USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > History of the city of Cleveland : its settlement, rise and progress > Part 6
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of triumphant relief went up on land for "Perry's Victory." It was a memorable gala day in Cleveland. The Grays and other military companies were out with numerous other military companies from home and abroad, each with its bands of music, with all the paraphernalia incident to military organizations previous to the great civil war which soon thereafter showed its wrinkled front. General Jabez W. Fitch was Grand Marshal of the day. Governor Dennison and Staff, Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island, and Staff, members of the Legislature of Rhode Island, and surviving relatives of Commodore Perry, survivers of the naval victory, and soldiers of the War of 1812, were in the great procession. Rev. Dr. Perry, rector of Grace church, was chaplain. Mr. William Walcutt, the sculptor, unveiled the statue. Hon. George Bancroft, the American historian, and Dr. Usher Parsons, the surgeon in Perry's fleet, were the orators of the day. George B. Senter was mayor, who with the Council, the police force, the fire department, civic societies and citizens generally, united to give eclat and renown to one of the most happy and pleasant events in our municipal history.
Prior to 1860 street railroads were unknown in Ohio, but on the sixth of October of that year, the East Cleve- land Street Railroad company was organized. There was not a word in the statute at that time authorizing City Councils to grant permits for the use of streets for such a purpose, but authority was assumed under and by virtue of a statute authorizing the use of streets by steam railroads, upon certain conditions and restrictions. This was liberally construed and deemed broad enough to cover the novelty
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of a street railroad, and under this law a permit or grant was made to this first road in Ohio. It was looked upon by citizens generally as a harmless experiment, detrimental only to those who expended their funds in its construction, and as the streets were only common dirt roads between the two termini, no harm would be done to pavements in removing it when the failure was demonstrated, as it would be very speedily. It certainly did look gloomy for the flowing in of many nickles, as the houses were few and far between on Prospect street and not more than two or three on the east part of Euclid avenue and only now and then a farm-house from Willson avenue to Doan's Corners. The eastern terminus was Willson avenue, and here, on the day before mentioned, the ground was broken in the presence of the few capitalists composing the syndi- cate. Mr. Henry S. Stevens, the leading spirit of the enter- prise, with due formality and without the slightest move- ment of a muscle of his classic face, elevated the first shovelful of dirt, after which he invited the stockholders. and patrons present to meet at the other end of the route, near Water street, three weeks from that day, to celebrate the completion of the first street railroad in Cleveland and in the state. The gentlemen then adjourned to the residence of Mr. Ellery G. Williams, on Kinsman street, now Wood- land avenue, by invitation, and were by him hospitably entertained. Kinsman Street railroad soon followed, as also the original West Side road, an enterprise largely inspired by Mr. Stevens, both of which grants or permits were under the samestatute. Later legislation and renewed grants of franchise for a period of twenty-five years, and
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a denser population of 250,000, has placed the seven or eight principal roads upon an excellent financial footing.
Street railroads have within the last twenty-five years be- come the established mode of transit in all American cities, largely superseding hacks and omnibuses, and are now as indispensable in cities as are the lines of steam railways in the states or across the continent.
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CHAPTER X.
THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT-VISIT OF COLONEL ELLSWORTH'S ZOUAVES -RENDITION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE, LUCY-VISIT OF PRESIDENT- ELECT LINCOLN - ORGANIZATION OF MILITARY COMPANIES - THE PRESIDENT'S CALL-CLEVELAND'S REPLY-CAMP TAYLOR-NORTH- ERN OHIO MILITIA STARTS FOR THE FRONT-THE CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS AT CLEVELAND - THE HOME GUARDS-VALLANDIGHAM AND HIS COLLEAGUES-DEATH OF WILLIAM CASE-CREATION OF THE SINKING FUND - BUILDING OF THE WEST SIDE STREET RAILROAD - MASS MEETING OF FREEMEN IN CLEVELAND - OPENING OF THE A. & G. W. RAILROAD - OBSEQUIES OF COLONELS CREIGHTON AND CRANE AND MAJOR THAYER - RETURN OF THE SEVENTH REGIMENT -THE OLD BAPTIST CHURCH - THE LADIES' AID SOCIETY AND ITS GOOD WORK - ORGANIZATION OF THE PAY FIRE DEPARTMENT AND THE INTRODUCTION OF THE TELEGRAPH SYSTEM.
