THE FOUNDERS OF OHIO
The footsteps of a hundred years
Have echoed, since o'er Braddock's Road
Bold Putnam and the Pioneers
Led History the way they strode.
On wild Monongahela stream
They launched the Mayflower of the West,
A perfect State their civic dream,
A new New World their pilgrim quest.
When April robed the Buckeye trees
Muskingum's bosky shore they trod;
They pitched their tents, and to the breeze
Flung freedom's star-flag, thanking God.
As glides the [Oyo]'s solemn flood,
So fleeted their eventful years;
Resurgent in their children's blood,
They still live on—the Pioneers.
Their fame shrinks not to names and dates
On votive stone, the prey of time;—
Behold where monumental States
Immortalize their lives sublime!
William Henry Venable.
Ohio was admitted to the Union in 1803. The serenity of the new state was rudely shaken, in 1806, by the remarkable bugbear known as the "Burr Conspiracy." Burr had incurred the enmity of Jefferson and most of the other leading politicians of the time, and they were led to believe that he was preparing an expedition against the southwest, to set up a separate empire there. Burr had interested in his plan—which was really directed against Mexico—one Harmon Blennerhassett, who owned the island of that name in the Ohio, and who undertook to finance the expedition.
BLENNERHASSETT'S ISLAND
From "The New Pastoral"