Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 133

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006

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For his support he lectured on science and gave private lessons in mathematics, as- tronomy and the languages. He thus man- aged to eke out a miserable existence and in almost abject poverty. He lived in a room, cheap, inaccessible and cheerless. A chair, and a bedstead with a pile of rags, a worn- out stove, and an old coffee pot, with a few musty shelves of books covered with soot, were all his furniture. An autopsy revealed

the wreck of his vital system and proved that the long and dreadful process of freezing and starving the previous winter had dried up the sources of life.

It was his intense absorption in_science that had thus made him a martyr. For that he had overlooked the wants of his body, and suffered. The European scientists through his contributions to scientific journals by cor- respondence with him had learned of his extraordinary attainments in the most pro- found topics of human thought. And, when. ever a stranger from Cincinnati appeared among them, the first question would be in regard to Professor Vaughan, and to not a few that question was their first knowledge of such an existence. He treated with great. originality such topics as "The Doctrine of Gravitation," "The Cause and Effects of the Tides,"' The Light and Heat of the Sun," "The Remote Planets," "The Ge- ography of Disease," "Origin of Moun- tains,' "The Theory of Probabilities in the Detection of Crime," etc.

It was a bleak, cold, cheerless day on January 13, 1808, in a neat frame on the snow-clad banks of the Connecticut river, in the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, that was born SALMON P. CHASE. His father, Ithaman Chase, was a farmer of English and his mother was of Scotch descent. His father died when he was yet a boy, and the family left in straitened circumstances.

Salmon was a studious lad, so when his uncle, Rev. Philander Chase, the earliest Episcopal Bishop, came to Ohio, he sent for him to come and live with him, and for a couple of years he studied with his uncle at Worthington, near Columbus, and then one year with him at Cincinnati. Then his uncle went to England on a visit and Salmon en- tered Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1826, paying for his college expenses by school-teaching. He then went to Washing- ton, where he taught a classical school and studied law with William Wirt. Having been admitted to the bar in 1830, he settled in Cincinnati to practise his profession, his age 22 years.

Finding but little business he occupied about two years of his leisure in compiling the Statutes of Ohio, preceded by an outline history of the State. The work, known as "Chase's Statutes," which proved of great service to the profession, was regarded of ex- traordinary merit. From his Puritan train- ing he had early learned to view all questions in their moral aspects, and so from the very beginning of his career he was the friend of the slave, being when in Washington active in procuring signatures to a petition to Con- gress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

In politics he did not then identify himself with either of the parties. When in 1836 a moh

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destroyed the Philanthropist, the anti-slavery newspaper, he was engaged by Mr. Birney, the editor, to bring the offenders to justice. About this time miscreants, in and about Cincinnati, not only made it a business to hunt and capture runaway slaves for the sake of reward, but to kidnap free-blacks, carry them across the Ohio and sell them into slavery. In 1837, in what was known as the Matilda case, where a master brought a slave girl to the city and afterwards endeavored to take her back into slavery, Mr. Chase ap- peared in her behalf, as he frequently did in similar cases without expectation of pecuniary reward. After the case had been closed a gentleman of note who was present said, There goes a promising young lawyer who has ruined himself," he feeling how un- popular in those days was the defence of the enslaved and defenceless. None but a man of the highest moral courage and humanity would have been willing to endure the obloquy. Governor Hoadley said of him :

"What helped him-yes, what made him, was this. He walked with God. The pre- dominant element of his life, that which gave tone and color to his thoughts and determined the direction and color of all he did, was his striving after righteousness. . . . Behind the dusky face of every black man he saw his Saviour, the divine man also scourged, also in prison, at last crucified. This is what made him what he was. To this habit of referring to divine guidance every act of his life we owe the closing words of the Proclamation of Emancipation, which Mr. Lincoln added from Mr. Chase's pen as follows : 'And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the favorable judgment of all mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.' He had dainty tastes, disliked the unclean in word or person ; but he put his pleasure under his feet when duty led him to the rescue of the lowly. He had a large frame and mighty passions, but they were under absolute control."

