- Ohio History in 2000 Words
- Mound Builders
- Native Ohioans
- The Ohio Company
- Ohio's Wood Forts
- Indian Wars
- War of 1812
- Ohio's Canals
- Ohio's Road
- Scenic Railroads / Museums
- Underground Railroad
- Civil War in Ohio
Fort Harmar at the confluence of the Muskingum River (lower left) and the Ohio River.
Period illustration shows Buckley Island.
After the American Revolution came to an end, the new federal government had no need for the large military force that it could not feed, clothe or pay wages to. The Continental Army that had won the war with England was disbanded by Congress. There were less than 100 professional American soldiers still in the ranks. A big debate was waged in Congress: should the United States have a military force? If yes, how will they get paid.
The answers came mostly from President Washington. YES, the country must have a military force. He wasn't alone in his feelings that the new country still faced imminent threats from many places, but in particular on the western frontier. Here there already were ongoing bloody fighting between pioneers and Native Americans. Added to that open conflict were the British and Spanish, both of who were siding with the Native Americans by supplying them.
President Washington suggested that each new state should train, supply and oversee their own militia force that could be called upon when needed. When threats appeared, these militia men, using their own weapons, their own food, and their own personal items, would assemble and act as an organized military force. The state would then supplement these forces by providing what necessary supplies might be required.
Congress realized that the milia may not be the solution they had thought it would be, so in 1784 they authorized the formation of a 1000 man army called the First American Regiment. This regiment was made mostly from the most experienced militia on the western frontier and former Continental Army members.
For more than a decade, there were pioneers willing to risk everything to get a free piece of land where they could raise their family and build a future. The problem was that this land, the Ohio Country, had been off limits to everyone except the Native Americans that lived here. A treaty had been signed promising that American settlers would not cross the Ohio River.
Those pioneers who had crossed the Ohio River became targets from Native American hunting parties. Not only were the pioneers at risk, so too were the Native Americans who might come upon a settlement that reacted with force against the Indians. Retaliation became a way of life, and because the Americans had crossed into their land, they too crossed into Virginia and Kentucky taking what they could find, killing those they came upon. It had become an open battlefield.
People with money wanted the fighting to end, so they could sell the lands they had acquired. People with money always seemed to have an influence upon Congress.
In 1784 Colonel Josiah Harmar left Fort Pitt, stopped at Fort McIntosh constructed by Lachlan McIntosh in 1778. Here Harmar and his men rebuilt the aging fort. In January of the next year, Harmar signed a new treaty with some Native Americans in the area. In this treaty, the United States began to assert its fledgling power by stating that Americans had the legal right to settle on land north of the Ohio River.
This was actually a dramatic change from what had been the norm. Previous treaties between the British and Native Americans, assured that colonial pioneers would NOT settle on this land. However, since there was no authority in the Ohio Country, those treaties went unenforced.
Fort Harmar was located at the mouth of the Muskingum River where it enters into the Ohio River on the west side of the Muskingum River. When Fort Harmar was originally ordered built by an act of congress its mission was to keep American settlers from putting down roots on Indian land which was on the north side of the Ohio River.
Construction of the fort began in the fall 1785 under command of U.S. Major John Doughty along with a detachment of federal troops. Even though the structure was small by military standards, it seemed to take longer than expected and wasn't completed until the following spring. It was named for Major Doughty's superior, General Josiah Harmar.
The fort consisted of horizontal log walls with several bastions to keep those walls in position. There were also four palisades that offered that provided additional support for the horizontal walls as well as improved firing lines in the event of an attack. Overall the fort had a pentagon shape. Inside the walled fort were several 2-story buildings for officers and family with barracks for the troops. There was also an arsenal and a store house with a watch tower that gave an elevated view of the rivers and land surround the fort.
Almost as soon as the fort was completed and outfitted with several canon, Major Doughty had the men begin building an extensive garden outside the fort's walls. In time that garden was supplemented with fruit trees.
From this fort small groups of 2 or 3 experienced rangers would fan out in wide 30 mile arcs around the fort to look for traces of Indian incursions as well as unwanted settlers that may have slipped across the river. These rangers or spies as they were sometimes called, were very alert to minutest signs (broken twigs, foot prints, anything out of the ordinary) that would indicate Indians were in the area.
