USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 26
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Governor Brown had corresponded with Dewitt Clinton on the subject of canals, and in his first communication to the legislature directed its attention to the necessity of such water ways in Ohio, but his recommendations that secured readiest hearing were regarding the branches of the United States bank, "established without anthority of State law." Following the example of Kentucky the Ohio legis- lature proceeded early in 1819 to attempt to wipe out those institu- tions, by imposing upon each of them a tax of $50,000 a year if they continued to do business after September 15, 1819. At the same time the legislature tried to compel the local banks to make good their notes. Of the twenty-five in the State only six or seven were redeeming their paper. Others were classified as "seven good, four decent, four middling, four good for nothing." One of these institu- tions, the Owl Creek bank, was made famous by the allusions to it in Viles' Weekly Register, of Baltimore, which, like many other papers, was addicted to raving on the subjeet, indiscriminately denouncing banks as the source of all evil. At the Owl Creek, or "Hoo Hoo"
* Brown received 30,194 votes, and Col. James Dunlap, of Ross couty, 8,075.
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bank, as Niles called it, a mysterious stranger called and, throwing down some of the concern's notes, demanded specie. There was none, and he asked for eastern funds. There were no eastern funds on hand. "Then," said the stranger, "will you be so kind as to give me some well-executed counterfeit notes on solvent banks?" When the clerks rose to put him out, he threw upon the counter the carcass of a hoot-owl, bidding them beware, for he had already killed their presi- dent.
The year 1819 was the turning point financially. The currency of the country had been contracted a half or more, and the time was near at hand at which gold would begin to return from Europe. The depression that reigned was terrible. The United States bank at Cincinnati had been made the dump of many thousands of depre- ciated paper dollars taken in on government land sales, which the cashier had loaned out, for want of anything else to do with them. The other banks became indebted to the United States bank heavily. When the demand was put upon them to pay, they complained that they had paid nearly a million and a half in eighteen months, at the cost of retiring nearly all their circulation, and they could not pay what remained in monthly installments of twenty per cent, with inter- est. The hard times that prevailed were blamed on the banks, and particularly on the United States branches.
Before the State could enforce its tax on these branches, an injune- tion was obtained from the United States circuit court, but this the State anditor ignored, and when the period of grace had expired, as set by the legislature, his agents entered the bank at Chillicothe and, being denied their demand for $100,000, jumped the counter and forcibly took possession of $120.425. Subsequently the excess over $100,000 was returned, but the balance, less $2,000 fees for collec- tion, was kept for some time in the State treasury, which had no other funds of value, though the face of the notes held was over $50,000. The officers concerned were arrested and imprisoned for a time.
The United States supreme court had passed on a similar case from Maryland, sustaining the United States bank in its right to do business regardless of state interference, but the radical state sovereignty people repudiated the authority of the United States supreme court in the matter. The Ohio legislature passed res- olutions explicitly recognizing and approving the principles of the famous Kentucky resolutions of 1798 and 1800, the original procla- mation of state rights and nullification ; asserting the right to tax a private corporation such as the United States bank, and protesting against "the doctrine that the political rights of the separate states that compose the American Union, and their powers as sovereign states, may be settled and determined in the supreme court of the United States, so as to conclude and bind them in cases contrived
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between individuals, and where they are, no one of them, parties direct."
This manifesto of the legislature, composed by Charles Hammond, was regarded as a matchless exposition of the doctrine of State rights.# The governor is quoted as saying of the invasion of the bank: "I view the transaction in the most odious light, and from my very soul I detest it. I am sorry it happened in Ohio."; But he sustained the action of the legislature.
These resolutions of the Ohio legislature were of particular impor- tanee beeause at that time the people of the United States were agi- tated over the struggle regarding the extension of slavery in the west, attending the proposed admission of the state of Missouri. The sovereignty of the states was being asserted both in regard to the bank and slavery question, and John C. Calhoun had come to the conclusion that the South might do well to secede and become an appendage of Great Britain. The Missouri problem and the fight with the United States bank both occupied the time of the legislature of 1819-20. The resolutions offered to instruct the Ohio delegation to oppose the extension of slavery provoked a long and bitter debate. General Harrison, who had lately served in Congress from the First distriet, and now was a member of the State senate, was for a mod- erate course (in Congress he had voted for "squatter sovereignty"), but the State went on reeord as opposed to the extension of slavery.
