USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 31
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* Stanton was born at Steubenville in 1814, was educated at Kenyon col- lege, served Ohio as reporter of the supreme court in 1842-45, and began his association with the government at Washington as attorney-general under Buchanan in December, 1860.
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Ashtabula county, who was this year elected to Congress. Giddings, a native of Pennsylvania, came to Ashtabula county in 1806, eleven years old, and became a lawyer of such success that he retired, well to do, in 1836, Rufus P. Ranney taking his place in the partnership; and, after losing all his property in the panie Giddings entered the field of politics, in which he had national importance during the next twenty years.
This legislature of 1838-39 elected as auditor of state John Brough, born at Marietta in 1811, son of an Englishman who had come to America with Blennerhassett. The young man had been reared as a printer and had already made a reputation as a leader of the Jackson party in editing the Marietta Gazette and Lancaster Eagle. On the "stump." a phrase more literal than metaphorical in those days, he was establishing his fame as "the Boanerges of the Democratic party," in Ohio. "In mental vigor, in acuteness and skill in debate, he greatly resembled Stephen Douglas. So formid- able was he in debate that very few Whigs were bold enough to meet him upon the stump."# Brough served as auditor of state until 1846, and rendered services of great value in reforming the financial and banking systems. In 1841 he and his brother Charles founded the Cincinnati Enquirer, which they made famous, and which has ever since had an unique place among the foremost American news- papers.
John Brough, the printer-orator, was an example of the genius that was abundant in that day. The State seemed to be full of great men. Charles Hammond, the intimate advisor of Henry Clay, and called by Daniel Webster "the greatest genius that ever wielded the political pen ;" William D. Gallagher (son of a refugee from Robert Emmet's Irish rebellion ), the first of Ohio poets, founder of the Western Literary Magazine at Cincinnati in 1836, and a brilliant Whig journalist ; James H. Perkins, essavist, poet and historian, and E. D. Mansfield, who started in 1836 the Cincinnati Chronicle, to which Harriet Beecher Stowe contributed her first story, may be named in the literary field. But in the profession of the law the pro- fusion of genius in the second generation of Ohioans was most appar- ent. It can be said of the bar of the State as a distinguished Ohio historiant has said of the bar of the Western Reserve: "They had but few law books and those they mastered ; their literature was the Bible and Shakespeare, and their forensie contests were apt dis- plays of logie, invective and wit. In that community influence went for nothing; if a man rose to the top it was through ability and industry. In those days the best lawyers went to the legislature and sat upon the bench. It was an honor to be a member of the legisla-
* Hugh McCulloch, "Men and Measures of Half a Century."
+ James Ford Rhodes, author of "A History of the United States from 1850."
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ture and an honor to be a judge." Chase and Wade and Giddings, reared among such lawyers, became not only great jurists, but leaders of the dominant sentiment of the North.
Among the Ohio lawyers of that day, says a competent authority,* the greatest were Ewing, Stanbery and Corwin. "Whether their distinction rests wholly upon their distinction at the bar, or not, it is certain they fill the largest horizon and occupy the greatest place in history of any lawyers which our State has produced." Each rose from humble birth to a place in the national councils. "Ewing would have been a great natural lawyer had he never seen a lawbook, a great logician had he never seen a work on logie." Henry Stanbery, more learned in books, was the most elegant and courtly man of his day, as well as one of the most eloquent. He delighted in explanations of the intricacies of the law and the exposition of general principles. It was not in his nature to be as much of a politician as Ewing. Greater than either of them in his influence on the public and in his wonderful power of invective, dazzling wit, and brilliant flights of rhetoric, and consequently more famous in the political field, was Tom Corwin. Group with these Peter Hitchcock, Philemon Beecher, Benjamin Tappan, Rufus P. Ranney, and note the younger men, like Charles Anthony, Samson Mason, Thurman, Stanton, Chase, Wade, Allen, Schenek, Pugh, as examples of a class, and it can be under- stood how Ohio within a few years became a leading power among the states.
Yet the historian Atwater, writing during Van Buren's adminis- tration, complained that Ohio was not recognized in national affairs. Said he. "We are oppressed in all the ways in which littleness, seated on high, can reach us." But he took courage to predict, "This state of things cannot last long, before Ohio has a voice and an influence at Washington. No president or attorney-general will dare then to treat with contempt our citizens and our members of congress."
