USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume I > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78
57
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
and he refused, in the most obstinate manner, to listen favorably to any petition for the modification of the measure he had instituted, or for relief on the application of merchants and manufacturers who waited upon him. His only reply was, in substance, that government ·had no power to apply any rem- edy, nor give relief; the banks had occasioned all the evils which existed, and those who had traded on borrowed capital ought to have become bankrupt-they had no one to blame but themselves. But the relief denied by the President directly was, through his operation, furnished indirectly, yet without his consent, and for some time without his knowledge. The condition that, in placing the public funds in the banks to which they had been removed, they should be kept there idle, was not met; and the banks, finding themselves loaded with millions, used these millions in a business way, and loaned freely to those offering the requisite security. With that fatality for bungling that usually attaches to the operations of military men when they undertake to guide matters of state economy and finance, in which they have no experience, the very object that Jackson labored to frustrate was brought about more effectively than if he had not at all moved in it. Through the freedom with which the favored banks loaned the public money,, speculation was stimulated, the credit system expanded beyond precedent, trade, for a short time paralyzed, recovered, and even exceeded its previous energy, prices went up, luxury abounded, and, as was the condition thirty years afterward, nobody seemed to perceive the under-current of extravagance that was wasting the foundations of the nation's real prosperity, and putting them in condition to col- lapse and crumble before the first pressure of the storm that shortly broke against them. The Bank of England began contracting its loans in the Spring of 1836, and in July of that year the United States Treasury Department issued what was known as the "Specie Circular," directing all collectors of the public revenue to receive nothing but coin. Thus it was that "Pay up, and in coin," was the demand of the moneyed institutions on both sides of the ocean. American houses in London became bankrupt with millions of liabilities, and in 1837 every bank in the United States suspended specie payments. The United States Bank, which, when the countenance of the government had been removed from it, had been chartered by the State of Pennsylvania, in the hope of becoming one of those to which part of the government money would be removed, but which privilege was by the President denied it, fell into hopeless ruin, and carried down with it the credit of the State of Pennsylvania, and the fortunes of thousands of her citizens and others who held her bonds. Up to the very last hour of President Jack- son's administration he persisted in the policy of his "Specie Circular," offensive though it was gener. ally regarded, and as the last act of his term of office he vetoed a bill passed by both Houses for its repeal ; and, to prevent its passage over his veto, he held it over the adjournment, and then dated his message, returning it with his veto, "March 3d, 1837, a quarter before 12 P. M."
Martin Van Buren, who was Vice-president during Jackson's second term, was nominated by the Democratic party for President, to succeed Jackson. He was elected by a large majority, and, having organized a cabinet that gave great satisfaction, called an extra session of Congress to meet September 4th, 1837. In his message he proposed the establishment of a treasury for the government, indepen- dent of all banks and bankers. This proposition was vigorously opposed throughout the session of forty. three days, and as a compromise of the terms of the Specie Circular, an issue of $10,000,000 in treasury notes was authorized. Not until 1840 did the subject of an independent treasury, faithfully adhered to by President Van Buren, meet with such favor that a law authorizing the organization of sub-treasuries in the three leading cities of the United States was enacted, and the revenue of the government there- upon removed to them.
The peaceful relations between the United States and Great Britain, which had existed for many years, were in 1837 and 1838 disturbed by events connected with a revolutionary movement that broke out in Canada, the avowed object being to achieve the independence of those provinces. In this effort the people of the border States sympathized, and gave the insurgents all possible aid and comfort. Individuals and organized companies went across the border and joined the insurgents, while refugees from the action of the law in Canada were received and protected by the border State people. The agitation and the outbreak occurred simultaneously in Upper and Lower Canada, then so called; but there being very little homogeneity of feeling between the peoples of the two provinces, the scheme of revolution was ineffective. The active sympathy of the people of the border States irritated the British Government, and President Van Buren, having issued a proclamation warning Americans not to violate
58
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
neutrality and international laws, sent General Scott to the northern frontier to preserve order. The revolution, however, progressed into 1838, and a very bitter feeling was engendered between the people of Maine and the loyal people of New Brunswick, the militia having been called out in both; and this feeling was continued, after the insurrection in Lower Canada was crushed, by a long-standing dispute concerning the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick.
