This favored land was thrown open for settlement at a time when the people of the states had been impoverished by the war, when there was neither money, credit nor commerce, when the government of the Continental Congress had fallen into contempt, and the new government was passing the ordeal of a vote in states jealous of each other. It was the only land subject to sale by the United States, for Kentucky was covered by Virginia grants, Western New York was the property of land companies, and all beyond was a _terra incognita_. There was a struggle for Ohio land among all the northern states, including Virginia and Maryland. Companies were formed, composed mostly of officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary War, to secure from Congress favorable land grants. Virginia and Connecticut had their ample reserves, New York had a large unoccupied region in her territory, and the other northern states demanded their shares in the common property of the United States. The result was that all the states established settlements in Ohio, and, for the first time in our history, the descendants of the Puritans of New England, the Dutch of New York, the Germans and Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania, the Jersey Blues, the Catholics of Maryland, the Cavaliers of Virginia and the loyal refugees of Canada united their blood and fortunes in establishing a purely American state on the soil of Ohio. Among these early settlers were the foremost men of all the states, the Revolutionary stock that won independence, who carried their love of liberty and the principles and instincts of their localities to a soil more fertile than any of the old states, and with natural resources, climate and facilities for settlement and civilization as favorable as any within their reach. The limits of this sketch will not permit details of the progress of this migration. The first difficulty it encountered was the toilsome way to the promised land. All roads, such as they were, crossed the Alleghany Mountains, or followed the longer route by the lakes. A voyage now easily made in a day then occupied sixty days on foot or on horseback, and every article of civilized life had to be transported with painful labor over rude paths and roads, relieved sometimes by barges and canoes on creeks and rivers. When the first pioneers reached their destination, their land was already occupied. Every part of Ohio was then in the possession of Indians. The war they had maintained with the pioneers of Kentucky only prepared them for the desperate struggle with new invaders. The first settlement of the New England colony was made in Marietta, April, 1788. From that day to the close of the war with Great Britain in 1815 there were hostilities in some part of Ohio with the Indians. There is not a county in Ohio that was not at some time the scene of a battle with the Indians, or a skirmish, or a massacre.