History of Ohio
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The history of Ohio is composed of many thousands of years of human activity. What is now Ohio was probably first settled by Paleo-Indian peoples, who lived in the area as early as 13,000 BC. They were eventually supplanted by Native Americans known as the Archaic peoples. The Archaic period is generally subdivided into the Early, Middle and Late Archaic. Scholars believe that Early Archaic peoples in Ohio were generally mobile hunters-and-gatherers. Because relatively few Middle Archaic sites have been found, it has been more difficult to theorize about their culture and people. Those which have been discovered have been deeply buried in river valleys and thus inaccessible.
The Late Archaic period featured the development of focal subsistence economies and regionalization of Archaic cultures. Regional cultures in Ohio include the Maple Creek Culture(Excavations) of southwestern Ohio, the Glacial Kame Culture culture of western Ohio (especially northwestern Ohio), and the Red Ochre and Old Copper cultures across much of northern Ohio. Flint Ridge, located in present-day Licking County, provided flint, an extremely important raw material and trade good. Objects made from Flint Ridge flint have been found as far east as the Atlantic coast, as far west as Kansas City, and as far south as Louisiana, demonstrating the links of the trading cultures.
About 800 BC, Late Archaic cultures were supplanted by Native Americans of the Adena culture. The Adenas were mound builders. Many of their thousands of burial mounds in Ohio have survived. Following the Adena culture was the Hopewell culture (c. 100 to c. 400 A.D.), and later the Fort Ancient culture. Researchers considered the Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio to be an Adena mound. It is the largest effigy mound in the United States and one of Ohio's best-known landmarks. It may have been a more recent work of Fort Ancient people.
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[edit] Early historic natives
When the first Europeans began to arrive in North America, Native Americans (also known as American Indians) participated in the fur trade. When the Iroquois confederation depleted the beaver and other game in the New York region, they launched a war known as the Beaver Wars, destroying or scattering the contemporary inhabitants of the Tennessee region. The Eries along the shore of Lake Erie were virtually eliminated by the Iroquois in the 1650s during the Beaver Wars. Thereafter, the Ohio lands were claimed by the Iroquois as hunting grounds. Ohio was nearly uninhabited for several decades.
Population pressure from expanding European colonies on the Atlantic coast compelled several groups of Native Americans to relocate to the Ohio Country by the 1730s. From the east, Delawares and Shawnees arrived, and Wyandots and Ottawas from the north. Miamis lived in what is now western Ohio. Mingos were those Iroquois who migrated west into the Ohio lands.
[edit] European colonization
During the 18th century, the French set up a system of trading posts to control the fur trade in the region. Christopher Gist was one of the first English-speaking explorers to travel through and write about the Ohio Country. When British traders such as George Croghan started to do business in the Ohio Country, the French and their northern Indian allies drove them out. They began in 1752 with a raid on Miami Indian town of Pickawillany (modern Piqua, Ohio). The French began military occupation of the Ohio Valley in 1753.
An attempt by the Virginian George Washington to drive the French out in 1754 contributed to the war known in the colonies as the French and Indian War. It was part of a much larger conflict between Great Britain and France that took place in Europe and their colonies across the world. The Seven Years' War, as it was known in Europe, concluded with Great Britain's triumph. By the Treaty of Paris, the French ceded control of Ohio and the old Northwest.
[edit] American Revolution
British military occupation in the region contributed to the outbreak of Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763. Ohio Indians participated in that war until an armed expedition in Ohio led by Colonel Henry Bouquet brought about a truce. Another military expedition into the Ohio Country in 1774 brought Lord Dunmore's War to a conclusion.
During the American Revolutionary War, Native Americans in the Ohio Country were divided over which side to support. For example, the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and the Delaware leader Buckongahelas sided with the British, while Cornstalk (Shawnee) and White Eyes (Delaware) sought to remain friendly with the rebellious colonists. American frontiersmen often did not differentiate between friendly and hostile Indians, however. Cornstalk was killed by American militiamen, and White Eyes may have been. One of the most tragic incidents of the war — the Gnadenhutten massacre of 1782 — took place in Ohio.