In the upper province, the insurrectionists, led by a man named William L. Mackenzie, found them- selves supported by a regiment of volunteers from Ohio, of which Lucius V. Bierce, of Akron, was elected colonel. This regiment, operating in Upper Canada, had a severe fight with provincial militia, and eventually fought their way through Windsor, and escaped into Detroit. The insurrection contin- ued in the upper province until after an event that attracted general attention had occurred. A party of Americans, seven hundred in number, with twenty cannon, took possession of Navy Island, in the Niagara River, two miles above the Great Falls. They had a small steamboat named Caroline, that plied for their use between the island and the New York State shore. One dark night in December, 1837, a party of loyalists crossed the river from Canada, and, setting this steamboat on fire, cut her loose from her moorings, and allowed her to pass blazing down the fearful rapids and over the crown of the mighty cat- aract into the gulf below. This conduct broke up the encampment on Navy Island, and eventually the "sympathizers," as the Americans were called, withdrew from the "patriot army"-the name the insur- rectionists were known by-and returned home. The boundary question was finally settled in 1842 by Daniel Webster, negotiating as Secretary of State, on the part of the United States, with Lord Ash- burton on the part of Great Britain; and in the same agreement, known subsequently as the Ashburton treaty, provision was made for the co-operation of the two governments in the suspension of the African slave-trade, and the surrender, in certain cases, of fugitives from justice escaping from either country into the other.
President Van Buren was nominated for a second term, and received the unanimous vote of the Democratic Convention assembled at Baltimore, in 1840. A national Whig Convention, held at Harris- burg, Pennsylvania, in December, 1839, nominated William Henry Harrison, of Hamilton County, Ohio, and for Vice-president, John Tyler, of Williamsburg, Virginia. The Summer and Autumn of 1840 witnessed one of the most exciting discussions that, up to that time, had been seen in Ohio. Dignity and decorum gave place to conviviality and carousing. Assuming that General Harrison lived in a pio- neer structure at North Bend, and necessarily he kept his latch-string out, if not his cabin door open, and a barrel of hard cider continually on tap for his thirsty visitors, the hard cider and log-cabin proces- sions caused so great a consumption of all sorts of liquors, and chiefly spirituous, that much dissipation and drunkenness resulted. With such a lever as the proposed independent United States treasury, op- posed by all the speculative institutions of the country, and the hard times that President Jackson's admin- istration left as a legacy to his successor, the election of his opponent was effected by a large majority, and, as the first Whig President of the United States, General Harrison was elected, amidst the wildest rejoicing in the State of his residence.
Fifty years had now elapsed since the settlement of Ohio had begun in any organized manner. For thirty-five of those years she had been a State in the Union, and was now represented by nineteen members in Congress. Her resources were largely developed. She had been successful in opening hundreds of miles of canals between the waters of her northern and southern boundaries, and by the operation of these the products of her soil had been doubled in the price they had previously com- manded. Several railroads had been chartered, and were in course of construction, and, to crown all, her honored citizen, who had conquered the enemies of her peace, and secured quiet from the fierce savage, had been elected the nation's Chief Magistrate.
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
59
PERIOD IV. THE STATE GOVERNMENT. 1841-1883.
