USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Indiana from its exploration to 1922, Vol II > Part 40
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Clark county, although the second oldest settle- ment in the state, was not so prominent in early news- paper work. Sometime about 1818 George Smith
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and his step-son, Nathaniel Bolton, founded the Indianian at Jeffersonville. Smith was a Pennsyl- vanian, trained in the printers' craft on the Lexing- ton, Kentucky, Observer and the Cincinnati Liberty Hall and Gazette. In December, 1821, they went to Indianapolis and the following January 28, in a log cabin on West Maryland street, began the publica- tion of the Indianapolis Gazette, the first paper pub- lished in the "capital in the woods." March 7, 1823, Harvey Gregg, of New Castle, Kentucky, a lawyer, and Douglas Maguire, also of Kentucky, founded the Western Censor and Emigrants' Guide. These pa- pers, the former becoming the Sentinel, the latter the Journal, continued the leading political papers of the state till February 26, 1906, and June 8, 1904, respectively. The best known editor of the Sentinel was Jacob Page Chapman, that of the Journal was John D. Defrees. Of the one hundred or more news- papers and magazines published in Indianapolis dur- ing the first century of its history, these two will remain the best expositors of its life and growth.
Wayne county's pioneer paper was the Intelligen- cer of Richmond, dating from December 29, 1821. However, neither the Intelligencer, nor its successor, the Public Ledger, nor the Western Emporium, founded at Centerville by John Scott, from Brook- ville, in 1824, was comparable in influence to the Pal- ladium, founded January 1, 1831, and still alive. Its two famous early editors were D. P. Holloway and John Finley, both of Cincinnati training. Around the Palladium grew up a group of fairly good pio- neer writers, including Finley, Judge S. E. Perkins, of the Jeffersonian, James Elder, John T. Plummer, Caleb Clark, editor of the Washingtonians, a tem- perance advocate carrying a page or two of stories and poems, Amelia Bloomer, editor of the Lily, and
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Isaac Julian, founder of the Indiana Radical, the father of George W. Julian, the political agitator.
At Connersville Samuel W. Parker, lawyer, edi- tor, politician and poet, gathered around his paper, the Clarion, perhaps the most gifted group of writ- ers in the state at that time. It included as its leader Samuel W. Parker, a graduate of Oxford, Ohio, Caleb B. Smith, John O. Kane, William S. Burrows, Lavinia Brownlee and Louise Chitwood.
North of the National road the journalists first put in their appearance at Logansport and Lafay- ette. The irrepressible John Scott from the White- water valley founded the Pottawattomie and Miami Times at Logansport, August 15, 1829, while the Indian camps were yet in the village. The heading of the paper was adorned with the cut of a deer's antlers, which suggested to the settlers the name "Pottawattomie Buck," by which the paper was known. From this office graduated a whole company of editors, lawyers, writers and scholars. Chief of these were William J. Burns, son-in-law of Scott, Stanislaus Lasselle, John B. Dillon, the historian, Thomas Bringhurst, Daniel P. Baldwin, W. Swift Wright, C. B. Knowlton, S. A. Hall and Horace P. Biddle.
Lafayette was only a few days behind its neigh- bor in establishing its first paper, the Free Press and Commercial Advertiser, September 29, 1829. Its edi- tor was Major John B. Semans. The successor of this paper, the Journal, has continued to the present one of the influential papers of the state. Crawfords- ville followed, October 18, 1831, with the Record, of which the Tippecanoe hero, Judge Isaac Naylor, was the best-known editor. T. H. B. McCain, of the Crawfordsville Journal, was an influential editor in whose office a family of editors received training.
South Bend has been known quite as well through
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its editors as through its wagon factories. The first of its editors were the Defrees brothers, John D. and Joseph H., who founded the North-Western Pioneer and the St. Joseph Intelligencer at South Bend, No- vember 16, 1831. Schuyler Colfax, of the Register, and John B. Stoll, of the Times, have sustained the reputation. In Allen county, the Sentinel, of Fort Wayne, was founded by Thomas Tigar and S. V. B. Noel, the former a journeyman printer from York- shire, England, the latter from the Indiana State Journal of Indianapolis. Around this office grew up or collected a number of writers and editors of local note. John Dawson, of the Times, came to be the best known of the editors. Those of a literary dispo- sition organized the Young Men's Literary Associa- tion and published their papers in the Laurel Wreath, the Casket, and the Summit City Journal.
