USA > Ohio > Ross County > Chillicothe > Ohio centennial anniversary celebration at Chillicothe, May 20-21, 1903 : under the auspices of the Ohio State Archaelogical and Historical Society : complete proceedings > Part 48
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One call for a meeting says (New Lisbon, Aug. 5, 1840) :
"The present alarming degree of executive encroachment on the reserved rights of the people - its reckless disregard of the constitutional checks placed upon it in the other coordinate branches - its entire abandonment of the first principles of a popular and representative gov- ernment - and its settled determination to merge every consideration of patriotism and national policy in a pitiful scramble for place and power on the part of the President and of his political favorites - call loudly, we think, to the people to rise in their strength-in their sovereign capacity, and assert and maintain their rights and liberties, and to rebuke those who have so wantonly disregarded the best interests of those over whom they have been appointed to rule."
In a call signed, among others, by Millard Fillmore, for a meeting at Buffalo in October, the committee say :
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"We feel that we are approaching a crisis in the political history of this country, second only to that great struggle that gave us inde- pendence and freedom."
The distinguished Whig manufacturer and philanthropist of Massachusetts, Abbott Lawrence, in a private letter of congrat- ulation on the election, says (Boston, Nov. 14, 1840) :
"We have chosen General Harrison President of the United States, which gives confidence to the capitalists and will shortly produce an effect upon the labor of the country. You have done nobly in Ohio - but I pray you not to forget that the old Bay State has brought out the spirit of '76 and sustained her character gloriously."
At the Baltimore convention Mr. Webster spoke as follows :
"The States are here, everyone of them, through their representa- tives. The old thirteen of the Republic are here from every city and county, between the hills of Vermont and the rivers of the south. The new thirteen, too, are here, without a blot or a stain upon them. The twenty-six States are here. No local or limited feeling has brought them here, no feeling but an American one - a hearty attachment to the country. We are here with the common sentiment and the common feeling that we are one people. We may assume that we belong to a country where one part has a common feeling and a common interest with the other.
"We are called upon to accomplish, not a momentary victory, but one which should last at least half a century. It was not to be expected that every year, or every four years, would bring together such an assem- blage as we have before us. The revolution should be one which should last for years, and the benefits of which should be felt forever. Let us, then, act with firmness. Let us give up ourselves entirely to this new revolution."
And Henry Clay said :
"We received our liberty from our revolutionary ancestors, and we are bound in all honor to transfer it, unimpaired, to our posterity. Should Mr. Van Buren be re-elected, the struggle of restoring the country to its former glory would be an almost hopeless one."
Lastly, I quote an editorial from the Harrison Eagle (Taun- ton, Mass., Oct. 31, 1840) :
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"FREEMEN ! AWAKE!
Friends - Americans - Patriots - Citizens -
You, who have wives and children, who look up to you for protection and support - you who have toiled on to the middle age of life - prospering and to prosper under our glorious institutions. Young men-you who have just started upon your untried career - you who are not born to wealth, and have nothing to depend upon but your good names, unblemished reputations, and the credit system for your ultimate success and prosperity in life - one and all, who value the honor, safety and glory of your coun- try, and would rescue her from a piratical band of spoilers - who would preserve, cherish, maintain, and transmit to posterity unimpaired, the privileges and immunities secured to you by the toil, blood and martyr- dom of the heroes of the revolution, our patriotic fathers - come up manfully, boldly, fearlessly to the rescue. Form in solid columns - let not one single man, lame, crippled, halt or blind, who loves his country, stay away. Come one, come all, to the rescue. March up undaunted to the ballot box, on the ninth day of next November, and deposit your votes for Harrison and Tyler - and by so doing, you will brand with the seal of your condemnation-agrarianism-blasphemy -- atheism-Brown- sonism - and Van Burenism in Old Bristol.
"Fear not - falter not - pause not. A glorious victory awaits you, if you but perform your duty - sleep not upon your posts - keep the watch-fires of liberty burning - put on your armor, and rally with brave indomitable hearts for the approaching contest - cleave down the temples of false prophets and false gods, and let them mingle with the dust - scatter the priests who have burned strange incense upon our altars like chaff before the popular whirlwind of your indignation - and then shall your country once more be free - and the car of State roll on in tri- umph manned by the friends of liberty and prosperity, and under the command of the veteran patriot and the honest Farmer WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON."
