USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 34
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The period of Governor Wood's administration was notable in the railroad history of Ohio. In February, 1851, the first through train was run from Columbus to Cleveland, and the governor and his staff and the legislature were treated to an excursion. In September, 1>51, the Great Miami railroad ( Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton), was opened, having been constructed by the sale of stock in Cinein- nati mainly, and bonds in New York, without such dependence on municipal and county subscription as was common. It soon became the great thoroughfare of Cincinnati. This and the Little Miami were the only railroads at Cincinnati until 1>57, when the Ohio & Mississippi was completed westward to Vincennes. The Marietta & Cincinnati, begun in 1-51, was not completed to C'ineinnati till
* George Ellis Pugh, one of the great lawyers of the State, was born at Cin- cinnati, November 28. 1822. He was educated at Miami university, and served as a captain in the Mexican war.
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1866. The Bellefontaine to Union railroad was opened in 1853, and a portion of the Cincinnati, Richmond and Chicago. The C'in- cinnati & Zanesville was begun in 1851, and the Columbus, Piqua & Indiana was in construction. In 1852-34 the Ohio & Pennsylvania was built to Crestline from the east, and the Ohio & Indiana from Crestline to Fort Wayne, but it was not until 1558 that trains were run over these lines from Pittsburg to Chicago. The Cleveland, Warren & Pittsburg was completed, making connection with Pittst burg and the east. The Cleveland & Mahoning Valley road was begun, but dragged along for several years, its principal promo- ter, Jacob Perkins, declaring on his deathbed in Cuba, "You may inscribe on my tombstone, Died of the Mahoning Valley railroad." The Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark, a combination of railroads laid with iron-plated plank rails, was reconstructed ; construction was in progress on the Central Ohio (Columbus to Bellaire), afterward merged in the Baltimore & Ohio system. It is interesting to trace the origin, in this period, of the Lake Shore system. The Junetion railroad company, chartered in 1546 to link the Cleveland, Colum- bus & Cincinnati and the Mad River & Lake Erie, took the old Ohio railroad right of way and pulled up its piles and timbers to make room for ties and iron rails ; the Toledo, Norwalk & Cleveland com- pany, to connect Toledo with the Cleveland and Columbus road, was incorporated in 1850, and the Port Clinton railroad company in 1852. In 1853 these companies were consolidated in the Cleveland & Toledo railroad company, which built the roads. Meanwhile, in 1852, the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula road had been built, to connect with the Pennsylvania lines to Erie and eastward, and the original Toledo & AAdrian road was being extended under various names to Chicago. The lines remained separate until after the great National war.
The total mileage of railroads in 1:52 is given as $90. During the next ten years over two thousand more miles of iron track were laid in the State and equipped with locomotives and cars. This largely monopolized the energy and capital of the State and the progress of building in all the states enlisted most of the capital of the east, for it meant an expenditure of over $100,000,000, in Ohio alone.
Of great importance in the financial history of the State was the Free Banking law enacted in 1851. Its principal author was Will- iam Lawrence, born at Mt. Pleasant in 1819, who was on the threshold of a distinguished career. Under this law the State sup- plied the banks with paper money, somewhat as the United States does national banks now under the financial system of Salmon P. C'hase. The Ohio law authorized the auditor of state to issue notes to banks, not to exceed three times their paid-up capital, when they should have made a deposit of the same amount of State or United
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States bonds. This made four banking systems in Ohio: those banks chartered before 1×45, which had $1,500,000 capital; the State bank and branches, with a capital of $4,000,000; the inde- pendent banks, with $720,000 capital, and the Free banks, which in 1×45 had about $700,000 capital. The issues of these banks formed the currency that circulated in business. The numerous systems aided the natural tendeney to inflation, which continued until 1854, where there was a crisis in the stock market in New York and a responsive run on the Ohio stock bauks for eoin. Though the notes of these banks were secured by bonds, they suffered depreciation in valne, and the notes of the old fashioned banks, withont sneh securi- ties on deposit, became almost worthless.#
Under the provisions of the new constitution the legislature ( March 14, 1853), passed an act for the reorganization of the com- mon school system, for which Ohio is mainly indebted to Harvey Rice, of Cuyahoga county. Radical changes were introduced, amounting to the founding of the modern system of public educa- tion in Ohio.
