USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > History of Dayton, Ohio. With portraits and biographical sketches of some of its pioneer and prominent citizens Vol. 2 > Part 15
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IIe was at that time but thirty-one years of age, slender in form, of an extremely nervous physical organization, white hair and complexion, weighing not over one hundred and forty pounds; quick in movement, with a sort of explosive energy in delivery, and captivating speaking talent. His partisanship was of the most combative, bitter sort. He seldom honored his opponents by calling them Democrats, but always "loco-focos." The older Whig stumpers, Corwin, Crittenden, Metcalfe, and others, who were conspienons supporters of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," regarded "Schenck " as one of the foremost young Whigs of Ohio, and among the most eloquent and effective of their speakers. He was already a popular orator; his speeches were strong, argumentative, witty, and sarcastic.
In the legislature he became at once conspicuous as a leader of his . 1 party. His term of service was signalized by an act of boldness, which indicated his mastery of emergencies.
The Democrats were in a majority in the general assembly, and had prepared a bill for the apportionment of the State into congressional districts. Montgomery County was placed in a strongly Democratie dis- trict. The bill was vehemently denounced by the Whigs as unfair to their party, and as giving the Democrats a grossly unjust predominance in the congressional representation of the State. One of the districts along the Ohio River extended up and down some hundreds of miles, and was likened in shape to some nondescript monster, called a "gerry- mander," and thus a new word, coined by one of Mr. Schenck's most ardent Dayton supporters, John W. Van Cleve, was given to American political nomenclature, which still survives.
Mr. Schenck led the bitter opposition to this measure in the house and under his leadership the Whigs determined in caucus to resign in a body and leave the legislature without quormn to enact the law, if no other means could be found to defeat it.
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The final test came. As Rufus P. Spalding, then the speaker of the house, ordered the roll to be called upon the passage of the bill, Mr. Schenck nervously arose in his seat, and, pointing his finger to the chair, said, "No, you don't, Mr. Speaker," whereupon he announced the resignation of himself and his fellow Whig members, of their seats as representatives, and left the hall of the house in a body without a quorum.
The measure of course was defeated. An exceedingly bitter contest in the following fall election ensued throughout the State, but Mr. Schenck was returned to the legislature, although by a reduced majority.
An apportionment act was passed by the next legislature which gave the Dayton district to the Whigs.
In 1843, after an exciting contest for the congressional nominations, with Charles Anderson, who was then a rising young lawyer and Whig politician of Dayton, and possessed wonderful popularity by reason of his extraordinary oratorical talents, Mr. Schenck was nominated and after- wards elected to his first term in Congress.
He was reelected subsequently twice, serving three successive terms, and was ranked among the foremost men of his party in Congress.
In 1851, he was appointed by President Fillmore as United States minister to Brazil. After an absence of some years, during which he performed important diplomatic services, he returned to his home in Dayton, taking no active part in political affairs until the year 1859, when he made a characteristic speech in Dayton on the political situation, and was credited with first suggesting Abraham Lincoln for the presi- deney upon introducing him to an audience before the Dayton courthouse for a political address.
Upon the breaking out of the Rebellion, he promptly tendered his services to the government and received a commission as brigadier- general. His career throughout the war is familiar history. He received a severe wound at the second battle of Bull Run, which permanently disabled his right hand and arm.
HIe soon afterwards received a commission as major-general and served until December, 1863, when he resigned to accept a seat in Congress, to which he had been elected in the fall of 1862 over C. L. Vallandigham from the Third Distriet which had been made strongly Republican by the legislature by the addition of Warren County to Butler, Preble, and Montgomery.
Ile was made chairman of the military committee of the House, upon which he rendered most important and arduous service.
IIe was reelected to Congress in 1864, over his Democratie competitor,
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David A. Houk, and again in 1866, over General Durbin Ward, and again in 1868, over C. L. Vallandigham. During this terin of service he was chairman of the committee of ways and means, and the recognized leader of his party in the House.
In 1871, General Schenck was appointed by General Grant minister to Great Britain, in which capacity he served with distinction until 1876. It was during this period that he was appointed a member on behalf of the United States of the celebrated Joint High Commission, which assembled at Washington and effected a treaty providing for the Geneva Conference, a measure which, by the substitution of arbitration for war in the settle- ment of a serious controversy between two powerful and war-like nations, marked an era in the development of the spirit of a true Christian civili- zation.
