The Contest for an Unfinished Ohio

© W. Russell Coil, 2010

From the 1770s to the early 1790, Ohio Indians stopped white migration to the Ohio country.

Cooperation across tribal lines (confederation)

Assistance from the British, seeking to check US expansion westward and to protect Canada from attack

Weak US military

1787-1788 was a turning point. Why?U.S. Constitution, instituting a new national

government capable of raising revenue to support the military

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

U.S. military whipped early on but then reorganized and put under the leadership of General “Mad” Anthony WayneBattle of Fallen Timbers, 1794

Decisive victory for the US and its first success against Indians

British withdrew support of Indians at crucial moment

Treaty of Greenville, 1795Ceded all but the northwest corner of Ohio to

white settlementEnded violent Indian resistance in Ohio

• Drainage is destiny.– River towns compared to Lake Erie towns

– 1800: 75% of population resided in places that bordered rivers

• Migration patterns– Southerners: river valleys in southern third of

Ohio– New Englanders: clustered in the northeast and

the lower Muskingum Valley– Marietta, 1788

– PA, NY, NJ in east, central, and Miami Valley• Different cultures

Geographical differences• Miami Valley first to flourish

• Military/Fort Washington• River access

• Cincinnati the most important western city in first half of 19th century

• strategically located along the Ohio River, the great highway to the Mississippi River and to New Orleans, a crucial port city for western business people.

• Western Reserve• Firelands• Development lagged…why?

Scioto Valley• Virginia Military District

– Metes and bounds– Large farms; small towns– African Americans– Economic inequality

»1850: 100 men owned 2/3 of land»1850: 89% of southern Ohioans from VA

1800-1810 45,365 to 230,760

Only 23,698 were children of settlers; the rest migrated

1820 581,000, mostly migrants from eastern and southern states

native-born Ohioans a minority 1825-1826: Of 103 members of the Ohio Legislature, only 3

born in Ohio1840• Ohio lost population to other states for the first time

1860• Just under 30% of heads of households in Ohio were Ohio

natives More heads of households in Ohio had been born in foreign countries

than in Ohio

1810-1840• Black population increased from 2,000 to 17,000,

but never reached above 1% of the state’s total population– Ohio Constitution– Black Laws, 1804-1837

• Furnish proof of freedom in order to live and work in Ohio• Required to post $500 bond signed by two whites willing to

guarantee good behavior and employment• Establish fines for harboring escaped slaves• Segregated schools• Prohibited interracial marriages, service on juries or in the

militia• Unable to testify against whites in court

• Race riots in Cincy: 1829, 1836, 1841, 1843• Tension related to Ohio’s proximity to slave states

John Malvin:“From the treatment I received by the people

generally, I found it little better than Virginia.”

Ohio River as Jordan River.Ohio as the Promised Land.Canada as alternative.Unfinished Ohio.

Nathaniel Dike in 1818:

“The spirit of immigration pervades the world. It has loosened the foundations of society, severed the ties of the kindred …”

Ohioans were “strangers to each other, and [mistrust] and jealousy embitter all social intercourse. They are only birds of passage.”

Desire to sell goods in distant portsFrancois Andre Michaux, 1802:“The Americans of the interior cultivate wheat

rather for speculation, in order to send the flour made from it to the seaports, than for their private consumption because nine-tenths of them use bread made of corn.”

War of 1812British Blockades and largest trading partnerTambora Volcano (Indonesia), 1815Largest volcanic eruption in recorded history

Ejected 24 cubic miles of molten and pulverized rock and spewed 400 million tons of sulfurous gases 27 miles into the atmosphere.

Explosion heard 3,000 miles away in India 4-5 hours later

1816: “the year without a summer”

• “In consequence of the unusual and universal failures of crops in 1816, the whole world came as near a state of starvation as the world’s people could well endure.”

