The Squirrel Hunters of Ohio; or, Glimpses of Pioneer Life

by N. E. Jones

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[Frontispiece.]
Home of the Pioneer,	[7]
This is Freedom!	[9]
The Gum Tree,	[12]
Stray Pup,	[30]
Gamer,	[33]
Our Cabin, 1821,	[37]
Ground Hog Club—Certificate of Membership,	[58]
Ohio School-house from 1796 to 1840,	[64]
School-house of 1851, in which President Garfield Taught,	[92]
The Olive Branch,	[95]
Hunter and Dog,	[118]
Man of Special Providences,	[128]
Church, Residence, and Court-house,	[131]
Public School Building, Pickaway County, O., 1851,	[148]
A Squirrel Hunter,	[171]
A Herd of Bison,	[174]
Camp Red River Hunters,	[176]
Turkey River, Iowa, 1845,	[221]
Sequoia Park,	[235]
Conflict in Pre-emption Claims,	[250]
Chillicothe Elm,	[252]
Logan Elm,	[253]
Map—Lord Dunmore’s Campaign,	[256]
Monument, Boggs Family,	[263]
Indian Raid,	[264]
Spinning Wheel,	[275]
Canal Era, 1825,	[290]
Log Cabin Luminary,	[292]
Ohio Stage Coach,	[301]
Prairie Schooner,	[306]
New Passenger Car on the Toledo and Adrian R’y, 1837,	[320]
Pontoon Bridge over the Ohio River,	[337]
Governor’s Certificate of Honorable Membership,	[343]
The Squirrel Hunter’s Discharge,	[344]
Draft Wheel,	[349]

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THE SQUIRREL HUNTERS OF OHIO;
OR,
GLIMPSES OF PIONEER LIFE.

CHAPTER I.
OHIO—EARLY SETTLEMENTS.

From the time the Mayflower landed at Fort Harmar (Marietta) in 1788 until 1795, emigration had not materially increased the population of the North-west, owing to the unstable and dissatisfied condition of the Indians.

All this time, the soldier, who had served his time in the cause of independence and been honorably discharged without pay:—the poverty-stricken patriot, unable to procure subsistence for himself and family in the bankrupt colonies, had been listening to accounts of a land “flowing with milk and honey,” and was anxious to get there. It was described as a country “fertile as heart could wish:”—“fair to look upon, and fragrant with the thousand fresh odors of the woods in early spring.” The long cool aisles leading away into mazes of vernal green where the swift deer bounded by unmolested and as yet unscared by the sound of the woodman’s ax or the sharp ring of the rifle. “He could imagine the wooded slopes and the tall grass of the plain jeweled with strange and brilliant flowers;” but there the redman had his field of corn, and would defend his rights.

The success of General Wayne in procuring terms of peace with the warlike tribes of Indians in the spring of 1795, caused such an influx of emigration into the Ohio division of the North-west Territory, that in 1798 the population enabled the election of an Assembly which met the following year, and sent William Henry Harrison as a delegate to Congress. So rapidly did the country fill up with new settlements that the prospective state at the beginning of the nineteenth century was knocking at the door for admission, with all the pathways crowded by pedestrians—men, women, and children—dogs and guns; crossing the perilous mountains to reach a country where a home was a matter of choice, and subsistence furnished without money or price.

Where all these lovers of freedom and free soil came from, and how they got here, will ever remain a mystery next in obscurity to that of the Ancient Mound Builders. They brought with them the peculiarities of every civilized nation, and continued to come until Ohio became the beaten road to western homes beyond. They were God’s homeless poor—the file of a successful revolution—the founders of a republic. As such they accepted pay and bounty in wild lands—established homes of civilization, cultivated the arts and sciences, and soon increased in numbers, until they became a people powerful in war and influential in peace.

Men and women, the chosen best, of the entire world, by causes foreordained, were made the exponents of the axioms contained in the charter founding the great empire of freedom. They were strangers to luxury—unknown to the corroding influences of avarice, and unfamiliar with national vices. Their lives were surrounded with happiness, and they lived to a good old age, enjoying the pleasures of large families of children in a land of peace and plenty. These and their descendants are the “Squirrel Hunters” of history.

Kentucky had received her baptism into the Union in 1791, but afterward felt slighted and dissatisfied, looking toward secession, if the five proposed states, outlined by the act of 1787 as the North-west Territory, should constitute an independent confederacy. The opinion seemed to exist to no small extent, that the North-west was by necessity bound to become separated from the Atlantic States; and Kentucky was lending her influence to this end. Josiah Espy, in his “Tour in Ohio and Indiana in 1805,” says: “In traveling through this immense and beautiful country, one idea, mingled with melancholy emotions, almost continually presented itself to my mind, which was this: that before many years the people of that great tract of country would separate themselves from the Atlantic States, and establish an independent empire. The peculiar situation of the country, and the nature of the men, will gradually lead to this crisis; but what will be the proximate cause producing this great effect is yet in the womb of time. Perhaps some of us may live to see it. When the inhabitants of that immense territory will themselves independent, force from the Atlantic States to restrain them would be madness and folly. It can not be prevented.”

But the inhabitants of this immense territory had a better and clearer vision of the mission of this “vast empire;” it was to be the heart and controlling center of a great nation of freemen. And when Ohio, in 1803, entered the Union under the enabling act, binding the Government to construct a national highway from Cumberland to the Ohio river, and through the State of Ohio, as a bond of union between the East and West, no more was heard of secession until the rebellion of the sixties.

In 1821, a member of the Virginia legislature (Mr. Blackburn), in discussing the question of secession, claimed there ought to be an eleventh commandment, and taking a political view of it, said it should be in these words: “Thou shalt not, nor shall thy wife, thy son or thy daughter, thy man-servant or thy maid-servant, the stranger or sojourner within thy gates, dare in any wise to mention or hint at dissolution of the Union.” Mr. Blackburn did not live to see it, but the words of the commandment came sealed in blood and “were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever.”

Many persons at the very dawn of independence felt the weakness of a union of such conflicting sentiments and interests as those of freedom and slavery, and were free in the expression that either slavery or freedom must rule and control the destinies of the nation—that the two could not, nor would not, co-operate peaceably in the same field.

Francis A. Walker, in “Making of the Nation,” says: “No one can rightly read the history of the United States who does not recognize the prodigious influence exerted in the direction of unreserving nationality by the growth of great communities beyond the mountains and their successive admission as states of the Union.” And the author apprehends “great danger” from the aversion of Western people to “measures proposed in the interests of financial integrity, commercial credit and national honor. ‘Having a predilection for loose laws regarding bankruptcies and cheap money has been a constant menace and a frequent cause of mischief.’ This, however, we may regard as due to the stage of settlement and civilization reached.”

No one, if he reads at all, can read otherwise than the “prodigious influence” of the Western States. To these the nation owes its freedom. Through this prodigious influence, slaves and slavery have been wiped out, national finance established with enlarged commercial credit, integrity and national honor. And if the history of the United States is correctly read, the country need fear no danger from any stage in the settlement and civilization of the North-west. The early pioneers of this lovely country brought with them from the South and East large stocks of patriotism perfumed with the firearms of a successful revolution; and it was prized more highly as it was chiefly all they had in a home where poverty was no disgrace, and a “poor-house” unknown in nature’s great empire. Their descendants inherited much, and increased their talents, and have under all circumstances been ready to render a favorable account and go up higher.

The residence of the immigrant was exceedingly primitive; still, it could not be said the log cabin of the pioneer made a cheerless home, by any means. Man retains too much of the unevolutionized not to find and enjoy the most pleasure in things nearest the heart of nature. Many pointers and pen pictures originating in these humble domiciles exist in evidence of the pleasure and satisfaction enjoyed by the early inhabitants, regardless of apparent privations, previous conditions or existing numbers.

Late in the fall of 1798 a revolutionary soldier wrote on the fly-leaf of his Bible that the “North-west Territory” made a delightful home, saying: “My footsteps always gladly hasten homeward; and when I pull the string and open the door, the delicious odor of roasting game and cornbread meets with smiles of hungry approbation. And with kisses for the children and blessings for a good wife, who could ask for more or a better home.”

Home of the Pioneer.

Another in 1799—“We often talk of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and friends left behind, and wish them here. And as the holidays draw near we send them our wishes and prayers, for it is all we can do. There is no mail or carrier pigeon to cross the wilderness that takes any thing else.”

The pioneer believed in the declaration of the Ordinance of 1787, that “Religion, Morality, and Knowledge” were necessary to good government and happiness of mankind. Thanksgiving and Christmas were days of universal observation. The Star of Bethlehem was the Star of Empire, and rested as brightly over the North-west Territory as when shining on the little town in Judea.

During the first few years of pioneer life, new and interesting as it must have been, few persons, comparatively, kept a diary of social life and times; and of such accounts fewer still remain to the present. Yet the number is sufficient to show corroborating testimony or agreement with the following in substance taken from a family history of a father and mother who, with three small children, a dog and gun, and all their worldly goods, crossed the mountains on foot, by following the Indian trail—reaching the Ohio river, floated to the mouth of the Scioto on a temporary raft, and from the confluence pushed up its winding course over fifty miles in a “dugout” to the “High Bank Prairie,” near where Chillicothe now stands—making the trip from Eastern Pennsylvania in sixty-three days; arriving at the place of destination April 25, 1798—a day of thanksgiving ever after.

The first Christmas seen or enjoyed in the new home of this family would in the present era be considered out of date, but doubtless at the time was the duplicate of hundreds of others. The day, before the event, was set aside for procuring extra supplies from nature’s store-house, regardless of any signal service. A coon-skin cap and gloves—deer-skin breeches and leggins, and a wolf-skin “hunting shirt” made the weather right at all times with the hunter.

“Ay, this is freedom!—these pure skies

Were never stained with village smoke:

The fragrant wind that through them flies,

As breathed from wastes by plough unbroke.

“Here with myrtle and my steed,

And her who left the world for me,

I plant me where the red deer feed

In the green desert—and am free.”

Early in the morning on the 24th of December, 1798, this pioneer started out with dog and gun in pursuit of Christmas supplies. It was no small game day—a deer, moose, bear, or wild turkey must adorn the bill of fare for the Christmas dinner.

Before the sun had reached the meridian mark in the door-way, he returned loaded down with three turkeys and two grouse. The country made such a favorable impression, as soon as time and chance offered an opportunity, the husband sent a letter to a friend at Redstone, Penn., who had never seen Ohio, in which he recalls this hunt and the first Christmas he enjoyed in this lovely country, and which is here given in his own language:

“After dressing the game and making a present of a turkey and two grouse to a widow and two children across the river, I told Grace (my wife) that the man who got injured by the falling tree must have a turkey, and with her approbation I shouldered a dressed gobbler and delivered the kind remembrances of my wife to the unfortunate.

“When I returned, it was quite dark, but my mind was ill at ease, and I told Grace I thought we had better take the other turkey down to Rev. Dixon as he hunted but seldom, and a bird of the kind would appear quite becoming, in the presence of a large family of small children at a Christmas dinner. These suggestions met with hearty approval, and I started off to walk a half mile or more with a great dressed gobbler in one hand, a gun in the other, and dog in front.

“On arrival I found the latch-string drawn in, but a knock on the door soon caused an opening large enough to admit the procession. The presentation was made with an Irish speech, dilating and describing the virtues of the deceased; and wishing the minister, his Quaker Mission and his family a merry Christmas, I turned my steps homewards.

“On my return, Grace wished to know what I expected for our own dinner;—reminding me of the guests,—Samuel Wilkins and Benjamin James, who were looked for by invitation, I told her I had been thinking while on the way home from Mr. Dixon’s, that Dr. Hamberger and wife up at the ferry were nice folks, and the Dr. had been pretty busy in his ‘clearing’ lately, and that Jack and I would go, early in the morning, up to the beech bottom, and get a turkey for the Doctor, and one for us—I said ‘Won’t we Jack’—and Jack’s assent was at once made known by the wag of his tail.

“Christmas morning, before the breakfast hour, Jack and I returned with two gobblers, and throwing them down at the cabin door I exclaimed ‘they are heavy.’ As I did so ‘a merry Christmas’ from Grace rang out on the bare and frosty forest for the first time ever heard in that vicinity. ‘Oh! the poor birds’ (said Grace), ‘how nicely bronzed they are—who is it that paints those iridescent colors? I never saw a happier pair than you and Jack make.’ I replied, ‘they are beautiful birds, but if I’d had my wits about me, I could have shown the best woman west of the Alleghanies the nicest fat fawn she ever looked at. But I was hunting for turkeys, and did not see it quite soon enough, and let it go without a shot. Never mind,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there in a day or two’—and I was.”

The hunter states that he dressed the game, left a turkey in the doctor’s cabin, and then assisted Grace in placing a twenty pound bird on a wooden spit to roast for dinner.

Before noon the invited guests came and after pleasantly reviewing army scenes and political, social and literary prospects of the people coming to the unbroken wilderness of the North-west, dinner was announced from the kitchen dining-room and parlor; and a more intellectual and jolly company has probably not assembled at a Christmas dinner since 1798. The guests had filled important positions in the general government, and were both natives of New York; while the host was from Dublin, and hostess an English lady, a former resident of London—all educated people, and knew how to entertain and partake of social and mental enjoyments.

The good pioneer became schooled to a quiet, but heroic submission to the unavoidable; and in this virtue Grace was recognized a model throughout the settlement. Still she manifested the greatest sorrow one could well express in the loss of the souvenir she had so carefully preserved and protected from damage during the long and perilous journey to Ohio. A large English Bible, printed in the infancy of the art, containing the family coat of arms and record for over four hundred years, with a chart of unbroken line of descent for near one thousand years. All was lost in the burning of their cabin in 1812.

The pioneer and his good wife lived to enjoy with these three children and grandchildren, forty-six returns of the Star of Bethlehem, near where the first Christmas day was seen in Ohio; and the writer has often heard the aged couple recite with feelings of delightful remembrance the first Christmas in Ohio as the dearest and most enchanting of all others.

A country by nature so lovely exerted no little influence on the civilization and character of its early, but mixed inhabitants. They all were, or soon became, genial, warm-hearted, kind, neighborly and obliging, in a sense unknown to phases of civilization connected with affluent circumstances. They generally settled at short distances from each other, to better enable them to render mutual assistance, and also protection in times of danger. Much of the labor necessary to open up a new country of this character could not be performed “weak-handed” as “rolling logs,” building cabins, opening roads, etc.; and when a new arrival appeared in the settlement and announced his desire to remain, all the neighborhood would cheerfully turn out, and with shovels, axes and augurs assemble at some designated spot in the forest, and work from day to day until a domicile was completed. Although entirely gratuitous, the construction of these log-houses was a business of experience. First, trees were cut down sufficiently to make an opening for sunlight, and site to place the cabin; then logs of determined diameter and length were cut and placed in position, one above another, and by notching the corners in a manner calculated to make them lie closely together, the whole became very substantial and binding. Cross-logs made sleepers and joists, and similar logs of different lengths formed the gables, and which were held together by supports for the roof in a way truly primitive and ingenious. It was covered with clap-boards four or five feet long, split from oak timber, placing them in the usual way to turn rain, and securing their position by a sufficient number of heavy poles or split pieces of timber reaching the length of the roof at right angles to the boards. The weight pole at the eaves was made stationary by the projecting ends of the top logs at the corners of the building, and the others were prevented from rolling down and off the building by intervening blocks of wood placed parallel with the clap-boards, one end resting against the pole at the eaves and the other end acting as a stop to the pole next above; and so on to the comb of the roof. The floor, if not of earth, was made of puncheons or long clap-boards. The door was constructed of heavy pieces of split timber, joined to the cross-sections, or battens with wooden pins. One end of the lower and upper battens was made to project far enough beyond the side of the door, and large enough to admit an auger hole of an inch and a half to form part of the hinge for the door. The battens and hinges were placed on the inside, also the latch, to which a strong string was attached, and passed through a small hole a short distance above, terminating on the outside. By pulling the string the latch was raised and the door opened by persons without. At night, the string was pulled in, which made a very secure and convenient fastening, in connection with the two great wooden pins that projected on the line of the top of the door to prevent it from being raised off the hinges when closed. It is quite probable, as has often been suggested, this primitive latch and lock combination gave rise to the saying “you will find the latch-string always out.”

There were no windows; but, if one was attempted, it consisted of a small opening without frame, sash, or glass, and was covered with a piece of an old garment or greased paper. The chimney formed the most important, as well as singular, part of the structure. It was built upon the outside, and joined to the cabin some five or six feet in height at the base, and then contracted, forming a stem detached from the building and terminating short of its height. The materials used in its construction consisted of sticks and mud, and when completed resembled somewhat in shape an immense bay window, or an overgrown parasite. The logs of the building were cut away at the chimney so as to give a great opening into this mud pen for a fireplace, and which sometimes had a back-wall made of clay, shale, or stone. The crevices between the logs were filled with small pieces of split wood and clay mortar, both on the inside and outside. Numerous augur holes were bored in the logs, and pins driven in to hang articles of apparel and cooking utensils on. Two pins in particular were always so arranged as to receive the gun, and perhaps under which might be seen a pair of deer antlers to honor the powder-horn and bullet pouch.

To erect a rude cabin of this kind would frequently occupy all the persons in a neighborhood three or four days; and, when finished, made a very humble appearance in the midst of the natural grandeur of its surroundings. Even after the occupants were domiciliated, the addition of their worldly goods added but little to the unostentatious show of comfort. In the absence of facilities for transportation, the pioneer was obliged to leave most every thing behind; or, worse perhaps, had nothing but family, dog, and gun to bring with him; so the furniture of his new home consisted of a bedstead made of poles—a table from a split log;—a chair in the shape of a three-legged stool;—a bench, and a short shelf or two. The utensils for cooking were quite as limited and simple, and corresponded in usefulness and decoration most admirably with the furniture; generally consisting of a kettle, “skillet,” stew-pan, a few pewter dishes, and gourds. These with an occasional souvenir, or simple article that could be easily carried from the “Old Home,” made up the invoice of the inside of the cabin of the pioneer.

Notwithstanding the apparent scanty comforts in the house, they were more imaginary than real. It required but little exertion to keep the larder supplied with the choicest beasts, birds, and fish, which with hominy, or, still better, the corn dodger, shortened with turkey fat or bear’s oil, and baked in the ashes—or that climax, the “johnny-cake” well browned and piping hot on the board in front of a grand open fire—constituted a substantial diet that might be envied by those of the present day. In addition to these, there was no lack of pumpkins, potatoes, turnips, beans, berries,[1] honey, and maple sugar, and the early settler had little reason to sigh for the delicacies of a more advanced civilization.

Sugar making was an attractive calling and one of the pioneers’ money-making industries, although sugar groves were scattered over the entire state. The trees, by nature, were gregarious, growing in clusters from hundreds to thousands so thickly set over the ground that few if any other varieties could find room to maintain a standing. There are a few of the older crop of sugar trees still remaining; but the great “camps” that furnished sweets in abundance have, with other varieties of timber, fallen victims to the woodman’s ax.

It has been suggested that the yearly “tapping” might injure the growth and shorten the longevity of the trees; but both experiment and observation tend to sustain the opposite opinion. A tree that has been under the notice of the writer for more than seventy years, and has been tapped in three to four places every year for the period named, is still a beautiful, healthy, growing tree.

It may be correct, that “it takes more than one swallow to make a summer;” but the evidence shown in the wood made into lumber after many years “tapping” for “sugar water” (not sap), is not significant of injury or decay. The cut made by the auger is soon closed over, which, no doubt, would be different if the sugar was obtained from “the sap” or wood-producing fluid. The fluid which contains the sugar is no nearer the “sap” (or blood of the tree) than is the milk, or other cellular secretion of a gland, near or identical with the blood or life sustaining and constructive element of animal existence.

A pioneer who owned a small cluster of sugar trees made his own sugar and some to spare, while those working camps of several thousand trees made it a “profitable calling and supplied others at reasonable rates of exchange,” so no one had occasion to stint or reason to complain. It required some labor and expense to equip a camp for making sugar; but once furnished, the material lasted many years. During the time unoccupied, the furnace and kettles under the shed would be surrounded with a temporary fence—the sugar-troughs, spiles, sled, water-barrel, funnel-buckets, etc., at the ending of the sugar season would be safely housed to remain until the next year. As soon as the icy earth began giving way to mild sunshining days in the latter part of winter, it was considered by the “sugar-maker” as the announcement of the near approach of “sugar weather.” At such times, on like indications, the “sugar-troughs” would be taken from the place of deposit and distributed to the trees; the better ones getting the larger troughs. The water-barrel underwent inspection—the funnel refitted—sled repaired—the pile of dry wood increased—store-room or annex renovated—tubs and buckets soaked—shortage of “spiles” and “sugar-troughs” made good—furnace and kettles cleaned, and every thing made ready for the work.

