USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 35
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Governor Chase, throughout his administration, attempted to arouse interest in military organization and drill, undoubtedly because he foresaw the danger of an appeal of the great political questions to the high court of war. He was far from a military man himself, but he sought to make the State capable of meeting any emergency. Ellsworth, of Chicago, had shown that militia might be interested in something more than the manual of arms, and Chase, with legislative support, encouraged similar companies of Zonaves in Ohio. A new arsenal was established, and new arms received from the government. \ convention of nearly two hundred officers met at Columbus to devise means of promoting the militia systeni, and at Dayton Governor Chase had the satisfaction of reviewing a gathering of nearly thirty companies. The result was slight in value, yet all the westward states combined did not possess so large a militia body as the First Ohio regiment, under the command of Colonel King, of Dayton."
In 1859 occurred John Brown's wild raid from Pennsylvania to Harper's Ferry, to promote an insurrection of negroes; the calling out of the militia of Virginia : the battle, in which one negro student of Oberlin lost his life, and the trials and hangings, in which another Oberlin negro student shared the fate of the old abolitionist. After this, there was a feeling that the crisis was near at hand. The last official declaration of Governor C'hase was in reply to a notice from Governor Wise of Virginia that Virginia troops would pursue abo- lition bands into sister states if necessary to punish them, Chase responded with dignity that Ohio would obey the constitution and the laws and discountenance unlawful aets, but under no circum- stances would the military of another state be permitted to invade her territory.
At the state election in 1859 there were no tickets but the Demo- cratie, headed by Rufus P. Ranney, and the Republican, headed by William Dennison, Jr. Dennison was elected by a majority of over 13,000, and the legislature, strongly Republican, sent Salmon P. Chase to the United States senate to succeed Pugh.
The new governor, inangurated in January, 1560, was a native of Cincinnati, born in 1815, son of the proprietor of one of the most
*"Ohio in the War," by Whitelaw Reid.
I-20
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famous hotels of the West. In early manhood he married a daughter of the great stage proprietor, William Neil, of Columbus, and embarked in the practice of law at the capital. He had shown marked ability mainly in connection with railroad and bank man- agement prior to 1860, though he had served a term in the State senate, but in the campaign against Ranney, an eminent lawyer and "acknowledged leader of the Ohio bar," he had achieved considerable popularity. He began his term with the eventful year of 1860, destined to be the crisis of the long pending conflict between the free and slave states. The situation was already serions enough for Gov- ernor Chase to say in his retiring message, January, 1860: "Ohio has uttered no menace of disunion when the American people have seen fit to entrust the powers of the Federal government to citizens of other political views of a majority of her citizens. No threats of disunion in a similar contingency by citizens of other states will excite in her any sentiments save those of sorrow and reprobation. They will not move her from her course. She will neither dissolve the Union herself nor eonsent to its dissolution by others. She will abide in the Union and under the constitution maintain liberty."
Ohio, at this critical epoch, had a population of 2,343,739. This was one-eighth of the people of the states that might be expected to unitedly support the national government, and, with 300,000 young men, it was to be expected that the State would play an important part in the approaching confliet. To this importance had Ohio arisen. Sixty years before a wilderness, she was now indispensable to the maintenance of the Union to which she had been admitted in 1:03. Besides, she had contributed an army of pioneers to the great states of Indiana and Illinois, which now contained three mil- lion people, as well as to other states west to California and north to Lake Superior. The census of 1>60 revealed that the center of pop- ulation of the United States, which had fallen further and further west from Baltimore since 1790, was now in Ohio, a State sixty years before on the frontier.
The State debt in 1860 was $14,250,000; the municipal debt nearly $10,000,000 ; but if to these were added corporate and private debt to make a total of $170,000,000, that total was only nineteen per cent of the assessed valuation of property. The people were pay- ing in taxes for local and general purposes eleven million annually. The efficiency of the State government was shown by the mainte- nanee of a reform school as well as a penitentiary, an institution for the blind, deaf and dumb, and three asylums for the insane.
