USA > Ohio > Ohio and her Western Reserve, with a story of three states leading to the latter, from Connecticut, by way of Wyoming, its Indian wars and massacre > Part 12
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Thus in a few months the tables were completely turned against the Federalists, and the Republicans were well advanced toward final victory. It only remained for the peo- ple to clinch what had been gained.
The "Enabling Act" had authorized a convention of delegates from all that part of the Territory proposed for statehood-all ex- cept Wayne County, including the eastern half of the lower peninsula of Michigan-to be held November 1st, at Chillicothe, to determine if it was expedient to establish a State government, and, if so, to proceed to frame a constitution and form a govern- ment, or to call another convention for that purpose. A hotly contested campaign for
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the election of delegates ensued, the issue being State or no State. There were multi- tudinous objections on the part of the Feder- alists, and all of the old charges against St. Clair were made to do duty again by the Jeffersonians, as well as new arguments setting forth the benefits to be derived from a State government. The strongest contention of the Federalists was that the Territory had not yet the 60,000 population required by the ordi- nance to entitle it to statehood ; but this had little effect, and only proved their own in- sincerity in moving, as they had done, for a State of far smaller bounds. It was true that a census taken in January, 1802, showed but 45,028 people of both sexes and all ages in the Territory, but the Republicans argued that the population would reach the required figure by the time that statehood was achieved, and it was obvious enough that a State which included the Chillicothe and Cincinnati set- tlements would sooner reach the required population than one which did not. One of the ludicrous objections of the Federalists, which, of course, seems even smaller now than it did when made, was that the Terri-
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torial government only cost about $5,000 per year, and that the expenses of a State govern- ment would be fully $15,000! But the op- position soon weakened.
When the convention assembled it was overwhelmingly Republican. It not only quickly decided the question of statehood for Ohio, but that it would itself prescribe the constitution for the State instead of leaving that task to a second convention, and went ahead with the work so expeditiously that it adjourned on the 29th of the month, having completed its duties.
What might be called the last protest of the Federalists was also the final gasp of its leader, poor Arthur St. Clair. He asked permission to address the convention, and although fourteen members voted against his doing so, he made a most injudicious speech, in which he inveighed against the "Enabling Act " as " an interference by Congress in the internal affairs of the country, such as they had neither the power nor right to make, not binding on the people and in truth a nullity," with much of contempt, and when this had been promptly conveyed to President Jeffer-
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son, there soon came like a thunderbolt to the old Governor a curt communication from Sec- retary of State James Madison (acting under orders from President Jefferson) alluding to his " intemperance and indecorum of language toward the Legislature of the United States," his " disorganizing spirit and tendency of very evil example," and peremptorily dismissing him from his high office. Thus after fourteen years of service General Arthur St. Clair was cut short in his incumbency in an office which was itself to end in a few months, and the letter containing his dismissal was handed him by his secretary and bitter enemy, now made his successor. But there was little sympathy for St. Clair among the triumphant Republicans in convention assembled and about to launch Ohio.
Another episode of the convention, pecul- iar and significant of the fact that the battle for free soil in Ohio and the old Northwest was not wholly nor immediately won by the ordinance of freedom, consisted in the actual attempt made to introduce, constitutionally, a limited slavery. The integrity of the ordi- nance was first attacked in Ohio, as it was
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afterward and more persistently in the other two Ohio River States of the Territory. An effort was made in the Committee that framed the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to in- troduce a clause favoring a form of slavery in which male slaves might be held until thirty-five years of age and females until twenty-eight years old, and it was alleged by the delegate offering this provision that one of the greatest men of the nation (it was believed the allusion was to Jefferson) thought that "this would be a great step toward a general emancipation of slavery " in the whole country. But there was upon this committee, as a Federalist delegate from the Marietta district, Ephraim Cutler, a son of Dr. Manas- seh Cutler, credited with the antislavery provision of the ordinance, and he made radical objection to slavery being allowed a foothold in the State, framed a clause of the constitution in the very language of the ordi- nance, and, rising from a sick bed, fought it to adoption, though it was saved both in committee and convention by a majority of only one. On this action rests Judge Cutler's title to the gratitude of the people of the 254
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Northwest, a title exceeded by that of no other man, and only equaled perhaps by the splendid service of Edward Coles, of Illinois (who was, by the way, of Southern birth). The stand taken by Cutler in reaffirming the sixth compact of the ordinance exerted an influence early and late, repeatedly, as other States and Territories sought, in the interests of Southern immigration, to evade it. Not a twelvemonth had elapsed when the people of Indiana Territory urging Congress to set aside this article, John Randolph answered them nay and held up Ohio as an example of what a State might become without the aid of slavery.
