Major-General Arthur St. Clair was a Scottish-born American military officer and politician. Born in Thurso,Caithness,he served in the British Army during the French and Indian War before settling in the Province of Pennsylvania. During the American Revolutionary War,he rose to the rank of major general in the Continental Army,but lost his command after a controversial retreat from Fort Ticonderoga.
William Henry Harrison served as the ninth president of the United States from March 4 to April 4,1841,the shortest presidency in U.S. history. He was also the first U.S. president to die in office,causing a brief constitutional crisis since presidential succession was not then fully defined in the U.S. Constitution. Harrison was the last president born as a British subject in the Thirteen Colonies and was the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison,the 23rd U.S. president.
The Northwest Territory,also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio,was formed from unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolution. Established in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation through the Northwest Ordinance,it was the nation's first post-colonial organized incorporated territory.
James Wilkinson was an American soldier / officer,politician,and later discovered years to be Royal Spanish secret agent #13,who was associated with multiple scandals and controversies,including the Burr conspiracy.
In the American Civil War (1861–65),the border states or the Border South were four,later five,slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware,Maryland,Kentucky,and Missouri,and after 1863,the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union,and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
The Indiana Territory,officially the Territory of Indiana,was created by an organic act that President John Adams signed into law on May 7,1800,to form an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4,1800,to December 11,1816,when the remaining southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Indiana. The territory originally contained approximately 259,824 square miles (672,940 km2) of land,but its size was decreased when it was subdivided to create the Michigan Territory (1805) and the Illinois Territory (1809). The Indiana Territory was the first new territory created from lands of the Northwest Territory,which had been organized under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The territorial capital was the settlement around the old French fort of Vincennes on the Wabash River,until transferred to Corydon near the Ohio River in 1813.
John Gibson was a veteran of the French and Indian War,Lord Dunmore's War,the American Revolutionary War,Tecumseh's War,and the War of 1812. A delegate to the first Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1790,and a merchant,he earned a reputation as a frontier leader and had good relations with many Native American in the region. At age sixty he was appointed the Secretary of the Indiana Territory where he was responsible for organising the territorial government. He served twice as acting governor of the territory,including a one-year period during the War of 1812 in which he mobilized and led the territorial militia to relieve besieged Fort Harrison.
George Rogers Clark was an American military officer and surveyor from Virginia who became the highest-ranking Patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the Virginia militia in Kentucky throughout much of the war. He is best known for his captures of Kaskaskia in 1778 and Vincennes in 1779 during the Illinois campaign,which greatly weakened British influence in the Northwest Territory and earned Clark the nickname of "Conqueror of the Old Northwest". The British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
Jonathan Jennings was an American politician who was the first governor of the State of Indiana and a nine-term congressman from Indiana. Born in either Hunterdon County,New Jersey,or Rockbridge County,Virginia,he studied law before migrating to the Indiana Territory in 1806. Jennings initially intended to practice law,but took jobs as an assistant at the federal land office at Vincennes and assistant to the clerk of the territorial legislature to support himself and pursued interests in land speculation and politics. Jennings became involved in a dispute with the territorial governor,William Henry Harrison,that soon led him to enter politics and set the tone for his early political career. In 1808 Jennings moved to the eastern part of the Indiana Territory and settled near Charlestown,in Clark County. He was elected as the Indiana Territory's delegate to the U.S. Congress by dividing the pro-Harrison supporters and running as an anti-Harrison candidate. By 1812,he was the leader of the anti-slavery and pro-statehood faction of the territorial government. Jennings and his political allies took control of the territorial assembly and dominated governmental affairs after the resignation of Governor Harrison in 1812. As a congressional delegate Jennings aided passage of the Enabling Act in 1816,which authorized the organization of Indiana's state government and state constitution. He was elected president of the Indiana constitutional convention,held in Corydon in June 1816,where he helped draft the state's first constitution. Jennings supported the effort to ban slavery in the state and favored a strong legislative branch of government.
The Northwest Indian War (1785–1795),also known by other names,was an armed conflict for control of the Northwest Territory fought between the United States and a united group of Native American nations known today as the Northwestern Confederacy. The United States Army considers it the first of the American Indian Wars.
John Hardin was an American soldier,scout,and frontiersman. As a young man,he fought in Lord Dunmore's War,in which he was wounded,and gained a reputation as a marksman and "Indian killer." He served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War,where he played a noteworthy role in the American victory at Saratoga in 1777. After the war,he moved to Kentucky,where he fought against Native Americans in the Northwest Indian War. In 1790,he led a detachment of Kentucky militia in a disastrous defeat known as "Hardin's Defeat." In 1792,he was killed while serving as an emissary to the Natives in the Northwest Territory.
William Hendricks was a Democratic-Republican member of the House of Representatives from 1816 to 1822,the third governor of Indiana from 1822 to 1825,and an Anti-Jacksonian member of the U.S. Senate from 1825 to 1837. He led much of his family into politics and founded one of the largest political families in Indiana. He was the uncle of Thomas Andrews Hendricks,who was also Governor of Indiana and Vice President of the United States. Hendricks County was named in his honor. His term as governor was spent repairing the state's finances to later enable large scale internal improvements. The establishment of the basic framework of the state's public school system and the transfer of the capital from Corydon to Indianapolis also occurred during his term.