After this, the first clear frosty morning with the prospect of a thawing day, a man would be seen with an auger passing rapidly from tree to tree, closely followed by another, with a basket and hatchet, who “drove the spiles” and set the troughs as fast as the one with the auger made the holes.

It would have astonished a Havemeyer[2] to witness the rapidity with which the “tapping” was accomplished. In a few moments the surrounding forest seemed sparkling with the beauties of the rainbow, and echoing the music of falling waters, each tree dripping, dripping with a rapidity suggestive of a race and wager held by Nature for the one that first filled the assigned trough with sparkling gems.

A “run” of sugar-water was not dependent upon a special act of Congress, nor was the product a subject for public revenue. It was limited, however, to frosty nights and warmer days; and when a number of consecutive days and nights remained above or below freezing, the “sugar-water” would cease to flow, often making it necessary to remove the “spiles” and freshen the auger-hole at the next run to insure the natural ability of the tree.

Sugar manufactured in those days was made from the black maple or sugar tree. This tree was very productive—in an ordinary season would run ten or twelve gallons each in twenty-four hours, and during the season average enough for ten to fifteen pounds of sugar—the better trees have been known to produce over fifty pounds each in an ordinary season. This, however, was before Congress suspected a trust and combine would be a good thing for the common people or got up the Luxow investigation and whitewash of the sugar business by New York. The sugar maker knows quite well the kind of days he could obtain a run of “sugar-water,” and for that purpose one or more holes were bored into the tree three to five inches deep, and “spiles” driven in to conduct the fluid into the sugar-trough.

The “spiles” that conducted the water from the tree to the trough were made from sections of elder or sumac, eight or ten inches in length, shaved down to the pith from three inches of one end, which formed the shoulder, made tapering to close the auger hole of the usual size, three-fourths of an inch. The pith in the shoulder and body of the spile was removed so as to form a channel for the sugar-water to escape. The sugar-trough was a short trough two to four feet long made of some light wood, as the white walnut, and were carefully charred on the inside or concavity to prevent the injury of the delicate flavor of the sugar. Many persons, familiar with higher mathematics and languages named in the curriculum of Yale or Harvard, as well as words and phrases used in athletic games, and manly arts of self-defense, would be turned down if asked to describe or name the uses of many very simple things to an Ohio “squirrel hunter” of three score and ten years.

No doubt there are many more persons that have seen and felt the great Congressional Sugar Trust and Combine than are now living who have seen the headquarters of one of those primitive “sugar camps,” with its row of kettles placed over a furnace—under an open shed—parallel with and near the kettles under this shed, a reservoir made from a section of a large tulip tree, to hold the excess of gathered water during the day for night boiling—the sled and mounted barrel with, a sugar-trough funnel—the annex near the furnace to obtain light and heat, with other primitive articles or things connected with and used in the manufacture of sugar.

The annex or temporary residence of those running the camp was generally a strong well-built cabin with one door, but no window. The door occasionally showed a want of confidence by being ornamented with a heavy padlock and chain. This little building entertained many a jolly crowd. It was the manufacturer’s office, storeroom, parlor, bedroom and restaurant. It was always a pleasant place to spend an evening, and, still more, a delightfully-sweet place on “stirring-off” days—to watch the golden bubbles burst in air and with noisy efforts rising to escape, driven back by their master with the enchantment of a fat-meat pill and made to dance to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy; for then was the time to dip and cool the wooden “paddle,” and taste again and again the charming sweetness of maple sugar in its native purity.

But in less than a century sugar-trees, sugar-troughs, and pioneer sugar making have been classed with things of the past, scarcely known by the many, and remembered but by a few; and shows how soon time makes abandoned words and many simple expressions of facts obsolete and unknown. When it is said, “In infancy he was rocked in a sugar-trough,” the language to many is as figurative, hypothetical or meaningless as the “lullaby upon the tree tops.” The younger generations never saw the pioneer cradle, and Noah Webster did not get far enough West to incorporate the word in his “Revised Dictionary.”

The ordinary use of sugar-troughs was to catch and hold the sweet water as it dripped from the “spile” placed in the sugar-tree. But under certain circumstances good specimens were devoted to other purposes, and not a few eminent lawyers, doctors, statesmen and divines have proudly referred to their cradling days as those having been well spent in the pioneer environment of a “sugar-trough.”

The sugar made from trees was gradually superseded by cane and beet productions; and the supply has always remained equal to the demand at moderate prices; and not until 1887 did the country discover the necessity of a “Sugar Trust” to control and regulate the trade of the United States. This combine started with a capital of seven million dollars, capitalized at fifty millions, and again was watered up to seventy-five millions. This trust controlled four-fifths to ninety-eight per cent of all the refined sugar in the United States.

The president of this trust has been receiving an annual salary of one hundred thousand dollars and the secretary seventy-five thousand. The stockholders have absorbed as dividends nearly four hundred million dollars in the eleven years of its existence, while thousands of its employes obtain but six dollars a week, working twelve hours each day in rooms at a temperature not much below two hundred degrees. The scales of justice are not often evenly balanced in trust monopolies that yield a net income of five hundred per cent profit on the capital invested.

The pioneer, however, had no use for “combines” to keep him poor, for like many facts not admitted or recognized at the time, good subsistence was so easily obtained from nature that it frequently contributed much toward creating an indifference for labor, which remained through life and kept the man of destiny no better off than when he arrived at his new home. It was no easy task to clear the land and prepare the soil for agricultural purposes. As a rule the timber was large and thickly set upon the ground; usually the best soil was covered with the greatest trees, and the labor required for their removal was not inviting to those who could subsist well without it. The white oak, burr oak, black oak, black walnut, sycamore, poplar, and other varieties, had for centuries been adding size and strength to their immense proportions. These giants, and the smaller timber and undergrowth, required great energy, perseverance and protracted labor to remove and clear the ground ready for a crop. The usual plan for their removal was by “girdling,” or cutting a circle around the trunk of each sufficiently deep to kill the tree, and then to burn by piece-meals as the branches and trunks came down by reason of time and decay. Consequently the patch of sunshine around these primitive homes, as a rule, did not enlarge very rapidly, and the pioneer too often became a man of procrastination and promise; and for all the time he had (the present) preferred the dog and gun to the maul and wedge as a means of subsistence. Some, however, opened up small fields and farms by disposing of the timber in this slow way. In the meantime, while the process of decay was going on, grain and vegetables were grown in the openings among the dead timber. The crops were generally divided pretty equally between the wild animals and the landlord. This loss, however, was of no great importance as there was no money, market, or mill; nor domestic animals to take a surplus. At a later day, and after the introduction of “movable mills,”[3] there still existed no market for the products of the soil, and to grow enough for food seemed all that could be required of the most ambitious pioneer; and if at any time the returns exceeded the estimates and insured a surplus, such overabundance seldom went to waste, as there were always enough who yearly came short in this respect, and were ready to share with the more prosperous neighbor.

The time and labor expended upon clearing the ground and raising grain met with little or no reward. The products could not be sold nor exchanged for necessaries of life. Consequently the forests remained quite undisturbed for many years and agriculture neglected, excepting for the necessary consumption of the family. The early settler, however, was not all the time free from discouragements. His domestic animals frequently became lost, or destroyed by ravenous beasts; and diseases of the country occasionally were protracted; and to the wife and children, he sometimes felt, it was not so much a paradise. But he came to stay, and this, for better or for worse, was his home, and submitted philosophically to circumstances and events he could not control.

The wife and mother endured with patience and heroism all privations and afflictions equally with the husband and father, and performed the arduous household duties; and, like the model woman of old, “sought wool and flax and worked willingly with her hands,” and the whirring spinning-wheel and thudding loom were heard in most every household. The welfare of the family depended upon the success of home industries, and consequently the wife had much less leisure than the husband. She superintended the manufacture of all the fabrics for the house and for the clothing of the family, and cut and made up the same without protection, tariff, rebate, or combine. And it is singular so little has been recorded of the good women who unlocked the resources of the new territory and gave their aid in founding a civilization that has surpassed all precedents in the history of nations.

Natives of every country and of every grade of intelligence in the new environment became alike distinguished for liberality and hospitality—ever desirous to forget the past, willing to admit the future, and ready to enjoy the present, the life of the pioneer was seldom darkened or overburdened with toil or care, and had times of good cheer, and was not without his social amusements. The violin and Monongahela whisky found way to the settlements and were accepted by many, young and old; and the dance after a quilting, shooting-match, fox-chase, bear-hunt, log-rolling, or house-raising gave all the pleasure and excitement desired.

As the population became more numerous, leisure and the desire for amusements increased; and among the many ways devised to entertain and interest, no one, perhaps, ever received more attention, higher cultivation, and obtained more general favor than the chase. Most descendants of Virginia, however destitute in other respect, had their packs of “hounds,” and the good people and the better, the poor and the poorer, some on horse and some on foot, mingled alike in the exciting sport.

The pedigrees, qualities, and performances of “lead dogs” of different owners were known over the country, and their comparative merits were frequently subjects that called forth the warmest discussions, the disputants generally ending the controversy with knock-down arguments on both sides. The owners of the dogs always manifested great pride and satisfaction in public praises and good will toward their animals, and no offense received a greater condemnation than the theft or injury of one of these “noblemen’s pets.”

Whenever a “pack” failed in having a good “leader” and “poked,” they lost their reputation at once and forever. And many trips were made on horseback through the wilderness over the mountains to South Branch, or other points in Virginia, on pretext of other business, when the real purpose proved to be “fresh blood,” or perhaps a pack of dogs that could take the front. They were brought through on foot, chained one behind another in double file, with a chain between, and horse in front, resembling the transportation of surplus of the “divine” institution in the days of John Brown. New importations, however, did not often give satisfaction. As a rule, the dogs of the finest scent and greatest endurance and speed were bred in Ohio. Such were McNeal’s “Nick,” Jordan’s “Sam,” Anderson’s “Magnet,” Renick’s “Pluto the Swift,” McDowell’s “Yelp,” Colonel Vause’s “Clynch,” and a host of others that never saw a “bench-show,” but were awarded the highest praises by men who filled their places as well in the chase, as many of them did, important public positions in after life. And in the written history of these notable contests for superiority is the circumstance, if not the day, when Colonel Vause’s little blue hound, his lead dog, “Clynch,” outwinded and distanced all the other “packs” as well as his own companions, and pursued the deer alone so inveterately, the poor animal, confused or to confuse, ran to the town of Chillicothe and into the open, empty jail, and was there captured.

Stray Pup.

But of all the dogs known to have taken part in amusing the people of destiny; or aided the advancing strides of civilization, none ever attracted such universal attention, and enjoyed that wide-spread fame as that given to “Gibbs’ Stray Pup.”

Quite early in the fall, when as yet the frosts had but slightly tinted the woodland foliage, some hunters while after turkeys, saw a dog in hot pursuit of a deer, and so close was the chase that the fatigued animal leaped from a high bank into deep water in Paint Creek and expired immediately. This dog proved to be a little half-starved, lemon, black and white pup, not more than seven months old, and having around his neck a section of dilapidated bed cord. Such a performance by a strange pup so very young and alone, attracted no little attention and talk, especially among the sporting gentlemen, who kept first-class dogs, and doted more upon their hounds than upon their lands and houses. Mr. James Gibbs was one of these, and by right of discovery, took the pup in charge and named him “Gamer.” The dog proved a stray in the settlement, and no owner could be found, and mere supposition gave a satisfactory explanation. “The pup had broken away from an emigrant wagon to get after the deer.”

At maturity, true to instinct, Gamer refused to follow deer, but became the embodiment of all the virtues and qualifications of a thoroughbred fox-hound. His fleetness, his extraordinary “cold nose,” or ability to carry a “cold trail;” his industry, perseverance, and sagacity, made him the model and marvel of all who knew him. He always led the pack far in advance, and so exact was he to hound nature, that in case the fox doubled short and came back near enough to be seen and turned upon by all the other dogs, he would continue around the course and unravel every winding step. His voice was quite as marked and remarkable as any of his other qualities: so much so, that for many years it lingered in the ears of surviving friends like the far-off echo of an Alpine horn. He could be distinctly heard across the great valley, bounded east by the Rattlesnake and west by Patton and Stone Monument Hills, a distance of more than five miles in an air line. His cry was musical, prolonged and varied, opening with a deep loud bass, and closing with a high, clear note, it would come to the listener sharp and distinct, solitary and alone, when the united cry of all the pack would be dead in the distance.

An accurate likeness with minute description of this dog has been preserved—height, above the average fox-hound; length, medium; head, long and narrow and well elevated when running; under jaw, three-fourths of an inch short, which gave a pointed appearance to the face; eye, intellectual and gamy, but of a most singular yellow color; ears, long and thin, but not wide; neck, slim and clean; shoulders, firm; chest, deep, the breast-bone projecting so as to make a perpendicular offset of two inches; back, quite straight; loins, not wide; hind legs, unusually straight; hams, thin, flat and tapering; tail, slim, medium length, little curved, and hair short towards the tip; color, white, excepting a large black spot on each side of the chest, tipped with lemon; a small black spot joined to a lemon spot on each hip or root of the tail, lemon head and ears, with small black spot behind each ear. Altogether a fine appearing dog, especially when engaged in the chase: and before two years old, was held in high esteem by the owner.

Gamer.

The popularity of Gamer was now fast gaining ground, as his performances were casting shadows over dogs of high repute, and many things were attempted to silence the repeated huzzahs that came in at the end of every chase for “Gibb’s Stray Pup.” Years rolled on, pack after pack, pick after pick were pitted against the “pup” to no purpose excepting to widen the difference by comparison.

A single incident taken from many that might be given, will sufficiently illustrate the superior qualities of this remarkable dog, as well as the usual success attendant upon the efforts to detract from his merited superiority by running picked hounds with him in the chase. A number of persons in every neighborhood kept hounds, and each owner considered himself the possessor of a small fortune, consisting at least of one animal that was considered faster and truer than any one belonging to a neighbor; and it was an easy matter at any time to summon on short notice fifteen to thirty of these favorites surrounded by a conflict of good opinions. On the 11th of November, 18—, twenty gentlemen, some of whom afterwards rose to high political and judicial eminence in the history of the state and nation, met by agreement and entered the forest at four o’clock in the morning with twelve dogs, the pick of the best packs known in the state. The atmosphere was still, white frost hung on the trees all day; the ground was but little frozen, and other things perhaps conspired to make it favorable, as hunters say, “for scent to lay.”

The dogs soon struck a cold trail, perhaps where the fox had been the previous evening, and which could be followed but slowly. Before midday, it became too cold for all the dogs excepting Gamer and two old hounds, one of which was famous for his “cold nose.” The latter dogs, however, were unable to get scent excepting in favorable places; and, by three o’clock in the afternoon, they too were out, and no longer able to render assistance. Gamer still kept at work trailing Reynard’s footsteps so closely, that on his way he entered an old vacant cabin, declaring most emphatically that Reynard had been there, showing that even on the dry ground and probably more than ten hours after the presence of the animal, there was enough found to call forth a most vigorous cry.

When more than half a mile from this cabin, the trail was lost, and half an hour was consumed, with all the dogs in circuits, to no purpose. While engaged in these efforts to strike the track, the wonderful “pup” raised his voice most significantly at the very spot where he had ceased his cry. He had discovered the track and commenced a rapid backward march in the precise line over the same ground he had passed but a short time before. When within fifteen or twenty rods of the old vacant cabin, he turned off through a “deadening” in the direction of Mount Logan, showing that, notwithstanding the fox had retraced his steps for a long distance, the sagacious hound detected the fact after going over the ground, and that, too, when the trail was so very cold that no other dog in the chase could take the scent.

From Mount Logan the trail was leading through thicker timber, and Reynard had been zig-zagging here and there, in search, perhaps, of birds and rodents for his supper the night before, walking on logs and limbs of trees whenever near his intended line of march. Here, the dog quite knowingly changed his tactics, and for two hours ran at more than half speed from log to log, right to left, with nose close to the bark and decayed wood, as he rapidly passed, would let out his encouraging cry.

In this way he followed the crooked course until the close of the day, carrying a trail for thirteen hours, which the fox had passed at no point less than ten hours before, following it, too, more than three hours after the best and most renowned dogs ever in Ohio were silent. It was now dusk, the timber sparse and logs few, making the chances seemingly more unfavorable. So, the hunters who had been on the go for fifteen hours, and without the substantials of life for twenty-four hours, concluded to quit, and, calling the dogs to follow, turned in the direction of the by-path leading toward home. All the dogs were very ready to obey, excepting Gamer, who only stopped for a moment to gaze at his retreating masters, and then resumed his work, in which he became more and more interested as the day passed on. It was thought, however, he would soon quit and overtake his companions but, before the hunters had gone a mile, Gamer’s starting cry was heard; he had winded Reynard where he had stopped to spend the day high up the mountain side. Every hound knew it was no cry on a cold trail, and turned and went off at the top of their speed. Soon Gamer could be heard over ridges and hills far away; and the hunters, thinking the run would be made in the broken mountains, went home. A squirrel hunter in that vicinity, who obtained Reynard’s “brush,” reported the fox so closely pressed, that he soon doubled, came back, and entered a hollow log near his cabin, and was captured. The time given showed the run was finished in less than an hour after the hunters left.

Our Cabin, 1821.

The sense called “power of scent” is exceedingly delicate in the dog, enabling him to follow the course of one animal amid a multitude of “tracks” made by others of the same species. This power of discrimination is frequently manifest even in the common house-dog as he traces the footsteps of his master or those of his master’s horse through crowded thoroughfares and winding ways, although hundreds of similar feet have passed over the ground after the walk of the one he seeks was made. But, to tell any one but an old foxhunter that it was possible to find perfection in a dog sufficiently, under the most favorable circumstances, to run all day on a trail ten hours’ cold, would be deemed purely chimerical.—Gamer is no more.—James Gibbs has long been numbered with the dead.—And of those who participated in and enjoyed the pleasures of that day’s chase but one remains a living witness of the facts herein stated—the old Roman—the Hon. Allen G. Thurman.—It is a notable fact, that in after years, when those Ohio boys no longer resembled the festive hunter, they always gave a smile of pleasure at the mention of those merry times; and, even in old age, when oppressed with the heavy hand of time, nothing awakened the flush of youthful pride and satisfaction like the rehearsal of the deeds of the hound that had no equal in the history of the country—“Gibbs’ Stray Pup.”

The exterior beauties of an animal are always attractive. But more than these do we admire those qualities termed intelligence, instinct, and reason in their beneficent relations to man and the external world. The dog possesses a most wonderful harmony in form and faculties. He is the type and embodiment of beauty, strength, and freedom of motion combined with endurance, courage, zeal, fidelity, constancy, and uncompromising affection. For these reasons he is of all man’s friends, the most valuable, the truest, and the best. So devoted and unchangeable is his love, that he is ever ready to sacrifice his life to save his master from threatened injury. He long remembers a kindness, and soon forgives ill usage. At an early age he obtains a knowledge of the meaning of words in the language of his master, and understands and obeys commands; and with that retentive memory which animals possess, he never falters or forgets. The story of Ulysses and his favorite is but the citation of the tenacity of memory which belongs to the species. After twenty years—

“Near to the gates, conferring as they drew

Argus, the dog his ancient master knew,

And not unconscious of the voice and tread,

He knew his lord, he knew, and strove to meet;

In vain he strove to crawl and kiss his feet;

Yet, all he could, his tail, his ears, his eyes

Salute his master and confess his joys.”

From prince to beggar, all the same—the only friend neither misfortune nor poverty can drive away. He is watchful and bold, and with delight guards his master’s house and herds from thieves and rapacious animals, and by his various services has accomplished for man’s happiness and advancement in civilization more than all other agencies combined. Without this aid, man would scarcely have maintained his existence on earth. “When he had ‘evolved’ to the ape,”[4] and “for safety lived in tree-tops with monkeys and squirrels,” his security and advancement was not so probably due to the suggestive “club” as to training of dogs, which is given by the great naturalist, Buffon, as the first art invented by man.

By means of dogs, the rapacious animals common to new or uninhabited countries are captured or driven to the rear of advancing population. Almost every emigrant in the earlier settlements of Ohio, from necessity, became more or less a hunter with dogs, not only to provide for the family, but as a profit in ridding the locality of thieving varments with which the forests were overrun. The pelts of fur animals were a legal tender, and were received as contributions and payment of debts. And the bark of the industrious dog was in this way transformed into literary and religious institutions of the country. And if not for his dogship, the “North-west” would be a wilderness still, inhabited by wild animals. The great naturalist says: “To determine the importance of the species in the order of nature, let us suppose it never had existed.” Without the assistance of the dog, how could man be able to tame and reduce other animals into slavery? How could he discover, hunt, and destroy noxious and savage beasts? To preserve his own safety, and to render himself master of the animated world, it was necessary to make friends among those animals whom he found capable of attachment to oppose them to others; therefore, the training of dogs seems to have been the first art invented by man, and the first fruit of that art was the conquest and peaceable possession of the earth.