The constitution adopted at Chillicothe was the work of many hands. It is tradi- tionally asserted that the same swashbuckling but brilliant Michael Baldwin whom we have seen leading the mob against St. Clair was its principal author, and that he used a whisky barrel as a desk on which to write it, and some of the contents as the spirit of literary inspiration. But there is a prepon- derance of probability amounting almost to a certainty that the real author of the instru-
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ment was Judge Jacob Burnet, of Cincinnati, a native of Newark, N. J., born 1770, a grad- uate of Princeton, the leading lawyer of the State, and "the Lycur- gus of the West." Orig- inally a Federalist, and later a Whig, he was successively Supreme Court Judge and United States Senator, and no man made a deeper im- pression upon the his- tory of Ohio.
The present President Judge JACOB BURNET. of the United States has called it a " foolish " con- stitution, but it was wise in one provision- viz., against the possible contingency of any Governor becoming too strenuous in the exer- cise of an unpopular policy. It went to the democratic extremity of limiting the Govern- or's powers to almost nil, and conferring all the patronage on the Legislature.
When "Tom " Corwin was Governor he remarked, after a week's occupation of the office, that "reprieving criminals and appoint- 256
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ing notaries were the sole powers of the pre- rogative." The truth was that the shadow of St. Clair fell athwart the making of the Ohio constitution and influenced the limita- tion of the executive power. Even after the lapse of half a century, when Ohio, having in the meantime thrived very well under the original, made a new constitution, the memory of the stiff old autocrat was still a restraining force, and the State to this day is one of the four in the whole Union in which the Gov- ernor has no veto.
Ohio was never formally admitted, as all other States since the original thirteen have been, to the Union ; and it has been a matter of much contention as to which one of half a dozen dates is the true one from which to compute her age. That of April 30, 1802, is not the correct one. It is simply that of the passage of the "Enabling Act." A better one would be that of November 29th, in the same year, when the constitution was adopted, or January 11, 1803, when the first election was held ; but these and several others are unsup- portable for various reasons. On February 19, 1803, Congress passed an act "for the 257
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execution of the laws of the United States within the State of Ohio," and this was the nearest approach to the "act of admission," from which the existence of the other States is dated. This date has been generally sanc- tioned by the historians as the true one. But the Legislature first assembled on March 1, 1803, and the Ohio Archeological and His- torical Society has officially decided that date to be the proper one of the State's origin, and it is therefore now gen- erally so accepted. The new ultra- democratic State, which had been protesting against the survival of English methods in its colonial gov- Queques ernment, elected as EDWARD TIFFIN. its first Governor British - born Ed- ward Tiffin, who had presided over the con- stitutional convention, and with the exception
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that one place on the Supreme Court judi- ciary was given to a Federalist -Samuel Huntington, of the Connecticut Reserve -- the spoils of office naturally went to the Jeffersonians, who held dominion over their own creation for more than twenty years. Thomas Worthington received substantial re- ward for his great services as a State founder in being made one of its first United States Senators, his colleague being John Smith ; and Jeremiah Morrow was elected and re- mained for ten years the sole Representative in Congress.
Of all the measures accompanying the advance to statehood, by far the most impor- tant, because powerfully affecting the settle- ment, and consequently the rapid rise of the State in every way, was a clause inserted by Albert Gallatin in the "Enabling Act" of Congress (and having all the force of a con- tract, when accepted, as it was, by the people of the State), which provided that the United States should grant one-twentieth of the pro- ceeds of all lands sold in the State to the construction of roads connecting tide-water with the Western waters. This was the real
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beginning of internal improvements in this country, and resulted in the building of the famous National Road to and through Ohio, a work costing several millions, and fully as important in its time as the construction of the transcontinental railroad in a later and larger era. The Ohioans were never in dan- ger of becoming " separatists," like the people of their Southern neighbors-as was indicated by Burr's finding them "too plodding for his purpose "; but Gallatin's far foreseeing cemented them even more firmly to the Union, and the inauguration of the policy of public improvements put the settlements of Ohio fully twenty years ahead.
