.
Woolsey (Susan Coolidge), William H. Ven-
able, Thomas Donaldson, Paul Laurence
Dunbar, Mary Hartley Catherwood, Nathan
iel Stephenson, and Alfred Henry Lewis.
But when we have mentioned these we have
not yet included a single one of the histo
rians, who are perhaps the class most con
spicuous in Ohio authorship. First among
them was Hubert Howe Bancroft, the his
torian of the Pacific Slope ; and the greatest
of those now living is James Ford Rhodes,
Two others who are well known are Prof,
William M, Sloane, of Princeton (author of a
Life of Napoleon and a History of the French
and Indian War and the Revolution), and
304

Ohio in the War and in Civil Life
Prof. Edwin Erl Sparks, of the University of
Illinois, author of American Expansion. Hil-
dreth, Rufus King, and the late Burke A.
Hinsdale have all performed valuable service
in this field.
Just where journalism and literature meet
stands an Ohio man — Albert Shaw, editor of
the American Review of Reviews ; and in
journalism pure and simple and at its best
strength there stands a larger host than we
can even mention. But it is a curious cir
cumstance that for a considerable period
three of the great metropolitan dailies were
simultaneously managed by three Ohio jour
nalists : The Tribune by Whitelaw Reid, the
World by John A. Cockerill, the Herald by
Julius Chambers. Two other journalists the
State contributed to New York — Murat Hal-
stead, and Adolph S. Ochs, proprietor of the
Times. But besides these and the peerless
MacGahan, and such brilliant world-known
correspondents as E. V. Smalley and H.
V, Boynton, there were Richard Smith,
G, M, D, Bloss, and Frederick Haussureck,
of Cincinnati; Joseph Medill and Alfred
Cowles, of Chicago; also the late Edwin
305

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Cowles, the long-time editor of the Cleve
land Leader,
As to art, it was an Ohioan who first gave
American art a prestige abroad — Hiram
Powers, Another Ohioan, John Quincy
Adams Ward, became the first sculptor of
America. Thomas Cole became one of the
country's greatest landscape painters and en
gravers. James H. and William H. Beard
by their originality in art achieved national
and international reputation, and the art
world well knows to-day the work of Ken-
yon Cox, Frank Duvaneck, W. H. Powell,
A. S. Wyant, W. L. Sontag, Frank Dangler,
Wilson McDonald, T. D. Jones, William
Walcutt, Henry Mosler, Caroline S. Brooks,
E. M. Ward, F. C. Webber, Jasper Lanman,
John Henry Witt, Marion Foster, J. H.
Twatchman, and Frank H. Tompkins.
In physical science there shine such Ohio
names as those of Ormsby M. Mitchell,
Wormely, Sullivant, Newberry, Kirtland,
Wright ; while those of Elisha Gray, Charles
Francis Brush, and Thomas Alva Edison as
pioneers in the practical application of ad
vanced science are of universal renown.
306

CHAPTER XII
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
As for the causes of the remarkable put
ting forth of political fruit by the Buckeye
tree, it must be borne in mind that the war it
self was a powerful stimulus to the spirit of
the people, and in addition to the influence
of the Ordinance, of Gallatin's pioneer inter
nal-improvement measure, of geographical
position, and of the energy derived from the
mingling of widely differing elements of pop-
idation w^hich had made the Ohioans a nu
merically great and phenomenally strong
race — other agencies were working which
had a more particular effect on the consti
tution of political power than those men
tioned. First of all, Ohio was, through a seeming
paradox — ^ which is superficial and simply
enough explained — a persistent and enormous
307

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
power in the electoral strife of the nation,
for the very reason that she was never in her
period of primacy, so overwhelmingly partizan
as to make it absolutely sure which way her
vote would be cast. As has already been
shown, the Jeffersonians, who brought the
State into being, held its mastery for twenty
years. It voted for Clay in 1824. Then,
with the reorganization of parties, it became
less stable. It voted for Jackson and Carr,
Democrats, respectively, in 1828 and 1832;
for Harrison and Clay, Whigs, in 1836, 1840,
and 1844 ; then for Cass and Pierce, Demo
crats, in 1848 and 1852. In 1856 it voted
for Fremont, and ever since the Republicans
have had the benefit of its franchise. But
Ohio had a way between times of letting a
Democrat assume the toga of the governor
ship, two of her three great war Governors
being Democrats (though elected on a Union
or fusion platform), and, on the average, one
out of every four governors since then being
of the minority party. This uncertainty as
to outcome at any given time, based on the
independent habit of mind of a large contin
gent of her citizens, made it worth while —
308

Summary and Conclusion
especially in view of Ohio's size in the electoral
college — to consult the preferences of her peo
ple in national campaigns, and often to make
sure of their suffrage by the naming of a local
candidate. The converse of this condition is
clearly exhibited in Ohio's next-door neigh
bor on the east, which, though giving with
unvarying certainty overwhelmingly great
predetermined majorities, has been accorded
but one nomination for the office of Chief
Executive in half a century.
The factitious but effective force brought
to bear on the foregoing situation, by the
consideration that Ohio was an " October
State," considerably enhanced her power.
The " closeness " of the issue, or the com
paratively even matching of parties, and the
fact that all her State battles were eagerly
watched by the whole nation, gave them an
importance which variously redounded to the
State's political advantage.
But a far more effective, though less
theatric, source of Ohio's strength in national
politics lay in the manner in which she sus
tained in public life and in official position
those men whose preeminent fitness once be-
309

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
came demonstrated. In this policy she has
only been equaled by New England and cer
tain sections of the South. Thus her states
men had opportunity to carry out, through
the advantages of familiarity with their sur
roundings and of prolonged and purposeful
study afforded by their continuance in office
by wise constituents, those settled policies and
plans which alike conferred honor upon them
selves and the State. A swift glance over
the records of Ohio's leading Representatives
and Senators affords abundant confirmation of
the claim of frequency of long terms accorded
them. James M. Ashley, a colleague (and
able coworker for the same causes) of Gid
dings, served ten years as Representative; John
A. Bingham, writer of the fourteenth amend
ment to the Constitution, sixteen years ; Ben
jamin Butterworth, ten; Thomas Corwin,
fourteen in the House and four in the Senate
(dying before his term expired), eighteen
years in all ; Columbus Delano, twenty-two ;
Giddings, twenty-two ; Garfield, seventeen
(being then in quick succession elected to
the Senate and the presidency) ; McKinley,
fourteen (ended only by his choice as Chief
310

