USA > Pennsylvania > Progressive Pennsylvania; a record of the remarkable industrial development of the Keystone state, with some account of its early and its later transportation systems, its early settlers, and its prominent men > Part 28
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
In 1785 St. Clair was elected a member of the Conti- nental (Confederate) Congress and in 1787 he was chosen its president, the position once held by John Hancock.
20
306
PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
On July 13, 1787, the Congress over which he presided enacted the celebrated "ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio." This ordinance provided that "there shall be appointed, from time to time, by Congress, a Governor, whose commission shall continue in force for the term of three years, unless sooner revoked by Congress." The Congress over which St. Clair presided appointed him the first Governor of the Northwest Territory, and on July 9, 1788, he arrived at Marietta, which had been designated as the capital of the Territory. St. Clair held his com- mission as Governor until 1802, a period of more than fourteen years, when, being a Federalist of strong convic- tions and outspoken in his expression of them, he was re- moved by President Jefferson. The notification of his re- moval was written by James Madison, Secretary of State, on November 22, 1802. In a few months thereafter the State of Ohio was organized. St. Clair's incumbency of the office of Governor therefore embraced practically the whole period of Ohio's territorial existence. He gave to Cincinnati its beautiful name, and Hamilton county, in which the city is situated, was also named by him in honor of Alexander Hamilton.
Not having lost his citizenship in Pennsylvania St. Clair was supported for Governor by the Federalists of that State in the election of 1790. The supporters of General Mifflin were, however, overwhelmingly successful.
In 1791 Governor St. Clair was appointed commander- in-chief of the army and ordered to proceed against the Miami and other Indians who had defeated General Har- mar the year before. On November 4 St. Clair was him- self defeated. Referring to the movements of St. Clair's army Boucher says : "Shortly after they left Fort Jefferson one of the militia regiments deserted bodily. Washington Irving, in speaking of these militia, says that they were picked and recruited from the worst element in Ohio. Enervated by debauchery, idleness, drunkenness, and by every species of vice it was impossible to make them competent for the arduous duties of Indian warfare. They were without discipline and their officers were not accus-
307
GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.
tomed to being under a commander. They were useless in a campaign, yet St. Clair thought it would disband his army or at least greatly impair its usefulness to allow them to desert at will, so he weakened his forces greatly by sending the First Regiment of Regulars in pursuit of the deserters. His army then numbered about fourteen hundred, with perhaps three hundred militia."
St. Clair's conduct during the engagement was in ev- ery way creditable. Those who would know the details of this action will find them fully set forth in St. Clair's official report, which he sent to President Washington under date of October 6, 1791, and which the President transmitted to Congress on December 12, 1791. The text of this remarkable report will be found in the Early His- tory of Western Pennsylvania and of the West, by "a gen- tleman of the bar," (I. D. Rupp,) printed in 1846. A com- mittee of Congress exonerated St. Clair of all blame for the defeat of his army, its report being as follows : "The committee conceive it but justice to the commander-in- chief to say that in their opinion the failure of the late expedition can in no respect be imputed to his conduct either at any time before or during the action, but that, as his conduct in all the preparatory arrangements was marked with peculiar ability and zeal, so his conduct dur- ing the action furnishes strong testimonies of his coolness and integrity."
Generals can not always win victories. Oftentimes, too, the result of a battle appears to turn upon accident rather than upon skill or valor. The decisive battle of Waterloo is a familiar illustration. In our own country Forbes's movement against Fort Du Quesne was seriously imperiled by the defeat of his advanced detachment under Colonel Grant. Bouquet narrowly escaped at Bushy Run the fate of St. Clair. Washington was compelled to sur- render to the French and Indians at Great Meadows, and he was repeatedly defeated during the Revolutionary struggle. McDowell lost the first Bull Run battle, Burn- side failed at Fredericksburg, and Hooker failed at Chan- cellorsville, although these generals were all good soldiers. General Grant met with a signal defeat on the first day
308
PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
at Pittsburg Landing and afterwards at Cold Harbor, and Sherman failed at Kenesaw Mountain. Lee lost the battle of Antietam and his star set at Gettysburg. St. Clair was defeated because he was opposed by about 2,500 Indians and because his undisciplined militia became demoralized at the first fire. He was not defeated because of any lack of generalship or personal bravery in himself. Wayne afterwards defeated the Ohio Indians because he had under his command a larger force than St. Clair and be- cause this force had been thoroughly trained for its work before it moved into the Indian country.