Many species of animals have greater agility, swiftness, and strength, as well as greater courage than man. Nature has furnished them better. And the dog not only excels in these, but also in the senses—hearing, seeing, and smelling; and to have gained possession over a tractable and courageous species like the dog, was acquiring new or additional agility, swiftness, strength, and courage with a mysterious increase of power and usefulness of the more important senses. And by the friendship and superior faculties of the dog, man became permanently sovereign and master of all.

“The dog is the only animal whose talents are evident, and whose education is always successful.”[5]

No better picture, portraying the noble qualities of the dog could be given than that by Buffon. And why this close observer of nature should say—“Without having like man the faculty of thought,” has always seemed strange. It sounds like a misprint, or an error in translation. Thought is the exercise of the mind—reflection, meditation, consideration, conception, conclusion, judgment, design, purpose, intention, solicitude, anxious care, concern, etc.

Who is there, even with ordinary acquaintance with the animal, that has not witnessed some if not all these attributes of “thought?” Most writers on the subject have shown a desire to give the human animal some distinguishing quality or faculty above all others, but their line of demarcation between man and the rest of animal creation has not been altogether successful, as man can not claim by the high authority that he is the only species that has the something called “spirit,” which is necessary in order “to think;” for the sacred book teaches that man and beast are alike in this, but the spirit of man goeth upward, while the spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth, and which in anti-bellum days constituted a knotty text for Southern theologians who taught that “niggers and dogs” have no souls.

An eminent Scotch clergyman, who has made a study of natural history believes that dogs are possessed of the same faculties as man, differing only in degrees. He asserts that conscience in man and conscience in the dog are essentially the same things. And Charles Dickens declares that dogs have a moral nature—an unmistakable ability to distinguish between right and wrong, which led him to believe the difference in the dog nature and the so-called spiritual nature in man was imperceptible, and that future existence rested upon like natural foundations.

It would be holding conclusions in opposition to all rules of observation to say that dogs and other animals are destitute of the faculty of “thought.” When the awful torrents came sweeping down upon Johnstown the terrible waves and debris dashed over housetops and Mrs. Kress was carried away by the wild current in an instant beyond human help, her faithful dog, unmindful of himself, jumped after her, and when he saw her dress come to the surface, seized and carried her to another housetop. Soon this house was demolished, but Romeo kept the head of Mrs. Kress out of water and battled with the raging current and floating timber for more than half an hour before he reached the roof of another house, where she was taken up unconscious with fright and exhaustion. When the dog saw the motionless condition of his mistress he barked and howled and made pitiful demonstrations of grief, for he “thought” she was dead; but when she breathed he became delighted and manifested his joy in a way that could not be mistaken.

For eight summers a little cocker spaniel (Archos) was daily with the writer in field and forest, and to his industry and sagacity is due no small part of the success in obtaining fresh specimens for the life size, hand-colored work by Mrs. N. E. Jones, entitled, “The Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio.” Many of the rare small birds build on or near the ground in thick cover, and among those he was credited with finding may be mentioned the obscure nest and eggs of the Helminthophaga pinus—Blue-winged yellow warbler, and the nest of the Geothlypistrichas—Maryland yellow-throat. He knew the object of pursuit as well as his master, and delighted in finding these little homes, and would stand firmly on a point, as it was understood between us that the bird must be shot when flushed for positive identification. He knew what his master was doing, for he understood the meaning of almost all words used in ordinary conversation, and could transact business on orders with admirable accuracy.

While out with a friend quail shooting, the sun was warm and we sat down on the cool grass in a fence corner shaded by the dead leaves on an oak bush. The little cocker was panting with heat and enjoyed the shade quite as much as his master. Soon a voice was heard from my friend, on the opposite border of a large field, calling: “Send Archos over here. I have a dead bird my dog can’t find.” The cocker paid no attention to the call, and no reply was made by the writer. And to show how much a dog may acquire of the meaning of words in a few years, I said to Archos in a conversational tone, as he ceased panting and fixed his great dark eyes on the speaker: “Ed has lost a dead bird—he can not find it; you go over and get it.” No sooner said than the little fellow started off in the tall ragweed which covered the field, and unknown to my friend scented the dead bird and brought it and laid it at my feet, all the time smiling and wagging the tail, as much as to say, “I would like to tell you how nicely that was done, but I can’t talk—dare not.”

Bab says: “Away back in some old book there is a story how dogs used to talk, and were men’s advisers. One day a great prince met a beautiful woman, and despite of the advice of the dog who was his counselor, he married her, and he made her cousin, a beggar, his prime minister. Amid the festivities, the dog warned the prince to watch the woman, told the prince that she was unfaithful, that her cousin was her lover, and that between them they would rob the kingdom and drive him from the throne. He turned on the dog and cursed him—cursed him so that this good friend, looking at the prince, said: ‘Until men are grateful and women are faithful, I and my kind will never speak again.’”

The world has grown older and better, but for the peace of society and quiet of social relations, it’s well he still holds his tongue. Professor Garner, who has devoted much time to the study of animals in this country and in Africa, has confirmed the general observation of those familiar with rural life to be true: that cattle—as horses, sheep, hogs and other animals—talk among their kind. What there is to be detected in the manner of delivery of the same sound, giving out entirely different sensations, is yet to be discovered. The squeal of the hungry pig, repeated by the phonograph, only increases the hunger and squeal of the pig that hears it; while to repeat the similar squeal of a pig in pain, at once causes manifest fear, anger and distress in all the pigs that hear it. And it must be so—all domestic animals do think and reason, and not unoften are enabled to make their thoughts known by signs and sounds to those to whom they look for help and comfort other than their kind.

Dogs are utilized extensively in Germany and other parts of Europe as draft animals. The United States consul says, in the large, wealthy and industrial city of Leige, and throughout Belgium, dogs are used for delivery of goods by all the trades of the city. While they are used as hewers of wood and drawers of water, the species is the most versatile in talents of the animal creation—and the dog makes the most accurate critic, the most successful detective, most reliable witness, best sentinel and most trustworthy friend.

Persons do not stop to think there is a world of intelligence, love and affection outside the human head and heart, and innocently ask, “What makes the dog heed every word when his master says ‘you can not go with me this time?’ What makes him place himself at the most observing point and look wistfully after his departing friends until they disappear in the distance? Why does he stay, perchance all day, at a favorable point to hear or see a returning approach, anxiously waiting and watching, and at the well-known and accurately distinguished sounds of the footsteps of his master’s horse from all others, runs to meet his master, and barks and laughs and cries with joy and gladness?” The beneficence of creation gives the answer in a world of unselfish love.

Dogs know nothing of hypocrisy—are always sincere—never lie—dislike ridicule—and never accept nor offer a joke.

The dog has been recognized as valuable property by his owner in every age, nation and people on the face of the earth; but with no staple market price any more than there is for that of the horse. The consideration is determined by amount of education, usefulness or purposes which he is capable of fulfilling.

Colonel D. D. Harris, of Mendon, Michigan, refused more than once ten thousand dollars for his famous sable Scotch Collie. He was a dog of such note, with the refined people of the world, that he was privileged to walk through the Vatican, and was entertained by the President of France—the Czar of the Russias—the King of Norway and Sweden, and other nobility of the old world. President Cleveland stroked his glossy coat, and he received the most grateful attention among all the courts visited in this and in other countries.

This Collie was never on public exhibition, but was the traveling companion of his owner. He could select any card called for in the deck—if not there, would say so by giving a whine—could distinguish colors as well as any human being; and could count money and make change with the rapidity and accuracy of an expert bank accountant. If told to make change of $31.31, or any other amounts from coins of various denominations, he could do so rapidly and without mistake. This intelligent dog lived out his allotted brief existence, dying at the age of fourteen years; but was better known than thousands of men who have lived much longer, thinking themselves quite eminent.

If dogs are not valuable property why are they exchanged at high rates in dollars and cents? Why did Mr. E. R. Sears, of Melrose, Mass., part with his twelve thousand five hundred dollars in “greenbacks” for the dog Bedivere? It may be said the one who purchased a dog at that price was “green”—if said, it would be a mistake, for Green was the gentleman who sold him.

The greater part of the early population of Ohio associated with dogs much of their time, and with good results. But the law-makers of the state, or a majority, had a penchant for self-elevation by legislating against those they feared as rivals—“dogs and niggers.” Consequently, “Black laws” and dog laws engrossed the time and talents of law-makers, who felt measurably unsafe unless the former were excluded as property and the latter deprived of citizenship.

The sensitive, if not infallible, Supreme Court has recently given the property rights and protection of the dog a bad set-back in the decision that “dogs are not property,” and outside of property it would seem there can be no ownership. But as decisions of the learned court are not required to be accepted in silence by the canine species, this one affecting their rights is enough to make every dog of high and low degree, from Maine to California, rise up with a prodigious howl of contempt.

The logic by which the high court was enabled to enunciate its decision is quite as remarkable as the decision itself. It would seem the learned court divided the animal creation into two parts—“useful and useless,” and subdivided these into “wild and domestic beasts;” and then states: “Dogs belong to the non-useful, wild animal division.” Ergo: “Wild animals, as dogs which have been domesticated, are therefore property only while in actual custody”—which means in arms, cages, or confinement. An able critic, and a very well-informed lawyer, says: “Any respectable court would laugh at the proposition that it is not theft to appropriate a diamond which has escaped from the owner’s custody.” But that is another kind of cow—the poor have dogs, not diamonds. Still the learned man is to be admired who said:

“I like dogs because I know so many men and women.

“I like dogs because they always see my virtues and ignore my vices.

“I like dogs because they are friends through good report and evil report—through poverty and through riches.

“I like dogs because they are faithful and generous.

“I like dogs because they are full of simplicity and find pleasure in very little things.”

The population of the early settlements of Ohio bought and sold dogs, and considered them as much property as horses, cattle, or other personalty. They were not purchased by the pound; neither were hogs nor cattle. Among traders of the rural districts, every thing weighing over five hundred pounds was bought and sold upon appearance and opinion, by the piece.

Where the price caused a disagreement between buyer and seller, some mutual friend, who had obtained a good reputation as guesser, would be called as an arbiter. Fattened cattle to go east, purchased by “drovers,” were never weighed, but were taken, like horses, at a given sum per head. Fattened hogs, however, were generally weighed, by request of the purchaser. Each hog would be suspended, and weight determined by the “steelyard,” and then branded with a redhot iron on the left ham. This done, the squealing prisoner would surrender his place and attentions of the audience to the next, and so on, until the whole drove became duly registered. But farmers trading among themselves, buying and selling stock, depended entirely upon their sight and judgment as to the valuation.

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CHAPTER II.
OHIO—EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL.

Ohio is the first of the contemplated states under the Ordinance of 1787, and is the most important if not the largest state in the Union. Although geographers say there are some twenty-five states larger, yet no one has ventured to determine beyond dispute or contradiction just how large Ohio is. When the lights of education were limited to the “three R’s,” the boundary was supposed to contain about thirty-nine thousand square miles. In a short time after, the size increased to forty thousand. The area is described as the space between Lake Erie and the Ohio river; and is usually estimated to contain twenty-five million six hundred thousand acres. But some advanced information has changed these figures to forty-one thousand square miles, and has shown by the state auditor’s reports that nearly twenty-seven million acres of farm lands were returned for taxation in 1833, and the question still remains undetermined how large the state is.

The state is greatly favored in regard to water navigation, having Lake Erie on the north for two hundred and thirty miles, and the Ohio river on the eastern and southern border for four hundred and thirty-five miles, giving a natural water-way around three sides of its boundary amounting to six hundred and sixty-five miles, which is more navigable water than is possessed by any other state in the Union, except California and Michigan.

The vast territory east of the Mississippi river, of which Ohio formed a part, was claimed and controlled by France, and was known as the “North-western Territory,” or “Louisiana”, by French traders and missionaries as early as 1658. In 1679, La Salle established a sailing vessel on Lake Erie, and trading posts were designated at favorable points, and missionary work found its way among the resident Indian tribes that occupied the portion of territory now called Ohio.

France was made aware of the beauty of the meager possession on this continent, and endeavored by means of the natives and their missionaries to keep the pre-emption warm until a title could be better recognized. In 1794, Major De Celoran, an officer of the French army, with a force of several hundred men (French and Indian) landed at a favorable point on Lake Erie, and carried their boats overland to Chautauqua Lake; from thence into the Alleghany and Ohio rivers. And on the way down the Ohio river, it is said this officer buried at numerous favorable points lead plates bearing the proclamation of Louis XIV, asserting the dominion of France over the territory on both sides of the Ohio river. The titles of France were but little better than the favorite grants and charters of James I, and the American colonies soon began the establishment of claims, which, in conflict, were settled only by the defeat of the French by the British at Quebec, and the treaty of Paris in 1763, by which this territory was all ceded to Great Britain; and the present good state was annexed to Canada, and by proclamation amenable to the government located at Quebec.

After the close of the War of Revolution, the United States found the rights to the territory of the great North-west in dispute between the Indians and the colonies; and congress attempted to settle the disputes by having the colonies abandon all claims by ceding the same to the United States as the common property of all. New York set the patriotic example, and gave up all her rights to a common cause and general good, and was soon followed by other colonies until the entire domain became vested in the United States, excepting an unsurrendered claim of Connecticut, in the northern part of the state known as the Western Reserve, about fifty miles wide and one hundred and twenty miles long.

The great North-west Territory, under the supervision of the government, was divided up and known under the following heads:

1. The Seven Ranges and Congress Lands.

2. United States Military Lands.

3. The Ohio Company’s Purchase.

4. The Connecticut Reserve and Fire Lands.

5. The Military Bounty Lands.

6. The Virginia Military Bounty Lands.

7. Symmes’s Purchase.

8. Special Grants, Donation Tract, Refugees’ Tract, French Grant, Dorhman’s Grant, Moravian and Lane’s Grants, Improvement Grants.

9. Canal, Turnpike, and Road Lands.

10. School, College and Ministerial Grants.

The Congress lands are those sold by officers of the Government. The Connecticut Reserve, consisting of about 3,800,000 acres, was a claim or grant made to the colony by Charles II in 1662. The “Fire Lands” were part of the grant, and were donated by the colony to reimburse losses sustained in property by the raids of Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War. The Fire Lands consisted of 500,000 acres, and were located chiefly in Erie county.

Connecticut sold her Ohio lands to a “land company for $1,200,000,” and placed it securely as an endowment fund for common schools; and the income from this source is still educating the children of that highly intelligent state.

The United States Military Lands, made such by act of Congress in 1796 to satisfy claims of officers and soldiers of the War of the Revolution. This tract embraced an area of 4,000 square miles in the counties of Morgan, Noble, Guernsey, Pickaway, Coshocton, Muskingum, Perry, Fairfield and Franklin. Donation Tract is 100,000 acres in the north part of Washington county, granted to the Ohio Company by Congress. The Symmes Tract of 311,682 acres was granted to John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, in 1794, for sixty-seven cents an acre. The land lies between the two Miami rivers. Mr. Symmes’s daughter married General Wm. Henry Harrison, and was the grandmother of ex-President Harrison the II.

The Refugee Lands is a grant of 100,000 acres. It lies along the Scioto river, and the city of Columbus stands upon this land, granted by Congress to be given to persons driven out of the British provinces during the Revolutionary War.

The French Grant consists of 24,000 acres in Scioto county, and given by Congress after the fashion of hush money.

The Dorhman Grant is a tract of 23,000 acres in Tuscarawas county, given by Congress to a Portuguese merchant.

The Virginia Military Lands were located on the west of the Scioto river. The amount of the grant in acres has never been known. There are fifteen counties in the tract and much of it has never been surveyed. This body of land was reserved by Virginia to pay her soldiers who were in the Revolution without compensation or pay. When it was determined by Congress to pay the soldiers in land, each original settler marked his own boundaries with a hatchet, and made a good liberal guess that the area within his lines would cover the acres given in his warrant.

The Moravian Grant was 4,000 acres in Tuscarawas county. Besides, many other donations were made for roads and other purposes, making a total of over eight million acres, the greater part of which went to creditors of the Government. Land was the only thing the United States had available to cancel the war obligations, and soldiers and others gladly accepted land certificates in lieu of those of silver or gold.

Land in body was more desirable than town lots. When Chillicothe was made capital of the territory it had about twenty cabins promiscuously located among the timber, which had not yet been cut down to designate the streets. The State House was constructed in 1800 by an old revolutionary soldier, Wm. Rutledge, and remained the Capitol until 1816, when it was permanently located at Columbus, Franklin county. The removal of the capital injured greatly the prospects and business of Chillicothe for many years, and secured leisure to its citizens, who engaged in various innocent amusements for killing time—in fact, lingered with scarcely a symptom of lysis until after the “Literary, Astronomical and Natural History Society” commenced the publication and distribution of that illustrated periodical (yearly), known and remembered to the last days of the older citizens, entitled “The Ground Hog Almanac.” Since then the town has grown in population, wealth and beauty, and is now the center jewel of the cities in the rich Scioto valley.

Provisions for the education of the generations that were to inhabit the North-west were made and ratified by Congress, in 1787, giving one-thirty-sixth part of the entire public domain to be reserved from sale for the maintenance of schools, declaring “That schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

When Ohio was set off and became a state, the reserve school lands were placed under the management of the legislature, the constitution of 1802 making it the duty of that body to carry out the educational clause of the ordinance, and that the schools supported by the land grants should be open for the reception of pupils. But it turned out like many public trusts; with this splendid endowment of near a million acres of good land, the children of Ohio received no benefit from that source, nor from any legislative equivalent, for near half a century after settlement. The majority of the people, it must be confessed, were indifferent to the subject of education, and were used to keep in power enough imbecile legislators, who in defiance of Ephraim Cutler, the wording of the constitution and acts of Congress, spent the sessions for more than twenty years in perverse legislation of the public school lands.

THE HISTORIC GROUND HOG CLUB.

Organized February 2, 1800.

Certificate of Membership.

The ground hog goes into his hole in the ground early in the fall, and stays there until the 2d day of February, when, regardless of the weather, he comes out; but, if he sees his shadow, winter is not over, and he goes back to stay six weeks.

It was stated by a member of the senate, at the time, that every year things were made worse—“That members of the legislature got acts passed, under pretexts of granting leases to themselves, relatives and political partisans, giving the lands away until there was little or nothing left.” One senator got acts passed giving him and his children seven entire sections. And legislation through ignorance, inability and design subverted the intention in regard to the school-land grant—squandered the proceeds, and then pledged the state to pay the interest. And for this pledge the citizen is annually taxed on a fund of over four million dollars, which exists nowhere excepting in name on the musty books of the state.

But the young Buckeye Squirrel Hunter could not be repressed; and fathers and mothers labored hard and economized to help sustain subscription schools to the full extent of their financial ability; while the State of Connecticut was supporting an expensive system of common school education from a fund arising from the sale of her lands in Ohio.[6]

The teachers of Ohio subscription schools were not examined, nor did their patrons require a very high standard of qualification. Still some were highly educated wanderers over the earth, as the literary works of H. D. Flood, John Robinson and James Kelsey show; and who were teachers in Southern Ohio from 1810 to 1825. The greater number of instructors were well-informed citizens, who accepted the opportunity in order to pursue studies that would qualify them for a more lucrative calling.

It was not customary to close the school on holidays; nor even on Saturdays. They were all hired by the month and were required to perform the duties of teaching the full number of working days in each calendar month—neither Christmas, New Year nor Fourth of July could close the door. The patrons were the sole managers of these schools, and were solicitous to obtain full consideration for the amount paid. But young America was alive, and the incentive a holiday by nature gave, could not, under the most staid rules of conduct and economy, be entirely suppressed; and it became more contagious than measles or whooping-cough, and every school in the country was soon broken out with the idea of a holiday—in parts of two days—Christmas and New Year.

There seemed to be no way to treat it other than to let it have its regular course. It always came with a specific demand upon the teacher, of which the following well-preserved pattern specimen embraces the material points of others, varying only in quantity and quality, with locality and circumstances:

“December 23, 1817.

“Mr. John Robinson (Teacher)—

“Sir:—We the undersigned committee, in behalf of the unanimous voice of the scholars of your school, demand that you treat, according to custom, to the following articles in amount herein named, to wit:

200 ginger cakes,
2 bushels of hickory nuts,
1 peck hazel nuts,
10 pounds of candy,
10 pounds raisins,

delivered at the school house, noon hour, December 25, for the enjoyment and pleasant remembrance of this school. If this meets your approbation you will please sign and return the paper to John Kelley to-morrow, December 24, at noon, saying, over your signature, ‘I agree to the above,’

“John Kelley,
James Brown,
William Smallwood,

}

Committee.”