LTHOUGH President Harrison, when elected, was apparently as vigorous in mind and body as any man of his age-then sixty-eight years-his death occurred on the thirtieth day after his inauguration ; and on the 6th of April, 1841, John Tyler, the Vice-president, became President of the United States. Formerly well known to be a Jackson Democrat, as those who favored President Jackson's hard . money and anti-bank views were called, Mr. Tyler had, in 1840, avowed himself a decided Whig. Up to Mr. Jackson's administration the Whig party, as such, was not known; and it may be well here to give a summary outline of the differ- ent political parties which had prior to that time divided the nation, and those which have since grown out of them. At the time of Mr. Jefferson's election, in 1800, that which was known as the Federal party, and which had opposed him, were placed in opposition in Congress to the Republican party, as the followers of Mr. Jefferson were called, and so continued through Mr. Madison's term, till the election of Mr. Monroe. As a national party it then became practically extinct, and for seven years party of any name offered but slight opposition to the administration. In 1824, however, when four candidates for the Presidency had been nominated, party lines were sharply drawn, and the principal opponents of the winning man claimed the name of Jacksonian Democrats, while their more direct and numerous oppo- nents took that of National Republicans. This continued until 1833, when the latter were joined by those seceders from the former who favored the views of John C. Calhoun, a United States bank, and other causes of opposition to Jackson's second term, and the whole body then took the name of Whigs. In this manner it resulted that when Martin Van Buren was nominated in 1837, the people were divided into two leading national parties, as they are at present, then called respectively Whigs and Demo- crats, with several minor parties, one of those being in the Eastern and Middle States, the Anti-Masons (then, however, nearly extinct) ; and in the Southern States and Western, States'-rights men, the disci- ples of Calhoun and supporters of Jackson, who opposed Van Buren, and the opponents of Jackson's later administration. Of these latter, nearly all joined the Whigs in electing General Harrison in 1840. But even previous to 1837-that is to say, in 1835-the Democrats had divided, in the Northern and Middle States, into what were called Jackson Democrats, or those who believed in President Jackson's vigorous ad- ministration, and the Equal Rights party-the latter being the successor of a previous combination, known in 1829 as the Workingman's party, or ultra Democrats (Radicals or Levelers, as they would be called in Great Britain, and in France Red Republicans of the Commune), and who, like the Socialists of the present time, wanted all property in common. Naturally, this last became a sort of secret party or society, and in 1837 had not risen above the dignity of a faction, in opposion to the regular Democratic party. The first decided demonstration of this faction took place in Tammany Hall, New York City, in October, 1835. There had been a struggle among those present on that occasion for the chair, which the regulars eventually obtained, nominated their ticket, and passed their resolutions. This done, they extinguished the lights. But the opposition relit the lights with matches, called at that time " loco- focos"-being the friction or lucifer matches, then but lately invented and introduced, and which took the place of the old-style brimstone match-placed their leader in the chair, and passed strong resolu-
8
60
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
tions against banks and every other kind and form of capitalist arrangement and monopoly. After this performance, this faction of the Democratic party was called the "Loco-focos," and the name was grad- ually extended to the whole party. Between 1837 and 1840 this faction had so greatly strengthened that, to conciliate them, the regular party supporters of Van Buren nominated one-of their leading men as Vice-president, Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky. History in politics and political parties has a general tendency to travel in a circle, so that to-day, but from somewhat different causes, we find as many political divisions as existed forty years ago, and bearing a strong family likeness.
President Tyler, while pretending to be a Whig, exhibited no genuine feeling in common with the demands of that party. It is true that, at his request, Congress solicited Mr. Ewing, Secretary of the Treasury, to report a plan for a United States bank, and that officer did so, with a bill for its incorpo- ration ; but President Tyler vetoed it when sent to him for his signature. A deputation of Congress having called on him for an explanation, he signified his intention to sign such a bill if properly drawn; but after a bill was drawn exactly as he desired it, he also vetoed that. Such conduct was an insult to the party that elected him, to his predecessor, and that predecessor's cabinet officers, whom he had retained ; and they all, except Mr. Webster, the Secretary of State, resigned. And although Mr. Tyler was not impeached, the Whigs felt that he was playing a game to win popularity with the Democrats, and, to designate his turpitude, to be "Tylerized " passed into an expression delicately indicative of deception, that lived for several years after he had passed, on the close of his term of office, into a much greater oblivion than subsequently attended the fortunes of another accidental President, who was impeached.
Ohio narrowly watched the operations of Congress during the term of John Tyler's Presidency, and toward its close felt that she was again called upon to take an active part in the election of his successor. Her prosperity had greatly increased. Her canals were highly advantageous to her agriculturists and manufacturers, and the attention of her capitalists had been directed to the construction of railroads. Her Legislature had encouraged the investigation of her mineral resources, and discovered that under- lying much of her territory was a vast amount of mineral wealth. By the aid of portions of this wealth her manufactures had greatly increased, and although at this time six free States west and north of her had been added to the Union, her population and resources caused her to rank as the principal State west of the Allegheny Mountains. Politically, however, she was ill at ease. Her population, originally comprising slave and free State immigrants, had, while increasing, preserved their likes and dislikes on the question of perpetuating slavery; and, with the election in 1844 of the successor to John Tyler, from a slaveholding State, after the misfortune sustained by the sudden death of President Harrison, and the deception practiced by his successor, the question of the gradual extinction or the perpetuation of human slavery more and more engaged the public mind.