Returning to Ligonier valley in 1802 or 1803 St. Clair established his family in a new home he had built at The Hermitage, about one and a half miles north of Ligonier. In the latter year he built at this place a furnace for the manufacture of iron from the ores that were found in the vicinity, the product of the furnace being chiefly stoves and other castings. This furnace was in blast in 1806. In 1808 St. Clair's debts pressed him to the wall and he was sold out by the sheriff, not even his household goods escaping the sheriff's hammer. Boucher says that "the most lamentable feature of his embarrassment is that his debts were nearly all contracted in the interests of the Republic, and should have been paid by the State or the nation and not by St. Clair." In a memorial to the Gen- eral Assembly of Pennsylvania St. Clair himself said that he had freely used his own means in supplying the forts and blockhouses of Westmoreland county with arms and ammunition at the outbreak of the Revolution. While Governor of the Northwest Territory he again used his own means to meet the obligations of Indian treaties. In the sale of his real estate at the beginning of the Revolu- tion he lost heavily through the depreciation of Continen- tal currency. Lands that he had sold for £2,000, payable in installments, yielded only £100. Albert says that when he entered the army he left to his neighbors for their use a flouring mill that he had built on Mill creek and that when he returned after the war it was a pile of rubbish.
But the saddest part of St. Clair's financial failure is told by Albert in these words : " When, in the darkest
309
GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.
days of the Revolution, Washington, seeing his army melt- ing away like snow, appealed to him to save to him the Pennsylvania Line, the flower of the army, St. Clair im- mediately responded by advancing the money for recruit- ing and for bounty, and by St. Clair's and Col. William Butler's individual exertions and influence their object was accomplished. To part of this claim the Govern- ment afterwards pleaded the statute of limitations. · When the army for the campaign of 1791 had collected together, and it was found that the sum authorized by Congress for the purpose was too small for the exigencies of the project, he personally guaranteed to the quarter- master-general, James O'Hara, the repayment of a large sum in order that the army might be victualed and sup- plied. When he presented his account in 1799 for pay- ment he was informed by the Secretary of the Treasury that there 'were no moneys appropriated by the Legisla- ture to pay such further disbursements.' On this subject St. Clair says that he became personally liable to the con- tractor, O'Hara, to whom he gave his bond for $7,042, on the express promise of the Secretary of the Treasury that it should be repaid with interest. This bond remain- ing unpaid suit was brought and judgment was obtained against St. Clair by his own confession for $10,632.17, debt and interest. Upon this judgment execution was from time to time issued, and upon it the entire remain- ing part of all his real estate was sold. James O'Hara, by his lawyer, bought all the property."
Boucher continues the pitiful story of St. Clair's dis- tress as follows : " The Assembly of Pennsylvania pen- sioned him, and in 1817, a year before his death, increased the pension to $50 per month. Congress the same year granted him $60 per month and dated it back a year. There being no law to forbid it this was attached by his creditors before it left the hands of the Treasurer, and St. Clair never received one cent of it. Soon after the sale of his property he was turned out of house and home. Dan- iel St. Clair, his son, owned a tract of land on the Chest- nut ridge, above the Four Mile run, and to this the old man and his family removed. Broken with the storms of
310
PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
more than three-score years and ten, saddened by the memories of the past, and denied by ingratitude what was justly due him from his State and nation, he quietly awaited the last roll call. To secure bread for his family he entertained travelers, though his house was but little more than a four-roomed log cabin."
