USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 33
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In his second message to the legislature Governor Bebb renewed the attack on the Black Laws, saying: "I cannot forget that the Black Laws still disgrace our statute books. All I can do is earnestly to reiterate the recommendation for their unqualified repeal." Through all the preceding years the Underground railroad had been doing its work, assisting the passage of runaway slaves through Ohio. In 1843 the State legislature had repealed the law intended to aid in the capture of these fugitives. The attempts to reclaim negroes were the eanse of much litigation. In 1845 three citizens of Ohio, Garner, Thomas and Loraine, helped some slaves up the Ohio bank of the river, and were arrested, taken to Virginia and indicted. This was the basis of the celebrated case in which Samuel F. Vinton made his great argument before the bench of twelve judges at Richmond, Va., on the extent of the ancient boundary of Virginia. In March, 1846, Columbus was excited by the abduction of Jerry Finney, a colored waiter there for many years, who was carried back to a former owner in Kentucky. The men implicated in his seizure were arrested for kidnapping.
The administration of Mr. Bebb was marked by the close of the war with Mexico, and some important steps toward the building of railroads. The Little Miami, which had been equipped in 1843 with one locomotive, two passenger coaches and eight freight ears, all built at Cincinnati, was relaid with heavier rails, and having been com- pleted to Springfield in 1846, within the next two years became a link in the first through railroad line across Ohio, from Sandusky to Cleve- land. In 1847 Richard Hilliard and Henry B. Payne, of Cleveland, began the taking of subscriptions for the building of the C'love- land, Columbus & Cincinnati railroad, to Columbus: Alfred Kelly was made president, and Frederick Harbach, Amasa Stone and Still- man Witt undertook the construction, and work was begun in 1548 and completed in 1851. The Cleveland, Warren & Pittsburg was begun in 1847 and completed in 1852. It is also worthy of note that in 1847 the first press telegram was received at Cincinnati, beginning that system of newspaper telegraphic news that is now such a familiar feature of everyday life. In the following year Prof. O. M. Mitchel mounted at his observatory, on one of the Cincinnati hills, a great telescope, carrying a lens manufactured at Munich. The land had been donated by Nicholas Longworth, John Quincy Adams had laid the corner stone of the pier, and many laboring men had donated their work to the cause of science.
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When Congress was discussing "expansion," and legislating in anticipation of settlement with Mexico in 1846, and it was sought to appropriate $3,000,000 for the purchase of territory on the Pacific coast, there was proposed what is known in history as the Wilmot pro- viso, written by Judge Jacob Brinkerhoff, of Mansfield, then a mem- ber of Congress, which provided that negro slavery should be excluded from the new territory. Upon this proposition a new party was formed in 1848, at the Buffalo convention, in which Joshua R. Gid- dings and Sahnon P. Chase were conspicuous figures. Thomas C'or- win was talked of by many as the presidential candidate of the new party, but having gone too far in opposition to the Mexican war, he was now suspected of shrinking from full allegiance to the Wilmot proviso. John McLean was also the favorite of some delegates, but his son-in-law, Chase, did not formally present his name. Martin Van Buren was nominated for president, upon the platform, "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men." General Taylor, under whom many Ohioans had fought in Mexico, was nominated by the Philadelphia convention of the Whigs, of which John Sherman was secretary, and the regular Democratic candidate was the former Ohio colonel and general, Lewis Cass. For governor of Ohio the Whigs put up Seabury Ford, who gained the nomination by a majority of two over Columbus Delano. The Democrats named John B. Weller, of Hamilton, a brilliant young man, then thirty-four years old, who had served in Congress three terms and as lieutenant- colonel in the Mexican war.
The electoral vote of the state was given to Cass, who received 154,773 votes, Taylor, 138,359, and Van Buren, 35,357. But Taylor was elected, and at his inauguration called to his cabinet Thomas Ewing as secretary of the interior." AAmong the congressmen elected in 1848 were David T. Disney, a man who narrowly missed the high- est political honors of the State ; Lewis D. Campbell, of Butler county; who now began a career of great prominence as a statesman, being five times re-elected, and Moses B. Corwin, a Whig lawyer of Champaign, who had been in Congress in 1839-41, and at this election had a small majority over his son, John A., who ran against him as a Democrat.