When the Liberty party was organized in Ohio, in 1841, Mr. Chase was foremost and wrote the address which gave the issues which were finally settled only by a bloody war. In this he said the Constitution found slavery and left it a State institution-the creature and dependent of State law-wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution. . . Why then, fellow-citizens, are we now appeal- ing to you ? ... It is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government, . . and that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the abso- lute and unqualified divorce of the govern- ment from slavery.

Mr. Chase defended so many blacks who were claimed as fugitives from slavery that the Kentuckians called him the "attorney- general for negroes," and the colored people of Cincinnati presented him a silver pitcher

" for his various public services in behalf of the oppressed."

Mr. Chase brought his great legal learning and a powerful mind to the task of convincing men that the Fugitive Slave law could and should be resisted as unconstitutional, because though the Constitution embraced a provision for the return of fugitives, it added no grant of legislative power to Congress over that subject, and, therefore, left to the States alone the power to devise proper legislation.

The original of John Van Trompe, in " Uncle Tom's Cabin," was John Van Zandt, who was prosecuted for harboring fugitive slaves, because overtaking a party of fugitives on the road he gave them a ride in his wagon, and his defence by Mr. Chase was one of the most noted. In the final hearing in 1846 he was associated with Mr. Seward.

Mr. Chase almost singly wrote the plat- form for the Liberty party, which in 1843 nominated James G. Birney for the Presi- dency. In 1840 this party cast but 1 vote in 360, in 1844 1 vote in 40, which caused the defeat of Henry Clay. In 1848 Mr. Chase presided over the Buffalo Free Soil Conven- tion, and the party cast 1 vote in 9. In 1849 by a coalition between the Free Soilers and the Democrats in the Ohio Legislature Mr. Chase was elected to the United States Senate. The Democracy of Ohio had de- clared in convention that slavery was an evil, but when the party in the Baltimore Conven- tion of 1852 approved of the compromise acts of 1850, he dissolved his connection with it. He opposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and made such strong, persistent attacks upon it as to thoroughly arouse the North and greatly influence the subsequent struggle.

In 1855 Mr. Chase was elected Governor of Ohio by the newly formed Republican party, formed solely to restrict the extension of slavery and the domination of the pro- slavery power, and by a majority of 15,651 over the Democratic candidate, Gov. Medill. Ex-Governor Trimble, the candidate of the Know Nothing or Native American party, received 24,276 votes. In 1857 he was re- elected governor by 1503 over Henry B. Payne, the Democratic candidate. In the Chicago Republican Convention of 1860, which nominated Mr. Lincoln, the first ballot stood, Seward, 173} ; Lincoln, 102; Cameron, 50} ; and Chase, 49.

When Mr. Lincoln was called to the presi- dency, March 4, 1861, he made Mr. Chase Secretary of the Treasury. His consummate management of the finances of the nation was such that a conspicuous leader of the rebellion said, "They had been conquered by our Treasury Department and not by our generalship." Whitelaw Reid said, "Ohio may be indulged, even here in the pardonable pride of an allusion to the part that in this phase of the war as well as in the others "she led throughout the war.' To take a bankrupt treasury, sustain the credit of the government, feed, equip, arm and pay all

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the expenses of a war of four years-this was the work accomplished by Salmon P. Chase. "

On June 30, 1864, Mr. Chase resigned his position as Secretary of the Treasury, was succeeded by Wiu. P. Fessenden, of Maine, and on the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, was confirmed on the 5th of December, 1864, Chief-Justice of the United States, an office he filled until his decease. He presided at the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868. In his politics he was a Democrat, and his name being frequently mentioned that year as the probable Democratic nomince for the Presidency, he wrote. in answer to a letter from the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee :

"For more than a quarter of a century I have been in my political views and senti- ments a Democrat, and still think that upon questions of finance, commerce, and adminis- tration generally the old Democratic principles afford the best guidance. What separated me in former times from both parties was the depth and positiveness of my convictions upon the slavery question. . In 1849 I was elected to the Senate by the united votes of the old-line Democrats and independent Democrats, and subsequently made earnest efforts to bring about a union of all Demo- crats on the ground of the limitation of slavery to the States in which it then existed, and non-intervention in those States by act of Congress. Had that union been effected, it is my firm belief that the country would have escaped the late civil war and all its evils."

