USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 32
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During the two years' administration of Governor Thomas Cor- win the financial condition of the state showed some improve- ment, and there were continued efforts to legislate sound principles into banking. The Mad River & Lake Erie railroad company was called to account for issuing paper money, a number of bank charters were repealed or suspended and the resumption of specie payments was pledged. In 1842 a law was passed to regulate banking, requir- ing all capital to be paid in in specie before beginning operations, and regulating the limits of liabilities and circulation. But the banks would not organize under it, and a number of the most reliable con- cerns organized for mutual support. At this time the currency in circulation had been reduced about one-third from what it was in 1837, and there was some light ahead. In 1843 the charters of thir- teen banks expired, and two more came to an end a year later. The remaining eight had a capital of about three million and a half, half of the total banking capital of the state. The charters of some were extended in 1844, with provisions for individual liability of stock- holders, and the circulation restricted to three times the specie in reserve. Forty-seven banks had failed since they had been chartered, but those that remained were in better condition than ever before. The State started in 1842-46 upon a new career of prosperity and speculation.
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The Whig legislature elected with Corwin was bombarded with petitions to repeal the Black Laws, but with no more snecess than had attended previous efforts. This disappointment may have been one of the reasons for a sudden growth in numbers of the "Liberty party," aided by Salmon P. Chase, Giddings and their followers in 1541, which materially contributed to the defeat of Governor C'or- win for re-election in 1842. Wilson Shannon, again a candidate, received a plurality over Corwin of 3,120, while Leicester King, the nominee of the Liberty men, polled five thousand votes. A notable feature of the campaign was a debate at Chillicothe between Corwin and Thomas Lyon Hamer, who took the place of Shannon for that event. Ilamer, born in Pennsylvania in 1800, and reared in poverty in Clermont county, with the valuable friendship of Thomas Morris, was a homely man, with a great shock of red hair, but of most win- ning countenance when he talked, and a powerful orator and excellent lawyer. He had served in Congress from 1835 to 1841, and within that time, in 1839, he had appointed to a cadetship at West Point, Ulysses Simpson Grant, who was born in Clermont seventeen years before.#
The second administration of Governor Shannon was uneventful. The main features of the legislation were financial, as already noted : there was a revival of railroad enterprise, as indicated by the exten- sion of old charters and the granting of new ones, and in January, 1844, a national convention met at Cincinnati to affirm the Monroe doctrine as applied to Oregon and protest against yielding to the Brit- ish claims. Among the prominent participants were Thomas Worth- ington, E. D. Mansfield, and Sammel Medary, of Ohio, and William Parry and Rufus King were secretaries. The convention was tribu- tary to the Democratic platform of 1844. which demanded the "reoc- enpation of Oregon and the reannexation of Texas," without serious result except as to Texas.
Governor Shannon resigned in April, 1844, and became minister to Mexico, the nation with which trouble was brewing, and Thomas W. Bartley, speaker of the senate, became acting governor.
At the elections of 1844 the Whigs carried Ohio and entertained hopes of making Henry Clay president, but though the great and beloved Kentuckian carried Ohio by a plurality of six thousand, and
* A Revolutionary soldier, who had fought at the battle of Lexington, a de- scendant of Matthew Grant, of Scotland, who came to Massachusetts in 1630, and of a family that had given soldiers to the French and Indian wars, came from Massachusetts after the war to western Pennsylvania, from there to Columbiana county, and thence to Portage county, where he apprenticed his son Jesse R., to a tanner. Jesse was in business on his own account at Ben- jamin Tappan's town. Ravenna, in early manhood, but soon moved to Point Pleasant, Clermont county, and married Hannah Simpson, though very poor. Ulysses was born to them, April 27. 1822, and next year they moved to George- town. Brown county, where the boy was reared.
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BEFORE THE WAR.
