Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume II, Part 115

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 916

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EXTRAORDINARY SCENE AT THE DEATH OF THOMAS CORWIN.

The following letter, descriptive of Mr. Corwin's death, appeared anonymously in the Ohio State Journal :

WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 19, 1865. Dear Sir :- It has never been deemed an invasion of the sanctuary of private life to preserve for the world and history the last utterances and acts of the men of history. That license which admits the treasuring up of the "last things" of great and historic lives induces me to write down what I do here.

It was never my lot before to be thrilled, by seeing brought together in startling prox- imity life and death, mirth and mourning, fame and frailty, as I saw them brought to- gether in the circumstances attending the last conscious moments of Thomas Corwin. How strange it seems to me now ! At a collection of men of Ohio, in which were Chase and Wade and Sherman, and Schenck and Bing- ham and Swayne, and fifty others of the

public men of the State, Gov. Corwin was present. Upon his entering the room, he, of course, became, what he for forty years had been everywhere, where his presence was, the centre of interest and of admiration. In ten minutes after he had entered the room I saw from some distance (for I did not soon go to him) men collected and compacted around him in eager, excited and, in some cases, ridiculous attitudes ; chief justice and associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, members of the Cabinet, major-generals of the armies of the United States, senators in Congress, and members of the House of Representatives were in a circle. Some were seated by him ; some stood erect about his chair ; some leaned and pressed eagerly forward between the more inner circles of listeners, and pushed their

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ears forward to hear the words and whispers which came from the centre figure of the circle. Some sat, some stood, some kneeled, and all leaned forward to listen.

I watched occasionally the effect upon this little company of men, of what was drawing them to that centre. The strange magician had taken up once more, and the last time, his wand, to try its spell upon a little com- pany of its subjects. It was the same one with which so often before, in the mere wan- tonness and sport of his powers, he had toyed and played with the storms of human pas- sions which it conjured up, controlled and allayed at will.

His youth, with its inimitable charms and graces, seemed for a moment to have come to him again. There were once more the flow of humor, the sparkle of merriment, the glow of enthusiasm, the flash of wit, and the charms of anecdote and illustration ; and there the wondrous play of features which made him Corwin. Men came repeatedly out from his presence at that seat, that night, exclaiming, "There is but one Corwin !" For a moment men, who a thousand times before had bowed before the spell of his genins, or had been swept off by its ir- resistible force, and then, when the spell was gone, wondered at their frailties, here again became its victims.

When at last the press about him lessened, I sat down by his side. What he happened first to say to me furnishes one of those strange coincidences which help to invest our lives with a tinge of the mysterious and awful, and which make us superstitious. One of his first utterances to me was a start- ling description of what Tom Corwin was to be in twenty-five minutes after its utterance. It was this : He said, " You are more bald than when I saw you last, the day before I sailed from Mexico." I said, "Yes." He said, with the semi-solemn, semi-comical face which has become historical, "But then Julius Caesar was bald." I said, "But Cæsar had fits." Then he assumed a more serious manner, and said, "Twenty years ago I saw a man fall in apparently un- conscious paralysis, when in the midst of ex- cited discourse. He was carried out by his friends in this condition, and his first act of consciousness was to utter the words you have just said, 'Cæsar had fits !'"

In twenty-five minutes after, I assisted in carrying Corwin out in the precise condition he had so strangely described.

He then went into a general conversation with those around him, asked after old friends in Ohio, etc. .. . Then he was invited to the refreshment-room. He arose and asked me to accompany him, which I did, Senator Wade joining us at the foot of the stairs. I urged him to be seated on a sofa at the

table, which he expressed reluctance in tak- ing, owing to the presence of ladies standing. On this sofa his last words were uttered in a few minutes after. The scene I have alluded to as occurring below was here speedily re- peated. Eager men again pressed about him and leaned forward, and held their breath to catch his last utterance. Once or twice they shouted with laughter and clapped their hands in boisterous merriment, and every eye and ear in the brilliant assemblage was directed to the seat where Tom Corwin was playing with skilled fingers upon that mystic harp whose chords are human passion, sym- pathy and emotion with all the wizard skill and power which was his of old. In a moment afterward his voice suddenly sank to whispers, and then he raised suddenly from his seat, reached forward his hands, asked for fresh air, and fell into the arms of surrounding friends ; and I helped carry him, speechless, from the chamber where his last anditory had just hung in love and admiration upon his lips, and stooped forward to get his last whispers. And we carried him into the death-chamber, whence a soul, more eloquent than Patrick Henry's, more beautiful than Sheridan's, more graceful than Cicero's, went back to God who made it.