As a public speaker Mr. Chase was not eloquent. His speech was at times labored and hard, but he was impressive from his earnestness and the weight of his thought. The listener felt that he was no common man,

and had the highest good of all only in view. In every position he ever held he always dis- played excellent executive capacity. On en- tering upon the duties of his office of Secretary of the Treasury he had by long and successful professional labors accumulated about $100, - 000, and when he left it, after controlling for years the vast pecuniary business of the na- tion, he was poorer than when he went in.

In appearance he was the most imposing public man in the country-over six fect high, a blonde, with blue eyes and fresh complexion, portly, with handsome features and a mas- sive head. His manners were dignified, but he had but little suavity, had none of the arts of the demagogue, and his great reputation was solely due to his great services and capacity, for he had but little personal popu- larity ; the multitude never shouted for him. His great ambition arose from the patriotic conviction that he could render great public service. He was married thrice, and died a widower, leaving, of six children, two accom- plished daughters.

Mr. Chase died in New York, May 7, 1873, of paralysis. He was buried in Wash- ington, and on Thursday, October 14, 1886, his remains were removed to Spring Grove, Cincinnati. On this occasion, ex-Gov. Hoad- ley, his once partner, gave a masterly oration upon his life and services, in Music Hall, and addresses were made by Congressman Butter- worth, Gov. Foraker, and Justice Matthews; James E. Murdoch read a poetical tribute from the pen of W. D. Gallagher. Conspic- nous in the crowd who had assembled to pay their last tribute to the distinguished dead were some old colored men who had been slaves, and who felt a debt of gratitude to a man who had done so much for their liberty.

CHARLES CIST was born in Philadelphia, in 1793; in 1827-28 came to Cin- cinnati, and died there in 1868. He was the author of "Cincinnati in 1841 ;" ditto in 1851; ditto in 1859; and "The Cincinnati Miscellany," composed largely of incidents in the early history of the West. He wrote the descriptive article upon Cincinnati in 1847 in the first edition of this work; and here reprinted. He conducted for a term of ycars Cist's Weekly Advertiser. His editorial columns were largely personal, well sprinkled with "I's "-those "I's" meaning himself-which enhanced their interest. As one read, there appeared to his vision " Father Cist " looking in his eyes, smiling and talking. He was filled with a love of Cincinnati, and ministered to the extraordinary social fraternal feeling that existed among its old people-its pioneers. He would often print some gossipy item like that upon Judge Burnet, who, having used tobacco for a lifetime, had broken off in his old age, and was waxing in flesh under the deprivation. Another week, perhaps, it would be Nicholas Longworth, Judge Este, Bellamy Storer, Nathaniel Wright, or possibly that eccentricity, finical, poetical, and artistical Peyton Symmes, that would come in for an item.

Much he wrote was tinged with humor, and some of his own experiences were comi- cally told. One we remember was about in this wise : "I got," said he, " into the stage- coach at the Dennison House, one day last

week, to go to Oxford, and was the only passenger until we neared Hamilton, which was after night, when half a dozen young college boys came aboard, and, without ask- ing if it was agreeable to me, filled the coach

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with tobacco-smoke. It made me deadly sick, but I said nothing. While we changed horses at Hamilton I made a little purchase in an apothecary shop. The coach started again ; the boys continued smoking. In a few minutes one and then another exclaimed : ' Whew ! what a horrid smell ! What is it? Oh! awful!' I sat for a time in silence, enjoying their expressions of disgust. Then I said : Young gentlemen, we have all our especial tastes. You are fond of tobacco- smoking, to me it is excessively disagreeable ; I have just made a purchase, which I am rubbing in my hands as an antidote to your smoke, and I must confess I rather enjoy it. You will say it is a curious idiosyncrasy of mine ; it is a piece of assafœtida.' For a moment the youths were dumbfounded ; next they burst into a roar, and then out of the window went their cigars, and my lump of assafœtida followed after."

