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

by N. E. Jones

TREES.

“Half the mighty forest

Tells no tale of all it does.”

“Individual avarice and corporate greed will soon cause all the mineral lands to be stripped of their forests.... Wealthy companies have been organized, mills erected, and the most valuable timber accessible is being rapidly cut off. That which is every one’s property is no one’s care, and extravagance and waste are the natural consequence of negligent legislation.”[21]

The increasing destruction of the timber belts of this country is certainly enough to alarm the nation. The Census Office prepared for distribution a bulletin bearing upon this subject for the consideration of the people of the United States. The lumber production—which means tree destruction—in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the last decade increased twenty-nine per cent in quantity and seventy-five per cent in value, and according to the eleventh (last) census, the capital invested in the milling business in the three states named shows an increase of one hundred and fifty-seven million five hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars.

United States Senator Henry M. Rice, who spent considerable time in Northern Minnesota treating with the Indians, says: “This timber cutting is going on for fifty miles up the Baudette, North and South Fork rivers, and that the Indians declare that it has been going on for more than a dozen years by Canadian lumbermen.” It is stated on good authority that more than two hundred million feet were floated through the Lake of the Woods in 1894. And Senator Rice says: “So bold have these timber robbers become that they have built dams in the tributary streams for the purpose of backing up the water and floating out their logs.”

When these extensive thieving operations were conveyed to the authorities, one lone “timber inspector” was sent up in this vast district and made his headquarters in the wilderness one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest point from which he could obtain any assistance, and it is generally believed, in Minnesota, that the “timber inspector” failed to “hold up” several thousand Canadian robbers, who were engaged in floating American timber across the line and filling their pockets with gold.

The Minneapolis Journal has done much to call the attention of the people of that state, and the Nation, to the unparalleled destruction of this greatest gift of nature, and quite recently says:

“The reservations which have been ceded by the Chippewas in this state to the government embrace the heaviest white pine forests now available as a source of lumber supply. These forests are largely contributory to the retention of the moisture which feeds the streams and lakes that make the sources of the Mississippi river.

“Already there is much said about the great commercial value of these pine lands, and there is not the slightest doubt that as soon as the region is opened by the government the work of destruction will commence, which will speedily lay bare the soil and subject it to the drying influences of the sun and wind, or to the forest fires, which will kill every young growth which appears, and destroy even tree seed, which has been borne there by the winds. The result of this will be the diminution of the sources of the supply of the Mississippi, which will be felt by every water power company from Itasca to Fort Snelling.

“These are grave consequences, and the question is: Shall the denudation of this new region be allowed to go on without some regulations as to cutting and forest renewal? There would seem to be a good opportunity to bring to bear the world’s experience in forestry. This reckless cutting and selling the forests will bring temporary gain to the lumbermen, but will ultimately destroy agriculture and water-power interests as well as the healthful conditions of the country.

“In France, whole communities were ruined by the denudation of their lands; and obliged the government to enter upon the work of restocking this ruined section of country with young trees at a cost of many millions of dollars; all to regain what had been lost through indifference. But how is it now? The region of the Landes, which fifty years ago was the abandoned country of little value, inhabited by a few sickly shepherds, who wandered over the country with their meager flocks, is now the most prosperous part of France. It has been made so by the planting of forests, and has now saw-mills, charcoal kilns, turpentine works, thriving towns, and fertile agricultural lands, and a growing and increasing valuation, and the net gain to the government by the expenditure amounts to over two hundred million dollars.

“Not until the sheltering influence of trees has disappeared, the climate made variable with sharp and sudden changes of temperature, successions of thaws and freezings; not until springs and brooks become dry in summer, and a failure of all kinds of crops and plants, does the improvident ask or even wonder what the matter is.

“Every reserve of timber in this country ought to be sacredly guarded by the government, and timber cutting be put under stringent regulations, looking to the continued protection of the streams. Unless this is done the Mississippi river will surely change its character. It will become a shallow, sluggish stream, unable to carry off impurities, and useless for navigation or water-power. It will not take very long to effect this change, if the forests are destroyed in the northern part of its source. A present gain in lumber will mean very great injury to all other material interests.”[22]

A special from St. Paul says—“From Rainy Lake to the Lake of the Woods, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, the entire country is covered with a heavy growth of timber and is mostly pine, and is totally uninhabited save by scattering bands of Chippewa Indians. That these two great lakes are connected by Rainy Lake river, one of the finest navigable streams in North America; and on which its branches and the Lake of the Woods, no less than twenty steamers and tugs ply from early spring to late in the fall, conveying stolen timber from the United States to Rat Portage, Keewatin, and even to Winnipeg, where it is manufactured and sent wherever a market can be found.

“Keewatin and Rat Portage are the centers of the timber depredations and act as a base of supplies for the depredators. Nearly all the numerous fleets of steamers plying on the lake find their home in these two towns. The Dominion Government considers its side of the line important enough to demand a station at Hungry Hall, on the Canadian side of the mouth of Rainy Lake river, as well as at several other points between the Red river of the North and the head of Lake Superior, but the United States Government, though knowing the amount of valuable timber in the district desirable, has no port between St. Vincent and Lake Superior.

“When it is realized that all this timber belongs to the wards of the United States, the Indians, or to the Government itself, it is hard to see on what principle the states can so neglect this great timber belt. Not a foot of this timber can be sold or in any way disposed of until it has been appraised and surveyed. And it was asked that the Minnesota delegation in Congress take steps at once to have Congress pass a measure authorizing the placing of a revenue cutter on the Lake of the Woods, and equipping two posts, one near Rainy Lake, and the other directly across from Hungry Hall, where one lone timber inspector is supposed to be. But has any thing been done? The State Senatorial Committee of Minnesota, in an investigation of frauds against the state, found the timber pirates responsible for most all the calamities from fire which have befallen the timber lands of the state. After stealing millions of dollars worth of timber belonging to the state, in order to cover the theft, have started fires which have resulted in those terrible losses of life and property. Firing the lands they had fraudulently cleared in order to render the measurement of stumpage impossible, and thereby shut off any suits a commission might attempt to bring against them. In putting the torch to the ‘toppings,’ every thing is destroyed—stumps, young trees and frequently valuable timber, to the amount of many million dollars.”

In all the pine belts in the western country there is a loud demand by honest citizens, that the manner of cutting timber be severely regulated. It has been clearly shown from time to time that this forest destruction in the United States without restitution, is still going on at the enormous rate of over ten million acres annually, and must soon land the country in all the ills due to forest famine.

Senator Paddock, of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, reports that the United States Government retains somewhat less than seventy million acres of public domain, which is designated as timber or woodland, mostly situated on the slopes and crests of the western mountain ranges. The above estimate may be too low, but if not, the entire forests of the Government are scarcely sufficient of themselves to supply the vast demands of the country another decade.

In 1889, it was estimated that Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming contained fifty-three thousand square miles of forest—Colorado and New Mexico, thirty thousand; and that other portions of the public domain were covered with large and valuable belts, and of which the Hon. Secretary of Agriculture says in his reports: “We are wasting our forests, by axe, by fire, by pasturage, by neglect. They are rapidly falling below the amount required by industrial needs, by our water supply, by our rivers, by our climate, by our navigation and agriculture. It is high time to call a halt. The devastation of the axe will probably go on in the forests owned by private parties. Other forms of devastation can and should be stopped by vigorous measures on the part of the Government.”

“Our only hope,” says Secretary Rusk, “is to save what forests we have still in public possession, ... not allowing them to be cut except under such conditions as will insure ample reproduction.”

Six years have passed since the above important declarations were made, still nothing has been done to deter the thieves or ward off a pending calamity.

For future forest supplies the people of the United States must look to the general government which controls the national domain, holds the keys of the public treasury, and is responsible for this source of national wealth.

From various authentic sources, it is stated of the once-timbered countries in Southern Europe, Northern Africa and from the Russian Empire to South India, which are now uninhabited barren wastes, has been due to changes of climate, soil and water-fall, from the loss of forests. The once fertile valleys of Syria, with springs and brooks, and fields of grain and grass, are as parched and dry, and water as scarce as it is on the desert or staked plains—summer suns have scorched the unprotected soil—hot winds absorbed the last vestige of moisture—the air is filled with clouds of loose dust, and the naked mountains stand as monuments of departed glory, of the Roman provinces from the Caucasus to the archipelago.

Look at the wasted peninsulas of Southern Europe. What has reduced to skeletons the inhabitants of the garden lands of the nations of classic antiquity? Greece has become a barren rock, and Sicily, “the pearl of the Mediterranean,” a hospital of famine, typhus and purulent ophthalmia!

Has not the desolation in each been due to one and the same cause?—the destruction of forests.

Why then should history repeat itself on this subject in America?

As early as 1832, the wisdom of Mehemet Ali saw the cause of the poverty and distress, and applied the only remedy that ever has or ever will restore life-sustaining conditions, and commenced re-establishing forests on the sand plains of upper Egypt—Abyssinia and the slopes of the mountains—at the rate of one hundred thousand acres annually.

Trees, like beasts and birds, at one time existed in such vast and apparently incalculable numbers that it seemed improbable their presence could be diminished sufficiently to give them importance or value. To have trees removed by any means was looked upon by the owner of the soil as a favor; and those having charge of the public domain felt pretty much the same way. But to the man of three-score and ten years it is astonishing how soon the great forests have disappeared, or become so valuable and inviting as to tempt the mercenary to steal and the rewarded public official to permit. Trees have a value to every form of life—a value above the lumber they may produce or the moneyed wealth they may bring the possessor. It has for thousands of years undergone practical demonstration that forests determine the climatic conditions of any given country, and for this reason forests form an indispensable basis for agriculture, manufacture and commercial industry. They also bear a near relation to the health, wealth and prosperity of a nation.

