OHIO GANG

in U.S. history, a group of politicians who achieved high office during the presidential administration of Warren G. Harding and who betrayed their public trust through a number of scandals. Leader of the Ohio Gang was Harry M. Daugherty, a long-time political operative who was the principal manager of Harding's political ascendancy and who was named attorney general of the United States. Other members of the gang included Albert B. Fall, secretary of the interior; Will H. Hays, postmaster general; Charles R. Forbes, head of the Veteran's Bureau; and Jess Smith, an official of the Justice Department. Early in 1924, shortly after Harding's death, congressional committees began investigating reports of graft and corruption during the Harding administration. As a result of those investigations, Forbes was indicted and later convicted for fraud, conspiracy, and bribery in operating the Veteran's Bureau. Fall was indicted, convicted, and imprisoned for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal and the Elk Hills oil-reserves scandal, becoming the first member of a president's Cabinet to be convicted of a felony while in office. Daugherty was tried for conspiracy on charges of selling illegal liquor permits and pardons. He was acquitted but was forced to resign by President Calvin Coolidge. Jess Smith committed suicide. History Prehistory and settlement Remains of ancient peoples dating to 9000 BC have been found in Ohio. The later Adena and Hopewell cultures built elaborate burial and ceremonial mounds and fashioned exquisite artifacts. Both cultures had disappeared from the area by about AD 300400. Present-day Ohio was largely unoccupied when Europeans first saw it in the 17th century. Villages of historic Indiansthe Miami, Wyandot, Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo (Iroquois), and Ottawaappeared in the 18th century. The long Anglo-French struggle to control the trans-Appalachian west culminated in British victory in 1763. The United States then won this region during the American Revolution. Following the Treaty of Paris (1783), Congress created the Northwest Territory north of the Ohio River and enacted the Ordinance of 1785, which established an orderly settlement pattern, and subsequently the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which called for the creation of new states therein. Statehood Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, the first state to be formed entirely from the public domain. From the outset it was socially diversified. It was a theatre of war in 181213; Oliver Hazard Perry's victory over a British fleet on Lake Erie helped clear the area of its last threat from Indians and their British suppliers. Population swelled, aided by a newly developed network of canals, roads, and railroads. By 1850 Ohio was the third most populous state in the nation, with nearly 2,000,000 residents, and the leader in diversified agriculture.