Albert preserves the following description of General St. Clair in his old age, written by Elisha Whittlesey, who once represented the Ashtabula district in Congress, con- tained in a letter which he wrote to Senator Richard Brodhead on May 16, 1856 : " In 1815 three persons and myself performed a journey from Ohio to Connecticut on horseback in the month of May. Having understood that General St. Clair kept a small tavern on the ridge east of Greensburg I proposed that we stop at his house and spend the night. He had no grain for our horses, and after spending an hour with him in the most agreeable and interesting conversation respecting his early knowl- edge of the Northwestern Territory we took our leave of him with deep regret. I never was in the presence of a man that caused me to feel the same degree of venera- tion and esteem. He wore a citizen's dress of black of the Revolution ; his hair was clubbed and powdered. When we entered he arose with dignity and received us most courteously. His dwelling was a common double log house of the western country that a neighborhood would roll up in an afternoon. Chestnut ridge was bleak and barren. There lived the friend and confidant of Washing- ton, the ex-Governor of the fairest portion of creation. It was in the neighborhood, if not in view, of a large estate at Ligonier that he owned at the commencement of the Revolution, and which, as I have sometimes understood, was sacrificed to promote the success of the Revolution. Poverty did not cause him to lose self-respect, and were he now living his personal appearance would command universal admiration. "
Neither Western Pennsylvania nor the whole State of Pennsylvania has honored the memory of this great man as it deserves to be honored. It is painful to reflect that two successive Governors of Pennsylvania have in recent
311
GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.
years vetoed bills of the General Assembly appropriating a small sum of money to pay for a suitable monument in his honor. The humble and fast decaying sandstone monument over his remains in an abandoned graveyard at Greensburg, erected by the Masonic Fraternity, bears this stinging inscription : " The earthly remains of Major General Arthur St. Clair are deposited beneath this hum- ble monument, which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one due from his country." The remains of the general's wife lie beside him in a wholly neglected grave. She died on September 18, 1818, surviving her husband only nineteen days. Westmoreland county is not wholly free from blame for neglecting to do what the State and the whole country should have done.
When the citizens of Bloody Run, in Bedford county, properly thought that the name of their town should be changed they looked not to the history of Pennsylvania for a new name but to Massachusetts, and they now live in Everett. When it seemed to be necessary to change the one-hundred-year-old name of Nineveh, in Westmoreland county, some person or persons having authority turned to New York for a name and called the little town Sew- ard. When the Pennsylvania Railroad was built through Westmoreland county there was a modest hamlet on the line of the road called St. Clair, so named in honor of Gen- eral St. Clair, whose home had been not many miles away. But the name of this town has been erased from the map and dropped from the railroad time table.
312
PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
CHAPTER XXX.
ALBERT GALLATIN, STATESMAN.
ALBERT GALLATIN, who was born in Geneva, Swit- zerland, on January 29, 1761, and died at Astoria, Long Island, on August 12, 1849, ranks foremost among all the statesmen of Western Pennsylvania in the length and va- riety of his public services and in the honors that were conferred upon him. Coming to our country in 1780 he settled in 1784 on George's creek, Fayette county, where he met Washington in September of that year. In 1786 he bought a farm of 400 acres at Friendship Hill, near New Geneva, on the Monongahela, in the same county, on which he resided, when not absent on official duties, for about forty-two years, until 1828.
Soon after coming to Pennsylvania Gallatin became an active participant in the political movements of the time, identifying himself with the party of Thomas Jefferson, of which he soon became a leader. He was a delegate from Fayette county to the Constitutional Convention of 1790. This convention was composed of very able men and Gal- latin took a prominent part in its deliberations. He suc- cessfully opposed the insertion of the word "white" as a prefix to "freeman" in defining the elective franchise. In 1790, 1791, and 1792 he was elected a member of the Gen- eral Assembly. In 1793, when not thirty-three years old, he was elected a member of the United States Senate, in which he served from December 2, 1793, to February 28, 1794, when he was declared ineligible because he had not been a citizen of the United States for the period of nine years as was required by the Constitution. He was suc- ceeded in the Senatorship by James Ross, of Pittsburgh, a Federalist. Gallatin actively opposed the Whisky Insur- rection of 1794, although at first sympathizing with the peaceable opposition to the excise tax on whisky. In that year he was again chosen a member of the General As- sembly from Fayette county. In December, 1795, he took
313
ALBERT GALLATIN.
his seat as a member of the House of Representatives of the Fourth Congress, having been elected by a most com- plimentary vote in 1794 from the district of Allegheny and Washington, in which he did not reside. This was a great honor. In the House he at once took high rank. He was three times re-elected a Representative in Con- gress, in 1796, 1798, and 1800, from the same district as that above mentioned, Greene county having been added to Allegheny and Washington in 1796. He became the leader of his party in the House.