When we laid him down he soon said to us, by a significant act, what he could not say by speech, "One side of me is dead !" This he did by raising up one arm, grasping tightly his hand and shaking his clenched fist. This he did twice, looking, at the same time, earnestly and rather wildly into the faces of the immediate bystanders. When he did this with his left hand, his right one was lying dead at his side. This act was instantly read by all as saying to us, "One side is powerless, but the other is not." This was the last communication to his fel- low-men ever made by him, unless subsequent grasps of recognition may have indicated to a few that he knew them. And there at mid- night I parted from that stricken man ! He who had touched with the sceptre of his im- perial and godlike intellect States, Nations, Peoples, Courts, and Senators, and made them all bow to the majesty of his power, was now touched-in his turn-touched by the sceptre of his Lord, and instantly bowed his head, and laid himself submissively down and died.

I, a sojourner here at the National Capital for a few days, and who happened to witness "The Last of Earth " to Corwin, wrote down this. Let it be preserved or throwr, away as may be fit ; but whether preserved or thrown away,

"Our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave."

EDWARD DEERING MANSFIELD, author, journalist and statistician, was born in New Haven, Conn., 17th August, 1801 ; died in Morrow, O., 27th October, 1880. He graduated at West Point in 1818 and then entered a classical course at

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Princeton, graduating in 1822, and later studied the law on Litchfield Hill, at Gould's famed law school.

He removed to Cincinnati and commenced the practice of law, after having been admitted to the bar in Connecticut in 1825. In 1835 he became professor of constitutional law and history in Cincinnati College. He was editor of the Cincinnati Chronicle, 1836-49; of the Atlas, 1849-52; and of the Railroad Record, 1854-72. For a long term of years was correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette, not in the line of news, but in the form of disquisitions upon living topics.

While editing the Chronicle and Atlas he encouraged many young writers who have since attained celebrity by publishing their productions in the columns of his papers ; among these was Harriet Beecher Stowe.

From 1859 to 1868 he was commissioner of statistics for Ohio, and an asso- ciate of the French " Société de Statistique Universelle." His writings covered a wide range of subjects, such as mathematics, politics, education and history. In 1854 Marietta College conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. Among his published works are " A Treatise on Constitutional Law," and " A Political Grammar of the United States " (Cincinnati, 1835) ; " The Legal Rights, Duties and Liabilities of Married Women " (Salem, 1845); "The Life of Gen. Winfield Scott " (New York, 1848); "The History of the Mexican War (1849); " The Memoirs of Daniel Drake" (Cincinnati, 1855) ; "Personal Memoirs, Social, Political and Literary, with Sketches of Many Noted People, 1803-1843" (Robert Clarke & Co., 1879). This was written for his family and friends. It is mainly autobiographical and most readable and instructive, mainly upon Ohio events and characters.

TRAVELLING NOTES. RECOLLECTIONS OF YAMOYDEN.

YAMOYDEN was the country-seat of the late E. D. Mansfield and where his family lived the last thirty years of his life, from about 1850 to 1880. Cincinnati was his business point, but his home was the place of his literary work.

Yamoyden is an Indian name which he gave to it from its euphony and that romantic sentiment that he associated with the heroic qualities of the best types of the original red man. It was the same sentiment that led the parents of a late lamented chieftain of our own, just passed away, to name their infant son "Tecumseh," i. e., Shooting Star. Out of this sentiment came Mr. Mansfield's affection for that fine poetic conception of Philip Frenean, the noted song-writer of the Revolution, the "Indian Death Song," sung while undergoing the pangs of torture. This he would often repeat while sitting under the porch at Yamoyden, and with an unction that showed his heart sympathized with the defying spirit and sublime faith of the dying chieftain :

The sun sets at night and the stars shun the day, But glory remains when their lights fade away. Begin, ye tormentors ! your threats are in vain, For the son of Alknomock can never complain.