LEWIS J. CIST, his son, who died in 1885, aged sixty-seven, had a local reputation as a poet and writer of music. He published the " Souvenir," the first annual of the West. He was an enthusiastic collector of auto- graphs and old portraits, his collection num- bering 11,000 of the former, and one of the largest and most famous in the United States. To him was ascribed the anthorship of "The Spotted Frog." a parody on Gallagher's pop- ular ballad, "The Spotted Fawn," spoken of elsewhere in this work.

HENRY M. Cisr. a younger son, born in 1839, is now a lawyer in Cincinnati. He was

a general in the rebellion, and noted for his contributions to war literature, as "Cincin- nati with the War Fever," "The Romance of Shiloh," and "Reports of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland." Mr. Cist's father opened and superintended the first Sabbath-school in Cincinnati, and his grand- father, also named Charles Cist, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and graduated at Halle, was a printer and publisher in Philadelphia, and was the first person to introduce anthra- cite coal into general use in the United States. He was also the original printer of Paine's "American Crisis."

BELLAMY STORER, jurist, was born in Port- land, Maine, March 9, 1798, died in Cincin- nati, June 1, 1875. He was educated at Bow- doin, and, in 1817, began the practice of the law in Cincinnati. He was in Congress from 1835-1837 ; in 1844 was a Presidential elector on the Henry Clay ticket ; for nineteen years was a judge of the Superior Court of the city. He was popular as a speaker at both political and religious meetings. At one time in his early life Judge Storer was a leading spirit in a religious band of young men, called "Flying Artillery," who went from town to town to promote revivals. When the Supe- rior Court of the city was organized in 1854, the three judges were Spencer, Gholson, and Storer, and they were thus characterized : Spencer as excelling in perception of law principles, Gholson for his knowledge of precedents, and Storer for bis great memory and fervid eloquence.

Gen. ORMSBY MCKNIGHT MITCHEL was born of Virginia stoek, in Union county, Kentucky, When a four-year-old boy he was taken to Lebanon, Warren county, Ohio, by his parents. He was naturally of a studious disposition, and before he was nine years of age he was reading Virgil. At twelve years of age, the family being poor in circumstances, he was placed out to serviee as a boy in a store, and working mornings and evenings in the family of his employer. At a little less than fifteen years of age he received a cadet-warrant, and, with knap- saek on his baek, footed it a large part of the way from Lebanon, Ohio, to West Point, and arrived there in June, 1825, the youngest of his elass, and with only twenty-five cents in his pocket.

He resigned from the army after four years of service, and began the practice of the law in Cincinnati, in partnership with E. D. Mansfield, who wrote of him in his " Me- moirs : " " Mitchel was noted at West Point for his quickness and ingenuity. My father, who was professor of philosophy there, used to say : 'Little Mitchel is very ingenious.' He was more than that, for he was what you sel- dom see, a man of real genius. A great many people are spoken of as men of genius, but I never saw more than half a dozen in my life, and Ormsby Mitehel was one of them. . . . He was my partner in a profes- sion for which I think neither of us was well adapted ; we were really literary men. The consequence was, Mitchel resorted to teaching classes, and I became a public writer."

Both the young men joined Dr. Beecher's

church, where Mitchel became noted for his fervid zeal at prayer meetings. In 1834 Mitchel was appointed professor of mathe- matics, natural philosophy, and astronomy in the "College of Cincinnati," an office he filled admirably.

When the project was entertained for build- ing what is now known as the Little Miami Railroad, he warmly encouraged it, examined the route, and with Mr. Geo. Neff prevailed upon the city to loan $200.000. Prof. Mitchel became its engincer. Three or four years of railroad engineering and attention to his college duties kept him busy.

An enthusiast in astronomy he felt the lack of the means for instructive observations for himself and students, and conceived the pro- ject of raising the funds for a complete ob- servatory. Neither Boston nor New York

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had an observatory. Was it likely that the people of a raw Western town would build one ? Yes, for Mitchel could persuade them to do that great thing. And he saw the way. The only man in the world that could see it.

He began by stirring up an interest in astronomy by delivering a series of popular lectures in the College Hall. The first night he had but sixteen to hear him. The next night they brought more, and so it kept on in- creasing until the whole city had been so aroused by his fervid eloquence that his closing lecture had to be repeated in a city church to an audience of over 2,000. It was a theme in which not one in a hundred hvad before felt the slightest interest. He spoke without notes. Ilis religions instincts were very strong ; he was all alive with feel- ing ; he possessed great fluency and com- mand of language, and he electrified his andience with this most sublime, elevating topic as probably no man living or dead had ever done before.