Summary and Conclusion
Executive) ; Jeremiah Morrow (of early days),
nineteen (in House and Senate) ; Joseph
Vance, eighteen ; Samuel F. Vinton, twenty ;
Robert C. Schenck, sixteen. In the Senate
we find Benjamin Ruggles serving continu
ously seventeen years ; William Allen, twelve ;
Benjamin F. Wade, eighteen ; Allen G. Thur
man, twelve ; and John Sherman, surpassing
in his total term not only all Ohio records, but
all in the history of the Senate, even that of
Thomas H. Benton, and having to his credit
almost thirty-two years (thirty-one years and
about eleven and a half months) in this sta
tion, and enough more in other high office to
make a total of half a century of exalted
public service.
A still further source of Ohio's primacy
in broadly public affairs must be looked for
in those mingled feelings of strong State
pride and of sturdy, dignifying nationalism,
which have come naturally, and almost in
sensibly, to animate its people. She had
attained third place as to population twenty
years before the war, and she held it for
thirty years after, only surrendering it in
1890 to Illinois (which is as much larger,
311

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
territorially, as is eight larger than five), ad
vancing in population in the meantime from
2,309,511 in 1860 to 2,665,260 in 1870; to
3,198,062 in 1880; to 3,672,376 in 1890; and
to 4,157,545 in 1900. But her rank was not
dependent on numbers alone. For many
years she was also third among the States in
wealth. She was long first, and subsequently
second, in the value of farms and farm im
provements. She was for years, and is now,
fourth in the total value of mineral products,
and third in the production of coal, being ex
ceeded only by Pennsylvania and Illinois,
She is ranked as fifth in manufactures. And
in education and religion she very naturally
is one of the foremost States in the Union,
But with all of the growth thus represented,
and having increased her population in an
even hundred years one thousand fold, Ohio
had early begun to build other States in the
West, Her sons were among the Argonauts
in California in the mid-century, and they
have been among the pioneers of all the
States ever since. She has undoubtedly con
tributed to them fully 2,000,000 people, and
more than half of that number born in Ohio
312

Summary and Conclusion
are now living in the Western common
wealths,*

* As a matter of fact, the total number of people born in
Ohio, but contributed to, and in 1900 living in, other States or
Territories, was 1,114,165. The largest numbers, as might be
expected, are to be found in Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa,
Missouri, and Michigan, but the number of Ohioans living in
most of these Western States was not so large in 1900 as in
1880, while, on the other hand, in the twenty intervening years,
the migration into States lying easterly has very considerably
increased — noticeably that into New York and Pennsylvania.
The following table of the Ohio-born in the States where they
are most numerous reveals the figures for 1880 and 1900, and is
interestingly indicative of some curious movements in the tides
of population, as well as valuable in showing the extent to
which Ohio has been a builder of other States :

1880.
Pennsylvania. . 27,502
New York  11,599
Wisconsin  20,512
California  17,759
Minnesota  15,560
Colorado  11,759
Texas  7,949
Oregon  6,201

1900.
57,48626,219 19,036
34,869 18,971
24,894
10,588 13,123

1880. 1900.
Indiana  186,391 178,344
Illinois  136,884 137,161
Iowa  120,495 88,146
Kansas  93,396 88,298
Missouri .... 78,938 80,966
Michigan.... 77,053 88,290
Nebraska...-. 31,800 40,981
W. Virginia. 27,535 40,301
Kentucky... 27,115 38,539
Of the other Western States, Washington leads with 16,762
Ohioans (in 1900) ; North and South Dakota have respectively
4,391 and 7,106 ; Montana has 6,650 ; Wyoming, 3,336 ; Idaho,
3,815 ; New Mexico, 1,768 ; Arizona, 3,100 ; Utah, 2,525 ; Ar
kansas, 8,867 ; Indian Territory, 3,393 ; Nevada, least of all, 741 ;
and Oklahoma, 15,049.
Of the Southern States, Tennessee (next to Kentucky and
West Virginia) had in 1900 the largest number of natives of
23 313

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
Ohio, by her vast growth in population,
by the multiform character as well as the
magnitude of her national development, by
the effectiveness of the exertion of her enor-

Ohio, 10,353. Alabama had 4,029 ; Mississippi, 1,538 ; Louisi
ana, 3,545; Virginia, 3,799; District of Columbia, 4,348 ; Mary
land, 3,204 ; Georgia, 3,542 ; Florida, 3,721 ; and the remaining
States much smaller numbers.
The New England States, which contributed largely to the
upbuilding of Ohio, have received something of the reflex tide.
Massachusetts led in 1900 with 5,353 Ohioans, and Connecticut
had 3,330.
New Jersey had 5,553.
Of States contributing to Ohio, as shown by their native-
born living there in 1900, Pennsylvania was naturally the leader.
The figures for the principal ones, in order of the number of
their native-born in Ohio, are as follows :

Pennsylvania  131,143
New York  56,653
Kentucky  53,464
Indiana  53,045
Virginia  33,343
Michigan  31.356
West Virginia  30,534
Illinois  18,964
Maryland  13,313
Missouri  7,591
Foreign countries' contributions of late years are headed by
Germany, of whose people 304,160 were living in Ohio in 1900.
There were of Irish nativity at the same time, 55,018 ; of Eng
lish, 44,745 ; and of Canadians— English, 19,864, and French,
3,903. The total foreign-born population was 458,734, or 11 per
cent of Ohio's 4,157,545 people. 314

Massachusetts  7,507
New Jersey  7,070
Iowa  - 6,805
Tennessee  5,893
Kansas  5,335
Connecticut  4,467
Wisconsin  4.330
North Carolina  3,407
Vermont  3,553

Summary and Conclusion
mous strength for the Union, and by the
exercise and outcome of her influence upon
the nation, long ago arrived at that dignity
of position which is claimed in the matter of
her State seal, of being literally an empire
within an empire — " Imperium in imperio."
And thus, located in the middle country,
looking westward to the homes of her sons,
and eastward to those of her sires, the horizon
of her interest and her influence is broadened
to the bounds of the Union itself ; and while
contemplating her own achievements, and
feeling her own strength — of which she first
became fully conscious in the period of the
civil war — she turns reverently the page of
history, to be reminded that she is the creature
of the nation ; that her foundations were lain
by the people of all the States, that her exist
ence was decreed and directed by the legal
enactments of the nation, and that she was
in fact the first product of nationalism.
Hence nationalism, which is the out
growth of a larger conception of citizenship,
represents a robust element in the Ohioan's
mood of mind. But with his profound patri
otism there must be ever a place, too, for a
315

Ohio and Her Western Reserve
passionate, insistent State pride. The very
fact that circumstances have never called for
choice, or division, between the two, makes
the dual allegiance one of doubly strong
devotion. The subject of the Ohioan's loyalty is a
kind of composite conception, as of two in
one — " Imperium in imperio " — which has
slowly and insensibly formed itself from con
templation of the historical development of
State and Union — the causative influences in
whose ascendency nowhere appear so inveter
ately and inseparably interwoven as here —
and to this unique devotion, in which dual
sentiments reciprocally reenforce each other,
we must look for a factor, not by any means
the least, in the constitution of the Ohio
man's political prowess, and in the common
wealth's pronounced prestige.

