USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 41
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And it may be said further, that among these quiet workers there were very few who were not earnest supporters of the war to the bit- ter end. They labored to hold the people true to the cause of estab- lishing and perpetuating a national America, with no more rotten compromises for its betrayal. They had no sympathy for the prophets of a patched-up peace.
Men of Ohio birth-Grant, Rosecrans, Buell, MeDowell, Sher- man, Sheridan, MePherson, Crook-commanded armies with, on the whole, more success than the generals of any other state. Indeed, if we may include Mcclellan, who, it may be said, was presented to the nation by Ohio, the greater part of the Union armies were the greater part of the time under the leadership of Ohio men. The most successful of these were the sons of Ohio pioneers, and were reared in log cabins or humble village homes, in the western atmos- phere of equality and fearlessness. This was particularly exempli- fied in Grant, Sheridan, Crook and O'nster, typical hard fighters, fearless leaders, who were never worried by the reverence for South- ern strategy and awe of Southern "chivalry," that injured the worth of many officers. "Never mind the danger of their entting our com- munications," said Grant in the Wilderness, "they have communi- eations of their own to take care of." "They are only a lot of department elerks," cried Sheridan at Five Forks, "Run them down !"
AAmong the naval officers particularly distinguished for patriotism was Henry Walke, of Virginia birth, who had been reared and edu- cated at Chillicothe, had gone into the navy as midshipman in 1827, and served with credit in the Mexican war. Ile was unfaltering in upholding the honor of the flag at Pensacola, aided in saving Fort Pickens to the nation, and on the Mississippi river from the fall of 1×61 to the fall of 1863 had a conspicuous part in all the naval fighting, as the commander of the famous Carondelet. AAfterward he chased the Confederate ernisers on the Atlantic, and his service was rewarded by promotion to commodore in 1566, and to rear- admiral in 1870. Among the naval officers on the Atantie coast, commanding a monitor in the attacks on Fort Sumter and other Confederate strongholds, was Daniel Ammen, a brother of General
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Annen, and a native of Brown county. He was an old playmate of Grant's, and after the latter became president, Ammen was made a rear-admiral. James Findlay Schenck, a brother of Gen. Robert C. Schenck, who had been in the United States navy since 1525, was made a commodore in 1863, and took an important part in the attack upon Fort Fisher. Ile was promoted to rear-admiral in 1568.
Not only did Ohio furnish great generals but she gave the nation great statesmen, like Chase, whose administration of the treasury department was one of the memorable features of that period-not perfect according to some crities, but on the whole as good as human imperfection would. permit : Stanton, secretary of war-stern, tire- less, single in purpose, who will always be conspicuous among the heroes of the most dramatic era of American history; Benjamin F. Wade, the bold and unhesitating leader of the war party in the sen- ate; Jolin Sherman, wise, calm, deliberate, a power in steadying the ship of state; John A. Bingham, a famous leader, and Schenck and Garfield, who were both statesmen and soldiers.
Thomas Corwin, at the beginning of Lincoln's administration, was sixty-seven years of age. He served his country through the war as minister to Mexico, and December 18, 1865, died at Washington. In 1974 Governor Noves, urging that the State honor his memory, said: "In a little graveyard at Lebanon, marked only by a bed of myrtle, reposes the dust of Thomas Corwin, the most brilliant ora- tor and one of the wisest statesmen whose lives grace the history of the State. No man has held a larger place in the hearts and minds of the people, nor has contributed more to the welfare of the State than he."#
Thomas Ewing, seventy-two years of age in 1861, gave his influ- ence to the support of the war after the failure of the Peace con-, gress, of which he was a member, but the weight of years was upon him. He died at Lancaster October 26, 1871. His son Hugh was one of the most gallant Ohio commanders, while Thomas, Jr., was no less noted among the commanders west of the Mississippi.
Jay Cooke, son of a Sandusky lawyer, land speculator, and con- gressinan of early days, Eleutheros Cooke, had become a noted finan- vier in New York in 1861, and as financial agent of the United States aided materially in the sale of the government bonds.
AAmong the newspaper men of the Union, Edwin Cowles, of Cleve- land, a native of Ashtabula county, and Murat Halstead, born in
*"At the close of the war he was stricken with paralysis while visiting as a private citizen the capitol at Washington where he had triumphed as repre- sentative and senator, and he died almost before the laughter had left the lips of the delighted groups which hung about him. Of all our public men he was most distinctly what is called, for want of some clear term, a man of genius, and he shares with but three or four other Americans the fame of qualities that made men love while while they honored and revered him."-William Dean Howells, "Stor.es of Ohio."