These facts being so universally admitted, it may seem strange that a government which has from its inception been so interested in the welfare of its subjects, and which has assisted and encouraged in various ways so many sources of wealth and industry, should have overlooked the forests, from which the nation is drawing larger amounts than from all other natural sources combined.

The government has ever been devoted to the interests of agriculture and manufacturing; and by premiums, by exemptions, by protections, by model farms, by grants, by bounties, by patent rights, by technical schools, and by introduction of superior animals and improved machinery, has fostered well these industries. It has not been at fault, either, in donating large sums in the construction of canals and railroads and for the improvement of rivers and harbors. It has even taken an interest in the clam and oyster, and has stocked the rivers and lakes with young fish, that the devastation of these natural sources of wealth may be compensated thereby, and perpetuated as a national trust; while the springs and brooks and streams, the climatic causes of disease, the necessary conditions for national wealth and national health—in a word, the importance of forests for the nation, for the land, for agriculture, for the perpetuation of rivers—has received little or no official recognition. Few persons are so destitute of foresight as not to see that the fires and thieves, and increasing consumption, if continued at the present rate, can not fail to make this a treeless waste, a desolate, uninhabitable country, at no very distant date. Is there no way by which the remaining beasts and birds and trees can be preserved? Must the civilization of the North-west permit the pirates of destruction to take and hold possession of all its natural endowments? The clubs have been after the pot-hunter with legal enactments, and have crippled, but never as yet have they succeeded in exterminating him. He is still destroying the remnants of game, and is at large in the public domain, seeking something to devour.

The general government should no longer postpone a definition of its policy regarding forests, rivers, and its millions of acres of arid lands. The American people have been slow to realize the drifting of this country toward a forest famine and its destructive results. On the subject of forestry, until recently, representatives have been politically dumb, and, no doubt, would have remained so much longer had it not been for the inspiration of a few men. In January, 1872, ex-Secretary Morton presented a resolution before the Agricultural Society of Nebraska to set apart one day in each year and consecrate it to planting trees. This day was christened “Arbor Day,” and is now observed by law and proclamation in thirty-one states; has entered our schools and colleges, and forestry forms part of the curriculum.

Wherever Arbor-Day has been observed it has awakened a sense of inquiry; has taught the children the names, nature, and usefulness of trees, with a lasting admiration and love for them. From the influences of Arbor-Day, Nebraska has more than a million acres of planted forests, and Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and other Western States fast following the good example. With laws, plantings, and premiums; with books, schools, and colleges; with the hearts of workers in it, forestry has built up a healthy public sentiment that must be felt. The Eastern States are also awake and glistening with law officers to protect their woods from fires and thieves; and by large premiums and exemptions from taxation, have greatly promoted the interest of forestry in their respective states.

Even the state that sold her birth-right—one hundred and fifty billion feet of standing forest for nine hundred million dollars—is not without influence for good. All these noble acts of the states and of the people will be heard in time; for the government of the nation is not given to disregard the will of the people, and has ever shown a readiness to take the front and co-operate with the states in every good work. But there is something more required of a government—the representatives of the people must do more than simply respond to petitions. In a free republican government the people are both sovereigns and wards, and they expect those who assume legislative and executive powers of the nation to understand political economy sufficiently to manage correctly the finances and the natural wealth of the nation with intelligence and superior wisdom. And in this direction it would certainly prove a most laudable act to withdraw from sale or entry for a long period, if not perpetually, all remaining forests and all arid lands where the rain-fall is below twenty inches, and place the same under the management of the Secretary of Agriculture, with ample powers and appropriations to build up a grand system of forestry, surpassing in extent and wealth all similar institutions belonging to the monarchies of Europe combined.

Governor J. J. Stevens, in his final report of surveys for a railroad across the Rocky Mountains, called the attention of the government, in 1855, to the arid lands west of the Missouri river, between parallels forty degrees and forty-nine north latitude. He compared it in extent, climate, rain-fall, and other features, to the Steppes, which occupies about one-fifth of the Russian Empire, and quotes the “Commentaries of the Productive Sources of Russia” to sustain his statements:

“Among other peculiarities of the Steppes a very prominent and distinctive one is the absence of timber, ... and opinions differ greatly as to the possibility of wooding it anew.”

Since 1855, the Russian Government has arrived at one conclusion, and adopted a policy of reforesting this two hundred and forty thousand square miles worthy of imitation.

Let the Government of the United States do as Russia has been doing, and the steppes from the Missouri river to the mountains will be reclaimed and made to “blossom as the rose.” According to geological surveys there are seven hundred and fifty million acres of arid, treeless lands, incapable of successful cultivation without irrigation—but where trees can be grown—for experiments have shown that trees will grow where the rain-fall is insufficient for grain or grass.

According to J. W. Powell, director of the United States Geological Survey, on the water supply in the arid regions, it would seem if all the water run off could be impounded and appropriated to irrigation it would be insufficient to supply one-tenth of the arid districts. And it might be asked if the arid land in the Dakotas, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, California, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Indian Territory, only about “one hundred million acres” can be irrigated and made productive, what is to be done with the remaining six hundred and fifty million acres?

Could the area entire, or any part of the arid lands be made productive on the most economic plan yet devised by irrigation enterprise in this country, the cost of such lands and their products could never become profitably utilized in commerce so long as the vast area of cheap productive soil of the United States, or even that of the North-west lies out doors, ready to receive the showers of Heaven.

When we recount the miseries and misfortunes of the eight hundred million people that meagerly subsist on the products of irrigated, treeless lands, it makes an irresistible hope that the government of this nation may never be induced by ingenious descriptions of co-operative systems of economics, nor less perceptible but more powerful influences of speculators in western water-ways, to adopt a policy that will make any part of this country and nation, a Spain, a China, an India, or an Egypt, for want of forests.

Every country should have a just proportion of the total area in timber to make it healthful and productive. It is far better to have a portion in timber than to have all the country clothed with herds or covered with corn. It is the order of nature, the necessity of civilization, and the only true basis for a happy, powerful and independent population.

As the source for national revenue, it is an interest ranking first in importance, even in dollars and cents; and certainly, if for no other reason than for the wealth there is in it, the subject demands the attention of the government sufficiently to enforce protection and perpetuation. Every year it comes—“Once more the forests of the far west are aflame,” and it is not only the loss in money, but such sections of country are ruined for all purposes beyond the power of generations to repair.

It may seem expensive to maintain an army of officers and employes to protect and perpetuate the forests of the public domain. But notwithstanding it would require large appropriations, it would repay the outlay many thousand times in national wealth, for this great army would not be idlers. Nothing short of an organized department of forestry can protect and maintain this source of national wealth. The appropriation for this department in France has been five million dollars, and is returned with good interest.

Austria, not larger in extent of territory than the States of Illinois and Iowa combined, maintains thirty-two thousand forestry officers or employees and receives a large net income from this source; and reports show that Germany has an annual income of fifty-seven million dollars from an area of thirty-three million acres of timber, and it is estimated that no more is harvested each year than is compensated by growth and reoccupation of wasted ground. For, forest preservation does not mean that trees shall not be cut down, but that they shall be used, while all the conditions for their reproduction are steadily maintained from year to year, using if necessary, an amount equal to the production by growth. This requires planting, and tree-planting and forestry mean labor in this country as it does in Europe. The United States without Alaska, is, I believe, about nineteen times larger in area than Germany, and to be proportionately equal with this foreign power, the United States should have under control of the government an area of six hundred million acres as a reservation for timber to supply the public necessities of the near future. And it should be done without delay; the arid lands and forests along the streams and lakes that make the sources of the Mississippi and other navigable streams, should be dedicated forever to the cultivation of timber.

And here the labor question is solved. Every government that is able to sustain itself, must have something for idle hands to do. The increasing supply of labor has alarmed many thinking people. Labor is wealth, but how can all find employment? Which means bread. And various suggestions have been made simply to furnish subsistence. But in forestry there is something better—a necessity, a demand for labor, giving profitable employment to a vastly greater number than any other public necessity; for the labors of a department or bureau of this kind would be as immense as indispensable; and could end only with the end of the race.

A forest of six hundred million acres, thoroughly organized and officered under the Secretary of Agriculture, would sink the post-office department and its patronage into insignificance, and would be the brightest star in the civil service solar system to those who elect a life in the service of the country. But this is not all—it would make the climate more healthful, the rain-fall more regular and abundant, the soil more productive, and in due time would exceed all other sources of revenue combined.

The immensity of the consumption of forest supplies can not be measured accurately; but some idea can be formed of its vastness, when it is known that the one hundred and eighty-seven thousand miles of railroads and one hundred and thirty-seven thousand miles of telegraph lines in this country consume each year the annual growth or a forest equal to one hundred and fifty million acres. And nothing short of a large area of well-managed forest will prove adequate to future demands. What else can the nation expect when at present statistics show the annual consumption, or crop, exceeds in value seven hundred million dollars?

This is more than the yield of all the gold-mines and silver-mines, coal, iron, copper, lead, and zinc combined; and if these are added to the value of all the steamboats, sailing vessels, canal-boats, flat-boats, and barges in American waters, the sum would be still less than the value of the forest crop by an amount sufficient to purchase at cost of construction all the canals, all the telegraph and telephone lines in the United States. The value of the forest income exceeds the gross income of all the railroads and transportation lines, and is an interest ranking in importance far above all others in the United States.

If this country ever becomes a Dalmatia—changed from a healthful, fruitful and salubrious habitation to a sterile, sickly waste, with decayed cities and crumbling greatness, history will not say “the Romans did it.”

Man should ever remember prevention is better than cure. The worst of evils is prevented by the removal of the cause. And when the apathy and improvidence which now threaten the destiny of a rich and prosperous nation are removed, then, and not till then, can it truly be said that the lost Paradise of the Eastern Continent has been regained in the New World of the West. The people should understand, also, the inspired influences of living forests—trees—those musical mutes, upon those who breathe their sweet ennobling influence.