• “This was foreseen by the eagle-eyed speculators of sea ports, and great quantities of corn were engaged on the Muskingum and other tributaries of the Ohio, to be delivered as soon as the ripening should allow.”

“the delay of running down a 2,000 mile river”

“This boasted supply arrives at last into the world’s highway and thoroughfare, the blue Atlantic.”

“Long ere this can be accomplished, the world has found a belly full and laughs at this outlandish” produce, leaving it and its seller to “rot and ruin.”

National SecurityWere Ohioans loyal Americans?George Washington: “The Western Settlers

– from my own observation – stand as it were on a pivot – the touch of a feather would almost incline them any way.”

Without “an easy communication” the westerners “will become a distinct people from us.”

Aaron BurrTwo trips west, 1805-1806

Harman Blennerhassett’s island (near Belpre, OH/Parkersburg, WV)Blennerhassett an open advocate of splitting the

west from the USSubsidized building of river boats for Burr

Senator John SmithCincy merchant specializing in military contracts

Andrew Jackson in Nashville$4,000 to pay for more boats

• “In less than five years you will be totally divided from the Atlantic states.”

• “The colonel entered into some arguments to prove why it would and must be so....He said that our taxes were very heavy, and demanded why we should pay them to the Atlantic parts of the country?....I  began to think that all was not right.  He said that with two hundred men he could drive congress, with the president at its head, into the river Potomac…”

“Colonel Burr now laid open his project of revolutionizing the territory west of the Allegheny, establishing an independent empire there; New Orleans to be the capital, and he himself to be the chief; organizing a military force on the waters of the Mississippi, and carrying conquest to Mexico”Thomas Jefferson, describing Burr’s plans

Jefferson sent spy to Blennerhasset and then to Chillicothe

Governor Tiffin called out militia and in December 1806 seized boats and supplies stored at Marietta

Virginia militia sacked the islandBurr tried but acquitted for treasonBlennerhasset ruined

Jefferson’s view of Burr’s ConspiracyThe plan involved "separating the western states

from us, of adding Mexico to them, and of placing himself at their head.”

Changed plans and focused on Mexico only when “he very early saw that the fidelity of the western country was not to be shaken.”

Ohioans had to imagine themselves as Americans because they were constantly under threat, at risk of falling to some other countryCompare Ohioans in War of 1812 vs. US

immigrants to Canada in War of 1812 

Greenville, OhioLalawethika/The Prophet

Master of Life who divided afterlife into twoBanned drinkingBanned tradingA return to traditionSyncretic religion

New ElementsCreate order

Banned racial mixingCreate a “nation of genuine Indians”

Tecumseh built military/political confederacy on foundation of brother’s religious movement

“The United States had set him an example by forming a strict union amongst all the fires that compose their confederacy”

Trying to stop the advance of white settlements by imitating what whites didPolitical union to strengthen militaryDefine new nation on basis of race

Defeat in the War of 1812 ended Indian resistance to white settlement in the Old NorthwestBritish withdrew key support at crucial moment

An Agricultural State?By 1850 agriculture reached its peak

Leading producer of corn and wool2nd in wheat behind only PA (1st by 1859)3rd in cash values of improved lands (behind PA

and NY)Unsurpassed in terms of diversity of

agricultural outputWheat regions of Upper Muskingum ValleyHog-dominated Miami ValleyCattle-feeding Scioto ValleyCattle grazing in Madison County/central OhioDairying of the Western Reserve

By 1850s, Ohio part of a coherent agricultural region:

• Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa• Specialized in the export of wheat, corn, pork• Liberal capitalism• Integrated into national and international

markets• One of the most highly commercialized

agricultural areas in the world

An Industrial State1820Only New York and Pennsylvania exceeded

Ohio in the value of manufactured productsOhio ranked 5th in amount of capital invested in

factories1850The last census year to show a majority of Ohio

workers engaged in agricultural work (51%)1870 for U.S.

Most agricultural rankings began to decline as farm productivity shifted west to the Mississippi Valley