In 1820 oceurred the first bank mob at Cincinnati, eaused by the suspension of the Miami Exporting company. A procession marched down Main street, with a dray carrying a coffin marked "Miami Bank No More." The military was stationed in front of the bank to protect it, and when the erowd reached the office of Mayor Isaac G. Burnet, that official read the riot act, which had the desired effect.
The financial depression did not seem greatly to check the marvel- ons growth of Ohio. The census of 1820 showed an increase in pop- ulation to 581,295. Ohio was now ahead of Kentneky and Tennessee, and had outstripped all the original thirteen states except New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. In faet this young giant of the West stood next to those great states, with Kentucky and Massachusetts the nearest rivals. Yet, according to the estimates of well-informed men of that day, more than half the population of the Ohio and the northwest at that time was in debt to the government at Washington, through the system of selling public land on time. To relieve this situation Congress passed a law in 1821 permitting settlers to give up lands they felt unable to pay for, and receive eredit on sueh traets as they eould retain for the whole amount of money they had paid. Thus twenty million dollars in debts were wiped out,
* Rufus King's "Ohio."
+ Journal of Commerce "History of Banking."
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and the experience led Congress to reduce the price of public lands to $1.25 an aere, payable in advance,
In 1820, the year that President Monroe was re-elected and the "era of good-feeling" was in progress among the politicians, though business was not feeling remarkably well, Monroe received the eight electoral votes of Ohio. Governor Brown was triumphantly re- elected, though General Harrison ran against him. Brown's vote was nearly 35,000, while Jeremiah Morrow received less than 10,000 and Ifarrison less than 5,000. Governor Brown directed attention to the canal projects in his message, December, 1820, but the mind of the legislature had first to be relieved on other subjects. General Harrison was a member of the senate, of which Allen Trimble was speaker, and the General, as chairman of the joint committee on pro- ceedings of the United States court, made a report asserting that the sovereign state of Ohio had been insulted in being called before an inferior United States court. Being sovereign it could not be cited before any court except by previous consent. As the courts had declared the United States bank independent of the State laws, Har- rison proposed to treat it as an alien and deprive it of the protection of the laws. Hle reported a bill, which was passed, withdrawing from the bank all the collection machinery of the Ohio courts. Under this remarkable law a burglar might rob one of these branch banks and the sheriff would be liable to a fine of $200 if he put the criminal in jail. At the same time it was provided that a compromise might be arranged upon the bank's submitting to a tax of four per cent on its dividends or withdrawing from the State. This was the law in Ohio for several years. In Cincinnati, before the bank was outlawed by the legislature, the mayor put it out of court, instructing a jury that the bank had no right to discount notes, whereupon the jury brought in a verdict annulling a debt .*
In 1821 the United States eirenit court ordered the return to the Chillicothe bank of the entire $100,000 confiscated, with some $12.000 interests and costs, and granted a perpetual injunetion against the collection of the tax. The legislature was discouraged in resistance by the fact that its remonstrance, sent to the legislatures of all the other states, had received no sympathetic response except from Connecticut. Governor Brown saw no course open but to sub- mit to the court.
At the March term, 1524, the case of the State Anditor of Ohio vs. the United States Bank was decided by the United States supreme conrt. For the bank appeared Henry Clay, and for the auditor the ardent Federalist, Charles Hammond,; whose genius was not at all
* Journal of Commerce "History of Banking."
+ Hammond had established The Ohio Federalist at St. Clairsville in 1812, and become the leader of his party. A member of the legislature from 1813 to 1822, he codified the laws and was the author of many of them. In
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obseured by the brillianey of the great Kentuckian. Hammond is said to have profoundly impressed Chief Justice John Marshall, the most majestic figure of that period, with the remarkable power of his intelleet. But it was Marshall's duty and his peculiar function in the building of the American form of government, to assert the supremaey of the laws of the United States. Ohio submitted grace- fully, having already returned the main part of the confiscated funds, and in 1826 repealed the laws barring the bank from State courts. The struggle was fiereer in Kentucky, which, as a result, for some years had two bodies elaiming to be the legal State court of appeals.