The admission of a slave State in 1821 was accompanied with a proviso that no more slave States north of the thirty-sixth parallel should be organized ; and the discussions at that time, which preceded the adoption of this proviso, known as "the Missouri Compromise," plainly indicated the aggressive char- acter of the slaveholders. The fact that, so far from looking forward to its ultimate extinction they seemed by its retention to strengthen their power and influence, became very offensive to those who rejoiced in having eliminated slavery from amongst them. And these feelings of such opposite character were not confined to political, but as well entered into civil and religious engagements, and separated people of the same denominational faith into Churches North and Churches South.
After the passage of the Missouri Compromise, for twenty-five years no question had arisen to con- flict with its requirement. But the admission of Texas, as a State made from foreign territory, being naturally followed, in 1846, by the Mexican war, under the proclamation of President Polk, awakened in Ohio, in common with the other free States, the feeling that once more were the slaveholding States invoking the intervention of the general government for an extension of slave territory; and this inter- vention the free States were in duty bound to resist. Very reluctantly, therefore, and sparingly did Ohio respond to the call of the President for troops to fight the enemy in Mexico. The leading Senator from Ohio, Thomas Corwin, resisted the appropriation of public funds to carry on the war, as being one of aggression, and not of defense ; and his speech in the United States Senate is still quoted as a model of deliberative eloquence. Several escaped slaves had been arrested in Ohio, and Mr. Chase, subse-
61
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
quently Governor of the State, had volunteered his services in their defense, and in doing so construed the Constitution in a manner calculated to startle those people who had regarded slavery as entirely secure under its provisions. The public mind was fast becoming ripe for that opposition to the slave power that culminated in the political convention at Buffalo in 1848, and the nomination of Van Buren and Adams for the offices of President and Vice-president. In consequence of the prominent part he had taken in directing in Ohio the storm of opposition to slavery, Mr. Chase, by a coalition of the Free-soil and Democratic members of the Legislature, was elected United States Senator, and at once put in better position to meet the aggressive advances of that power.
As a reward for his success in the war with Mexico, General Zachary Taylor was in 1848 elected President; but, like General Harrison, he lived but as many months as the former did weeks after his inauguration. The Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, became President, and the Southern Congressmen lost no time in winning him to their interest. The Constitution, they maintained, was ineffective to protect them in their most important institution, and the several bills included in the Compromise Act, so called, with slight modifications, became law two months after President Taylor's death. A proposi- tion of Mr. Seward, a Senator from New York, to suppress the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, was incontinently voted down in the Senate by_ a vote of 45 to 5. The Fugitive-slave Law, so called, enacted though it was as a compromise measure, gave the free States fresh cause for offense .. Not sat- isfied with the language of the Constitution, the slaveholding power had under that law secured the people of the free States to act as a police force to catch and return to them their slaves, with the Mar- shals of the United States Courts to act as captains of this police ; and the city of Boston, the fountain- head of antislavery sentiment, became the scene of the first capture. The Fugitive-slave law thus came to be regarded, by the people who had always looked on slavery as a crime, with intense dislike, and the results of this dislike were not long delayed in their appearance. The extension of the Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30' through the new Territories-north of which slavery was interdicted, and south of which the people were permitted, in organizing their State governments, to decide this question for themselves-was the last public act of Henry Clay, in the belief that by it the slavery question would be forever set at rest; but this was a vain hope. California, that by this privilege was intended to be admitted as a slave State, by her territorial regulations and State constitution forbade such admis- sion ; and this portion of the compromise measures of 1850 was enacted in vain. The determination of the slaveholding States to extend their territory in disregard of the Missouri Compromise culminated in directing into the Territory of Kansas an immigration of armed slaveholders. But "no more slave ter- ritory north of 36° 30'" was the demand of the free States, and a counter immigration of armed freemen entered that Territory with the election of President Pierce. Though a Northern man, he was elected mainly by the Southern vote; and, consequently, he was disinclined to resist any Southern demand ; and with the close of his term the "irrepressible conflict " was fully established between freedom and slavery.