As a result of the crash of the banks and the general prostration of business in 1837, ascribed by the Whigs to President Jackson's suc- cessful war on the United States bank and the sacrifice of Clay's American system of protection to the nullification threats of South Carolina, Ohio was in a bad way financially in 1838-40.
Everywhere, manufactories shut down, merchants failed, and banks went to the wall. Farmers could not obtain remunerative prices for their products, and labor was deprived of employment. When the Ohio treasury did not have enough money to pay the interest on her bonds, which there was some talk of repudiating, Alfred Kelly, fund commissioner of the State, guaranteed Ohio by giving his individual notes for twice what he was worth. People, in their discouragement turned to any employment that promised returns, and the craze of
* David K. Watson, writing in 1890.
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mulberry culture and silkworm breeding spread over the country, leading many to invest all they had and lose it, in 1839-40.
The legislature renewed its efforts to shut out irresponsible insti- tutions that printed money. The Washington Social Library com- pany was one of these concerns that embarked in the money industry, and endeavored to inveigle Auditor Brough into recognizing its anthority. The story was told that eastern adventurers bought the charter of a moribund library association in Hamilton county, and issued bank notes, with no assets except a renmant of dogeared books. Half the bank capital in the State was owned by non-residents, and a third of the bank loans were to officers and directors. The banks dis- trusted each other, and the people distrusted all of them. Nine con- cerns had out illegal circulation, among them one chartered as an Orphans' institute. The depreciated money and public serip bore peculiar and derisive names-such as yellow dog, red cat, smooth monkey, blue pup and sick Indian.
As the whole country was affected by the same conditions of depres- sion, the progress of railroad and canal construction was endangered in Ohio. But the legislature attempted, in March, 1837, to help these enterprises by "an act to authorize a loan of eredit by the State of Ohio to railroad companies, also to turnpike, canal and slackwater navigation companies," a measure that had sneh unfortunate results that it was popularly known as "the Plunder law." The trouble arose from the fact that while the law provided for a loan of credit, that is, the issue of State bonds to the corporation to the amount of half the money expended in actual eons ruetion or in the purchase of lands for the use of the corporation, it was construed to apply to "the purchase of lands for the purpose of speculation or even frand."* Under this manipulation of the law the Ohio railroad company. orig- inally organized at Painesville in 1830, to build through northern Ohio, from the Pennsylvania line to Toledo, bought lands at myth- ical prices by the issue of stock, obtained State bonds for $249,000, established a bank on this capital, and issned $300,000 or $400,000 in paper money with which to build a road. The plan of construc- tion was as airy as the finances. A line of plank rails was to be laid on posts or piles. Work was actually begun on this plan in 1839, from Fremont to a future city, called Manhattan, somewhere in the high grass below Toledo. There was to be another city called Rich- mond, near Painesville. Upon the original subscriptions to two mil- lions of stock, less than $14,000 was paid in cash. That was of course lost, for presently the company collapsed, leaving no assets but some land, fully covered by liabilities, and sixty-three miles of rotting posts and timbers. Under the provisions of the same law, aid was extended to the Mad River and Lake Erie, the Little Miami,
* Report of Auditor John Brough, 1843.
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the Vermilion & Ashland, the Mansfield & Sandusky City, and the Fairport & Zanesville railroads, the Cincinnati & Whitewater canal, and the Pennsylvania & Ohio eanal, which was completed in 1841, opening communication between Cleveland and Pittsburg. Before the law was repealed in March, 1840, the State had issued bonds to the railroads named, to the extent of over $750,000, to the canals for $600,000, and to twenty-five turnpike companies for the enormous sum of $1,853,365. The grand total of the investment was nearly three and a quarter millions. The Little Miami and Mad River roads paid dividends, but otherwise the bonds represented an almost total loss.