Remember the woods where in ambush he lay, And the scalps which he bore from your nation away. Why do ye delay ? till I shrink from my pain ? Know the son of Alknomock can never complain.

Remember the arrows he shot from his bow ; Remember your chiefs by his hatchet laid low. The flame rises high-yon exult in my pain ! But the son of Alknomock will never complain.

I go to the land where my father has gone , His ghost shall exult in the fame of his son. Death comes like a friend ; he relieves me from pain ; And thy son, oh Alknomock ! has scorned to complain.

EDWARD DEERING MANSFIELD, The Sage of Yamoyden,

Drawn by Henry Howe in 1886.

ZAMOYDEN, NEAR MORROW.

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Yamoyden is about a mile north of Morrow, on a spur of the river hills and some two hundred feet above the stream on the west. The view is down the valley extending for miles, and beautiful is the site for the home of a literary man, filled with a love of nature and a love of man. It was his habit early in the morning in pleasant summer weather to take a seat under the porch, and look down south and east over the beautiful valley for miles away and meditate ; and anon, at times as he sat there meditating, there would come up from the valley below the sound of falling waters from an old dam once used for a long gone mill. And the monotonous melody fell as a sort of lullaby to soothe his senses as he gazed upon the outspreading scene of peace and loveliness.

Then after sitting there a while in thought he would withdraw to his study and write instructively upon some living topic to go out fresh from his pen to the people. It was there he wrote those weekly letters during the war period to the New York Times over the signature of " Veteran Observer," dating them from " The Beeches." These papers so bright and cheerful lifted the hearts of multi- tudes during the dark distressing periods. Addison Russell, at the time financial agent of Ohio in New York (see page 429, Vol. I.), tells of their influence upon the magnates of the great metropolis, those men of cash and elegance, with whom he was in daily association. "Who is the Veteran Observer ?" inquired they, and " where are the Beeches ?"

It is a cherished memory of the early period of the war my passing several days in June enjoying the hospitalities of Yamoyden with my young children, and the Mansfields with theirs. Mr. Mansfield and myself were of kin, and of carly association. Under the head of Mansfield in Richland county is an allusion to that association, and a sketch of his father, Col. Jared Mansfield, the old Surveyor-General of the Northwest Territory. The Mansfields were charming people. Mrs. Mansfield was the daughter of Governor Worthington, and she was born in and passed her youth at Adena, the old family-seat on the hills near Chillicothe. See Vol. III., p. 173. She was of the best of old Virginia stock, and illustrated it. I had known her mother, and Mrs. Mansfield was an honoring daughter of honoring parents. In person Mrs. Mansfield was large and com- manding, a blonde, with a sweet smile and ways and fine moral sensibilities, a Christian woman of the finest type. And Margaret, as he called her, was admirably adapted from her executive capacity to be the helpmeet of him whom the country around called the "Sage of Yamoyden," because so philosophieal in his thoughts and utterances, and so filled with many knowledges. So great was his absorption in study that he was unfitted to give his mind to those business affairs so important to the man of family.

Mr. Mansfield was a blonde, rather tall and extremely near-sighted. Although he wore the deepest of double concave glasses, he could ouly read by placing the print elose to his eyes. He was a man without guile, never felt the emotion of maliee, and was simple as a child. In his fifty years of journalism not a drop of bitterness flowed from his pen. In his religions sentiments he walked in the faith of his fathers. "I trust," said he, "in the bridge that brings me safely over." He saw God everywhere. Existence under His government was a joy. Nature and faith had given him an exuberant flow of spirits and hopefulness. In the dark period of the rebellion his pen was as a toreh of light.

His faith in republican institutions never failed him, and beyond all spots he loved Ohio. One of his great things was his address delivered at Philadelphia, August 9, 1876, "Ohio in the Centennial."

In this he showed the history, resources and present status of Ohio; it was interspersed with statisties and information upon every point of valne. He con- eluded with saying : "A State which began long after the Declaration of Inde- pendence in the then unknown wilderness of North America presents to-day a picture of what a republican government with Christian civilization can do!"

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And then finished with the query : " Where is the civilization of the earth which can equal this ?"