With the American victory in the Revolutionary War, the British ceded claims to Ohio and its territory in the West as far as the Mississippi River to the United States.
After Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, settlement of Ohio began with the founding of Marietta by the Ohio Company of Associates. It was formed by a group of American Revolutionary War veterans, who with their families composed much of the first generation of settlers. The Miami Company (also referred to as the "Symmes Purchase") managed settlement of land in the southwestern section. The Connecticut Land Company administered settlement in the Connecticut Western Reserve in present-day Northeast Ohio. Migrants came from New York and especially New England, where there had been a growing hunger for land as population increased. Most moved to Ohio by wagon and stagecoach, sometimes traveling part of the way by barges on the Mohawk River. Farmers who first settled in western New York sometimes moved on to one or more locations in Ohio in their lifetimes, as new lands kept opening to the west.
[edit] Northwest Ordinance and Territory
American settlement of the Northwest Territory was resisted by Native Americans in the Northwest Indian War. The natives were eventually conquered by General Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. Much of present-day Ohio was ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Greenville the next year.
The United States created the Northwest Territory in 1787 under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The territory was not allowed to legalize slavery (although once it achieved statehood it was allowed to do so, and did not.) The states of the Midwest would be known as free states, in contrast to those states south of the Ohio River that came to be known as slave states. As Northeastern states abolished slavery in the coming two generations, the free states would be known as Northern States. The Northwest Territory originally included areas previously called Ohio Country and Illinois Country. As Ohio prepared for statehood, Indiana Territory was carved out, reducing the Northwest Territory to approximately the size of present-day Ohio plus the eastern half of Michigan's lower peninsula.
[edit] Statehood
As Ohio's population numbered 45,000 in December 1801, Congress determined that the population was growing rapidly and Ohio could begin the path to statehood. The assumption was the territory would have in excess of 60,000 residents by the time it became a state. Congress passed the Enabling Act of 1802 that outlined the process for Ohio to seek statehood. The residents convened a constitutional convention. They used numerous provisions from other states and rejected slavery.
On February 19, 1803, President Jefferson signed an act of Congress that approved Ohio's boundaries and constitution. Congress did not pass a specific resolution formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state. The current custom of Congress' declaring an official date of statehood did not begin until 1812, when Louisiana was admitted as the 18th state.
Although no formal resolution of admission was required[who?], when the oversight was discovered in 1953, Ohio congressman George H. Bender introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union retroactive to March 1, 1803. At a special session at the old state capital in Chillicothe, the Ohio state legislature approved a new petition for statehood that was delivered to Washington, D.C. on horseback. On August 7, 1953 (the year of Ohio's 150th anniversary), President Eisenhower signed an act that officially declared March 1, 1803 the date of Ohio's admittance into the Union.
[edit] War of 1812
Ohio was on the front lines of the War of 1812. Frontiersmen believed that British agents in Canada had provided weapons, especially rifles and gunpowder, to hostile Indian tribes. At the same time Tecumseh's War started, the conflict in the Old Northwest between the U.S. and an Indian confederacy led by the Shawnee chief Tecumseh. He became an official ally of the British in 1812. William Henry Harrison's victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, coupled with the defeat and death of Tecumseh in 1813, broke the power of the Indians. After 1815 the British no longer traded with the Indians of Ohio nor provided them military supplies.
In 1835, Ohio contested with Michigan over the Toledo Strip. Congress gave the land, which included the city of Toledo, to Ohio. In exchange, Michigan was given more of the Upper Peninsula.
[edit] Civil War
Ohio's central position and its population gave it an important place during the Civil War. The Ohio River was a vital artery for troop and supply movements, as were Ohio's railroads. Ohio provided numerous senior commanders to the United States Army during the war. The war was important to more than a generation. Five Buckeye veterans later served as President of the United States.