The organization of the legislature developed one of the most remarkable political struggles in the history of the State. The pre- vions legislature had attempted to divide Hamilton county into two distriets for the election of representatives, and the legality of this was in dispute. Two sets of representatives appeared, and neither party in the legislature was strong enough to organize, until a plan of compromise was foreed upon them by the eight Free Soil members.
* Elisha Whittlesey, born in Connecticut in 1783, a pioneer lawyer at Can- field in 1806, was appointed comptroller of the treasury by Taylor, and held the place nntil Buchanan's administration. He was restored to the office by Lincoln, and retained it until near his death in 1863.
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In the senate two members of the Free Soil party held the balance of power and much time was consumed in organization. After both honses were organized they did little but meet and adjourn until Jan- uary 8, 1>49, when they met to canvass the vote for governor. The first committee appointed to count the returns threw out two counties and reported the election of Weller. But finally, on January 22d, a return was agreed to which showed a majority for Ford of 311 votes in a total of about three hundred thousand. The next struggle was over the election of a United States senator to succeed William Allen. The Democrats voted for Allen, and the Whigs for Thomas Ewing. But two Free Soilers, Norton S. Townshend, of Lorain, and John F. Morse, of Lake county, controlled the situation. Morse desired the election of Joshua R. Giddings, and Townshend that of Salmon P. Chase. They demanded the repeal of the Black Laws and the election of one of their candidates for United States senator, and in return they were willing to help either of the old parties elect two members of the State supreme court. Giddings, the veteran abolitionist, had too strong a record for some of the Whigs; but Townshend succeeded in his coalition with the Democrats, and Chase was elected to the United States senate.# Rufus P. Spalding and William B. Caldwell were elected to the supreme court, and the Black Laws were modified. so as to remove the most offensive restrictions upon the negroes, and provision was made for separate schools for negro children. But further than this Ohio was not disposed to go in making the negroes citizens. Two years later a proposition to give colored men a right to vote was defeated in the legislature, 108 to 13, and it is probable that less than one-tenth of the voters of the State would have voted to strike the word white ont of the qualifieations for franchise .?
Seabury Ford is to be remembered as the first governor from the Western Reserve. Born at Cheshire, Conn., in 1801, in the same town that was the birthplace of his uncle, Peter Hitchcock, he was brought to Ohio a few years later by his parents, and reared at Bur- ton. He walked back to Connecticut to enter Yale college, where he was the only Ohio student. After studying under Judge Hitchcock he became prominent as a lawyer and efficient as a legislator, repre- senting Geanga county and his senatorial district for a number of years. In politics he was an ardent supporter of Henry Clay. After
* This deal was called bad names by the Whigs of Ohio, who fiercely de- nounced the Free Soil party movement, for partisan reasons. Of its effect upon sentiment something may be judged from the following extract from an historical paper by A. G. Riddle, in 1875: "Whatever may be said of the morality or the expediency of the course pursued. no doubt can exist of its effect upon Mr. Chase and his career. It lost to him at once and forever the confidence of every Whig of middle age in Ohio. Its shadow, never wholly dispelled, always fell upon him and hovered near and darkened his pathway at the critical places in his political after life."
Message of Gov. R. B. Hayes, 1868.
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a term of two years as governor he returned to his home, where he died in 1835.
The year 1849 was marked by another attack of cholera. There were 162 deaths at Columbus, and many other places suffered, but none so severely as Cineinnati, where there were 4,114 deaths that summer. In 1850 Cincinnati was almost depopulated by the panic caused by the epidemic, and the deaths numbered nearly five thou- sand. The disease returned in various parts of the state, during the following summers, the last visitation occurring in 1854.
A feature of internal improvements at this time was a sudden notion for plank roads, a scheme not badly adapted to some parts of the undrained country. A hundred companies for such work were incorporated by the legislature in 1850. A good many roads were laid, which have long since disappeared.