General Schenck's highest faculties were brought into requisition in this important service. Upon no occasion in his eventful life were his intellectual abilities, his tact and force of character more conspicuously or advantageously displayed. Associated with him on the commission in behalf of the United States, were Hamilton Fish, secretary of state; Judge Nelson, of the United States Supreme Bench; Hon. E. B. Hoar, now senator from Massachusetts, and Hon. George H. Williams, then United States attorney-general. The gentlemen comprising the British commission were all greatly distinguished and able-Earl DeGrey and Ripon, a baronet and peer of the realm, president of the privy council; Sir Stafford Northcote, a privy councilor and member of parliament; Sir Edward Thornton, British minister to the United States; Sir John A. McDonald, member of her majesty's privy council for Canada, and minister of justice, and attorney-general for the Dominion of Canada; and Montagne Bernard, professor of international law in the University of Oxford.
The matters submitted to this celebrated commission comprised the existing differences between the goverment of the United States and that of Great Britain, the most notable of which was known generically as the Alabama claim. The treaty, however, which was successfully negotiated, embraced questions connected with the fisheries, navigation of the St. Lawrence, relations with Canada, and the boundary at Fuca Strait.
It is hardly necessary to say that in a commission thus constituted, all these questions were exhaustively and critically examined. The relations between the government of Great Britain and that of the United States, owing to circumstances that had transpired during the war, were, to say the least, somewhat strained. The Confederate cruisers,
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which had inflicted such irreparable damage to our commercial marine, had been built and almost equipped in British ports, and had sailed from British waters with the knowledge of all the world except that of the English authorities, whose duty it was, as the officers of a neutral govern- ment, to have prevented so palpable a breach of the law of nations. In addition to this serious grievance, involving an immense unadjusted pecuniary loss, the American government still felt the sting of the sur- render of Mason and Slidell, which England had virtually demanded at the cannon's mouth. Some seven years bad passed since the collapse of the Southern Confederacy, which, notwithstanding its slavery corner- stone, England would have gladly seen erected upon the ruins of the American Union, and still no hour of reckoning had ever come.
It was fortunate for all, that this step for adjustment was taken, when the silent man, whose name and fame were associated in England and throughout the world with the conquest of the gigantic American Rebellion, was seated in the presidential chair.
Whilst American public opinion recognized and embraced all the mighty forces that had combined to achieve the great victory, not by any means withholding his due proportion of credit to General Grant, abroad, and especially in England, he was looked upon as a military colossus, and the " conqueror of the Rebellion."
The suggestion of a peaceful method of settling existing differences with England, therefore, emanating from his administration, was promptly responded to by that government.
General Schenck, in addition to the qualifications resulting from his long experience in political life, from his training as a lawyer and diplomatist, went upon the commission as, in a degree, a representative of the military element, a close friend of General Grant, with personal knowledge of his ideas and purposes.
With social qualities of a notoriously high order, great intellectual alertness, as well as force, keen discrimination of points in controversy, and unflinching firmness and courage, it is no depreciation of others to say that no man's influence on the commission was superior to that of General Schenck. .
So widely were his important services on this commission known and recognized throughout the country that there was a perceptible current of public opinion in his party setting his name in connection with the approaching nomination for the presidency.