T HE year 1860, with its momentous political cam- paign, with the angry threats of the southern slave State leaders and their hostile acts immediately following the election of the Republican candidate, with the monster mass meetings, occasioned a steady growth in the deter- mination of the people of the Western Reserve that the Union should be preserved at whatever cost; and in no place in the country was this spirit more deep seated or more vigorously sustained by the convictions of the people and the circumstances of the times, than in the city of
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Cleveland. Situated at the heart of the north, and being the recognized post of departure for the Underground Rail- road, the first mutterings of secession that came from the South inspired her people to begin early their preparation for the irrepressible conflict.
The celebrated Ellsworth Zouaves, of Chicago, had been invited here by the local military organizations in the summer of 1860, and the brilliant evolutions and manly bearing of the visitors aroused the home martial spirit.
Directly following the evacuation of Fort Moultrie by General Anderson and his retreat to Fort Sumter, a mass meeting held at the old Atheneum unanimously adopted resolutions calling upon the State Legislature to take measures for the immediate organization of the State militia. Without waiting, however, for State action, several new companies were organized and regular train- ing inaugurated.
The year 1861 was a year of the most intense excite- ment ever, up to that time, experienced, not only in Cleve- land but throughout the whole country. South Carolina had seceded a few days before the New Year had dawned, and southern States were seething hot and were destined tofollow fast and faster her example. War was imminent and inevitable. Yet, strange as it may seem at this late day, in less than a month from the first act of secession, from the city of Cleveland was returned, under the Fugi- tive Slave law, a fugitive slave. On the twenty-first of January one William S. Goshorn, of Virginia, a gray-haired old man, swore a warrant before the U. S. Commissioner, for the seizure of a young colored woman called Lucy,
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whom he claimed as his slave. The seizure was made by the U. S. Marshal, at the residence of Mr. L. A. Benton, on Prospect street, where she was employed as a domestic.
Lucy was placed in the county jail to await a hearing before the commissioner, but she was soon released from jail by virtue of the State law prohibiting confinement of fugitive slaves in jails of Ohio, and the marshal retained her elsewhere outside of the county jail, until the examin- ation.
The colored people of the city armed themselves for resist- ance, but Lucy was, nevertheless, delivered over to her master and returned to Virginia. Goshorn was reported to have died not many years after, but what became of Lucy is not known here.
This is believed to be the first redition of a slave from this city and the last ever returned under the obnoxious Fugitive Slave law. Yet the South was not appeased. The South was, and had been for some time, preparing for the great crisis, and the North was slowly and dimly awakening to the coming emergencies by the formation of local military companies, and soliciting arms from the State arsenal.
Another occasion for strengthening the determination to resist the pro-slavery spirit and the disloyal disposition of the South was the visit of President-elect Lincoln, Feb- ruary 15, on his way to Washington, to the inaugural cer- emonies. His reception in Cleveland was the largest and most enthusiastic of all the demonstrations from Spring- field, Illinois, to Washington. More than thirty thousand people crowded the streets in defiance of a heavy rain
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storm and acres of mud, while the military organizations, fire department, employés of great manufactories, coun- cilmen and mayor escorted the President and his son to the hotel. Business blocks and dwelling-houses were cov- ered with flags and banners bearing patriotic devices, while the enthusiastic multitude cheered again and again the cause represented by the coming savior of the Union.
Up to this time some two hundred and sixty-eight men had enrolled themselves-five companies of artillery, two of infantry, one of cavalry, and one independent company, the Light Guards. Sixty German citizens formed a rifle company and applied to Columbus for one hundred rifles. This was all anticipatory, voluntary and patriotic, but the opportunity and necessity was only in the very near future, for on the twelfth of April Sumter was bombarded and fell, and three days thereafter the President issued his proclamation for seventy-five thousand men.