Mr. Mansfield inherited from his father a never-failing fountain of cheerfi.lness, and much the same mannerisms. He had the same love of humor, and the same hearty laugh. He believed in the gospel of work. "I want," he said, " engraved on my tombstone : 'Here lies a workingman.'" And he was right. Outside of work there is no satisfaction except in the earned rest and recreation that has come from work, and which prepares the spirit for more work, better work in the beyond.

DURBIN WARD was born at Augusta, Ky., Feb. 11, 1819. The family removed to Fayette county, Ind., and there young Ward was brought up on a farm, obtaining his education in country schools. At eighteen he had prepared himself for college, and eutered Miami University, paying his way by teaching during vacations. He left college at the end of two years without graduating, removed to Lebanon, O., studied law with Thomas Corwin, whose partner hc became on being admitted to the bar in 1842. The partnership was dis- solved in 1845 on Ward's election as prosecuting attorney of Warren coun- ty, an office he held for six years, when he was elected to the Ohio Legislature.

He was an active and influential member of the House.

DURBIN WARD.

He was defeated as a Democratic candidate for Congress in 1856, also for the office of attorney-general of Ohio in 1858.

In 1860 he was a delegate to the Charleston and Baltimore conventions, warmly supporting Stephen A. Douglas.

At the outbreak of the war he enlisted in the Union army as a private, served in West Virginia and in the campaigns of Gen. Geo. H. Thomas. He was appointed major of the 17th O. V. I., August 17, 1861, and lieutenant-colonel, December 31, 1862.

He was shot through the body at Chickamauga, and his left arm disabled for life. Without his knowledge he was mustered out of the army, but had the order recalled, and in November, 1863, was made colonel of his regiment. He served till the close of the war, being brevetted brigadier-general October 18, 1865.

In 1866 he was defeated for Congress by Gen. Robert C. Schenck. In No- vember of the same year he was appointed United States District Attorney for Southern Ohio, holding office for three years, when he was removed by President Grant. In 1870 he was elected to the Ohio Senate, declining a re-election at the expiration of his term.

He was a candidate for the nomination for governor in 1877, but was defeated by R. M. Bishop. General Ward was frequently mentioned as a candidate to office by his party, but his firm adherence to principle, regardless of personal popularity, often led to his defeat by less able men. He was a student and thinker on political questions, an eloquent orator and able lawyer. The plan of the present circuit court system of Ohio was drafted by him.

He died at Lebanon, May 22, 1886. He began a work on constitutional law, to be entitled "The Federal Institutes," but did not live to complete it. His

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life and speeches were published by his widow (A. H. Smythe, Columbus, Ohio, 1888).

JAMES SCOTT was born April 15, 1815, in Washington county, Pa., of Scotch- Irish parentage. He died in Lebanon, December 16, 1888. He removed to Morrow, Warren county, O., in 1843, and in 1851 to Lebanon, practising medi- cine in both places. In 1857 he edited the Western Star. He served in many public offices, was for sixteen years a member of the Legislature, and one of the best informed men on State affairs, and one of the most useful the State ever had.

During the war he applied to Governor Tod . for a captain's commission, but was told to stay where he was, that he was worth more in the Ohio House than he could be with any commission in the field. He was called "The watch- dog of the treasury," and did much to hold down public expenses, to simplify and arrange the system of State finance and business.

He is best known as the author of the Scott law, passed in 1882, taxing the liquor traffic. He is the author of many of the laws on the Ohio statute books of to-day.

ACHILLES PUGH was born in Chester county, Pa., March 10, 1805. Four years later his father settled in Cadiz, O., and at the age of seventeen Achilles entered the office of the Cadiz Informant to learn the printers' trade, and in 1827 went to Philadelphia to perfect himself in the business. In 1830 he found em- ployment in Cincinnati, and soon became manager of the Evangelist periodical. In 1832 he married Miss Anna Maria Davis, daughter of John Davis, of Bed- ford county, Va. A few years later he formed a partnership in the job printing business with Morgan & Sanxay.

