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88 a child of the revolution chapter nine Cincinnati t The signs of spring appeared early that year, heralding a real frontier spring, wild and beautiful. A warm spell at the end of February sent gallons of melted snow hurtling down the Ohio; by 10 March, as the troops prepared for their second expedition to the interior, the river had rampaged out of its banks at Cincinnati, flooding cabins built near the water and covering the river road. The outpost of Columbia, indeed, was cut off from the other white settlements except by canoe. The fort was untouched, however, and the troops left as scheduled.1 The next two weeks were chilly and wet, but by the end of March, when the soldiers returned, spring had come indeed. The hills around Cincinnati were checkered with the pink of redbud and the white of dogwood and hawthorn; green and gold parakeets, redbirds, and robins twittered in the trees; and by April, according to a boy who remembered it long after, the ground “was covered with May apple, blood root, ginseng, violets, and a great variety of herbs and flowers.”2 Ensign Harrison could take in much of this natural beauty from the fort, just by looking up at the amphitheater of hills surrounding it, but as the spring advanced he often found occasion to visit the village. Actually, there was not a great deal to Cincinnati, which was just a collection of log buildings, at most two hundred, clustered on two levels separated by a high, steep bank. The buildings on the upper level straggled up and down dusty streets laid out in a grid like Philadelphia’s. Most were dwellings: primitive, mud-chinked cabins built around clay-and-stick 88 Booraem text.indb 88 5/22/12 1:53 PM cincinnati 89 chimneys and painted brick red on the outside. Some were primitive but grand, like the log house of the landowning Ludlow family, who kept a servant. Their inhabitants were mainly plain Pennsylvania and Jersey farmers and their families; Harrison often saw them in the morning, going to their fields outside town with tools and oxen (and the inevitable musket) to plant or cultivate their corn. Beyond their fields, which filled with sprouting corn as the season advanced and testified impressively to the richness of the soil, stood the first thickets of the forest, bright green with fresh foliage dense enough already to conceal hostile Indians.3 Down on the lower level by the river were buildings of a different sort, crude warehouses for the merchants like John Bartle and Thomas Gibson who did business, genial and calculating, behind the rough plank counters of their stores. These men generally sold spirits and doubled as tavernkeepers; it was from their cabins, late at night, that hunters and boatmen came reeling out, stinking of Monongahela whiskey.4 Cincinnati was a rough little place. It was full of frontier drifters and discharged soldiers, heavy drinkers who guzzled bitters in the morning to wash last night’s whiskey from their mouths, brawlers adept in noholds -barred fighting of the variety called “bite, ballock, and gouge” from its three principal winning holds—nose, testicles, and eyes. Even the more permanent inhabitants settled their disputes more often by fighting than by law and were not the sort to be cowed for long by the menace of Indian war. The residents were also hard workers. Harrison, strolling about the village in spring, could hear the sound of hammering everywhere as they continued work on their settlement. In the village center, one or two substantial men of property, like Israel Ludlow, were building pretentious , two-story houses. Winthrop Sargent, the territorial secretary, was putting up a small frame house and a large vegetable garden on some land he owned behind the fort. Down by the river, Wilkinson had soldiers working on a large stockade for the artificers who made and repaired army supplies and also on a garden where he planned to sow cabbage, turnips, and lima beans, among other vegetables. Not far from the fort, a log church was under way.5 Harrison had a particular interest in the church, for he had contributed to its construction. The preacher was to be James Kemper, a Presbyterian minister who had come to the West in1791, a portly, popular man whose Eastern dress—knee breeches, queue, and buckled shoes—contrasted Booraem text.indb 89 5/22/12 1:53 PM [3.149.214.32] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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