USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 28
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THE former half of this was filled with the prologue, the acts, and the epilogue of the great drama of civil war. The events of every one of its years, in Cincinnati and Hamilton county, that are worthy of public record, re- late almost solely to this; and we have but a meagre rec- ord besides for this decade. Special chapters will be given, directly after these brief notes, to the part which Cincinnati played in the enactment of the mighty tragedy.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY.
The United States census enumerated the total popu- lation of the city as one hundred and sixty-one thousand and forty-four. The population by wards, as in other years, will be found in a table below.
This was the year of the visit of the Prince of Wales and his illustrious party to Cincinnati, in the course of their tour through the United States. They came on the special invitation of Mayor Bishop, and were of course elegantly entertained while here.
In January came to the Queen City the excursion of the legislatures of Kentucky and Tennessee, upon the occasion of the completion of the Louisville & Nashville railroad, which soon afterwards was to prove so service- able to the cause of the Union, in the transportation of men and the material of war. The Solons went on to Columbus, by way of Xenia, returned to this city by way of Dayton, and thence to their homes.
On the third of March a lamentable accident occurred at the new St. Xavier's church, on Sycamore street, in the falling of an extensive wall, burying no less than six- teen persons in its ruins-a degree of fatality almost, if not quite, unequaled in the history of similar accidents.
April 18th, the Young Men's Mercantile Library asso- ciation completed its twenty-fifth year, and celebrated a "Silver Festival" in consequence.
May 2d, a great hurricane sweeps over and through Cincinnati, unroofing buildings and inflicting many other but mostly petty losses.
On the twenty fourth of that month, the street railroads were relieved by the council of the per capita tax which had theretofore been imposed.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE.
Three hundred and thirty-six new buildings were put up this year -- three hundred and nine of brick and stone, and twenty-seven of wood.
January 9th, officers Long and Hallam, of the police force, were killed by the Lohrers, father and son. On the twenty-fifth Patrick McHugh was hanged for the mur- der of his wife.
In February President-elect Lincoln passed through Cincinnati on his way to Washington to be inaugurated. Mayor Bishop made a reception speech, to which Mr. Lincoln replied in terms suited to the momentous crisis then impending.
April 13th, comes the news of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, awakening intense indignation and the de- sire for speedy and adequate punishment of the South for
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its aggressions. Camp Harrison is soon opened for the reception of volunteers, on the race-ground near Cummins- ville. On the eighteenth, the conflict having fully opened, the city council votes two hundred thousand dollars to the war fund.
May Ist, a committee of public safety for the city was appointed. On the seventeenth, General Robert Ander- son, returning from his luckless post at Sumter, was given an enthusiastic public reception for his meritorious con- duct there.
June 20th, the Indiana regiments passing through Cin- cinnati were fed at the Fifth street market house.
August 2d, occurred the first reception to the returning volunteers of the three months regiments. There was less joy and enthusiasm on the twenty-ninth, when the body of Major General Lyon, killed in the battle of Wil- son's creek, near Springfield, Missouri, was received with military honors.
September 27th, an uneasy feeling having prevailed for some time in regard to possible danger from the direction of Kentucky, measures were taken, but not carried to completion, to fortify the city.
October Ist, came the first sad sight of the arrival of wounded soldiers from the front of battle.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO.
January 24th marked the greatest height of another tremendous freshet in the Ohio, which reached within a few feet of the high-water mark of 1832.
February 17th, was celebrated the glorious victory of Fort Donelson.
March Ioth, death of the well known poet, one of the most notable ever resident in Cincinnati, W. W. Fos- dick. On the 20th a soldiers' home is opened in the Trollopean Bazaar. On the 25th a disturbance occurs at Pike's opera house, in consequence of a lecture there on public affairs by Mr. Wendell Phillips.
July 18th, a state of alarm prevails in the city in con- sequence of rebel movements in Kentucky. A raid by John Morgan upon the city is expected, and preparations are made for defence. On the second a great war meet- ing had occurred at the Fifth street market place.