Occasionally a teacher not fond of fun or fearful of exposure, would at once sign these modest demands, and would join in with the children at noon on Christmas, and again on New Year’s day, and have a long to be remembered pleasant jollification. But by far the greater number of teachers preferred a little preliminary skirmishing before acceding to the peremptory demand. When the above bill of fare was handed the teacher just before dismissal on the evening of the 23d, he glanced over the contents and commenced tearing the paper into small fragments. And it was said this meant defiance.

The next morning was cold, with deep fall of snow during the night; but all the larger boys were inside of the school house with a hot fire and armed with ropes and strings, and plenty of wood and provisions to withstand a siege, before it was yet light. All the openings were barricaded with the benches, which consisted of heavy “puncheons,” with wooden pins driven in on the convex side for legs. One after another of the children came and were admitted, and when the teacher arrived, he found the house (cabin) full of jolly boys and girls, but could not himself enter.

After many ineffectual efforts to obtain admission, he started homeward. This was the signal for the boys, and the yelping, whooping crowd of all sizes and ages of minors, broke camp and gave chase. Robinson is described as an athletic specimen of vigorous manhood, and delighted in sport, and concluded to give the boys a fox chase through the forest and unbroken snow. He led the gang quite easily for a short time, but after several miles’ running the boys captured and overpowered the fleeing despot. Finding resistance useless he submitted to be tied and roped down securely to pieces of timber on either side with face in the direction of the clouds. The burial ceremony was performed by asking compliance, and marching around his body, singing funeral dirges, and piling snow upon his person.

A monument of snow was soon erected with an opening for breathing and conversation. He did not hold out long, and by pledging his honor the bill of fare should be on hand, and no punishment or ill-will entertained for the usage received, the prisoner was released, and all returned to the school-house, spelled for head, and were regularly dismissed for home.

The next day at noon a cart-load of good things arrived with those specified; and children and parents enjoyed the feast, after which there was an old-fashioned spelling-match, and all went home to remember with pleasure the Christmas of 1817. And at this writing (1895) only one of that jolly crowd is known to be living, and from whom the above reminiscences have been obtained.

The country was so thinly settled it was often difficult to make up a school (fifteen), owing to distance from the school cabin, and it was the common practice for those most interested, usually two or three neighbors, to “sign” for their own children and enough more out of the range to make up the required number. And often, in order to secure them, agreeing to pay the tuition and to board them during attendance. And so far as the advantages of these schools were to be obtained, the boys and girls shared alike. But if unable to afford the expense for both, the boys generally got the schooling.

Ohio School-house from 1796 to 1840.

The school-house was usually located in the woods. The building was of round logs, and presented the appearance of very little comfort, either without or within. The floor was of mother earth; the ceiling above, the underside of the roof; a number of rude benches; a few puncheon shelves, and a huge fire-place, constituted the necessary arrangement of the interior. It was known as the school-house, although used as a place to hold elections, lectures, debating societies, and singing-schools.

But notwithstanding the loss of an endowment much needed in primitive times, and the restriction of subscription schools from existing poverty, and that the log-cabin school-houses stood empty for long periods, there was no effeminacy in the desire for knowledge, for where there is a will there is a way, and volumes might be filled with learned and illustrious names who were once rocked in a “sugar-trough,” and took their first lessons in “Brush College.”

It was in this environment the scientist, statesman, and divine obtained that self-confidence and industry which leads to high and honored stations and has made the North-west a perpetual eclipsing shadow upon all other parts of the United States.

In every department, the chosen citizen of this magnificent empire has shown himself master of the situation. In art, literature, and sciences; in war and times of peace, he has given strength to the Union and credit to a central power that will surround itself with national influences the most impregnable of any government in the world. And under all the disadvantages—the absence of public schools, and the opening up of a new world isolated from civilization, he came forth like a vision of beauty and glory from a chrysalis on which was written the destiny of future greatness.

A short time before execution, John Brown said—“I know the very errors by which my scheme was marred were decreed before the world was made. And I had no more to do with the course I pursued than a shot leaving a cannon has to do with the spot where it shall fall.” That hunger and thirst for knowledge which prevailed in the North-west seemed to contradict all theories of man’s proneness under favorable circumstances to degenerate, and favors the theory advanced by the hero of Ossawatomie in regard to power and purpose. Some of the first generation of boys of Ohio (those that lived in the territory) previous to 1796 were born elsewhere to disappoint the Indians, but were all the same shareholders of the great estate. And at the early dawn of the present century many of these young men found their way to Eastern institutions of learning, taking the front in physical and mental culture, as they did afterward in positions of national honor.

As boys, squirrel hunters, men, scholars, lawyers, soldiers, civilians, and statesmen, history shows they filled their places well as American models of superior manhood. Poor as the isolated inhabitants were in regard to worldly goods, they had an abundance of that which gave vitality, energy, and power of will to do. It was no uncommon thing for boys in this vast forest to obtain by their own efforts full preparation to enter college, and with a knapsack of luncheon, tinder-box, and scantily-filled purse, walk hundreds of miles to a seat of learning, and there remain four years without seeing home or friends until they obtained the high honors of the institution.

Ex-Governor Seaberry Ford is but the sample of many. When it came time to go to college, the family of the young squirrel hunter was living in a log cabin in the backwoods of Ohio. His ambition, however, was for Yale, and so expressed it. His father replied, “How are you to get there!” The answer was, “I can walk,” and did walk—reached Yale, where he remained the “boss” young man of the town and institution for four years, and returned to Ohio with the first diploma issued by that college to an Ohio boy. Many years without public schools papers or libraries did not dampen the ardor of the young for knowledge. The inhabitants were destitute of a circulating medium, but managed to keep apace with all the world in that synonym for power. The means employed, as given in the autobiography of one of the first two college graduates in the North-west, illustrates well the thousands of that and later dates who managed to obtain books, and worked their way to the highest standard of education.

The Hon. Thomas Ewing says—“About this time” (1803) “the neighbors in our and the surrounding settlements met and agreed to purchase books and make a common library. They were all poor and subscriptions small, but they raised in all about one hundred dollars.

“All my accumulated wealth, ten coon-skins, went into the fund, and Squire Sam Brown, of Sunday Creek, who was going to Boston, was charged with the purchase. After the absence of many weeks he brought the books to Captain Ben Brown’s in a sack on a pack-horse. I was present at the untying of the sack and pouring out the treasure. There were about sixty volumes, I think, and well selected; the library of the Vatican was nothing to it, and there never was a library better read. This with occasional additions furnished me with reading while I remained at home.

“Dec. 17, 1804, the library was fully established and christened, ‘The Coon-skin Library,’ and a librarian duly elected by shareholders.”

Five years later, at the age of nineteen, with consent of his father, young Ewing left home to procure means to obtain a collegiate education. He set out on foot and found his way through the woods from his home in Athens county to the Ohio river, and from thence to the Kanawha Salt Works, where he engaged as a day laborer, and in three months saved enough money to pay his way at school through the winter at Athens College. He became well satisfied with the success so far, and in the spring returned to the Salt Works and made money enough to pay off some indebtedness that was troubling his father, devoting the winter to the study of some new books obtained by the “Coon-skin Library.”

The third year he returned with enough to induce him to enter college as a regular student, where he remained until 1815; and, after taking the degree of A. M., returned to the Salt Works, and earned enough to aid in the study of law. Thus, ten years were spent as a necessary apprenticeship—performing the arduous and monotonous labors of boiling salt, that he might be enabled to cultivate the various talents nature had so bounteously bestowed upon him, and at the same time avoid financial embarrassments.

Many thousands of squirrel hunters since have imitated the example of this great man, and have arisen to high eminence, but none—not one—to the height of “The Ohio Salt-boiler”—the greatest man America ever produced. In stature Mr. Ewing was six feet two inches tall—well proportioned, with remarkable physical ability. It is related—that many years after athletical exercises had been lain aside for law, on passing near the old court-house in Lancaster, Ohio, he found a crowd of able-bodied men who had been trying to throw an ax, handle and all, over the building, but it could not be done. Mr. Ewing halted, and took the ax by the handle and sent it sailing five feet or more above the building and passed on.

Mr. Ewing was great from the fact he was familiar with the little things of life, as well as the greater matters in the supreme court, where he chiefly practiced. Daniel Webster acknowledged Mr. Ewing’s superior abilities in seeking his aid in his difficult and weighty cases.

In the Senate of the United States, he introduced many important bills—and opposed Clay’s Compromise—the amendatory fugitive slave law of 1850—and advocated the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. As a statesman and educated in a free state, he had none of that diffidence, timidity, and submission to slave-holding dictation so commonly witnessed among northern legislators in Congress, and before their constituents.

The influence of slavery was felt in the education and lives of the people of the North-west. As race hatred was transplanted into Ohio in the early settlements, it soon became a political element that caused many odious and unchristian laws to be placed on the statute books, and enforced as vigorously against color as if made in the interests of slavery and bonded ignorance of the state.

The first State Constitution of Ohio, adopted in 1802, in article 8, “That the general, great, and essential principles of liberty and free government may be recognized, and forever unalterably established, we declare”—

Sec. 1. “That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights, among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Sec. 2. “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in this state, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

Sec. 3. ... “That schools, and the means of instruction, shall forever be encouraged by legislative provision, not inconsistent with the rights of conscience.”

Sec. 25. “That no law shall be passed to prevent the poor in the several counties and townships within this state from an equal participation in the schools, academies, colleges, and universities within this state, which are endowed, in whole or in part, from the revenue arising from the donations made by the United States for the support of schools and colleges; and the doors of the said schools, academies, and universities shall be open for the reception of scholars, students, and teachers of every grade, without any distinction or preference whatever contrary to the intent for which the said donations were made.”

Still the colored man, under no circumstances, excepting taxation, was recognized as a citizen. He was by Article IV of the Constitution of Ohio disfranchised by the word “white”—no other color could enjoy the rights of an elector. He was by law deprived of schools and means of instruction contrary to the spirit of the endowment as well as expressions of the constitution; and for more than forty years the colored population sojourned in a wilderness of freedom before it was discovered that manhood has rights all are bound to respect—one of which is the right of suffrage.

The greater portion of the population forming the new state were favorable to freedom, and many were known to have emancipated their slaves and settled in Ohio that they might wipe out the stains of an institution which had so truthfully been denominated the “sum of all villainies.” There were, however, others, in almost every neighborhood, who by nature were the patrons of the slave-hunter and looked upon a colored man as unworthy of an existence on earth, and delighted in tormenting, killing, or driving him from his home and neighborhood.

This race hatred in some parts of the state received so much attention and cultivation, that many well-meaning people encouraged the prejudice, in view of the peace of the neighborhood.

Cincinnati did more than all the rest of the border towns in keeping up and disseminating a violent race hatred. Free respectable colored people were looked upon, denounced, and treated as a nuisance, “having no rights a white man was bound to respect.” The city harbored if not encouraged a lot of miscreants, who made it a business to hunt and capture runaway slaves for the reward; and also to carry on the money making business of kidnaping free blacks, carrying them across the river, and selling them into slavery. Any and every unlawful treatment they received was winked at by citizens and city authorities.

The courts were open, but until S. P. Chase went to Cincinnati in 1830 the black man could procure no counsel, as a white man could easily ruin his character and standing by manifesting the least sympathy for the persecuted. When the Hon. Salmon P. Chase defended one of these down-trodden creatures in the courts of Cincinnati, after the hearing of the case, a prominent man of the city said, pointing to Mr. Chase, “There goes a promising young lawyer who has ruined himself.”

But the state outside of Cincinnati had enough of the right element to enforce, if necessary, at all times, the fifth paragraph of the eighth article of the state constitution, which affirmed, “That the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and possessions, from all unwarrantable searches and seizures; and that the general warrants whereby an officer may be commanded to search suspected places, without probable evidence of the fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named whose offenses are not particularly described, and without oath or affirmation, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be granted.” Still in matters of legislation Cincinnati managed to secure her influence against the negro.

Notwithstanding the plain wording of the Constitution of the State, laws were enacted to keep the black and mulatto people out of Ohio. These were the much discussed “black laws”—

First. A black or mulatto person was prohibited settlement unless he could show a certificate of freedom and the names of two freeholders as security for his good behavior and maintenance, in the event of becoming a public charge; and unless the certificate of freedom was duly recorded and produced, it was a penal offense to give employment to a black or mulatto.

Second. Colored and mulattoes were excluded from the schools; and,

Third. No black or mulatto could testify in court in any case where a white person was concerned.

In 1848, Dr. N. S. Townshend, of Lorain county, and Dr. John F. Morse, of Lake county, were elected members of the legislature as “abolitionists.” To these two members, fortunately, holding the balance of power between the Whigs and Democrats, are due the repeal of the odious “black laws,” and the election of an “abolition” United States Senator—S. P. Chase.

To these men, in combination with the Democrats, is not only due the repeal of existing laws, but, also, provisions for schools for black and mulatto children. And Ohio became reclaimed in favor of freedom, and all was bright and lovely and prosperous—but not all happy; for there still remained a black, disgraceful, disfiguring spot on the face of the Goddess of Liberty—a spot that was causing millions to mourn.

Early in the Union of the States, slavery caste began to isolate itself from every thing denominated “Yankee North,” and, at the same time, disseminated a race hatred against the “nigger” among the ignorant white and poor people of the South. And, in the line of emigration, Ohio received a larger share of immigrants who had been taught to despise the “nigger,” and honestly believed a colored man was an inferior animal, “destitute of a soul;” and lecturers were often traveling over the state entertaining large audiences with such crude material as that—“A nigger is not human—the bones in the hands and feet are entirely different; and he is nothing more or less than an improved Orang-outang, and made to be a slave to the human race as much as a horse or cow.” By lowering the natural status of the colored man, such audiences became elevated and the space between man and the monkey widened by comparison making room for increased hatred. At all times, but most especially so, previous to the odious amendments of the “Fugitive Slave Law,” in 1850, it was no uncommon thing to see calls signed by numerous citizens inserted in popular newspapers, asking all persons in favor of “law and order” to assemble at the time and place specified to put down abolitionism, and to let their “southern brethren” know the people of Ohio were in favor of the constitution and preservation of the Union of the States.

A call for a meeting of this kind in a central county of the state, and announced in the official political paper of the time, dated October 3, 1835, is headed in large type—

“Anti-Abolition Meeting.

“A meeting of those opposed to the wild projects of abolitionists is proposed to be held at the court-house in Circleville, on Saturday, the 10th day of October next, at 1 o’clock P. M.

“All those who love their country and are willing to maintain her constitution—

“All who are friends to order and would avert the horrors of a servile war—

“All who know slavery to be an evil, but believe a dissolution of our National Union a greater evil—

“All who deprecate ecclesiastical influence in political affairs, are respectfully and earnestly invited to attend the proposed meeting, when a number of addresses will be delivered.”

This call is signed by four hundred and seventy-three names, citizens of a town having less than two thousand inhabitants. The next issue of the paper publishing the call, and previous to the time of meeting, contained an anonymous, but scathing criticism of such movements, in which the author of the article says: “It has been shown what is the real state of the anti-slavery question, and the unreasonableness and utter groundlessness of the outcry against Abolitionists.” “Further we would state for the serious consideration of our opponents that we are persuaded that the ‘Union will be dissolved,’ not if this subject be discussed, but if it be not. If it be true that the social compact was formed on the condition of slavery being tolerated by the free states, then it is such an Union as must sooner or later be dissolved.”... “Admitting the existence of a God, and that God is a being of perfect equity, can it be believed that He will suffer such a combination against the happiness of man to exist forever? And has it not already existed too long for that unity of counsel in this great republic which should ever mark the doings of a nation? And can we calculate on a much longer forbearance?” The editors of the paper, after offering an apology for publishing the article, of which the above quotations are but a small part, say: “Will some Abolitionist be so kind as to refer us to the passage in our Constitution or Declaration of Independence which asserts that all men are created free and equally; we have not seen it.”

The meeting came off as advertised, and the chairman said: “Deeply sympathizing with our ‘Southern brethren,’ we have assembled to express our most unqualified opposition to emancipation and disapprobation of the course pursued by its advocates; and to assure our fellow-citizens in the Southern States that we regard their constitutional rights as our own, and that we will to the utmost aid them in the defense of those rights.” “Therefore, Resolved,” was followed by ten long resolutions in praise of fidelity to the South and opposition to emancipation, winding up with the following:

“Resolved, That were the slave-holders now willing to abolish slavery, in our opinion the immediate and unconditional emancipation of all the slaves in the United States, without providing for their colonization, would render the condition of both the whites and blacks infinitely worse than it now is, and would be an act of palpable and unpardonable inhumanity to the slaves.”

Signed: Valentine Kieffer, President; Nathan Perrill, John Entrekin, Wm. Renick, Sr., Vice-Presidents; Elias Bentley, W. N. Foresman, A. Huston, Secretaries.

All the officers were well-known and prominent people, and it is not strange that persons of such note and intelligence should have given their approbation and signatures of approval to such a meeting, when we reflect that most pro-slavery men in the free states had been taught to believe or say: If the slaves were liberated, they would come north in swarms and “steal our chickens,” and destroy the peace of society “by marrying every good-looking white woman in the country.”

But there existed no occasion for alarm; the slave-holding states South never had an inclination to emancipate their slaves. They were the wealth of that country, and its growing greatness fostered the desire to found an aristocratic empire on slave labor. The number in bondage was rapidly increasing and their labor was becoming more and more remunerative. They had but to see the increase of this wealth and its products in fifty years, to stimulate the desire to found a government on the aristocracy of the institution.

In 1810, there were in all the states but 1,191,360 slaves; and notwithstanding New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had in the meantime liberated theirs—and the African slave trade had previously been abolished—the underground railroad had been doing a lively business—and the manumissions and colonizations that were going on in the “breeding states”—in 1860 the number had increased to within a small fraction less than four millions.

Slave labor was exceedingly profitable in the cotton states, as the increase of the cotton product shows. In 1801, these states only produced 48,000,000 pounds, while 1860 returned 2,054,698,800 pounds. There were, however, two things inserted in the government plat that were unsatisfactory: “That all men are created equal” in natural rights, and the Missouri Compromise—the thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, Mason and Dixon’s line. It was not so clear as they wished it might be, that “unalienable rights,” “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” belonged only to masters; and when the failure to rescind the “Compromise” in 1853 occurred through democratic influence, of such men as Albert P. Edgerton, the possibility of peacefully enlarging the area of slavery became as hopeless as it was manifestly evident that bondage and freedom could not much longer remain peaceably in the same government. And with amendments to the fugitive slave law the Southern political bosses, who had usurped the control of the national government, knew the constitution found slavery in the states, and as a state institution left its local existence to the chances of state laws. They knew full well it was not made a national institution and that the time was close at hand when they must go to the rear or abandon their northern allies and set up a slavocracy for themselves. They had obtained sufficient to know Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Arthur Tappan and the Boston Liberator were actual facts; and the large meetings of the “dough faces” and their expressions of sympathy was not the kind of “Soothing Syrup” the South desired, although giving great encouragement to secession.

The division of sentiment existing in the free states in regard to the rights of slavery and its extension became more and more expressive, especially along the border lines of the opposing institutions. Consequently Ohio felt a full share of the evils due to political and social disturbances arising from this cause. But the intercommunications given by railroads and the light emanating from a free and fearless press—cheap postage and speedy transportation—infused new life; and mankind began thinking—thinking differently from that of past times when the postage on a letter was twenty-five cents and required four days for an individual to travel one hundred miles and return.

Slave hunting in the land of the free did not prove an agreeable or profitable occupation. The oppressed fugitive generally found friends enough in the North to secure the boon he sought. In almost every community could be found the spirit contained in the lines by Whittier, expressed for George W. Lattimer, who with his wife escaped from Norfolk, Va., in 1841, and was found in Boston. He was the first slave hunted in the North, and was arrested and proceedings began to have him returned to slavery. His cause was championed by such men as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass. The court ruled against the fugitive and his liberty was purchased by the good people of Boston. Lattimer gained great notoriety, and after a long and eventful life died at his home in Lynn, Mass., May 30, 1896, aged seventy-five years. And it can not well be disputed that much of the after changes in public sentiment in regard to the status of the colored man, and his rights in a free state, was brought about by the object lessons in the enforcement of the odious fugitive slave law. “All that was necessary to prove the detestable character of this iniquity and its dangers to liberty was simply to enforce it.”[7] Still the corrupting influences of trade made the evils of slavery felt in the social, moral and educational interests of the entire state; and consequently citizens, who had in their hearts the logical idea that all men are born free and equal, saw the hand of tyranny quite as much on either shore of the river, that constituted geographically the dividing line.