From the contemplation of the financial conditions in 1>38 and 1839, people turned with delight to the diversions and exeitement of polities, and, aseribing the evils that existed to the Jackson dynasty that was continued under VanBuren, joined in a vast ery for "a change." This brought under one banner the followers of Clay in Ohio and the Crawford state-sovereignty men of the South. The Whig national convention at Harrisburg, Pa., in December, 1839, nominated General Harrison the second time for the presidency. No other man could have united the discordant elements of the new party. He was able to assure the South that slavery should be undis- turbed," and in the North the people had confidence in his belonging to the school of Henry Clay. In fact, his party stood for the repeal of all that the Jackson Democrats had accomplished in the direction of what would now be called "sound money." and Harrison had the support of the "wildeat" banks. But the great issne was, a change, and the election of an honest, patriotic old soldier, in place of Van- Buren, a cold-blooded politician of the school of Aaron Burr. The cry was for "The iron-armed soldier, the true-hearted soldier, The gallant old soldier of Tippecanoe."
A Baltimore paper foolishly said that if Harrison were given a small pension he would be content to remain in his log cabin and drink hard cider the rest of his days. This sneer at the character of a noble gentleman and at the peculiarities of pioneer life settled the fate of Van Buren, whom the Democrats put up for re-election. On Washington's birthday the Ohio Whig convention was held at Column- bus, and before the day set the people began to arrive by canal boat and wagon from all parts of the State. Through day and night they poured into the city, with bands playing the Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner. With them they hauled through the winter mud, log cabins on wheels, decorated with coon skins, and abundantly supplied with hard eider, ginger bread, hoe-cake and bacon. When
* He was markedly unfriendly to Giddings after the inauguration, at a time when the Southern congressmen were inviting the Ohioan to come South and be hanged on account of his denunciation of the Florida war as a crime.com- mitted in behalf of slavery.
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the hotels were full, private houses were opened to those pilgrims who did not find sufficient food and shelter in the caravans. At the con- vention General Beall presided and Thomas Ewing led in the speech making. But the main interest was in the procession, that wound for hours through the streets, its main features being a long line of canoes on wheels; a warship, "Western Empire State," bearing a Buekeve tree and a great banner with Harrison's portrait ; a repre- sentation of Fort Meigs with cannon firing salutes from the embra- sures, a company with brooms to signify a "clean sweep," and a horse bearing the war-saddle of George Washington, which had been sent up from' Marietta. Everywhere there were banners, with inserip- tions that kept the watching thousands in an uproar of cheers and laughter, and there were songs by glee clubs, with rousing choruses, such as "His latch string hangs outside his door, So here's three cheers for honest Tip."
A spirit of unrestrained jollity possessed all the Whigs. On top of the log cabin from Springfield, built of Buckeye logs, rode the portly and dignified Charles Anthony, eating ginger bread and drink- ing hard cider. Governor Vance was At the helm of the gunboat, and when it stnek in the mud "Bill" Neil, the king of the coach lines, ran to the rescue. In the midst of all this tremendous outburst, the convention nominated for governor the "Wagon Boy of 1812," Tom C'orwin. He resigned his seat in Congress, and the convention to nominate his snecessor, held at Wilmington, and attended by ten thousand people, unanimously named the veteran Jeremiah Morrow, who was elected. This was Morrow's last publie service. The remainder of his days he spent at his home on the Little Miami, until his death March 22, 1852.
Corwin, already famous through ten years' service in congress, was the typical man for such a campaign as followed. He was hailed in song: "Tom Corwin, our true hearts love you ; Ohio has no nobler son, In worth there's none above yon." Sustained by his marvelous eloquence and humor he swept along for seven months at the erest of a wave of enthusiasm. His political enemies were com- pelled to admire him, and he had always had a story or a witty thrust to turn the point of any question that would embarrass a statesman merely philosophie. The most effective campaign document was his speech in Congress provoked by an attack upon Harrison's military record by Crary, of Michigan. Corwin had overwhelmed the critic (who had been a militia general) in a flood of brilliant sarcasm. When spoken, the speech transformed the House from a body of some dignity into a group of laughter-shaken humanity, crowding about the speaker that they might miss none of his intonations or facial expressions, and when he had finished with joking he held them spell- bound with an argument of profound dignity that vindicated the character and ability of his friend. Poor Crary's political career
.
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was finished, and to the end of his days he was known as "the late general."