The finest agricultural climate, perhaps, in the world, fell to the lot of Ohio. But this state will soon be obliged to do something to offset the destruction that is still going on with the little groves. When it came into the Union, it presented the grandest unbroken forest of forty-one thousand square miles that was ever beheld on this continent. A forest interspersed with hills and valleys, springs, brooks, and rivers; with a soil most inviting to the aspirations of agriculture.

The natural conditions of things were such that the possessors of this inheritance soon desired occupation of the soil, and looked upon its trees with less favor than they did upon those who disputed their titles with the tomahawk. Indians could be induced to move out of the way, but trees were all disposed to stand their ground and take the consequences. Both were considered too numerous for easy advancement of civilization, and in the contest both got the worst of it.

Forests may flourish independent of agriculture, but the latter can not prosper without the former. This was not so evident, however, to the early inhabitant, who felt he had thrust upon him more than his share of perpetual shade, and every owner and occupant of the soil combined with his neighbor in a warfare of destruction upon trees, and millions, the best of their kind ever produced were killed by cutting a circle around the trunk and left to decay. These deadenings were to be seen all over the country, as fast and as far as settlements were made or contemplated. And now, in less than a hundred years, more than eighty per cent. of this great forest has disappeared, and only small clumps in agricultural sections can be seen in any part of the state.

The older trees that occupied their places in these remnants of woods have nearly all fallen by the hand of the axman, and the younger growths are being appropriated for various purposes, greatly in excess of possible reproduction to the remaining stock; and the time is not far distant, if things continue without change for the better, when the salubrious climate, with summer showers and productive soil, will become changed to one of uncertainty. The entire North-west is now on the very border of forest limit. Still thousands of portable saw-mills are moving over the states, destroying the remaining needful trees, and the rural districts will discover, when too late, that private interest is insufficient to protect forest lands in quantity enough to maintain climatic and sanitary influences without the aid of state government.

Some years ago the legislature of Ohio passed a law, now in force, which lost the state many millions of growing forest trees that stood on the public grounds. The act reads: “Supervisors shall cut down all bushes growing within any county or township highway, the same to be done within the months of July and August of each year.” Thus a clean sweep was made of every tree, bush and plant, as the word “bushes” was legally defined to mean places “abounding in trees and shrubs.” Trees of all kinds, sizes and ages, bordering and within the legal limits of the highways, met their doom under this act. And every growing scion that dared since to raise its head along the border lines of Ohio roads has met a similar fate in the months of July and August of each year.

If laws can be enforced to destroy trees along the borders of public highways, it is reasonable to suppose laws may be made and enforced to restore and protect them in such locations. Ohio has approximately forty thousand miles of good public highways and ways that could well subserve the use of trees along their borders, at sufficient distances to give them room and opportunity to grow. A tree on either side at thirty feet distant would make in the aggregate a forest of ordinary distribution of several million trees, that could be owned, cultivated and protected by law. At the same time, an act of this kind would maintain the lawful width of roads and prevent encroachments by adjoining land-owners, and make all highways and byways avenues of beauty, health and pleasure.

A fraction of a mill added to the tax assessment as a “forestry fund,” and expended in planting and protecting trees, would soon accomplish the work. Trees similarly arranged along railroads, canals and water-courses, and around district school-houses, with a law exempting from taxation all lands devoted exclusively to woods, would, in the combination, form an important factor in preserving the true ratio of timber to farming lands, the humidity of the atmosphere, and the healthful condition of the country.

Trees are to be prized for many reasons, and admired for their longevity. There is, perhaps, no limit to the life of a tree. No inquest has ever rendered a verdict “caused by old age.” They are not dependent upon the heart for their systemic vitality. The potency of the living principle lies near the periphery and most distant roots and branches from the surface of the ground; and grow on and on, subject only to accidents that may end life. The expression may have seemed extravagant for even an enthusiast, when that slip from a cypress tree of Ceylon was planted, to say it would “flourish and be green forever.” It is now the historical and sacred Bo-tree of two thousand one hundred and eighty-three years, and still green and growing.

While the Bo-tree is perhaps the oldest tree found in human records, it is not likely by any means, that it stands at the head in longevity. For trees keep their own books, and write their own history, in which may be found an account of passing years, from the beginning to the ending of life—a true autobiography—the eucalyptus of Senegal, the chestnuts at Mount Ætna, the oaks of Windsor, the yews at Fountain Abbey, the olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, or the mammoth trees in California are much older, making it quite probable that some of the first seedlings that grew after the last remodeling of the earth took place, are still green and growing.

Sequoia Park.

It is stated on good authority that one of those ancient Jumbos blown down at Sequoia Park, California, was forty-one feet in diameter and showed six thousand, one hundred and twenty-six annual rings, or yearly growths.

In the explorations and surveys, under act of Congress, 1853 and 1854, Dr. J. M. Bigelow, in his report says: “It required five men twenty-two days,” with pump augers, to get one of these Sequoia Gigantea down—costing for labor at California prices, $550. “A short distance from this tree was another of larger dimensions, which, apparently, had been overthrown by an accident some forty or fifty years ago.... The trunk was three hundred feet in length; the top broken off, and by some agency (probably fire) was destroyed. At the distance of three hundred feet from the butt, the trunk was forty feet in circumference, or more than twelve feet in diameter, ... proving to a degree of moral certainty that the tree, when standing alive, must have attained the height of four hundred and fifty or five hundred feet!

“At the butt it is one hundred and ten feet in circumference, or about thirty-six feet in diameter. On the bark, quite a soil had accumulated, on which considerable-sized shrubs were growing. Of these I collected specimens of currants and gooseberries on its body, from bushes elevated twenty-two feet from the ground.”

Ohio abounded in large forest trees of many varieties—the sycamore, oak, poplars, chestnut, black walnut, etc. The writer made partial notes at the time, of a large yellow poplar that was cut down in 1844, and taken to a saw mill, receiving from it over eleven thousand feet of lumber, which was sold at the mill for one hundred and two dollars. The tree was large at the base, measuring three feet above the ground, forty feet in circumference. The axemen built a scaffold twelve feet in height to stand upon, and by means of the axe and saw, they made a stump fifteen feet in height. Some distance above this point the center was decayed and when down, ten feet was discovered as unsuitable for boards. Four sound logs of ten feet each were cut below the two branches, and each branch made also a good saw-log. The four logs cut from the trunk of the tree were, on the average over seven feet in diameter, and were obliged to be quartered in order to handle them, and consequently there was more than ordinary waste at the mill, as well as where the tree stood. The outside appearance of the tree bore no evidence of decay and those who had taken the contract to cut it down were greatly rejoiced to find over four feet of the diameter useless as support.

Many coon-hunters had followed tracks in snow for miles to bring up at this tree, which was selected for safety or other instinctive reason; probably from its long standing it became a favorite resort or stopping place for traveling raccoons. A portion of both main branches of the tree was hollow. One was occupied by coons and the other by “the little busy bee.” But neither the bee-hunters nor hunter for coons could be induced to cut the tree for what it contained, and for forty years it defied the axemen of the surrounding settlement.

Another of the first crop of trees that has passed away without mention is a sycamore that stood on the banks of the Scioto, in Pickaway county. It became quite noted and familiar to generations of hunters, who used the interior for camping purposes on hunting excursions for nearly half a century. It was also known and visited by others, from the fact, in 1872, a newly married couple commenced housekeeping in its spacious quarters, and enjoyed the seclusion amidst a forest of other mammoth trees. July 4, 1855, the dimensions of this sycamore were taken, which showed—Circumference three feet above ground, forty-five feet, and diameter of the hollow chamber, fourteen feet; door-way, three feet wide at base, terminating in a point seven feet above.

The large trees existed in abundance in many portions of the state, showing ages of four to five hundred years. Trees sometimes are found in such close proximity as to be termed “wedded,” as those shown in the [following page], which are near the line of the towing path of the canal in Miami county—an elm and sycamore—girt six feet from the ground measures twenty-four feet.

Conflict in Pre-Emption Claims.

One of the surveys of the Military District, in Pickaway county, is known as the “Seven Oaks.” In 1793, while Nathaniel Massie was making surveying tours in the country yet covered by hostile Indians, his assistant, Duncan McArthur, ran around a tract located in Pickaway county, covered it with warrants, and named it, “The Seven Oaks.” The trees were said to be large one hundred years ago and still growing. From measurements made June 21, 1895, the circumference of the main undivided trunk, three feet from the ground measured twenty-five feet ten inches; height of common trunk, three feet six inches. At the top of the common trunk is an opening eighteen inches wide into a circular inclosure, with a floor thirty-six inches in diameter, formed by main trunk and surrounding trees. The four trees, forming the west and north portions of the circle, remain united for ten feet, while those forming the south and eastern portion separate at six feet from the ground. Each of the seven trees is one hundred feet in height, and measures a little over eight feet in circumference at bisections.

“Grandeur, strength, and grace,

Are to speak of thee. This mighty oak—

By whose immovable stem I stand and seem

Almost annihilated—not a prince,

In all that proud old world beyond the deep,

E’er wore his crown as loftily as he

Wears the green coronal of leaves with which

Thy hand has graced him.”

Great trees and great men and women are too numerous to obtain more than a mention. Every thing in Ohio has shown a tendency to superiority. It may seem almost fabulous, though true, a grape-vine near Frankfort, in Ross county, was cut down in 1853 that measured sixteen feet in circumference, ten feet from the ground; twenty feet up it divided into three branches, each measuring eight feet in circumference; height, seventy-five feet, and spread one hundred and fifty feet; and when cut up made eight cords of fire-wood.

Chillicothe Elm.