316

INDEX

Alger, General Eussell A., 195, 295.
Allen, Ethan, 117.
Allen, William, 269, 298, 802.
Allyn, John, describes Connecti
cut in 1680, 24.
Ammen, Admiral Daniel, 284.
Anderson, Charles, 302.
Andrews, Sherlock J., 191.
Antislavery, idea of, actuates
Connecticut men in war of re
bellion, 47-49; David Wilmot,
of Pennsylvania, and his Pro
viso, 122 ; Charles B. Storrs its
pioneer in the Western Ee-
serve, 174, 178 ; the general zeal
for, in the West, 175, 178 ; serv
ices of Giddings and Wade for,
in Western Eeserve, 184, 185 ;
John Brown's part, 189 ; Jacob
Brinkerhoffs assistance to Wil
mot, 190-191; at Oberlin, 199;
cause of, as affected by the Or
dinance of 1787, 219 et seq. ;
services of Ephraim Cutler for,
in Ohio constitutional conven-
. tion, 254 ; and of Edwai'd Colea
in Illinois, 255 ; Southern lead
ers of, in Ohio, 274-277 ; Cler
mont County as citadel of, 275-
276. (See Slavery.)
"Appleseed, Johnny," 161-163.

Armstrong, Colonel John, 113-114.
Arnold, Benedict, 37.
Ashley, James A., 310.
Ashtabula County, Ohio, the " po
litical Gibraltar " of the Western
Eeserve, 180.
Austin, Moses, projects colony in
Texas, 29.
Austin, Stephen F., founds Texan
city, 29.
Bacon, Delia S., 208.
Badger, Eev. Joseph, iirst preacher
in Reserve, 158-159.
Baldwin, Michael, leads riot, 244,
245, 273.
Bancroft, H. H., 304.
Banning, General H. B., 281.
Bartley, Thomas W., 801.
Beard, David, 206.
Beard, James H., 206.
Beard, William H., 206.
Beatty, General John, 281.
Bebb, William, 801.
Bidlack, James, 91 ; killed by tor
ture at Wyoming, 94.
Bierce, Ambrose, 205.
Bingham, John A., 266.
Birney, James G., 268, 276.
Bishop, K. M., 302.
Bolton, Sarah K., 205.

31T

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

Brant, Joseph, Mohawk chief,
mentioned, 80 ; with Indians at
Tioga prior to Wyoming mas
sacre, 84 ; mention of, 138 ; meets
Western Eeserve surveyors, 144.
Brant, Molly, 80.
Brinkerhoff, Henry, 191.
Brinkerhoff, Jacob, 190-191.
Brinkerhoffs, the, 272.
Brooks, General T. H., 281.
Brough, John, 189, 194, 284, 236,
302.
Brown, Ethan A., 300.
Brown, John, 189, 275.
Brush, Charles F., 207.
Buck, Aholiab, 91.
" Buckeye," origin of, 228.
Buckingham, General C. P., 281.
Buckingham, Governor William
A., of Connecticut, 40.
Buell, General D. C, 281.
Burnet, Judge Jacob, 241 ; author
of Ohio's flrst constitution, 255-
256, 267, 298.
Burns, General W. W., 281.
Burrows, Julius Csesar, 192, 296.
Bushnell, Asa S., 303.
Butler, Colonel John, mentioned,
82, 83 ; described, 85, 86, 88 ; in
battle of Wyoming, 92, 93.
Butler, Colonel Zebulon, leader of
Wyoming settlers, 69, 73 ; de
feats Plunkett expedition, 77 ;
becomes commander at Wyo
ming in hour of danger, 81 ; leads
settlers in defense of Wyoming,
91, 92; arrested by Pennsylva
nians, 112; for conciliation, 119.

Campbell, Alex., 297.
Campbell, James E., 802.

" Campus Martius," 228.
Canals, opening of Erie and Ohio,
154, 155.
Carlyle, Thomas, on Puritanism,
6-7.
Carter, Lorenzo, 148-149.
Cary sisters, 303.
Case, Leonard, 209.
Cass, Lewis, 271.
Catherwood, Mrs. Mary H., 304.
Chambers, Julius, 305.
Chapman, Jonathan, 161-163.
Chase, Salmon P., 271, 285, 291,
292, 293, 298, 301.
Chillicothe, settled by Virginians,
233, 234 ; becomes capital, 287 ;
riotous demonstration in, against
St. Clair, 244.
Chisholm, Henry, 208.
Cincinnati, first settlement of,
229.
Cist, Lewis J., quotations from, 51,
127.
Cleaveland, General Moses, men
tioned, 140, 143-144, 147.
Clermont County, an antislavery
citadel, 275-276.
Cleveland (city), surveyors at site
of, 146-147 ; flrst residents of,
147 et seq ; benefited by open
ing of canals, 154-153; Western
Eeserve University in, 197-198;
marvelous growth and impor
tance of, 208 ; the Boston of the
West, 209.
Cockerill, John A., 805.
Coifln, Levi, 269.
Coles, Edward, 255.
Congregationalism, established
religion in Connecticut, 32 ; in
tlie Western Eeserve, 173, 174.