As the campaign opened so it continued. and the Ohio spirit spread over the United States. The buckeye was popularized as a symbol of the State and the candidate, and there was a great trade along the National road in buckeye canes. Horace Greeley, in New York, began the publication of The Log Cabin, out of which grew the Tribune. For the first time political song books were published, and the Whigs were soon all chanting the praises of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," and vehemently shouting that "Van-Van-is a used up man." For the first time in a national campaign business was prac- tically suspended. For the first time a presidential candidate made a tour of speech making. This was provoked by the ernel report that General llarrison was of feeble mind. Consequently he made a few speeches in Ohio, at which there were immense audiences and proces- sions, regiments of brass bands and avenues of log cabins. At Day- ton he spoken to ten acres of closely packed humanity, and was heard by most of his andience. The number at this meeting was a subject of discussion all over the United States, and was variously estimated at from seventy-five to one hundred thousand. What this meant in the way of travel may be judged from the fact that the town of Day- ton had abont five thousand residents. At Chillicothe the General rode in a procession six miles long and spoke to fifty thousand people, and there were similar demonstrations at Lebanon, Urbana, Sidney, Somerset and Columbus.
Against this whirlwind of political enthusiasm a gallant fight was made by Wilson Shannon, who was renominated for governor, aided by Allen, Brough, Tod, and the other Democratic leaders, but with- ont avail. Early in the fall came the news that Maine had "gone hell-bent for Governor Kent." Delaware, Maryland and Georgia fol- lowed suit by electing Whig governors, and in October Ohio gave Cor- win sixteen thousand majority. At the presidential election the Harrison electors in Ohio received 148,157 votes and the Van Buren electors 124,782. In the United States IFarrison obtained 234 elec- toral votes, VanBuren 60. The most devoted abolitionists, among whom Senator Morris was now a leader, organized the Liberty party, and voted for James G. Birney for president, but the total vote was very slight.
In the spring of 1841 General Harrison left Cincinnati by boat, cheered by thousands, to go to Washington, and at his inauguration he had a glorious triumph. Unfortunately he did not have an oppor- tunity to prove his ability as chief magistrate of the nation. After a few weeks of worriment by a flood of office-seekers, embittered by disputes with Clay and Webster, who assumed to dictate appoint- ments, his weakened nerves yielded under an exposure to weather that he had been accustomed to enjoy, and he passed away, April 4th,
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the first president of the United States to die in office, and the first of three Ohio presidents who have lost their lives in that exalted station.
To his cabinet, as secretary of the treasury, President Harrison had called Thomas Ewing, who held the office under Tyler until the latter vetoed the second national bank bill, when he resigned. Another of Harrison's appointments was of Elisha Whittlesey, who had served in Congress sixteen years, as fourth anditor of the treas- ury. Whittlesey resigned from Congress to take the place, and Ben Wade made his first effort in politics as the Whig candidate to suc- ceed him.
The census of 1840 showed a population in Ohio of 1,519,467, an increase of 580,000 in ten years, the greatest in all the history of the State, from 1803 to 1903. The day of doubling the population in ten years had passed, for Ohio was already sending thousands of settlers to the younger states, mainly to Indiana and Illinois. From the Miami valley, for instance, after the opening of the Indian lands in northern Indiana in 1832, young men, sons of Ohio pioneers, set out for the new country with their wives, experienced hardships like those of their fathers as they made their way through the Black Swamp, and in the forests renewed those experiences of toil, privation and happi- ness that their parents had gone through in Ohio thirty years before. But with a million and a half of people, Ohio had gained the third place in population, and, what was just as remarkable, the fourth place in manufacturing. Old Virginia had fallen far behind in total population and had less than half the number of freemen. This place among the states, next to New York and Pennsylvania, which Ohio had attained in forty years, she held for another forty years, finally yielding a slight advantage to her younger sister of the West, where Ohioans were helping to build up a city that should eclipse even that "eighth wonder of the world," Cincinnati.