August 11th, citizens and soldiers attend in large num- bers the funeral of Colonel Robert L. McCook, murdered by guerrillas while riding sick in an ambulance in advance of his troops, in southern Tennessee. A bust of heroic size was afterwards set up to his memory in Washington park.
September 2d, genuine and well-based alarm again pre- vails in consequence of the apparent advance on Cincin- nati of a rebel force in Kentucky, under Generals Kirby Smith and Heath. On the fourth martial law is pro- claimed in the city, and before the next day has gone the city is full of volunteers. Ample preparations are made here and back of Covington for resistance. The famous "squirrel hunters'" campaign follows. By the fourteenth the alarm is mainly over, and the militia are ordered home by the Governor.
An enumeration of population this year, founded upon the school census, the Directory, or some other ba-
sis of estimates, yields a total of one hundred and eighty- four thousand five hundred and seventeen.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE.
Population this year, by official estimate, one hundred and eighty-six thousand three hundred and twenty-nine.
New Year's Day the great sanitary fair, for the benefit of sick and wounded soldiers, was opened, and culmi- nated in a magnificent success. Its operations will be detailed at some length in the next chapter.
In January died Mrs. Mary Barr, who had been a res- ident of the city since 1809-fifty-four years.
April 4th, the order for the re-organization of the State militia, under the name of the Ohio National Guard, was received.
May 5th, the place of amusement known as the Palace Varieties was burned. On the fifteenth of the same month, the operations of the first draft for the army be- gan in Cincinnati.
The John Morgan raid through Hamilton county and southern Ohio generally, occurs in early July, and creates great excitement in Cincinnati. It is made the subject of a chapter in part I of this work.
The Plum street railway depot-four hundred feet by sixty-four-was erected this year.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR.
This year the present Cincinnati, Hamilton, & Dayton depot-four hundred by sixty-was put up at the corner of Fifth and Hoadly streets, reaching through to Sixth.
Very little of stirring interest happened this year, apart from the events of the war. The principal scenes of conflict were now far away-in northern Georgia and by the rivers of Virginia-and it was a comparatively quiet year for Cincinnati.
The estimate of population for the year is one hun- dred and ninety-three thousand, seven hundred and nineteen.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE.
The estimate is increased this year to a round two hundred thousand-probably too great, as all the esti- mates and professed enumerations thereafter, until the official census of 1870, which shows the incorrectness of the figures for a number of previous years.
A liberal system of public improvements was devised and entered upon by the city authorities after the close of the war, to remedy defects and neglects which were inevitable during the continuance of the great struggle. It included the present magnificent and costly structures occupied by the Cincinnati Hospital, the Workhouse, and the House of Refuge.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX.
Estimate of population, two hundred and ten thou- sand, eight hundred and sixty-six.
January 27th, the police and fire alarm telegraph, for which a persistent pressure had been kept up for years, was completed and successfully put in operation.
March 22d, the superb opera house erected by Samuel N. Pike was destroyed by fire. It had two thousand sit- tings, and on the occasion of Christine Nilsson's first
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John F. Follett
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appearance in the city, had held three thousand and three hundred people. Its destruction recalled the lines of Mr. T. Buchanan Read, the poet-artist, to Mr. Pike:
Who builds a noble temple unto Art,
And rears it grandly from the head and heart, Hath done a noble service, and his name Shall live upon the golden roll of Fame.
April 3d, deceased Mr. M. D. Potter, the senior pro- prietor of the Commercial.
June 8th, a successful swindle was perpetrated upon the Third National bank, whereby it lost the sum of four thousand five hundred dollars.
July 11th, another calamity happens to the music and amusement-loving people of Cincinnati, in the burning of the Academy of Music building.
The cholera visits the city again this year, and with terribly destructive effect. The total number of deaths from this cause here was two thousand and twenty-eight -one in every ninety-five and seventy-four hundredths population, or ten and forty-four hundredths in every thousand. On the thirteenth of August there are eighty- six deaths by cholera.
August 2 Ist, the splendid Jewish temple, K. K. Benai Jeshurun, at the corner of Eighth and Plum streets, was dedicated.