It was about this time that, through the malicious resentment of a newspaper correspondent in London, for some imputed personal affront, a wide notoriety was given (or revived rather ) to General Schenck's con-
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nection with a mining enterprise in Colorado. The same matter, which had transpired several years before, had been brought to the attention of the American secretary of the State, Mr. Fish, who, upon full investiga- tion of all the fhets, had entirely exonerated him from any blame in connection with it. Before the termination of his mission broad, the members of the Dayton bar and his other personal friends in Dayton, without distinction of party, tendered General Schenck a banquet ( which he accepted ) as a testimonial of the high respect entertained by those who had been intimately acquainted with him for a life time, for his personal purity of character, and the high appreciation of his neighbors for his eminent public services. Born, reared, and educated in Ohio, his profes- sional and political successes having been achieved here, always regarding Dayton as his home, he has been throughout his whole life, a thoroughly typical Western, or more distinctively, an Ohio man. The marked traits he has displayed in a long and illustrious. carcer of public service, as a legislator, diplomatist, soldier, and statesman, have been strong virility of character, superior intellectual power, courage, decision, and unimpeach- able integrity. Although, for the last forty years General Schenck has not been continuously engaged for any considerable length of time in the active practice of the legal profession, his general habit of mind has been that of the trained lawyer. With strong intellectual tastes he has always been an extensive reader in the higher departments of belles lettres, as well as of historical and scientific literature. On the floor of the house of representatives where he was so long conspicuous and influential, he displayed, whenever opportunity offered, the power of logic, lucidity of statement, closeness of reasoning, and adroitness of presentation, characteristic of an educated and superior legal mind. He was espe- cially gifted in repartee. The ten or fifteen years of close study and laborious training in a large miscellaneous practice at the Dayton bar, in the early part of his life, so familiarized him with the elementary prin- ciples of the common and civil law, with methods of legal procedure, the law of evidence, and the fundamental principles of international law, that when he was called upon to exercise the high functions of statesmanship or diplomacy, he did not find himself by any means unequipped for the service.
The carly bar of Ohio was no mean school for men destined to be called into the highest ranks of public life. In it were trained Ewing, Corwin, Crane, Vinton, the Stanberrys, Chase, Stanton, McLean, Swayne, and later, Thurman, Ranney, Groesbeck, Waite, and a score of others whose public services have conferred lustre upon the State and nation. General Sehenek well deserves to be ranked among the most illustrious 36
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men Ohio has produced -- and no State in the Union could furnish him better company. He has himself sketched briefly but accurately, in a letter kindly written by him and quoted in this chapter, the other more prominent members of the original Dayton bar when he canie here in 1831.
Mr. Odlin, for many years his senior partner, and to whom he did not refer, did not come to Dayton until afterwards. His partnership with Mr. Schenck was formed in 1834. He was purely a lawyer and one of very high standing. He was a most effective speaker, educated, always logical, and at times very eloquent. He was a superior trial lawyer, as strong in the arguments of questions of law to the court as of facts to the jury. There were very few, if any, law firms in the State that excelled in their day that of Odlin & Schenck.
Another most widely-extended reputation attained by a member of the Dayton bar was that of Clement L. Vallandigham. He belonged to the group of lawyers who came to the bar here after 1840 and prior to 1860.
He also was a native of Ohio, bornin. Columbiana County, July 29, 1820. His father was a Presbyterian minister, who graduated in the year 1804 at Jefferson College, Cannonsburgh, Pennsylvania. His mother, whose maiden name was Laird, was of an Irish family. Mr. Vallandig- ham, with three brothers, was prepared for a college course by his father, who gave instruction in a private classical school, and at the age of seven- teen, entered the junior class of the same college at which his father had graduated more than thirty years before. He remained, however, but a year, when he was solicited to take charge as principal of an academy at Snowhill, in Maryland, where he remained two years.
In 1840, being then twenty years of age, he reentered Jefferson College as a member of the senior class. A short time before he would have graduated, by reason of a difficulty with Dr. Brown, the president of the college, he requested an honorable dismission, which was granted.
Mr. Vallandigbam studied law and was admitted to the bar in December, 1842. He commenced his professional and political life in Columbiana County, and removed to Dayton, where he permanently located, in August, 1847. He was inclined to seek a career in politics rather than in law, and although his early practice in Columbiana County gave promise of success, he became a representative in the legislature from that county as soon as he arrived at the eligible age of twenty-five years, as prescribed by the constitution. He was the youngest member of the legislature, and at once became popular with his fellow-members, and greatly respected for his superior talents, his. lofty aime, and pare
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personal habits. He was a most industrious and discriminating reader, and well versed in the best class of ancient and modern literature. Soon after he located in Dayton, in 1847, he took charge of the Democratic paper, the Empire, which he continued to edit with marked ability until 1849, when he sold out his interest.