The pioneer paper of Laporte was the Laporte Whig, founded in 1838 by J. M. Stuart and S. C. Clis- bee. Capt. A. P. Andrew published it awhile and sold it to F. A. Stewart, one of the founders of the Chicago Tribune. Gen. Jasper Packard was editor of the Union, a successor of the Whig during early war times. Thomas Jernegan edited the Indiana Tocsin in Laporte in the forties. John C. Walker and Charles G. Powell were later the leading editors of the town. Around these men grew up a strong activity in educational and church affairs.
The Goshen Democrat perhaps holds the record in the north end of the state for continuity. It ap- peared in 1837 and still continues without change of name or policy. Dr. E. W. H. Ellis, its editor from 1839 to 1850, was known throughout the state. W. A. Beane and his son Joseph have conducted the Demo- crat for over sixty years.
These pioneer editors and their successors have been the makers, in large measure, of public opinion
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in the state. None of them in reputation compares favorably with Horace Greeley or in ability with Henry Watterson. They were not as a group so scholarly as the lawyers or the ministers, but the edi- torial writing has been fairly good. The old-time editorial of the forties and fifties had a literary style and flavor which one misses in the present day news- paper. Not one of these editors built up a personal following which enabled him to dictate either politi- cally or otherwise. Excepting the Sentinel, in the forties, under the Chapmans, they have been the ser- vants of the parties they represented. There have been comparatively few independent newspapers in the state, the present Indianapolis News being the oldest and most successful example. What the com- bined influence of the editors on the political, educa- tional, social and literary life of the state has been, can only be approximately estimated. It seems not too much to say, however, that they are worthy of being placed beside the teachers, preachers and law- yers among the builders of the state.
§ 207 ORATORY
In Indiana public speaking has always been highly appreciated. The first public speakers were the preachers. The ordinary pastors, the itinerant Meth- odist circuit-riders, the missionaries and especially the Baptist preachers, each had peculiarities of style and delivery and each left marked traces on later generations of public speakers. The Baptists and Methodists depended largely on the inspiration of the moment for their utterance. In many instances the preacher had not decided on his text until after he reached the meeting place. Enthusiasm was the chief ingredient of their oratory. Speaking from notes or reading a sermon was not tolerated.7 So
7 Peter Cartwright remarked of a young eastern preacher
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widespread was this prejudice that there are few audiences in Indiana even today but what have a decided preference for this "off-hand" delivery.
There can be no question of the eloquence of such preachers as Peter Cartwright, Calvin Ruter or James Havens of the Methodist church ; Elijah Good- win, James Mathes, or Benjamin Franklin of the Christian; John Vawter, Isaac McCoy or Jesse L. Holman of the Baptist; John M. Dickey, Samuel T. Scott, or W. M. Martin of the Presbyterian. These are only representative of several hundreds of these old-fashioned preachers whose extemporaneous elo- quence delighted and edified the first generation of Hoosiers. They were not scholarly men, neither were they uneducated. They had adventured nar- rowly in the field of human literature but in the field of human life they had been in touch with reality at many points. What they lacked . in breadth they made up in depth and intensity. The Bible they had by heart and over its problems they pondered deeply as they read horseback along the lonely trails. The substance of their discourse, then, was a compound of the Bible and their own experience, formulated in homely, picturesque phrases. They preached the judgments of God and the damning influence of sin, a wholesome theology to the rough, lawless frontiers- men. There was no waiting for an elegant term, but the common word, though a stranger to any diction- ary, was impressed.8 The camp meeting and the
speaking from notes that "it made him think of a gosling that had got the straddles by wading in the dew." W. H. Milburn, Pioneers, Preachers, and People of the Mississippi Valley. 417.