Moss Eratio, N.Y.

GEN. O. M. MITCHEL.

At the close he stated his plan for building an observatory. It was by the organization of a joint stock company of 300 shares, the shares to be $25 each, in all amounting to $7,500, the shareholders to have certain privileges of admission to look upon the starry world. A few then subscribed, and he then called in person and besieged citizen after citizen until the 300 shares were taken.

Then the professor visited Europe, to secure the instruments ; his ambition swell- ing with his successes, he now resolved to make it the best observatory in the country. Two resolutions he formed, he said, contrib- uted to his success. "First, to work faith- fully for five years, during all his time from regular duties, and second, never to become angry under any provocation while engaged in this enterprise." These show the quality of "little Mitchel," who in person was only about five and one-half feet in stature, erect, slender, wiry, but symmetrical, of a dark

complexion, with a keen visage and regular features. He looked the embodiment of will power and nervous energy, and ordinarily was silent and thoughtful.

He could find neither in London nor Paris such an object glass as he wanted ; but at Munich was one unfinished that would take two years to complete, the price to he $10,- 000. He had but $7,500 to pay for building an apparatus. The people of Cincinnati must come further to his aid ; and after an absence of only 100 days he was among them. The shareholders indorsed his action, he appealing to their local pride by his state- ment that, if they did so, their telescope would be excelled by only one other in the world. He remitted $3,000 to Munich to sceure the contract.

Mitchel then worked vigorously to secure the money to erect the building, to be put on a four-acre lot given by Mr. Nicholas Longworth. Workmen were set to work digging for foundations, and preparing the material. On the 9th of November, 1843, occurred the memorable event of laying the corner-stone, by the venerable John Quincy Adams, who was the orator of the occasion. The observatory seemed likely for want of funds to stop with its corner-stone, they he- ing exhausted by the payment for the tele- scope. Next spring work was resumed with three workmen. But Mitchel kept up his courage. It is the beginning that costs. Will power, faith moves mountains. He worked with his own hands; induced some of the laborers to take part pay in shares. By March, 1845, the great telescope was mounted, and a sidereal clock and a transit instrument were given by Prof. Baehe, of the coast survey.

He had promised his services as astronomer for ten years free of charge, calculating upon his salary in the college for support. Soon the college was burnt, and he was out of business. Nothing daunted, he resolved to give popular lectures as a means of liveli- hood, and continue his labors at the observa- tory. He began at Boston. The first night the hall was but half full. "Never mind," said he to a friend, " every one that was here to-night will bring a friend the next night." Great success followed. The problem of subsistence was solved. For years he devoted himself to his astronomical studies, was an admirable observer, and showed remarkable inventive genius. By these inventions he revolutionized the system of cataloguing the stars. During 1854-9 he made nearly 50,- 000 observations of faint stars. He published the Sidereal Messenger, an astronomical jour- nal. His own books were the " Planetary and Stellar Worlds," his leetures on the "As- tronomy of the Bible," and in 1860 his last, "Popular Astronomy." In his "Astronomy of the Bible " he boldly adopted the "Nebular Hypothesis " of La Place ; but the theology which he learned from the stars was Calvin- istic. In his final lecture, after showing that the universe was governed by immutable law, he concluded with this eloquent passage :

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"No, my friends, the analogies of nature applied to the moral government of God would crush out all hope in the sinful soul. There for millions of ages these stern laws have reigned supreme. There is no devia- tion, no modification, no yielding to the re- fractory or disobedient. All is harmony because all is obedient. Close forever if yon will this strange book claiming to be God's revelation ; blot out forever if you will its lessons of God's creative power, God's super- abounding providence, God's fatherhood and loving guardianship to man, his erring off- spring, and then unseal the lids of that mighty volume which the finger of God has written in the stars of heaven, and in these flashing letters of living light we read only the dread sentence, 'The soul that sinneth it shall surely die.' ""

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 133

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 1006

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006