USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 44
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The census of 1880 showed a population of 3,198,062. Cinein- nati had increased in ten years from 216,000 to 255,000, but the most rapid growth was shown by Cleveland, under the influence of the new development of the iron and coal and oil industries. From 92,000 the city on the lake had grown to 160,000 in ten years, sur- passing Pittsburg and Detroit. In the same period Columbus and Toledo had maintained their remarkable neck and neck race, the first growing from 31,000 to 51,000 and the second from 31,000 to 50,000. Springfield showed an increase from 12,000 to 20,000 and Dayton from 30,000 to 38,000. These six were Ohio's representa- tives among the hundred largest cities of the United States in 1880, a time when St. Louis had only 350,000 people and Chicago 500,000.
Ohio was the third wheat growing State, surpassed only by Illi- nois and Indiana; the fourth tobacco growing State, excelled only by Virginia, Kentneky and Tennessee; second to Pennsylvania in the number of soft coal mines, and ranking next that state also in the iron and steel industry, with $25,000,000 invested.
With the decisive election of 1879 a majority was obtained by the Republicans in the legislature, which elected James A. Garfield, by a vote of 86 to 55, to succeed Senator Thurman. Garfield's early life has already been noticed. He had first taken a seat in Congress as the representative of his district, in December, 1863, after the bat- tle of Chickamauga, where he was chief of staff, and since then he had been serving continuously, and with distinction. Devoting him- self particularly to the study of finance, he gained reputation in that field of statesmanship, as well as in the debates over reconstrue- tion and civil rights, and after Mr. Blaine had been transferred to the senate, lie became in 1876 the leader of his party in the lower house of Congress. He was well described by Governor Haves: "Beyond almost any man I have known, Garfield had the faculty of gathering information from all sources and imparting it to an andi- enee in instructive and attractive oratory."
As the time for a choice of a snecessor to President ITaves approached, the main issue among the Republicans was the candidacy of President Grant for a third term. He had returned late in 1979 from a tour around the world, which was an epoch in the history of the United States as an influence in foreign countries. His friends,
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powerful leaders like Senators Conkling and Cameron, urged that the foremost man of the world should be honored with another term in the presidency, but there was strenuous opposition. Ohio resolved to support John Sherman for the nomination, and in the Chicago convention he was faithfully supported by something more than ninety votes during twenty-eight ballots. Then he gained for a few ballots some votes from minor candidates, but did not succeed in rivalling the strength of Grant, for whom more than three hundred delegates voted immovably, nor of Blaine, who retained nearly as large and steady a support. Finally, there was a sudden throwing of fifty votes from Blaine and other candidates to Senator Garfield, for whom one or two delegates had been voting from the beginning and whose participation in the convention was so prominent as to commend him to favor. On the next ballot, the thirty-sixth, nearly all the opposition to Grant united upon Garfield, nominating him despite the unbroken column of Grant delegates.
In the national Democratic convention Ohio supported Senator Thurman, but General Hancock was nominated. A notable feature of the campaign that followed was the meeting of General Grant and Senator Garfield at the home of the latter, betokening a healing of the stubborn strife engendered in the Chicago convention. Ohio voted 375,000 for Grant and 340,000 for Hancock, and about 9,000 votes were given to Greenback and Prohibition candidates. A similar result obtaining throughout the North, Garfield was elected and inaugurated March 4, 1881. To the seat he wonkl have occupied in the senate, the legislature elected John Sherman, who began his fourth term in that body. Ohio was not represented in the cabinet of President Garfield save by William Windom, sceretary of the treasury, son of a Belmont county Quaker, who had studied law under Judge Hurd, of Mount Vernon, and removed to Minnesota in 1855. Samuel J. Kirkwood, secretary of the interior, a native of Maryland, had been a resident of Richland county in 1835-55, and a member of the constitutional convention of 1851, but had gone west and gained fame as the war governor of Iowa. One of the President's carly acts was the renewal of the nomination of Stanley Matthews to the United States supreme court, which President Haves had made and the senate had refused to confirm. Confirmation was now obtained by a majority of one vote, though the senate continued to have a majority of Democrats, who resented the connection of Mr. Matthews with the electoral contest of 1876. Other nominations of the president aroused opposition on the part of the senators from New York, who asserted the senatorial prerogative of recommending Federal appointments in their state, and the resignation of both these senators threatened a division in the president's party.