The census of 1550 showed a population in the State of practically two million ( 1,980,329), of which only 25,000 were colored people. Beyond the Ohio were two states, perfectly adapted to white labor, but denied it by the unfortunate policy of the South ; states that fifty years before had seven times the population of Ohio; but Ohio now had as many people as Kentucky and Tennessee together, and among her people she did not have, as they did, 450,000 ignorant slaves, a degradation of labor and a menace to civilization. Virginia, one hundred and fifty years older than Ohio, with a third more area, abundant mines of coal and iron and magnificent ocean ways, had fallen far behind in population, and, even counting one-third of her people as personal property, her assessed valuation was a hundred millions less than that of Ohio. Cineimati, the metropolis of Ohio, with a population of 115,000, had already equalled the ancient city of New Orleans, and far surpassed Charleston and Louisville. There was a lesson in this that the South would not see. The South insisted on settling more of the territory of the United States with a comparatively small number of white people who should monopolize the land and work it with slaves, to the exclusion of foreign immigra- tion, and against such a policy the opposition daily grew stronger in the North. California, acquired through the war with Mexico, in 1848 became the subject of contention on account of the discovery of gold and the great rush to the gold fields in 1849. The pioneers framed a constitution prohibiting slavery and asked admission as a stato.# The radical Southern leaders thereupon threatened seeession from the Union if slaves were barred from that part of the Pacific coast. They asserted what Benton called, in derision, "the transmi- gratory function of the constitution and the instantaneous transpor- tation of itself in its slavery attributes into all acquired territory."
* John McDougall, son of a pioneer trader at Chillicothe and a captain in the Mexican war, was elected the first lientenant-governor of the new state. and governor in 1851.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
The northern men fighting for free soil demanded the admission of California and New Mexico withont slavery, the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia, and the prohibition of the slave trade between the states. Clay proposed a compromise, and Daniel Web- ster made his famous speech of March. 1>50, by which, said Giddings, "a blow was struck at freedom and the constitutional rights of the states which no southern arm could have given."#
It was Webster's purpose, by pointing out the excesses and misun- derstandings of both sides, to calm the fears of the South and end the anti-slavery agitation in the North. For the moment. Clay and Web- ster snceceded. The compromise prevailed, California was admitted free, Utah and New Mexico were left as territories without the Wil- mot proviso, and a new fugitive slave law was enacted, so severe that Seward considered it part of a conspiracy to justify secession. In this great political battle, during which threats of dismembering the Union were freely made in Congress and in the legislatures of the Sonth, Ohio's free soil leaders, Salmon P. Chase and Joshua R. Gid- dings, made a stand with Seward, Hale, and Thaddeus Stevens, "on the principle of permitting no more slavery in the national domain, and, while the Southern leaders were dreaming and talking of the eon- quest of Mexico and Cuba, they determined it should be known that there was a band of men totally opposed to the conquest of more terri- tory muless it were expressly understood that it should be dedicated to freedom." The impartial years, says Mr. Rhodes, have vindicated their course as right.
The compromise of 1550 was approved, however, by the greater part of the people of Ohio, because it promised sectional peace. An enthusiastie meeting at Dayton resolved that the settlement was the best attainable, and that "the Union, the constitution and the laws must and shall be maintained." This meeting was addressed by Clement L. Vallandigham, born in 1820 at New Lisbon, where his father had been a Presbyterian clergyman and teacher since 1507. The young man had become a lawyer and newspaper writer at Day- ton, led his party in the legislature of 184>-49, and opposed the repeal of the Black Laws. He snecceded L. D. Campbell in Congress in 1857, and was one of the ablest of those men in the North who from this time became particularly noted for advocating sectional peace, at any price.
But far more important in permanent influence than the speech of Vallandigham or the Dayton resolutions was a little family letter writ- ten about the same time by Mrs. Edward Beecher to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Harriet Beccher Stowe. In it were these words, inspired by the compromise and the fugitive slave law: "Hattie, if I could use a pen as von can, I would write something that would make this whole
* Rhodes' History of the United States.