In the way of educational facilities, the State had twenty-two col- leges, eleven theologieal schools, one law school, ten medieal schools, ten commercial schools, ninety academies, one hundred and thirty- five private and parochial schools, one hundred and fifty-seven high
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BEFORE THE WAR.
schools, and 11,673 free common schools. The beginnings of Ohio university at Athens, and Miami university at Oxford, as well as Kenyon, Western Reserve, Oberlin, and Lane theologieal school, have been mentioned. Besides these there were Marietta college, founded in 1535; Ohio Wesleyan university at Delaware, founded in 1842; Wittenberg college, at Springfield, chartered in 1843; St. Xavier's college, chartered in 1846; Otterbein university, founded in 1849; Franklin college, founded in 1825; Muskingum college, 1837; Heidelberg college, 1850; Urbana university, 1850; Capital univer- sity, 1550; Antioch college, 1852 ; Baldwin university, 1856; Mount I'nion college, 1858. Nearly all of these, except the institutions at Athens and Oxford, were supported and controlled by particular religious denominations. The State had no great eentral university, such as was founded by Michigan. But in these numerous small colleges, where the students were comparatively few, there was earnest work done, and a democratie equality among the students, that tended to the proper training of men for noble functions in society.
Something has been said to indicate the prominence that Ohio had obtained in matters of intellect by her brilliant statesmen, jurists and journalists. In the literary field there have not been mentioned the Cary sisters, Alice and Phoebe, daughters of Robert Cary, a pioneer of 1503, who were born and reared at Cineinnati, began the publica- tion of their poems in the Cincinnati papers, and were among the most popular poets of America from 1850 until after the civil war. In seience considerable distinction had been obtained by John Strong Newberry, born in Connecticut, but reared from two years of age in Ohio and educated at the Western Reserve college and Cleveland medical college. From 1555 to 1859 he was engaged in geological exploration in the far west with government expeditions. William S. Sullivant, of Columbus, son of a pioneer of that region, associated with Leo Lesquereux, a Swiss who came there about 1850, became the highest American anthority in one of the most difficult depart- ments of botany, and Lesquereux began his famous study of the fos- sil plants of the coal beds.
William Davis Gallagher, born in Philadelphia in 1808, but reared in the Miami valley from the age of eight years, editor of the Cincinnati Mirror and a busy journalist, made himself famous in 1845 by a ballad, "The Spotted Fawn," and wrote some other things that were better. "There are few American poems," says William Dean Howells, who was then writing sketches and poems for the papers, "that impart a truer and tenderer feeling for nature than Gallagher's .August,' beginning 'Dust on thy summer mantle, dust.'" Coates Kinney, born in New York, came to Ohio at fourteen years of age in 1840, lived at Xenia, and in 1849 published the poem, "Rain on the Roof," for which, and "Duty Here and Glory There,"
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he will always be remembered. Hiram Powers, born in Vermont in 1805, came to Cincinnati in 1819, and there began his work as a self- taught sculptor. Aided by Nicholas Longworth, he went to Wash- ington and finally to Italy, where he produced his "Greek Slave," the most famous work in early American art. James H. Beard, son of a pioneer shipmaster on the lakes, and reared at Painesville, where his scarcely less famous brother, William H. Beard, was born, after a wandering life as a portrait painter lived for many years at Cin- cinnati, leaving there in 1860 to become a resident of New York and member of the National Academy.
Cincinnati was at this time, with 160,000 population, one of the two greatest cities of the West. Its population was practically the same as that of Boston, New Orleans and St. Louis, and only 50,000 behind Baltimore. Chicago was growing remarkably fast, but as yet had only 110,000 people. Cleveland had less than 45,000, Columbus less than 20,000, and Toledo 15,000. The next in Ohio was Zanesville with about 10,000. In the list of cities of six or seven thousand were Hamilton, Springfield, Chillicothe, Portsmouth and Steubenville, and those of four thousand or five thousand were Xenia, Cireleville, Marietta, Mt. Vernon, Mansfield and Canton.