Cincinnati was not at that time wholly a "Porkopolis," although one-fourth of the pork packing in the United States was done there. Thirty-three steamboats were built there in 1840, at a cost of $600,000. It was the intellectual, educational, book-publishing een- ter of the West. There were eight bell foundries as well as many breweries, and four concerns were manufacturing mathematical and philosophical instruments. The foundries and machine shops of the city were famous for the production of steam engines, and hundreds of cotton gins, sugar mills and cotton-spinning machines were being shipped to the South every year. Cleveland, though far inferior in population, was beginning to gain importance in ship building. The first little schooner built there, the Zephyr, was launched in 1808, and in 1827 the first steamboat was completed. The building of the steamers for the lake traffic rapidly increased at the city on the Cuya- hoga, and, in 1844, it. boasted of the first. steamboat in the United
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States of more than a thousand tons, the Empire, which from keel to masts, engines and all, was of Cleveland manufacture.
Steamboat travel was attended by some frightful disasters. One long remembered in Ohio was the explosion of the Moselle, April 26, 1536. Going out from Cincinnati, on its first trip, with over two hundred people on board, the steamer turned up stream a little ways to take on some passengers before running to Louisville, and as another steamer happened to be near at hand, of course there must be a race at full speed. The boilers burst with a terrible roar, so near the city that the body of the captain and fragments of other human remains were thrown into the streets. The pilot was blown a hundred feet in the air and fell in the river. Many people who survived instant death drowned before help could reach them.
U'nder the census of 1840 Ohio was given twenty-one congress- men. A special session of the legislature was held in the summer of 1842 to make the apportionment, but action was prevented by the desertion of the minority of the house, who declared that the proposed apportionment was unjust and in disregard of constitu- tional provisions.
In 1841 the Miami canal had been completed north from Dayton to Piqua. About thirty miles of the Little Miami railroad had been built out from Cincinnati, with straprails, for horse power ; the White- water canal was nearly finished, the Pennsylvania & Ohio canal was completed, connecting Cleveland, by way of Akron, with the Ohio river at the mouth of Beaver and river navigation to Pittsburg, and the Mad River and Lake Erie was in course of construction from San- dusky to Springfield and Dayton, and partly in operation. An inter- esting story might be told of the building of the pioneer railroads. On the Little Miami road the laborers were often fed upon the cattle contributed by the farmers on the hoof in payment of their subscriptions. Funds were frequently exhausted. "The men sur- rounded the house of honest William Lewis, the treasurer, demand- ing money from an empty treasury, calling him every kind of a hard name, until he was forced to seek the president and declare: "These men, when I tell them I have no money, call me liar and scoundrel so often and so earnestly, that I begin to think I am what they call me, and I must resign ?' **
In 1842 Charles Dickens visited Cincinnati, and was entertained with the sight of a procession of the Washington Auxiliary temper- ance societies. This was a manifestation of the great temperanee movement that began in Ohio in 1541, which John Sherman, looking back after a lapse of half a century, judged to be the most beneficial reform in his time. If Dickens had come a year earlier he might have witnessed the famous battle between the negro residents and a
* Reminiseences of S. S. L'Hommedieu.
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riotous white element, reinforced from Kentucky, which kept the city in a turmoil for two days. On his return from St. Louis the novelist traveled by coach over the good macadam highway from Cin- cinnati to Columbus and thence to Sandusky. Of all of which one may read in his much-abused "American Notes."
On November 1, 1842, there was another serions riot at Cincinnati, caused by a run on the banks, not for specie, but for paper better than their own. Two or three banks were gutted, and when the militia was called out the mob was fired upon and several wounded.
Among the twenty-one congressmen elected in 1842, was a young man of Springfield, who had attracted attention by daring a debate with John Brough and acquitting himself with honor. This was Robert C. Schenck, son of Gen. William C. Schenck, one of the famous pioneers of Ohio, and ward of Gen. James Findlay. For many years Sehenek was one of the most brilliant men of Congress. Joseph Vance returned to Congress with this delegation, and Samuel F. Vinton, and Joshua R. Giddings, of Ashtabula county, a man standing six feet two, with muscles hardened by clearing away the forest, who had entered Congress at the age of forty-three years, in 1839, and for twenty years afterward led the forces of free soil and free labor in the face of the most bitter opposition and contumely. During a period of violence he was singularly immune to challenge or assault, though he was unrelenting and often bitter in his political denunciations.
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