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nation feel what an acenrsed thing slavery is." Harriet Beecher had come to C'ineinnati in 1832, with her father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, the president of Lane Theological seminary, had married Prof. Calvin E. Stowe of the same institution, in 1836, and afterward had busied her- self in writing for the newspapers and magazines of that day. For a time she assisted her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, in editing the Daily Journal. She was familiar with the doings of Levi Coffin, and had seen her father and brother arm themselves to take to an interior station of the Underground railroad a servant, considered free, that a former master proposed to recall to slavery. Her mind had been filled with pictures of border state slavery-the prices set on negro women for their qualifications as breeders, slave anetions with their disregard of modesty and humanity, the parting of families-happen- ings quite real and unquestionable, and defended only on the ground that the negroes were not unhappy in such conditions, and that the anguish of separated families and the pangs of deseerated modesty existed only in the minds of people north of the Ohio. To some extent the defense was reasonable. But that class of negroes keen- witted enough to escape into Ohio did not lack in descriptive powers nor manifestation of human attributes. Being also of a restive and uncontrollable nature, the fugitives were likely to hear the marks of ernel scourgings, brandings like cattle and cropped cars. When she left Cincinnati for Bowdoin college, whither her husband was trans- ferred in 1850, Mrs. Stowe had in hand the elements of a thrilling story of border life, and in 1851-52, in response to the suggestion already mentioned, she gave it to the world in the National Era, pub- lished at Washington by Gamaliel . Bailey and John G. Whittier. Such was the source of Unele Tom's Cabin, the greatest American novel up to that time, and, very likely, yet the greatest. Within a few months Mrs. Stowe was the most famous woman in the world. Eighteen publishing houses in London were kept busy supplying the demand for the book in Great Britain, and before long, it was trans- lated into all modern languages. In August, 1852, the story was dramatized, and the hoodhun of the galleries who had delighted in pelting abolitionists with rotten eggs was persuaded to weep over the sorrows of Uncle Tom and meditate vengeance against slave hunters.
The exciting national issnes were much discussed in Ohio during the State campaign of 1850, but there was a general disposition to accept the compromise. Reuben Wood, of Cuyahoga county, was elected on the Democrat ticket by a plurality of 12,000 over William Johnston, Whig, while Edward Smith, the candidate of the Free Soil party, had about 13,500 votes. Wood, an eminent lawyer and popu- lar politician, was a native of Vermont ( 1792), had been a state sen- ator in 1825-27, and afterward a judge of the common pleas and supreme courts. Being "a giant in stature, erect as an Indian, with the presence of a chief and the bearing of a soldier," he was known as
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the "Tall Chief of the Cuyahogas," when he was a candidate before the Democratic national convention in 1852, for the nomination for president of the United States.
Senator Corwin had been called to the cabinet of President Fill- more as secretary of the treasury after the death of President Taylor, and Thomas Ewing, who retired from the cabinet after the death of Taylor, was appointed in Corwin's place as senator. The legislature of 1850-51 had the duty of electing a successor, and the task proved to be an arduous one. The candidate of the Democrats was Henry B. Payne, a lawyer at Cleveland since 1833 and already conspicuous in the railroad and manufacturing enterprises of the State. His main opponent at first was Hiram Griswold, with Joshna R. Giddings receiving enough votes to prevent an election. Griswold finally dropped out and Thomas Ewing, Thomas Corwin, Benjamin F. Wade and Ebenezer Lane were successively voted for against Payne, until the opposition mainly concentrated on Wade, and he was eleeted by a majority of one on the thirty-seventh ballot. This was one of the most important events in the history of the State, as it gave Ohio a double leadership in the United States senate in favor of that policy that presently gained ascendeney in the North and sus- tained the war for the Union.
During this exciting struggle a convention was framing a new con- stitution for the State. The convention was called by act of Febru- ary, 1550, and convened at Columbus, May 6th, with one hundred and eight members. William Medill, of Fairfield county, a Delaware man who had become one of the lawyers of the famous Lancaster bar in 1×32, and as a Democrat had presided as speaker of the Ohio honse, served in congress and held office at Washington as assistant-post- master-general and commissioner of Indian affairs, was made presi- dent of the convention. Among the members were Rufus P. Ranney, Josiah Scott, Peter Hitchcock and Joseph R. Swan, justices of the supreme court : Charles Reemelin, a noted writer on polities and economies ; William S. Groesbeck and Henry Stanbery, eminent jur- ists: William P. Cutler, son of Ephraim Cutler, who sat in the first convention : Simeon Nash, the law writer, and Otway Curry, a bril- liant editor .* Governor Vance, while a delegate to the convention, was stricken with paralysis, from which he died in the following year.