In 1850-51 the second Constitutional Convention of Ohio took place, and some changes were made in that organic law, one of these being the election of a Lieutenant-governor, and another the establish- ment of Probate Courts of Record. The restriction of power on the part of the Governor was still retained. This amended constitution continued unchanged until 1874, when a third Constitutional Con- vention was called. After a session that began in 1873, and continued during the seemingly intermina- ble period of one hundred and eighty-eight days, with two adjournments to recuperate, a new form of constitution was submitted to the popular election, but was voted down by an overwhelming vote against it. For reporting the debates of this convention there were paid the official reporter $13,695.78; and the aggregate expenses of it amounted to within a fraction of $200,000. The expenses of the Consti- tutional Convention of 1802 were less than $5,000 ; but then the speeches were not reported nor the debates printed. The proceedings and results only were recorded, and published. As a specimen of the style of general advance toward prosperity made by Ohio in seventy years, this is not an unfair criterion.
In 1854 James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, represented at the court of Great Britain the United States, while John Y. Mason, of Virginia, and Pierre Soule, of Louisiana, were our Ministers, respect- ively, to France and Spain. Matters which had occurred in the Summer of that year in Cuba caused
62
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
President Pierce to direct a meeting of these representatives for an expression of their opinion as to the position the United States should assume toward Spain with reference to Cuba. They met at Ostend, in Belgium, in October, and Mr. Buchanan wrote the opinion which was signed by himself and the others, embodying their views, and recommending the purchase of Cuba, if possible; and if not, to obtain possession of that island by force. "If Spain," said this document, that subsequently was best known by the name of the "Ostend Manifesto," "actuated by stubborn pride and a false sense of honor, should refuse to sell Cuba to the United States," then, "by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from her if we possess the power." The claim was even made in the United States Senate by one of the Southern Senators that Cuba naturally belonged to the United States, as it was formed by the washings from the Mississippi River and the Gulf Stream! Such opinion was plainly in accord with that of the slaveholding Southern people, and caused its conceiver, which James Buchanan was acknowledged to be, to receive the solid Southern vote in 1856 for the Presidency.
In January, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas introduced by bill, from his seat in the Senate, the territo- rial recognition of Kansas and Nebraska, and the privilege of the inhabitants to decide for themselves whether they should be slave or free States. Such a proposition being a plain infraction of the Missouri Compromise, and the enactment on the subject that was part of the compromise measures of 1850, startled the free State Senators, and a rancorous controversy in and out of Congress was the result. The free State people-taking this action in connection with the Southern boast that it elicited, made by Robert Toombs, of Georgia, a member of the Senate, that he would yet "call the roll of his negroes on Bunker Hill "-believed that a determination to nationalize slavery really existed, and there arose within them an equally strong determination to resist to the death rather than have this done. But the fact was, slavery had to expand or suffocate. From Delaware to the Rio Grande were limits too confined for this aggressive institution, and an armed emigration, under Colonel Kinney, to Nicaragua, in Central America, was followed by the "gray-eyed man of destiny," as he was named by his Southern supporters, and by himself dubbed "General " William Walker. He had previously attempted to revo- lutionize Lower California, and even established a government and proclaimed a constitution ; but the Mexican troops were too strong for him, and he was compelled to look for "fresh fields and pastures new." By the Nicaraguan troops he was soon driven out of their state, and escaped with the remnant of his emigrants on a small schooner. Again, taking advantage of one of the political revolutions which have long been almost perennial among those people who live under the torrid zone, Walker entered Nicaragua with more "armed emigrants." The other states of the isthmus, becoming alarmed, sent troops to the aid of Nicaragua ; but these were beaten by the troops, otherwise "armed emigrants," of Walker, who then declared himself President of Nicaragua; and in 1856 one of the last acts of Pierce's administration was to acknowledge the new "President " by cordially receiving his embassador a Roman Catholic priest, named Vigel. For two years, and until May, 1857, Walker played " President of Nic- aragua," and then he was seized by Commodore Paulding on behalf of the United States Government, and sent to New York as an offender against the neutrality laws. While President Buchanan is said to have privately commended the act of Commodore Paulding, so earnest was he in his desire to please his Southern supporters that he publicly condemned it in a message to Congress as "a violation of the sov- ereignty of a foreign country," and Walker was allowed to go free. He went immediately to Mobile, there fitted out another expedition of armed emigrants, and sailed for the seat of his presidency. Arrested for leaving port without a clearance, he was tried in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, in New Orleans, and acquitted, and then, once more departing for his new dominion, he was captured, and, with several of his companions, shot, at Truxillo, in the eastern part of South America.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.