On the morning of July 2d, while President Garfield and Mr. Blaine, his secretary of state, were entering a railroad station in
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Washington, to take the train for a trip to New England, the presi- dent was shot in the back by an individual of the class which from that time became known by the expressive name of "cranks." The man had been an applicant for appointment to offices for which he was quite unfitted, and his declarations indicated that a spirit of revenge and unbridled egotism had led him to perform the horrible act. Generally throughout the country the president was regarded as a victim to the "spoils" system of official patronage, which had been a factor in causing the fatal illness of President Harrison, forty years before. For a fortnight the president was expected to recover, but afterward he grew worse, and while the surgeons seemed confi- dent of the location of the ball that had entered his body, their inci- sions did not give relief. Lingering thus, through the heat of the summer, General Garfield bore himself bravely, though in a very feeble condition, and on September 6th, at his carnest request, he was removed to a cottage at Long Branch, on the coast. There, after a further patient endurance of suffering, he passed away at 10:35 o'clock, in the morning of September 19th.
"Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death-and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishiment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and ealm courage, he looked into his open grave.
"What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell ? What brilliant broken plans, what baffied high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm manhood's friendships, what bitter rend- ing of sweet household ties ? Behind him a proud, expectant nation ; a great host of sustaining friends ; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full rich honors of her early toils and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his ; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic ; the fair young daughter ; the sturdy sons just springing into elosest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a father's love and care ; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him desola- tion and great darkness. And his soul was not shaken.
"His conntrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and uni- versal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suf- fering. He trod the wine press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above
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the demoniae hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree.""
The body of the president, brought to Cleveland on the 24th of September, lay in state under a pavilion erected in Monumental park, was visited by thousands on Sunday, and buried on the 26th with impressive ceremonies. A magnificent monument now marks Gar- field's resting place, built by contributions from people of many states, and a large fund was similarly provided for the benefit of his widow and family.
At the state election of 1881 the Prohibition party polled over 16,000 votes, and the question of restraint of the traffie in intoxicat- ing liquors became the most important question before the legislature of 1882, which had a large Republican majority. Amendments to the constitution, which had prohibited the granting of licenses since 1851, were adopted by each house, authorizing the granting of licenses, under which provision it was expected to control the busi- ness. But while one of these resolutions authorized local option of communities regarding prohibition, the other put the power of State prohibition in the hands of the legislature, and as the two houses could not agree, nothing was done, except to pass what was known as the Pond bill, providing for a high taxation of liquor dealers. This law was soon brought before the State supreme court and declared unconstitutional because it was in effect a license law. At the State election that followed in October, the governor and legis- lature were obviously rebuked, the Democrat ticket, headed by James W. Newman for secretary of state, being elected by nearly 20,000 majority. But Governor Foster again urged legislation regarding the saloons upon the adjourned session of the legislature in January, 1883. "When the present constitution was adopted," he said, "a clause was voted into it by the people, under the belief that through it would be secured a greater restraint to the traffic than had previously existed. Experience has shown that, instead of greater restraint, we have practically free trade in liquor, not only six days in the week, but Sundays also. In fact, in many localities, Sunday, instead of being, as the law and well-being of society demand, a day of rest and recreation, has beeome a day of rowdyism and carnivals; instead of being the most orderly it has become the most disorderly day of the week. It is a humiliating faet that we have in Ohio, today, more than sixteen thousand places where this unrestrained traffie is carried on, taking the hard-earned wages from many thousands of our citizens, whose families need the money thus thrown away. This entire traffie, the amount of which in round numbers will probably exceed $70,000,000 annually, mueh the larger portion of which is profit, contributes but a tithe of the burden it
* Memorial oration of James G. Blaine, February 27, 1882.
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imposes upon the public through the erime and pauperism created by it."
The result of the legislative debates was the submission to the peo- ple of two amendments, one authorizing the legislature to regulate the traffic, and the other forever prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in the State. Another tax law was also passed, ealled the Seott law, which the supreme court sustained as constitutional. It aroused the earnest opposition of the liquor dealers and manufacturers, who had a strong influence in the October election, when the amendments were submitted. A powerful oppos- ing influence was exerted by a great many women of the State, who for the first time took part in the work of a political campaign. Led by the Women's Christian Temperanee Union, committees were organized, literature published and distributed, and women were at the polls on election day, to urge the adoption of the amendments. A large majority, over eighty thousand, was given in favor of gen- eral prohibition, but it appeared in the final returns that the majority vote was not a majority of the total east at the same time for gover- nor, and consequently the amendment failed of adoption. The ean- didates for governor were George Hoadley, for the Democrats, and for the Republicans Joseph Benson Foraker, a native of Ilighland county, who had gone into the Union army at sixteen years of age and come home a captain at the age of nineteen after marching with Sherman to the sea. Afterward he had attended college, studied law and practiced his profession at Cincinnati, holding a judgeship for three years. Judge Hoadley was elected by a plurality of 12,500 votes, over 8,000 being east for Ferdinand Sehnmacher, the Prohibi- tion candidate, and about 3,000 for Charles Jenkins, Greenback.