318

Ind

ex

Conneaut, Eeserve surveyors at,
144r-146.
Connecticut, New. (See Western
Eeserve.)
Connecticut, Puritanism in, 8 ;
fii-st settlements of, 13, 14 ; flrst
constitution of, 15-20; signal
service of, to America, 20-21 ;
influence of, on colonial expan
sion, 28 et seq. ; flrst colonies of,
24, 27, 28 ; described by Allyn,
24^25 ; prolific of public men,
29-30 ; in Eevolutionary War,
35 et seq. ; in war of rebellion,
39 et seq. ; charter of, 58 ; char
ter claim of, in Pennsylvania, 59
et seq. ; flrst emigrants from, to
Pennsylvania, 67 ; extends gov
ernment over Wyoming, 74;
divested of title to Wyoming by
" Trenton decree," 108 ; forms
plan of government for new
State at Wyoming, 119 ; contri
bution of eminent men to Penn
sylvania, 122; probably gains
" Western Eeserve " in Ohio as
result of " Pennamite Wars,"
124-125; triumph of, in Ohio,
129 et seq. ; cedes claim to West
ern lands, 131-132 ; makes a res
ervation, 134^135 ; sets apart
"Fire Lands" for "Sufferers,"
138-139 ; authorizes sale of
" Western Eeserve " lands, 139 ;
reproduced in Western Eeserve,
158 et seq. ; names of, in Western
Eeserve, 165, 166 ; refle.K tide
brings educators to, from West
ern Eeserve, 200-201 ; contribu
tions of, to Ohio, 265.
Constitution of Connecticut, first

in America, 15-20, 53 ; first of
Ohio, 255-257.
Cooke, Eleutheros, 191, 272.
Cooke, Jay, 206, 207, 272, 285, 286.
Corwin, Thomas, on Ohio's consti
tution, 256 ; nativity of, 268, 292,
293, 298, 301, 310.
Cowles, Alfred, 305.
Cowles, Edwin, 306.
Cox, General Jacob Dolson, 195,
205, 272, 282, 294, 302.
Co.x, Kenyon, 206.
Cromwell, Oliver, 23, 44.
Cushutunk, 54, 57, 66.
Custer, General George A., 272,
281, 283.
Cutler, Ephraim, carries Ohio con
vention for prohibition of sla
very, 254^255.
Cutler, Eev. Manasseh, as agent ot
Ohio Land Company, 228 ; his
agency in forming and passing
the Ordinance of 1787, 224;
votes in Congress for a small
State, contrary to the Ordi
nance, 249.
Dahlgren, Mrs. M. V., 272.
Day, William E., 292, 295.
Delano, Columbus, 294.
Delaware Company, 26, 58, 66.
Democracy, dawn of, in America,
15. (See Jeffersonian Democ
racy.)
Denham, Obed, 276.
Dennison, Colonel Nathan, 91,
92.
Dennison, William, 268, 284, 286,
298, 301.
Denver, James W. (note), 296.
Dewey, General Joel A., 195.

319

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

Dorrance, Lieutenant - Colonel
George, 91 ; killed at Wyoming,
98.
Durkee, Colonel John, 91.
Durkee, Eobert, 91.
Edison, Thomas A., 207.
Edwards, Pierpont, 189, 141.
Elkins, Stephen B., 291-292,
294.
Ellis, Edward S., 204.
Erie Canal, opening of, 154.
Erie Literary Society, 159-160.
Ewing, General Hugh B., 281.
Ewing, General Thomas H., 281.
Ewing, Thomas, 266, 292, 293.
Ewing, Thomas H., 298, 298.
Expansion, colonial, of Connecti
cut, 28 et seq., 58, 60, 62 ; a per
sistent dream of, realized, 211.
Fairchild, James H , 200.
Fearing, Paul, 247, 297.
Federalists, from New England at
Marietta, 235; downfall of, in
West complicated with move
ment for Ohio statehood, 288
et seq. ; pass a bill for erection of
Ohio as a small State, 242 ; and
a bill for removal of capital
from Chillicothe to Cincinnati,
248 ; riot precipitated by these
measures and St. Clair's un
popularity, 244; plans of, for
State presented to Congress,
247 ; scheme of, defeated in Con
gress, 249; ludicrous objections
of, to Ohio statehood, 251, 252;
liave only one official in first
State government, 259.
Finney, Eev. Charles G., 200.

"Fire Lands," 188, 139,166,167;
Foraker, J. B., 300, 302.
Ford, Seabury, 194, 301.
Forsythe, General J. W., 281,
Fort Harmar, 227.
Fort Penn, 97, 100.
"Forty Fort," built in Wyoming
by Connecticut settlers, 69 ;
Wyoming men muster at, 90.
Foster, Charles, 291, 294, 802.
Franklin, Colonel John, 112, 120.
French in Ohio, 272.
Fullerton, A. J., 304.
Gallatin, Albert, service of, to
Ohio in internal improvements,
259-260, 262.
Garfield, James A., 192, 195, 198,
272, 281, 286, 288, 289, 291, 299,
310.
Garrard, General K , 281.
Garrett, Major John, 91, 92, 93.
Geer, Eezin, 91.
Germans in Ohio, 272.
Gertrude of Wyoming, 108.
Giddings, Joshua E., mentioned,
174, 178, 180; birth and parent
age of, 181 ; succeeds Whittle
sey in Congress, 184; declares
against slavery in Eepublican
platform, 184 ; character of, 185-
188 ; grave of, in Jefferson, 188 ;
mentioned, 270, 275.
Governors, powers of Ohio's, lim
ited, 256, 257 ; first of, 258 ; list
of Ohio's, 300 et seq.
Granger, General Eobert S., 281.
Granger, Gideon, 141.
Grant, General U. S., 273, 280, 291,
292, 298.
Greenville, treaty of, 188.

320

Indej

Griffin, General Charles, 281.
Griswold, Harley, 191.
Griswold, Stanley, 297.
Hallam, Henry, on Puritanism, 6.
Halstead, Murat, 268.
Hamer, Thomas L., 266.
Hammond, Charles S., 268.
Hanna, M. A., 191, 800.
Harmon, Judson, 295.
Harrison, Benjamin, 290, 294.
Harrison, William Henry, 238;
nativity of, 265 ; mentioned, 291,
297, 298.
Hartford, Conn., first settlement
of, 14.
Harvey, Thomas W., 202-208.
Hatton, Frank, 294.
Hayes, Eutherford B., 271, 281,
289, 291, 294, 302.
Hay, John, 206.
Haydn, Eev. H. C, 197.
Hendricks, Thomas A., 291.
Hewitt, Dethic, 91.
Hickok, Laurens P., 198.
Hinsdale, Burke A., 198, 205.
Hiram College, 198.
Hitchcock, Peter, 191.
Hoadley, George, 270, 302.
Hooker, Eev. Thomas, settles in
Hartford, Conn., 14 ; grave of,
14 ; inspires first written Ameri
can Constitution, 16, 22, 46,
178.
Howells, W. D., 204, 304.
Hudson, David, 160.
Hume, David, on Puritanism, 5, 6.
Huntington, General Jedediah,
228.
Huntington, Samuel (Governor of
Connecticut), 37, 39.