It is not remarkable that in the midst of the financial depression and political turmoil other important matters were neglected, if not considered impracticable. In December, 1520, Governor Brown rec- ommended a survey of eanal routes before the State should blindly turn over the work to corporations. An aet was passed, providing for the appointment of three canal commissioners, to have charge of the survey of a route of a eanal if Congress should donate the public lands along the line. On January 3, 1822, Micajah Williams made an elaborate report on the subject of canal navigation, and moved the appointment of a commission to further investigate the subject. See- ing an opportunity to profit by the need of the new enterprise for friends, Caleb Atwater had moved for a commission on a free school system. Thus there was prospeet of something tangible in the way of improvement toward the elose of Brown's second term. On the same day, January 3d, the governor was elected United States sen- ator to succeed Col. W. A. Trimble, who died at Washington, from the effects of his wounds at Fort Meigs. The governor's ambition for a senatorship was contested by Thomas Worthington, John McLean and General Harrison, but after he and Worthington had run neck and neek for several ballots, Brown succeeded by a majority of one. Col. Allen Trimble, who was speaker of the senate and had been for five years, became aeting governor, and served throughout the remainder of the year 1822 with general satisfae'ion to the people.
Governor Trimble, who had lived in the Seiot , valley from 1505, was not only a pioneer and gallant soldier himself, but the grandson of a Scotch-Irish frontiersman who was killed by Indians, and son of one of the Virginians who fought at Point Pleasant. Born in the Shenandoah valley and reared in Kentucky, he was a typical Ohioan of the middle region, and his lineage and record and personal worth made him one of the most popular men of the State.
1821 he was chosen as the first reporter of the supreme court, an office he held until his death in 1840. Living at Cincinnati from 1822, he made the Cincinnati Gazette famous by the brilliancy and weight of the editorials he contributed during the remainder of his life. He was called the Alexan- der Hamilton of the West. Henry Clay and he, in succession, refused a seat in the United States supreme court, tendered by President John Quincy Adams.
CHAPTER X.
FREE SCHOOLS, TURNPIKES AND CANALS.
GOVERNORS ALLEN TRIMRLE, 1822; JEREMIAH MORROW, 1822-26; ALLEN TRIMBLE, 1826-30; DUNCAN MCARTHUR, 1830-32; ROBERT LUCAS, 1832-36; JOSEPH VANCE, 1836-38.
T WAS during the brief administration of acting-Governor Trimble that a resolution, drawn by Micajah T. Williams, of Cincinnati, was passed, providing for a public engineer and seven commissioners, to investigate and report. regarding four proposed eanal routes, one from Sandusky bay to the Ohio, one by way of the Manmee and Miami, one by way of the Cuyahoga and Muskingum, and one from the mouth of Grand river by way of the Mahoning. On the same day, January 31st, was passed a resolution reported by Mr. Atwater, for the appointment of a commission to report "a system of education for common schools." "The same mes- sage from the senate to the house of representatives announced the snecess of both measures, so closely allied were the friends of each, and so uniformly did they work together."" Governor Trimble appointed Caleb Atwater, John Collins, James Hoge, Nathan Guil- ford, Ephraim Cutler, Josiah Barber and James M. Bell to devise the educational system. The canal commissioners selected were Judge Benjamin Tappan, of Steubenville; Alfred Kelly, a lawyer and legislator of Cleveland, who had some time before this startled the legislature by proposing to abolish imprisonment for debt ; Thomas Worthington, ex-Governor Brown, Jeremiah Morrow, Isaac Minor, and Ebenezer Buckingham.
Thus the year 1822 is a memorable one in State history for the effective beginnings of great advancement. Its political events were also of great importance. A special session of the legislature in May redistricted the State for the election of fourteen congressmen, to which Ohio was entitled under the last census, and the delegation chosen included such men as Philemon Beecher, Duncan McArthur,
* Ryan's History of Ohio.