Governor Hoadley, who was inaugurated in January, 1884, was a native of Connecticut, reared and educated in the Western Reserve, and had been admitted to the practice of law at Cincinnati in 1847, afterward becoming a partner of Judge Chase. For a considerable time he sat upon the bench of the city courts, declining a membership in the supreme court offered him by Governors Chase and Tod. Dur- ing the war he was in opposition to the Democratic party, but in 1872 he returned to it through the Greeley movement. In 1876 he was one of the counsel of Governor Tilden before the electoral com- mission. In his first message he took occasion to say that "the great monument of victory, the enduring assurance that the blood was not spilled, the treasure not spent in vain, is the restoration of the Union upon the basis of the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the slave." His recommendation that the legislature provide laws to enforce the civil rights of white and black alike, further indicated the general acceptance of the ideas that were the ground of party con- tention in 1865-70. This matter had been given new interest by the decisions of the United States supreme court in 15-3. invalidating
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the "supplementary" congressional civil-rights laws. After the legislature had passed civil-rights bills, the governor urged in his message of 1885 that the colored and white schools be consolidated for the better education of the colored children.
In Jamary, 1884, the Democrats, having a majority in the legisla- ture, retired Senator Pendleton, who was a candidate for re-election, and chose Henry B. Payne, of Cleveland, who, it will be remembered, was the candidate of the same party for senator in 1851, when Ben- jamin F. Wade was elected after thirty-seven ballots, and candidate for governor in 1859, when Chase won by a majority of 1,500. For fifty years he had been one of the able lawyers of the State, for over thirty years a leader in railroad and manufacturing enterprises. He had also served in Congress one term, during the crisis of 1876-77, and was chairman of the house committee that joined in recommend- ing the plan of an electoral commission. In 1876 and 1880 and again in 1884 he was considered among the men of his party worthy of the nomination for president.
Two political events, early in the year 1884, profoundly agitated the State, one being the repeal of the congressional apportionment as made by the previous legislature, and the other the ruling of the supreme court, which had been changed in membership, that the Seott liquor tax law was unconstitutional, reversing the ruling of the year before. In February there was a great flood of the Ohio river, causing great damage, partienlarly at Cincinnati, where the water rose to the unprecedented height of 7134 feet.
In the latter part of March a serious riot occurred at Cincinnati, which had its origin in the methods that then prevailed in the judi- cial treatment of criminals. The country had been disgusted by the farcical trial, for several weeks, of the assassin of President Garfield, and nearly every trial of an alleged murderer was similarly the occa- sion for displays of the brilliancy of lawyers who made a specialty of clearing criminals, rather than an example of the swift and impar- tial administration of justice. A murder of unusual atrocity had been committed in Cincinnati, and one of the participants, Berner, being put on trial and "brilliantly" defended, after he had admitted his guilt, was virtually acquitted by a verdict of manslaughter. This, and the fact that abont twenty men were in the jail accused of mur- der, and untried, provoked popular indignation, and furnished the exense for a mob that attacked the county jail, forced the door and songht to wreak speedy vengeance upon Berner. It was found that he had been secretly removed by the sheriff, who brought a company of militia into the jail and ordered the rioters to disperse. Upon their refusal firing began, and several men were wounded before the mob left the jail, which they then attemptd to set on fire, but failed. Next day two regiments of troops were ordered to the city, but before their arrival, a mob of several hundred besieged the jail at
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THE TWENTY YEARS AFTER APPOMATTOX.
night, and set fire to the courthouse, which was badly injured, but not totally destroyed. Several stores were broken into and robbed, and Captain Desmond, of the military, while attempting to extin- guish the fire in the courthouse, was shot and killed. In other encounters with the militia and police on this terrible night, others lost their lives or were wounded. On the next day, Sunday, when several reginrents of troops had arrived, barricades were built in the streets to protect property and guard the main business streets. These barricades were attacked in the night by the rioters and many volleys fired, and it was not until Wednesday, the sixth day of the dis- turbances, that it was judged safe to remove the obstructions and dismiss the greater part of the troops. The casualties of this mem- orable riot were estimated at 45 killed and 138 wounded.
In May there was a demand for State troops in Ashland. Two murderers were to be executed, and the public demanded view of the performance. Three hundred and fifty militia, under Col. A. L. Conger, were required to restrain the mob from breaking down the fence that surrounded the gallows. Later in the year some State troops were called out to suppress disorder accompanying the intro- duetion of foreign labor in the Hoeking valley coal region, the miners having disagreed with the operators regarding wages. During the course of the trouble, through the summer, seven mines and three railroad bridges and much other property were burned, and at least two armed attacks made npon the guards.