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CHAPTER X
OHIO'S ASCENDENCY ANALYZED
THE remarkably rapid progress of Ohio's settlement constitutes one of the most won- derful chapters in the history of the nation, and taken together with the cosmopolitanism that characterized it, gives to the State its best title to be considered, at least in one respect, absolutely unique among the sister- hood of States, as has already been claimed in a preceding chapter. That the distinction is true, and not a mere figure of speech, be- comes apparent upon even a slight examina- tion of the facts.
Cutler's construction and passage of the Ordinance of 1787 have been dwelt on as constituting the first great humanly planned cause of Ohio's early auspiciousness of condi- tion. Taken in conjunction with the first great fortuitous cause of rapid settlement, her
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geographical position, these two were suffi- cient to work seeming wonders, but Gallatin's stroke of economic statesmanship came as a third great formative cause, supplementing and enormously enhancing the effect of the others. Geographically, Ohio stood, a great body of desirable, nationalized land, as the focusing-point of a cordon of settled States, naturally looked to by all as a field of settle- ment. Then came the ordinance operating automatically for selection of the best from these. And finally Gallatin's great provision for preparing a highway for the march of civilization. It was all exactly as if the con- centrating march of a vast army of occupa- tion had been directed upon Ohio as a huge strategic movement planned by a supreme commander of sublime intelligence and fore- seeingly carried forward as a single gigantic operation-engineering measures and all- from the first to the finish. But if the result of several statesmen's sagacity, all building wiser than they knew, and singularly favored by the fortuitous, the end was the same.
It has been tritely told that New England was sown with selected seed from Old Eng-
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land. But Ohio was sown with selected seed from New England and all the colonies. Her uniqueness, historically speaking, lies in the fact that hers was the first soil settled by the X United States.
New England was peopled by the Puri- tans (and others) from old England; New York, by Dutch and English ; Pennsylvania, by Quakers and Germans and Scotch-Irish ; Virginia, again by English, but quite dif- ferent from those of Massachusetts and Con- necticut ; Maryland, by still another element ; and so on. Of the States not included among the original thirteen, but admitted to the Union before Ohio, Vermont was settled by Massachusetts and New York, Kentucky by Virginia, and Tennessee by North Carolina ; but Ohio was settled by all of these-by elements from each and every State in the confederacy ; in other words, Ohio was set- tled by the people of the United States.
Hers was the first territory to be repre- sentative of the entire people. Within her borders the hitherto racially different or long- separated consanguineous elements-in some instances estranged, in others emasculated or
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enervated through dearth of fresh blood- came into contiguity-finally to be blent into a homogeneous whole, and so to advance by another stage-and a huge one-the evolu- tion of a race. It would savor of extremism to go further and to say that these once widely dissevered and dissimilar elements coming together in a virgin land not only advanced an old, but founded a new race ; and yet, what were those elementary frag- ments in the old States but colonies of Eng- lish Puritans and Cavaliers and Quakers, of Scotch-Irish and Germans ? And, in a cer- tain sense, were not the Ohioans truly the first Americans ?
A slight analysis of this surprisingly va- ried population is interesting, both because of the reminders it affords of the origins of some prominent Ohio personages, and its revelation of the influence of the old States in building a new one.
No two or three States can be credited with a preponderating contribution to Ohio if its whole history is taken into account, but because of its territory lying in the zone of Virginia's and Pennsylvania's natural emigra-
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tion westward, and because these States were nearest and most populous, it was their pio- neers who dominated the new State during the years that it was new. This fact is at- tested by the prevalence of men born in those two States, among the constitution makers and early Congressmen of Ohio. Of twelve men in the convention of 1802 whose his- tory is known, six came from Virginia, one each from Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, and Connecticut, and two from Massachusetts. Of Congressmen prior to 1830, out of thirty-three whose nativity is known, nine were Pennsylvanians, six Vir- ginians, six also each from Connecticut and New Jersey, three from New York, and one each from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Kentucky.