8 Such hard-hitting words as cantankerous, tetotaciously, rambunctious, sockdologer, explatterate, absquatulate, formed the basis for emphasis. The surging crowd was at the speaker's elbow and no honey-dew would satisfy it. For examples of this language see Benjamin Franklin, Twenty Sermons; Hall's The
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joint debate furnished the best stages for these ora- tors. The fact that audiences were held through suc- cessive days is ample proof of the speakers' powers over their audiences. It hardly need be observed that no one now would listen to such sermons except for amusement.9
The influence of college training on the oratory of the preachers has been noticeable and interesting. In general the fire of the earlier day has been cooled. Elegance has supplanted force and, excepting one school, it is a question whether the second generation of preachers was as effective as the first. Asbury university developed a school of oratory, the most pronounced in the state. Whether due to its curricu- lum, instruction or the direct influence of a line of eloquent bishops connected with the school, is not apparent, but the heat of the early missionaries has been preserved while grace and diction have been added. Matthew Simpson, Thomas Bowman, John P. D. John, H. A. Gobin, John B. DeMotte and Ed- win Holt Hughes have been among the leading ora- tors of the country.
The second group of orators to appear in Indiana, in fact they were contemporaries of the preachers, was the circuit-riding attorneys, the so-called "great lawyers." Each judge presided over a circuit, com- posed of from six to twelve counties. Accompanying
New Purchase (Woodburn Edition), 371; W. C. Smith, Indiana Miscellany; Strickland, Autobiography of Peter Cartwright; Cath- arine Cleveland, The Great Revival. There is considerable liter- ature of this material in Indiana university library.
9 The best accounts of these joint debates are in James Mathes' Christian Teacher, the works of Alexander Campbell, Mathes' Life of Goodwin and other volumes of that date. Erasmus Manford, an Universalist of Terre Haute, was a famous debater. Records of at least a score of his debates remain. The Owen- Campbell debate at Cincinnati attracted national attention some- what like a World Series baseball game at present.
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them from county seat to county seat was a calvacade of lawyers. On all and singular occasions these men were expected to be, and were ready to deliver an oration. On a court case that would now be "argued" in half an hour, each lawyer then demanded a half day while not infrequently an important murder case was "argued" three days. On such occasions all the gentry round gathered to the courtyard to hear the "pleading."
These men were more popular than the preachers and on all social or festive occasions such as muster day, Fourth of July and barbecues, or more especial- ly at banquets given to visiting statesmen, made the addresses. Fortunately hundreds of these latter orations are preserved in the local newspapers, where they were printed, in spite of the "strong pro- test" of the authors. There was one common subject for all these convivial efforts: The liberty of our conntry and its glorious achievements. The long, sonorous phrases borrowed from Patrick Henry, the Adamses, Webster, Clay, Pitt and Burke were the staple. As the orator, with staring eyes and flaming face, delivered himself of these ponderous periods the rustics expressed their admiration in many a boisterous cheer. Before a jury the best of the cir- cuit-riders had unbounded influence. Their inten- sive study of Blackstone and Coke made them mas- ters of the best legal language. Such men as Charles Dewey, O. H. Smith, Samuel Judah and Joseph Jer- negan were pleasing, forceful speakers. No better training in oratory was then anywhere to be had than to sit at the feet of these lawyers.
Their successors, profiting by the examples of hearing their predecessors and by the training to be had in the colleges, were more polished orators. Such men as Henry S. Lane, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel W. Voorhees, George G. Dunn, Joseph E. McDonald and
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James Whitcomb were not excelled as forensic plead- ers at the bar in this country. Many of them had a national reputation and a nation-wide practice. Mod- ern law practice is not conducive to the production of this kind of orators and it is hardly to be expected that their equals will ever again be heard in the court rooms of Indiana.10
Closely related to the legal profession have been the political orators of the state. In fact most of our politicians have been lawyers. Their oratory on the hustings has been the most characteristic literary expression of the Indiana people. In its freedom, its extravagance, its buoyancy, its piquancy, enthusiasm and whole-heartedness it has expressed Indiana life more fully than any other form of literature. It is best studied by periods and parties. From 1825 to 1850 the Whig and Jacksonian Democratic orators held the stage. Of the Whigs the best known were Joseph G. Marshall, Samuel Parker, R. W. Thomp- son, George G. Dunn and Henry S. Lane. These rep- resented all phases of oratory. Marshall was stately, dignified and Websterian; Parker was literary, mus- ical and picturesque; Thompson was verbose, remi- niscent, but interesting; Dunn was refined and liter- ary, but keen and cutting ; Lane was illustrative, alle- gorical, resembling Lincoln in the use of pithy incident.