A famous event of 1853 was the law suit growing out of the loss of the steamer Martha Washington by fire on the Mississippi river, with a cargo heavily insured. Conspiracy was charged and the most famous lawyers of the State, including Thomas Ewing, Noah Swayne, Judge Walker, Durbin Ward, George Pendleton, Henry Stanbery and George Pugh took part in the trial in the United States court at Columbus.
Governor Wood, becoming financially embarrassed, resigned July 15, 1853, to become United States consul at Valparaiso, and Lient .- Gov. William Medill succeeded him. In October Medill was elected governor as the candidate of the Democratic party, receiving nearly 150,000 votes. Nelson Barrere, nominated by the Whigs, polled only 85,557, while the Free Soil people rolled up 50,000 for Samuel Lewis. The legislature was so strongly Democratie (three to one ) that George E. Pugh was elected United States senator in March, 1854, by a large majority on the first ballot, to succeed Sal- mon P. Chase. But this remarkable political triumph was short lived. At the time of Pugh's election Congress was struggling over a new extension of slavery in the territories, that permanently divided the party of Jackson and Van Buren. Stephen A. Douglas, desiring to give a territorial organization to the great western region then known as Nebraska, embraced in a bill for that purpose what he called "popular sovereignty," which, in brief, was allowing the set- tlers to decide whether they would have slavery or not. This he did to gain the votes of the Southern congressmen, who otherwise would leave Nebraska in the hands of the Indians.
* Journal of Commerce History of Banking.
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At the opening of the debate on this question early in 1853, Sena- for Chase was the leader of the opposition in the United States senate. "He was, with perhaps the exception of Summer, the hand- somest man in the senate, and as he rose to make his plea for the maintenance of plighted faith, all felt the force of his commanding presence. More than six feet tall, he had a frame and figure pro- portioned to his height. With his large head, massive brow and smoothly shaven face, he looked like a Roman senator."# Ben Wade, Seward and Summer, following him, were the other great opponents of Douglas. During the discussion a Carolina senator drew a pathetic picture of the cruelty of compelling him to leave behind the "old mammy," his negro nurse in childhood, if he should seek a new home in the West, and Wade provoked the laughter of the North by the quick retort that no one could find fault with the senator's migration to Kansas, nor his taking his mammy with him, but there was serions objection to his selling her after he got there.
Modified so as to provide for two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, the bill permitting the introduction of slavery into them and annull- ing the compromise boundary line of 1820, passed Congress despite the desperate struggle of Chase and Wade and Giddings and their allies. Thousands of people in the North were now convinced that the aggressions of slavery would never cease until the whole country was overspread with it. As an extremist, William Lloyd Garrison publiely burned a copy of the United States constitution, declaring, "The Union must be-dissolved," and extremists of the South were of the same mind when they waxed angry at the notion of forbidding them to emigrate to the west with their laborers as slaves. At the same time the North was alarmed by the efforts of the administration to annex Cuba, apparently as slave territory, to balance new western states, which resulted a few months later in the "Ostend manifesto." by the United States ministers in Europe, declaring that the United States could not enjoy peace until Cuba "was embraced within its boundaries."
The situation gave birth to a new political party. On July 13, 1854, the anniversary of the ordinance of 1787, a convention met at Columbus, with representatives from every town in the State, to organize all the political elements opposed to the extension of slav- ery into Kansas and Nebraska. This brought together Democrat, Whig, Free Soil and Liberty men ; the friends of Birney and those of VanBuren, and those who elected Chase to the senate in 1549. Already a convention of similar sentiment had adopted the party name of Republican in Michigan, but this Columbus convention did not go so far. The resolutions of the convention contained this
*McCulloch's "Men and Measures."