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Virginia gave the State the first of its presidential contributions-William Henry Harrison. It gave it, too, its chief of founders, Thomas Worthington, later Senator and Gov- ernor, and those other sterling early Govern- ors, Allen Trimble and Robert Lucas; its eminent jurist, Noah H. Swayne, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States ; its
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pioneer and founder of the State capital, Lu- cas Sullivant and Lyne Starling; its famous Ewing family and Allen G. Thurman-with many more almost equally influential men.
Pennsylvania in the early days was not far behind Virginia as an Ohio builder. She sent over her western border General Wil- liam Lytle, the found- er of an influential Ohio family, of whom the poet-soldier, Gen- eral William H. Lytle, was a representative of the third genera- 7.000 tion ; Joseph Vance, twice a strong mem- ber of Congress and twice Governor ; Jeremiah Morrow, sole mem- ber of Congress from Ohio, 1803 to 1813, and last of the pioneer Governors; that strangely named Quaker abolitionist, Achilles Pugh ; General Thomas Lyon Hamer, the only rival of Corwin, martyr hero of the Mexican War, and the Congressman who sent Grant to West Point; John A. Bingham, Congress-
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man and foreign minister, and variously prominent in the nation ; the father of Gen- eral William S. Rosecrans ; "the fighting McCooks' " progenitors ; the nearest ancestry of General Grant ; and the parents of the late President Mckinley.
New Jersey, small- er and more remote, did less, but still much. What she did is suggested, rather than told, in the names of her pioneers, among whom, besides John Cleves Symmes, the founder of Cincin- AG Thurman nati, were Jacob Bur- net, "the Lycurgus of the West"; the Zanes, highest types of the frontiersmen ; Benjamin Lundy, the journalistic pioneer of antislavery agitation in State and nation ; John McLean, of the United States Supreme Court, who dared to dissent from Taney on the Dred Scott decision ; the Piatts, of poetic fame ; Nicholas Longworth, philanthropist and mu- nificent patron of art; and the father of Wil-
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liam Dennison, one of the triumvirate of the State's great " war Governors."
Kentucky contributed the peerless "Tom" Corwin, Governor and Senator of the United States, equally famous as sound statesman and brilliant wit; Gen- eral Irvin McDowell, and-strangely exem- plifying the automatic working of the great ordinance-James G. Birney, pioneer of ab- olition.
Maryland sent to the State, as the most prominent of her pio- haberin neers, Charles S. Ham- mond, the great edi- tor and lawyer, and as the most prominent of later-day citizens, Hugh J. Jewett, financier.
From North Carolina, though far away, came many who achieved eminence them- selves or were the parents of eminent men. Among the former, the ancestors of Edwin M. Stanton, the iron War Secretary, and of Murat Halstead, and among the latter Wil-
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liam Allen, Congressman and most famous of Ohio's Democratic Governors; also-again illustrating the function of selection in the ordinance-Levi Coffin, most prominent of emancipators, who freed from two to three thousand slaves by personal exertions, and passed into history as
the "reputed presi- dent of the Under- ground Railroad."
New England, aside from the Mari- etta settlement, com- posed principally of Massachusetts men, and including the Putnams and Cutlers, W. Allen whose great services to the State have been shown, and Return Jonathan Meigs, an early Governor and Ohio's first of a long series of contributions to the Cabinets,-did not figure so largely in the early weaving of the Western social fabric as did the Middle and Southern States. But New England made up for this omission when the Connecticut Reserve was opened to settle-
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ment. Connecticut men naturally predomi- nated there, as we have already seen. Sam- uel Huntington, one of the first judges of the Ohio Supreme Court and second Governor of the State, was of the vanguard of her pioneers. Here also came from the same Yankee State the father of David Tod, sec- ond of the " war Governors." But Connec- ticut's contribution was not all bestowed on her Reserve. Alfred Kelley, of Columbus, "the father of the Ohio canal system," was of Connecticut derivation, as was the late Governor George Hoadley, of Cincinnati, and so also Morrison R. Waite, of Toledo, Chief Justice of the United States, and the Sher- man family of the central part of the State, whose name was made illustrious by the longest-serving Senator of the United States and its most famous financier, John Sher- man, and by General William Tecumseh Sherman.