The day after the President's call for volunteers Melo- deon Hall was filled with people to make arrangements to respond. General Fitch, General Crowell, Hon. D. K. Cartter and Judge Spalding spoke. On the eighteenth, two days after the meeting, the Grays departed amid cheers of "God bless you-We'll not forget you!" and "Defend the flag!" The city was draped in red, white and blue. So soon as the twenty-fifth, Camp Taylor pre- sented an animated appearance. Volunteer companies were armed and drilling .* Relatives and friends besieged
* Ex-Secretary of War Floyd having secured a large portion of the government implements of war to the Confederacy, it was difficult, and for a time impossible, for the authorities to supply the tens of thousands
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the gates and implored the guards to admit them. Cap- tain T. H. Simpson, United States mustering officer, ar- rived to relieve Captain Gordon Granger, mounted rifles, and to cooperate with Captain Clinton of the Tenth Infantry, the recruiting officer of this post.
May 3 a conference of governors was held at the Angier House, in this city. Governors Dennison, of Ohio; Curtin, of Pennsylvania; Randall, of Wisconsin; Blair, of Michi- gan; Morton, of Indiana, were present. They were sere- naded by the Cleveland Band, and addressed the people from the balcony.
On the sixth the Seventh Regiment departed, and on the fourteenth the Lincoln Guards were organized, with John Friend as captain.
The Forty-first Regiment, under Colonel Hazen, departed for the seat of war in November, '61. On the fourteenth of May the Home Guards were organized, with General A. S. Sanford as captain. Stores were closed early in the evening to allow merchants and their clerks to learn mili- tary tactics. All classes of business men, clerks, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, bankers and mechanics, without respect to age, and indifferent as to the draft, joined this company and were drilled night after night until they were pretty well trained, and would have been a very formida- ble force for home protection in the absence of all our com- panies. At such a time a small force by way of the lake
of militia with arms. In the absence of muskets for drilling purposes, wooden ones, or dummies, were made, which served to teach the new volunteers the manual of arms till the State was enabled to furnish them with guns .- [EDITOR.]
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could have done the city much injury, and this company of drilled citizens was deemed a necessary precaution against small detachments of the enemy who might avail themselves of our military weakness to raid the city.
The year 1862 was one of the greatest doubt and despond- ency in Ohio concerning the final results of the rebellion. It seemed that nearly all of our available young men had already volunteered and enlisted and were in the field. But still more men were needed, and the draft became a necessity. Political disturbances were unfor. tunate, and for a time almost blocked the wheels of mili- tary progress in the State. Mr. Vallandigham was an ambitious leader, with quite a large following, opposed to an armed force against the Confederacy, which greatly increased the discouragements of the Union party. He was a man of considerable ability, had been in Congress and had made what he delighted to call his "Record." He seemed to be prompted and inspired by an indomitable self-conceit, and a desire for personal notoriety to draw public attention to himself, regardless of results, when the great majority of the people of the State were agoniz- ing amid the calamities of war. Many of the leading men of his own political opinions in times of peace declined to burn incense for the gratification of that gentleman. The sons of citizens of all parties were at the front, and were not to be forsaken by their sires, and so they went on with the war. To counteract the baleful influences of Vallan- digham and his followers, prominent Democrats from all parts of the State took the field to encourage enlistments and revive the drooping spirits of the people. From Cleve-
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land there went forth through the State such distinguished men of the Democratic party as Judge Rufus P. Ranney and Henry B. Payne, who by their patriotic and inspiring addresses largely contributed to the restoration of public confidence and renewed efforts of the people to increase the number of regiments and fill the quota demanded by the National government, and expected from a great and patriotic State.
The twenty-fifth of April was a day of public and munici- pal mourning for the death of Hon. William Case, late mayor of the city, a gentleman greatly beloved for his high and noble character and his genial and generous spirit. His funeral was attended from his late residence on Rockwell street. An immense concourse of people were in attendance, and hundreds of the poor and humble, to whom he had ever been exceedingly kind, filled the street for a long distance and wept in silence and in sorrow. The mayor, council, and all city officers were in at- tendance.
On the twenty-sixth of May the Perry Light Infantry and the Light Guards were under arms and ready for the field.