Huntington, Samuel (Governor ot
Ohio), 149-151; attacked by
wolves, 156 ; second elected
Governor of Ohio, 194; one of
flrst judges of Supreme Court of
Ohio, 259 ; mentioned, 270, 300.
Hutchins, John, 191.
Indians, sell lands to Connecticut
settlers, 68, 66 ; massacre set
tlers at Wyoming (1762), 68;
repudiate sale of lands, 69 ; con
centrate at Tioga to move
against Wyoming 81 ; descend
on Wyoming, 89 ; in battle, 93
torture and kill captives, 95
release title to Ohio lands, 138
meet Connecticut emigrants,
144; the battles with St. Clair
and Wayne, 281.
Irish, the, in Ohio, 273.
Jeffersonian Democracy, nucleus
of Western, at Chillicothe, 284 ;
rise of, complicated with state
hood of Ohio, 238 et seq. ; op
poses Federalist measures, 243 ;
antagonism of, to latter reaches
riot, 244; takes active measures
to control Ohio's formation, 245,
246 ; victory of, in Congress on
Ohio statehood, 249, 250 ; con
trols first Ohio convention, 252;
fllls all State offices save one,
258, 259.
Jefferson, Thomas, urges settle
ment of Connecticut-Pennsyl
vania land claims. 111 ; and or
dinance for the Northwest Ter
ritory, 224; interested in creation
of Ohio as a State, 234, 248 ; sees

321

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

need of additional electoral
votes, 246 ; attitude of, toward
St. Clair, 248 ; removes St. Clair
from office, 252-253.
Jefferson (town oO, 183, 187-188.
Jenkins's Fort, 90.
Jennings, Eev. I., 202.
Jewett, Hugh J., 268.
Johnson, Sir William, 80.
Johnson, Tom L., 191.
Jones, Sir William, quoted, 218.
Keep, " Father " John, 200, 274.
Keifer, General J. W., 281.
Kelley, Alfred, 208, 270.
Kennan, George, 206.
Kentucky, contributions of, to
Ohio, 268.
Kingsbury, Colonel James, 147-
148, 149.
Kirker, Thomas, 300.
Kirtland, Jared P., 208.
Ladd, Ecv. George T., 201, 205.
Lake Erie College, 200.
Lee, General John S., 281.
Lewis, Alfred Henry, 206.
Longworth, Nicholas, 267.
Looker, Othniel, 300.
Lowell, James Eussell, quoted, 2,
170.
Lucas, Eobert, 265, 301.
Lundy, Benjamin, 267, 275.
Lytle, General William H., 26C,
281, 804.
McArthur, Duncan, 271, 300.
Macaulay, T. B., on Puritanism, 5.
McClellan, General George B., 282.
McCook, General A. McD., 281.
McCook, General Daniel, 281.

McCook, General Eobert L., 281.
McCooks, "the fighting," 267,
278, 281.
McDowell, Irvin, 268, 273, 281.
MacGahan, J. A., 273.
McKarrican, William, 91.
McKinley, William, 192, 267, 291,
295, 303, 310.
McLean, General N. C, 281.
McLean, John, 267, 292, 293.
McMillan, William, 297.
McPherson, General J. B., 272,
278, 281.
Marietta, mentioned, 31 ; first set
tlers arrive at, 226, 227-228;
Federal government organized
at, 229-230.
Marshall, John, services of, to
Western Eeserve, 153.
Maryland, her " pioneer thought,"
222 ; contributions of, to Ohio,
265, 268.
Mason, General J. S., 281.
Massachusetts, noble history of,
3 ; agency of, in giving law to
the West, 285 ; contributions
of men to Ohio, 270.
Massie, Nathaniel, 233.
Mather (clerical family), 141.
Mathews, Samuel H., inscription,
iii.
Matthews, Stanley J., 292, 299.
Medill, William, 301.
Meigs, Eeturn J., 269, 292, 297,
300.
Mentor, home of Garfield, 151.
Miller, Eear-Admiral J. N., 284.
Miller, W. H. H., 290, 295.
Mitchell, General John G., 281.
Mitchell, General 0. M., 282.
Monroe, James, 191.

322

Ind

ex

Montour, Catharine, influential
with Indians descending on
Wyoming, 87, 88 ; in battle of
Wyoming, 92 ; tomahawks six
teen captives, 95.
Morris, Thomas, 276, 277, 298.
Morrow, Jeremiah, 266, 297, 300.
Nash, George K., 303.
Natchez, Miss., a Connecticut set
tlement, 27.
Newberry, J. S., 208.
New England, Ohio Land Com
pany of, 223 ; how composed,
225 ; virtually dictates passage
of Ordinance of 1787, 226 ; con
tributions of, to Ohio, 269-271.
New Jersey, contributions of, to
Ohio, 265, 267.
New York, contributions of, to
Ohio, 265, 271.
Noble, John W,, 290, 295.
Northaway, Stephen A., 191.
North Carolina, contributions of,
to Ohio, 268.
Northwest Territory, 229 ; flrst
officials of, 230 ; population of,
in 1790, 231 ; government of, ad
vanced to second phase, 287 ;
plans for division of, 241-243.
Noyes, Edward F., 302.
Oberiin, 174, 175, 199-200.
Ochs, Adolph S., 305.
Ogden, Amos, 69, 70, 73.
Ohio, a complicated study, 215;
the product of a happy conjunc
tion of causes, 217, 218 ; its set
tlement projected by patriots
under the counsel of Washing
ton, 218 ; the " Ordinance of 323