This was more especially true of Cincinnati, where large interests in trade enabled the sentiments of the few to dominate and regulate public acts and opinions parallel with steamboat monopoly, and the creed of the “Divine Institution,” as much as if the city had been located considerably south of “Mason and Dixon’s line;” and as late as 1836 a free soil newspaper, “The Philanthropist,” was destroyed by a mob of leading citizens of Cincinnati, and which will ever remain a historical record of loyalty to the institution on the opposite side of the river, and as penance for some manifestation in favor of freedom.

The Philanthropist was a newspaper ably edited by James G. Birney. After being published some three months, at night, July 14, 1836, the press-room was broken open by well-known citizens of Cincinnati, and the press materials all destroyed. No attempt was made to punish the perpetrators. But rather to sanction the act. A call for a meeting of the citizens was made for July 23d, stating the purpose to be, “to decide whether the people of Cincinnati will permit the publication or distribution of ‘abolition’ papers in the city.”

The decision of this mass meeting, composed of the business men of the city, was afterwards published in a leading local paper, and makes very good reading, although derived from a pro-slavery source, to wit: “On Saturday night, July 30th, very soon after dark, a concourse of citizens assembled at the corner of Main and Seventh streets, in this city, and, upon a short consultation, broke open the printing office of the Philanthropist, the abolition paper, scattered the type into the street, tore down the presses, and completely dismantled the office. It was owned by A. Pugh, a peaceable and orderly printer, who printed the Philanthropist for the Anti-Slavery Society of Ohio.

“From the printing office the crowd went to the house of A. Pugh, where they supposed there were other printing materials, but found none, nor offered any violence. Then to Messrs. Donaldsons, where only ladies were at home. The residence of Mr. Birney, the editor, was then visited; no person was at home but a youth, upon whose explanations the house was left undisturbed.... And proceeded to the ‘Exchange’ and took refreshments.”... “An attack was then made upon the residences of some blacks in Church alley; two guns were fired upon the assailants and they recoiled.... It was some time before the rally could again be made, several voices declaring they did not wish to endanger themselves. A second attack was made, the houses found empty, and their interior contents destroyed.”

Although all this kind of proceeding looked very much like an unlawful assemblage, it met with no opposition from the city authorities, and all that was ever done in a matter of this kind was to call a meeting of citizens, and “regret the cause of the recent occurrences,” and the next day would drive a Wendell Phillips from Pike’s Opera House, and seek him with a howling mob that he might be hung to a lamp-post, “the mayor refusing to allow the police to interfere.”

Cincinnati reaped a rich harvest for the examples given in “citizen” mobs. Still, at any time previous to the “salvation” of the city, it was impolitic if not dangerous for a minister of the gospel, a public speaker, press or private citizen, to mention the subject of slavery in a manner that might be construed unfavorable to its sanctity; for a black line had been drawn over the twenty-sixth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles; the tenth verse of the second chapter of Malachi, and the spirit of the gospel dispensation, as effectually in their practical theology as was ever manifest in Danville or in any Southern translation of the ten commandments.

So determined were the pro-slavery elements to hold the fort in Cincinnati and aid the South in making it dangerous for a colored man in a “free state,” that they continued to supply the South with stores until the last moment; and only a week before the bombardment of Sumter, the city permitted cannon to pass through on way from Baltimore marked

“For the Southern Confederacy,
Jackson, Mississippi.”

And the same day, or the day before, returned a fugitive slave through the commissioner, and all went well with the city, reaping the fruits of the war, until General Wallace placed it under martial law, and, suspending business, demanded the citizens to enroll themselves for defense. “Some were at once taken very sick, others were hunted up by detailed soldiers, who turned them out of barns, kitchens, garrets, cellars, closets, from under beds, and in the disguise of women’s clothing.” For the seed sown was now ripe and mid air was resounding—“The harvest is here.”

At a time, in 1858, when public sentiment was beginning to be felt, and official prosecutions for the return of fugitive slaves became more or less unsatisfactory to the owners, James Buchanan, President of the United States, gave a surprise to every one by appointing Judge Stanley Matthews—an eminent lawyer, ex-editor of an abolition paper, and leader in the anti-slavery movements in Ohio, as United States District Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.

To politicians, this seemed not only a deviation from all known precedents, but, politically, an unfathomable mystery. But, no more remarkable was the appointment than that, a lawyer at the summit of professional ability and large income—a noted abolitionist—opposed to the fugitive slave acts, should have accepted the position. But those who knew Judge Matthews and his patriotism best, could discern in it logical conclusions—the interests of freedom could be subserved and the public mind attained by a shorter method than by arguing, speaking, or publishing—“the enforcement of the iniquitous fugitive slave law.” And for three years he prosecuted “offenders” without just fault or favor—giving such lessons in its application, that made loyalty to freedom, and magnified the blessings of the free.

Judge Matthews resigned the office in 1861, and took the commission of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Twenty-third—afterward Colonel of the Fifty-first Ohio, and awaited the “proclamation.”

During Judge Matthews’ entire service as United States District Attorney, the slave states were secluded as pertaining to things and persons of the “North”—papers, books, teachers, preachers, and citizens were effectually ostracized; northern colleges and seminaries had their southern patronage withdrawn; and, finally, when, by the aid of the Secretary of War, they secured large quantities of United States arms and military supplies, and felt thoroughly prepared and equipped, the states stepped out of the Union with defiance, leaving poor Kentucky with a governor that threatened to chastise either of the belligerents if they dared to interfere with her “neutrality.” And it is not known to history that either the cotton states or neutral Kentucky ever gave Judge Matthews a vote of thanks for his vigorous enforcement of the fugitive law. But this is not all. In 1876, Judge Matthews ran for Congress in the Second District of Cincinnati, and his defeat, says the biographer,[8] was in consequence of an act of his while United States District Attorney—that while he had the office he prosecuted W. B. Connelly, a white resident of Cincinnati, and reporter of the Gazette, for giving to a young runaway slave and his wife “a glass of water and piece of bread”—a crime under the fugitive slave law. It was shown that the negroes were captured and were shut up in Connelly’s room, and while there they were furnished “bread and water.” It was further shown, that a letter was written by Connelly, as a Master Mason, to Judge Matthews, as a brother Mason, in which he confessed that he had “furnished the negroes with food.”

But, with all these influential relations, the offense was prosecuted—Connelly found guilty and was sentenced to serve time of imprisonment. “The publication of these facts destroyed Judge Matthews’ chance for Congress,” and that his brother Masons obtained full credit for his defeat can not well be doubted.

It is not stated that any promise had been made by Judge Matthews—none violated; and differed materially from ordinary cases, like that of O. A. Gardner, a Master Mason, arrested for robbing the mails at Minneapolis, who said in court that his confession was made to Postal Inspector Gould, a brother Mason, on the promise that Gould, as a fellow Mason, would see that he was acquitted—“that his acquittal was assured—that the judge, the lawyers on both sides, and most of the jury were Masons.”

Judge Matthews had taken the oath of office as district attorney, which to him was above all other oaths, and was not the man to play the Marshal Ney performance. And it would seem the “defeat for congress” was not “the consequence of an act of his” as much as it was his declining to “act” crooked for the benefit of a brother Mason.

If any one now thinks it impossible that a free people in the North could be so influenced, cowed, and blinded to the atrocities of slavery upon the free, let them read the biography of Southern prisons. It was a day of jubilee for the abolitionists (who had survived the horrid cruelties that made “Libby” a paradise) when the federal forces took possession of the South. The Rev. Calvin Fairbanks, after being kidnapped and serving horrible time for seventeen years and four months for being an abolitionist, was released from the state prison of Kentucky, at Frankfort, by a special order of President Lincoln.

During the last two wardens of the prison—Zeb Ward and that of J. W. South—this man received thirty-five thousand stripes on his bare body with a strap of half-tanned leather a foot and a half long, often dipped in water to increase the pain. He was often whipped four times a day, receiving seventy stripes at each whipping; one time the number of lashes was increased to one hundred and seven.

All this punishment was pretended to be inflicted on the grounds of failure to perform the daily task which had been fixed beyond possibility—requiring the prisoner to weave two hundred and eight yards of hemp cloth daily.

Early in 1864, Mr. Lincoln learned through Miss Tileston of the cruelties practiced upon Mr. Fairbanks, and sent General Fry to Kentucky with orders to make it “Fairbanks Day” at Frankfort prison.

“When released, Mr. Fairbanks says he crossed the river and kissed the free soil in Ohio,” where he met the girl who, on hearing of his misfortune in Massachusetts, came to Ohio and engaged as teacher at Hamilton, and then at Oxford, supplying him with such comforts as was within her power—worked and petitioned and watched over the border for many long years with the love of a true woman.

Slavery is no more—the dark blotch to freedom has been wiped out with the best blood of the nation. It was a contentious, political evil as well. But slavery of the colored race is not the only evil, the only danger, that can arise to overthrow a Republican form of government.

The first thirty-five years of the existence of Ohio as a state may be recognized, in an educational point of view, as the period of the “Three R’s”—“readin, ’riten, and ’rithmetic”—for state legislation made it so. There were no public schools, no academy, but one higher institution in operation, called an “Ohio University,” located at Athens, in Athens county. This was opened for students, in 1809, with the classic course; and the first class, numbering two, graduated in 1815, receiving the first collegiate degrees ever conferred under the endowment for education by the act of 1787—John Hunter, A. M., and Thomas Ewing, A. M.

This university was in financial straits all this time with an incomplete corps of professors, for the reason the legislature had manipulated the land endowments (46,000 acres) from time to time until little or nothing was received, where large incomes should have been realized. And the good intent of land grants for educational purposes in Ohio proved a signal failure in common schools, academies, and colleges.

After ineffectual efforts of mongrel state universities to supply the pressing wants of rising generations, sectarian institutions multiplied rapidly, and the state soon became honored with numerous chartered seats of learning representing all religions from Roman Catholic (down, or up, which ever it may seem) to the Free Will Baptist. Of these, Oberlin has taken the lead. It was chartered, in 1834, under the direction of the Congregational Church, with a theological seminary attached as part of the institution. Both sexes and all colors have been admitted to its classes.

During the struggle in Ohio to establish a satisfactory system of education, the good people of Kentucky claimed to be greatly in advance in regard to facilities, and sold large numbers of scholarships to those who desired to embrace better opportunities to obtain an education, before it was discovered that young men from a free state, or states, attending those seats of learning had little or no spare time for mental culture, after giving the physical enough attention to keep all its members intact; as free-state students were obliged to fight or “eat dirt.”

School-house of 1851, in which President Garfield taught.

The writer still holds the larger end of an uncanceled scholarship in one of the then leading, but now defunct, college institutions.

As late as 1837, there was no public school system operating in Ohio. But the year following a law was passed for the purpose of adopting a system on a uniform footing. Still it required that teachers should be qualified only in reading, writing and arithmetic. Amendments and improvements, however, went on, and in 1847 the “State Teachers’ Association” was organized, and deserves great credit for the good work done and still doing in obtaining beneficial legislation and raising the standard of teachers and the curriculum of “High Schools.” And at the present time Ohio compares favorably with other states in regard to her system for general and liberal education, regardless of color or previous condition.

Information derived from newspapers was measurably lost—the inefficient postal service prevented the circulation of metropolitan papers; and those published in Ohio for half a century were under the ban of slavery. And with the censorship of Kentucky and the cotton states it is not surprising they were short-lived and unattended with prosperity. The first paper published in the North-west was printed in Cincinnati, November 9, 1793, under the name of “The Sentinel of the North-western Territory.” The journal was owned and edited by William Maxwell. Newspapers in those days were comparatively small and poorly executed in presswork; and changed names, ownership or ceased to exist so frequently that not a few attempts at journalism became lost to history.

During the territorial days, and while the seat of government tarried at Chillicothe, Mr. Willis, the father of N. P., the poet, author and artist, published a literary paper for a short time. After the capital became permanently located at Columbus, Philo H. Olmstead, from 1813 to 1818, published “The Western Intelligencer”—then changed the name to “Columbus Gazette” and in due time to “Columbus Journal.”

Small as these and other beginnings were over the settled portions of the state, the press and its influence became of more and more importance, and kept pace if not in advance of many other leading departments connected with an advanced civilization. As ideas beget ideas, so inventions beget inventions, until time and space are no more, and the wild elements meekly bow in submission to the will and works of man. If John Gutenberg, Fust, Mentel or Koster, with their little inventions, could see the automatic working of one of those mammoth printing machines, which noiselessly move with such rapidity, exactness and intelligence—even putting human volition and precision to shame—any one or all of the once contesting discoverers would stop disputing in astonished wonderment long enough to set up and strike off on their own inventions a single line, in quotations, “Large trees from small acorns grow,” and abandon further contention.

Newspaper educators at an early day, like the schoolmaster, had a limited showing in a country so financially short. Editors and publishers could not conduct the business without a given amount of support. But this needful requirement was too manifestly uncertain to justify an expensive venture; for there was little or no money in the country, nor means to procure it by exchanges. Still, the experiment was occasionally made, but most generally failed even in the hands of the most economical management and moderate expectations.

The following is a brief of a four-paged paper, ten by fifteen inches in size—“No. 33, Vol. I.”—dated June 5, 1818. This paper was started at the county seat of one of the early settled localities, and in agriculture one of the leading counties in the state. This number treats of the following subjects:

THE OLIVE BRANCH

Volume I.] June 6, 1818. [Number 33.

1. Light reading. Traits in Washington City Drawing-Room. Mrs. Monroe. The President. Virginians. The Belles. Foreigners. Etiquette. Foreign Ministers. The Secretaries of Government Departments. Western Opposition. American Manufacturers. Essex Junto. Two Different Descriptions of Men that Inhabit Virginia, Contrasted.

2. Foreign News—Spain. Major-General Jackson’s Letter to Gov. Rubute, Bowleg Town, Suwanny, April 20, 1818. Late from the Army—Milledgeville and Indians. Patriots victorious—Marching on to Carraccas. The President of the United States. More Specks of War at Detroit. The Belt had passed through the Winnebago, Sack, Fox and Hickapoo Nations. Mercury at Green Bay through the Winter, 25°. Letter from “Savannaa,” April 30, 1818. Letter from Porto Rico. Letter from Upper Canada. Extract from a Vermont Paper. Expensiveness of the Ground purchased for the Bank of the United States at Philadelphia, being One Thousand Dollars per Front Foot.

3. Obituaries. Advertisements. Court Proceedings. Expulsion of Masons from the Order. Patent Pumps. Paris Papers. One Hundred and Forty Vessels perished in the late Tremendous Gale along the English Coast. Injurious Effects of Flannel. Masonic Notice. Prospects for continuing the Publication of “The Olive Branch.” Advertisements.

4. Poetry—“Absent Friends. Defense of Putnam. Improvement of the Loom for Weaving. Sheriff Sale of Accounts.” His own Included.

The deplorable condition of the press of Ohio at the time is so graphically and candidly set forth by the editors of the Olive Branch—the only paper published in the county—in their last appeal for support, is better illustrated by reproducing the article entire:

“PROSPECTS

“For Continuing the Publication of
THE OLIVE BRANCH.

“The publishers now call upon the citizens of —— county, and the country adjacent, to determine if they shall continue publishing The Olive Branch. They have fully and firmly determined to discontinue its publication, unless the number of their subscribers is considerably increased. They apprehend their present number will not pay the expense of the establishment; and they do not think themselves able, nor are they under obligations, to lose more by it than they have lost already.

“If, therefore, the citizens of the county are desirous that a paper should be published at this place, and if any think this worthy of their patronage, let them declare it by adding their names to the list of our subscribers. By this declaration, yea or nay, when fully and explicitly made known, we shall positively abide.

“Some persons ask, ‘What is to be the character of our paper?’ And what inducements we offer them to become subscribers? In a few words we will tell them: Its character shall be truly American and Republican. Americans by birth and education, we have no partiality for European institutions or policy. Republicans in principle, we will never disseminate aristocratical or monarchical doctrines. We will ever oppose, with our utmost endeavors, their progress. We do fearlessly declare perpetual war against them. Believing our forms of government infinitely superior to any ever before witnessed, we will rather perish in their defense than sit silent spectators of their destruction.

“We will ever respect and inculcate virtue, both public and private, and deprecate vice in all its dazzling forms. Nothing shall ever appear in our columns to disturb the present public tranquillity, unless we see danger lurking therein, which duty requires us to expose to public view. We hold the Christian religion in sacred veneration, and shall never, therefore, suffer an aspersion to be cast upon it through our columns.

“As the happiness of most of mankind lies in their social domestic circles, we shall hold them sacred. We will never designedly cast into them the apple of discord; nor will we knowingly cause a pang to the honest heart or a blush upon ‘the modest cheek.’

“The inducements we offer are:

“First—A weekly account of the most important events and transactions occurring in our own country.

“Secondly—An account of such as transpire in other parts of the globe affecting us; and among these, every thing important relative to our Mexican and South American neighbors will have a preference.

“Thirdly—The most important state papers and documents relating to or coming from our government.

“Fourthly—Well-written essays, either original or extracted, on political, moral and scientific subjects, and relating to the topography and geography of our country.

“Fifthly—A view of the proceedings of our state and national legislatures, and a strict examination of the laws passed by them.

“Sixthly—Literary articles which convey instruction with amusement will find a niche in our paper. We shall not, however, seek to amuse unless we can at the same time instruct. To excite or gratify the public taste for amusement alone we consider dangerous to our freedom. By such means Pericles destroyed the liberties of Athens, and Cæsar of Rome. Modern France, too, had her Pericles and her Cæsar; she followed them, and she is now ruing her folly. Similar must be our fate when we follow after the siren song of amusement. We will never be the willing instruments of thus sapping our free institutions. If our paper can not find a sufficient support without this, let it go ‘to the tomb of the Capulets.’ For we will sooner breast the torrent of public feeling on this subject, though we are swept by it into the deep bosom of destruction, than glide upon its surface and trim our barques to its course.

“Renick, Doan & Co.”

Although ably edited—containing interesting, well-written and well-selected articles, the verdict was “perpetual suspension.” The inhabitants of neither town nor country cared to become “readers of newspapers.” The agrarian element of society had not extended to business transactions. The contracted condition of the “circulating medium” was such that it became absolutely necessary to ignore every luxury that required “spot cash;” while state laws made the credit system so dangerous, honest people kept as free as possible from financial obligations. They did not wish to take the risk of seeing their names posted in public places, stating the time the indebtedness would be sold by the sheriff at public outcry to the highest bidder.

And the citizen continued on his even way, enjoying the chase—catching wolves and foxes; and hunting the deer, turkey and squirrel; and in summer tilling a few acres of corn—a small “patch” of flax—enough potatoes, beans, pumpkins, and gourds for the use of the family. The soil produced well, and with but little labor enough corn could be raised for family meal and to winter the small amount of stock—the fire-wood was secured from wind-falls in the “deadening,” and with a horse and cow, a few sheep, and a good dog, the “squirrel hunter” became wonderfully well satisfied with his environment, and had no desire for change. The amount he knew of things transpiring in the outside world was obtained by the word of mouth in the regular line of communication.

The women carded the wool and hackled the flax, and spun and wove the same; and from year to year there were no changes in household appearances or landed possessions. The “deadening,” however, was a little larger in area, in order to keep up the easily-obtained supply of fire-wood, and to increase the amount of the natural grasses and green things in summer for the benefit of the stock.

All domestic animals subsisted on what nature furnished in the woods during spring and summer, and each individual owner had an ear-mark for hogs and cattle recorded at the county-seat, which gave security against mistakes, and when animals became lost furnished information of ownership and acted as a substitute for a square in the “lost” column of some newspaper. It must be remembered that Ohio was not settled all over at once. It came into the Union an immense wilderness, and much of it remained unoccupied for long periods. The first tree cut, in Hardin county, was cut for bees in 1837—a dead black-walnut, seventy-two feet to the first limb. And as the counties became organized and settled the inhabitants all commenced at the same point—the same style of cabin and like simplicity—benches were used for chairs, earth for flooring and carpet, forked sticks driven into the ground with cross poles for bedsteads, clap-boards for bed-cords, and pond-grass for feathers, a single pot and frying-pan, with a few pewter dishes, constituted the primitive outfit, sooner or later, for every county in the state.

The immigrants who pushed forward into the interior counties suffered most for want of mills and from the high price of freight, and merchandise, as salt, flour, and other necessaries of life, all came from Chillicothe or Zanesville. Salt was ten and twelve cents a pound, calico one dollar a yard, coffee seventy-five cents, and whisky two dollars a gallon.

High prices ruled in all new settlements long after they had been reduced in and at the vicinity of Chillicothe and Zanesville; and which, too, was only partly owing to exorbitant rates for transportation. So little and so few were articles purchased, that pioneer merchants did not enter the interior counties of the state for many years, and orders for flour, and salt, and other necessaries, accompanied by the silver, would be forwarded generally by the bearer of the order, as no regular mail or line of transportation was run from one settlement to another. For want of roads the inconvenience was tolerated, as it did not detract much from the power of the inhabitants in every part of the state from living well and living easy. Still there were a few from isolation or improvidence suffered hardships and unpleasant conditions, especially in the interior counties.