The corn crop of the State, from the earliest days its main reli- ance, was 75,000,000 bushels a year. The wheat erop was about 18,000,000 on the average. There were 240,000 farmers, mostly owning small farms, and these were one-tenth of all the farmers in the l'uited States. The meat packing industry of the State was worth about. $12,000,000 ammally, and Cincinnati was the great pork packing city of the country, as it was also the greatest city for the manufacture of clothing, not excepting New York, the product being valued at about $16,000,000 annually. Since 1550 there had been enormous progress in developing the natural resources of the State aside from agriculture and grazing. The coal dug had increased from eight million to fifty million bushels, the number of iron furnaces from nineteen to fifty-nine, and the product of salt had grown from 300,000 bushels to two million. The manufactures in iron were estimated at $20,000,000 annually. In 1>54-60 were the beginnings of the iron rolling mills at Cleveland, and people began to prophesy, because of its situation in relation to coal and iron mines, the future greatness of that city.
Another source of wealth was becoming important for the first time. Oil, seeping out of certain rocks, or coming up in springs in some localities, was known to the red men before the days of the pioneers. The Indians used it as a medicine, and the thicker oil for mixing the paint with which they adorned their bodies. When the French commander at Fort Duquesne came into Pennsylvania before the Revolution, the Indians set fire to Oil Creek for his enter- tainment. The abundance of the oil about Fort Stanwix ( Rome,
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BEFORE THE WAR.
N. Y. ), and the use of it by the Indians, gave rise to the name "Sen- eca oil," by which it was known for many years. In northern Ohio the oil exuded in many places from a fine-grained sandstone and elay shale that in eastern Ohio bends down under the coal beds, and there were similar appearances along the exposures of this rock as far south as Portsmouth. When the early settlers were boring salt wells they often encountered off and sometimes a great pressure of gas that caused wonder and alarm. This was the ease along the Little Mus- kingum, where some of the people used the oil in lamps, and Pro- fessor Hildreth, of Marietta, in 1819 predicted that some way would be found to employ the product in lighting the streets of future Ohio eities. At Liverpool, abont the same time, people boring a well for salt water "struck oil," which was forced to the surface, accom- panied by a tremendous explosion of gas. Not valuing such things, they bored deeper and found salt water, but it was too nich defiled with oil to be valuable. So a wooden tube was inserted in the well, and a pump used to encourage the natural flow of the oil. It was nsed about Liverpool as a sovereign remedy for rheumatism, hoarse- ness and throat disease, and for lubricating machinery and cart- wheels. Three barrels of this "roek oil" were taken to Cleveland and offered for sale as rheumatism medicine, but the supply offered was so enormous that the speenlation was defeated.
Distillation of the ernde oil was necessary to make it valuable as an illuminant, and this was not successful, on a large scale, until 1854, when "kerosene," produced at New York, was put on the market. Then it became desirable, for the first time, to bore for oil, and a Comeetient man, Drake, came to Titusville, Pa., in 1859, and began a well, langhed at by the natives, who had so little faith in the enterprise that the village blacksmith refused the explorer credit for the price of a centerbit. But Drake struck oil, at 170 feet, and obtained twenty barrels a day from the well. This was the begin- ning of the great oil exeitement in the West. The product of Penn- sylvania was increased from 2,000 barrels a year to 2,000,000 in 1-59-60. John Strong Newberry wrote in 1859 an account of "The Roek Oils of Ohio," which was published in the Ohio agricultural reports, and said that "already the amount of petroleum daily drawn from the wells bored to proeure it in Pennsylvania and Ohio may be safely estimated to be at least five hundred barrels." He announced the theory that the oil was formed by natural distillation from coal under pressure, and that the oil of strong odor probably had its origin in animal remains. Some two hundred wells were being bored in the Mecca ( Trumbull county) distriet, he said, and twelve or more were sneeessfully pumped. The average depth was fifty feet, and the daily product five to twenty barrels. At Lowellville, in Mahon- ing county, a single well, 157 feet deep, was yielding twenty barrels of light oil a day. Boring had just begun about Liverpool and
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Lorain, and wells had been sunk on Duck creek in Noble county, where oil had been obtained for many years from salt wells, After- ward, 13 wells were sunk about Liverpool, four of them by Colonel Whittlesey. The oil of Ohio promised great returns of wealth even then, for in Europe many of its uses had been discovered. Out of the oil from the West and East Indies there had been obtained "par- affin, benzole, nitro-benzole, aniline ( used to produce the fashionable color, mauve), and pure violet aniline powder, selling at $300 a pound." The price of rock oil from Titusville at. New York was then forty cents a gallon, and Dr. Newberry predicted, "Should petroleum ever be prodneed in such abundance as to glut the market, and the price be reduced to fifteen cents a gallon, it will be used as a fuel on steamboats and locomotives." That it "must ultimately suc- ceed all illuminants now in use except gas" he had no doubt.