Freedom " the first favoring
cause of the State's prosperity,
219 ; not a sporadic growth, 2] 9 ,
the ordinance an agency for
" selection," of people, 220-221 ;
history of the ordinance, 222
et seq. ; Eev. Manasseh Cutler
and the Ordinance of 1787, 223-
224 ; Washington upon the set
tlement of, at Marietta, 225 ; flrst
settlement of, 226, et seq. ; sig-
niflcance of " Buckeye," 228 ;
settlement of Cincinnati, 229 ;
government of Territory organ
ized at Marietta, 229-280 ; St.
Clair's and Wayne's campaigns
against the Indians, 231 ; great
accessions to population of, in
1796, 232-233; Virginia Mili
tary District, 232; Chillicothe
settled, 233 ; Virginians cred
ited with giving Ohio state
hood, 234, 235 ; statehood hot
achieved at a stroke, 236 ; state-
liood linked with rise of Jeffer
sonian Democracy, 237; state
hood hastened by animosity to
St. Clair, 238-240 ; and by ad
vance of Territorial government
to second form, 241 ; smallness
of the State proposed by Fed
eralists, 242, 243 ; riotous dem
onstrations caused by statehood
agitation, 244 ; Worthington goes
to Washington in interests of
State creation, 245; struggle for
statehood wholly one of parti
zan politics, 246 ; the battle in
Washington, 247 ; and in the
Territory, 248 ; Federalist plan
for State rejected by Congress,

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

249 ; " Enabling Act " passes
Congress for admission of State,
249 ; tables completely turned
against Federalists, 250 ; grounds
of Federalists' protest, 251-252 ;
St. Clair dismissed from office by
President Jefferson, 253 ; free-
soil provision of Ordinance of
1787 attacked in constitutional
convention, 253 ; but signally
and successfully defended by
Ephraim Cutler, 254^255; first
constitution's authorship, 255-
256 ; limitation of executive's
power, 256-257 ; admission of
State unique, 267 ; various
dates of State's origin, 258 ; Al
bert Gallatin's service to Ohio,
259-260, 262; ascendency of
State analyzed, 261 et seq. : causes
of growth, 261-262 ; settlement
from all of the States, 263 ; con
tributions from leading ones,
265 et seq. ; contributions from
New England. 269-271 ; nation
alities represented in popula
tion, 272-273; War of 1812 as
cause of State's growth, 273-274 ;
earnestness of political convic
tions, 274 ; prominence of South
ern antislavery men, 274^277 ;
progress of population, 278; the
State in war of the rebellion, 279
et seq. ; generals of, 280 et seq. ;
civilians prominent in war pe
riod, 284 et seq. ; prominence of
Ohioans in post-bellum civil
affairs, 287 et seq. ; Ohioans at
inauguration of Garfield, 288-
289; great number of Ohio-born
Congressmen in service, 290 ;

disguised Ohioans in Harrison's
Cabinet, 290 ; remarkable roster
of Ohioans in national offices,
291 et seq. ; same an'anged by
administrations, 292 et seq. ;
Senators, 296 ; Governors, 300 ;
literature and authors, 303 ;
journalists, 305 ; artists, 306 ;
scientists, 306 ; resume of causes
of Ohio's prestige, 307 et seq.;
vote of State, how cast, 808 ; as
an "October State," 309; long
terms of Senators and Eepre-
sentatives, 310-311 ; population,
312-814 ; Ohio's contributions
to the building of other States,
313; State motto, 816; conclu
sion, 316.
Opdyke, General Emerson,195,281.
Opper, Frederick, 206.
Ordinance of 1787, the, as the first
cause of Ohio's favorable foun
dation, 219; establishes " free
dom forever " northwest of the
Ohio, 219 ; becomes more valu
able to Ohio as an agency for
selecting its population, 220;
history of its formation and en
actment, 222 et seq. ; why it
passed, 223 ; Manasseh Cutler's
authorship of, 224; virtually
dictated by land purchasers,
226 ; integrity of, attacked in
Ohio's first convention, 253 ;
but suoeessfuUy defended by
Ephraim Cutler, 254-255 ; prin
ciples of, advanced by South
ern men in Ohio, 274-277.

Paine, Eleazar A., 195.
Paine family, 151.

324

Ind

ex

Paine, General Edward, 149.
Paine, Halbert E., 195.
Painesville, founded, 151.
Parsons, General Samuel Holden,
148, 230.
Payne, Henry B., 191, 299.
" Pennamite Wars," allusion to,
56 ; keynote of, 64 ; real begin
ning of, 69 ; Ogden arrests
" Yankee" settlers, 70 ; Captain
Lazarus Stewart assists colo
nists, 71 ; first blood fiows, 72 ;
Wyoming colony wiped out, 73 ;
Connecticut supports her colo
nists and extends government
over them, 74 ; become compli
cated with Eevolution, 75 ;
Plunkett's expedition, 75-77 ;
connection of, with Eevolution,
79 ; reopening of, under new
conditions. 111 ; Patterson's ex
ploits in, 112-114 ; civil war and
new State threatened, 115-116 ;
Timothy Pickering's diplomacy,
118; progress of "new State"
idea, 119-120 ; Compromise Act,
120-121 ; results of war to
Pennsylvania, 122, 123 ; a final
result of, is gaining of " Western
Eeserve" by Connecticut, 124^
125.
Pendleton, George H., 299.
Pennsylvania, charter of, ex
plained, 61 ; Connecticut set
tlers in, 54, 57 ; prepares to re
sist Connecticut invasion, 66
first " Yankee " settlers in, 67
attitude of, to Wyoming, 106
title to Wyoming lands vested
in, 108 ; takes measures against
Wyoming settlers, 111-114; re

luctantly concedes individual
title to Connecticut men at
Wyoming, 118, 119 ; results to,
of "Pennamite War," 122;
votes for grant to Connecticut
from Western lands, 135 ; con
tributions of, to Ohio, 265, 266.
Perkins, Joseph, 208.
Perry, Oliver Hazard, victory of,
154.
Phelps, Oliver, 141.
Piatt, General A. S., 281.
Piatts, the, 267.
Pickering, Timothy, as diplomat
in Wyoming troubles, 117-118 ;
arrested by Connecticut men,
120, 243.
Politics: new Western Democracy
forms nucleus at Chillicothe,
234 ; Federalists from New Eng
land in Ohio, 235 ; Ohio comes
naturally by predilection for,
286 ; war of Federalists and
Jeffersonian Eepublioans over
statehood for Ohio, 238 et seq. ;
partizan measures of Ohio Fed
eralists, 242, 243 ; Jeffersonians
plan Ohio as « partizan State,
246 ; Thomas Worthington vis
its national capital, 247 ; battle
for statehood given additional
heat by opposition to St. Clair,
248 et seq. ; Federalist plans for
State defeated, 249 ; pro and
con of statehood agitation, 251-
252 ; Jeffersonians flU all State
offices but one, 258-259 ; ear
nestness in, a cause of develop
ment of State power, 274 ; South
ern antislavery leaders prom
inent in Ohio, 274-277 ; election

