USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912, Volume II > Part 17
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The promptness. and precision with which these pioneer citizens organized their little government and carried on their judicial proceedings, is another indica- tion, in addition to those often pointed out. as to how deeply the genius of law and order is implanted in the Anglo-Saxon race. Within less than twelve months after the first settlement was made, in what up to that time had been an unbroken wilderness, there were orderly judicial proceedings voluntarily in- stituted by the people, and the old institution, always dear to English speaking people, of trial by jury, promptly makes its appearance. From the time of the regular establishment of the courts under the act, judicial proceedings were regularly had in the county, and there were judges and members of the bar whose duty it was to attend to such matters. What is now the State of Ohio, at that time constituted a part of the territory "northwest of the river Ohio," as de- nominated in the laws of congress, which consisted of what is now four or five states of the Union, including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, all of which were governed by the famous ordinance of congress passed in the year 1789. Under the provisions of the ordinance, there was a general court for the terri- tory, consisting of three judges appointed by the president. It was the highest court of the territory, invested with original and appellate jurisdiction in all civil and criminal cases, but without chancery powers. It had the power to re- vise and reverse the decisions of other tribunals in the territory. It was held in Cincinnati in March of each year, at Marietta in October, and at Detroit and the western counties at such time in each year as the judges saw proper to designate. These places were separated by tracts of uninhabited wilderness, one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles in extent, without roads, bridges or ferries, yet it is stated that from the year 1796 to the formation of the state government in 1803, the judges of the court never missed a term at either place, though they were compelled to travel those long distances on horseback through
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the wilderness, carrying with them such things as were necessary to their sup- port en route, and frequently passing through Indian villages and meeting wan- dering parties of Indians. One of their greatest difficulties in traveling was the crossing of streams at which there was neither a bridge nor a ford, so that, as Judge Burnet puts it, travelers had to rely upon their horses as the only sub- stitutes for these conveniences. That fact made it common, when purchasing a horse, to ask whether he was a good swimmer, which was considered one of the most valuable qualities of the saddle horse. As late as 1801, Judge Burnet, upon his return from Marietta, found it necessary to swim various streams, among them the Whiteoak and the east fork of the Little Miami near Williams- burg, and again the same stream near where the town of Batavia now stands, and afterwards at Turpin's Bottom. Many similar stories of adventure are told in connection with the travels of these early judges and lawyers. The hardships which they voluntarily underwent, exhibit a devotion to duty for which it would be hard to find a parallel among modern judiciary.
Through the mist which obscures the view of those early times, the outlines of two or three prominent figures are visible. The earliest of these is William McMillan, by nature and training apparently well qualified to take the lead in a pioneer community. He was born in Virginia, was graduated from William and Mary College, and had been admitted to the bar. He was a man of clear perceptions and strong reasoning powers, and his professional position was always among the leaders. To these qualities may be added those of deter- mination, fearlessness and persistence, which were requisite in the somewhat turbulent community just coming into existence. He was one of the Denman party who stepped ashore at Yeatman's Cove, near the foot of Sycamore street, on that December day in 1788, which is usually regarded as the natal day of Cincinnati, and he immediately became the leader of the little colony in mat- ters pertaining to law and government. As mentioned above, he was chosen by the people as their first judge and acted as such until a regular government was organized in the territory, and he was then appointed to the same position by lawful authority. Judge Burnet says of him: "He posssessed an intellect of a high order and had acquired a fund of information, general as well as pro- fessional, which qualified him for great usefulness in the early legislature of the territory." The late William M. Corry, a nephew of William McMillan, a gentle- man himself well qualified to judge, and who did not bestow eulogy indiscrim- inately, in a public address says of him: "During his professional career there was no higher man at the western bar than William McMillan. Its accomplished ranks would have done honor to older countries, but it did not contain his su- perior. Some of our distinguished lawyers of that day were admirable public speakers. He was not. Some of them were able in the comprehension of the law, and some were skillful to a proverb in their management. Of these he ranked among the first. His opinions had all the respectability of learning, pre- cision and strength. They commanded acquiescence and they challenged opposi- tion, when to obtain assent was difficult and to provoke hostility was dangerous." William McMillan, subsequently, in the year 1799, became the leader of the first delegation from Hamilton county to the territorial legislature, and still later was a representative in congress, the duties of which positions he performed with
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great ability and success. He became a large land holder in and about Cincinnati. and is said to have laid out the prominent street in the suburbs which bears his name.