Nor was this all overwrought political declamation. Within fifteen years the executive was overriding the will of the people in Kansas; and, twenty years after, the very existence of the nation was put to the hazard of the sword. But it is unneces- sary to impute to the Whigs foreknowledge; there were many live issues crying out for settlement. The twenty thousand federal offices were filled with men, all of one party, and aggressively partisan; the national-banking system had been broken up; the currency of multitudes of state banks was depreciated or worth-
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less ; forty millions of surplus in the national treasury had been distributed among the States; the revenues had decreased ; the expenses which had been $13,000,000 per annum during J. Q. Adams' administration, had increased under Van Buren to $37,- 000,000 ; the federal government, apparently, was on the verge of bankruptcy ; wages had declined, in some cases as much as one-half; the cost of living had increased; and it was estimated that a million men were out of employment. To cap all, de- falcations, like those of Price and Swartwout, were extremely common. A single document communicated to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury contained a list of more than fifty de- faulting sub-treasurers, called "leg-treasurers," the sums vary- ing from one thousand to more than one hundred thousand dollars.
Such was the campaign and such the hero. How deeply the people had been stirred may be judged from the fact that the total vote at this election was nearly one million larger than at the election of 1836. Harrison's majority on the popular vote was about 150,000, and in the Electoral College he had nearly four- fifths of the electors.
The President called about him a cabinet of great ability : Daniel Webster, Secretary of State; Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Treasury; John Bell, of Tennessee, afterward candidate for President on the Bell and Everett ticket, Secretary of War; George E. Badger, of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy; Francis Granger, of New York, Postmaster-General ; and John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, Attorney-General.
In just one month, came the sad death of the President. Nothing had been done except to deal with the ravenous horde of office-seekers, whose importunities were largely responsible for his death. The state of public opinion in Ohio on the distri- bution of the offices may be surmised from the statement that, on the basis of population, aside from the postoffices, she was entitled to 642 places in the public service, and actually had only 137.
The President was distressed by the attitude of his party toward the public offices. But the Van Buren administration, as
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already indicated, retained or appointed many unfit men. Edwin P. Whipple, in a lecture delivered in 1845, refers to the "spec- tacle of gentlemen taking passage for France or Texas, with bags of the public gold in their valises." Along the same line is the following defence of the removals which I find among Mr. Ew- ing's memoranda :
"There was also another reason and a more just one for this opinion of the public and I may say mandate of the popular will. It had been the policy of the party just thrust from power to retain in office none but their active political adherents, those who would go for them thoroughly in all things; and the performance of official duty was far less requisite to a tenure of office than electioneering services. Hence the offices had become for the most part filled with brawling, offensive political partisans of a very low moral standard, their official duties performed by substitutes or not performed at all. . It was thought wise and prudent to make many changes, and by so doing to elevate, as far as possible, the official standard, and insure a more faithful execution of official duties."
Some of the traditions of the cabinet are worth noting. In the correspondence of M. de Bacourt, the French minister, we get glimpses of Mr. Webster, rather awkward as Master-of-cere- monies, lining the foreign representatives along the wall in order of seniority in service and marching the President and Cabinet in, in single file, at the first diplomatic reception; of Crittenden chewing tobacco and Badger smoking; and of Bell, whom the minister chanced to meet at the home of the Secretary of the Treasury, throwing himself full length onto a sofa and putting his feet on the arm of a chair ; all very much to the disgust of the French minister.
I remember a story of the first diplomatic reception which my father used to tell. Mr. Webster, who was much given to the grand manner, asked the Cabinet to meet at his office in the State Department, that they might pass in a body to the White House. He ranged them in the order which pleased him, himself first, little Mr. Badger last, and started the procession through the White-House grounds. There was one man in the line who felt himself misplaced. As they approached the White House Badger slipped around in front of Mr. Webster, and, assuming a particu-
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larly irritating strut, led the way into the building. The Cabi- net were shown into an ante-room, where they awaited the coming of the President. Mr. Webster was magnificently arrayed in a blue coat and waistcoat, with brass buttons. As they were solemnly standing there, Badger stepped over to him and said: “Pardon me, Mr. Webster, but would you mind telling me how much that waistcoat cost?" Mr. Webster, looking down upon him with good-humored disdain, exclaimed, "You egregious trifler !"
When the Cabinet broke up by reason of the rupture with President Tyler over the bank-vetoes, Webster remained. Though all the other members retired, his defection impaired immensely the force of their demonstration, and strengthened the hands of the President. It led to bitter but temporary resentment. I find a memorandum in Mr. Ewing's hand which, though perhaps not quite germane, is so full of feeling that I cannot forbear to quote it. It was written in 1864. Speaking of Mr. Webster, he says:
"The last time I met him, before some difference as to national policy cast a shade of unkindness between us, was in the Supreme Court. I was there attending to my causes; he in the Senate, but waiting for the coming on of some very important case. I met him every morning about eleven for nearly a month-the Senate sat at twelve- and we walked behind the judges' seat and were social. One day I was detained at home. Next morning we met at the usual hour and as we shook hands, he said :
'One morn I missed him.'
This was kindly and handsome, and when I read that on his death- bed he asked for Gray's Elegy, the scene rushed upon my memory with a force that almost unmanned me. How often, - morning, noon and even- ing, - have I since missed him."