325

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

of Brough, over Vallandigham,
284 ; prominence of Ohio in na
tional civil affairs, 287 et seq. ;
roster of officials in Federal
and State service for one hun
dred years, 291 et seq.; causes
of political prestige of State,
307 ; vote of State since 1824,
308 ; Ohio an " October State,"
309 ; long terms of office an
element of strength, 808, 309,
810. (See Jeffersonian Democ
racy, Federalists, etc.)
Potts, General B. F., 281.
Powers, Hiram, 806.
Pugh, Achilles, 266, 275.
Pugh, George E., 299.
Puritanism, seamy side of, 4^6 ;
British historians on, 5-7 ; atti
tude of, toward literature, 8-9 ;
progressive character of, in
America, 11, 20-21 ; relaxes in
West, 31-32 ; and " coolness of
judgment," 85 ; outcome of, in
Connecticut, 45 ; in the West
ern Eeserve, 169, 171 ; progres
sive nature of, in the West, 172
et seq. ; mingled with patriotism
forms code of moral aggression
in Western Eeserve, 177 ; idea
of, put in force by Giddings and
Wade, 178 et seq.
Putnam, General Israel, 37. 43.
Putnam, General Rufus, 223, 226.
" Queen Esther." (See Montour,
Catharine.)
Eankin, John, 276.
Eanney, Eufus P., 194.
Eansom, Samuel, 91.

Eebellion, War of, Connecticut in,
39 et seq. ; Ohio in, 279 et seq.
Eeid, Whitelaw, 273, 305.
Eeilly, General J. W., 195, 282.
Eepublioans. (See Jeffersonian
Democracy, Politics, etc.)
Eevolutionary War, Connecticut
in, 85 et seq. ; Wyoming's rank
in, 102 ; Ohio pioneers officers
in, 225, 226.
Ehodes, James Ford, 205.
Eice, Harvey, 202.
Eiddle, Albert Gallatin, 191, 203.
Eobinson, General J. S., 282.
Eoosevelt, Theodore, on Ohio's
first constitution, 256.
Eoseorans, General W. S., 267, 273,
281.
Eoot, Joseph M., 1 91.
Euggles, James M. (note), 296.
Eunkle, General B. P., 282.
Eusk, Jeremiah M., 290, 295.
Eussell, A. P., 304.
St. Clair, General Arthur, as Gov
ernor of the Northwest Terri
tory, 230 ; defeat of, by Indians,
231 ; unpopularity of, 238 ; ani
mosity toward him hastens
formation of State, 288 et seq. ;
death of, 241 ; riotous demon
stration against, 244 ; denounced
by .Teffersonians as an aristo
crat and tyrant, 248 ; makes in
judicious speech to Legislature,
252 ; removed from office by
President Jefferson, 258 ; shad
ow of, falls on Ohio's constitu
tion, 257.
Sargent, Winthrop, 230.
Schenck, General Eobert C, 281.

326

Index

Scotch-Irish, the, in Ohio, 273.
Senators of United States from
Ohio, 296.
" Seven Eanges," 233.
" Shades of Death," fiight of Wy
oming settlers through, 98.
Shannon, Wilson, 273, 300.
Shaw, Albert, 305.
Sheridan, General P. H., 273, 280,
283, 289.
Sherman, John, 270, 271, 286, 289,
291, 292, 294, 296 ; long term of,
299 (note), 311.
Sherman, General William T.,
289, 292, 294.
Sill, General Joshua, 282.
Six Nations, lands of, purchased,
68 ; prepare to descend on Wy
oming, 78, 79, 80, 81, 89, 90,
98.
Slavery, prohibited in Northwest
Territory by Ordinance of 1787,
219-221 ; limited plan of, pro
posed for Ohio, 258 ; but de
feated in convention by Ephra
im Cutler, 254, 255; vote on,
in Ohio convention, 254. (See
Antislavery.)
Sloan, John, 191.
Sloane, William M., 804.
Slough, General John P., 282.
Smith, General W. S., 282.
Smith, John, 297.
Spalding, Eufus P., 191.
Sparks, Edwin E., 805.
Speneer, Piatt E., 207.
Sproat, Colonel Ebenezer, 228.
Stanberry, Henry, 271, 298.
Stanley, General David S., 281.
Stanton, Edwin M., 268, 286, 291,
292, 293.

Statistics ; of Western Eeserve's
growth, 158, 210 ; of Cleve
land's growth, 208 ; of Ohio's
progress in population, 278, 312 ;
of population contributed to
other States, 313-814 (note) ; and
of those received from other
States and nations, 314 (note).
Steedman, General Jacob D., 273,
282.
Stewart, Lazarus, 71, 91.
Stone, Amasa, 209.
Storrs, Charles B., 47, 174, 178,
274.
" Sufferers' Lands." (See " Fire
Lands.")
Susquehanna Company, the, 63,
65.
Swan, Joseph E., 271.
Swayne, General John Wager,
281.
Swayne, Noah H., 265, 292.
Symmes, John Cleves, 229, 230,
267.
Taft, Alphonso, 294.
Tappan, Benjamin, 298.
Taylor, Ezra B., 191.
Teedyuscung, Delaware chief,
burned to death, 67-68.
Thomas, Edith, 204.
Thurman, Allen G., 266, 267, 291,
299.
Thwing, Eev. Charles F., 197.
Tiffin, Edward, first Governor of
Ohio, 258, 272, 297, 300.
Tioga, Indians concentrate at, 81-
83.
Tod, David, 194, 270, 284, 286,801.
Tories, expelled from Wyoming,
79 ; with British and Indians in

327

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

attack on Wyoming, 81-82; in
England, affected by Wyoming
massacre, 102.
Tourgee, Albion W., 205.
" Trenton Decree," 108 et seq.
Trimble, Allen, 265, 800.
Trimble, William, 298.
Trumbull County organized, 152.
Trumbull, Jonathan, 86, 37, 182.
" Underground Eailroad," 175,
199.
Upson, William H., 191.
Vallandigham, Clement L., 194,
284.
Vance, Joseph, 266, 301.
Van De Veer, General F., 282.
Varnum, James M., 230.
Venable, W. H., 304.
Vermont, immigrants from, to
Ohio, 271.
Vinton, Samuel F., 271.
Virginia, Congressmen of, op
posed to granting Connecticut's
Western Eeserve, but vote for,
186 ; reserves military lands in
Ohio, 232 ; her people dominate
early Ohio, 283 et seq. ; settlers
from, give Ohio its statehood,
234 et seq. ; contributions from,
to Ohio, 265-266 ; antislavery
leaders from, in Ohio, 275-276.
Wade, Benjamin P., mentioned,
164, 178, 180 ; birth and parent
age of, 182-188 ; iu United
States Senate, 185 ; character of,
185-188 ; grave of, in Jefferson,
188; mentioned, 265, 270, 285,
291, 299, 811.