received a strong support throughout the Union, the Liberty party voted for an Ohio ticket, Birney and Morris," and their defection from the Whigs in New York state defeated Clay, to the intense sor- row of the majority of the people of Ohio. The Whig candidate for governor of Ohio was Mordecai Bartley, of Mansfield, father of the acting governor, who was a Democrat and came within one vote of being nominated for governor on the Democratic ticket. The senior Bartley was born in Fayette county, Pa., in 1753, settled in Jefferson county in 1809, commanded a company in the war of 1812, and after- ward eleared a farm in Richland county and became a merchant at Mansfield. Beginning in 1822 he had been four times elected to Congress. He was the first Ohio governor from the "New Purchase" country, and it was his fortune to be the second war governor, count- ing Governor Meigs as the first. His opponent in the campaign was David Tod, to whom the future was to bring honor as governor dur- ing another war. He was the son of Judge George Tod, conspicuous in the earlier history of the State; was born at Youngstown in 1805, became a lawyer there, and had made himself a name as a campaign orator in 1840, supporting the Democratic ticket. The election was very close, as Leicester King, the Liberty party candidate, increased his vote to nearly nine thousand, and Bartley had to be satisfied with a plurality over Tod of 1,271. The financial issue was prominent, the Democrats standing for hard money, and the Whigs for bank paper. Tod, having declared that rather than adopt paper money it would be better to go back to the Spartan eustom and coin money from pot metal, was dubbed "Potmetal Tod," and medals of iron were struck, hearing his likeness, and distributed as "Tod money."i
Failing to become governor, Tod opened the first coal mine in the Mahoning valley in 1845, at Briar Hill, and began the shipping of coal to Cleveland, taking into his employment for the canal boating, among others, James A. Garfield, of Cuyahoga county, then a boy of fifteen years. Sinee 1806, when the first blast furnace in Ohio (built by David Heaton) was started in Mahoning county, a few miles from Youngstown, charcoal had been exclusively used in the manufacture of iron, to the rapid destruction of the forests in the vicinity of the thirty furnaces that were put in operation in the State up to 1546. The new era in the manufacture of iron, linking together for the benefit of man the natural deposits of iron ore and coal, began with experiments in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1845,# and in August, 1846, bituminons eoal was first successfully used in iron smelting in Ohio, in the Mahoning furnace, at Lowell-
* Senator Thomas Morris was the candidate of the Liberty party for vice president. In the following month. December 7. 1844. he died suddenly at his Clermont county home.
+ Taylor's "Ohio Statesmen."
¿ Ryan's History of Ohio.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
ville. At a later date the coal was converted into coke before it was used in the furnaces.
There followed, in 1549, the founding of Ironton on the Ohio, by John Campbell, a native of Ripley. This was near the place known to the early explorers as Hanging Rock, where John Means, a South Carolina slaveholder converted to abolition, began the burning of charcoal and manufacture of iron as early as 1826, and whence pig iron had been shipped to New York by way of New Orleans, and a little to Europe, in 1832. This Lawrence county district, in 1840, manufactured 20,000 tons of iron, and all the rest of the State, inelud- ing the furnaces in the Cleveland region, 15,000 tons.
In the congressional delegation elected in 1844, some new names appeared, among them that of Allen G. Thurman, who was to surpass his unele, William Allen, in reviving the political fame of Chillicothe and the Virginia military reserve. Born at Lynchburg, Va., in 1813, the son of a Baptist clergyman who came to Chillicothe six years afterward, he studied law in his youth under his uncle and Noah H. Swayne, and succeeded to Allen's law practice when the latter became senator. For a long time after his one term in Congress he kept out of polities, but was upon the supreme bench for four years, 1851-55. Another of the new congressmen was Columbus Delano, eleeted as a Whig, a man then thirty-five years old, residing at Lexington, where he worked his way up from employment in a woolen mill to an honor- able position at the bar.
The legislature following, in December, 1544, having a Whig majority, elected Thomas Corwin to the United States senate to sue- ceed Benjamin Tappan, by a vote of sixty to forty-six for David T. Disney. Disney was a prominent lawyer of Cincinnati, of Maryland birth, one of the foremost men of his party from 1830 to 1860, twice speaker of the senate, and three times cleeted to Congress. He died suddenly in 1857, while preparing to go to Spain as United States minister.
In 1845 the Wabash & Erie canal, long delayed by the fevers that seemed to be let loose as the earth was excavated, making the work as dangerous as a war, was completed far enough to influence the volume of business at the port of Toledo, and in the same year the Miami & Erie canal was opened through to give water communication between Cincinnati and Maumee bay. Toledo then expected to speedily become the great distributing point of the West. The Wabash canal, to be four hundred and sixty miles long when com- plete, was to be the channel of most of the export and import trade of Indiana and eastern Illinois, and the Miami canal would certainly be one of the most important transportation channels in the world. The change that was to be effected by the railroads, it appears, was not vet comprehended.