The year before he removed to Dayton, in August, 1846, he had married Louisa A. McMahon, sister of the distinguished lawyer, Hon. Jolin V. L. McMahon, of Baltimore, Maryland. Upon the diposal of his interest in the Empire he more diligently pursued the practice of the law, still, however, avowedly looking forward to political leadership,
HIe was a candidate before the State Democratic Convention for lieutenant-governor in 1851, but was defeated. He was a candidate for Congress against Lewis D. Campbell in 1852, and was defeated. Again in 1854, in the memorable " Know-Nothing" year, he was a candidate against Mr. Campbell, and was " snowed under" by a majority of over two thousand five hundred. He was a third time a candidate against Mr. Campbell in 1856, and although the official returns showed a majority of nineteen against him, he gave notice of contest, and was declared, upon trial by the House of Representatives, entitled to his seat by a lawful majority of twenty-three. From his entrance into Congress he became at once conspienous in the political history of the country. He was reflected in 1858, and was serving in the House when the War of the Rebellion broke out. He strenuously opposed the war as being an unnecessary, unconstitutional, and impracticable method of settling the matters in controversy between the North and South. His term in the House ended in 1862. Ile had ranked among its most able and distin- guished members. His opposition to the war was radical. He did not believe, and so boldly declared, that a Federal Union, based upon consent, could be restored by force. He questioned upon constitutional grounds what were claimed as " war powers" of the government by the adminis- tration of Mr. Lincoln and its supporters, and had the thorough convietion that the only feasible and constitutional method by which the controversy could be adjusted, would be the calling of a convention to revise and amend the constitution of the United States.
Mr. Vallandigham became the most conspicuous man perhaps in the entire North for his opposition to the war. He was arrested upon the order of General Burnside on the morning of the 5th of May, 1863, at about two o'clock, at his residence on First Street in Dayton by a com- pany of soldiers and taken to Cincinnati, where he was tried by a military commission the next day, found guilty of charges which were preferred against him for disloyal utterances in a public speech made
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some time before at Mount Vernon, Ohio. An application for a writ of habeas corpus made to Judge Leavitt was refused, and he was sentenced to close confinement during the war, which sentence was afterwards changed to banishment within the rebel lines.
In June following, he ran the blockade from Wilmington and arrived by sea at Halifax, whence he proceeded to Windsor, his place of final sojourn, on the 24th.
While at Windsor he was nominated for governor of Ohio, with George E. Pugh as lieutenant-governor, against John Brough and Charles Anderson, who were nominated for the same offices, and were elected by over one hundred thousand majority.
In June, 1864, Mr. Vallandigham returned to his home in Dayton, was elected a delegate to the Chicago Convention that nominated General MeClellan for the presidency, and was active in the political campaign in Ohio in which Judge Thurman ran for governor. His audiences were generally larger throughout the State than were drawn by any other speaker, and he was an avowed candidate for the senate. Much to his disappointment, the Democratic majority in the legislature elected Judge Thurman to that position over him.
He was a delegate to the National Convention in New York in 1868, and, although supporting Mr, Pendleton with the Ohio delegation as Ohio's candidate, was really in favor of Mr. Chase's nomination. In the confusion resulting from the withdrawal of Mr. Pendleton's name, a con- centration could not be effected on Mr. Chase before the current set in for Horatio Seymour, who was nominated on the twenty-second ballot by a majority which was made unanimous on Mr. Vallandigham's motion.
In January, 1870, Mr. Vallandigham formed a law partnership with Judge Haynes. In May, 1871, he inaugurated in Montgomery County the celebrated politieal movement, known as the "New Departure." The author of this sketch was president of the meeting, at which Mr. Vallan- digham presented his resolutions, and on taking the chair, delivered a brief address which "shadowed forth the action afterwards taken by the meeting."
Mr. Vallandigham, after reading the resolutions, delivered a brief but powerful speech in support of them, and they were unanimously adopted. They were, in the following July, adopted at his instance by the Democratie State Convention of Ohio, upon which occasion he made one of his greatest political speeches and the last of his life.
I vividly remember the elation with which he received and read to me the following letter he had just received from Mr. Chase, who was then chief justice of the United States, complimenting him upon the inauguration of this important movement:
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WASHINGTON, D. C., May 20, 1871.
" MY DEAR SIR :- I have just read the resolutions of the Montgomery County (Ohio) Democratic Convention, reported by yourself, together with your remarks and those of Mr. Honk. You have rendered great service to your country and the party; at least such is my judgment. May God bless you for it. Nothing can be truer than your declaration that the movement contemplated by the resolutions is the restoration of the Democratic party to its ancient platform of progress and reform. I know you too well to doubt your courage or your fidelity to your convictions.