It has been shown by actual measurements that the “big elm” of Walnut street, Chillicothe, Ohio, is much larger than the famous Boston elm, or any one at Cambridge, New Haven, or the great tree at Wethersfield. The Chillicothe elm measures twenty-eight feet six inches in circumference three feet above ground, with boughs covering an area of fifty-five square rods. As late as 1840 the remnants of this olden forest crop could be numbered by the dozen on an area of almost any square mile of woods. They were left because it meant work to get them off their pre-emption claim. But an advance in lumber and improvements soon diminished the number having a lumber value, leaving those unfitted for boards to the destruction of campfires and girdling, or to be utilized as houses of various kinds and purposes. A large, hollow sycamore in Pike county, near Waverly, made a commodious blacksmith shop and horse-shoeing establishment for many years.

The Logan Elm.

“The Logan Elm” is the most interesting historic tree in Ohio, testifying of thrilling incidents in colonial times—military achievements of Lord Dunmore, unsurpassed ability of the red man, and the trying period of the earliest pioneers—each giving great interest to the spot where stands this living monument.

During the fall of 1774 Lord Dunmore fitted out an expedition of three thousand men, hoping to destroy the Indians and their numerous towns along the Scioto valley. His army moved westward in two sections. The larger division, commanded by Dunmore in person, crossed the mountains by way of the Cumberland Gap, and arrived at the Ohio river near where Wheeling now stands, and the smaller corps, under command of Colonel Andrew Lewis, followed the Kanawha to its confluence. Before reaching the villages of the plains and along the borders of the Scioto river, in Pickaway county, the divisions had planned to form a junction.

Colonel Lewis arrived on the Ohio river at the point designated October 6th, and encamped on the grounds now occupied by the town of Point Pleasant, awaiting dispatches from Lord Dunmore. After remaining three days without intrenchments or other works of defense, he was, on the 10th, attacked early in the morning by one thousand chosen braves of the tribes belonging to the confederacy, under the great chieftain, “Cornstalk,” hoping to destroy his enemies before they should have an opportunity to unite their forces. The battle lasted all day and ended with the cover of night. The Indians felt they received the greater disaster, having two hundred and thirty-three killed and severely wounded. Here Colonel Charles Lewis lost his life, with the lives of half of the commissioned officers.

Chief Cornstalk felt the failure, and to save the towns and people of the Scioto valley, something must be done immediately, and hurried to Lord Dunmore with petitions for peace. Previous to this, and in ignorance of the bloody battle, Dunmore had transmitted orders to Lewis to move on and enter the borders of the enemy’s country on the Scioto.

Elated with the idea of slaughtering the “redskins” in their camps and country, the enraged Virginians marched eighty miles through a rough, trackless wilderness, without bread or tents, and on the 24th day of October encamped on the banks of Congo, under the spreading boughs of the historic tree, and within less than four miles of the great town of the Shawnees, located on the west bank of the Scioto river, now known as “Westfall.” Chief Cornstalk had been scouting Colonel Lewis’s movements, and he, with the chiefs of other tribes, were beseeching Lord Dunmore to stop Colonel Lewis and save their towns and women and children.

LORD DUNMORE’S CAMPAIGN.

Thrice had Lewis received orders to halt, but on he went; and when near the Indian town, he was intercepted by Dunmore, who drew his sword upon Lewis and threatened him with instant death if he persisted in any further disobedience, and marched the army back to Camp Lewis, where the treaty went on to a satisfactory conclusion, in the presence of two thousand five hundred troops and all the confederate chiefs and their warriors.

There was one chief absent whom Dunmore much desired present—Logan, the great warrior of the Mingoes—who felt his people had been very unfortunate in their attempts at peaceful relations with the whites; and in order to secure his presence, John Gibson, an interpreter and friend of Logan’s, was detailed as messenger with dispatches to the chief, who resided at Old Chillicothe (Westfall), about four miles distant from Camp Lewis.

Of this matter Captain Gibson says, under oath, he found Logan at his home, but refused to attend the council, and that at the chief’s request they walked out some distance into the woods and sat down. Logan appeared much affected, and after shedding many tears and showing other manifestations of sorrow, told his pathetic story in reply to the request from Lord Dunmore, and which Gibson translated into English and delivered to Dunmore in the council assembled under the boughs of this noble tree on the banks of the Congo—and was read as follows, to wit:

“I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry and I gave him not meat; if ever he came cold or naked and I gave him not clothing.

“During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained in his tent, an advocate for peace. Nay, such was my love for the whites that those of my countrymen pointed at me as they passed by and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white man.’ I had even thought to have lived among them, but for the injuries of one man—Colonel Cresap—who last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, cut off all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge—I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. Yet do not harbor the thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”

The authorship of this message has been doubted and disputed by reason of its greatness. But it is well known that many of the native men of America have shown an ability for expression of thoughts surpassed by no people or nation in the world. Who could have thought it—who could have said it so effectively, by every gesture and living fiber—as it was expressed by Tecumseh, after finishing a speech at Vincennes holding, contrary to the United States Government, that no one or two tribes could make treaties conveying away lands without the consent of others equally interested? When done speaking, an aide of Governor Harrison, pointing to a vacant chair, said to Tecumseh, “Your father requests you to take a seat by his side.” Drawing his mantle around him, the chief proudly exclaimed: “My father! The sun (pointing upward) is my father, and the earth my mother; on her bosom I will repose,” and seated himself on the ground where he had been standing. And it is unusual, at least, that one with learning and general acquaintance with the high standard of natural ability of the Indian, and after so many years, should enter into a voluminous correspondence to prove that he (Jefferson) did not write “Logan’s reply.”

Some years since, a partial investigation of the papers of Lord Dunmore was made. While the original Gibson translation was not discovered, there was much to confirm the statements here given.

The expedition of Dunmore with an army of three thousand men into the heart of an Indian country, with mountains and wilderness hundreds of miles between him and supplies, at that early date, with that existing animosity between the Indians and his Virginia soldiery, makes it appear now, as it did at the time to many of his soldiers, of singular significance. When the military expedition reached the point of destination it found the enemy praying for peace. And while the chiefs were entertained in council, and the braves and soldiers were listening to Virginia oratory, small bands of maddened and vicious troops stole away and murdered Indian women and children, fired their towns, and with stolen horses discharged themselves from the army and fled the country.

The Indians were helpless, and the treaty fixing the Ohio river the boundary line went on, while the soldiers put in the time making speeches and passing resolutions. The following should be ever preserved as the thoughts of men in a far country, by a captain:

“Gentlemen—Having now concluded the campaign, by the assistance of Providence, with honor and advantage to the colony and ourselves, it only remains that we should give our country the stronger assurance that we are ready at all times, to the utmost of our power, to maintain and defend her just rights and privileges.

“We have lived about three months in the woods, without any intelligence from Boston, or from the delegates at Philadelphia. It is possible, from the groundless reports of designing men, that our countrymen may be jealous of the use such a body would make of arms in their hands at this critical juncture. That we are a respectable body is certain, when it is considered that we can live weeks without bread or salt; that we can sleep in the open air without any covering but that of the canopy of heaven; and that we can march and shoot with any in the known world. Blessed with these talents, let us solemnly engage to one another, and our country in particular, that we will use them for no purpose but for the honor and advantage of America, and of Virginia in particular. It behooves us, then, for the satisfaction of our country, that we should give them our real sentiments by way of resolves at this very alarming crisis.”

Thereupon the committee presented the following resolutions, which carried, and ordered printed in the Virginia Gazette:

“Resolved, That we will bear the most faithful allegiance to His Majesty, King George the Third, while His Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free people; that we will, at the expense of life and every thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in the support of the honor of his crown and the dignity of the British Empire. But as the love of liberty and attachment to the real interests and just rights of America outweigh every other consideration, we resolve we will exert every power within us for the defense of American liberty, and for the support of her just rights and privileges—not in any precipitous, riotous or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen.

“Resolved, That we entertain the greatest respect for his excellency, the Rt. Hon. Lord Dunmore, who commanded the expedition against the Shawanese, and who we are confident underwent the great fatigue of this singular campaign from no other motive than the true interests of the country.

“Signed by order and in behalf of the whole corps.

“Benjamin Ashby, Clerk.”

All of which shows political and personal resolutions have maintained a due degree of hypocrisy to the present, without material change.

Captain John Boggs and family located on this place in 1798, before the lands were surveyed or in market. And from Captain Williamson, an officer under Lord Dunmore, Captain Boggs procured many important facts in regard to Camp Lewis, Logan, and the noted tree. This large and valuable tract of land, on which the tree stands passed from the United States into the hands of Captain John Boggs, and is still owned by his descendants.

Monument of the Boggs Family.

In memory of the family settlement and historic events of the spot, John Boggs the third erected a handsome monument where stood the cabin in which three generations were born. The monument is within one hundred and fifty feet of the Logan Elm, is of pure granite, twelve feet square, base six feet, shaft fifteen feet, tapering. On each side are cut letters in commemoration of events connected with that spot. On one side is firmly set in the granite a bronze tablet, thirty by fifteen inches, bearing the picture of the capture of Captain Boggs’ son, William, in bas-relief. The figures depicted represent a thrilling and vivid scene which on that spot actually once occurred in view of the agonized family.

Indian Raid.

The landscape is an exact representation of the surroundings. In the left-hand corner is a log cabin, at the corner of which is the figure of an Indian with a gun to his shoulder; to the left, and fronting the cabin door stands an Indian. At the right of this is a field of wheat surrounded by a rail-fence. Several panels have been thrown down in the night, and the cattle are in the field eating the grain. Near the fence is seen a boy running up a slight ascent, making his way to a palisade on the elevation beyond—after him are two Indians in hot pursuit.