But the most remarkable advancement was in channels of com- mumieation and trade. At the beginning of the year 1858, Commis- sioner Mansfield was able to say that in the thirty-two years since the first earth was turned for the canals, the State had completed the most extensive system of works for the facilitation of commerce and travel that any state or nation of like population e uld show. "Noth- ing in ancient or modern times, within the same period of time and with the same population, can be compared with it." No state in the Union, except New York, with greater population, could rival Ohio in this respect. It was only ten years since the Little Miami and Mad River railroads had begun to attract attention, but in 1858 Ohio had three thousand miles, or one-seventh of the railroads of the United States, in addition to the 850 miles of canals, and 2,400 miles of turnpike and plank roads. A single generation had made over 70,000 miles of canals, highways and iron roads."
The principal points of convergence of the railroad lines were Toledo, Sandusky and Cleveland on the lake, Columbus and Dayton in the interior, and Cincinnati on the river. The only railroad termini on the river between Cincinnati and Bellaire were Ports- mouth and Marietta. The main lines of the present Lake Shore, Pennsylvania, Panhandle and Big Four systems were in operation, under various names, through the State, as channels of transporta- tion from east to west. The Baltimore & Ohio system was also rep- resented by the lines from Bellaire to Columbus and Sandusky, but without the modern Chicago extension. On these lines there were many changes of cars for through travel, from one railroad to another. No bridge spanned the Ohio. At Cincinnati the famous engineer. John A. Roebling, had planned a suspension bridge in 1846, and work was begun on the towers in 1856, but financial trou- bles had forced its abandonment.
* Reports of E. D. Mansfield, State statistician.
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BEFORE THE WAR.
Hardly less notable was the advance in ship building and water commerce. The State ranked next to Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania in ship building. There was now as much Ohio steamboat tonnage on Lake Erie as on the Ohio river, and the sail tonnage on the lakes had increased so much that all together the Jake tonnage exceeded that of the river four to one. The commerce with Canada ports had doubled in ten years. In 1860 the lake exports were valued at $23,000,000 and the imports at $38,000,000. In 1855 a canal had been completed at Sault Ste. Marie, opening the iron and copper mines of Michigan to the iron workers of Ohio.
Toledo, in 1860, received by way of the Michigan Southern, Toledo & Wabash and Detroit & Milwaukee railroads and the canal, over five million bushels of wheat, eight hundred thousand barrels of flour, and considerably more than five million bushels of corn, besides other grain, which was largely shipped east by boat over the lake.
Now, the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were no longer necessary as outlets for the products of the State. The great channels of com- merce eastward over the lake and along the lake shore and north bend of the river, as well as by the Potomac valley, were established, and the East and West were one, as George Washington had said they must be. Ten years earlier the South, controlling the Mississippi river, might have set up a separate government with comparatively little danger of its overthrow. Now the railroads had made the East and West an united and unconquerable enemy to such a division of the country.
CHAPTER XII.
THE WAR FOR THE UNION.
GOVERNORS WILLIAM DENNISON, 1860-62; DAVID TOD, 1562-64; Jonx BROUGH, 1964-65.
ART of the inaugural address of Governor Dennison was admirable-that directed to 'matters in which he had experience-the needs of commerce. He said most appro- priately: "The time has arrived when the West will no longer consent that her just demands upon the Federal gov- ernment for the protection of her great interests shall be dis- regarded. She is no longer a frontier, and will not patiently be treated as such. She is the heart of the Union, the center of its population, its production and its consumption."# This senti- ment, evidently influenced the nominations for president that followed. The Democratic party, which had already contributed thousands of voters to the Republican party, split again beeanse, as George E. Pugh said in the Charleston convention, the South would Immiliate the Northern Democrats to the verge of degradation, with their hands on their months and their mouths in the dust. The Northern wing nominated Stephen A. Donglas, of Illinois, and the Southern John C. Breckinridge, of Kentneky. The Republican national convention, meeting at Chicago, considered Salmon P. Chase and Judge MeLean, of Ohio, as well as Seward and others, and chose Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. In the election Ohio gave Lincoln 231,610 votes, Douglas 187,232, Breckinridge 11,405, and Bell ( the candidate mainly supported in the South in opposition to Broekinridge) 12,194. Thus all shades of opinion were represented. As soon as the result of the national vote eleeting Lincoln was announced, preparation for secession began in the extreme Southern states, led by South Carolina, and the people of Ohio were brought
* But he was verbose in his discussion of the proposed secession, and declared that standing armies would be the "succedaneum" of division. The word was new to his readers and was the subject of much jesting.