From 1801 to 1814 Mr. Gallatin was Secretary of the Treasury under Jefferson and Madison, holding this posi- tion, with honor to himself and credit to the country, for a longer period than any other person has held it from the foundation of the Government. While Secretary of the Treasury he was the ardent and influential friend of the National Road, from Cumberland to the West. He was, indeed, the author of the scheme for building the road. In a speech in the House on January 27, 1829, Andrew Stewart said : "Mr. Gallatin was the very first man that ever suggested the plan for making the Cumberland Road." In a letter which Gallatin himself wrote to David Acheson, of Washington, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 1808, he said that he had "with much difficulty obtained the creation of a fund for opening a great western road and the act pointing out its general direction." In 1809 President Madison offered Gallatin the portfolio of the State Department, which he declined, preferring to remain at the head of the Treasury Department.
In 1813, while still Secretary of the Treasury, Gallatin was appointed by Madison one of three commissioners to Russia, the Emperor Alexander having offered his services in promoting the restoration of peace between Great Brit- ain and the United States. Negotiations to this end fail- ing, Gallatin was appointed in the following year one of five commissioners to treat directly with Great Britain, and these commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent in December, 1814. It is claimed by his biographers that his was the master hand in the preparation of the treaty. In February, 1814, Gallatin ceased to be Secretary of the
314
PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
Treasury. In 1815 he was appointed United States Min- ister to France, and this position he held until 1823, when he returned to the United States and to Friendship Hill. In 1824 William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury under Monroe, was nominated for the Presidency by many members of the Republican party of that day and Galla- tin was their choice for the Vice Presidency. After some hesitation, in a letter written from his home in Fayette county, he finally declined to be a candidate. In May, 1825, Governor Shulze offered Gallatin the position of ca- nal commissioner, which he declined. In the same month he received La Fayette in an address of welcome at Uniontown, and a day or two afterwards escorted him to Friendship Hill, where La Fayette remained over night.
In May, 1826, President Adams appointed Mr. Gallatin United States Minister to Great Britain, and this position he accepted. His special mission to Great Britain having been accomplished he returned to this country in Novem- ber, 1827, although the President earnestly desired him to remain. In 1828 he removed his residence to New York City, where he continued to reside until his death. With this removal his active connection with public affairs vir- tually ended, although in 1828 and 1829, at the instance of President Adams, he devoted much time and his great ability to an exhaustive study of our troubles with Great Britain concerning the Northeastern boundary, and this subject he again carefully investigated in 1840, when he published "an elaborate dissertation upon it, in which he treated it historically, geographically, argumentatively, and diplomatically," his work contributing materially to the final adjustment of the controversy in the celebrated Webster and Ashburton treaty of 1842. Subsequently he published a pamphlet on the "Oregon Question" which commanded public attention.
In 1831 Gallatin was chosen president of the National Bank, of New York, and this position he retained until 1839, passing with great credit through the most trying financial crisis in our history. He was succeeded in the presidency by his son, James Gallatin. During the re- mainder of his life Gallatin was active in many fields of
315
ALBERT GALLATIN.
usefulness. In 1842 he founded the American Ethnolog- ical Society. In 1843 he was chosen president of the New York Historical Society. In 1844 he presided at a mass meeting in New York to protest against the annexation of Texas as slave territory, and in 1847 he discussed the whole subject of the annexation of Texas in a pamphlet entitled "Peace with Mexico." He had always held "the pen of a ready writer." In the early years of his life, as also in the closing part of his career, he made valuable contributions to the discussion of financial and scientific questions. When he died in 1849 he was far advanced in his 89th year.
Gallatin early showed commendable enterprise in en- couraging the establishment of manufacturing industries at his new home in Western Pennsylvania. In 1796 or 1797 he established at New Geneva one of the first works west of the Alleghenies, if not the first, for the manufac- ture of window glass. The Geneva works continued in op- eration for many years. In 1799 or 1800 Gallatin estab- lished at New Geneva, in company with Melchor Baker, a practical gunsmith, a factory for making muskets, broad- swords, etc., which also continued in operation for several years, and which at one time employed between fifty and one hundred workmen. After these works had been in op- eration for about two years Gallatin withdrew from the partnership, his duties as Secretary of the Treasury not permitting him to give the enterprise further attention.