It was then that trouble overtook him. The Ohio Anti-slavery Society was organized in April, 1835. Its business was conducted by an executive committee, who started a newspaper, The Philanthropist, at New Richmond in Clermont county, and after printing a few numbers applied to him to take the press and type and print the paper in Cincinnati. His partners refusing, the

ACHILLES PUGH.

connection was dissolved, and he contracted to print it alone. Unable to hire a building for the purpose owing to the obloquy at- tached to the cause, he erected one in the rear of his residence on Walnut street, be-

tween Sixth and Seventh streets. He under- took the printing as a matter of business. "If," reasoned he, "slavery cannot stand discussion, then slavery is wrong ; therefore, as a printer, it is in the line of my business to print this paper, charging only the ordinary rates for the work." Soon as the paper ap- peared it was evident from the attitude of the city press that a storm was brewing, and at midnight of the 12th of July, 1836, a band of men broke into his office, frightened into silence a boy sleeping there, destroyed the week's issue, and dismantled and carried away parts of the press.

Not to be balked so easily, Mr. Pugh had a new press purchased, and was at work at 11 o'clock the next day printing off his weekly issue. A few days after he removed his press to his job office, corner of Seventh and Main streets. At sundown on the night of the 29th a second mob assembled, broke into his office, pitched the type-cases and press. into the middle of the street, and were about to set it on fire when his honor the Mayor, Samuel W. Davies, mounted the pile and addressed the mob. He complimented them for having done so well thus far, but advised against the conflagrating process, as it would endanger the adjacent property. Thereupon they hanled the press by a rope, and with much noise and shoutings cast it into the Ohio river. After the second attack he for a while printed the paper at Springboro, in Warren county, and brought down "the abominable sheet " by canal to the city. In the exciting era he was a marked man, and very much wanted as an object of adornment with tar and feathers; but by keeping in

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after dark, and keeping out of certain parts of the city when it was light, and possessing moreover a powerful muscular physique, he was blessed to escape being made a subject of "high art." Scowls and cold shoulders were given him in abundance. These he bore with equanimity ; and, as the cause of anti-slavery gradually advanced, many a dollar was pri- vately slipped into his hand, which were applied to aid the flight of colored fugitives by the underground railroad. Some of the money was supplied even by those engaged in the Southern trade. No questions were asked, only for the money, the parties giving seeming strangely incurious as to its applica- tion, only as they gave they winked and smiled and looked queer.

Until 1875 Mr. Pugh was closely identified with the printing business in Cincinnati. In 1837 he formed a partnership with Mr. Dodd, and began the publication of the Weekly Chronicle, E. D. Mansfield and Benjamin Drake, editors. This paper was afterwards converted into a daily and continued until 1846 with Mr. Pugh as printer. Just as the paper commenced to make financial returns for the expense of its establishment, at the instigation of his church and his own desire to avoid the appearance of evil, every adver- tiscment regarding the sale of spirituous liquors was taken out of the paper, and " with them nearly all the profits of the business." Thus he ever was ready to sacrifice worldly gain for the cause of righteousness.

In 1869, in company with John Butler, he was chosen by the Executive Committee of the Orthodox Friends' Commission, in con- nection with the duties assumed under the invitation of President Grant, to make a tour

of examination through the Indian Agencies of the Central Superintendency. One day, when riding unarmed in a buggy through the Indian country, accompanied only by a guide and ambulance driver, they were overtaken by two wild Indians of the plains, Kiowas, who rode up, one on each side of them, with their bows strung and arrows in their hands, evidently designing mischief. Mr. Pugh re- sorted to a stratagem to get rid of them. Placing his hands to his mouth he drew there- from a complete set of false teeth, and thrust them towards the nearest savage, at the same time dropping his heavy beetling brows in a ferocious scowl, while his mouth, being de- prived of its support, the chin and nose came in close proximity. The Indians were horri- fied at the act, and, putting spurs to their ponies, in a twinkling were nowhere to be seen.

From very early life he was a member of the religious Society of Friends, and was act- ively and devotedly engaged in church and Sabbath-school interests, mission as well as his own; but his broad Christian character and loving heart made him particularly un- sectarian. He was a life-member of the American Bible Society, and was constantly and unselfishly interested in the dissemination of Bible truth.

The poor and unfortunate found in him a most generous friend ; and he was so genial and well informed that his company was a pleasure and instruction. Though suffering much before his death, he was not confined to bed, and joined his family in worship on that day, requesting that the 14th chapter of John be read. We trust he is with the Sav- iour of whom he loved to hear.

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume II, Part 115

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 916

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 916