The next, and a still more important figure to make its appearance in that era, is a slender, erect, dark-eyed, military figure, which appeared as commandant at Fort Washington after the conclusion of General Wayne's campaign in the northwest. It was then that Captain William Henry Harrison was put in com- mand of the force at Fort Washington, where he remained for some time, and from that time forward played a great part in the history of Cincinnati, the Northwest Territory and the State of Ohio. A few years afterward he became secretary of the Northwest Territory. He was a member of the General Assem- bly, a representative in congress, a member of the senate of the United States from Ohio, commanding general of the troops of the Northwest Territory, and finally conqueror of the Indians, and had the honor and glory of forever putting an end to the Indian raids and disturbances which had been going on in the terri- tory for nearly a generation. Strangely enough, after these great public ser- vices, he served a number of years as clerk of the court of common pleas of Hamilton county. The explanation of that fact is to be found in the circum- stance that he had fallen into financial trouble and it was necessary that he should be in a position to better his circumstances and maintain his family, with which he was residing at North Bend, the old home of John Cleves Symmes, the original purchaser of the lands between the two Miamis. General Harrison had married Judge Symmes' daughter, and brought up his family at North Bend. A number of his friends, becoming aware of his straightened circumstances, secured his consent to accept the position of clerk of the court of common pleas, then the most lucrative office in the county, and the judges of the court, who then had power to do so, were prevailed upon to appoint him. His subsequent election as president of the United States and early death thereafter, are mat- ters of national history.
Another figure which made itself apparent in Cincinnati at a very early date was that of Jacob Burnet, then a very young man. He was the son of Dr. Will- iam Burnet, a surgeon general of the United States army during the Revolutionary war, residing in Newark, New Jersey. The exact date of Jacob Burnet's appear- ance in this vicinity does not appear, but in the introduction to his notes on the Northwestern Territory, he speaks of himself as having been subject to an attack of malarial fever and lying ill at Yeatman's Tavern, then the principal inn, in the year 1796. He was a graduate of Princeton College, a man of great energy and ability, and very soon made himself felt in the new settlement. He was a member of the first legislative council of the territory and took a large part in its deliberations. He soon became prominent at the bar and was very active in the practice, riding the circuit with the court for great distances through the forest and under circumstances of peculiar hardship. He subsequently occupied va- rious public offices, in all of which he rendered distinguished service, one of them being that of a judge of the supreme court of Ohio. A number of his opinions may be found in the earliest volumes of Ohio reports. He was also a member of the United States Senate from Ohio, and becoming a man of wealth, he for a long time occupied a very prominent position. During the first half
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.century of the existence of the city, he was generally looked upon as the first citizen. His spacious mansion at the corner of Seventh and Elm streets was a center of hospitality, where distinguished visitors coming to the city were en- tertained, among others, Lafayette, President John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and President William Henry Harrison dined at his board. It is notable that he refused to entertain Aaron Burr when that celebrity was in Cincinnati, because of the part that Burr had taken in the duel with Hamilton, saying that he regarded Burr as a murderer.
Illustrative of the difficulties of the practice of law in the Northwestern Terri- tory at that early date, is an account given by Judge Burnet of a trip made by him- self, Mr. St. Clair and a Mr. Morrison, from Cincinnati to Vincennes, on pro- fessional business.