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pledge: "We will labor assiduously to render inoperative and void that portion of the Kansas and Nebraska bill" permitting the inva- sion by slavery of the territory pledged to free labor by the Missouri compromise, and we will oppose by every lawful and constitutional means every increase of slave territory or slave states "in this repub- lican confederacy." A State ticket was nominated: Joseph R. Swan, a Democrat, for judge of the supreme court and J. Blickens- derfer for member of the board of public works, and in every congres- sional district a candidate was nominated or approved by this new party opposed to slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, and known as the Anti-Nebraska party. The old party lines were abandoned and the people were arraved definitely on this issue, with the result that the new party swept the State, electing Swan by a majority of 75,000 and carrying every congressional district. Congressmen David T. Disney, Alfred P. Edgerton, Andrew Ellison, Moses B. Corwin, Wil- son Shannon and others were defeated ; John Scott Harrison (son of the General ), Lewis D. Campbell, Matthias H. Nichols, Aaron Har- lan, William R. Sapp, Edward Ball, Edward Wade and Joshua R. Giddings were re-elected, and among the new names appeared those of Benjamin Stanton, a Quaker native of Belmont county; Sammel Galloway, of Columbus, a man of great eloquence and humor, to be known later as the intimate friend of Tod and Lincol; John Sher- man, then thirty-one years old, a lawyer of ten years' practice ; and John A. Bingham, of Cadiz, a Pennsylvanian who had come to Ohio in 1840, practiced law, and occasionally met in political debate that staunch Democrat, Edwin M. Stanton. Bingham began at this elec- tion a career of sixteen years in Congress, Sherman one of forty.
These men were Ohio's contribution to that memorable Congres- sional battle of the winter of 1855-56. While the Anti-Nebraska men had been very successful in Northern states, their vietory was in some degree involved in the sudden spread of another new party, started in 1852, founded upon a secret society for the promotion of native-American rule-the American or "Know Nothing" party, so-called from the apparent ignorance of its leaders regarding the secret society. Among the candidates for speaker of the lower house of Congress was Lewis D. Campbell, of Ohio, who had the favor of some of the Northern "Know-Nothings" and the support of Horace Greeley. The Anti-Nebraskan congressmen, led by the veteran JJoshua R. Giddings, voted for Nathaniel P. Banks. The contest continued from the opening of Congress until early in Feb- rnary, with great excitement and angry discussion, in which Gid- dings with his stalwart frame and heroie courage bore the brunt of the battle. Finally, on the 133d ballot, Banks was elected by a plurality of three, and Giddings, the "Father of the House," enjoyed the reward of sixteen years of struggle. Ohio east eighteen of the votes necessary to elect Banks, and two for Campbell, and her influ-
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ence was pre-eminent in winning the victory. There had been much talk of "our section," among the Southern congressmen. There were threats, also, of secession. But now Giddings took his revenge, and shouted to the opposition, "Your history is written; your doom is scaled." "We do not intend to dissolve the Union, and we do not intend to let you do it." Predicting that his party would soon have the senate and the president, he warned his opponents, "Then those who threaten disunion had better look out."
Before this event, in 1553, came the first convention in Ohio that revived the old Jeffersonian name of Republican. It was called to order at Columbus by Joshua R. Giddings, and John Sherman was made permanent chairman. Its membership included representa- tives of the Democrat, Whig, American and Free Soil parties. The American wing, led by Lewis D. Campbell, desired the nomination for governor of Jacob Brinkerhoff, of Richland county, for fifteen vears a judge of the supreme court, but Giddings' support gave the honor to Salmon P. Chase. The Democrats who did not join the new party nominated William Medill, and a remnant of Whigs named the veteran Allen Trimble, but Chase received a decided pln- rality, nearly 147,000 to 131,000 for Medill and 24,000 for Trimble. The full ticket was successful.
The installation of the new officials in January, 1856, was fol- lowed in a few months, by the discovery of a deficit in the state treas- ury, which cansed the resignation of Treasurer William Il. Gibson, who had succeeded his brother-in-law, John G. Breslin. Amasa P. Stone was appointed to the vacancy.
The annual elections in this period kept the State in a turmoil of excitement. In 1856 came the famous Fremont presidential cam- paign. As a prelude occurred the personal assault upon Charles Sinner by Preston Brooks, in Congress, and when Anson Burlin- game challenged Brooks to a duel, in behalf of Summer, whose life was in danger, Lewis D. Campbell was selected as one of the seconds of the Michigan congressman. But Canada was proposed as the scene of the fight, and Brooks declined to cross the Northern states.