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William MeLean, Joseph Vance, Samuel F. Vinton, John Sloan, and Elisha Whittlesey, giving a strong representation to the many people of the State who were disposed to break with the administration of national affairs that hindered the extension of the National road on account of constitutional seruples.
A great many of the old Republicans, like General MeArthur (who named his eldest son Thomas Jefferson), rallied under the leadership of Henry Clay in support of the "American System." It was their desire to engage the general government in a system of internal improvements ; that Congress should levy taxes for the purpose of making roads and construeting canals, and impose heavy duties on articles of foreign importation, in order to prevent foreign manufac- turers from coming in competition with American manufacturers. This was called the high tariff .* With this branch of the old Jeffer- sonian party those who retained the principles of the Federalists had no difficulty in coaleseing, and the result was a formidable party that enrolled about half the voters of the State, and during a great part of the time controlled the government. Allen Trimble was in the new movement, and he came near election as governor in 1822.
Jeremiah Morrow, an old friend of Worthington's, won the elec- tion, but for the first time in the history of the State, by a minority vote. He received 26,059 votes, Trimble 22,899, and William W. Irwin, of Fairfield, 11,030. Governor Morrow, a shrewd business man of Seoteh-Irish descent, was by no means a constitutional the- orist ; in fact, was the strongest internal improvement man in the State. Born near Gettysburg, Pa., in 1771, he came to the Miami valley in 1796, bought land in what was later Warren county, and, after the manner of the day, returned to Pennsylvania to marry and brought his wife to the log cabin in the Ohio woods. As has been noted, he took part in framing the first constitution and then, for ten vears, while Ohio had but one representative in Congress, held that office continuously. Promoted from the lower to the upper house, he was United States senator six years as the colleague of Worthington and Ruggles. Ilis strength as a publie man was based on his rugged honesty, remarkable good sense and unassuming modesty. It was said of him by Henry Clay: "No man in the sphere within which he acted ever commanded or deserved the implicit confidence of Con- gress more than Jeremiah Morrow. There existed a perfect persua- sion of his entire impartiality and justice between the old states and the new. A few artless but sensible words pronounced in his plain Scotch-Irish dialect were always sufficient to insure the passage of any bill or resolution which he reported." Ile had done in the house, in 1806, what Worthington did in the senate, toward the build- ing of the great National road, and, with Worthington, endeavored
*Such is the statement of McDonald (1838), in his sketch of McArthur.
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to overcome his party's prejudice against this national necessity. As chairman of the senate committee in 1816 he presented the report rec- ommending a general system of internal improvements by the federal government. When he declined re-election to the senate, and went back to his farm and mill on the Little Miami, he was called to act on the Ohio eanal commission. As governor he continued to urge highway and canal improvements.
Toward the close of his administration he was visited by Bernard, duke of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach, who wrote in his "Travels in North America :" "The dwelling of the governor consists of a plain frame house, situated on a little elevation not far from the shore of the Little Miami, and is entirely surrounded by fields. The business of the State calls him onee a month to Columbus, and the remainder of the time he passes at his country seat, occupied with farming, a faith- ful copy of an ancient Cincinnatus. He was engaged at our arrival in cutting a wagon pole, but he immediately stopt his work to give us a hearty welcome. Hle appeared to be about fifty years of age; is not tall, but thin and strong, and has an expressive physiognomy, with dark and animated eyes." The duke noted that the governor prefaced his breakfast with prayer, and some days later found the same enstom observed by Governor Worthington, of whom he wrote that he considered the acquaintance with him and his family "one of the most interesting that I made in the United States."
As a feature of the new political order of things, it is to be noted that Jacob Burnet, who, at the organization of the State, considered himself a man proscribed, had been elected a judge of the supreme court in 1819, and at the same time there was advanced to the same high position, Charles R. Sherman, of Lancaster. Both of them served in the supreme court, with Jesup N. Couch and Peter Hitchcock, John MeLean and Calvin Pease, as their associates most of the time, the court now having four members, until 1529, when Sherman died suddenly, while yet a young man, and Burnet was elected to the United States senate.