While we praise those who have reached the highest place in our Government, it must not be forgotten that, though only six Ohio men ever attained to that distinction, many have stood, capable, and ready to fill the office. Out of an aver- age voting population in Ohio, during the past hundred years, of about half a million, but a bare half-dozen have been chosen to the presidency ; only about one in one hundred thousand. I am reminded of an anecdote told me of President Hayes by Mr. John Brisben Walker: At a time when during the Hayes administra- tion the secretaryship of war fell vacant, Mr. Walker, among
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others, approached the President with the suggestion that he ap- point as Secretary Mr. Murat Halstead, of Cincinnati. Knowing that the President would question the propriety of making two ap- pointments to the Cabinet from the same State, Mr. Walker armed himself with precedents to sustain it, and when General Hayes raised the question, he cited them. "Yes," said the President, "I know that there are precedents for the appointment of two men from the same State to the Cabinet. But can you find a precedent for the appointment of an Chio Secretary of War, when the President and Secretary of the Treasury are from Ohio; an Ohioan is General of the army, another Lieutenant-general ; when the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and one of the associate justices are from Ohio; when an Ohio man is min- ister to France and another minister to Japan?" -and so on through a long line of his fellow-statesmen all filling high offices.
We honor the six Ohio Presidents for their ability in snatch- ing the great and coveted place. We honor them more for the patriotism and capacity which they brought to the discharge of its duties. They will be remembered because their careers and character are incentives to high ideals and great deeds. But they interest us, above all, as types of that native American people, which, in the brief span of one hundred years, changed twenty- five millions of acres of savage wilderness into this progressive, happy, proud commonwealth.
ETHNOLOGICAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
B. R. COWEN.
The title to this paper was the suggestion of the Executive Committee of the Joint Centennial Commission. The wide dis- crepancy between the promise of the title and the performance of the paper would seem to call for an apology. Instead of which the writer merely suggests that he is responsible for the paper alone and not for the title.
Ethnology is defined as "the science which treats of the division of man- kind into races, their origin, distri- bution and relations and the peculiar- ities which characterize them."
So unique are the antecedents of the Ohio man that an "Ethnological History" of the state would neces- sarily embrace the history of those B R. COWEN. races which constitute most of the civilized nations of the globe, because the most of those nations have contributed in a greater or less degree to make the Ohio man what he is to-day.
The task may be greatly simplified, however, by eliminating all consideration of the humanity which peopled our territory be- fore the coming of the white man; that is from the Paleolithic man of the later Glacial Era, supposed to have lived here, through the vast intervening period of some thousands of years to the recent Indian who was so much in evidence when the real Ohio man made his appearance.
Those who preceded the present occupants were the mere caretakers for the real possessor whose coming these broad
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savannas, far reaching forests and teeming hills plainly foreshad- owed as the future domain of a mighty empire.
They left nothing behind them which in the slightest de- gree influenced the character, laws, or customs of the present oc- cupants and are not, therefore, connected, directly or indirectly, prejudices, his fierce and ungovernable passions, his vices, and still
The history of those peoples though interesting in itself, is a thing apart from our history. True, they occupied the territory but they never possessed it in any true sense of possession. It is only by agricultural labor that man can be said to appropriate or possess the soil, and the Indian lived by the products of the chase. He was marked for destruction by his fixed and ineradicable prejudices, his fierce and ungovernable passions, his vices, and still more perhaps by his savage virtues. The coming of the white man with his peculiar civilization was the death knell of the Indian, for it had come to be an axiom of that civilization that barbarism has no rights which it is bound to respect, and that axiom was the rule and guide of the white man's conquest.
So that the Indian has gone the way of the Mastodon, the Cliff Dweller and the Moundbuilder. He has sped away like a bird on the wing leaving behind him no memorials of his passage save his dishonored graves and his musical names which linger on mountain, lake and river to tell the story of his sojourn and his exit. He is gone, but in the crimson trail of his retreat the spots where he made his stand are marked and honored by a people who admire courage even in an enemy, for no aboriginal race can point to a more desperate valor, a more stubborn resist- ance, or a more dramatic exit.
Yet, defeated and driven from the graves of his fathers, not all the power of our high civilization with its superior appliances for warfare could reduce him to a tame submission, or awe him into non-resistance.
His gallant deeds in Greece or haughty Rome, By Mars sung, or Homer's harp sublime, Had charmed the world's wide round, And triumphed over Time.
To have supplanted the haughty Indian a hundred years ago when the white settlements were widely scattered and sparsely
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inhabited was by no means the least important of the white man's achievements. From Massasoit, King Philip, Powhatan and Logan down to Ouray, Sitting Bull and Geronimo, every nation and every tribe of Indians produced men of mark. The Narra- gansetts, the Pequods and the Iroquois are extinct. King Philip, Powhatan, Red Jacket, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Logan, Black Hawk, Cochise, Captain Jack, Sitting Bull, a grim procession of fierce and untamable warriors, many of them men of striking diplomacy and statesmanship, have stalked across the pages of our history proving their humanity by leaving behind them one more trail of blood.