December Ist the great Suspension Bridge is at last opened to foot travel.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN.
New Year's day had a very satisfactory celebration for the people of Cincinnati and the Kentucky suburbs, in the full opening of the suspension bridge to all kinds of carriage as well as foot travel.
April 4th, three criminals, George Goetz, Alexander Aulgus, and Samuel Carr, are hanged for the murder of James Hughes.
· Estimate of population for the year, two hundred and twenty thousand five hundred. This, and the two esti- mates which follow in this decade, are greater than the official footings of 1870. The new buildings of the year counted up one thousand three hundred and seventy- two.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT.
Estimate of the population, two hundred and thirty- five thousand. The bonded debt of the city was now four million five hundred and seven thousand dollars, having increased one million forty-seven thousand five hundred dollars within a year, during about which time had been erected the workhouse and the hospital, the greater part of the Eggleston Avenue sewer had been laid, and a material increase in the facilities afforded by the water-works had been made. The hospital alone, which was occupied this year, cost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The aggregate estimated value of property in the city was eleven million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
June 18th, a great thunder-storm occurred, during which several houses in the city were struck by lightning, and one burned.
On the ninth of July the Varieties theatre was the vic- tim of the fire-fiend.
November 4th, a public building, devoted to a very different purpose, the Widows' Home, was also burned.
· EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE.
The estimated population for this year was put in round numbers at a quarter of a million-too great, probably, by nearly forty thousand. The city now, according to Mr. George E. Stevens's book on Cincinnati, from which we condense the following statements, was the largest and wealthiest inland city in America. Although but eighty years old, it had reached a population as great as Phila- delphia had after one hundred and sixty years' settle- ment, and as New York had in 1833. It was "moving steadily and compactly forward to a magnificent future." It "is destined to become the focus and mart for the grandest circle of manufacturing thrift on this continent, the Edinburgh of a new Scotland, the Boston of a new New England, the Paris of a new France." Mill creek was still the western boundary, but the river front was nearly ten miles long, and the north line of the city was more than two miles from low-water mark. The front margin of the lower plateau, originally a steep bank, had been wholly graded down to a gentle declivity, and much of the surface drainage of the city passed directly into the river. The wholesale business was chiefly on Main, Walnut, Vine, Second, and Pearl streets; the retail trade on Fourth, Fifth, and Central avenue. The great staples of the Cincinnati markets- iron, cotton, tobacco, sugar, etc .- were mainly on Front, Water, and Second streets. Pearl street was largely oc- cupied by dry goods, notions, clothing, and boot and shoe stores. Third was then, as now, the Wall street of Cincinnati, containing many of the banks, insurance and law offices, etc. The city had four magnificent retail shopping establishments. Some superb new buildings had gone up, including those we have named, and also the St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal church, at the corner of Seventh and Smith streets. There were in all one hundred and nineteen churches. The Tyler-Davidson fountain was in progress. The Garden of Eden park had been surveyed, and a force was occupied in grading it. Large part of the work on the great reservoir in the park for the water-works, had been done. A satisfactory in- crease had been observed in the numerous branches of productive industry followed in the city. The total esti- mated value of products for the year was fifty million dol- lars. About twenty-five thousand children were in the public schools, and twelve thousand more in private and parochial schools and seminaries of learning, among which were now two theological seminaries. The death rate per year was only eighteen and five ore-hundredths in one thousand of population; and from the single cause of consumption only nine and forty-eight one-hundredths per cent. of the deaths occurred, against fourteen and two one-hundredths in New York city, and fifteen and thirty-eight one-hundredths in Philadelphia. The fire department was regarded in efficiency as above any other on the face of the earth, and the previous year there had been a remarkable exemption from destructive fires in Cincinnati,
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
The first seven months of 1869 were comparatively de- void of interesting events. August was characterized by several, however. On the third was opened, in the new Sinton building, near the Burnet House, the Exposition of Textile Fabrics, which pioneered the magnificent series of industrial expositions that have since followed. A pretty full history of this notable success, and the annual fairs succeeding, will be found in another chapter. On the thirty-first of the month, a party of fifty-three Cin- cinnatians, about one-third of them ladies, and including Mr. and Mrs. Robert Buchanan and many other promi- nent residents, started on an excursion to California, by way of the Indianapolis, Cincinnati & Lafayette, Toledo, Wabash & Western, Hannibal & St. Joseph, St. Joseph & Council Bluffs, Union Pacific, and Central Pacific railroads. The project was started among the members of the Chamber of Commerce, the number going limited to sixty, and the expense of round-trip tickets to three hundred dollars each. Most of the party returned in a body October 8th, after an extremely agreeable tour. A neat little book was afterwards made of the letters con- tributed by a correspondent with the party to the Cin- cinnati Commercial.