The canal commissioners, having engaged James Geddes, of New York, as engineer, made a preliminary report to the first legislature of Morrow's administration, and were continued on duty, but the years 1823-24 brought fatalities that seriously interfered with their work. Fevers of varions sorts desolated the State. Pending the progress of material improvement, the laws and forms of legal pro- cedure were revised and greatly simplified as a result of the work of a committee headed by Judge Francis Dunlavy, and the legislature declared by a large majority in favor of a system of emancipation that should put an end to slavery in the southern states. 1 United States battleship had been named in honor of Ohio, and the State presented it a stand of colors. An interesting event of 1623 was the meeting of Lewis Cass, representing the United States government, and Lewis
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de Schweinitz, of the Moravian society, to bring to an end the oceu- pation by Christian Indians of the lands in Tuscarawas county deeded the society in 1798. It had been found impracticable for these Indians to live without deterioration, surrounded by whites, and exposed to the evils of civilization. Consequently, the red men, including the heirs of Killbuck and White-eyes, left the State, most of them taking refuge at the Moravian town on the Thames, rebuilt since the visit of Harrison's army.
In 1824 occurred the famous elections in which the Virginia suc- cession to the presidency was overthrown. The friends of Clay in Ohio polled 19,255 votes for their electoral ticket, headed by General Harrison, while the conservative wing of the Jeffersonian party east 18,489 votes for General Jackson, and the remnant of the Federalists gave 12,280 for John Quincy Adams. The election of a president was thrown into the lower house of Congress, and ten of the Ohio representatives followed the will of Henry Clay in making Adams president in preference to William H. Crawford or Andrew Jackson. Governor Morrow was re-elected, but ont of the total poll of nearly 77,000 votes he had a majority of less than 2,500 over Allen Trimble.
The legislature elected at the same time had a majority favoring the new party, soon called National Republican, in distinction from the Democratic Republicans who supported Jackson. This session elected General Harrison to the United States senate, to succeed Ethan Allen Brown, Wyllys Silliman being a formidable candidate. Aside from national polities, the majority of the legislature was pledged to take some action for the eanals and publie schools.
Full reports and estimates were laid before it for various routes of water transportation between the Ohio river and Lake Erie. The demands of both the eastern and western portions of the State were to be considered, and the canal commission at first sought to find a practicable course for a canal to unite the Seioto and Miami valleys, making Cincinnati one of the river termini of a connected system. But this was decided to be impracticable, and hence two systems resulted, one from the mouth of the Scioto, following that river, the Licking and upper Muskingum to Coshocton, and thenee along the Tusearawas and Cuyahoga to Cleveland, and another line from Cin- einnati along the Great Miami to the Maumee river. Marietta was to be provided for by an improvement of the Muskingum river from its mouth to the point where the Ohio canal approached it from the west, near Dresden. Sandusky, greatly to her sorrow, was left out of the scheme.
These two systems, the first to be known as the Ohio eanal and the second as the Miami and Erie canal, were adopted by the legislature, though the first order was to build the Miami eanal no farther than Dayton from Cincinnati, while the Ohio canal was to be completed - through. There was only $60,000 in the treasury, and the revised
V
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estimate of the cost of the Miami line was over $2,500,000 and of the other nearer three millions. But times were better, and the success of the Erie canal in New York assured the generous support of eastern capital. Besides, the conditions permitted the canals to be con- structed with great economy in the cost of labor. The money went, not to gangs of practically servile and foreign laborers, but to farmers and fariner boys of the State. The investment of capital was there- fore profitable, aside from the worth of the canals themselves.
Under the famous act of February 4, 1825, "to provide for the internal improvement of the State of Ohio, by navigable canals," the great work was put under the management of seven canal commis- sioners, Alfred Kelly, Micajah T. Williams, Thomas Worthington, Benjamin Tappan, John Johnston, Isaac Minor, and Nathaniel Beasley, and the financial part of the enterprise was entrusted to a board of canal fund commissioners, Ethan Allen Brown, Ebenezer Buckingham and Allen Trimble. When the latter became governor his place was taken by Gen. Simon Perkins. These names include those of the men who may justly be called the fathers of the famous canal system of the State. Kelly was particularly distinguished in the actual superintendence of the castern, and Williams of the west- ern line.
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