"They purchased a small Kentucky boat, sometimes called an ark, in which they embarked with their horses, provisions, etc. In the afternoon of the fourth day they arrived at the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville), where they left their boat, mounted their horses and proceeded on their journey. About nine o'clock in the evening they discovered, at a little distance from the path they were traveling, a camp of four or five Indians, which they approached. After having shaken hands with them, they procured a brand of fire, and proceeded some distance further on their way, and then halted for the night. Having brushed away the snow from the spot they had selected for their camp and collected a good supply of wood for the night, they kindled a fire, took some refreshment, wrapped them- selves in their blankets, and laid down to sleep.
"The next night they encamped in a rich valley, where they found an abun- dance of fallen timber, which enabled them to keep up a large fire through the night, before which they slept very comfortably till morning. During the night, a couple of panthers, attracted by the light of the fire, approached sufficiently near the camp to serenade them with their unwelcome music-but kept at a re- spectful distance. The next day, they encountered a severe snow-storm, during which they surprised eight or ten buffalo, sheltering themselves from the storm, behind the top of a beech tree, full of dead leaves, which had fallen by the side of the "trace," and hid the travelers from their view. The tree and the noise of the wind among its leaves, prevented them from discovering the party, till they had approached within two rods of the place where they stood. They then took to their heels, and were soon out of sight. One of the company drew a pistol and fired, but without any visible effect.
That evening they reached White river, where they found an old cabin de- serted by its builder, in which a large wild cat had taken shelter, and seemed dis- posed, at first, to vindicate his right of possession. He was, however, soon ejected, and the travelers entered and occupied the premises without molestation, during the night, and without attempting to do personal violence or injury to the tenant they had dispossessed. The next morning they arrived at Post Vincennes, where they tarried about a week. In the meantime Mr. Morrison proceeded westward. As soon as Messrs. S. and B. had closed their business, they set out for home, having abandoned the idea of engaging in the practice of law in that county, from a conviction that the profits of the business would not be an ade-
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quate compensation for the fatigue and loss of time to which it would subject them."
In his later years Judge Burnet was persuaded to publish a volume of remini- scenes, which he did under the title of "Notes on the early settlement of the Northwestern Territory." It is not too much to say that the volume is invaluable, for without it the early history of Ohio would lack many an interesting and illus- trative fact which it contains. It was published at Cincinnati by Derby, Bradley & Company in 1847. It will always remain a principal source of information for those who wish to delve into the history of that era. He is thus described by one who knew him in his old age: "Until his death in 1853, Judge Burnet was one of the most notable figures on the streets of Cincinnati. Tall and dignified in ap- pearance, 'he retained the style and manners of the olden time. He wore the old- fashioned queue, and in public assemblies his grave, stately deportment inspired, if not awe, at least respect. In his opinions and judgments he was decided. He did not believe in anything half way, nor did he hesitate to state his views when occasion required, and they were so stated as to be completely understood."
The most important event in the first decade after the settlement at Cincinnati was the campaign of General Wayne against the Indians of the northwest, in the years 1793-1795 ; ending with the total defeat of the Indians and the peace at Greenville, which for some years afterwards put an end to Indian wars through- out the northwest. The treaty of Greenville made a great impression throughout the country generally, and emigrants began to flock into the new territory in great numbers. It was said, in the rather grandiloquent language of the time, "to have opened the glorious gates of the Ohio to civilization." The population of the territory increased so rapidly that by the year 1802 it was deemed to be suffi- cient to authorize the creation of a new state, and steps were taken to that end. Bills were introduced into the territorial legislature looking to the division of the territory so that the eastern part of it would be bounded on the west by the Scioto river up to the Indian boundary, thence by a line to the western corner of the Connecticut Reserve, and with it to the Lake; the middle state of the territory to extend along the Ohio from the Scioto river to the falls of the Ohio, and its western boundary to be a line from there to the Chicago river ; the western state to occupy the country between that line and the Mississippi. The bill was promptly passed by the legislature, but was soon found to be very unpopular. Many reasonable objections were made to it, and Congress rejected the scheme. By a large majority, an act of Congress was passed upon April 30, 1802, authorizing a convention of delegates to be elected in September by the votes of that part of the Northwestern Territory bounded on the east by Pennsylvania, south by the Ohio river, west by a line drawn from the mouth of the Great Miami due north to an east and west line passing through the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, and by this line and the Canada line through Lake Erie to the west line of Pennsylvania. This last boundary, the northern one of the state, was afterwards corrected so as to fix the line between Ohio and Michigan as it now is. Although there was a good deal of opposition, an elec- tion was held and delegates to the convention chosen. When the convention as- sembled, by a vote of thirty-four to one, it was determined to form a constitution and a state government. It was further ordained that an election for governor and members of the legislature, sheriffs and coroners, under the constitution, should