Wade, Edward, 183, 191.
Wade, General M. S., 282.
Wade, J. H., 209.
Waite, Morrison E., 270, 289, 292.
Ward, J. Q. A., 306.
Ware, Eugene F., quoted, 218.
Warner, General W., 282.
War of 1812, effects of, on Ohio,
273.
Warren, first seat of justice in
Western Eeserve, 152.
" Wan-ior's Path," 99.
Washington, George, moves for
avenging of Wyoming, 105 ; op
posed to grant of Western Ee
serve, 136 ; counsels settlement
of Ohio, 218; upon the West,
225 ; upon Arthur St. Clair, 240.
Wayne, General Anthony, chas
tises Indians and makes treaty
of Greenville, 138.
Weitzel, General Godfrey, 281.
Western Eeserve College (and
University), mentioned, 159,
160, 174, 178 ; organized at Hud
son, 196 ; removed to Cleveland,
197, 198.
Western Eeserve, mentioned, 28,
110 ; gained by Connecticut
through conditions at Wyo
ming, 124^125 ; triumph of Con
necticut in, 129 et seq. ; Con
necticut cedes claim to Western
lands, 181-132; a "reserve"
stipulated, 132; reasons for
same, 133 ; based on Wyoming,
134 ; Washington opposed to
grant of, 136 ; Virginia Con
gressmen originally oppose, but
finally vote for, 136 ; reasons
therefor, 137 ; Indian title to.

328

Index

secured, 188 ; the " Fire Lands "
set apart, 138-139 ; sale of lands
in, 139 et seq. ; personnel of pur
chasers, 140 ; General Moses
Cleaveland, 143-144 ; the sur
veyors, 144; Fourth of July,1796,
at Conneaut, " the Plymouth of
theWest," 144-146; surveyors at
site of Cleveland, 146-147 ; first
residents, 147 et seq. ; local gov
ernment established, 152 ; John
Marshall's great service to, 153 ;
Perry's victory, 154 ; benefited
by opening of Erie Canal, 154 ,
and by Ohio Canal, 155 ; safe
ty and peaoefulness of life in,
155-157 ; as a conservation of
Connecticut, 158 et seq. ; first
preacher in, 158 ; first school in,
159, 160 ; its local character
" Johnny Appleseed," 161-163 ;
irreligion and whisky drink
ing in, 168-164 ; pioneer teachers
of, paid in whisky, 164; Con
necticut names iu, 165-166 ; map
of, 167; amount and division of
lands in, 166-168 ; counties of,
168 ; distinctness of, as a Con
necticut colony, 169; force of
heredity in, 170 ; Puritanism
modified in, 171-173 ; progres
sion and radicalism of, 172-177 ;
Mormonism given short shrift
in, 176 ; Puritanism infiuenoes
politics in, 177 ; rise of anti-
slavery, 177 et seq. ; called " a
State separate from Ohio," 179 ;
Giddings and Wade, 180 et seq. ;
John Brown, 189 ; contributions
of, to national service, 190 et
seq.; James A. Garfield, 192;

William McKinley, 192 ; con
tributions to civil roster of
State, 198-195 ; governors from,
194; civil- war generals from,
195; education, 196; "Yale of
the West" at Hudson, 196;
University of, in Cleveland, 197,
198 ; Hiram and Wooster Col
leges, 198; Oberlin, 199-200;
Lake Erie College, 200; reflex
tide among educators, 200-201 ;
the common schools, 201-203;
literature and authors, 203 et
seq. ; growth of Cleveland, 208 ;
commercial importance of
Cleveland, 208, 209 ; comparison
of, with several States, 210 ; con
clusion, 211 : mentioned, 232,
233, 265, 269.
Whittlesey, Asaph, 191.
Whittlesey, Charies, 208.
Whittlesey, Elisha, 184, 191.
Wilkesbarre, first settlement of,
67 ; the town named, 74.
Wilmot, David, author of " Pro
viso," 122, 191, 192.
Windom, William, 290, 294.
Winsor, Justin, quoted, 27.
Wintermoot's Fort, 90.
Wolcott, Governor, on Connecti
cut colonists in Pennsylvania,
64 ; writes constitution for i\a\\
" Yankee " State in Pennsyl
vania, 119.
Wolcutt, General C. C, 282.
Wood Eeuben, 194, 271, 301.
Woods, General C. E., 282.
Woods, General W. B., 282, 292.
Woolsey, Sarah C, 205.
Woolson, Constance F., 205.
Worthington, Thomas, chief pro-

33

329

Ohio and Her Western Reserve

moter of Ohio's statehood, 244-
245 ; goes to Washington in its
interest, 245 ; his labor there,
247 ; mentioned, 265, 297,
300.
Wright, G. Frederick, 206, 208.
Wyoming, as " Windsor of the
West," 24, 27, 57 ; first settled,
67 ; first massacre at, 68 ; great
growth of, 75 ; Indian hostility
to, 78 ; signs of danger at, in
crease, 80; Indians advance
upon, 89, 90 ; battle of, 192 et
seq. ; massacre begins, 94 ; cap
tive inhabitants tortured and
killed, 95 ; total losses in battle
and massacre of, 96 ; flight
from, 96-98 ; far-reaching effects
of battle, 101 et seq. ; ranked
with Lexington and Concord
in significance, 102; attention
of world drawn to, 103, 104 ;

settlers return to, 105 ; Con
necticut and Pennsylvania
claims to lands of, left to adju
dication, 106 ; commissioners
appointed, 107 ; lands of, vested
in Pennsylvania, 108; Wyo
ming men acquiesce, 110; as
nucleus of proposed new State,
116 ; lands of, finally confirmed
to " Y'ankee " settlers, 122 ; con
test for results in Connecticut
gaining the " Westem Eeserve,"
124-125, 134-136.
" Yale of the West." (See West
ern Eeserve College.)
Young, John, founds Youngs
town, 151-152.
Young, Thomas L., 302.
Youngstown founded, 161.
Zanes, the, 267.

THE END

330

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