On the twentieth of October the College building, on Walnut street, was again desolated by fire. The Mer- cantile Library suffered much by the flames, water, and hasty removal, and other institutions in the structure sus- tained serious loss.
This year occurred the celebrated struggle over the Bible reading practised in the public schools. It began at a regular meeting of the School Board September 6th, in a proposition for the union of the Roman Catholic schools with the public schools, and an amendment offered to prohibit the oral reading of religious books, in- cluding the Bible, before the pupils of the schools. The subsequent transactions are detailed in our special chap- ter on Education.
CHAPTER XVI. CINCINNATI IN THE WAR.
THE Queen City found herself, with all her great ad- vantages of situation for commercial and other purposes, peculiarly and quite unhappily placed at the outset of the great war of the Rebellion. Her growth had been largely the result of Southern trade; her business connections with the South, by river and rail, were extensive and val- uable; while her social connections, through the large immigration from some of the slave States to Cincinnati, in all periods of her history, through the intermarriage of many Cincinnatians with Southern families, and through interchanges of visits and courtesies, were ex- ceedingly numerous and powerful. Mr. Parton says, in his little article in the Atlantic Monthly (February, 1863), on the "Siege of Cincinnati," that many leading families in the city were in sympathy with the Rebellion, and
that there were few which did not have at least one mem- ber in its armies. But, he adds, "the great mass of the people knew not a moment of hesitation, and a tide of patriotic feeling set in which silenced, expelled, or con- verted the adherents of the Rebellion." The old busi- ness relations with the South were speedily broken up, and the city soon began to reap a great pecuniary harvest by the supply of gunboats and military stores in immense quantity, and by the various labors incident to the estab- lishment and maintenance of camps and the movement of troops.
Cincinnati, by her local situation, had also much cause for fear. It was by far the largest and richest city of a northern State upon the border of a slave State. By its wealth, and the value of the contents of its banks, its warehouses, and manufactories, to the Confederacy, as well as by its steadfast and abounding loyalty, its zeal and activity in support of the Union cause, the vengeance to be wreaked and the prestige to be gained by its fall, it offered a standing and very great temptation to the Con- federate arms for capture and plunder. The most nota- ble facts of its war history are the menace delivered from the southward by the rebel generals in the summer of 1862, and that from the westward and northward by John Morgan a year later. Happily, it was delivered from all its dangers to the end; but the peril was none the less real and palpable during nearly every year, and in many months of the war. It was keenly felt at the dread be- ginning; and when, in April, 1861, at the recommenda- tion of Captain George B. McClellan, then the young president of the Ohio & Mississippi railroad, his friend and former comrade, Captain Nathaniel Pope, of the regular army, proceeded to Columbus to give military advice to Governor Dennison, he had little to suggest except the purchase of some big columbiads for the defence of Cincinnati, to be mounted upon the hills on the Ohio side, since nothing of the kind could be done in Ken- tucky, which was then assuming a position of armed neu- trality. The Governor, with some reasonable doubts, signed the order for the guns, and they were bought; but history is silent as to the further part they played in the suppression of the Rebellion.
