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��HISTORY OF OHIO.
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��Kentucky, 235,000, and Massachusetts, 164,000. Thus Ohio more than maintained, in the National army, the rank among her sisters which her popu- lation supported. Ohio furnished more troops than the President ever required of her ; and at the end of the war, with more than a thousand men in the camp of the State who were never mustered into the service, she still had a credit on the rolls of the War Department for 4,332 soldiers, beyond the aggregate of all quotas ever assigned to her; and, besides all these, 6,479 citizens had, in lieu of personal service, paid the commutation ; while In- diana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New York were all from five to one hundred thousand behind their quotas. So ably, through all those years of trial and death, did she keep the promise of the memorable dispatch from her first war Governor : " If Kentucky refuses to fill her quota, Ohio will fill it for her."
"Of these troops 11,237 were killed or mor- tally wounded in action, and of these 6,563 were left dead on the field of battle. They fought on well-nigh every battle-field of the war. Within forty-eight hours after the first call was made for troops, two regiments were on the way to Wash- ington. An Ohio brigade covered the retreat from the first battle of Bull Run. Ohio troops" formed the bulk of army that saved to the Union the territory afterward erected into West Virginia ; the bulk of the army that kept Kentucky from seceding ; a large part of the army that captured Fort Donelson and Island No. 10 ; a great part of the army that from Stone River and Chickamauga, and Mission Ridge and Atlanta, swept to the sea and captured Fort McAllister, and north through the Carolinas to Virginia."
When Sherman started on his famous march to the sea, someone said to President Lincoln, "T hey will never get through ; they will all be captured, and the Union will be lost." " It is impossible," replied the President ; "it cannot be done. There is a mighty sight of fight in one hundred thou- sand Western menP
Ohio troopsfought at Pea Ridge. They charged at Wagner. They helped redeem North Carolina. They were in the sieges of Vicksburg, Charleston, Mobile and Richmond. At Pittsburg Landing, at Antietam, Gettysburg and Corinth, in the Wilderness, at Five Forks, before Nashville and Appomattox Court House; "their bones, reposing on the fields they won and in the graves they fill, are a perpetual pledge that no flag shall ever wave over their graves but that flag they died to maintain."
��Ohio's soil gave birth to, or furnished, a Grant, a Sherman, a Sheridan, a McPherson, a Rosecrans, a McClellan, a McDowell, a Mitchell, a Gilmore, a Hazen, a Sill, a Stanley, a Steadman, and others — all but one, children of the country, reared at West Point for such emergencies. Ohio's war record shows one General, one Lieutenant General, twenty Major Generals, twenty seven Brevet Major Generals, and thirty Brigadier Generals, and one hundred and fifty Brevet Brigadier Generals. Her three war Governors were William Dennison, David Todd, and John Brough. She furnished, at the same time, one Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, and one Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. Her Senators were Benjamin F. Wade and John Sherman. At least three out of five of Ohio's able-bodied men stood in the line of battle. On the head stone of one of these soldiers, who gave his life for the country, and who now lies in a National Cemetery, is inscribed these words :
" We charge the living to preserve that Constitution we have died to defend."
The close of the war and return of peace brought a period of fictitious values on the country, occa- sioned by the immense amount of currency afloat. Property rose to unheard-of values, and everything with it. Ere long, however, the decline came, and with it " hard times." The climax broke-over the country in 1873, and for awhile it seemed as if the country was on the verge of ruin. People found again, as preceding generations had found, that real value was the only basis of true prosper- ity, and gradually began to work to the fact. The Government established the specie basis by gradual means, and on the 1st day of January, 1879, began to redeem its outstanding obligations in coin. The efi'ect was felt everywhere. Busi- ness of all kinds sprang anew into life. A feeling of confidence grew as the times went on, and now, on the threshold of the year 1880, the State is en- tering on an era of steadfast prosperity ; one which has a sure and certain foundation.
Nearly four years have elaped since the great Centennial Exhibition was held in Philadelphia; an exhibition that brought from every State in the Union the best products of her soil, factories, and all industries. In that exhibit Ohio made an ex- cellent display. Her stone, iron, coal, cereals, woods and everything pertaining to her welflire were all represented. Ohio, occupying the middle ground of the Union, was expected to show to foreign na- tions what the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio
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