GENERAL EVENTS. 



PERIOD FIFTH. 



THIS PERIOD COMPRISES THE HISTORY OP OHIO FROM 1815 TO 



1825. 



During the period of which we are about to treat, there was 

 a stagnation of business of all sorts. To relieve the pressure 

 in the midst of it, congress reduced the price of their lands in 

 the west, from two dollars to one dollar and twenty-five cents 

 an acre. This reduction was extremely injurious to land own- 

 ers, many of whom held large tracts, on which they had long 

 paid taxes, until the taxes themselves, amounted to more than 

 the lands were worth. The productions of the lands, meat 

 and bread, no longer found a market near the place of their 

 production. A want of good roads, either by land or water, 

 on which our home productions could be transported, added to 

 our far inland situation, operated severely on industry of all 

 sorts, and palsied every manly effort, either of body or of 

 mind, in Ohio. This stagnation of business, and this torpor 

 of the body politic were increased, and greatly aggravated by 

 the failure of a great number of little country banks. These 

 had sprung up like mushrooms, in a night, during the war, 

 when every article, which the farmer could spare, sold readily 

 for cash at a high price. The eastern merchants, to whom we 

 were greatly indebted, refused our western bank paper, ex- 

 cept at a ruinous discount, in payment either of old debts or 

 for goods. Our specie had been transported on pack horses 

 over the Alleghanies. The vaults of our banks were emptied 

 of their silver and gold, and all our banks either stopped 



