USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 25
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On aceount of the war Ohio lost as a citizen General Cass, who continued for some time as governor of Michigan and became promi- nent in national affairs, and regained General Harrison, who made his home at North Bend, and presently was selected to represent the State at Washington, as he had represented the territory. These two gentlemen, with Governor Shelby, of Kentucky, were appointed to make peace with the Indians before the elose of the war, and a sec- ond treaty at. Greenville was concluded, July 22, 1814, by which the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanees, Senecas and Maumees agreed to become allies of the United States against Great Britain.
Governor Meigs resigned in Mareh, 1814, to become postmaster- general of the United States under President Madison. Though this was not then a cabinet office, Meigs may be said to have been the first Ohioan in high administrative position at Washington. He held the place nine years, serving also under Monroe, and then retir- ing, lived at his Marietta home until his death March 29, 1825. It is an interesting faet that he was succeeded as postmaster-general by John McLean, who held office six years under Monroe, Adams and Jackson. After him, the office became a political dispensatory, of cabinet rank. Edward Tiffin was also called to office at Washington by President Madison, as commissioner of the public land depart- ment, a place he filled with marked ability. His books and papers were the only ones saved at the burning of the capital. Later he exchanged places with Josiah Meigs as surveyor-general of Ohio. This position he held, being permitted to remove the office, for his convenience, to Chillicothe, until, on his deathbed, he turned the office over to Robert T .- Lytle.
Upon the resignation of Meigs, Othniel Looker, of Hamilton county, speaker of the senate, became aeting governor. He was a candidate for election as governor in the fall, but Senator Thomas Worthington was elected by a large majority, receiving 15,879 votes to 9,708 for his opponent.
For the senatorship which Worthington resigned there was a large number of candidates, the most prominent being Benjamin Rug- gles, Joseph Kerr, William W. Irwin and David Purviance. Kerr was finally successful, but for the full term that followed Judge Rug- gles was chosen, his principal competitor being General MeArthur.
Governor Worthington, the most prominent man of the State after the fall of St. Clair, had hitherto been assigned to work for the
* Under the act of 1813 she contributed $104.150, and under that of Janu- ary, 1815, she raised $208,300."-Ryan's History of Ohio.
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State's interest at Washington. As governor now, he exercised the limited powers of the chief magistrate for four years, being honored with re-election in 1516 by an overwhelming majority over James Dunlap and Ethan Allen Brown. During his term the State made rapid progress toward the modern condition of affairs, many events of interest ocenrred, and in Congress Morrow and Ruggles and an able body of representatives gave the West greater political impor- tance.
General Harrison was elected to Congress in 1816 to take the place of John McLean, who went on the supreme bench of the State. There was an animated political fight over this election, and charges were made against Harrison's record as a general that led to an investigation. Congress, in voting medals, left out his name, but two years later made amends by resolutions in his honor. Other congressmen elected in that year were John W. Campbell, of Adams; Levi Barber, of Washington ; Samuel Herriek, of Zanesville ; Phile- mon Beecher, of Lancaster, and Peter Hitchcock, of Cuyahoga county. Peter Hitchcock was contented with one term. He was a graduate of Yale, one of the ablest lawyers of the State, served twenty-eight years in the State supreme court, was twenty-one years chief-justice, was called "the father of the constitution of 1851," and was, altogether, one of the noblest characters in the annals of Ohio.
In 1816 John Kilbourn, author of geographies, began the publi- cation of the Ohio Gazetteer at Columbus, and William Lusk, at the same place, launched his AAlmanae, which was a favorite in the pioneer homes for thirty-five years.
A very important result of the embargo that preceded the war of 1812, and the cutting off of English trade throughout the war, was the growth of manufacturing in Ohio. According to the Baltimore Register of May, 1814, New Lisbon had a furnace, bloomery and wire mill, and two or three wool and cotton factories in prospeet, for cotton could be cheaply shipped on the river and the settlers were raising many sheep. Chillicothe already had three cotton factories, two nail factories, paper mill, furnace, etc. Merino sheep were introduced here about 1810. Cincinnati was the greatest manufac- turing town of the west, except Pittsburg and Lexington. It had a steam mill, manufacturies of cotton and wool and numerous distil- leries and breweries. Steubenville had a woolen mill and steam flouring mill, and a manufactory of the hand printing presses that were used by the newspapers of the west. While Ohio was thus learning to make clothing and iron, tools and machinery at home, she was also sending droves of cattle and hogs across the moun- tains instead of exporting at great cost the grain she grew. Thus the international troubles tended to make Ohio a financially and industrially independent state.