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Butler county, were inferior to none in ability or devotion to the government. Whitelaw Reid, the Xenia editor, became war cor- respondent of the New York Tribune, and upon his observations many thousands based their hopes of success. The potent weapon of ridicule was turned so strongly against the opponents of the war by David Ross Loeke in the Toledo Blade, that it was soberly declared in a speech at Cooper Institute, New York, that three things saved the Union, "the army, the navy and the letters of 'Petroleum V. Nasby.'"
Again, if songs are more important than laws, Ohio was eminent in that field also. In the trenches of the Crimea, it is said, the Eng- lish all sang "AAnnie Laurie." In the Union army they sang "Lorena," written by a young Zanesville preacher. Soldiers of many states, when they thought of home, hummed the plaintive lines of "Rain npon the Roof," by Coates Kinney, of Xenia. Nor was there lack of poets to express the patriotic sentiment of the people. In the latter days of the war nothing cheered the people more strongly to the final and supreme effort than the "Sheridan's Ride," of Thomas Buchanan Read.
NOTF .- It has been barely mentioned that Ohio troops were conspicuous in saving Missouri to the Union in 1861-62. In he Army of the Mississippi, first organized under General Pope. there was the Twenty-seventh Ohio, Col. John Groesbeck: Thirty-ninth, Col. John W. Fuller: Forty-third, Col. J. L. Kirby Smith, and Sixty-third, Col. John W. Sprague, forming the First divi- sion, under Brig. Gen. David Sloan Stanley, born in Wayne county in 1828, and a graduate of West Point in 1852. Sands' Ohio battery was also with this army. Stanley's command attacked and captured New Madrid, Mo., early in March. 1862. The regiments were afterward put in one brigade under Col John W. Fuller, and their subsequent career can be traced in the foregoing pages. Another army in the trans Mississippi. the Army of the Southwest, was under the command of Gen. Samuel R. Curtis, an Ohio vet- eran of the Mexican war. On March 7-8. 1862. Curtis fought a severe but successful battle at Pea Ridge, in which the Second and Fourth Ohio bat- teries had an important part. Other Ohio commands in these Missouri cam- paigns were the Eleventh and Sixteenth batteries, the Second and Sixth and part of the Fourth cavalry After Pea Ridge, Missouri was not seriously disturbed until the fall of 1864. when General Rosecrans drove out a formid- able invasion and ended the war in the West.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TWENTY YEARS AFTER APPOMATTOX.
GOVERNORS CHARLES ANDERSON, 1565-66 ; JACOB D. Cox, 1866-68; RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, 1868-52; EDWARD F. NOYES, 1872-74; WILLIAM ALLEN, 1874-76; RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, 1876-77; THOMAS L. Yorsa, 1877-78; RICHARD M. BISHOP, 1878-50; CHARLES FOSTER, 1880-84; GEORGE HOADLEY, 1884-86.
G OVERNOR BROUGHT, despite his good record as a war governor, was not a candidate for re-election in 1865. With his patriotic devotion was mingled an impatience and occasional harshness that impaired his popularity. In June he received an injury that cansed his death at Cleveland, August 29th, terminating a long and honorable public career. Until January, 1866, Lieutenant-Governor Charles Anderson was at the head of the State government.
Governor Anderson was a son of the Colonel Anderson who was land agent for the Virginia veterans of the Revolution, and a brother of Gen. Robert Anderson : was born at his father's home near Lonis- ville in 1841, was graduated at Miami university, married and made his home at Dayton and was elected to the legislature, but became unpopular because he sought the repeal of the Black laws, After- ward he practiced law eleven years at Cincinnati as a partner of Rufus King, and in 1860, being a resident of Texas, he made vigor- ons but futile efforts to encourage a Union spirit there. Escaping to the North he served as colonel of the Ninety-third Ohio until wounded at Stone River. In his message to the legislature it is interesting to note that Governor Anderson, in alluding to the pro- posed war on France in behalf of Mexico, made an elaborate argu- inent against the "Monroe doctrine," which he characterized as the invention of Mr. Canning, minister of George IN, and an "absurd usurpation of the functions of universal wetnurse to the orphan republies of the world." An event of temporary importance in his brief administration was the removal from office of State Treasurer Dorsey.