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be held January 11, 1803, and that the legislature should commence its first ses- sion on the first of March at Chillicothe, as the capitol. On the 19th day of February, 1803, an act of Congress was passed reciting that a constitution and state government had been formed by the people, pursuant to the Enabling Act passed by Congress, that they had given it the name of the "State of Ohio," and that it was ordained that it be established as a judicial district of the United States ; that a district court be organized and hold its term on the first Monday in June at Chillicothe, and that the laws of the United States should be of the same force and effect in the said state as elsewhere in the United States. This was the first act passed by Congress recognizing the existence of the state of Ohio, and yet there was no state government in existence until after elections were held upon January IIth, and the general assembly met at Chillicothe on the first of March, when Edward Tiffin was declared elected governor. There has been a good deal of dispute as to the date when Ohio was admitted to the Union, but the better view appears to be that the true date was March 1, 1803, at the time of the original organization of the state government, for up to that time there certainly was no state government in existence, but a territorial organiza- tion, and that date was recognized by the executive officers of the government of the United States by fixing March 1, 1803, as the date up to which the salaries of the territorial officers should be allowed and paid. It is a curious fact that the organization of Cincinnati into a municipality occurred slightly before the ad- mission of Ohio as a state, the Territorial Legislature having passed an act for that purpose in the year 1802, and that the county of Hamilton was created before either, as it was organized by an order of Governor St. Clair in the year 1790.
The growth of the city proceeded steadily after the admission of the state of Ohio into the Union, although it was more or less interrupted by some exciting events, the first of which was the Aaron Burr expedition, which passed down the Ohio in the year 1806. The leader of it, Burr, stopped at Cincinnati and was received with a good deal of hurrah. His schemes were misunderstood and magnified until they had come to be something tremendous in the eyes of the people. When the real proportions of the enterprise became known, it was re- garded as ludicrous and was made the subject of a good many jokes. The gov- ernor of Mississippi arrested Burr in January, 1807, and reported to the presi- dent, Mr. Jefferson, as follows: "This mighty alarm, with all its exaggerations, has eventuated in nine boats and one hundred men; and the majority of these are boys and young men just from school." Burr's acquittal of the charge of treason after a long trial, is a matter of history. John Smith of Cincinnati, a member of the United States senate from Ohio, was expelled on the charge of being an accomplice of Burr. The prosecutor of the charge against him was John Quincy Adams.
Next in time after the Burr conspiracy, but much greater in proportion, was the War of 1812, between the United States and Great Britain, which was a matter of prime importance to the people of Ohio, because a large part of the actual fighting occurred in or near the boundaries of the state. Cooperating with the British, Tecumseh undertook to revive and extend the great Indian confederation, with the object of driving the whites out of Ohio and the neigh- boring territory and extending the Canadian boundary to the Ohio river. Na-
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turally these were very alarming propositions to the people of Ohio, and they rose against them with great courage and determination. At first the fighting seemed to favor the British and the Indians, but later William Henry Harrison, having been put into supreme command, gathered together his forces including a large body of volunteers from Kentucky under the lead of Governor Shelby, and made his famous campaign through the northwest, ending with the decisive battle of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh. About the same time, Commodore Perry achieved his great victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie near Put-in- Bay and within the boundaries of the state of Ohio. These events, together with the Jackson victory at New Orleans, wound up the war in a blaze of glory, al- though so far as the original controversy with England was concerned, very little was gained by it, yet the people of Ohio were the gainers by the final and com- plete determination of all their troubles from the Indians, and the possession of the northwestern forts and territory by the whites.