In the national conventions of 1684, Ohio presented the names of her sons, John Sherman and Allen G. Thurman, for presidential honors, but the selections of the parties were Mr. Blaine and Gover- nor ('leveland, of New York. The latter was elected, though Ohio gave a plurality against him of nearly 32,000. Previously, the Republicans had carried the State election, elceting James S. Robin- son secretary of state. One of the principal features of the con- gressional elections was the success of William MeKinley in the Twentieth district, although it had apparently heen arranged to insure his defeat. MeKinley, then forty years of age, was a resi- dent of Canton, and remarkably popular. He was a native of Niles, had enlisted in the Union army at seventeen years of age in 1861, and after a good record had come home a brevet major in that remarkable school of famous men, the Twenty-third Ohio volunteers. First elceted to Congress in 1876, he had been regularly re-elected, and wisely made himself a specialist in legislation, the interests of his district naturally suggesting the tariff protection of home indns- try as the most valuable field of work. He had already been recog- nized as a master of this subject, concerning which theory is easy, but the interpretation of facts most puzzling and difficult. With the beginning of Cleveland's administration, the tariff became the main issue, and he rapidly rose to the leadership of the lower house
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of Congress, though his modesty kept him from any showy assump- tion of importance.
Another Ohio man of prominence in this field was William Law- rence, a distinguished lawyer, already mentioned as the author of the Free Banking law, who had been colonel of an Ohio regiment in 1862, a congressman from 1865 to 1875, first-comptroller of the United States treasury in 1880-85, and as president of the National Wool Growers' association a constant contributor to the arguments for high tariff.
Eminent upon those who maintained the opposite doctrine were Frank H. Hurd, of Toledo, a native of Mount Vernon, who was elected to Congress three times and defeated as often in 1876-86; Michael D. Harter, twice elected to Congress, a native of Canton and head of a great manufacturing establishment at Mansfield; Law- rence T. Neal, of Chillicothe, who had been three times elected to Congress and was an able lawyer as well as politician; and Tom L. Johnson, who was elected from one of the Cleveland districts in 1890 and 1892, and was also conspicuous as an advocate of the "single- tax" doctrine.
The year 1884, full of events, was also marked by a serious finan- cial stringency, following the rapid progress of railroad building, beyond the possibility of immediate profitable returns. The State of Ohio had doubled its mileage since 1869, in the latter year having 3,324 miles, and in 1883, 6,897. In 1869, so far as statistics showed, the railroads in Ohio moved 15,000,000 tons of freight, and in 1883, 64,000,000. In 1869 the local freight was only a little over half the business, and in 1883 it was two-thirds, indicating the rapid development of the State that accompanied the growth of railroad lines. Furthermore the charge per ton per mile in 1869 was about 216 cents, and in 1883 it was less than 1 cent." The actual freight charges in Ohio in 1883 were $67,000.000, while, if the rates of 1869 had been maintained, they would have been over $200,000,000 showing a saving to Ohio in local freight alone of $60,000,000 a year, as a result of the somewhat reckless investment of money in new and competing roads.
Though it had been found impossible to adopt a new constitution for Ohio, an important amendment was adopted in 1883, for the benefit of the judicial system. Under it twenty-one judges of the circuit court were elected in 1884, three judges in each of seven cir- euits, to act as an intermediate court between the common pleas and supreme court.
In the summer of 1884, General Grant, bankrupted by the fail- nre of his sons in the financial crisis of that year, undertook the writ- ing of his memoirs, in the hope of providing for his family, and he
* Report of Commissioner Sabine, discussed in American Encyclopedia.
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carried it to completion, though in the midst of his work he was attacked by a painful and fatal disease. His death, July 23, 1885, near Saratoga, was an event of mournful importance in every com- munity that had sent a soldier into the war for the Union.
"Johnston and Bnekner on one side of his bier, Sherman and Sher- idan on the other, he came to his tomb a silent symbol of the conquests of liberty, patriotism and peace." For him, in 1864, the high rank of lieutenant-general had been revived, and after the war he was given the rank of general, before bestowed only upon George Washington. As William Dean Howells has written: Grant was not only "one of the greatest captains of all time," but "one of the purest patriots, one of the best and gentlest of men." "In the war he had but one motive, and that as intense as life itself-the subjugation of the rebellion and the restoration of the broken Union," said the greatest preacher of that day in pronouncing his eulogy. "He embodied the feelings of the common people. He was their perfeet representative. Ile never wavered, turned aside or dallied ; never lost courage or equanimity. With a million men, for whose movements he was responsible, he yet carried a tranquil heart, neither depressed by disasters nor elated by snecess. Gentle of heart, familiar with all, never boasting, always modest, Grant came of the old, self-contained stoek, men of sublime force of being, which allied his genins to the great elemental forces of nature-silent, invisible, irresistible."
CHAPTER XIV.
THE RECENT PERIOD.
GOVERNORS JOSEPH B. FORAKER, 1886-90; JAMES E. CAMPBELL, 1890-92; WILLIAM MCKINLEY, 1892-96; ASA S. BUSHNELL, 1896-1900; GEORGE K. NASH, 1900-
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