Opposed to these were James Whitcomb, Tilgh- man Howard, Edward Hannegan, Joseph A. Wright and John W. Davis as representatives of the Demo- cratic orators. Whitcomb was most polished, pleas-
10 Only a few examples of this kind of oratory have been preserved. O. H. Smith, Trials and Sketches, is the best refer- ence. In Courts and Lawyers of Indiana the author has treated this subject more fully. In Bench and Bar, D. D. Banta and W. W. Thornton have given their appreciation of these men. See, also, Daniel W. Voorhees' Forty Years of Oratory.
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ing and statesmanly; Hannegan was impulsive, im- passioned, irresistable and perhaps the most elo- quent political speaker in the state, at least in his day. To hear a pair of these men, a Whig and a Democrat, engage in a joint debate was such a treat as would cause men to take their families twenty to forty miles in ox wagons to hear. Few examples of this oratory remain but the united testimony of a generation leaves no doubt that it was enjoyed by those who heard it.
The Civil war group includes among many others, O. P. Morton, Ashbel P. Willard, Thomas A. Hen- dricks, Schuyler Colfax, David Turpie, Albert G. Porter, Joseph E. McDonald, Benjamin Harrison, Daniel W. Voorhees and George W. Julian. No at- tempt is made to compare these men. Thousands of men now living have sat under the spell of their voices and scores of their speeches have been pre- served. While the flavor of oratory is usually lost in mere reading, some of the speeches of these men may yet be read for pleasure as well as for informa- tion. A younger group of political speakers, now living, bid fair to excel all their predecessors in this field, though it is too early to attempt to estimate their final value. In this latter class one would seem to take no risk in naming Albert J. Beveridge, James E. Watson, Eugene V. Debs, J. Frank Hanly, or Ed- win Holt Hughes.
§ 208 PROSE
Of first-rate writers of prose Indiana has had a small number. Judge Isaac Blackford, who sat on the supreme bench of the state from 1817 to 1853, has usually been conceded one of the cleverest writers in the field of law. His Reports, in seven volumes, have been models for three generations of lawyers. He was born at Bound Brook, New Jersey, November 6,
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1786, graduated from Princeton in 1802 and came to Indiana in 1811. The strength of his prose is its simplicity. In this regard he has been followed by Benjamin Harrison, who in breadth, of scholarship ex- celled him. In the historical field Indiana has no writer who has attracted the notice of the world for literary excellency. John C. Ridpath tells a story with effect but his neglect of historical criticism has made his work so unreliable as history as to render his writings almost useless.
In prose fiction the state has produced an army of workmen ranging in achievement from first-rate work down to zero. This prose, rather remarkable for its quantity, may, for the sake of discussion, be divided into two classes, that which deals substan- tially with Indiana and that which does not. The division is entirely arbitrary except that the former has an avenue of appeal which the latter has not and for that reason has been overrated as literature. It may be observed that all great literature is local but that no provincial literature is great.
Of these critics of Indiana life, the first was Bay- nard Rush Hall, principal of the Indiana seminary. Hall was a native of Philadelphia, a graduate of Princeton and a Presbyterian minister by training. The lure of the West was in his blood. He had visions of doing great deeds for humanity in this land of miracles. He followed this dream, about 1822, into the wilderness of Indiana, locating on the frontier near the present town of Gosport. His book, The New Purchase, or Seven and a Half Years in the Far West, narrates his experiences there and at Bloom- ington. Judge D. D. Banta, who came as near assess- ing Indiana pioneers at their true value as any writ- er, pronounced it "the best and truest history of pioneer life and pioneer surroundings in Indiana that can anywhere be found." Nevertheless, like
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Robert Owen, Hall was unable to realize his beauti- ful vision and returned a disappointed man.11
While Hall was enjoying himself learning to shoot the old squirrel rifle in Monroe and Owen coun- ties, Mrs. Julia L. Dumont was "serving humanity" at Vevay, teaching a district school and reveling in the natural beauty of the Hoosier Switzerland. Mrs. Dumont, who was born near Marietta, Ohio, in 1794, and twenty years later came to Vevay, was a teacher rather than a writer of prose, though in Like Sketches from Common Paths, she has preserved some of the traditions of her time and neighborhood. From the standpoint of literature her writings are not now readable, but from the standpoint of the history of culture in the state they are valuable.12
The fact that Mrs. Dumont was the teacher and inspirer of the Eggleston brothers, Edward and George Cary, has, more than her writings, kept up an interest in her. Edward and George Cary Eggleston were sons of Joseph Cary Eggleston, one of the lead- ing lawyers and politicians of the late thirties in In- diana. At their beautiful home in picturesque Vevay the brothers were born, the elder in 1837, the younger in 1839. In their training and surroundings they had the best to be had in the state. Their father, one of the most promising young men of the state,
11 D. D. Banta, Tales of Pioneers, Indianapolis News, May 30, 1888, seq .; James A. Woodburn, The New Purchase, Centennial Edition, introduction. The first edition of The New Purchase was published at New Albany in 1843. An abbreviated edition was published in 1855. The volume does not rank high in literary merit.