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THE TWENTY YEARS AFTER APPOMATTOX.
Two Ohio generals were nominated for governor in 1865-Maj .- Gen. Jacob D. Cox by the Republican or "Union" party, and Brig .- Gen. George W. Morgan by the Democrats. The national issues now turned upon the questions of how to reconstruet the Southern states, and whether the freedmen should be given full citizenship and the right of suffrage. Senator Ben Wade, who had found him- self in opposition to Lincoln regarding the method of re-establishing state governments, was a leader of the radical wing of the Repub- lican party, that would hold the Southern states under military rule until they had abolished slavery by their constitutions, submitted to negro suffrage and did penance for their secession, while the Demo- erats were for re-establishing the state governments without con- dition. "The one great question of the day," according to the platform of the Democratic party (in 1866), was, "the immediate and uneonditional restoration of all the states," and they opposed the condition of "negro political and civil equality." President Lin- coln, in 1864, had appeared to be in favor of the theory that none of the states had ever been out of the Union. He would recognize the reorganization of their goverments by loyal men ; but Congress had the right to refuse their representatives admission. There were abundant new sources of political difference in the reconstruction question and the negro suffrage question, to divide patriotic people, and some who had stood together in the war soon found themselves in opposing ranks. The Republican party did not welcome the negro suffrage doctrine with remarkable enthusiasm, and General Cox, in the midst of the State campaign, declared himself strongly opposed to the policy. He was elected in October, by a majority of nearly thirty thousand, the Republican vote being much smaller than in the previous year.
Governor Cox, born in Canada in 1528, while his parents were temporarily in that country, was a product of the Connecticut reserve in training, from the time he entered Oberlin college in 1546. He began the administration of the office of governor with great prestige as a military officer. No volunteer soldier, without military experience in 1861, rose to higher functions in the war than he ably performed. He was to Ohio what Logan was to Illinois, as a general without military training, but different in other respects. Aside from his soldierly qualities, which were characterized by quiet, eare- ful performance of duty. without dash and display, though he was a fine horseman and skillful swordsman, he was a good lawyer, an able public speaker, one of the most accomplished literary men the State has prodneed, and an expert in one of the most delicate depart- ments of scientific research.
In his inaugural address he sounded a note of caution against carrying the spirit of the conqueror into the legislation regarding the South. He advised holding in check impulse and passion, and
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
would challenge the motives and consistency of actions, and fasten attention on the principles of government and human rights that had been axioms in the earlier days of the republic.
Regarding the conditions of civil life he said: "The habit of grasping great thoughts and of daring to do great deeds has appar- ently begotten in our people a disposition that makes all business enterprises take wider scope than heretofore, and the keen insight with which all our resources are being scanned, and the adventurous energy with which their development is pushed, leave nothing to be desired in a business point of view, unless it be an increase of that sagacious cantion which may save us from the danger of those com- mercial revulsions which have with considerable regularity followed great expansions of the currency."
It is often said that the soldiers of the great war, returning quietly to civil life, were submerged in the ordinary channels of industry, something not exactly true. If so, these men would have lost at once that spirit of heroic enterprise that had animated them for sey- eral years, would have gone counter to the broadening of mind, the wide grasp of affairs, that war service had brought to them. In fact, when they came home in 1863, 1864, and 1865 the soldiers brought into the fields of industry and commerce a spirit of enterprise and restlessness that helped make the following years remarkable for development in all lines of activity. But the opportunity that the war had afforded to those who did not engage in it was the source of most of the great fortunes that now had their beginning. The evil side of war doubtless aided, also, the multiplication of schemes and speculations, some of them unsound and wicked, and a spirit in pol- ities that bred a corruption even greater than that which marked the days before 1861.
One of the avenues of enterprise that were thronged by adventur- ous men in this period was boring for oil and speculating in oil lands. The beginning of the industry in 1860 has already been noted. In 1861 the first "gushers" were discovered by boring deeper, into the region of gas pressure, and the price of crude oil at the wells fell to fifty cents a barrel. The boring of wells continued in Ohio during the war period, particularly in Washington, Meigs and Morgan coun- ties. Marietta, as the commercial center of that oil country and a region in West Virginia, revived her ancient importance, and herself boasted of an oil well 800 feet deep. Cleveland became a center of oil refining and of speculation.