The most important legislative accomplishment of Bartley's admin-
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BEFORE THE WAR.
istration was the incorporation of the Bank of the State of Ohio, by act of February, 1845, a measure largely due to the energy and wis- dom of Alfred Kelly, who has been called both the father of internal improvements and the founder of the State banking system. Under this law existing banks were to be merged in a State bank, with a cap- ital of over six million dollars, and branches equably distributed over the State, under the management of a central board of control, and a board of bank commissioners. Independent banks, if they desired to issue notes, were required, as the State bank was, to deposit bonds of the State or of the United States to secure circulation. There resulted a reasonably safe and adequate banking system in Ohio. Three years later there were thirty-seven branches of the State bank, with a total eirenlation of $5,400,000 in bank notes, deposits of $2,200,000 and $1,900,000 gold and silver on hand. Besides the State bank, several independent houses were in operation under the law, including the Life and Trust company, which had been permitted to continue.
Other important events were the appointment of commissioners to complete the new State house at Columbus, which had been begun July 4, 1839, and abandoned on account of a sectional dispute which nearly cansed removal; the creation of the office of attorney-general of Ohio, to which Henry Stanbery was elected as the first incumbent in 1846; and the founding of the Ohio system of taxation, devised by Senator Alfred Kelly and pushed by him to adoption in 1846.
Toward the close of Governor Bartley's administration the State was again called upon to furnish troops for a war, under circum- stances that inspired very general distrust of the motives of the con- fliet and indifference as to the result. Yet Ohio responded as generously as any state to the call of the president, and her soldiers did honorable duty. In 1845 Texas had been annexed with provi- sions that insured the extension of slavery over its territory. A small army of occupation, under Gen. Zachary Taylor, was advanced to the Rio Grande, a boundary which Mexico had not admitted for Texas, and in May, 1846, the Mexican forces crossed the river and attempted to drive away the American troops, bringing on the battles of Palo Alto and Resaea de la Palma.
A bill for the support of war with Mexico was immediately intro- duced in Congress. Representatives Delano, Vance, Giddings, Root and Tilden, of Ohio, voted against it, and in the senate a memorable speech was made by Senator Corwin, who boldly declared that the prosecution of a war that excited hostility between the North and South was treason, a "crime of such infernal hne that every other in the catalogue of iniquity, when compared with it, whitens into vir- the." He declared that "if hell itself could yawn and vomit up the fiends that inhabit its penal abodes to disturb the harmony of the world . . the first step in the consummation of this diabol-
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
ical purpose would be to light the fires of internal war and plunge the sister states of this Union into the bottomless gulf of civil strife." This was strong enough, but the most famous utterance of the great invective was in reply to the ery of Mr. Cass that the people of the United States wanted more room. "If I were a Mexican," Corwin declared, "I would tell you, 'Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead men ? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable graves.'" By this utterance, more dramatic but in essence the same as that regarding the war of the Revolution for which William Pitt is praised by AAmer- jeans, Corwin incurred general disapproval. The popular sentiment was. "Our country, right or wrong," and effigies of Corwin were burned to demonstrate the patriotism of the citizens of various regions.
When Ohio was called upon for troops, Samuel Ryan Curtis, of Newark, a native of New York, but reared from infancy in Ohio, a graduate of West Point and from 1837 to 1840 engineer of the Mus- kingum river improvements, was made adjutant-general of the State to organize the quota of volunteers. The offers for enlistment were abundant, and there was no delay in enrolling the quota of the State. The volunteers were collected at Camp Washington, near Cincinnati, in May, and organized in three regiments.
The First, mustered in June 23, 1-46, was commanded by Col. Alexander M. Mitchell. John B. Weller and Thomas L. Hamer were made lieutenant-colonel and major, and the successive adjutants dur- ing the service were Andrew W. Armstrong, James Findlay Harri- son and Jonathan Richmond. The surgeon was E. K. Chamberlain. The companies, in their alphabetical order, were commanded at first by Robert M. Moore, Luther Giddings, Lewis Hornell, Edward Hamilton, John B. Armstrong, Edwin D. Bradley. Sanders W. John- son. Philip Muller, James George, William H. Ramsey .*
The Second regiment, mustered in June 23d, was commanded by Col. George W. Morgan, then a young man of twenty-six years, who had left school in Pennsylvania in 1836 to join the Texas army of independence, became a cadet at West Point in 1841, and later entered the practice of law at Mount Vernon. His staff officers were William Irvine of Fairfield county, a West Point graduate, lienten- ant-colonel : William Wall, major ; Thomas Worthington, of Hocking Falls, a graduate of West Point (1827) and afterward general of Ohio militia, adjutant ; William Trevitt, surgeon. The original com- pany commanders were Hobby Reynolds. George W. Morgan, David Trick, Evan Julian, Simeon M. Tucker, Robert G. MeLean, John F. Mickum, William Irvine, Richard Stadden, Daniel Brunner, William Lathan.