12 The best blography of Mrs. Dumont Is by T. M. Eddy in the Ladies Repository, XVII, 321 (June, 1857). This article was copied almost verbatim by William T. Coggeshall, Poets and Poetry of the West, 43, where a number of her poems are given. In Scribner's, March, 1879, is an excellent appreciation by Edward Eggleston.
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was of Virginia, English stock, and a cursory read- ing of his famous report on the Internal Improve- ment transactions in Indiana, made to the state sen- ate in 1842, will convince one that the sons hardly excelled their father in the mastery of the English language. Their mother was of the Craig family of Kentucky, four of whom, including her father, George, sat in the Indiana General Assembly. The father's cousin, Miles C. Eggleston, was the most fam- ous circuit judge that ever held court in the state. Some years after the death of their father, their mother married William Terrell, a Methodist minis- ter, who took his family to live first at Madison, then at New Albany, when these towns were the business and social centers of the state. These, coupled with the further facts that they had the best education obtainable in the west and a childhood of ease and culture, account, so far as outside conditions can, for their high achievements. They were observers of the pioneer life in the neighborhood of their home and especially of the rough "river rats," but while other boys of their age were grubbing sprouts in the "new ground," they were feasting on the exquisite beauty of nature along the banks of the Ohio.
For awhile, Edward Eggleston preached, but in 1866 he gave that up for editorial writing, returning to the pulpit again in 1874. In 1870 he removed to New York City. Editorial work having again at- tracted him from the pulpit, he gave his entire atten- tion afterward to literary work.
While editor of Hearth and Home, in 1871, he con- tributed The Hoosier Schoolmaster. The next year, 1872, appeared The End of the World; The Mystery of Metropolisville followed in 1873; in 1874 came The Circuit Rider; Roxy was published in 1878, while the author was pastor of a church in Brooklyn; The Hoosier Schoolboy bears date of 1883; The Gray-
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sons, 1887. These seven volumes form the author's commentary on Hoosier character and customs.18 His reputation as a literary man rests on this work for it does not seem that Duffels, The Faith Doctor and the other stories of that class could have found a publisher had their author been unknown.
The Hoosier series was given to the world by the author as an honest delineation of the Hoosiers.14 But, granting this does not concede the faithfulness of the picture.15 As stated above, none of these books
13 It should be kept in mind that there is no wide difference between the people of southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and the characters here drawn are taken from the section rather than from Indiana alone.
14 "But the picture of Western country life in The Hoosier Schoolmaster would not have been complete without this com- panion-piece, which presents a different phase of It. And indeed there is no provincial life richer in material if only one knew how to get at it."-Edward Eggleston, The End of the World, 7.
"It has been objected that I have copied life too closely, but it seems to me that the work to be done just now is to represent the forms and spirit of our own life, and thus free ourselves from habitual imitation of that which is foreign. I have wished to make my stories of value as a contribution to the history of civilization in America."-Edward Eggleston, The Mystery of Metropolisville.
"I had thought to close up the cycle of my stories of life in the Mississippi Valley with Roxy, which was published in 1878. But when I undertook by request of the editor to write a short story for the Century Magazine, and to found it on a legendary account of one of President Lincoln's trials, the theme grew on my hands until the present novel was the result."-Edward Eggle- ston, The Graysons.
15 The following quotation from an editorial review in Atlan- tic will show what the world understood from Eggleston's writings: "In Mr. Eggleston's Hoosier Schoolmaster we are made acquainted with the rudeness and ugliness of the intermediate West, after the days of pioneering, and before the days of civilization-the West of horse thief gangs and of mobs, of protracted meetings and of extended sprees, of ignorance drawn slowly through relig- lous fervors towards the desire to knowledge and decency in
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