The position of Kentucky was of eminent importance to the safety of Cincinnati, and for some time excited great uneasiness, which was measurably relieved by the assurance of Judge Thomas M. Key, of the Ohio State Senate, who had been sent to interview Governor Ma- goffin, that the Kentucky executive dwelt particularly upon "his firm purpose to permit nothing to be done that could be viewed as menacing the city of Cincinnati." The people of the city, however, were by no means dis- posed, in consequence of this assurance, to grant any concessions to treason. Mr. Reid says, in his "Ohio in the War":
The first note of war from the east threw Cineinnati into a spasm of alarm. Her great warehouses, her foundries and machine shops, her rieh moneyed institutions, were all a tempting prize to the confederates, to whom Kentucky was believed to be drifting. Should Kentucky go, only the Ohio river would remain between the great eity and the needy enemy, and there were absolutely no provisions for defense.
The first alarm expended itself, as has already been seen, in the pur-
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chase of huge columbiads, with which it was probably intended that Walnut Hills should be fortified. There next sprang up a feverish spirit of active patriotism that soon led to complications. For the citi- zens, not being accustomed to draw nice distinctions or in a temper to permit anything whereby their danger might be increased, could see little difference between the neutral treason of Kentucky to the Govern- ment and the more open treason of the seceded States. They accord- ingly insisted that shipments of produce, and especially shipments of arms, ammunition, or other articles contraband of war, to Kentucky should instantly cease.
The citizens of Louisville, taking alarm at this threatencd blow at their very existence, sent up a large delegation to protest against the stoppage of shipments from Ohio. They were received in the council chamber of the city hall, on the morning of April 23d. The city mayor, Mr. Hatch, announced the object of their meeting, and called upon Mr. Rufus King to state the position of the city and State au- thorities. Mr. King dwelt upon the friendship of Ohio for Kentucky in the old strain, and closed by reading a letter which the mayor had procured from Governor Dennison, of which the essential part was as follows :
"My views of the subject suggested in your message are these: So long as any State remains in the Union, with professions of attachment to it, we cannot discriminate between that State and our own. In the contest we must be clearly in the right in every act, and I think it bet- ter that we should risk something than that we should, in the slightest degree, be chargeable with anything tending to create a rupture with any State which has not declared itself already out of the Union. To seize arms going to a State which has not actually seceded, could give a pretext for the assertion that we had inaugurated hostile conduct, and might be used to create a popular feeling in favor of secession where it would not exist, and end in border warfare, which all good citizens must deprecate. Until there is such circumstantial evidence as to cre- ate a moral certainty of an immediate intention to use arms against us, I would not be willing to order their seizure; much less would I be wil- ling to interfere with the transportation of provisions."
"Now," said Mr. King, " this is a text to which every citizen of Ohio must subscribe, coming as it does from the head of the State. I do not feel the least hesitation in saying that it expresses the feeling of the people of Ohio."
But the people of Ohio did not subscribe to it. Even in the meeting Judge Bellamy Storer, though very guarded in his expressions, inti- mated, in the course of his stirring speech, the dissatisfaction with the attitude of Kentucky. "This is no time," he said, "for soft words. We feel, as you have a right to feel, that you have a governor who can- not be depended upon in this crisis. But it is on the men of Kentucky that we rely. All we want to know is whether you are for the Union, without reservation. Brethren of Kentucky! The men of the North have been your friends, and they still desire to be. But I will speak plainly. There have been idle taunts thrown out that they are cowardly and timid. The North submits; the North obeys; but beware! There is a point which cannot be passed. While we rejoice in your friendship, while we glory in your bravery, we would have you understand that we are your equals as well as your friends."
To all this the only response of the Kentuckians, through their spokesman, Judge Bullock, was "that Kentucky wished to take no part in the unhappy struggle; that she wished to be a mediator, and meant to retain friendly relations with all her sister States. But he was greatly gratified with Governor Dennison's letter."
The citizens of Cincinnati were not. Four days later, when their in- dign ition had come to take shape, they held a large meeting, whereat excited speeches were made and resolutions passed deprecating the letter, calling upon the governor to retract it, declaring that it was too late to draw nice distinctions between open rebellion and armed neu- trality against the Union, and that armed neutrality was rebellion to the Government. At the close an additional resolution was offered, which passed amid a whirlwind of applause :
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