The national conventions of 1856 were held on the Ohio river. First, there met at Pittsburg the former Whigs, Democrats and Free Soilers who now took the title of Republicans, in a memorable con- vention largely dominated by Joshma R. Giddings, Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin F. Wade. Though Judge MeLean was strongly sup- ported, they nominated for president John C. Fremont, the "path- finder" of the Rocky Mountains and son-in-law of Thomas H. Benton. The Democrats came further west, in recognition of the new power in the nation, and held their convention at Cincinnati, nominating Buchanan, Ohio gave Fremont a plurality of nearly 17,000 over Buchanan, while 28,000 votes were cast for Fillmore, the candidate of the Americans and Whigs. In the congressional
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elections there was a Democrat or conservative gain, notably in the election in the First district of George H. Pendleton, a young lawyer of Cincinnati, beloved for his courteous manner and high character ; in the Second district of William S. Groesbeck, of Cincinnati, an older man who had been prominent in the constitutional convention ; in the Third district of Clement L. Vallandigham, who was adjudged by Congress to have a majority over Campbell, though the latter was at first awarded a majority of nineteen; and in the Twelfth district of Samuel Sullivan Cox, of Zanesville, grandson of the former state treasurer, Samuel Sullivan. He was then but twenty-two years old, but had earned a diplomatie appointment and considerable fame as editor of the Ohio Statesman.
The election of Buchanan, despite the large vote polled by Fre- mont, was a victory for the party now engaged in struggle with Northern colonists for the possession of Kansas. John Brown, after leaving Summit county, Ohio, for the East, had become one of the recruits for the Kansas war, and being joined in 1854 by five of his sons from Ohio, made his home near Ossawatomie, and began to have national fame. Just after the inauguration of Buchanan came the famous Dred Scott decision of the United States supreme court. The law, in 1856, as announced by Chief Justice Taney, was that when Dred Scott's owner, in Missouri, took him into Illinois, he remained a slave, in spite of the Illinois laws forbidding slavery, because Dred Scott, being a negro, was not a citizen of the United States. Though Illinois might recognize him as a citizen and grant him the citizen's privilege of lawful marriage, when his owner took him back to Missouri he continued in his former condition as a slave. and had no claim to liberty, wife or children. The same ruling had previously been made in cases of negroes taken into Ohio and back into Kentucky. The court also, in declaring the Missouri compro- mise unconstitutional, made it impossible to draw any line on slavery extension in the future. Judge MeLean, the representative of Ohio on the supreme bench, dissented, and held that if Dred Scott became free on entering Illinois with his master, he remained free when he returned to Missouri. In plain words he stated the danger that threatened the nation. "It seems to me the principle laid down will enable the people of a slave state to introduce slavery into a free state, for a longer or shorter time, as may serve their convenience, and by returning the slave to the state whence he was brought, by force or otherwise, the status of slavery attaches, and protects the rights of the master and defies the sovereignty of the free states." A year later Abraham Lincoln startled the North by his clear and forcible statement of the same truth, which had been realized by the enemies of slavery for many years, inspiring them to their thankless and actually dangerous labors. "This government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free," said Lincoln. "It will become all
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one thing or all the other. 3 Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South."
In 1856 it became apparent that the great absorption of the capital of the country in building railroads, such as those that then extended through all parts of Ohio, was to produce serious results, At the same time there was a change in the tariff, upon which the evil that followed has been blamed. In 1857 the failure of the Ohio Life and Trust company started a panic. There was great depression of prices and loss of employment among working men, caused by sus- pension of manufacturing enterprises and railroad building, but on account of the famine in Ireland and the Crimean war the farmers did not suffer. The main effect in Ohio was the collapse of the rail- road companies. Nearly all of them failed to pay interest, suffered foreclosure of mortgages, and went into the hands of receivers, from which most did not emerge until after 1860. A remarkable excep- tion was the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula, under the presi- deney of Amasa J. Stone, one of the greatest financiers of Ohio. His road was the most perfect in the State and ten years later had the best financial record, all the original stockholders who had retained their stock having enjoyed regular and handsome returns.