*Official Roster of Ohio Troops.
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BEFORE THE WAR.
Samuel R. Curtis, leaving his work as adjutant-general, was com- missioned colonel of the Third regiment, and his staff officers were George Wythe MeCook (a law student and partner of Edwin MI. Stanton, at Steubenville ), lientenant-colonel; John S. Love, major; Oliver C. Gray, adjutant : Benjamin Stone, surgeon. The captains were James Allen, William MeLaughlin, Jesse Meredith, Thomas H. Ford, John Patterson, David Moore, James F. Chapman, Chauncey Woodruff, Asbury F. Noles, John Kell, Jr., James Allen.
These regiments were eulisted for twelve months, and in July left for the Rio Grande, taking boat at Cincinnati for New Orleans. But before they started Maj. Thomas L. Hamer was commissioned briga- dier-general of volunteers, an honor at the same time conferred upon Caleb Cushing, Franklin Pierce, Sterling Price and other men of his- torie prominence, Though Hamer lacked military experience and military education, and was put, for political reasons, in command over men who had such qualifications, his remarkable ability enabled him to creditably act the part of a general. He was succeeded as major by Luther Giddings, of Dayton.
On reaching the Rio Grande the army was organized, and the Ohio brigade was assigned to the division of General William O. Butler, with Gen. Tom. Marshall's Kentnekians, and Gen. Joe Lane's Indi- anians. Among the officers of the regulars the volunteers found some Ohio acquaintances, such as Lient. Irvin MeDowell, son of a Worthington pioneer, who was aide-de-camp to General Wool : Lieut. Don Carlos Buell, adjutant of the Fourth United States, who attracted admiration by his soldierly air,# and another lieutenant, acting as quartermaster of the Third, a quiet, unobtrusive young fellow, with no pretensions to glory, but much esteemed for common-sense, Ulysses S. Grant.
The Third regiment went ou garrison duty at Matamoras and Fort Brown, the Second was detailed for the garrison at Camargo, where they began building Fort Ohio, and the First took an active part in the advance from Camargo on Monterey. In the battle of Monterey, August 21, 1846, the First led one of the columns that penetrated the suburbs of the town. Coming under a destructive fire, General Butler ordered a charge .upon the enemy's works. Colonel Mitchell and Adjutant Armstrong and Capt. James George were wounded, and the men were falling rapidly under a concentric fire, when Butler, receiving a severe wound, turned over the command to General Hamer with orders to withdraw. But Hamer's brigade continued to hold the suburbs of the town, which was surrendered three days later. Among the killed of the First Ohio on this occasion was Lient. Matthew Hett.
* Buell was born near Marietta, in 1818. son of Capt. Timothy Buell. of Blennerhassett's time. McDowell was born in the same year, of Scotch- Irish-Kentucky family.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
No more battles were fought by Taylor's army during 1846. Gen- eral Hamer continued in command of the Volunteer division of the army until December 30th, when he died after a short illness. In his order announcing the fact, General Taylor said, "In couneil I found him clear and judicious, and in the administration of his com- mand, though kind, vet always impartial and just. . I had looked forward with confidence to the benefit of his abilities and judg- ment in the service which lies before us, and feel most sensibly the privation."
At the time of the Buena Vista campaign, in March, 1847, the First and Second regiments had some brisk engagements with the enemy, while guarding Taylor's line of communication and bringing up supplies. Major Giddings and three companies were particularly distinguished at C'eralvo, March 7th. The Third, after this, garri- soned Camargo, while the others were advanced to Buena Vista. At the expiration of the enlistment the three regiments were sent home, with an honorable record. The First lost 24 killed and 42 from dis- case ; the Second 6 killed and 62 from disease ; the Third 64 in all.