Shortly after Fort Harmar was completed, the men were startled when a canoe was spotted drifting down the Ohio River. Some of the men captured it and brought it back to shore. Inside the unmanned canoe were found a pair of shoes, 2 axes and some corn. The men were left to wonder what had happened to the occupant.
On the south side of the Ohio River was Virginia. Here Isaac Williams who owned 100s of acres of land here set aside 400 acres of land directly across from the new fort. He did this in hopes of adding strength in numbers to the new arrivals. It should be mentioned that the demand for land was being fueled because of the lack of money in the country's new treasury. Officers who had served General Washington had not been paid for their time in the service. They instead were being offered bounty claims on land along the western frontier for service rendered during the American Revolution.
Three years later a group of men under the leadership of General Rufus Putnam arrived at Fort Harmar. They actually set up a camp on the east side of the Muskingum River and they built a fort there. They eventually named named their community Marietta. Rufus Putnam was also a general in the American Revolution and had a long career as a soldier. It was Putnam's idea of building a series of forts along the Ohio River one of which was Fort Harmar.
In 1790 most of the garrison still posted at Fort Harmar were transferred to Fort Washington further down river at the confluence of the Ohio and Greater Miami Rivers. Governor Arthur St. Clair also moved his office to the new fort. In 1795 Fort Harmar was abandoned.
JOSIAH HARMAR
Born in
Philadelphia, raised as a Quaker, Josiah joined the American army in 1775, served under George Washington and Henry Lee. After the war, Harmar delivered the ratified Treat of Paris back to Paris, France and to Benjamin Franklin.
When Congress created the First American Regiment which consisted of 8 companies of infantry and 2 artillery regiments. The president of Congress named Josiah Harmar, his former aide to be made its commander. This force was under direct control by the United States Congress.
With an increasing number of incidents between Native Americans and American settlers happening along the Ohio River, Governor St. Clair requested there be a sit down meeting between the Native American leaders and the Americans. This meeting was held at Fort Harmar in late 1788.
American Indians included representatives from the Wyandot, Delaware, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, and the Sauk nations. These groups were hoping that Governor St. Clair would establish a recognized reservation on the land north of the Ohio and west of the Muskingum Rivers. When this proposal was presented to St. Clair, he immediately refused. Governor St. Clair demanded the representative nations agree to the boundary established in the Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785. St. Clair threatened the American Indians with attack if they refused and then proceeded to bribe them with three thousand dollars in presents. The chiefs signed the Treaty of Fort Harmar, which reiterated the terms of the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, on January 9, 1789.
This treaty which looked good back east and to the U.S. Congress did nothing to stop the bloodshed on the frontier. There were also several nations that had refused to sign the treaty, the most noticeable were the Shawnee. In fact, they were responsible for increasing not only the number of attacks on American settlers, but the ruthlessness of these attacks also increased.
The following year the federal government decided to force the issue of bringing peace to the frontier with armed military incursions into the Ohio Territory. The first was led by Josiah Harmar which led to a military defeat. Next, St. Clair led an expedition that also resulted in a tragic loss. President Washington disgusted with the results to date, requested his old military comrade Anthony Wayne to come out of retirement and do the job right.
General Wayne did indeed lead a strategically sound campaign against the American Indians that ultimately led to the Treaty of Greeneville which opened up much of the Ohio Territory to settlement. It wasn't a lasting peace, but it was the start of a lasting peace.
The above drawing was made by an early pioneer settler named Judge Joseph Gilman who came to the Northwest Territory and settled in the new village of Marietta. He had been a New Hampshire state senator, but after the Revolutionary War much of the economy in New England had collapsed. Men of wealth and position could not collect money owed them and many individuals who had one time been wealthy and had positions of power, were now in positions where they couldn't afford to live. It was this reason that Judge Joseph Gilman joined the Ohio Company of Associates and decided to emigrate to America's new land, the Northwest Territory in 1789. Seven years later President George Washington appointed to be one of the first federal judges in the new territory. Three years after Ohio became a state, sixty-eight year old Gilman died and was buried in the Marietta Cemetery, but his grandson, had him re-interred many years later in the family plot in Brooklyn, NY.
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