" Very truly yours, "S P. CHASE. " IION. C. L. VALLANDIGHAM."
In the following June occurred at Lebanon the important trial of the case of Thomas MeGehan, for the murder of Myers, in Hamilton, in which, with a large array of distinguished counsel on both sides, Mr. Vallandigham was the leading attorney for the defense. Ilis tragic 'death, which resulted on that occasion from an accidental self-inflicted pistol shot, received whilst illustrating his theory of the manner in which Myers had been shot, created a feeling of sympathy and sorrow as profound as it was universal throughout the United States. He had to a great extent lived down the hatred with which he had been regarded in the Northern States by the supporters of the administration of Mr. Lincoln during the war. No one had expressed a more utter detestation of Mr. Lincoln's assassination than he, nor declared more strongly the conviction that it could be regarded in no other light than as a most serious national calamity. He had continued to be a conspicuous figure in American politics, and his great abilities were everywhere recognized. He was a most accomplished and popular orator, of attractive presence, and winning manners. His style was formed upon the best models of ancient, as well as of English and American oratory. ITis study of these models had been one of the chief occupations of his life. His convictions were strong, and as honest as they were inflexible. His personal courage and integrity were undoubted.
Although Governor Anderson has not been a resident of Dayton for many years, and was in active practice at our bar only from 1835 to about 1847 or 1848, he has yet always regarded this city as, in some sort, his home, identified as it was with his carly social and professional life, and being still the location of important property interests, as well as of a large family connection.
He came here early in 1835, at twenty-one years of age, and in the
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autumn of the same year married Miss Eliza J. Brown, of one of the most estimable of the original Dayton families -- the Pattersons. Having graduated two years before at Oxford, then under the charge of the celebrated old Scotch Presbyterian, Dr. Bishop, and completed his law studies, he "hung out his shingle," and commenced the practice of his profession in Dayton.
HIe found here a galaxy of bright, educated, ambitious young law- yers, like himself, just entered upon the threshold of life, - Odlin and Schenck, Ralph and Peter P. Lowe, George B. Holt, Henry Stoddard, and Robert A. Thruston, with Joseph HI. Crane, then in carly middle life, their exemplar and leader, at the head of the bar. He at once took equal rank with them; for he, too, was educated and accomplished, as he was generous, brave, and especially gifted as an orator.
The literary accomplishments of this class of young men, in those days,-before the world was drowned in the flood of current literature that now prevails,-consisted mainly in familiarity with the classic stories, in verse, of the Odyssey, the Iliad, and AEneid; the poetry of Ovid and Horace; the writings in philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, of Epictetus and Seneca, and the teachings of the great master of them all, Socrates; and with the biographies of Plutarch; in English literature, first of all with Shakespeare-then, in poetry, with Milton, Chaucer, and Spenser, Cowper and Pope, Thomson and Young, Grey and Goldsmith, and later, Byron, Burns, Scott, Moore, Shelley, and Wordsworth; in philosophy, with John Locke, and Lord Bacon, Bolingbroke, and Dugald Stewart, and in lighter literature and politics, with Ben Jonson, Butler, Swift, Steele, Fielding, Sterne, Addison, Horne Tooke, and Dr. Hugh Blair; intermingled with all these there were, for steady, systematic, dutiful reading, the "Commentaries upon the Laws of England," by one "Sir William Blackstone," Tidds' "Practice," Chitty's "Rules of Pleading," and Espinasse's "Nisi Prius." Their models in oratory were Demosthenes and Cicero among the ancients; Burke and Chatham, Curran, Grattan; and Phillips, among the moderns; not forgetting the Adamses, Henry, and Lec, with the other celebrated orators of our own Revolutionary era. The intervals of leisure in the practice of most young lawyers at an inland Ohio bar in the thirties and forties, were neither few nor brief; so that these young Dayton barristers did not pine for want of time to indulge their literary proclivities in the cultivation of these ancient and modern classics, with whom it was fashionable and popular to be conversant. Charles Anderson's early habit of extensive miscellaneous reading, so congenial to his mental organization, has continued with him through life. With the rarest faculty, aided by a wonderful memory, of classify-
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