The Indians, under cover of darkness, had torn down the fence and turned the cattle upon the growing grain; then secreted themselves for events that might occur in the morning. The decoy was successful. The boy, awakening early, found the destructive scene, and, unsuspecting the authors of the mischief, proceeded at once to drive out the herd and to restore the fence. Suddenly an apparition of a hostile foe rises before him. He at once retreats toward the cabin, but there too he sees a redskin awaiting his approach. He turns, and, with the speed of dying fright, vainly endeavors to make the palisade on the elevation; but his course is beset with increasing pursuers on all sides, and at length, exhausted, is overcome and made captive to Indian cunning.

All this time, Captain Boggs stood sentinel at the cabin’s corner, guarding the family, while the son is relentlessly pursued by the hostile enemy. The whole is depicted and for the time preserved in bronze and granite; and as generations of the future stand before this consecrated record, it will extort thoughts of the pioneer—his pleasures and his sufferings—with venerated admiration for those whose lives marked out the pathway of our civilization.

Every nation, every country, and every town has historic trees. They are not without influence on the destiny of individuals, societies, and nations. They are objects of reverence—works of time—homes of generations—and the manifest wisdom of creation. In the tree is beheld in perfection an enduring living principle, exceeding all other forms of life—beginning in the morning of creation and ending only with the end of time. When moth and rust have corroded memorial in bronze, and years of the unseen future have crumbled the granite to dust, there will still be standing noble, historic trees, with all their lessons fresh and green.

---

CHAPTER V.
OHIO—HER COACH, CANAL, AND STEAMBOAT ERA.

At the close of the Revolution, a majority of the people cheerfully trusted to the wisdom and integrity of those who led the way to a country and conditions on which to found a republic. The patriots who unfurled the Declaration of Independence were glorified in the name of “United States of America.” And with thirteen stars, the red, white, and blue came forth a government strong and vigorous, honored and respected, amidst an epidemic of European wars. In the formation of the republican government, so few precedents were at hand that could be used as guides to the organization, the work was rendered herculean in character. But with General Washington, John Adams, Jonathan Dayton, Alexander Hamilton, and other patriotic Federalists, at the head, the people had no fears for the accepted Constitution. Still, the first President and his advisers were not blind to the dangers that surrounded the new republic. The First Congress (1789-90) assembled with but a small and uncertain majority favorable to the Constitution as adopted; and the combination of disaffected and opposing elements wore loud in their denunciations of the President and “that instrument;” and it required great wisdom, moderation, and concession to obtain the necessary contemplated amendments[23] and acts of Congress necessary to carry on and regulate the working operations of the several departments of the new government.

The citizens of the South, and those of the North were equally jealous of their interests. New England demanded a protective tariff, and the South “free-trade.” That which suited one locality was the policy not desired in another. Consequently, some states felt they were treated unfairly in this, and others in that, and a Congress failing to legislate special benefits to all found denunciations common with a disregard for law and order, occasionally amounting to open rebellion.[24]

At the very commencement of President Washington’s second term, things became stormy and taxed the wisdom of the man who had crowned a successful revolution, to manipulate the new machinery of a complex government into satisfactory running order. The cabinet and both branches of the legislative department were pretty evenly divided on the distracting questions of the times. France and England were at war—the French Republic expected reciprocal help from the United States. The Secretary of State (Mr. Jefferson) and Mr. Randolph, Attorney-General, contrary to the views of the President, espoused the cause of France, and were suspected of aiding Genet, the French minister, in issuing commissions to vessels of war to sail from American ports and cruise against the enemies of France.

Notwithstanding this, and the violent opposition of both houses of Congress, the President remained firm, that the people of the United States, under the circumstances, should not become involved in a war with Great Britain, and issued his neutrality proclamation, had the French minister recalled and accepted the resignation of the Secretary of State. Congress, however, persisted in doing all it could to strengthen the opposition to the President and bring on a war with England. When foiled in this, attempted by resolution to adopt the substance of Mr. Jefferson’s final report—“to cut off all intercourse with Great Britain, and as good republicans or democrats, either wear the ‘national cockade’ as evidence of opposition to neutrality and friendship for France.”

The resolution passed the House but was defeated in the Senate, by the casting vote of Vice-President John Adams, and saved the nation from disgrace. The common people had been partially persuaded by the doctrines of Jefferson that federalism meant the establishment of a limited monarchy, and want of confidence in the people. This was giving the position of Washington and his followers a coloring much below their patriotic conceptions. They held a government of laws must have principle of energy and coercion; and it was the concentration of this energy in a federal government which the convention gave, and which, to carryout into perfection, induced the Washington policy.

Had it been otherwise, had Mr. Jefferson’s ideas of government been placed in his own hands for organization, with his unlimited confidence in the virtue of the people, and their capacity for self government in the final experiment, the Constitution would have crumbled to pieces in his own hands. At the end of eight years of Washington’s administration, 1797, the nation was at peace at home and abroad—all disputes had been settled amicably excepting that of France—the credit of the government was never better—ample provision had been made for the payment of the public debt—“commerce had experienced unexampled prosperity—American tonnage had nearly doubled—the products of agriculture had found a ready market—the exports had increased from nineteen millions to more than fifty-six million dollars—and the amount of revenues from imports exceeded the most sanguine expectations, and the prosperity of the country was unparalleled, notwithstanding great losses from belligerent depredations.” How different the story when Mr. Jefferson turned the high office over to Mr. Madison, March 4, 1809, as given in the report of a committee of the legislature of Massachusetts, January previous to the close of Mr. Jefferson’s administration.

“Our agriculture is discouraged, the fisheries abandoned, navigation forbidden; our commerce at home and abroad restrained, if not annihilated; our navy sold, dismantled, or degraded to the service of cutters or gunboats; the revenue extinguished; the course of justice interrupted, and the nation weakened by internal animosities and divisions, at the moment when it is unnecessarily and improvidently exposed to war with Great Britain, France and Spain.”

The most peculiar and damaging political view held by Mr. Jefferson was that appropriations by the government for national internal improvements were unconstitutional. This was enforced as a cardinal principle of his “Republican-Democratic” party, and so influenced his party successors, Madison and Monroe, that during their administrations, appropriations and surveys were refused on constitutional grounds. However good, influential and honest the actors may have been, it is quite evident the political influences of those in power, from the commencement of the administration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801 to the end of Monroe’s in 1825, blocked the wheels of progress in civilization under the pretext of reverence for the Constitution.

It was generally rumored in Ohio politics that the Jeffersonian party were opposed to expenditures for national internal improvements, and before entering the Union the state presented her influence with the Eighth Congress for a national highway, from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio river at Wheeling, Virginia, and from Wheeling westward across the proposed State of Ohio. The measure passed Congress and was approved by President Jefferson as “a war measure and bond of union,” instead of an “unconstitutional improvement.”

This, however, was not considered, by Mr. Jefferson nor his party, binding in policy as a precedent; but Ohio politicians thought differently, and from necessity and importance of the subject kept it agitated in and out of Congress. And in 1816, after an able and full discussion of the constitutionality and expediency of a system of internal improvements by the general government, both houses of the Fourteenth Congress passed a bill appropriating the bonus which the United States Bank was to pay the Government for the charter, to purposes of internal improvement; but the bill was returned to Congress by the President (Mr. Madison) with his veto involving constitutional scruples, and the measure failed to become a law.

Notwithstanding both houses of Congress were at times favorable to improvements, the majority was not often found conservative, and in 1822 killed a small appropriation to repair the Cumberland road, built and controlled by the Government.

A small majority of the Eighteenth Congress, in 1823 and 1824, came around partially to the grounds occupied by the Ohio people on the subject of improvements, and made an appropriation of thirty thousand dollars, authorizing the expenditure on surveys, plans and estimates of such roads and canals as the President might deem of national importance.

President Monroe, after mature deliberation, gave the bill his approval. At that date, a portion of the New York and Erie Canal was in operation, and as an orator was very convincing and converting. This could not justly be called a “war measure,” nor a “bond of union;” and was universally accepted as a second precedent in favor of “internal improvements,” and ended the Jeffersonial dynasty as far south as the City of Washington; and in 1829 Andrew Jackson, in direct opposition to his supporters in the South, New England, and in New York, followed the precedent of Ex-President J. Q. Adams, indorsing the action of the Twentieth Congress, which declared the constitutionality and expediency of such improvements.

This fixed the policy of the Government for all future time, Ohio, feeling proud in the active part she had taken, having the honor of bringing about the first national internal improvement in the United States.

Spinning-Wheel.

Although the Government had changed its policy, the political education of the people had been such that many good citizens had little or no desire for changes or improvements that might destroy or disregard the sanctity of the constitution; nor could it be claimed they were much in favor of improvements of any kind—things were good enough. They did not expect to have every thing in the world, and were satisfied if things would remain as they were; they did not want any thing better than the easy routine in which they had spent much of their lives. The New York Canal was talked of as a private enterprise; but for what purpose above the cost of labor could not be stated, as there were no surplus productions in the country calling for a market, and so far Ohio people were “high protectionists of home industries,” and did not favor the introduction of “cheap foreign goods, nor imported labor.” They raised flax and wool, and, with the spinning-wheel and loom, manufactured the wearing apparel and household goods, and so sure as

“Man wants but little here below,

Nor wants that little long,”

the average citizen felt amply supplied with the necessaries of life, and could not well ask for more. He plowed his little piece of cleared ground with a “bull-plow,” having a wooden mold-board and cast-iron share; harrowed in his wheat, rye, oats, and turnips with a wooden-toothed harrow; dropped his corn by hand, and covered it with the hoe. Every spring he made enough maple-sugar for home consumption, and to exchange for tea, coffee, and salt; and if he had a few spare bushels of grain, they were taken to some one of the many copper-stills scattered over the country. And to him there was no encouragement for the improvement in wealth of state by establishing a commerce or trade that would sap the foundations of its home industries. And he feared for the future prospects of the North-west should the existing prohibitory tariff be removed between the East and West by cheap transportation, believing it would destroy home manufactures, diminish the price of labor, and produce “panics and paupers” beyond state ability and charity to maintain. The “flax-breaker’s” occupation would be gone; carding-machines, spinning-wheels, and looms, would no longer be manufactured or used, and the vast multitude of laborers carrying on these “infant industries” would be thrown out of employment and be “obliged to steal or starve.” Even the young woman, who makes an honest living by spinning sixteen “cuts” daily, at fifty cents a week and boarded, would be thrown upon the cold embraces of the world, and thousands of other honest poor would be ruined for want of protection against such an influx of “pauper labor and foreign manufacture.” And the man of one idea considered the condition of “home industries,” under contemplated internal improvements, as discouraging, as a “prospective repeal of a protective tariff.”