This prosperity was aided also by a great tide of immigration that
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poured into the State as soon as peace was assured. But it was threatened from the first by the rottenness of the money system. At the beginning of the war gold, being undervalued in the ratio of coin- age then existing, ceased to be currency, and was an article of mer- chandise and export. Silver had been superseded by the flood of notes of local banks, "and besides, would have been too eumbrous for a national currency."* The government was compelled to rely upon the local banks for support, and they soon stopped specie payments, except in New England, and the United States government issued treasury notes in great quantities. These depreciated in value as they came west, and in Ohio were worth not more than two-thirds their face in exchange for even the diseredited loeal bank notes.
After the war the numerous banks and institutions of various sorts with the privilege of issuing printed notes, supplied an abundant cir- culating medium. Under its influence speculation ran riot, and improvements of various kinds were projected, beyond the prospect of speedy realization of profit. Prices were inflated, while money sank in value. "Before 1820 the country was flooded with the notes of irresponsible private banks. Traders and others issued their small notes of twenty-five cents and upwards, called shin plasters, redeem- able in dry goods, groceries, or something to drink. The little sil- ver in circulation was converted into what was ealled 'eut money.' A Spanish pistareen [from New Orleans], worth seventeen or eighteen cents, was cut into six pieces, representing double the value in silver of the pistareen, and so with quarters and half dollars. A ineal at a tavern was to be had for twenty-five eents in this eut money, and for one dollar or more in paper." i
In 1815 the legislature began a war on unauthorized issue of eur- reney, a contest more protraeted and vigorous than in any other state, because it seemed a more difficult problem in Ohio than elsewhere. A law was also passed imposing an annual tax of four per cent on bank dividends, and if these were not reported, a tax of one per cent on nominal capital. But all the banks were not bad. The State found them useful in making large loans to pay the direet war tax. A large part of the irresponsible banking was done by agents of banks of other states, and these were absolutely barred from doing business in 1816. This was followed, in February, 1816, by an aet designed to benefit the treasury of the State and prevent the further increase of banking institutions. Six banks were incorporated to last till 1843 and seven hitherto unincorporated companies were given charters under the same plan, which required them to set apart for the State one-twenty-fifth of their stock, and so handle it as to ultimately make the State a one-sixth partner. In return the
* Thomas H. Benton, 1854.
+ Reminiscences of Mayor L'Hommeieu of Cincinnati.
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banks that went into this scheme were exempted from State taxa- tion. This act was the result of a recommendation by Ralph L. Osborn, who was made auditor of State in 1815, and by Governor Worthington, that the State limit the capital of the banks of Ohio to five million dollars, of which the State should hold one-fifth, so that the State might be in position to check the speculative issues of currency. Governor Worthington expected the State to derive from this arrangement an annual revenue of $120,000 within ten years, but the result of the law passed was such that in 1823 the legislature relinquished its elaim to stock for the payment of a tax of two per cent on previous and four per cent upon subsequent dividends.
The notion of State partnership in banks for the purpose of rais- ing state revenue, and the twin error of bank loans of money on real estate, held sway in the west during the first half of the century, and, "were more destructive to the happiness and prosperity of one section after another than pestilenee or famine."" But at the same time the doctrine of Hamilton, who had opposed these notions, was that specie was "dead stock" except as used to back issues of paper money. It was a period of entting and trying, to find the right way, and evil results were often traceable to the most honest inten- tions.