In the fall of 1803, Henry Berry, a Welshman, came to this country to establish a home, and leaving his wife and smaller children in Philadelphia, Pa., took his two boys, one nine and the other eleven years old, and put up a small cabin in the interior of Delaware county, fifteen miles from the nearest one of the three families that constituted the white inhabitants. At this time the country was full of Indians and wild animals, and was distant from sources of supplies seventy-five to one hundred miles. The father was so infatuated with the country, he hurriedly erected a small cabin of such timber as he and his boys could handle; and when covered, but without floor, chimney, or fire-place, and without daubing or chinking, he fixed the children a place to sleep, started back for Philadelphia, hoping to get the rest of his family West before the cold weather set in. When he reached Philadelphia he found his wife dangerously sick with a protracted fever, and before she was able to travel Mr. Berry became sick, and winter came on, and he was unable to return until the June following.

The boys had not been heard from; the winter had been unusually severe, and they had been left with but a short amount of provisions, without a gun, surrounded by Indians and wild beasts, and were compelled to live upon such animals as they could capture; and with no fireplace or chimney they passed a cold winter in that open cabin. And when the father returned with the family, he found the boys had cleared enough ground for a large garden and had vegetables growing from the seeds they had brought with them from Wales. Of course the boys suffered much, but like the one on the burning deck, they heroically stood their ground regardless of consequence.

But the man who would refuse cornbread and carry a bushel of wheat seventy-five miles on his shoulder, to get it ground, is not properly a subject of pity or sympathy.

Before the state had reached its fortieth anniversary, almost all parental heads establishing homes in this country, prior to the opening of the Erie Canal (1825), could, at the sound of a dinner horn, call in a large family of well-grown children, numbering a “baker’s dozen,” more or less; and oftener than otherwise, without the loss of a single addition.

The ratio of natural increase of population was satisfactory, and death rate was small. The climate was healthful; living simple and easy; house-keeping uncomplicated and destitute of style. Rural homes were all alike unostentatious, and early marriages were seldom, if ever, deferred on account of immaturity or financial circumstances; and large families became fashionable. Seldom less than ten, and only occasionally more than twenty children, were added to the household.

People may have been poor in accumulated wealth, but it was not felt or despised. A father with eight or ten robust sons had a sure foundation for a hope to see the destruction of the surrounding forest, cultivation of the soil, and the transformation of a portion of the wilderness into fields of waving grain, fruits and flowers.

It is possible, and has been no uncommon thing for heads of large families to live to see their great-great-grand-children; for it would seem true, as in history, longevity and children are very nearly related. As a rule, large families are healthy, having inherited a full measure of vital resistance. Records of centenarians show that both males and females of those who have gone into the second century have been nearly all parents of large families; and read quite similar to the following: “Alexander Hockaday has just celebrated his one hundred and twelfth birthday. His wife, a few years younger, is still living. They were blessed with twelve children, eleven of whom are living near the aged couple with their numerous posterity.”

No doubt the existing conditions of a desirable new country, and the exemption from avarice, penury or speculation, with the enjoyment of that happy state unknown to wealth, want or war, were favorable to longevity and natural increase. States of the mind and existing impressions, like acquired habits, are transmissible as certainly as that of the resemblance of physical and moral qualities. And with the pioneer posterity, much of that strong manifestation of character and mental endowment was due to the multiplicity and salutary combinations of causes. Blood will tell, but in addition to descent, posterity had all the winning influences of a quiet, simple and easy mode of living—pure air, earth and water, filled with inspiration to greatness and dispensed by nature to those who delight to worship within her temple and partake wisdom from beasts, birds and flowers.

---

CHAPTER III.
OHIO—PROFESSIONS: MEDICAL, MINISTERIAL, AND LEGAL.

“The subject of practical education has occupied the attention of every enlightened nation, and has ever been one of intense interest to the reflecting portion of this country. It has been a universally-received axiom, that the foundations of a republic must be in the information of its people.”[9]

In the general desire for knowledge and a steady advancement in the things pertaining to civilization the professions were in harmony with that honesty, simplicity and zeal which constituted the foundation structures of pioneer society. The doctor, the clergyman and the lawyer occupied respectively their inviting fields, and each became alike interested in the ever new book of nature, and read aloud the wonders of the New World. The calling of the physician was not very remunerative. He seldom refused to obey a call for reason of the inability to pay. Still, he had but little to do. It was not fashionable to send for a doctor and have the temperature taken for every little indisposition. The people, from instinct or circumstances, had great faith in Nature as a healer. They discovered that persons recovered from most all diseases; and that cool spring water and a little catnip or bone-set tea served to amuse the patient to a satisfactory termination quite as well as the visits of the physician.

And, it would appear, the doctors were generally honest enough to encourage this reasonable confidence to so great an extent that the good physical inheritance required very little medication; and many pioneer fathers and mothers reared large families of children without the loss of a single member, as well as without having a doctor called for any occasion whatever. And the rate of mortality remained astonishingly low until the innovation of “cross-roads” medical colleges, and proprietary nostrums received the patronage of the public.

The great danger in a free country of the learned professions being made up of evil, ignorance and corruption, gave timely warning to the medical men of Ohio, who, with the aid of the legislature, endeavored to protect the growing community against quacks and mountebanks.

The state was divided into districts of several counties each, in which censors were appointed and duly qualified “to faithfully perform and impartially discharge their duties as censors” in the examination of the qualification of applicants to practice medicine and surgery. A certificate of qualification from the Board of Censors was insufficient of itself to entitle the holder to practice, and required a license from the court of common pleas, certified by the secretary of the medical district, and placed on record in the county in which the applicant proposed to practice medicine and surgery.

The following forms were used:

“CERTIFICATE OF QUALIFICATION.

SEAL

“State of Ohio,
Medical District No. 3.

“To Whom It May Concern.

“These presents certify, That Giles S. B. Hempstead, of Portsmouth, in the county of Scioto, appeared for examination, and is found to be duly qualified to practice physic and surgery.

“In testimony whereof, I, President of said Board, have hereunto set my hand and affixed the seal of said Board at Marietta, this, the fifth day of November, 1818.

“E. Perkins, President.
Columbus Bierce, Secretary.”

“LICENSE.

“Know all men by these presents, That I, ——, President of the Second Circuit Court of Common Pleas in the State of Ohio, by the authority in me vested, do license Giles S. B. Hempstead to practice physic and surgery within this state.

“In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and official seal of the County of Scioto this, the twenty-third day of November, A. D. 1818.

SEAL

__________________________
“President Court Common Pleas.

“I do hereby certify the above to be a true copy of the license granted to Giles S. B. Hempstead.

“Columbus Bierce,
Secretary Third Medical District.”

Each medical district kept a record of all certificates and licenses issued within the area designated for public inspection, that all might know who were qualified to assume the responsibility.

The censors and members licensed composed a list of the learned and able men of Ohio. Almost every one licensed brought with him a certificate of qualification from state censors of some state east, which was copied into the records kept by the censors in Ohio.

These “Diplomas” were quite similar in character and expression, the following being a fair sample:

“DIPLOMA.

“We, the President and other officers of the Incorporated Medical Society of Dutchess County, in the State of New York, having received from our censors full assurance of the competent knowledge of Columbus Bierce in the theory and practice of medicine, and from Doctor John Cooper and others, his former preceptors, the like assurance of his standing and moral deportment, do by the powers vested in us confer upon him, the said Columbus Bierce, license to practice physic and surgery and midwifery in any part of this state, and recommend him to the confidence of our fellow-citizens, and the friendly attention of our brethren, as a person of good morals and liberal attainments.

SEAL

“In testimony whereof we have subscribed these presents with our names and caused our seal of incorporation to be annexed.

“Done at Poughkeepsie, this, the 15th May, A. D. 1816.

“John Thomas, President.

“Attest: John Barnes, Secretary.

“I certify the above to be a true copy from the original.

“C. Bierce,
Secretary Third Medical District, Ohio.”

The censors and society of the third district met semi-annually, alternately at Athens and Marietta, and the place of meeting was generally at the residence of some citizen, who volunteered in advance to entertain the doctors. An applicant for a certificate or license to practice medicine was required by law, to file with the Board of Censors a certificate of good moral character and a fee of ten dollars.

A diploma from the censors, approved by the court in the county where the practitioner resided, entitled the holder to a membership of the medical society in his district, auxiliary to the state society. Any member failing to attend a semi-annual meeting subjected himself to a fine, notwithstanding many were obliged to ride horseback more than two hundred miles to make the round trip. The attendance of these meetings, as the records show, was good, and the proceedings compare favorably with those of the present day.

Among the standing resolutions, members were “requested to exhibit specimens of indigenous medicinal plants for inspection,” and “Dr. S. B. Hildreth to procure and keep on hand at all times genuine vaccine matter, and to furnish the same to members of the society on their application and payment therefor.”

At one of these semi-annual meetings the following met unanimous favor, viz:

“Resolved, That each individual member of this society, at the next meeting, furnish in writing an account of such remedies as are known and used by the people in their several vicinities, not hitherto generally employed by the faculty.”

The import of this resolution was of much more significance than it would seem at the present time. Then, domestic medicine, or use of indigenous plants, by a poor and sparsely inhabited country, was general for diseases incident to locality. And to receive written statements on the subject from various parts, covering a large portion of a great state, by men of science, constituted an instructive record in diseases, remedies and results.

Another resolution seems to have been adopted as the rule of the society, “to report all accidents requiring surgical interference.” This may have been from the fact there has always remained a suspicion of the dual character of things coming under the law of accidents, and from which probably originated the saying that “trouble never comes singly.” This dual character of odd occurrences has been noticed, and noted more frequently by physicians and surgeons, perhaps, than by those of any other calling.

This may not have been uppermost in the mind of the Doctor when he announced to the society that he wished to report two unusual cases of “stuck balls” that came under his notice at the same time, happening to two squirrel hunters in the same neighborhood. A young man after squirrels, became confused in regard to the order in which the loading materials should be used, and put the ball down first. The ramrod, however, was provided with a remedy for such loss of memory, and the screw in the end of the rod was firmly fixed in the body of the ball; but no adequate force seemed at hand to withdraw the ramrod, as the end projecting beyond the muzzle was so short the operator was obliged to apply force by means of the teeth. After making many unsuccessful efforts a happy thought seemed born with the necessity, and he felt assured if he had the ball once started it could be withdrawn. On this theory he worked just enough powder in at the “touch-hole” of the “priming-pan,” as he judged, to give the ball a slight impetus in the right direction. And with the end of the ramrod between the teeth, and great toe upon the trigger, applied full force, adding that of the powder by means of the toe, which, to his surprise, lost the ramrod and left an ugly looking hole in the neck at the base of the skull. Treatment for gunshot wound—recovered.

The other “stuck ball” was caused by a lad of German extraction failing to close the “priming pan” to his flint-lock before loading, and consequently the powder nearly all went out at the “touch hole” as the ball was pushed down the barrel. Enough, however, remained with the “priming” to drive the ball about half way out. At this point it remained fixed, and the amateur gunner could neither get it out nor push it down.

Like a dutiful son, reverencing parental wisdom, returned to the house with the gun, and gave a statement of the facts. After being equally unsuccessful in the removal of the obstruction, the father looked carefully over the make of the gun, and said, in bad English: “Shon, oh, Shon! did you cshoot de gunne mid a zingle drigger ur mid de double drigger?” John replied that it was shot with a single trigger, which so enraged the father that he disremembered the commandments, and with irreligious prefixes declared any fool might know, to shoot a double-triggered gun “mid a zingle drigger, the ball would go only half way out.” The case was considered hopeless.

These short reports bear the only appearances of matter for levity that the writer has found in looking over volumes of manuscript proceedings of the biennial meetings.

At a subsequent meeting of the Medical Society, in 1819, an accident is given, as stated, “not for the surgery there was in it, a simple fracture of the left clavicle, but on account of the odd manner in which it occurred and the instructive sequel. The patient was but recently from New York City, an estimable young man, but not versed in the ways of the Western world,” ... “A squirrel he killed lodged in another tree on its way to the ground. The branch that held the unfortunate animal was an offshoot of an ancient sycamore which had in some past age of the world been broken off about thirty feet from the ground; but, like most sycamores, it was not willing to give up the ghost, and threw out incipient branches along the remaining section of the trunk; and at the top or point of fracture a crown of short limbs adorned the mammoth stump. It was one of these top branches that held the squirrel.

“After failing to dislodge the animal by the usual methods, he went up the tree, and on the top of the stump he found a good place to stand and bring the game in reach above his head. In the act, the decayed wood on which his feet were placed gave way and let the hunter down to the base, in a dark tube, six feet in diameter, without door or window, and no possibility of returning by the opening he entered.

“As soon as he recovered from the shock, and took in the situation, he began making voice signals of distress; but the caliber of the horn of his dilemma was too large and long to be blown effectually by an excited and injured asthmatic. He did, however, the best he could, thinking if those on earth could not answer his prayers, ample facilities had been obtained for being heard from above.

“Fortunately a fisherman had not proceeded far up the river before he heard groans of distress, that seemed to come from the water beneath his boat, and badly frightened, pulled ashore. Still the muffled cries of human distress were unceasing, and apparently in all directions among the trees—soon a man was located imprisoned in the interior of a sycamore. Friends were notified, axes procured and the hunter relieved, who gave many thanks, requesting that nothing be said about it.

“He soon recovered from the injury and to show there is no disposition in the human mind so universal as that which ‘locks the stable door after the horse is stolen,’ long after, his friends smiled but said nothing, as they looked upon a hatchet suspended to his hunting belt.” And circumstances make it highly probable that no one connected with those meeting with the accidents named, were in any way related to the enrolled men of renown, known in history as the “Squirrel Hunters of Ohio;” all are not Jews that dwell in Jerusalem.

Doctors were mostly hunters, consequently the hunter was not necessarily an ignorant man, still, in a population of many thousands, the exceptions might have appeared quite numerous. As a rule he became a man of extensive information, and hunted, not as a primitive Darwin-tailed quadruped “making a struggle for life with a club,” yet it was to supply the necessities of existence all the same. Subsistence was, however, easily obtained, and did not tax much of his time, and he had abundance of leisure to devote to experiment and observation. He was a worker in the vineyard, with the naturalist, geologist, botanist, biologist, archæologist, etc., and the aggregate co-operative labor accomplished became manifestly incalculably great. With object lessons daily before him, in due time he became familiar with the habits, instincts, intelligence and peculiarities of beasts, birds and insects, as well as acquainted with the geology, mineralogy and botany of the district in which he resided. Nothing escaped observation, from a spear of anemone to the spreading oaks of the forest. The names of all beasts, birds, plants and minerals with characters, habits and qualities could be given by the accurate and extensive observers and investigators who were found among resident squirrel hunters.

Hunter and Dog.

The man with dog and gun could answer all questions; was the only encyclopedia the collector had to consult; the formulator of scientific facts desired no other, could ask for no better. The Doctor in early days, was a man of science and literary attainments. And his avocation brought him in contact with the hunter and his valuable collections, observations and investigations, and in this way became the safety deposit of facts relating to natural history and collateral branches; in fact, the medical profession constituted a small army of zealous collectors and investigators—such men as Doctor Ezekiel Porter, president of the first medical society in Ohio; Doctors Eliphas Perkins, John Cotton and Samuel P. Hildreth, of Washington County; Doctors Ebenezer Bowen, Chancy F. Perkins and Columbus Bierce, of Athens County; Doctors Robinson and James S. Hibbard, of Meigs; Doctors Felix Reignier and J. G. Hamlin, of Gallia; Doctor Giles S. B. Hempstead, of Scioto; Doctor Alexander M. Millan, of Morgan; Doctor Joseph Whipple, of Hocking; Doctor Joseph Scott, of Madison; Doctor Ezra Chandler, of Muskingkum; Doctor Jared P. Kirtland, of Cuyahoga, and others equally well known and respected in other parts of the country and who were equally identified with the history of the state.

To Dr. Samuel P. Hildreth we owe the first extended and connected account of the geology of the Ohio Valley. His published notes on the salt springs and interesting observations on the coal deposits, with descriptions of the rocks, fossils, organic remains, illustrated by drawings of plants and shells, constitutes one of the most comprehensive documents that has ever been made of the geology of the state. And it was through his influence the legislature took steps for a geological survey, which was ordered March 27, 1837, with a corps composed of doctors chiefly—Professor W. W. Mather, Dr. S. P. Hildreth, Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, Dr. John Locke, Dr. C. Briggs, Col. T. W. Foster, and Col. Charles Wittlesey.

Dr. Kirtland was a model specimen of those noble men with great hearts, clear heads and diligent hands. He was no closet naturalist, but a student of nature in its full degree. In 1829, while studying the unios or fresh-water mussels, he discovered that authors and teachers of conchology had made nearly double the number of species which are warrantable. Names had been given to species in which was only a difference of form due to males and females of the same species. The fraternity of naturalists in the United States and Europe were astonished because of the value of the discovery and the source whence it came. There were hundreds and probably thousands of professors who had observed the unios and enjoyed the pleasure of inventing new names for the varieties. “A practicing physician in the backwoods of Ohio had shattered the entire nomenclature of the naiads.”[10]

At the Cincinnati meeting of the American Association in 1852, Professor Kirtland produced specimens of unios of both sexes, from their conception through all stages to the perfect animal and its shell. Agassiz was present and sustained his views, and said they were likewise sustained by the most eminent naturalists of Europe.[11] And it is worthy of remembrance that it is only those who base their conclusions on observed nature that make permanent reputations, and show that theory and discussion do not settle any thing worthy a place in science.

The field was long and wide as it was inviting to the man of science. And the large corps of medical men dispersed over the state, working in concert with each other, and in daily contact with the observing hunter, constituted an academy of science that will not likely ever find its parallel in enthusiasm, character and efficiency. The country was so healthy that the practice of medicine was limited and unremunerative, and the doctor who carried a gun and whistle for a dog often had much of his time and attention taken up with things other than squirrels. He conversed with intelligent hunters, and listened attentively to all they had to say, and then investigated their statements of every thing in turn, from the habits and life of the black ant, that relieves the beasts and birds from annoying ticks, up to the most perplexing questions in natural history. His shelves were loaded with mineral and archæological specimens; his cases glistened with the bright plumage of rare taxidermic birds; his drawers filled with oological information; and every rare plant, tree and shrub accurately drawn and classified, with the fruits and flowers indigenous to different parts of the state, received attention and preservation.

And the question may be suggested, Where did all this wealth of thought and investigation, scattered over the state, go to?

The answer is found in the collections of nearly every natural history society in the United States—in the geological surveys of the state, and in the everlasting records made by Thomas Nuttall, John J. Audubon and Alexander Wilson. These noted authors with pens, pencils and brushes were in the new world collecting facts—each independent of the other. Nuttall, to make a compendious and scientific treatise on ornithology, hoping to produce it at a price so reasonable as to permit it to find a place in the hands of general readers. Audubon marked out his designs on a much larger and more expensive scale—to give the exact size, coloring, etc., of the birds and botany indigenous to the country. This required double elephantine sheets, three feet three inches long, by two feet two inches wide, to accommodate figures of the large birds. Exactness was a prominent feature in making this descriptive history. The eye was never trusted for size; every portion of each object—the bill, the feet, the legs, the claws, the very feathers as they projected beyond each other, were accurately measured. These full-size drawings were engraved and artistically colored by hand, according to the pattern drawings and colorings made by the author’s pencil and brush. Collecting and formulating the material for the four hundred plates, required six year’s labor in the unbroken forests, and the publication handicraft twenty more in a foreign country. It was nevertheless completed and will forever remain as pronounced, by the immortal Cuvier, “The greatest monument ever erected by Art to Nature.”

Alexander Wilson also contemplated nature, as nature is, and communed with her in her sanctuaries. In the forests, mountains and shores, he sought knowledge at the fountain head.

The observations and records made by these collectors are the corner stones of natural history of the United States, and their writings and illustrations will be consulted when other books on the subject have passed to oblivion. Still it can not be claimed that all valuable observations have been or ever will be registered; nor that collectors did not obtain much of their vast stores of information from pioneer residents, as the acknowledgment of this fact is so often met with in their works. These authors compliment the medical profession, who in turn refer to the pioneers, students and professors in natural history—the “Squirrel Hunters.”

Dr. Coues, the standard authority on ornithology of the present time, was told incidentally by a reputable woodsman, that the “wild goose” often nested in trees along large water-courses. The Doctor could scarcely believe it, and was led to investigate, and found the circumstance to be a matter of common information among the residents of localities where the bird rears its young. Captain Bindere, of the army, stationed in Oregon, states that one year it was dry and the geese all nested on the ground; and the next year proved wet with high waters, and many nested in the trees, and asks if this is instinct or reason. Other birds that usually nest on the ground, for some reason during the wet season, occasionally build in trees, showing an architectural ability entirely different from nests constructed on the ground. The writer has known the chewink, or ground-robin to build five feet from the ground a well-constructed nest, during wet seasons only.