As early as 1807, Jesse Hawley conceived the idea of a canal from the Hudson river to Lake Erie—a distance of three hundred and fifty miles—believing it would be a profitable investment for the state and nation, that it would populate the North-west and establish important commercial relations with western states. But the newspapers pronounced Jesse “a crank,” and refused to make public his thoughts upon the subject. But this did not change the opinions of practical business men, whose talk of canals and intersecting canals did not meet with much favor among legislators, which, perhaps, represented the sentiments of their constituents. And it took nearly half as long as it did the people of New York to build the Erie canal, for those of Ohio to understand that a canal, commerce and free trade, would increase labor and enrich a state. And for the timely commencement of the great work the people of Ohio are much indebted to W. Steele, of Cincinnati, for his trial surveys and intelligent letters upon the subject at an early day, when few persons entertained the practicability of such an undertaking.

The following extracts from a letter published in the Olive Branch, February 27, 1821, on the “Project of a Canal,” is but a fair specimen of the philanthropy of the times, and says:

“Nothing can be of more importance to the State of Ohio than the making of a navigable canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio river. That it is practicable to make such canal admits not of a doubt. Were it made, and the Hudson and Erie canal finished, we should have an easy and cheap highway on which to transport our surplus produce to the New York market. I have had the level between the Scioto and the Sandusky bay at Lower Sandusky. From the summit level on the most favorable route for a canal that I am acquainted with, to Lower Sandusky, the descent, agreeable to the report of Mr. Farrer, whom I employed for the purpose of taking the levels, is 318 feet.... And by the report of the engineers employed by the State of Virginia, they make the Ohio river at the mouth of the Great Kanawha river 83 feet lower than Lake Erie. If those levels are to be relied on, and we ascertain what is the amount of descent in the Ohio river from the mouth of the Great Kanawha to the point where the canal is intended to communicate with the Ohio, we will then know what will be the whole amount of lockage required. If we allow 50 feet for the descent, the lockage will be as follows: From Lake Erie to the summit level, 318 feet; and from summit level to Ohio river, 433 feet; making the whole amount, 751 feet. I do not know how near this estimate is to the truth, but I am satisfied in my own mind the lockage would be between seven and eight hundred feet.

“The estimate of the commissioners for making the New York canal is $13,800 per mile. Owing to the reduction in the price of labor it is found it can be made for much less money. The ground for making a canal across the State of Ohio is much more favorable than that over which the New York canal is now making. Although there would be more lockage on the Ohio canal than on the New York, yet it is believed it can be made at less expense than an equal distance of the New York canal. When we take into consideration the low price at which labor can be had, and the advantage to be gained by the employment of experienced engineers now employed on the New York canal, I think I hazard but little in saying that a canal can be made across this state for $12,000 a mile.”... “I am aware that some will say that ‘the State of Ohio is too young and too poor to undertake this mighty project.’ But I deny that the State of Ohio is either young or poor. She contains at this time more than 500,000 souls, and ranks fourth or fifth state in the Union. Can a state with such a population (of industrious people, too) be poor? It has been justly remarked, ‘That population is power; and industry is wealth,’ so I contend that we are both powerful and rich.

“The inquiry of some will be, how is the money to be raised to dig this ‘mighty ditch?’ Raise it in the same way New York does—borrow it on the credit of the state. Many there are, I have no doubt, who will doubt whether money can be borrowed on the credit of the state. To such I would say, go and try. If we stand at the base of a hill and look up, without making an effort to ascend, we will never reach its summit....

“Although it cost $2,400,000 (to make 200 miles), it might not be necessary to borrow any thing like that sum. The distribution of the sum required would go to the people of the state, and give more relief from their present pecuniary embarrassments than can be had from any laws enacted for that purpose. As the lands in the vicinity of the canal belonging to the general government would be greatly enhanced in value, I think it not improbable that Congress will make a donation to the state of a body of land in the vicinity, so far as it passes through their territory; if so, it would aid very much in making it.

“A member of the House of Commons once asked an eminent engineer for what purpose he apprehended ‘rivers were made.’ His answer was ‘to feed navigable canals.’ Such was the opinion of a great man, and such indeed must have been the opinion of many others, for we find canals in Great Britain in many places running parallel with navigable rivers. Persons unacquainted with the cheapness at which goods are transported on canals, are surprised when they learn that a ton weight can be transported at the rate of one cent a mile. The illustrious Fulton, but a short time previous to his death, gave it as his opinion that goods could be transported on the New York canal, when completed, at the rate of one cent a ton per mile. We find him supported in this by Col. C. G. Haines, corresponding secretary to the New York association for the promotion of internal improvement.

“Mr. Phillips, in the preface of his history of ‘Inland Navigation,’ says: ‘All canals may be considered as so many roads of a certain kind on which one horse will draw as much as thirty horses do on ordinary turnpike roads, and the public would be great gainers were they to lay out upon making every mile of canal twenty times as much as they expend upon making a mile of turnpike road.’ And Sutcliff, in his treatise on canals, says: ‘That within the last twenty-five years there has been expended on canals in England more than one hundred and thirty million dollars.’ A country is never made poor by making internal improvements, even if the people are taxed to make them. If money be taken from the people, it is again paid out among them, and kept in circulation.

“When the canals through Ohio and New York are finished, I have no doubt but that two-thirds of the surplus produce of all the country watered by the Ohio and its tributary streams above the falls, would pass through them to the New York market. That it would be to the interest of every shipper to give the preference to New York is obvious.... The amount of produce that perishes on the way and at New Orleans every fifteen years, would itself more than pay for building a canal across the State of Ohio. During the spring tides, when the principal part of the produce of the western country is carried to New Orleans, that market is glutted, and the shipper is very often pleased at being able to return home with half the money his cargo cost him.

“If Mr. Fulton’s estimates as to the expenses at which goods can be transported on canals be correct, the expenses of transporting a barrel of flour to the City of New York (allowing ten barrels for a ton), will be as follows:

From Ohio river to Lake Erie, 200 m.	20c
Down the lake, 260 m.	20c
New York canal, 353 m.	35c
Down the Hudson, 160 m.	15c

“Total nine hundred and seventy-three miles for ninety cents. To this must be added the tollage of both canals. The lowest rate at which flour at present is freighted to New Orleans from the falls is $1.25 per barrel. Nor is it probable that the price will be reduced, as the boat which cost $100 to $150 is generally thrown away at New Orleans, or sold for a sum not exceeding the tenth part of their cost.

“It will be recollected, that while our produce is carried to New York at the cheap rate quoted above, that our foreign goods can be brought through the same channel at the same rates, from sixty-seven cents to one dollar and twelve cents per ton. More or less of these goods the people will have, and the cheaper the rates at which they can be furnished, the better for the country. And besides, it must be recollected if they are brought across the mountains, by way of Pittsburg, or from New Orleans by way of the Mississippi and Ohio, that the expense of transportation is paid to citizens of other states; if brought over the Ohio canal, the money saved in the state thereby, would, in twenty five years, amount to more than the whole cost of the canal.

“It must be admitted that the risk on the canal and lake is much less than on the Ohio and Mississippi, and the time required to carry the produce that way much less. By turning the trade from New Orleans to New York, we would save thereby the lives of many of our most enterprising and useful citizens, who would otherwise fall victims to the diseases of the lower Mississippi. The State of Kentucky has lost more of her citizens by the New Orleans trade within the last fifteen years than she lost by the late war, and it is known she bled at every pore.

“Lateral canals may be made from the main canals in many places, which will serve to collect to the main canal the rich products of the soil through which they pass, and at the same time afford means of furnishing the country with many of the necessities of life at prices greatly below what they now cost without the canal. I will only name the article of salt, which by means of the canal may be furnished to people in the interior of the state from the salines of New York at a price but little, if any thing, exceeding fifty cents per bushel. It is impossible to calculate the benefits that may be derived to the people of this state by the making of the canal. In its progress it will, no doubt, lay open rich beds of minerals. It will lay us, as it were, alongside the Atlantic. It will, in short, elevate the character of the state, and put it half a century in advance of her present situation....

“It only remains for the legislature of Ohio to apply the means within their reach to accomplish this desirable object. When accomplished, there can be no doubt but that it will produce a sufficient revenue to defray the expense’s of the state government.

“W. Steele.
Cincinnati, Ohio, 1820.”

The arguments made for internal improvements were good; but to the child of nature such talk became a source of alarm. To destroy the forests would diminish the game supply, and he soon began to feel the country was becoming too highly civilized for good and easy living; that buckskin breeches and tow trowsers were already being discarded for imported goods. And when the spirit of advancing civilization came within sight, he who had no fence around his cabin, or little else besides sunflowers or a peach tree to indicate manual labor near the unbounded premises, sold his land at a small advance, and, with family and dogs, moved out to “Ingianny.”