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to consider what was their duty in regard to the preservation of the Union.
The sentiment of the State was conservative. Anything would have been conceded to the South for the sake of peace except the one thing, that slavery must not be extended over more territory, either in the west or southward by expansion in the Spanish-American countries. The legislatures of Kentucky and Tennessee, visiting Columbus, were greeted with the utmost friendliness and courtesy, and an effort was made to assure them that Ohio was actuated by fraternal feelings. In the Congress of 1859-60, memorable for the long and bitter and finally successful contest of the Southerners against the candidaey of John Sherman for speaker of the house, Thomas Corwin had secured the preliminary adoption of an amend- ment to the United States constitution, guarding slavery forever from interference, provided it remained within the limits then established, and the legislature of Ohio ratified this amendment after war had actually begun.
But the South, edneated by the farseeing and logical-minded Jolin C. Calhoun, was persuaded that there could be no peace in the Union with slavery, and consequently, in the minds of the leaders, it was settled that the cotton states would go out of the Union. They were convinced that their interests were so different from those of the corn and wheat states that it was useless for either section to attempt those sacrifices of individual notions necessary to maintain one gen- eral government. They did not want mannfactories nor a tariff to protect manufactories. Their only desire was to raise cotton by negro labor and let England spin the cotton and weave the cloth.
In that gloomy period at the end of 1860 and beginning of 1861 when the Southern congressmen were taking their leave and pro- nouneing funeral orations for the Union, and people were everywhere in doubt what should be done or could be done, Ben Wade of Ohio rose in the senate and boldly declared that the United States was a nation and must defend herself. He went on to lay down the policy that Lincoln afterward followed. If a state should secede, the nation will not make war on her, but the secession would be illegal until the nation acceded to it. The president must continue to exe- cute the laws of the Union and colleet revenues. The state must submit to this or make war on the United States. If she makes war on the United States, that is treason and will be crushed. "That is where it results," said Wade, "we might just as well look the matter right in the face." As for him, he said, "I stand by the I'nion of these states. Washington fought for that good old flag. My father fought for it. It is my inheritance. It was my protector in infaney and the pride and glory of my riper years, and though it may be assailed by traitors on every side, by the grace of God under its shadow I will die."
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But a large part of the people of the North were convinced that the sections were so radically different that it was no longer worth while to try to keep the cotton states in the Union. Like Horace Greeley, they would let them go in peace. Throughout January, 1861, they were going-adopting ordinances of secession, taking possession of United States forts and arsenals, capturing and paroling United States troops, until there remained only a few little spots in the South Atlantic and Gulf States where the Stars and Stripes were flying-only the islands occupied by Forts Suinter and Pickens and the Florida keys. Five of the states that were thus behaving, out of seven, had been bought by the money of the whole country or won from foreign powers and the Indians by the blood and treasure of the whole country. Gradually the enormous impertinence of such a pro- ceeding prevailed over the feeling of indifference, and there was a mighty indignation in the North that awaited more aeute provocation to break out in the spirit of conquest and punishment. Yet there was a constant restraint imposed by the neutral attitude of the border states, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri. At their suggestion a peace conference was held at Washington in February, 1861, to which Ohio sent as delegates, Sal- mon P. Chase, William S. Groesbeck, Franklin T. Baekus, Renben Hitchcock, Thomas Ewing, Valentine B. Horton and C. P. Wolcott. They deliberated on plans to perpetuate slavery in the South and limit it by a boundary. But the conference was altogether futile. The cotton states were determined on independence, and no proposi- tion on any other basis would be considered then, or at any other time before Appomattox.
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