In 1847 two other Ohio regiments were organized. One of these was the Fourth Ohio, mustered in May 19, 1847, of which Charles H. Brongh was colonel ; Melchior Werner (and later, Augustus Moor), lieutenant-colonel ; William P. Young, major : Herman Kessler ( and later, Warren Speneer ), adjutant; O. M. Langdon, surgeon ; and the captains, W. C. AAppler, Augustus Moor ( succeeded by Herman Kess- ler, who was killed), Otto Zorckel, Samuel Thompson, George Weaver, Mitchell C. Lilly, George E. Pugh, Tresher L. Hart, Will- iam P. Young, Charles II. Brough ( succeeded by Josiah M. Robin- son ), Melchior Werner ( succeeded by John Fries). This regiment left Cincinnati July 1, 1847, and after garrisoning Matamoras went to Vera Cruz and joined Scott's army. They raised the siege of Pueblo and fought at Atlexco October 19, 1547, and in a year's service lost 4 killed and 72 died. The Fifth regiment, in fact the Second reorganized, and generally known by that number, was enlisted at C'ineinnati, in August, 1847, with William Irvine as colonel : William 1. Latham, lieutenant-colonel; William II. Link, major: Robert MeNeil, surgeon ; and the following captains: Nathaniel H. Miles (lied ), Richard Stadden, John W. Lowe, William A. Latham, Joseph W. Filler. William T. Ferguson, James E. Ilarle, William II. Link, John G. Hughes, George F. McGinnis, Edwin Williams. The Fifth reached Vera Cruz in September, 1547, formed part of the brigade that guarded the great wagon train sent to Seott's army at the City of Mexico, and had considerable guerrilla warfare. The loss was 74 killed and died.
George W. Morgan was commissioned colonel of the Fifteenth United States infantry, to which Ohio also contributed five compa- nies commanded by Capts. Daniel Chase, James A. Jones, Edward
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BEFORE THE WAR.
A. King, John S. Perry and Moses Hoagland. These companies were distinguished for gallantry during the advance of Scott's army to the Mexican capital, in the fall of 1847, at the battles of Contreras, Churubusco and Chapultepec, losing a large number of men killed and wounded. Colonel Morgan, receiving a wound at Contreras, was honored with the brevet of brigadier-general in the regular army. Chase, Jones and Hoagland won the brevets of major.
Ohio also contributed the following independent companies, in serv- ice during 1846: Companies of Capt. John R. Duncan (mounted ), John H. Dauble, Frederick A. Churchill, Hermann Kessler, George Durr, John Caldwell, H. O. Donnell, Thomas W. Ward, Augustus Moor, Joseph S. Hawkins, Atlas L. Stout, Francis Link, John S. Love; and two that served in 1847-48, under Capts. William Ken- neally and Robert Riddle. There was an Ohio company in the regiment of Riflemen, under Capt. Winslow F. Sanderson, who won promotion to major in Scott's campaign, and some Ohio companies in the Third Dragoons and Voltiguers. Captain Kenneally died in Mexico, in December, 1847, and was succeeded by Capt. William H. Lytle, a native of Cincinnati, then twenty-one years old, who made himself as famous, a few years later, with his poem, "I am dying, Egypt, dying," as that other Mexican war soldier, O'Hara, who wrote "The Bivouac of the Dead," in memory of Buena Vista.
While Ohio soldiers fought the battles of the country in the field, Samuel F. Vinton, in the lower house of Congress, though a Whig, supported the administration as chairman of the ways and means com- mittee. He was at this time a veteran in Congress, having served continuously from 1823 to 1837, and again from 1543, and he con- tinned until 1851. Notable among his achievements was the estab- Iishment of the national department of the interior.
One important result of this war was the training of a large num- ber of men for military command in that greater conflict that Corwin had prophesied as the sequel of the aggression upon Mexico. Among the field and line officers of the Ohio volunteer regiments there were the following generals of 1861-65: Samuel Beatty, George F. McGinnis, Robert B. Mitchell, William H. Lytle, George W. Morgan, Samuel R. Curtis : and the following colonels: James Findlay Har- rison, Edwin D. Bradley, Ferdinand Van Der Veer, Carr B. White, James P. Fyffe, Thomas Worthington, George W. MeCook, Thomas HI. Ford, John Kell, David Moore, B. J. Crossthwaite, Jacob G. Frick, Arthur Higgins, Augustus Moor, James Irvine, John C. Groom, John G. Marshall, John W. Lowe, William Howard.
In the midst of the war period, at the Ohio election of 1×46, the Whigs continued in ascendancy. David Tod, again a candidate for governor, was defeated by a small plurality by William Bebb. The vote stood, Bebb 118,569, Tod 116,459, and Sammel Lewis, Liberty party, 10,797. William Bebb was a native of Butler county (1804),
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in early manhood had taught school at North Bend, the home of Gen- eral Harrison, and since 1831 had been practicing law at Hamilton. After the close of his term he visited England, in 1855, and organized a colony which settled in East Tennessee. This enterprise was broken up by the rebellion, and he spent the remainder of his days in Illinois.
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