Previous to 1820 the inhabitants of the North-west had very little prospect that agriculture would ever be the “road to affluence.” The natural barriers to transportation were viewed as permanent obstacles. A water-way was ridiculed by high authority, which pronounced it little short of madness, and the newspapers in the East had shown the impracticability; and the Western land-owner manifested but little dissatisfaction. He found his way to this country in order to live, and was happy in finding enough to make it easy. He anticipated but little from agriculture as a source of profit. In the Eastern states it had not given satisfaction. But with the population increasing and foreign demand improving, and facilities for transportation better, things showed they were undergoing a change in the older states; and the markets were becoming better, with better management of farms and farming, than at any period since colonial times.

In 1823 Charles A. Goodrich, of Hartford, Conn., wrote: “Until within a few years agriculture, both as a science and art, is receiving much of that attention which its acknowledged importance demands. It is beginning to be regarded, as it should be, not only as the basis of subsistence and population, but as the parent of individual and national opulence.”

At this date corn was selling to feeders at six cents per bushel in Ohio, and wheat at twenty-five cents. But a few years later agriculture in the North-west was beginning to be regarded as the “basis of subsistence and parent of individual and national opulence,” also.

The idea of a prospective market for the products of the soil, that would well remunerate the labor of production, was already being felt, and creating an enthusiasm and preparation for farming on a larger scale. Labor was plenty and wages fair, and the work of destruction of timber and increasing the acreage for cultivation went on rapidly. Large areas were deadened to facilitate the removal, and the sunshine in many places found its way to earth, where it had been excluded for ages. And the common squirrel hunter soon underwent an expansion of character that led on to eminence in agriculture, art, science, commerce, courts, congress, and cabinet. The things said and done caused the legislature, in 1822, to pass an act authorizing the employment of engineers to examine and report the “practicability of making a canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio river;” and in 1825, after four years of the most arduous labor and discussion, the work was determined upon, and Governor De Witt Clinton and others, among whom were Solomon Van Rensselaer, of Albany, and United States Judge Conkling and Mr. Lord, of New York, were invited to be present at the commencement of the great work, which was to have its beginning three miles west of Newark, July 4, 1825.

The people of the entire state were under high excitement at the new era which seemed approaching so rapidly, and acted quite differently from what they likely would at the present day on the commencement of a public enterprise. Then many thousands assembled to see “The Father of Internal Improvements,” and to hear what “the best-looking man the nation had ever produced” had to say on the subject of which he was the reputed father.

The time was near at hand, and on the arrival of the great Governor of New York at Cleveland, the ovation was grand; he was welcomed by Governor Morrow, state legislature, officials, military organizations, and by the people. And flags, and guns, and noisy display were beyond the power of description. And before the sun had risen, July 4, 1825, every thoroughfare to Newark was crowded with all kinds of loaded vehicles; men and women on horseback, and men, women, and children on foot—many of whom had traveled all night in order to reach the appointment on time. And the wonder was, where all the immense, uncounted, and unaccountable mass of human-beings came from.

The day was fair and the air cool and balmy, as Ohio atmosphere is after recent July showers. Newark at this time had less than one thousand inhabitants, but the country surrounding was amply large to accommodate the crowd which desired to pay their respects to the man whose influence, energy, ability, and perseverance were able to advance civilization, at once, half a century, by the magic wand of public improvements. And when Governor Clinton’s carriage appeared on the public square at Newark, thousands of voices rent the air with loud and long huzzas of welcome; and to which was added, the firing of one hundred guns. And the immense procession at once began moving for the spot prepared for the ceremony of the “spade and barrow,” three miles in the country. Governor Clinton took the first spadeful amid the enthusiastic shouts of thousands. The Ohio Governor, squirrel hunter, statesman, and farmer, next sunk the implement its full depth. And so from one to another the spade passed, until the wheel-barrow could hold no more, and was taken to the designated dump by Captain Ned King, of Chillicothe, amid one wild, indescribable, and continuous cheering.

Hon. Thomas Ewing was orator of the day, and when the Governor of New York attempted his reply, the bursts of applause were so great he was obliged to pause, “and being unaccustomed to such demonstrations and tokens of respect, shed tears in the presence of his worshipers.” After the addresses the entire audience, estimated at not less than ten thousand, dined in the shade of the wide-spreading beech trees, the underbrush having been cleared off from several acres for the purpose, and seats arranged and tables spread with a sumptuous dinner for all, furnished by the liberality of one man, Goetleib Steinman, of Lancaster, Ohio.

The regular toasts were limited to thirteen, but the volunteers were still going on when the editor of the Olive Branch retired late in the evening.

1. General George Washington.

2. The President of the United States.

3. The Governor of Ohio.

4. The man who guided by the unerring light of science with vigorous and firm mind, has led and now leads his countrymen in the splendid career of “internal improvements”—our honored guest.

5. The great State of Ohio.

6. Legislature.

7. The Canal Commissioners.

8. Ohio Canal—The great artery of America, which will carry vitality to all the extremities of the Union.

9. State of New York—She has given to the world a practical lesson what freemen can do when determined to secure their own happiness.

10. Henry Clay—the able supporter of “internal improvements.”

11. General Bolivar—The Washington of South America.

12. The power of free government.

13. The fair sex of our country—In prosperity the partners of our joys, and in adversity our greatest solace.

Volunteer—

By De Witt Clinton—The Ohio Canal—A fountain of wealth, a chain of union, a dispenser of glory.

By General Van Rensselaer—The memory of General Wayne—By his sword, the way was cleared for the settlement of the country.

By I. Johnston—National Improvements—A fit subject for national pride.

By Wm. Lord—Thomas Jefferson—A man with one mistake.

Canal Era. 1825.

The 4th of July, 1825, only a few months prior to the completion of the New York Canal, machinery was put in motion to revolve until the end of time. On this day the policy of the state government in favor of internal improvements was permanently inaugurated. Even the few opposing minds of those who had never seen the walls of China, but wished to maintain the state secluded from the commercial world by means of the high tariff (the barriers nature had vouchsafed to the inhabitants), weakened in their ideas of “home protection,” or at once became favorable to the doctrine of reciprocity, which at that early date was the “soft” or synonym for free trade. And when it became satisfactorily demonstrated that improvements would increase the amount and price of labor, as well as the values of its products, such individuals changed to vociferous advocates of a canal, saying: “If the canal can secure such prices for the products of the soil, and in return furnish foreign cheap supplies, we can afford to abandon looms and spinning-wheels, and let supply and demand take care of themselves.” And the energetic boards of construction were unanimously supported by the people, and soon completed eight hundred miles of canals and one thousand miles of toll-roads, with a disbursement of over fifteen million dollars, borrowed money. The state, however, suffered no inconvenience on this account; its credit was good, and all that was necessary to obtain funds as fast as needed was to call upon the Lord who came to Ohio with Governor Clinton at the opening.

Log-Cabin Luminary.

Among the multitude of great men assembled on this occasion, no one did more or was nearer and dearer in the hearts of the people than the man who mastered mathematics, Greek, Latin, and law, while a “hireling” at the Kanawha Salt Works; the man who did his reading at night by the light of the furnace or a “log-cabin luminary,” a lard lamp; the man who received the first collegiate degree of A.M. ever issued in the North-west; the orator of the day, Hon. Thomas Ewing. No such universal and intense enthusiasm was ever before, or again will be, so overwhelmingly manifested in Ohio as that of the opening of the canals; no other object for public demonstration is likely will ever approach it in importance.

Governor Clinton and party were escorted from Newark to Columbus by the state militia, legislature, county and state officers and eminent citizens. And in reply to Governor Morrow’s reception, Governor Clinton said:

“I find myself at a loss for language to express my profound sense of the distinguished notice taken of me by the excellent chief magistrate of this powerful and flourishing state, and by our numerous and respected fellow citizens assembled in this place, I feel that my services have been greatly overrated, but I can assure you that your kindness has not fallen on an ungrateful heart—that I most cordially and sincerely reciprocate your friendly sentiments, and that any agency I may have had in promoting the cardinal interests to which you have been pleased to refer, has been as sincere as it has been disinterested.

“When Ohio was an applicant for admission into the Union, it was my good fortune to have it in my power, in co-operation with several distinguished friends, most of whom are now no more, to promote her views and to assist in elevating her from a territorial position to the rank of an independent state. This was an act of justice to her and duty of high obligation on our part. At that early period I predicted, and indeed it required no extraordinary sagacity to foresee, that Ohio would in due time be a star of the first magnitude in the federal constellation; that she contains within her bosom the elements of greatness and prosperity, and that her population would be the second, if not the first, in the confederacy.

“The number of your inhabitants at the next census will probably exceed a million. Cultivation of the soil has advanced with gigantic strides—your fruitful country is teeming with plenty, and has a vast surplus beyond your consumption of all the productions of agriculture. Villages, towns and settlements are springing up and extending in all directions, and the very ground on which we stand, but a few years ago a dreary wilderness, is now a political metropolis of the state, and the residence of knowledge, elegance and hospitality.

“I have considered it my solemn duty in concurrence with your worthy chief magistrate, your very able canal board of finance and superintendence, and other patriotic and enlightened citizens of this state, to furnish all the resources in my power in aid of the great system of internal navigation so auspiciously commenced on the fifteenth anniversary of our national independence.

“This is a cause in which every citizen and every state in our country is deeply interested; for the work will be a great centripetal power that will keep the states within their federal orbits—and an adamantine chain that will bind the Union together in the most intimate connection of interests and communication. It therefore secures, not only the prosperity of Ohio, but the union of the states and the consequent blessings of free government; and now I think it my duty to declare that I have the utmost confidence in the practicability of the undertaking, and the economy and ability with which it will be executed. In five years it may, and will be completed, in all probability, and I am clearly of the opinion, that in two years after the construction of this work, it will produce an annual revenue of at least a million dollars, and hope this remark may now be noted, if any thing I say shall be deemed worthy of particular notice, in order that its accuracy may be tested by experience.