It will illuminate one's view of the condition of the North during the war to learn that Sheridan's victories in the Shenandoah valley in the fall of 1864 were hailed with delight as giving an opportunity to open up the oil fields of West Virginia. In February, 1865, a newspaper correspondent wrote from Franklin, Pa. (in the time of Col. George Washington known as Fort Venango) : "Somebody
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THE TWENTY YEARS AFTER APPOMATTOX.
said the papers say that Charleston is taken. Who cares? Some- body struck a forty-barrel well up Sugar Creek yesterday, and this faet gives rise to infinitely more gratification and discussion than the fall of Charleston or even than would the surrender of Richmond, including Lee and his whole army and the Southern confederaey thrown in." At Cleveland and other centers of oil speculation, "everybody talked, thought, dreamed and sehemed about oil." For- tunate owners of wild land, fortunately living under laws that gave individuals, for the insignificant price of surface land, a title to all the treasures of the earth that might be found beneath-laws that may sometime exeite the amazement of wiser people-suddenly became millionaires. Some spent hundreds of thousands rapidly in all sorts of extravagance and lieentiousness. Others hoarded their money, like the miser who acquired a fortune from oil land, and was robbed by burglars of $250,000. The part of Ohio in this period of "coal-oil" history was principally speeulation in Pennsylvania lands, and reaping a harvest from leky oil men who desired to spend their money, and in the legitimate business of oil refining, which soon beeame important at Cleveland. But there was considerable speeu- lation and boring of wells in the Liverpool region, where the oil wells had been abandoned after the discovery of gushers in Pennsylvania, and wells were also sunk in Washington, Athens, Morgan and Noble counties.
In 1865 eleven hundred oil companies were formed in the United States, mainly to operate in the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Vir- ginia country, with an aggregate capital of six hundred million dol- lars, and among these, the companies organized at Cleveland were not inconsiderable. But most of these organizations were speculative. In two or three years the "oil bubble" broke, and there was not much advance in the growth of the oil fields until 1573, Ohio during this period prodneing at the best not more than 50,000 barrels a year.
Notable among those who embarked in the oil business at this time, though not then conspienons, was John D. Rockefeller, who had come to Cleveland, a boy of fourteen and son of a physician, from central New York, in 1853. During the period of speculation he and his partner, Clark, bought some oil land, and borrowed money to build an oil refinery to put in practice a method devised by Sammel Andrews, a man with ideas acquired as a day laborer in the oil regions of Pennsylvania. William Rockefeller was indneed to join the part- nership, and a second refinery was built and a warehouse opened in New York. The Andrews method was successful, and they were able to produce refined oil of better quality at less cost than their rivals. Henry M. Flagler went into the partnership, with $60.000 capital, and, in 1870, the Standard Oil company was organized, with the Rockefellers, Andrews and Flagler as the principals, and a nom- inal capital of one million dollars. The policy of promoting co-op-
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
eration rather than competition was carried on from the first, rivals being bought ont for cash or Standard stock, and in seven years the company had a monopoly of the refined oil business in the United States, and, before long, practical control of the petroleum market of the world. The participants in the enterprise were enriched beyond the dreams of men esteemed wealthy in the earlier days of America. Through the enterprise of Rockefeller and other pioneers in the industry the investment of capital in the oil refining at Cleve- land increased from $3,000,000 in 1868 to $27,000,000 in 1884.
Beginning also in 1861, but more noticeable after the elose of the war, was the period of sale of railroads to pay the mortgages, as a rule destroying the value of the original stocks, in which the people of the State had made large investments. Upon the financial wreeks of the original unassociated lines rose, sometimes by devious methods, the modern railroad systems. One of the earliest of these reorgan- izations and consolidations was brought about by a shrewd New York lawyer, Samnel J. Tilden, following the foreclosure sale of the Crest- line roads in 1861, ont of which he formed the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chieago system. Another of the new companies was the Pittsburg, Columbus & Cincinnati ( Panhandle), operating in 1865 the old Columbus & Steubenville and part of the Central Ohio. Gradually out of these and subsidiary lines grew the great Pennsyl- vania railroad system. Another famous system of that day was the Atlantie & Great Western, which built a road from Warren to Day- ton, in 1863-64, as a link in a line between New York and St. Louis. The Baltimore & Ohio also acquired control of lines to Columbus and Sandusky, preparatory to its extension to Chicago. The Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula railroad leased the Cleveland & Toledo in 1867 ; these were merged in 1868 in the Lake Shore railroad, and in 1869 this was consolidated with the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana to form the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railroad.