The Legion of the United States was a reorganization and extension of the United States Army from 1792 to 1796 under the command of Major General Anthony Wayne. It represented a political shift in the new United States,which had recently adopted the United States Constitution. The new Congressional and Executive branches authorized a standing army composed of professional soldiers rather than relying on state militias.
Ratliff Boon was an American politician who briefly served as the second Governor of Indiana — taking office following the resignation of Governor Jonathan Jennings,whom he served as lieutenant governor under,after his election to Congress,and subsequently serving again as lieutenant governor under Governor William Hendricks —and a six-term member of the United States House of Representatives. A prominent politician in the state,Boon was instrumental in the formation of the state Democratic Party,and he supported President Andrew Jackson's policies while in the House.
David Wallace was the sixth governor of the US state of Indiana. The Panic of 1837 occurred just before his election and the previous administration,which he had been part of,had taken on a large public debt. During his term the state entered a severe financial crisis that crippled the state's internal improvement projects. He advocated several measures to delay the inevitable insolvency of the state. Because of his connection to the internal improvement platform,his party refused to nominate him to run for a second term. The situation continued to deteriorate rapidly and led to state bankruptcy in his successor's term. After his term as governor,he became a congressman,then chairman of the Indiana Whig party before becoming a state judge,a position he held until his death.
James Whitcomb was a United States senator and the eighth governor of Indiana. As governor during the Mexican–American War,he oversaw the formation and deployment of the state's levies. He led the movement to replace the state constitution and played an important role at the convention to institute a law that prevented the government from taking loans in response the current fiscal crisis in Indiana. By skillfully guiding the state through its bankruptcy,Whitcomb is usually credited as being one of the most successful of Indiana's governors. He was elected to the United States Senate after his term as governor but died of kidney disease only three years later.
Charles Scott was an American military officer and politician who served as the governor of Kentucky from 1808 to 1812. Orphaned in his teens,Scott enlisted in the Virginia Regiment in October 1755 and served as a scout and escort during the French and Indian War. He quickly rose through the ranks to become a captain. After the war,he married and engaged in agricultural pursuits on land left to him by his father,but he returned to active military service in 1775 as the American Revolution began to grow in intensity. In August 1776,he was promoted to colonel and given command of the 5th Virginia Regiment. The 5th Virginia joined George Washington in New Jersey later that year,serving with him for the duration of the Philadelphia campaign. Scott commanded Washington's light infantry,and by late 1778 was also serving as his chief of intelligence. Furloughed at the end of the Philadelphia campaign,Scott returned to active service in March 1779 and was ordered to South Carolina to assist General Benjamin Lincoln in the southern theater. He arrived in Charleston,South Carolina,just as Henry Clinton had begun his siege of the city. Scott was taken as a prisoner of war when Charleston surrendered. Paroled in March 1781 and exchanged for Lord Rawdon in July 1782,Scott managed to complete a few recruiting assignments before the war ended.
Isaac Newton Blackford was the second Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court,the court's longest serving Justice,and among the longest serving jurists in the history of the United States. He wrote an eight-volume work entitled Blackford's Reports recording all the early decisions of the court. The books became a staple legal source among Indiana's lawyers and received national and international acclaim for their style,accuracy,quality,and concision in dealing with common law. As a jurist,Blackford was the most influential ever to serve on Indiana's courts,according to former Chief Justice of Indiana Randall Shepard. He was nicknamed the "Indiana Blackstone" because of a comment made by Washington Irving regarding the popularity of Blackford's books. During his lifetime he was nationally renowned as one of the most prominent jurists in the United States.
Dennis Pennington was a farmer and a stonemason who became known for his many years in public office as an early legislator in the Indiana Territory and in Indiana's General Assembly as a representative of Harrison County,Indiana. Pennington,a member of the Whig Party,became the first speaker of the Indiana territorial legislature's lower house in 1810,served as the territory's census enumerator in 1815,and represented Harrison County as one of its five delegates to the constitutional convention of 1816. Pennington was the first speaker of the Indiana Senate,and served in the state legislature for eighteen years,which included five years in the Indiana House of Representatives and thirteen years in the Indiana Senate. His major political contributions relate to his strong opposition to slavery. Pennington ran unsuccessfully for Indiana's Lieutenant Governor in 1825. In addition to his service in the state legislature,Penning was a Harrison County sheriff and a justice of the peace,a trustee of Indiana University,and a member of the Grand Lodge of Indiana. He also supervised construction of the limestone courthouse that served as Indiana's first state capitol building in Corydon,Indiana. The historic Old Capitol,the seat of state government from 1816 to 1825,is one of his most enduring legacies. Fondly remembered as "Old Uncle Dennis" or "Father Pennington," he was known for his common sense and strong character and became one of Harrison County's most influential citizens.
Benjamin Parke was an American lawyer,politician,militia officer,businessman,treaty negotiator in the Indiana Territory who also served as a United States federal judge in Indiana after it attained statehood in 1816. Parke was the Indiana Territory's attorney general (1804–1808);a representative to the territory's first general assembly (1805);its first territorial delegate to the United States House of Representatives (1805–1808);one of the five Knox County delegates to the Indiana constitutional convention of 1816;and a territorial court judge (1808–1816). After Indiana attained statehood,Parke served as the first United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Indiana (1817–1835).