Nearly all the public services of Gallatin were rendered to his adopted country while he was a citizen of Western Pennsylvania, and these services were of an exalted char- acter. Western Pennsylvania soon recognized his great ability, and the distinction it conferred upon him brought him the nation's recognition. The whole State of Pennsyl- vania may well be proud of his achievements and of his unswerving devotion to the best interests of his country. He was not always right, as in his opposition to our pro- tective tariff policy, but even in this opposition we are told by Judge Veech that, although " his free trade pro- clivities were fixed, yet he did not obtrude them in his State papers." He believed in a revenue tariff.
316
PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A MAN OF LETTERS.
ANDREW CARNEGIE, the most enterprising, most cour- ageous, and most successful of all American manufactur- ers, was born at Dunfermline, in the Lowlands of Scot- land, on November 25, 1835, and came with his father's family to Pittsburgh in 1848. His father was a weaver.
No writer upon historical subjects can dwell upon the remarkable industrial development of Pennsylvania, or upon its greatness in any respect, and not have his attention arrested by the industrial achievements of An- drew Carnegie in the decades that are gone and by the great good that he has done with the wealth that his own genius, and not Fortune's wheel, has placed in his hands. Down to April 1, 1908, his philanthropic gifts had amounted to a total of $150,000,000. Mr. Carnegie's life has been mainly passed in Western Pennsylvania. It was there that his great work as an industrial leader was done. The whole world has long known of his phe- nomenal success as a creative business man and of his work as the greatest of all philanthropists; it knows of the libraries and technical schools that he has estab- lished and of his generous contributions to other schools of learning ; and again it knows of him as a publicist who is familiar with economic and financial questions and who can discuss them from the rostrum or in the printed page. But one of his accomplishments it knows only imperfectly. Mr. Carnegie is a man of letters. He is not only a builder of libraries but he is familiar with the contents of books, and he is himself a ready and an industrious writer upon many subjects.
In the Youth's Companion for April 23, 1896, Mr. Carnegie has told the story of his childhood and boyhood and his early career as a business man-how he was first a "bobbin boy" in a cotton factory in Allegheny City at $1.20 a week, going to work in the morning
317
A MAN OF LETTERS.
when it was still dark and returning home late in the evening after dark ; how next he " fired " a boiler in the cellar of a bobbin factory in the same city and also "ran " the engine ; and how, when he was fourteen years old, he became a telegraph messenger in Pittsburgh at $3 a week, soon becoming an expert telegraph operator. The remainder of Mr. Carnegie's story for boys tells of his steady progress toward financial independence.
The telegraph boy had not graduated from a high school or even a grammar school; he had not dreamed of ever attending an academy or a college ; but he had quick perceptions and a love of good books. In those days there were no public libraries in Pittsburgh or Alle- gheny City to which ambitious boys could have access, but Mr. Carnegie has acknowledged his great indebtedness to Colonel Anderson, of the latter city, who opened his collection of a few hundred books to poor boys. Mr. Carnegie's ready command of the English language and his full vocabulary in after years can be traced not to the training of schools but to his telegraphic experience, to the reading of good books, and to contact with bright men, added to a fine literary sense which came to him by inheritance. If "poets are born, not made," so also are the writers of good prose.
Mr. Carnegie's biographer, Mr. Barnard Alderson, says that Mr. Carnegie has written five books, in addition to a large number of magazine articles. If these magazine articles were bound together they would make probably four more books of large size. Those that Mr. Alderson has mentioned are Round the World, (1879,) Our Coaching Trip, (1882,) Triumphant Democracy, (1886,) The Gospel of Wealth, (1900,) and The Empire of Business, (1902.) As a man is known by the company he keeps so an author may be studied in the books he has written. We propose, therefore, to make some extracts from the books men- tioned and from the magazine articles that will illustrate Mr. Carnegie's literary tastes and embody his opinions on some important subjects, and also from another book, More Busy Days, also a book of opinions, which was in- tended for circulation only in Great Britain.
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.