The great Cincinnati suspension bridge over the Ohio river, on which work was resmined in 1863, was opened to foot travelers Decem- ber 1, 1866, and to wagon traffic a month later, and the Bellaire bridge, to connect the two shores held in hostility by the Indians and the advance guard of white conquest a hundred years before, was begun in 1865, to be completed five years later at a cost of one and a quarter millions.
There was also a great development of eoal and iron mining and manufacturing, and sawmills multiplied, dennding millions of aeres. of the forests that had so far survived the conquests of agriculture.
The manufacture of agricultural implements had been begun at. Springfield in 1854. Indeed, primitive plows had been made at Cin- cinnati as early as 1813, and a concern at Columbus was turning ont 1,500 plows a year in 1832, but it was "after the war" that the won- derful growth in the manufacture of all sorts of agricultural maehin-
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THE TWENTY YEARS AFTER APPOMATTOX.
ery began and inventors racked their brains for new ways of doing the farmer's work.
The warning of Governor Cox was timely, regarding the danger of a revulsion, but except for a dullness in 1867, the evil to come was postponed for a few years. During the administration of General Cox the State board of charities was created in 1867, with G. D. Har- rison, Douglas Putnam, Joseph Perkins, Robert W. Steele and Albert Douglas as the first members. A State Soldiers' home was estab- lished in 1866, followed in 1867 by the location of the Central branch of the National Sokliers' home at Dayton. It was not long before the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' home was established at Xenia.
In the political affairs of the nation, soon embittered by the con- fliet between President Johnson and Congress, Ohio was pre-eminent with Ben Wade and John Sherman in the senate, and Robert C. Sehenek, William Lawrence, John 1. Bingham, James 1. Garfield, Benjamin Eggleston, Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Shellabarger, Ralph P. Buekland, James M. Ashley, Rufus P. Spalding and others in the house. The State was not in this period represented prominently in the opposition, except by Gen. George W. Morgan, who was elected to Congress in 1866, and was the candidate of his party for speaker when James G. Blaine was first elected to that office. The attitude of the president led Postmaster-General Denni- son to resign in 1867, while Edwin M. Stanton, one of the greatest figures among the Ohio men of war times, held his post as secretary of war, sustained by Congress, against the will of the president. The president, seeking vindieation of the people, "swung around the cir- cle," making a speech in Cleveland, among other places, that did not help him in publie favor. There followed his impeachment and trial before the senate, in the spring of 1868, proceedings in which John A. Bingham was the leader of the prosecution, and William S. Groesbeck and Henry Stanbery# were among the president's coun- sel, Groesbeck making a speech of remarkable power. Senator Wade, president of the senate, would have become president of the United States if the impeachment had not failed.
In 1866 the Republicans carried the State by 43,000 majority. and elected all but two of the congressmen, but in 1867 the majority was greatly redneed. The issue then was narrowed largely to negro suffrage, though reconstruction still remained a source of dispute. and the Democratie party was beginning a vigorous fight against the protective tariff established in 1561. The Republicans nominated for governor Gen. Rutherford B. Hayes, and the Democrats Allen G. Thurman, whose earlier life has already been noticed, and who began at that time a career of national importance. He had been the choice of his party for senator when John Sherman was re-elected
* Stanbery was afterward nominated for justice of the United States supreme court, but Congress would not confirm the president's selection.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
in January. He and Sherman were leaders in national polities for more than twenty years, and were alike in being strong, conservative men, restraining their parties from error and exeess, and earning perpetual remembrance as patriots. At the polls, in October, 1867, a proposed constitutional amendment giving colored men the right to vote in Ohio, also disfranchising deserters and refugees from the draft, was rejected by a majority of over 50,000. Though General Hayes won the governorship, it was by a majority of less than 3,000, and the Democrats elected a majority of the legislature, so that when that body convened in January, 1868, Mr. Thurman was elected to succeed Benjamin F. Wade in the United States senate. This was the end of Wade's official career, but he had finished his work, manfully performed in a period when men of such heroie mold were indispensable.
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