en our state authorities and those
of Michigan a dispute concerning the border line between the two
commonwealths, and matters went so far that the governors of both States
called out their militia. The Michigan troops actually invaded Ohio,
and overran the watermelon patches near Toledo, ate the chickens of
the neighborhood, destroyed an ice house, and carried off one Ohioan
prisoner. But the mere terror of the Ohio name sufficed to send them
flying home again when they heard that our riflemen were waiting for
them in Toledo, and many deserters from their ranks took to the woods
on their way back. This vindicated the glory of our state; we cheerfully
submitted when the arbitrators chosen to settle the dispute decided it
mainly in favor of Michigan, and we have ever since lived at peace with
that commonwealth.

All this seems now like a huge joke, and so it has ever since been
regarded, but a war was coming which was serious enough. It might be
said that the great Civil War began with "John Brown's invasion of
Virginia," in 1859, but it might just as well be said that it began with
the fighting for and against freedom in Kansas in 1856. In fact it might
be said that it began with the mobbing of anti-slavery speakers and the
rescue of runaway slaves all over the North, from 1830 onwards. Yet this
would be fantastic, even if it were true, and we had better accept the
dates which history gives. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President
by the men opposed to the spread of slavery, and in 1861 the slave
states, feeling that their mastery of the Union was gone, left it one
after another, and the first fighting took place through the effort of
the United States government to hold its forts in the South.

In this war, Ohio played so great a part, that it is hard for Ohio
people to keep from claiming that she played the first part. Remembering
that General Grant, General Sherman, General Sheridan, the three
greatest soldiers of the war, were all Ohio men, we might be tempted to
claim that without these the war would not have been won for the Union,
but it is safer to claim nothing more than that Ohio gave the nation the
generals who won the war. Our three greatest soldiers were only chief
among many others under whose lead Ohio sent to the war some three
hundred and twenty thousand men, during the four years of fighting, a
force almost as great as that of whole nations in other times.

[Illustration: John Morgan invades Oh