This year (1862) the Legislature passed a law estab- lishing the Cleveland Sinking Fund, and named in said act the following gentlemen as commissioners thereof : Henry B. Payne, Franklin T. Backus, William Case, Moses Kelley and William Bingham. This was not only an important item of legislation for the city, but fortunate in its provisions for securing a board of commissioners equal to the production of great financial results. The
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city has ever taken just pride in the management of her Sinking Fund, which, in the hands of able and honest commissioners, in twenty years, and before the fund was drawn upon for purposes contemplated in the law, aug- mented from $361,377.52 to $2,700,000, with a nominal expense of only $600. No other city in the United States can surpass such a financial record, and even England, the land of faithful trusts, can not present a like instance of ability and fidelity in financial management.
February 10, 1863, the council granted a permit to the West Side Street Railroad company to construct a rail- road to the West Side, to be completed and in operation by June 1, 1864. The route was through Vinyard Lane, now South Water street, Centre street and Detroit hill; a change was afterwards made on the East Side by using Champlain street to Seneca street-all of which were hap- pily superseded by the Viaduct route.
In April the Bank of Commerce assumed the title of Na- tional, under the law. Its capital of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with the privilege of increasing it one hundred thousand dollars more, seems quite modest when compared with the same institution with its millions of present capital. The bank was then but ten years old, but was strong enough in its backbone to pay ten per cent. dividends to its happy stockholders-in fact, it had done so from the beginning-it always walked, never crept. Joseph Perkins and H. B. Hurlbut had been president and cashier from its organization.
On the eleventh of May there was a grand mass meeting of the Freemen of the Northwest in the city-one of the
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many great assemblies, impromptu and by notice in ad- vance, incident to the four years' military struggle, to con- sult and to encourage. Speeches were made by Post- master-General Blair, David P. Brown, John A. Bingham, General F. S. Carey, General James Lane, John Hutchins, J. M. Ashley, Owen Lovejoy and others.
The opening of the Atlantic & Great Western railroad was celebrated on the eighteenth of November by an ex- cursion to Meadville, concluding with a banquet at the Angier House, at which speeches were made by General Rosecrans, Governor Yates and others.
December 6 was a day of mourning throughout the city for the death of Colonels Creighton and Crane of the cele- brated Seventh Regiment, who fell in battle. The funeral was the occasion of a vast assembly. Public meetings of sympathy had been held and the council in a body at- tended. It was a day of sincere sorrow.
This solemn occasion was only too soon followed by the public funeral of Major Thayer, a prominent member of the bar, who early served in a cavalry regiment in the West and subsequently in the Army of the Cumberland. In addition to other public demonstrations of sorrow, there was a large meeting of the Cleveland bar, on the twenty-ninth of December, Judge Ranney presiding, at which appropriate resolutions were passed and speeches made by Judge Ranney and Bishop Charles W. Palmer, F. T. Wallace and others.
On the nineteenth of January, 1864, Cleveland was vis- ited by the severest snow storm ever known to its citizens.
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All business ceased and railroad travel was suspended for several days.
June 26 the decimated ranks of the Seventh Regiment returned from the seat of war. A meeting of military committees was held at the Weddell House, August 6, for the purpose of organizing another regiment in the Nine- teenth Congressional district.
The same day a fire broke out in the planing mill of J. H. Moeller, corner of Seneca and Champlain streets, which totally destroyed valuable machinery and a large amount of material. The exterior of the building was only saved by the energies of the fire department. It was one of the oldest buildings of the city, built for a Baptist church. It still exists with a varied and singular history. After serv- ing many years as a house of religious worship, it was leased to the county for a court-house, and used as such from the abandonment of the old court-house on the cor- ner of the Square till the occupancy of the new court-house on the north side of the Park. Then it became a German theatre, but after a few seasons it slid naturally into a dance house, and from that into a gymnasium. Thus it has been a temple of religion, law, and the muses, besides doing honorable service as a manufactory. This venera- ble old building has fulfilled the terms of an advertisement which we remember to have seen in a Cleveland paper, some twenty-five years ago, written by a retired clergy- man who, in the zeal of his early ministry, had built in an- other part of the city a church at his own expense, and now wanted to sell it. His statements in the advertise- ment touching the substantial character of the structure
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were honest and truthful, but we felt that his association of ideas was rather incongruous and unclerical when he announced that the building was "suitable for the wor- ship of God or for manufacturing purposes."