It is the observing man who resides for many years among beasts and birds that obtains full knowledge of their habits under various circumstances. It is the patient man to whom nature reveals her secrets; and the half-clad hunter is often a man versed in these hidden things, and can even tell how to “feed tadpoles to make them all females” as correctly as a Professor Drummond.

Through the knowledge of such men have come the great educators—the natural history societies and associations of the north-west. Is there one of these institutions of civilization that owes not its origin to the collections, accomplishments, observations and will of the Squirrel Hunter? Not one. He not only collected scientific matter, but was also the man the future looked upon as the one to open up farms, build school-houses, churches, highways, water-courses, mills, manufactures—to carry on commerce, make laws and to enforce them. He kept his gun clean, his powder dry and bullet pouch full, ready to put down rebellion or subdue invasion, or perform any other duty assigned him.

All this is no fancy sketch nor pen-picture—history written and unwritten will forever stand with his honorable mention. In the war of 1812, Ohio sent out more of these men as volunteers than she had voters; and in addition to this—when it was known General Hull had disgracefully surrendered the fort at Detroit, the Squirrel Hunters in the northern counties of the state did not await an invitation, but with their own guns, ammunition, blankets and rations marched to Cleveland, and made General Brock and his Indians feel satisfied to have the big pond of water between them and these determined men.

The following year (1813), at the time Fort Meigs was under hot fire and siege by General Proctor and his mixed army of British and Indians, the besieging general, it is said, was informed “ten thousand ‘squirrel hunters,’ called ‘Hardy Buckeyes,’[12] were on their way and near at hand to tell his army to get out of the country without delay!” On receipt of this, “not another gun was fired,” and the general with his army took the nearest and most expeditious route to Canada.

In the absence of the love of gain that comes with higher civilization, the pioneers were in favorable condition to receive literary and religious instructions. And the teachers found the people always as ready and anxious to hear the words of inspiration and eternal life as are those of the present time to learn the last quotations of the market.

The strictly moral and religious elements seldom, if ever, took part in such amusements as “shooting-matches,” “horse-racing,” ball-dancing, card-playing, or drinking whisky. And for the first forty years of the Nineteenth Century, the social condition, in regard to loading vices, had perhaps less evil than at any period since.

The majority of resident citizens were a Sunday-observing, church-going people. Although the inhabitants were sparse, the congregations were generally very large—whole families would walk six, eight, and ten miles or more to hear a Lorenzo Dow, Jacob Young, or Bishop McKendree.

Sectarian influences were but little felt. The people encouraged all denominations, though differing in confessions of faith and church discipline; each had in view the making mankind better here, and happier hereafter. “And for forms of faith, let graceless zealots fight, holding that his ‘can’t be wrong’ whose life is right.” And with a people who had many reasons to believe in special providences it was but consistent they should cultivate a submissive sincerity and desire to follow the paths of rectitude, with faith and assurance—“to such all ends well.”

In looking back upon the records made by Squirrel Hunters in early days there may be seen a most wonderful faith in the providences of practical religion—that religion which stays with the individual throughout his daily occupations of life. A simple instance of this old-fashioned piety is sufficient to illustrate its meaning and spirit of the times, taken from the biography of one born in the Quaker Church, written by himself:

“I owned two hundred acres of choice land, heavily timbered and well watered with springs and brooks. Of this, only five acres were cleared for cultivation. My family consisted of wife and two small children. Of domestic animals, I had two horses, a cow and a dog. One evening, in the spring of 1813, the cow failed to come home. Her pasture was an unfenced wilderness. The bell could not be heard, and search beyond its sounds was impractical after night. Three days were ineffectually spent without obtaining the least clue to her location; and bodings of bad luck seemed standing in the high way to prosperity.

Man of Special Providences.

“I gave the cow up for lost and resumed the work of grubbing and burning brush to enlarge the five acres a little. In the afternoon, while busily engaged with my thoughts in smoke and brush, my wife and two children appeared on the ground. She came to tell me there was a man at the house with a sad story. He had been burned out, and lost everything, and wanted help to start again. I told her we were too poor to help any body; that the half dollar in the house was all the money we had, and I did not think it best to part with the last cent; that he should go to work and earn something and not spend his time begging of people who have nothing. My good nature had got around on the north side.

“As my wife turned toward the cabin, she observed, ‘The man looks much distressed.’ And either her words, spirit, or something else, brought before my eyes in large capital letters the creed or motto of my life, ‘Do right and all will come right.’ And I called her, saying, ‘Give the unfortunate man the half dollar, and tell him we feel for him.’ The beggar left rejoicing. And while at supper the sound of the cow-bell was at the door—the lost had returned, and we were all happy again.”

Pioneer preaching was most satisfactory and successful, and piety appeared quite as lasting in members of the Methodist Church as those in churches holding “once in grace, always in grace.” It was remarkable, as stated, that in a sparsely settled country congregations would assemble in numbers so great no house could accommodate more than a small fraction of the multitude. And out-door preaching became a necessity; and camp-meetings held in “God’s first temples” were inaugurated in the very commencement of the settlements, and a meeting of the kind in the pleasant season of the year would bring together the inhabitants from a large area of country. And under the supervision of such eminently spiritual divines as Bishop Asbury, McKendree, and others, it was not strange the old lady entertained the opinion that “dogfennel and Methodism were bound to take the country.”

Methodism and its methods were better adapted to the religious wants of the people than any of the many sects that found missionary encouragement in the North-west, and it was well said by Warren Miller, of New York, recently, at the Methodist Social Union, held in Chicago in honor of John Wesley—“that Methodism has exercised a greater influence for good over the institutions of our government, from its origin, and over the lives and character of the masses of our people than any other branch of the Christian Church, can not be questioned by any one who has carefully studied the inner history of our government and of our people.”

Religious and educational interests were not neglected, and where the population was too sparse and poor to afford a week-day school, children were taught to read and write in Sunday-schools, which were open in summer in most every neighborhood. Church buildings were few, but preaching and religious services were seldom overlooked, and in warm weather were held in the groves, and in winter in private houses, bar-rooms, country taverns, school-houses, courtrooms, and other places obtained for the occasion. Protracted, tented, or camp-meetings increased, following the settlements, and becoming very popular with preachers and people—usually lasting over a week—attended by large congregations and great revivals.

Stated preaching places were free to all denominations.

Church, Residence, and Court-house.

Of the numerous log-cabins used for this purpose, only a few have been preserved as familiar objects in the history of early settlements. A house that served as a family residence, hotel, church, court-house, and school-house—a humble log cabin, of which the above drawing is a faithful likeness—is still standing.

Dwellings, school-houses, churches, “meeting-houses,” hotels, and court-houses, resembled each other so closely, it required a knowledge of the purpose to apply the correct name. And quite frequently cabins were dedicated for general purposes, but without change of pattern.

The Methodist Western Conference comprised in 1802, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and missionary fields in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. The ministry traveled on horseback, and after conference each member would have his field of labor designated on a map or drawing. On arrival at point of duty the minister arranged his own circuit and engaged his own preaching places, so he might travel and preach each day in the week.

Bishop Asbury devoted all his time and talents to this large field of religious instruction; traveled and preached, and was so devoted to the religious or spiritual welfare of the people that he often remarked to Mr. Kendree that his work was so arduous that he “never had time to marry a wife, buy a farm or build a house.” And it can not be said that he or those in his charge had either an easy or lucrative calling—the bishop’s salary being sixteen dollars per quarter, or sixty-four dollars per annum. But he lived to see that for which he and other Christian denominations labored—ten years of the most remarkable revivals of religion that ever occurred in the United States, and of which Ohio and the North-west received a full share of the good and lasting results.

In the period from 1800 to 1810, or during the height of the great religious revival that swept over the western and southern states, there existed a singular manifestation, called the “jerks.” It appeared to follow and to be in some way related to religious excitement; to be no respecter of persons, and made victims of all classes and conditions of society. A noted divine in his autobiography says: “I have often seen the ladies take it at the breakfast table, as they were pouring out tea or coffee. They would throw the whole up toward the ceiling, and sometimes break both cup and saucer. They would then leave the table in great haste, their long suits of braided hair hanging down their backs, at times cracking like a whip. For a time it was the topic of conversation, public and private, both in and out of the church. Various opinions prevailed. Some said it was the work of the devil, and strove against it. Sometimes it almost took their lives.”[13]

The Methodist and Presbyterian ministers were working together in the revival very harmoniously. But in due time it became whispered around that the Methodists were making more noise than necessary; that shouting was a matter under the control of the will, and should be moderated. All this reached the ears of a young minister, who, at a camp-meeting in 1804, and before an audience of more than ten thousand people, concluded it a fitting moment to set matters right and explain or give the philosophy of the “jerks,” and that of shouting, and of which he says:

“On Monday morning I preached. I was preceded by the venerable Van Pelt, who, having preached a short and pithy sermon, sat down, with the congregation bathed in tears. There was no appearance of jerks. I took the stand like most of men who know but little and fear nothing, and undertook to account for the jerks. The preachers behind me looked as if they were alarmed, the audience seemed astonished at the young man. I viewed it as a judgment on that wicked community. This led me to take a compendious view of nations, to show that God’s providence was just, as well as merciful. Though He bore long, His judgments were sure to come.... I took occasion to dwell on the rise and progress of Methodism in this country, and the cruel persecutions its professors had met from their neighbors. I quoted their taunting language: ‘How, the Methodists are a pack of hypocrites, and could refrain from shouting if they would.’ I made a pause, then exclaimed, at the top of my voice: ‘Do you leave off jerking if you can?’ It was thought more than five hundred commenced jumping, shouting, and jerking. There was no more preaching that day. One good old mother in Israel admonished me, and said I had just done it in order to set them to jerking.”

The “jerks” have never been satisfactorily accounted for. Some persons have attributed the manifestations to the influence of witchcraft. But this superstition failed to fasten itself upon Western civilization as it unfortunately did on the Eastern States; and the witches imported into the North-west were so few and insignificant in character that none of the tribe ever reached recognition to an extent sufficient to obtain more than a mere mention in the statute books of Ohio. They made but little public history.

In 1828, there was a court case in Lawrence county, involving the individuality of those operating the “black art,” growing out of an action to recover on a warranty given in a bill of sale of a horse. The horse proved unsatisfactory, if not unsound. And it was claimed the horse was docile and all right, excepting for frequent periodical “spells,” in which he would stop in the midst of routine work, and, after a short pause, would rear, kick, plunge, and strike out right and left, uttering unearthly cries, foaming at the mouth, and trembling, showing great fatigue and fear. All these alarming symptoms would pass off in a short time, and the animal would again resume its normal condition and in all respects a docile and well educated beast.

It was during one of the animal’s normal periods that the defendant sold it to the plaintiff, making the usual warranty. Soon after, while the animal was quietly drawing the family to a country church, he commenced kicking and screaming, until he demolished a new wagon and tore down the “worm fences” in the vicinity of the transaction, and suit was brought upon the warranty to recover the money.

The witnesses for plaintiff showed conclusively that there was something wrong with the horse; and defendant frankly admitted all that had been testified as to the singular “spells” or waywardness of the animal, and related others more startling, but declared that this was not because of any unsoundness, but owing to the horse being bewitched from time to time by a gang of witches under control of an old lady who lived in seclusion of the mountains and fastnesses for which Lawrence county is noted.

The defendant stated to the court that this gang were in the habit of taking possession of horses and cattle, and sometimes of men and women, riding and worrying them almost to death in the night-time. That the horse he had sold (and causing this suit) was one of the victims of this witchery, and that he sold the horse to his neighbor hoping the evil spirit would not pursue it when it had passed into other hands—adding, “If witches could be driven out of the neighborhood the horse would be all right, and the people would be better off.”

Upon mature deliberation, the court went far enough in the direction of the views of the defendant to render a conditional judgment, to wit, “that the defendant should either repay the plaintiff the price of the horse, or relieve the animal of the witches.” Upon receipt of this optional decree, the defendant went up to the head waters of Little Beaver, in Pike county, and consulted a noted witch doctor who resided in that neighborhood.

After obtaining a statement of the case, the doctor concluded it was necessary to visit the locality and make a careful and mysterious study of the situation. On arrival in the affected district the doctor soon discovered that the old woman on the hill was at the head of a gang of witches, and prescribed an old-time remedy—that she be at once seized and burned at the stake.

It is reported that even the victims of the witches thought this to be rather heroic, and insisted that some milder remedy should be adopted. After several days study of the case, the doctor so far modified the prescription as to substitute the first animal that fell into the clutches of the witches as a vicarious offering at the stake.

“It was only a few days until one of the defendants’ cows was taken possession of by a battallion of witches, which apparently showed indications of complete recovery. Defendant lost no time, but called his neighbors together to assist him in tying the cow with ropes and leading her into a neighboring clearing, where there were plenty of dry logs and brush.

“These were piled around and over the bellowing animal and fired. Then began a supernatural battle. The cow refused to be burned to death and gave vent to the most piteous and unearthly moans. More brush and logs were piled on her, and blue flames leaped high in the air, assuming grotesque shapes and uttering guttural laughing sounds.

“As sunset approached, the struggles and moans of the animal began to subside and the flesh and bones began to yield to the consuming fangs of the flame; the doctor and the defendant in the law-suit, stood by watching for the denouement with absorbing interest, while the awe-stricken neighbors stood farther back in the gathering folds of the approaching night.

“There was a lurid outburst of flames, demoniac cries and gibbering as a cloud of sparks rose upward, on the crest of which were a score of witches, each with a firebrand in its hand. Up and up they rose, then sailed away over the hill and past the hut of the old lady, and finally disappeared from sight.”

The bewitched horse recovered his wonted docility, and the purchaser never again had any complaint to make. The old lady ceased to commune with witches, joined the church, and when she passed away was mourned by the entire community, and so far as known, the witch doctor never had another case, and the court records officially attest that there once were witches in this part of Ohio, but were most effectually expelled by fire and the doctor, and fled shrieking across the Ohio River, into Kentucky, where they still exist among white politicians and the aged colored population, who once served under the previous condition. All of which is a pointer as to variety, or that Ohio can show enough merely to make up a fair assortment and pattern of most every kind of people, with room for improvement by further advances in civilization that will end the least barbarous act in the attempt to diminish crime by the horrors of electrocution, the rope, or the stake and fagots.

But the “jerks,” as well as witchcraft, soon gave way before the ministers of the gospel, who were a social body of men, welcomed always at pioneer homes: although many stories have been circulated in regard to their love for barn-yard poultry. In early days wild game was common, and when a preacher called, something extra was sought in honor of the guest, and generally a chicken was sacrificed for the occasion. At one time, the minister who said “a turkey was an unhandy bird—rather too much for one, and not quite enough for two,” called to dine with a widow woman and sister in the church, who was noted for her willingness to put the “best foot foremost.” After a short time the clergyman went out to look after his horse, and heard a boy crying, and soon located him back of the corn-crib, with a chicken under his arm. “What is the matter, sonny?” said the divine in his most soothing manner. The boy bawled out “Matter! between the hawks and circuit-riders, this is the only chicken left on the place.”

Early in the nineteenth century a citizen and observing author[14] says: “There is a prejudice against all preachers in this (Ohio) and all other states is certainly true; but, so far as we are acquainted with them, and we know them well, we are compelled to say that our clergymen in Ohio, especially those who have lived here ever since our first settlement, deserve unqualified praise for their zeal and good works. No men in this state have been so useful in building up society, in making us a moral and truly religious people.

“Their disinterestedness and benevolence; their kindness, forbearance and charity, zeal, industry and perseverance in well-doing, merit and receive the respect, gratitude and affection of all good men. They have labored zealously and faithfully and long, and their pay has been but trifling. We name them not, though we know them all. They have always been the true friends of liberty, and they would be the very last men in the nation to wish to overturn our free institutions.”

The work of the clergy, though differing from that of the doctor, often caused them to meet on common ground, and they were alike fast friends of humanity and of each other. As a financial success neither could boast the superior; but in the good works in which they were engaged the minister of the gospel held the longer and stronger lever. With the doctor “death ended all;” but the lessons of the man of inspiration established a faith in a higher and everlasting existence, which shed its influence from the departed to the living, and placed in view another and higher kingdom.

For many years the learned profession of law was a mere form, and practically remained on the statute books. Few indeed were the causes justifying legal investigation. Parties having grievances preferred to settle them in the primitive way.

A single recorded instance so fully represents the infant scales of justice in Ohio that we quote the proceedings of the first court held in Greene county, in a public “tavern” with all the accommodations for man and beast.

The first court-house in this county was not located within the area of the present city of Xenia, and it was by no means as pretentious as the present structure. A primitive log cabin with a single room, in a “clearing” of a few acres, some five miles west of the present county seat, a little off the road which leads from Xenia to Dayton, with Owen Davis’s mill on one side and a block-house on the other side of the stream, was the place where the blind goddess first set up her balances.

The building was constructed by General Benj. Whiteman more than a century ago, and shortly after became the property of Peter Borders, and was selected by the “court” as the seat of justice in 1803, when the first session was held to complete the county organization. The first term of court was synonymous with a meeting of the county commissioners of the present day. The presiding, or law, judge, Hon. Francis Dunlavy, was not present, and the associate judges, William Maxwell, Benjamin Whitman and James Barrett, with John Paul, clerk, met at the Borders cabin on the 10th of May, 1803, and duly dedicated it. The session lasted but a single day, and the business dispatched was the organization of the townships. This done, the court adjourned until the next regular session, which convened some two months later.

This was a more imposing court and was convened for trying such causes, civil and criminal, as might come up for consideration. The court opened with a perfect, clean docket, and for a short time it looked as though there would be nothing to do. Judge Francis Dunlavy, then one of the most distinguished citizens of the new state, and who had served in the territorial legislature, from Hamilton county, presided, with associate justices Maxwell, Whiteman and Barrett on the bench, and Daniel Symmes, of Hamilton, performing the duties of prosecuting attorney. The grand jury was composed of William J. Stewart, foreman, John Wilson, Wm. Buckles, Abram Van Eaton, James Snodgrass, John Judy, Evan Morgan, Robert Marshall, Alex. C. Armstrong, Joseph Wilson, Joseph C. Vance, John Buckingham, Martin Mindenhall and Henry Martin, who were duly sworn and impaneled.

Chief Justice Dunlavy (as recorded) delivered a forcible charge to the grand jury, directing it to diligently inquire into and make a true presentment of all infractions of the law within its bailiwick. Duly impressed with the solemnity of the charge to which they had listened, the jury retired a few yards distant from the cabin, where they began the first grand inquest, but the most diligent inquiry failed to discover a single case requiring their attention and action.

The court, as it seems, would have proved an absolute and inglorious failure had not Owen Davis, the miller, come to its rescue. People far away as the Dutch settlement in Miami, had taken advantage of court day to come to the mill with their grists. Among the number from a distance was a Mr. Smith from Warren county. Mr. Smith had the reputation of helping himself to pork wherever he could find wild hogs in the woods, and Mr. Davis, after having turned out the grist for his Warren county friend, concluded to administer a little “pioneer law” on his own account, while the court was proceeding in a more conventional manner. Accordingly he gave the unfortunate Smith a good drubbing, and as he was an expert Indian fighter, the job, no doubt, was well done. Having finished it, he burst into the primitive courtroom where the judges sat around the deal table in solemn state and awful dignity, with the exclamation—

“Well, I’ll be blanked if I haven’t done it!”

“Done what, sir?” inquired associate justice Whiteman.

“I’ve whipped that blanked hog thief from down the country, Ben, and I’ve made a good job of it. What’s the damage, anyhow? What’s to pay?”

Whereupon he pulled out his purse and counted down a handful of silver coins, while the court looked on with horrified surprise, but said nothing.

“Oh, it’s a fact,” he went on, “I’ve whipped him, Ben, and blank you if you’d steal a hog, I’d whip you, too!”

This was altogether too much for the court, and the sheriff was ordered to go out and get the witnesses to the affray and take them before the grand jury. The miller’s pugilistic performance, however, had proved contagious, and when the sheriff got outside, he found a free fight going on in all directions, and the grand jurors watching it through the openings in the little out-house.

Everybody who had a grievance was settling, or trying to settle it in the regular way, in backwoods fashion, and the grand jury and prosecutor Symmes at once had their hands more than full of business. A score or more of witnesses were examined and by the middle of the afternoon, nine indictments for affray and assault and battery were presented in court, and the offenders, including the owner of the court-house, were arraigned. All plead guilty, beginning with Davis, the first offender, who was assessed a fine eight dollars, and the rest four dollars each. All paid their fines upon the nail, so that the court, owing to the fortunate visit of the Warren county man, found itself in funds to the amount of forty dollars before early candle lighting.