They were forest bred, reared in the shadow of our hills and mountains, their familiar music the thunder of our cataracts, their daily haunts our forests, our lakes and our rivers. It is this Ohio climate, this teeming soil and this life-giving sunshine of ours, which we must rely upon, as did our fathers, to make us and continue us great, free,' liberty-loving and God-fearing people, and which produced the race we have supplanted, whose deeds of valor should place them beside the Saxon and the Greek in history.
Scientists have traced, with more or less minuteness, and apparently to their own satisfaction, at least, what they are pleased to call a natural evolution of the race through the centuries. So that if we shall accept their theories we must conclude that present conditions are simply the result of such evolution, and thus resolve all doubts as to the causes of our present condition, and thus end this discussion.
But such theories take no account, or do not give due weight to what might be termed differing rates of evolution among different peoples or among the same peoples, with different en- vironment. Nor do they account for the decadence of the race wherever those things which we are accustomed to regard as civilizing influences are withdrawn.
There are whole communities in this country where the pub- lic morals and the general intelligence are at a very low ebb; where the people have not only made no improvement for a hundred years, but where they have in fact retrograded, being probably more illiterate, immoral and bestial to-day than were
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the lowest classes in any section of the country a hundred years ago. So that what scientists are pleased to call evolution as applied to moral and intellectual development is not a law of general and uniform operation, but rather a something depend- ent, more or less, upon extraneous influences acting upon cer- tain people in certain favored localities.
Why is it that there are communities in this country where illiteracy is the rule and intelligence the exception; where human life is cheap and lawlessness prevails? In ante-war times we were wont to dismiss the question with the statement that it was because of the dehumanizing influence of human slavery, which degrades labor, destroys virtue, fosters idleness with its attendant ignorance, pride, luxury and vice, enervating the mental powers and benumbing activity.
But similar conditions of illiteracy and immorality are found in some of the oldest settled portions of the New England and other northern states and we must look elsewhere for the causes. of such decadence.
A recent writer endeavors to show how far the principle of evolution is applicable to morals, to prove the evolution of morals; that the direction is guided by external influences in a manner analogous to that of the development of the forces of material nature. In the latter case the determining agencies are physical, while in the former social and spiritual influences are those which chiefly operate. The conclusion of the author re- ferred to is that moral evolution is the development of the prin- ciples and faculties of man's nature in response to the action of the social influences, the result being what we call morality.
Physical causes are totally inadequate to produce results like those which make the history of our first century, for while our domain presented a unique field for human activities and inex- haustible materials for industry and labor, yet where under the sun shall we find more fertile plains, mightier rivers or more inexhaustible material resources than are found in South Amer- ica? Yet few communities are more turbulent and miserable than those of that continent.
Here upon the Ohio territory was a fit place for the experi- ment of constructing society upon a new basis; here theories
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hitherto unknown or deemed impracticable were to exhibit a spectacle for which the previous history of the world had fur- nished no example.
The nature of the country, the origin of its inhabitants, the religion of the first comers, their former habits exercised, aside from and independently of their democracy, a masterful influ- ·ence upon their thoughts and feelings. The result was an ex- emplification of that evolution as, a direct product of a happy com- bination of physical, moral and spiritual influences operating in a chosen field upon a receptive people.
In European countries men of restless disposition, masterful desire for wealth and position and pronounced love for inde- pendence were regarded as a serious menace to society. Here they were and are the very elements which ensure permanence and peace to our institutions. Without this unquiet element the popu- lation would have congested at the more favored localities of a century ago, and must have become subject to wants difficult to satisfy.
These restless and independent elements, transplanted to their new environment, soon observed the intimate connection between public order and public prosperity, and realized that one could not exist without the other, so that prosperity has ever been a controlling influence for good in the process of development.
The logical result is that the Anglo-American of to-day relies largely upon personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided and independent exertions and com- mon sense of the citizen.
He did not acquire his positive notions and his practical science from books. Such books as he had may have prepared him to receive those ideas, but did not furnish them. He learned to know the laws by taking part in the act of legislation, and learned the forms of government by governing. The growth of society was proceeding under his very eyes and, as it were, under his hand.
Experience is the main source of true knowledge and if the men of that early time had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves their book learning would have been of little assistance.
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The foundation of this commonwealth presented a novel spectacle and the circumstances attending it were singular and original. As a rule colonies, or new settlements, have been first made either by men of no education or resources, driven by pov- erty or crime from their native land, or by speculators or ad- venturers greedy of gain. Some less honorable were founded by pirates, as San Domingo, or as penal colonies, as Australia.
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