In the autumn of 1791, the United States Army marched north from Fort Washington into the Ohio woods to settle the Indian question once and for all. They never finished the march. They never settled anything. What was left of them came stumbling back twenty-nine miles through cast-off muskets and frozen blood and bodies the army would not return to bury for two and a half years.

This is the story of that march, the morning that ended it, and the long winter after.

On November 4, near the headwaters of the Wabash, the army of General Arthur St. Clair was met at dawn by a confederacy of warriors under Little Turtle and Blue Jacket. Inside three hours, six hundred and thirty Americans were dead. Two hundred and seventy more were wounded. Cannon were left in the mud. The old general was carried out on a litter, weeping. It remains the worst defeat the United States Army has ever suffered at the hands of an indigenous force, and you have probably never heard of it.

Word was the campaign had been ill-starred from the start. The contractors couldn't keep the column fed. The militia drank what they could carry and deserted in lots of sixty. The general was sick - gout, rheumatism, dysentery, take your pick - and rode out that morning leaning on two officers, his hair undone, his coat unbuttoned, a man already half a casualty before the first shot was fired. By breakfast he had lost his army.

In the shadow of the gallows, justice is as wild as the frontier. These are the stories of every man who met his fate at the end of a rope in Butler County. Explore the desperate race for mercy, the quiet power of a deathbed confession, and the unsettling calm of a condemned man's final smile. 

"The Deserters" (1793) Seven soldiers desert Fort Hamilton during the Indian Wars.

"The Wrestlers" (1869) Uzile Prickett, "Champion of America" wrestler and professional grifter, is murdered after throwing a fixed match in Hamilton.

"The Son" (1884) George Schneider murders his 74-year-old mother Catharine on Halloween night for ninety dollars. 

Hamilton, Ohio, 1919. 

ONE MORE LAST CALL plunges you into the tense final days of legal drinking, where the most honest men are about to become criminals and the police force is on the verge of fracturing. At the center of the storm is Lyman Williams, a respectable saloon owner who finds a single-day legal loophole to host the "Last Legal Saloon" on May 26th—a grand, defiant farewell that puts him, his friends, and their legitimate businesses on a collision course with the new dry laws.

But the real battle is for the soul of the city, and the lawmen who are supposed to protect it. Inspector Herman Dulle, a good cop trusted by the community, must confront the reality of enforcing a law he despises, while his colleague, Roy Addison, sees only opportunity for new, more lucrative corruption. Meanwhile, returning WWI veteran Joe Jacobs is pushed into the world of auto theft, safe blowing, and bootlegging by sheer necessity, forming a dangerous alliance with the railroad gang boss, Fat Wrassman, and earning a nickname that will haunt him until his death.

This is the story of how Prohibition didn’t end drinking—it only ended legal drinking, pushing sympathetic businessmen like Williams and politician George Renners into the orbit of violent criminals. As the battle lines are drawn, Dulle must decide if he will uphold a broken law or defend the decent people it is about to destroy. The countdown is on, and for everyone in Hamilton, one last call will change everything.