The rest of the business of the court, including a license to Peter Borders, to conduct a “tavern” in the court-house, with all the word implied, for which he was taxed eight dollars, was finished before bed time, and the court was ready to adjourn at an early hour next morning.

Daniel Symmes, the prosecuting attorney, had come from Cincinnati, making the fifty miles’ journey on horseback along the Indian trails, and the court awarded twenty dollars out of the proceeds of the fines as compensation. But when it reassembled in December following, it decided that the payment had been illegally made, and Mr. Symmes was required to refund it. This so discouraged the prosecuting attorney, he decided that thereafter he would not appear in that court as prosecutor. He was partially remunerated, however, when, a few years later, he was promoted to the supreme bench.

The first session of the Supreme Court was hold in this old log-cabin, on the 25th of October, 1803, the judges present being Samuel Huntington and William Sprigg. The third judge, Jonathan Meigs, was unable to be present, but Arthur St. Clair, of Hamilton county, attended the sitting in all the glory of a cocked hat and other military paraphernalia. The only business transacted by the court was to admit Richard Thomas to the practice of law.

The descendants of pioneers cling with tenacity to the memories of olden times, and are proud of the historic struggles made by their ancestors to establish schools, churches, and good government in a wilderness known only to savage life for untold ages. Although there was little cause for litigation, it was necessary to hold the courts of justice open, as it was to encourage schools and churches that directed society in the enlightened paths of virtue and higher plane of civilization.

Workers in religious denominations met with more or less encouragement, and mapped out their fields upon a large scale for future operations. And fathers and mothers, doctors, ministers, and lawyers worked harmoniously together to instruct, educate, and elevate coming generations, and many lived to witness the fruits of those exertions with pride and satisfaction.

Colonel Charles Whittlesey, in an address before the “Northern Ohio Historical Society,” November, 1881, says: “If our representative men are prominent, it may be a source of honorable state pride, for, while great men do not make a great people, they are signs of a solid constituency. Native genius is about equally distributed in all nations, even in barbarous ones; but it goes to waste wherever the surroundings are not propitious....

“Cromwell was endowed with a mental capacity equal to the greatest of men; but he would not have appeared in history if there had not been a constituency of Round-heads, full of strength, determined upon the overthrow of a licentious king and his nobility....

“Washington would not have been known in history if the people of the American Colonies had not been stalwarts in every sense, who selected him as their representative. In these colonies the process of cross-breeding among races had then been carried further than in England, and is now a prime factor in the strength of the United States.

“I propose to apply the same rule to the first settlers of Ohio, and to show that if she now holds a high place in the nation, it is not an accident, but can be traced to manifest natural causes, and those not alone climate, soil, and geographical position.”

No doubt, the admixture of races has in some cases added something favorable to the physical and mental powers of manhood; but, perhaps, in regard to the superiority of the men of the North-west, more must be attributed to the natural conditions and surroundings which secured freedom from all corroding influences of avarice, added to the alert outdoor life among Indians and savage beasts, with the rifle and attendant athletic exercises, that gave mental stimulation without subsequent exhaustion of mind or body. The rising Squirrel Hunter is no drone; he represents a bundle of activities that scorns a leisure that breeds an indolent stupidity.

First School-house in Circleville, Ohio. Cost $10,000 in 1851. In 1879 was remodeled by the School Board at a cost of $39,300.

The facilities for the physical culture were greatly in advance of those for the development of the mental; and it is remarkable what the key to education has in its turn accomplished—the Bible, “Buckley’s Apology” and “Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Most of the present educational influences were unknown to the generation that has given to the United States so many great men. In their youthful days libraries were exceedingly few, and books were expensive and not easily obtained; and little reason had any one to anticipate that the boys living in the backwoods of Ohio, shooting squirrels and hoeing corn, spring and summer; catching rabbits, foxes and coons in the fall and winter, and occasionally attending a “subscription school” in some abandoned log cabin two or three months, would ever become stars of the first magnitude in the literary canopy of the United States.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific—in every city, in every town—boys of the rural districts of Ohio have marched to the front. Even in the National Metropolis it need not be asked: “Whence came Murat Halstead, Whitelaw Reid, John A. Cockerill, Charles J. Chambers, William H. Smith, Bernard Peters, William L. Brown, and others.” The New York Tribune, Herald, World, Associated Press, Times and Daily News, and the evidences of success resulting from ability, integrity and business capacity, give the answer, “Ohio.”[15]

Whatever the cause may now be attributable to, there can be no question of the inherited capacity and natural and acquired ability which has enabled the “Squirrel Hunters” of Ohio to give to the nation greater and more useful men during the present century than all the other states combined.

In every channel of advancing civilization the Ohio man is found over the entire world, and is known by the stamp he bears—“none other genuine”—“O.I.O.” It may be excusable to name a few of the many national characters which an Ohio man is ever proud to recall with an admiration unknown to egotism—of such—Thomas Ewing, Rufus P. Ranney, George H. Pendleton, Joseph Medell, Richard Smith, Donn Piatt, Ed. Cowles, Samuel Medary, W. McLean, E. D. Mansfield, James G. Birney, Swayne, Springer, Scoville, Chase, Simpson, McIlvaine, Thomas Cole, Hiram Powers, Wm. H. Beard, Quincy Ward; the great inventor, Edison; the arctic explorer, Dr. Hall; the Siberian traveler, George Kennon; the astronomer, Mitchell; geologists, Hildreth, Newberry, and Orton; humorists, Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby; as popular writer, A. W. Tourgee and William Dean Howells. The latter found “Squirrels” in the spring, where they resorted for “the sweetness in the cups of the tulip-tree blossoms;” and in boyhood made “impressions” with his bare feet in the snow on the cabin floor, and in after life more lasting ones with his pen on the hearts of those who have been favored with his literary productions.

Why was it said on the 4th of March, 1881, the nation was enabled to see “three men of fine presence advanced on the platform at the east portico of the Federal Capitol? On the right, a solid, square-built man, of impressive appearance, the Chief-Justice of the United States (Morrison R. Waite). On his left stood a tall, well-rounded, large, self-possessed personage, with a head large even in proportion to the body, who is President of the United States (James A. Garfield). At his left hand was an equally tall, robust, and graceful gentleman, the retiring President (R. B. Hayes). Near by was a tall, not especially graceful figure, with the eye of an eagle, who is the general commanding the army (Wm. Tecumseh Sherman). A short, square, active officer, the Marshal Ney of America, Lieutenant-General (Phil. Sheridan). Another tall, slender, well-poised man, of not ungraceful presence, was the focus of many thousand eyes. He had carried the finances of the nation in his mind and in his heart, four years as the Secretary of the Treasury, the peer of Hamilton and Chase (John Sherman). Of these six five were natives of Ohio, and the other a life-long resident. Did this group of national characters from our state stand there by accident? Was it not the result of a long train of agencies, which, by force of natural selection, brought them to the front on that occasion?”[16]

While this painting from life will ever stand as a most worthy compliment to Ohio, it must be looked upon as but a detached part of the great picture of the North-west, in the center of which may be seen the full measure of a wise man crowned with six stars untarnished with slavery—Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, 1787.

The Ohio State Journal says of the 4th of March, 1897, that, “This is a great time for Ohio at the National Capital. The Buckeye State is very much in evidence. The President is from Ohio; the Secretary of State is from Ohio; Mark Hanna is an Ohio man; Secretary Alger was born and bred in Ohio; ... Senator Foraker, who is expected to be one of the leaders in the senate, is an Ohio man; the First Assistant Secretary of State ... is an Ohio man. In short, Ohio politicians will be in the saddle as far as national affairs go, and, compared with them, the Republicans of the other states are small potatoes, so to speak.

“Ohio has for the last quarter of a century been a great state for presidents. But it never occupied a more conspicuous position in the sisterhood of states than to-day. The Ohio man comes very near being the whole thing.”

Ohio has made her mark politically high, and still manifests a modest willingness to furnish the nation with presidents and other high officials, although the New York World thinks the kissing of the words of Holy Writ by the last favorite son assumed a rather extravagant and monarchical appearance; that it cost only five thousand dollars to seat Thomas Jefferson, while the ceremonial bill for William McKinley and the tenth verse of the first chapter of the Second Chronicles footed two million five hundred and fifty-five thousand five hundred dollars; and bannered the fifteenth verse of the same chapter, for the time being at least. For with that “wisdom and knowledge,”—“the king made silver and gold at Jerusalem (Washington) as plenteous as stones.”

And in this line, not of boasting, but of greatness, it is not thought strange, after supplying the nation with a large ratio of leading statesmen, artisans, scientists and men of letters, the state should have had in readiness for the occasion—one general, U. S. Grant; one lieutenant-general, Mr. Tecumseh Sherman; twenty major and thirty-six brigadier generals; with twenty seven brevet major-generals and one hundred and fifty brigadier generals; a secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton; a secretary of the treasury, S. P. Chase; a banker, J. Cooke, with a contribution of three hundred and forty thousand armed men and twenty-six independent batteries of artillery, and five independent companies of cavalry.

Ohio had the men—had the will—and when the call came, went into the war to fight, and of which she did her share, as the eleven thousand two hundred and ten killed and mortally wounded on the battle-fields, attest.

The finances were so ably managed by the secretary and his advisor, Jay Cooke, that a rebel leader declared the treasury, and not the war department, had conquered the South. To take an empty and bankrupt treasury and agree to find, equip and pay the immense federal army was the portion assigned to secretary Chase. And when Mr. Cooke asked the amount required daily to meet demands—the reply was “two millions, five hundred thousand dollars. Can you raise the money?” “I can,” was the reply.

Mr. Cooke organized a plan for popularizing the loan, and soon had receipts coming into the treasury, averaging over four millions per day. It must be admitted that brains, as well as bullets, gave strength and success to the federal forces, and it can be truthfully as well as modestly assumed, that Ohio furnished her share of both, with honest scripture measure.

Ohio people are not given much to foolish pride, although considered sensitive; and those familiar with the resources, industries, wealth and learning, were surprised that the glorious first-born of the family of the “North-west Territory,” should come so far short of expectations at the World’s Columbian Centennial Exposition, at Chicago. The state was all right, however, and deeply interested. But political favoritism and incompetency often supplants meritorious ability, and determines adversely what otherwise would claim admiration and give general satisfaction.

Ex-Governor Campbell, in an address recently, would mislead a stranger, when he says, “The State of Ohio was at Atlanta in 1864, under Sherman, but is not now at Atlanta as part of the great exhibit of industrial products held there, because, under, and by virtue of the last general assembly, the state credit was reduced so low, and its coffers so depleted, that not money enough could be found for this purpose. The only official representation from our state at Atlanta, in the year 1895, is on the part of a few lady commissioners, who have the freemen’s privilege of paying their own expenses.”

Does anyone believe Ohio is poverty stricken? Has anyone known the state or people to be so since the squirrel hunters traded coon-skins for books, that it could not turn Lake Erie into the Ohio River—the army of the “Southern Confederacy” face about—or make a first-class exhibit in any competitive exposition? As a statement, it is true, “Ohio is not at Atlanta.” But the absence is not due to the causes assigned, and the wonder is, she is as rich and powerful as she is, after being forced so frequently to play the part of the individual that journeyed from Jerusalem down to Jericho.

Ohio is an agricultural state, populated with those who hold the handles of the plough and fear not poverty, discontent and strikes. The native inhabitants inherited a love of liberty and independence from an ancestry who came to a wilderness to secure homes for themselves and posterity. And it was in these homes a permanent foundation for a superior civilization was laid; and through the providences of a people with homes and families, supported by natural and cultivated resources, that has transformed unbroken forests into fertile fields and developed an intelligent, happy and prosperous people.

It is an old and well-founded belief that the earth was not made in vain, but is capable of fulfilling all the purposes for which it was created—now as at any other period in its history. It is also worthy of thought that the interest in the well-being of man by creative and governing intelligence is not less than that extended to the beasts of the fields, and that his title to a share of subsistence on the earth is quite as good as that of the cattle that graze upon a thousand hills.

Every one can, and every one should, secure a share in this inheritance while living. His heirship is indisputable, and on which no mortgage ever found a right, room or reason to rest. If every cast-off from the seductive trusts, combines and monopolies—every one of the millions begging bread—had a definite home upon the soil of the earth, there would be room for millions more, and bread riots and starvation would be unknown in all the land.

Natural civilization—that made in accordance with the laws of nature—does not consist in aggregating the products of labor into the hands of a few and distributing poverty broadcast to the many, but in cultivating intelligence, securing homes, families, subsistence, comfort and happiness, by every man owning and controlling the products of his own labor.

During the first half century of the settlement in the Buckeye State, the equality and advancement of true civilization of the people have never been surpassed in the history of the world. Although their land estates were small, and with that prohibition nature had thrown around the state against all foreign imports, it might readily be imagined the living and populating a great empire on its own developed resources would naturally entail much want and distress. But such was not the fact. They all had enough and to spare, and vagrants were as unknown to public provision as were paupers or want among the sparrows, or the innumerable millions of buffalo that were provided for on the western plains.

Those who had homes they could call their own, with families and friends, plenty to supply the necessities of life, were singularly exempt from avarice, or that which since the world began has been denounced “the root of all evil.”

The first organized money power of serious import, endangering a republican form of government, was the monopoly termed “The Bank of the United States,” incorporated by act of Congress in 1816, for the term of twenty years. And with its millions of easily earned profits, it soon controlled legislation in the interests of wealth and the corporation, causing suffering and disaster to the business of the nation by making prices unstable through contractions and expansions of the mediums of exchange, so that the State of Ohio raised objections to the contemplated establishment of branches of the monopoly within her borders.

After much political discussion of the matter, a legislature was elected largely opposed to the money power, and the state in 1818 passed an act in the nature of a high protective tariff, “taxing each branch of the United States Bank located in the State of Ohio fifty thousand dollars.” The bank refused to pay the assessments when due under the act, and, like most monopolies in sight of a supreme court, disregarded the act of legislation and defied the authorities.

The law-makers in Ohio, even in that early day, had seen enough to understand the defiant insubordination of wealth, and in the act for collecting the tax from the branch banks due the state, authorized the collector to employ an armed force, if necessary, and to enter the bank and seize money sufficient to cover the claim and costs of collection.

This was done by the collector for the “Chillicothe branch,” and the state became defendant, returning with interest the money taken at the end of the usual course of litigation, by an order of the supreme court. It has often been related by those who took part in the great struggle for supremacy of law, or will of the majority of a producing population, as against the tyrannical usurpations of a money power, with its revolving satellites, that the contest threatened the peace, prosperity and safety of the whole nation.

As stated by Hon. Brisben Walker, the institution “quickly became a political power; established branches and agencies throughout the country to control votes; spent money freely for political corruption;” and when it went down, was reported in 1839, by a committee of its own stockholders, to have given “such an exhibition of waste and destruction, and downright plundering and criminal misconduct, as was never seen before in the annals of banking.

“Thirty millions of its loans were not of a mercantile character, but made to members of Congress, editors of newspapers, politicians, brokers, favorites, and connections.” And it continued to rule until the will and wisdom of President Jackson put an end to the great monopoly. He removed the government deposits, prevented a re-charter, and in 1833 made a statement to Congress, giving the grounds on which his action was based toward the bank, saying “it was for attempting to control the elections, producing a contraction of the currency, and causing general distress.” The funeral went off quietly, with but few mourners, and the American people were liberated from the bondage of aggregated wealth, and Ohio obtained a lease for a number of prosperous decades. But the war of the Sixties came, and moneyed combines grew in power and audacity, until many persons expressed fears for the laws, labor and liberties of the common people.

Taking into consideration the small number of wealthy persons among the great mass of the people, it is rather remarkable that so many patriotic men in this country, from the days of Washington up to the present time, have expressed emphatically their fears for the welfare of the republic should it fall under the destructive power of concentrated and organized wealth.

President Jackson declared it was “better to incur any inconvenience that may be reasonably expected than to concentrate the whole money power of the republic in any form whatsoever, or under any restrictions.” He had seen the arrogant influences under all the restrictions law could give, and gave the warning statement that what he saw were but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into sustaining institutions of “organized wealth.”

President Lincoln said, at the close of the sanguinary struggle: “It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood; ... but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of the country. As the result of war corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until all wealth is aggregated into a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicion may prove groundless.”

These and other prophetic warnings carry with them a vast degree of thoughtful solemnity, due to our knowledge of man and the signs of the times. When the successful candidate for office is made to depend upon the size of the campaign fund, and party success more or less assured in proportion to the length of figures beyond a dollar mark, the liberties of the common people are fraught with danger, if not already destroyed.

Wherever the corrupting influence of money has been permitted to enter politics, it has become more successful than just and salutary announcements, and has been used aggregatingly by the wealthy in amounts sufficient to secure their own interests, regardless of party lines or the welfare of the public. This may appear severe in statement, but it is nevertheless true to the experience of one who has seen nearly four score years of our republican form of government. The writer would gladly soften the roughness with charity, had he ever witnessed a compensating virtue or redeeming excuse for permitting the money power to run the government, make the laws and rule the people.

So great is the apparent fear, too, by the money power that the government may pass into the hands of the common people, and those less than multi-millionaires may aspire to political preferment, that organized leagues are spread over the entire Northern states, like political fly-traps, with plenty of the “sticky stuff,” in order to hold the ignorant and indifferent to the support of the rich and their party alliances. The organization of wealth for increasing its influence on legislation, or other purposes, under the title of “The National Business Men’s League,” is not looked upon in any very commendable light by the average American, and has been pronounced “unsavory” by many honest men.

“The promoters of this league,” says Senator Quay, “invokes a class against the masses and all other classes. No league of business men, based upon wealth, can erect a government class in this country. In the United States Senate we have millionaires and business men enough to serve all legitimate purposes. Senators are needed who have no specialties, but who will act for the interests of the country in gross, without special affinities.

“The people most deserving of a representation, and most in need of legislative protection, are the farmers, the small store-keepers, the artisans, and the day-laborers, and I stand by them, and against this ‘league.’ I go into the barricades with the bourgeoisie and the men in blouses.

“There must be less business and more people in our politics, else the republican party and the country will go to wreck. The business issues are making our politics sordid and corrupt. The tremendous sums of money furnished by business men, reluctantly in most instances, are polluting the well-springs of our national being.”

It is unpleasant to look upon the dark side of any question, and especially that of our lovely country, and still go on ignoring the lessons given us by the fathers of the nation. When we compare the administrations of Washington, Adams, and others, with the present ravening greed for place by those who look upon official position as the gateway to sudden wealth, the inquiry suggests itself, and the desire to know the points of compass the nation is drifting, and at what port the ship of state is expected to enter if continued on the dark lines of the present chart?

History is full of object-lessons—storms, wrecks and disasters that have ended all attempts to perpetuate a republican form of government by the power of organized wealth. Money is powerful, and may govern for a season. But legislation that concentrates the wealth of the nation into the hands of a privileged few causes the government to rest upon a sandy foundation. The common people will eventually tire, become restless and revengeful.

The money interests of the United States and those of Europe are the same. And when the accumulation becomes so great it can not satisfy personal greed for gain, it finds its way into landed investments, chiefly in the United States. At the present rate of concentration and transfer into realty, the period can not be far in the future when all the valuable lands in the United States will be owned and controlled by a few immensely wealthy families in this country and in Europe. The “money power,” with its “trusts,” “combines,” high fences, barb-wired, armed police on the outside and bulldogs within, may smile at the success giving financial control of the profits of all kinds of labor necessary in the development and manufacture of the resources of nature. Still, the aristocratic pyramid is incomplete until the soil and profits from cultivation are owned and controlled by the “systematic and satisfactory management of a ‘land trust.’”

It is manifest now that wealth is seeking unusual investments in farming lands by the money kings of Europe and America, when a single lord of England can own three million acres in the heart of the most fertile section of the United States, and have his rack-rents sent to Viscount Scully, in Europe. Sir Edward Reid owns two million acres; the Marquis of Tweeddale, one million seven hundred thousand acres, and several others of the titled aristocracy of Europe own farms ranging from forty thousand to three million acres each, making in the aggregate an area of several states. And quite recently fifty million acres more have passed into the hands of the English stockholders in the distribution of the land grants to the Northern Pacific Railroad. These large bodies of land owned by aliens—lords of Europe, with the syndicates and American monopolies and railroad grants,[17] and special gifts by Congress of one hundred and ninety-seven million six hundred and ninety-nine thousand acres to the rich monopolies in this country and Europe, amount to an area greater than the sum of eleven states of average size, and which may ere long be considered sufficient to constitute a respectable nucleus for an “American Land Trust.”

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CHAPTER IV.
OHIO—HER BEASTS, BIRDS, AND TREES: AIDS TO HIGHER CIVILIZATION.