As a result of the misfortunes of the railroads there were strikes of railroad employes, notably one at Chillicothe, January 1, 1855. The men took possession of the property of the Marietta & Cincin- nati road, and stopped the trains, but the city police put forty strikers under arrest and the railroad company brought suit against them for $50,000 damages.
It can be said of Ohio that her financial record during this crisis was exceptional. Her public debt had reached its maximum, $20,000,000, in 1>45, but, though there was talk of repudiation, the honor of the State was rigidly maintained. In 1857 an act was passed for the incorporation of the Bank of Ohio, with offices at Cleveland, Cincinnati and New York. The bank maintained specie payments through the year 1857. The next step in regard to money was made by the legislature in 1858, and it is of great interest as indicating the position of financial independence which it was then believed the State had attained. What was called the independent treasury system was adopted, and provision was made for the gradual retirement of all bank notes and the collection of taxes in coin only. The State bank was to come to an end in 1866, and the free banks in 1872, and after that nothing but hard money was to be receivable for publie dnes in the State. Ohio was in such good financial con- dition when the crisis of 1560 arrived that the banks did not suspend in unison with those of the rest of the country, and there was much
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dispute in the board of control as to whether the banks should be allowed to suspend specie payments in 1962,
Governor Chase was re-elected governor in 1857 by a very small plurality. Henry B. Payne was selected as the Democrat candidate, and received 159,294 votes to 160,575 for Chase. ,Philadelph Van- Trump, the American candidate, polled over 10,000 votes. The legislature was strongly Democratic. But in the following year Christopher P. Wolcott, Republican, was elected over Durbin Ward, the Democrat candidate for attorney-general, by twenty thousand.
Governor Chase's administration extended from January, 1856, to January, 1860. Throughout his administration the legislature, by special sessions, met every January. One of the most important events of this period was the reorganization of the militia and a review of the military forces in 1858. There was practically a state of war in "bleeding Kansas," with the sacking of towns and bloody encounters of small parties.
In 1858 occurred one of the last attempts to make the fugitive slave law effective in Ohio. A young negro at Oberlin, supposed to be a fugitive, was taken by four slave hunters to Wellington, where a crowd rescued him without violence, and sent him to Canada. The law was invoked, and twenty-seven indietments returned in the United States court, against citizens of Oberlin and Wellington, ineluding one professor. Two were tried and convicted, and four- teen went to jail at Cleveland, refusing to give bail. When the State supreme court was asked for a writ of habeas corpus, this relief was denied by a division of three to two. If one judge had been of differ- ent mind, says President J. II. Fairebild, in his history of Oberlin, Governor Chase would have sustained "a decision releasing the pris- oners, by all the powers at his command, and the United States was as fully committed to the execution of the fugitive slave law. This would have placed Ohio in conflict with the general government in defense of State rights, and a war might have come in 1859 instead of 1861." A great mass meeting was held at Cleveland, May 24th, to express sympathy with the prisoners, and Joshua R. Giddings, referring to the charges of the Democratic press that he had coun- seled foreible resistance to the law, declared, "God knows it is the first truth they have ever told about me." It is pertinent to add that in the fall of the same year this veteran radical was defeated in the nomination for Congress by John Hutchins, by a majority of one vote. Finally the men in jail were liberated through a compromise with the slave hunters, who were alarmed by proceedings for kidnap- ping. So, said the Cleveland Plaindealer, "the government has been beaten at last, with law, justice and faets all on its side, and Oberlin, with its rebellious higher law creed, is triumphant."
Stanley Matthews, of Cincinnati, a Free Soil man appointed United States district attorney by President Buchanan, enforced
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the provisions of the law against a white man of Cincinnati, who had given a fugitive negro couple some bread and water in the pri- vacy of his home, and the sinful good Samaritan was sent to prison. Twenty years after, this enforcement of the United States statutes was recalled against Matthews, causing his defeat as a candidate for Congress, a circumstance that would tend to vindicate those who considered the fugitive slave law an outrage upon the essential prin- ciples of humanity and civilization.
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