To Massachusetts must be accredited " Ben " Wade and Joshua R. Giddings, the twin political giants of the Reserve (although the latter was born, where the family a short time sojourned, in Pennsylvania). Garfield,
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of the same region, also came remotely of mingled Massachusetts and Connecticut stock.
Vermont "Green Mountain " vigor was exhibited in a goodly immigration, which bore in, among others, Governor Reuben Wood, and the father of President Ruther- ford B. Hayes, of Fre- mont. Rhode Island would have been well enough represented even had she sent to the new State no oth- er of her sons than the lofty Whig lead- er, Samuel F. Vinton. New Hampshire con- John Sherman tributed Lewis Cass, whom Ohio lost to Michigan's gain, and Sal- mon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treas- ury and Chief Justice of the United States.
New York added to this composite popu- lation, among a host of useful and famous citizens, General Duncan McArthur, one of the pioneer Governors; the great jurist, Joseph R. Swan; Attorney-General Henry Stanberry ;
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Major-General Jacob D. Cox; Eleutheros Cooke, the father of Jay Cooke; also the fathers of General McPherson and James A. Garfield.
If we go further and consider nationalities, we find that these added to the complexity of population and contributed elements of power. Of the Germans, it is sufficient to say, look at Cincinnati, with its musical and art fame! But of this people there came even the despised Hessians, and behold the son of one of them was the brave cavalry- man Custer ! If we turn to the English of immediate immigration, we are reminded that of these were Tiffin, the first Governor of the State, and John Brough, the greatest of its war Governors. From the British isle of Guernsey, on the French coast, came enough people to decide the naming of a county after their native island. Even the French, who were a small element, brought some fine strains of blood, of which one comes down to to-day in the literary elegance of Mrs. Made- line Vinton Dahlgren. The pure Dutch gave the State the able Brinkerhoffs, and the na- tion, through the State, one of its greatest
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generals, William S. Rosecrans, whose fame grows brighter with the passing years. The Scotch-Irish, always strong in the frontier settlements, contributed the Covenanter stock of which Whitelaw Reid came; that of Gov- ernor Joseph Vance ; of Generals McDowell, McPherson, and Steedman ; that of the " fight- ing McCooks," fifteen in number, all famous ; and the blood on his father's side of U. S. Grant. As for the straight Irish, they here lost no time in showing their proneness to politics and fighting. First of them all was Michael Baldwin, whom we have seen riot- ing at Chillicothe in the period of the State's formation, and who was also the first Speaker of the Ohio House. Wilson Shannon, the first native-born Governor, was an Irishman ; and so, too, General Phil Sheridan, and the brilliant war correspondent Januarius Aloys- ius MacGahan, the " Bulgarian liberator."
The exceedingly diversified elements of population which have been indicated under- went the first great step toward homogeneity in the stirring times of the War of 1812. The intensely patriotic and energetic spirit of the pioneers was splendidly attested when a popu-
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lation which cast a total vote of about 19,000 contributed over 20,000 men to the military service. Here occurred the first demonstra- tion of Ohio's usefulness to the nation, and in the War of 1812, with its swift mingling of the men of the State and its soldierly dis- cipline, we find the first internal cause of the remarkable upbuilding of her people's power, soon to be made variously evident.
A second cause of Ohio's rapid rise in political power was the really wonderful de- velopment of a moral tone of profound ear- nestness in their political principles which gradually came to dominate the mass of the people. This began with the planting of the antislavery doctrine, the propagation of which was, owing to the operation of selec- tion through the Ordinance of 1787, pushed forward fully as much by Ohioans of South- ern as by Ohioans of Northern or New Eng- land birth. It was to have been expected under any circumstances that the New Eng- land settlements would have their agitators like Charles B. Storrs, the President of Hud- son College, in the Western Reserve, its Fin- ney, and "Father" Keep, and Fairchild, its 274
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