The situation was complicated by the revival of the United States bank. As soon as it was chartered in 1816 Ohio towns applied for the location of branches, and on January 28th, 1817, a branch was established at Cincinnati, and about a year later one was opened at Chillicothe. Their establishment was soon followed by a crisis in the affairs of the parent bank, due to bad management and a loss of some $3,000,000 through rascality at Baltimore, all of which was kept secret, the publie only seeing that the bank stopped the issue of currency, and gathered in what was in cirenlation, and refused to perform those functions of publie convenience in hope of which the Jeffersonian politicians had consented to establish it. At Chilli- eothe the branch refused to honor a draft from Governor Cass for $10,000 to pay the Indians what was due them by treaty, and this occasioned prejudice all over the United States. All these circum- stances persuaded some of the states, led by Maryland, to try to tax the branch banks out of existence. The subject was agitated in Ohio before the elose of Worthington's administration.
By this time the collapse had arrived. The treaty of peace had restored commercial intercourse with Great Britain, and that coun- try obtained some revenge by excessive sales of goods in the United States, ruining the recently established factories. An instance was the failure of the Worthington manufacturing company, established by James Kilbourn at Steubenville and Worthington, which manu- factured woolens and issued paper money. The flood of paper
* Journal of Commerce "History of Banking."
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money and wild speculation also brought their natural sequel of loss of confidence. Men who had contracted debts found, when called upon to pay, that the means were unattainable. Banks which had made excessive issues, could not redeem their notes on demand, and their loans on land were not collectible. The inflated prices took a tumble, merchants failed and banks broke. There were desperately "hard times," in Ohio, and many people lost all they had saved in their struggles in the wilderness. Thousands of farmers found it impossible to pay for their lands, bought of the government on time.
Out of the conditions following the war of 1812 grew the submis- sion of the Jeffersonian party to the re-establishment of the United States bank and the growth in favor of the "American policy" of internal improvements and a protective tariff, advocated by Henry ('lay, who became the idol of Ohio.
Though the building of sailing vessels at Marietta soon declined, the trade down the Ohio and Mississippi continued to grow, barges being used mainly, despite the introduction of steamboats. The first steamboat to aseend the rivers from New Orleans was the Enterprise, that went down in 1814 and came back in May, 1815, commanded by Capt. Henry M. Shreve, who gave his name to Shreveport, La. The Etna, in the following year, failed in the attempt to stem the river torrents amid the snags and driftwood. In 1815, even for coming up the rivers, barges got most of the freight at New Orleans, in preference to steamboats, at eight cents a pound. Steamboat building soon began at Cincinnati, and in 1818 another "Enterprise," built and owned entirely at Cincinnati, made the trip from New Orleans to its home city in twenty-eight days. In 1817-19, it is said, one-fourth of all the steamboats built in the West were launched at Cincinnati. By 1826, 233 steamboats had been on the Ohio, of which 90 had been lost. The steamboat revo- Intion gradually made headway, and by 1840 the boats were going down from Louisville in four or five days and np in five or six, and carrying freight up at fifteen cents a hundredweight.
The disenssion of canals was revived after the close of the war. The early idea was that the sources of rivers should be connected by artificial channels, using the navigable part of the beds of the streams, but in later years it became apparent that the better plan was to dig a canal following the river valleys, and by means of dams use the streams as feeders. In 1515 Dr. Daniel Drake," one of the
* Daniel Drake was born in Plainfield, N. J., in 1785, and died in Cincin- nati in 1852. He was reared in Kentucky, studied medicine at Cincinnati and Philadelphia, practiced his profession at Cincinnati, was one time pro- fessor in the Transylvania university and at the university of Louisville, and in 1835 organized the medical department of the Cincinnati college. He gave twenty years of travel and study to the production of his monu- mental work on the "Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America." He did more, says a biographer, to advance the intellectual life of Cincin- nati than any other man before 1850.