On the twenty-fifth of April, 1861, only five days after the President's call for seventy-five thousand men, at a time when from lack of experience in matters of war there probably were not half a dozen men in the city who could even guess within fifty thousand dollars how much it would cost to equip a regiment, or the expense for a day to sustain it even in camp, the patriotic women of Cleve- land seemed instantly possessed of a prophetic vision and wonderful foresight of the necessities of the hour and of the future of the coming calamities of war. On that day, as by inspiration from on high, the ladies held an im- promptu meeting in Chapin's Hall to consider how the charity and devotion of woman could best serve her coun- try in its impending peril. At this meeting Mrs. B. Rouse was elected president, Mrs. John Shelley and Mrs. William Melhinch, vice-presidents, Mary Clark Brayton, secretary, and Ellen F. Terry, treasurer.
Thus began the "Ladies' Aid Society," soon to be known as the Soldiers' Aid Society of Cleveland, without change of the organization or the personnels of its officers. Its history can not be written here. Its four years of won- drous labors and its results are recorded in a ponderous volume, yet even in that the story is but half told. The unwritten volume is more wonderful still, but its pages are lost in the grave of the dead soldier, or exists but in the cherished memory of the survivors of the conflict --
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the armless, legless and enfeebled citizens of our country- and the gratitude of a generation. The results of this enterprise of our devoted women was the collection and distribution of upwards of a million of dollars. A fitting conclusion of this mighty work of woman was the famous Sanitary Fair, began on the twenty-second of February, 1864, when the four streets of the Public Square were covered by a monster building in the form of a Greek cross, in which was displayed all manner of merchandise and curious and beautiful things, and a whole multitude of bazars were represented, both in material and in costume of the ladies in charge, of all the commercial nations of the world. The net results were upwards of one hundred thousand dollars in two weeks. But we have no room to say more here, but refer the reader to the Record of the Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio, for is it not all written in the book of Mary Clark Brayton and Ellen F. Terry-"Our Acre and Its Harvest."
During these excited and troublous times the people were oftentimes unnecessarily disturbed by rumors, groundless of course, but none the less effective in creating apprehension of a Confederate invasion of the city by way of Canada.
The frustration of the plan on the part of the Confed- eracy to surprise the garrison at Johnson's Island and lib- erate the rebel prisoners there confined occasioned much excitement; and while it gave evidence of protection by the strong arm of the government, it perhaps awakened as much as allayed the people's fears and feelings of inse- curity, by suggestions of what might happen.
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There were some municipal events during the war of prime importance to Cleveland, indicating the change from town to city. Two of these were the organization of the pay fire department and the introduction of the fire telegraph system. In the fall of 1862 the council, by a State grant' of authority, purchased a steam fire engine and equipped the first paid company. In the following spring two more companies were fitted out, and before the close of the year, a fourth. With the advent of No. 4 the old volunteer companies, with their hand engines, went out of existence. The coming of the latest approved appa- ratus, so much more effective in coping with the demon of Fire, was hailed with enthusiastic delight by the owners of perishable property, by insurance companies and by the people generally. This history would be incomplete, how- ever, were it to omit a grateful tribute to the courage, self-sacrifice and gallantry of the old veteran volunteer firemen who, without compensation, protected from the flames the lives and property of our citizens up to this time. True, they received the merely nominal sti- pend of eight dollars per year from the city, but this was deposited in the treasury of the companies to de- fray expenses, and such funds often proved inadequate, making it obligatory upon the brave veterans to go down into their pockets and contribute money as well as time and strength. There were, in 1862, about thirteen companies and about six hundred firemen. Cleveland has now, with its quadrupled population, one hundred and ninety men, fourteen engine companies, five hook and lad- der companies and a fire boat, to protect the city. The
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