The convention sat at Columbus until July 9th, and at Cincinnati from December 2, 1850, to March 10. 1851, when the fruit of its labor was adopted as the constitution of Ohio. It was a much more elaborate instrument than that of 1502; and like its predecessor has served the State for half a century withont much amendment. . 1 marked change was that the legislature was deprived of the election of state officers and judges, which was referred to popular vote,
*Ryan's History of Ohio.
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showing a progress of confidence in the ability of the people to govern themselves, since the days of Jefferson. At the same time, the exper- ienee in canal and railroad building persuaded the constitution framers to deny the people of any city, town or county the right of voting aid and ineurring debt in behalf of any corporation, and it was provided that the State should never again contract any debt for the purpose of internal improvement, or be a shareholder in any corpora- tion. In the attempt to regulate taxation the constitution went so far as to specify exactly what should be taxed, and consequently the tax- ing of franchises, a matter of great importance fifty years later, is not allowable in Ohio.
The meetings of the legislature were changed to the first Monday of January, every other year, and both representatives and senators were to be elected biennially. The membership of the house was fixed at one hundred, of the senate at thirty-three. There was to be a new state officer, the lieutenant-governor, and all state officials were to be elected biennially, except the auditor, who should hold office four years. A supreme court of five members was created, the justices to hold five years, and since then the number has been increased to six, with six-year terms. The first supreme court, under the new constitution, was composed of Thomas W. Bartley, John A. Corwin, Allen G. Thurman, Rufus P. Ranney and William B. Caldwell. In place of the nineteen judicial districts previously existing, nine were created, with three common pleas judges in each, and these three with a judge of the supreme court presiding, constituted a dis- triet court. Special incorporations by the legislature were forbid- den. The faith of the State was pledged for the payment of its public debt, ineurred in public improvements, and a sinking fund was created. The powers of the governor were not increased and the veto power was withheld.
This new constitution was submitted to the people at a special election in June, 1851, and adopted by a vote of 125,264 to 109,276. At the same time a separate vote was cast on this section: "No license to traffic in intoxicating liquors shall hereafter be granted in this State ; but the general assembly may, by law, provide against evils resulting therefrom," and the clause was adopted by a majority of abont nine thousand.
The first elections under the new constitution were in October, 1851, beginning the odd year elections in Ohio, and as congressmen and part of the State officers were to be chosen in even years, Ohio has since had annual elections. At this election of 1551 the Demo- erat party was successful. Governor Renben Wood was re-elected by a majority of 26,000 over Sammel F. Vinton, the Whig candidate, and Sammel Lewis, who was put up by the Liberty party, received about 17,000 votes. The remainder of the ticket elected was Will- iam Medill, lieutenant-governor; William Trevitt, secretary of
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state ; William D. Morgan, auditor of state; John G. Breslin, treas- urer of state; George E. Pugh,# attorney-general; and members of the board of publie works, James B. Steedman, George W. Many- penny and AAlexander P. Miller. The terms of office of all these offi- cials began in January, 1852.
It should be noted that in this period the first state fairs were attracting much attention. They were begun at Cincinnati in 1-50, and held annually with much success at various cities. Nor should it be forgotten that it was a time of great decline in the sheep grow- ing industry. There were about four million sheep in the State in 1×4>, but many wool factories went out of business after the tariff change of 1846, and wool growing became unprofitable. This had a marked political influence.
The year 1852 was a memorable one. On February 1, 1852, the old statehouse, built by the founders of Columbus, burned down. A new statehonse had already been begun in 1839, and was completed in 1861, at a cost of $1,644,677. In February Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, visited Columbus and Cincinnati, by the invita- tion and at the expense of the State and citizens, but failed to arouse sufficient enthusiasm to involve the country in war with Austria. In June the Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott for president and the Democrats, on the forty-ninth ballot, named Franklin Pierce : one of Ohio's sons, Lewis Cass, failing in his great ambition. In July the great political hero of the West, Henry Clay, died, and thousands wept as his body was borne through Ohio. In October Daniel Webster passed away, and with the loss of these two leaders, the fate of the Whig party was certain. In the fall, while the Whigs received a crushing defeat, the valiant Giddings made a successful fight in a congressional district that had been arranged to secure his overthrow, and there was a famous jollification dinner at Paines- ville.
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