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greatest men of the Ohio valley, proposed such a canal from some point on the Great Miami to Cincinnati. In his "Picture of Cin- cinnati," published in that year, he predicted that if New York should dig the proposed Erie canal, New York city "will probably become one of our inlets for foreign goods," a remark that indicates the commercial relations of Ohio at that day. New Orleans was then the great place of export and import for all the western coun- try, and next to New Orleans, were Baltimore and Philadelphia. The change sinee then has been wronght, first by the canals, next by the railroads, and by the combination of railroad interests in favor of New York. In 1817 the New York legislature provided for the construction of the Erie canal, and within a decade the great work was carried through by that State, led by Dewitt Clinton, sup- plying an example to the rest of the United States. In January, 1818, the Ohio legislature incorporated the Little Miami eanal and banking company, but there was a growing sentiment in the State opposed to entrusting canal enterprises to corporations. Meanwhile the steam navigation of the great lakes was begun in the summer of 1×18 by the trip of the "Walk-on-the-Water," named after Tecum- seh's warrior, from Buffalo to Cleveland and Detroit. This pioneer steamer was a queer-looking craft, rigged for sails and needing them at times, that could make eight miles an hour with its rickety machinery.
Toward the close of Worthington's term there was a revival of the Michigan boundary trouble, simultaneous with a great increase of Ohio territory open to settlement toward the northwest. In the vicinity of the old port of Miami and Fort Meigs a new town was laid out on the military reservation in 1816, and called Perrysburg, which became the seat of Ohio influence, while the pioneer towns of Port Lawrence and Vistula (now merged in Toledo) were within the hounds claimed by Michigan. The United States government surveyors ventured out in the wilderness to run the desired true east line from the head of Lake Michigan, under the direction of Edward Tiffin, surveyor-general, and Harris, the engineer in charge, in 1$17 established the northwest corner of Ohio, on a due east line from the most southern point of Lake Michigan, according to the original ordinance. But he found that if this line were continued due east to Lake Erie, it would touch the lake over seven miles south of the most northerly cape of Maumee bay. Accordingly, in conformity to the constitution of Ohio, he ran a boundary line from the northwest corner he had established, to a willow tree on the cape. The differ- ence in latitude of his willow tree and the northwest corner of Ohio was abont fifteen minutes. Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan ter- ritory, protested against such a departure from the anciently pre- scribed boundary, and furthermore declared, "The country on the
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Maumee has no natural connection with the interior of Ohio." There was some exeuse for Harris' disregard of the old ordinance line, for Congress, in 1816, in defining the bounds of the new state of Indiana, allowed it to eneroach ten miles upon Michigan, and in 1818 gave Illinois a line fifty miles north of the ordinance boundary. But the government did not approve the Harris line, and in 1818 another surveyor, Fulton, was sent out. He ran a line due east from Harris' Ohio corner, eighty miles and forty chains to Lake Erie, throwing Maumee bay into Michigan. Michigan treated this as the true south line, and up to that line extended her county and township government.
It will be remembered that in 1805 the United States bought of the Indians the eastern end of the great Indian country in Ohio under the Greenville treaty, and in 1807 a large area north of the Maumee was purchased. In 1818 the Indian title to all the remain- der, except some reservations for the chiefs, was extinguished by a treaty made by Generals Cass and Me Arthur at the Maumee rapids. The consideration was an annuity of $4,000 forever to the Wyan- dots, $500 forever to the Senecas, $2,000 forever to the Shawanees, $1,300 for fifteen years to the Pottawatomies, $1,000 for fifteen years to the Ottawas, $1,000 for fifteen years to the Chippewas, and $500 onee to the Delawares. This was followed by the removal of the Indians to the west, which was not completed until 1842, when the Wyandots went, among whom the Rev. James B. Finley estab- lished a famous mission in 1821.
In February, 1820, the legislature defined fourteen counties in this newly acquired region-Allen, Crawford, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Mercer, Marion, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, Williams and Wood, but for want of inhabitants, only two of these-Sandusky, including the settlements on that river and bay, and Wood, including Perrysburg, were then organized. The north- ern boundary of Williams, Henry, Wood and Sandusky was declared to be the Harris line, and there soon arose conflicts of local authority with the officials of Erie county, Michigan.
Other important events of Worthington's administration were, a general revision of the laws in 1815-16, the enactment of laws against duelling, and the incorporation in 1816-17 of a large num- ber of companies for the building of turnpikes, connecting the prin- cipal towns. Out of the three per cent received from sales of United States land more than a hundred public roads were ordered opened and improved in 1817. The State library was founded by Governor Worthington in 1817, through a legislative appropriation, and Jer- emy Bentham and Robert Owen contributed their works to this frontier collection. In the same year the first Sunday school in Ohio was held at Marietta.