During all this period a considerable stream of emigration had been pouring into Ohio, and cities and towns were rapidly increasing in population and others were springing up. The bar of Cincinnati naturally grew and increased with the growth of the state and city, and became a body for which the people had great respect, and, judged by its personnel and its achievement, it was entitled to it. When the courthouse which was destroyed by fire, as above stated, in 1814, was rebuilt at the corner of Main and Court streets and finished in the year 1819, the bar of Hamilton county consisted of twenty-seven members, and there were among them an unusually large percentage of men of much more than or- dinary standing and prominence. The names of Jacob Burnet, William Henry Harrison, William Corry, Nathaniel Wright, Nicholas Longworth and Nathaniel G. Pendleton were known far beyond the boundaries of Ohio. There were others perhaps entitled to rank with these, whose names might be mentioned, but it is not the purpose of this article to exhibit a catalogue of members of the bar, but only to mention such as became very prominent or made a deep impression upon the legal or judicial history of the state. In addition to those above mentioned, there were two young men who made their advent in Cincinnati about that time who afterwards became famous by reason of their professional and personal qualities and their conduct on great occasions. They were Charles Hammond and Bellamy Storer.
It has been said of Ohio, that after its admission to the Union, "the next thirty years of life in the state may be summarized as a long struggle of the pioneers with the forest and bad roads." They were literally "getting out of the woods." The times were very hard. There was little private capital and no public ac- cumulations out of which roads or other public improvements could be con- structed. The houses were mainly constructed of logs, and even public buildings were of that material. The state house at Chillicothe, where the first constitution of Ohio was drawn up and adopted, is said to have been built of hewn logs, two stories in height, and was thirty-six feet by twenty-four feet in size. "The mil- lions who are dwelling in peace and plenty in the broad farms and busy towns of Ohio today, can get no realizing sense by mere words, of the hardships by which their prosperity was earned. The toilsome journey, the steep mountain ways, the camping out where there were no inns, and hardly a road to guide them, were as
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nothing to the dreariness which, at the journey's end, confronted the emigrant, his wife and children. The unbroken forest was all that welcomed them. The awful stillness of the night had no refrain but the howl of the wolf and the wail of the whip-poor-will. The nearest neighbor often was miles away." These con- ditions were gradually ameliorated, but the progress was necessarily slow. Roads were opened, farms cultivated, and houses constructed.
One of the great difficulties with which these early people had to contend, was the want of money, of which there was very little. Business was chiefly conducted by barter. An illustration of the want of money, is the fact that Mexican dollars, of which a number came up from the southwest, were cut into quarters and in that way circulated as small change. Institutions called banks sprang up in the towns and were incorporated under acts of the legislature. Nearly all of these were authorized to issue paper money, consisting of the writ- ten promises of the bank to pay a specified number of dollars upon demand. As the security for the payment was often small and the conduct of the business was anything but conservative, a great deal of trouble and litigation necessarily grew out of these conditions. If the early history of Ohio on the subject of "wild cat" banking could be fully written, it would furnish a very instructive financial lesson. Gradually, however, there grew up a few strong and solvent concerns, but these were surrounded by a multitude of petty institutions of a very differ- ent sort. In the year 1817, the government of the United States established two branches of the United States Bank in Ohio, one located at Chillicothe with a capital of $500,000.00, and the other at Cincinnati with a capital of $1,500,000.00. This immediately created great excitement throughout the state. All those in- terested in local banking were intensely hostile to the federal institutions, and many others, for various reasons, economic and political, were violently opposed to them. The same objections to the United States Bank which prevailed in other parts of the country, were strongly urged in Ohio and very much aggravated by local conditions. It was publicly stated, and doubtless believed by many prom- inent persons, that "the object of the United States Bank was to destroy the country banks, drain the country of specie, oppress the public and endanger the liberties of the people."
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