[edit] Industrialization
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Throughout much of the 19th century, industry was rapidly introduced. Workers in factories manufactured what people had formerly produced at home. Ohio had rivers and its frontage on Lake Erie to help with transportation, water power and movement of goods.
[edit] Natural resources
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[edit] 1900s
[edit] Constitutional Convention of 1912
In 1912 a Constitutional Convention was held with Charles B. Galbreath as Secretary. The result reflected the concerns of the Progressive Era. The constitution introduced the initiative and the referendum, and provided for the General Assembly to put questions on the ballot for the people to ratify laws and constitutional amendments originating in the Legislature. Under the Jeffersonian principle that laws should be reviewed once a generation, the constitution provided for a recurring question to appear every 20 years on Ohio's general election ballots. The question asks whether a new constitutional convention is required. Although the question has appeared in 1932, 1952, 1972, and 1992, the people have not found the need for a convention. Instead, constitutional amendments have been proposed by petition and the legislature hundreds of times and adopted in a majority of cases.
[edit] 2000s
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[edit] See also
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Surveys and textbooks
- Andrew R. L. Cayton. Ohio: The History of a People (2002)
- Knepper, George W. Ohio and Its People. Kent State University Press, 3rd edition 2003, ISBN 0-87338-791-0 (paperback),
[edit] Secondary Sources
- Blue, Frederick J. Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (1987)
- Beverley W. Bond Jr.; The Foundations of Ohio. Volume: 1. 1941. detailed history to 1802.
- Buley, R. Carlyle. The Old Northwest (1950), Pulitzer Prize winner
- Booraem V. Hendrick. The Road to Respectability: James A. Garfield and His World, 1844-1852 Bucknell University Press, (1988)
- Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-253-33210-9 (hardcover); ISBN 0-253-21212-X (1998 paperback).
- Jensen, Richard. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (1971)
- Jordan, Philip D.Ohio Comes of Age: 1873-1900 Volume 5 (1968)
- Stephen E. Maizlish. The Triumph of Sectionalism: The Transformation of Ohio Politics, 1844-1856 (1983)
- O'Donnell, James H. Ohio's First Peoples. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8214-1525-5 (paperback), ISBN 0-8214-1524-7 (hardcover).
- Ratcliffe, Donald J. The Politics of Long Division: The Birth of the Second Party System in Ohio, 1818-1828. Ohio State U. Press, 2000. 455 pp.
- Eugene Roseboom. The Civil War Era, 1850-1873, vol. 4 (1944), detailed general history
- Andrew Sinclair. The Available Man: The Life behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding 1965
- Richard Sisson ed. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (2006)
- David D. Van Tassel and John J. Grabowski, eds. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (1987), also online
- David D. Van Tassel and John J. Grabowski, eds. Cleveland: A Tradition of Reform (1986)
- Francis P. Weisenburger. The Passing of the Frontier, vol. 3 (1941), detailed history of 1830s and 1840s
- Wheeler, Kenneth H. "Local Autonomy and Civil War Draft Resistance: Holmes County, Ohio" Civil War History, Vol. 45, 1999
[edit] Primary sources
- Tom L. Johnson. My Story Kent State University Press, 1993
- Phillip R. Shriver, Jr. and Clarence E. Wunderlin. eds. Documentary Heritage Of Ohio (2001)
[edit] External links
- Historic Ohio, the magazine
- Ohio Historical Preservation Group
- Ohio Historical Society
- Ohio History Central – an online encyclopedia by the Ohio Historical Society
- OhioKIDS!
- Ohio in The Civil War
- State of Ohio Official Webpage
- Bibliography of Ohio politics
- Ohio Exploration Society
- Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
- Ohio: A Sentimental Journey, WBGU-PBS collaborative documentary
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