The new State buildings at Columbus were ready for occupaney in
I-15
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1816, comprising, as they were described by a traveler," a statehouse eighty feet square, of brick with white marble trimmings, another large building for state offices, and a penitentiary for convicts, which struck the observer as quite too small.
In Angust, 1817, the State had its first presidential visit. Presi- dent Monroe returned from Detroit through the interior by coach, and was entertained at Lancaster, Delaware, Columbus, Circleville, Zanesville and other places. "At the boundary of Ross county he was met by a deputation of the corporation of Chillicothe, and a large number of gentlemen on horseback, who escorted him to the governor's mansion on Prospect Hill, where he spent the night."
The years 1517 and 1818 are remembered for great emigration from New England to the Western reserve. The exodus was pre- ceded by a summer season of unprecedented cold in the cast, frosts destroying all the crops, and as Goodrich deseribes it in Peter Par- ley's Recollections, "a sort of stampede took place from the cold, desolate, worn-out New England, to this land of promise." Some came in covered wagons, others started in ox-carts and traveled at the rate of ten miles a day. Families came on foot, the father and boys taking turns in dragging a hand wagon, on which a few goods were hauled, and an occasional lift given the mother and baby. Many of these persons were in extreme poverty and begged on the way.
It is worthy of note that in 1818 Capt. John Cleves Symmes, nephew of Judge Symes, published his famous theory that the earth is not solid but composed of concentric spheres, and that if the poles could be explored a passage would be found to an interior world which would be habitable if not already inhabited. Until his death in 1829 he attracted much attention by his lectures on this subject and efforts to raise money for an expedition to the north pole. Doubtless he gave a considerable impulse to those polar expeditions that have become common in later years.
Governor Worthington's last two messages were largely devoted to the subjects of public education and transportation improvement. There was yet no free publie school system, nor were the colleges for which Congress had donated land, in operation, except that the insti- tution at Athens (incorporated December 12, 1501), first known as the American Western university, and later as the Ohio university, was represented by an academy conducted by the parish minister. Nathan Guilford, of Cincinnati, began the publication of the Eduea- tion Almanac abont 1816, and the movement at Cincinnati was heartily seconded in the Ohio Company region and in the Western
* Dr. John Cotton, of Marietta, who said: "One thing seems truly ridicu- lous. Inscriptions are set up over the doors on beautiful slabs of marble, taken from Joel Barlow's Columbiad, holding forth the detestable principles of the French revolution." Cotton was evidently a Federalist.
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Reserve, but the struggle for public schools was a difficult one. Gov- ernor Worthington advised the founding of a State free school at the capital. He also advocated legislation to encourage the estab- lishment of manufactories in Ohio, and the restraint of the produc- tion and sale of intoxicating liquor, and the reform of the banking system by incorporating a State bank. He was a worthy prophet of progress.
The election for governor in 1818 resulted in the choice of Ethan Allen Brown," of Cincinnati, a native of Connecticut, who had studied law under Alexander Hamilton, and served on the supreme court of Ohio from 1814. He was the first governor from the Miami country, except Othniel Looker, who acted in that capacity a short time as speaker of the senate. In polities he was opposed to Henry ('lay. He assumed such little power as belonged to his office, thor- onghly imbued with enthusiasm for the development of the resources of the State by means of canals, and he was also friendly to the move- ment for free schools. The State officials associated with him were Jeremiah MeLene, secretary of state: Ralph Osborn, anditor, and Hiram M. Curry, who had succeeded MeFarland as treasurer in 1517. When the term of Jeremiah Morrow in the United States sen- ate expired in 1819, the legislature elected Col. William A. Trimble, of Highland, a brother of Allen Trimble, and of Virginian parentage, who had been a major of Ohio troops under Hull and a major of reg- ulars under Harrison, receiving a severe wound in the sortie from Fort Meigs, and had afterward remained in the army. Thomas Worthington, Robert Lucas and John Hamm were the other eandi- dates.
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