“I beg you, sir, to accept the assurance of my high respect for your private and public services, and to feel persuaded that I consider your approbation and the approbation of patriotic men an ample reward for my service, that a benevolent Providence may have enabled me to render to our common country.”[25]

From Columbus the party was escorted to Springfield, Dayton, Hamilton, and Cincinnati, receiving public dinners and the most extravagant and enthusiastic demonstrations of appreciation and respect by thousands of citizens. At Cincinnati the party were invited guests to an entertainment given in honor of Henry Clay.

While Governor Clinton was in Cincinnati, he yielded to the pressing invitation to go to Louisville and render an opinion on the question then in dispute between Kentucky and Indiana, as to which side of the river was the better adapted for a canal around the falls. His decided opinion was in favor of Kentucky, to which all parties assented, and the canal was constructed accordingly.

On returning home, the Governor passed through Portsmouth, Piketon, Chillicothe, Circleville, Lancaster, Summit, and Zanesville, via Pittsburgh, receiving every-where the most distinguished attention.

All business for the time was suspended. He and his party were every-where treated as Ohio’s invited guests; and the Governor was attended by all the county officers, eminent citizens, and multitudes to the next county line, where a like escort was in waiting with the best livery the country could produce; halting at each county town, for a grand reception, ornamented with speeches, toasts, flags, and firearms.

Thus the benefactor of the nation passed from one county to another, across a great state, and as soon as the advance-guard came in sight of any town, the bells of all the churches, public buildings, and hotels, gave their long and merry peels of welcome—the cannon roared and a vast crowd of waiting citizens of town and country marched forward with huzzas and banners of “Welcome—welcome—to the Father of Internal Improvements.”

The following extract, written at the time by a cool-headed representative of the state, is expressive without coloring or exaggeration:

“The grave and the gay, the man of gray hairs and the ruddy-faced youth; matrons and maidens, and even lisping children, joined to tell his worth, and on his virtues dwell; to hail his approach and welcome his arrival. Every street, where he passed, was thronged with multitudes, and the windows were filled with the beautiful ladies of Ohio, waving their snowy white handkerchiefs, and casting flowers on the pavement where he was to pass on it.”

No king, emperor, president, or statesman; no manufacturer of personal or political enthusiasm, even of palace-car order, ever obtained that intensity and spontaneous manifestation as was shown “The Father of Internal Improvements,” on his passage through the state.

And it is yet a sorrowful reflection to memory, that such magnetism, ability, and influence for good did not live to see the Lake Erie and Ohio Canal completed; that his life’s sacrifices, in physical and mental efforts for the advancement of civilization in the North-west, have been so soon almost forgotten. But more; that his good works should have been so cheaply recognized at his death by a state he had enriched by making himself so poor. But it is never too late to be just, nor too long to right a wrong.

About this time, an era of “prosperity” had already dawned in the East, and was heralded from mouth to mouth—from the Ohio river to Lake Michigan—that the “Erie Canal” was completed, and the first fleet of boats left the Hudson, October 26, 1825, laden with emigrants for the North-west.

On the banners this fleet carried were the significant words, “The Star of Empire Westward Takes its Way,” and the cannons were heard and answered from Buffalo to New York City.

This canal proved a success even beyond the expectations of the most sanguine; and a line of commerce was at once established from tide-water to the western chain of lakes, and soon filled the new states with population and their ports with merchandise. And the Ohio protectionist, who had been so fearful of an influx of “pauper labor” and the products of “foreign industries,” found his own state, while discussing it, ready to disburse fifteen million dollars for day labor in the construction of internal improvements. And the Squirrel Hunter, whose life was one of education, development, power, and progress, hailed with delight the opportunity to work on the Lake Erie canal, twenty-six dry days of twelve hours each, for the sum of eight dollars. It was the first privilege ever offered in Ohio to obtain so much money in so short time, without encroachment upon his store of squirrel and coon skins.

In 1824, the year before the completion of the Erie canal, prices of produce still ranged low: twenty-five cents for wheat and six cents for corn, with no market or demand excepting for making whisky with copper stills. But when the Erie canal was finished and the Ohio and Lake Erie under way, prices on all kinds of produce advanced more than two hundred per cent, with such an unlimited demand that the improvements converted every body into favor with public works. And times became better in Ohio than ever before—corn advanced to forty and fifty cents and wheat to seventy-five and one dollar per bushel; and with the state distribution of millions of money, and her rich and productive soil, she was lifted out of the groove of idle content into the bright sunshine of prosperity and improvement.

It soon became manifest that internal improvements increased the demand and prices of the products of the soil, with a diminution in value of most all kinds of manufactured articles used in exchange. The salines of New York killed the salt manufacture in Ohio as effectually as free trade did the business of the wheelwright, the reelwright, the manufacturer of looms, reeds, flyers, hackles, plows, nails, and other “infant industries.” All were ended by the canal; and a man or boy who desired a new hat had, no longer than 1825, to go to a “hat shop” and have his head measured with a tape-line, and diagram registered, with full directions of minor matters—material, color, and price—and then wait the making.

By means of the New York canal, peddlers were offering for sale almost every thing enjoyed in the East, “at unprecedented low prices;” and even the meridian mark in the south doorway was of no use any longer, except to regulate a Yankee clock. These Connecticut time-pieces were distributed to nearly every resident landholder in the state at sixty dollars or less, on a year’s credit, in the form of a note with six per cent interest—a clock that cost the peddler two dollars and fifty cents at a New England factory.

Traveling merchants of all kinds flocked into the North-west like squirrels at moving time, and the epidemic struck Pennsylvania so disastrously that the Hon. John Andrew Schultz, at the time governor of that state, is reported as having memorialized the legislature for a law preventing this class of non-residents from perambulating the country, selling articles of no value, and often base counterfeits of things of domestic use, saying that in his neighborhood, “They were palming off counterfeit basswood nutmegs, when every body knows the genuine are made of sassafrac.”

The opening of the canal trade gave interest and amusement to thousands of persons. On the day appointed citizens came long distances to witness the filling of the ditch with water, and the floating of boats as they came along in the pride of the names they bore in honor of favorite citizens living along the line, as “The James Rowe,” “The Dr. Coats,” “The James Emmitt,” “The Sam Campbell,” “The General Worthington,” etc., lettered in gold, all of which was purely complimentary to the individual, and not thought of as an advertising dodge, although it may have suggested afterwards its advantages in this line to members of the Board of Public Works.

The remarkable advancement in the prosperity of the state resulting from the canals exceeded the expectations of their best friends so far that it will probably ever remain as the most notable era in the history of the state. Increased prosperity and rising civilization advanced step by step. From the pack-saddle to the freight-wagon, stage-coach, canal-boat, steamboat and railroad, each served or is serving a good purpose in the elevation of the social, intellectual and moral faculties of American citizens.

Ohio Stage Coach.

From the organization of the state until the introduction of canals and railroads, inland transportation of merchandise and travel was done by means of stage-coaches and freight-wagons. The coaches were stoutly constructed, with leather suspensions for springs, with inside dimensions for nine persons, and somewhat like a Chicago street-car—enough room outside for all who were able to find a place to “hang on.” At the rear each coach was provided with a capacious boot for the accommodation of Saratoga trunks and U. S. mail-bags. The driver had an elevated outside seat in front, and proudly pulled the strings on four spirited horses, which were driven in relays of ten miles, and under favorable circumstances would, in this way, make eight miles an hour, including stops for changes, and times of arrival and departure at the stations were very punctually made on good roads.

Often it became amusing to see how easy a good-hearted driver who loved his team, as many drivers did, could favor it by letting the horses walk up each little ascent, but when in sight of the change would blow the horn and crack the whip, and go in flying, with a mark “behind time” for the next driver and relay to make up. But the “make up” seldom came, and it was nothing unusual in a distance of two hundred miles to find the coaches fifteen to twenty hours behind the schedule time.

There were no improved roads north of Columbus for nearly fifty years, and during the wet season, or thawing of the frozen road-bed, staging became slow and laborious. If not mixed with pleasure, it was the only means of inland intercourse of a public character the inhabitants could look to.

Charles Dickens, on his way from Columbus, Ohio, to Buffalo, N. Y., via Sandusky City, in 1842, accurately describes the roughness of traveling by stage-coach and the jolting of the corduroy roads over bogs and swamps, and says: “At length, between ten and eleven o’clock at night, a few feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian village, where we were to stay till morning, lay before us. They were gone to bed at the log inn, which was the only house of entertainment in the place, but soon answered our knocking, and got some tea for us in a sort of kitchen or common room, tapestried with old newspapers pasted against the wall.

“The bed-chamber to which my wife and I were shown was a large, low, ghostly room, with a quantity of withered branches on the hearth, and two doors without any fastening, opposite to each other, both opening upon the black night and wild country, and so contrived that one of them always blew the other open, a novelty in domestic architecture which I do not remember to have seen before, and which I was somewhat disconcerted to have forced on my attention after getting into bed, as I had a considerable sum in gold for our traveling expenses in my dressing case. Some of the luggage, however, piled against the panels, soon settled this difficulty, and my sleep would not have been very much affected that night, I believe, though it had failed to do so.

“My Boston friend climbed up to bed somewhere in the roof, where another guest was already snoring hugely. But being bitten beyond his power of endurance, he turned out again, and fled for shelter to the coach, which was airing itself in front of the house. This was not a very politic step as it turned out, for the pigs scenting him, and looking upon the coach as a kind of pie with some manner of meat inside, grunted around it so hideously that he was afraid to come out again, and lay there shivering till morning. Nor was it possible to warm him, when he did come out, by means of a glass of brandy, for in Indian villages the legislature, with a very good and wise intention, forbids the sale of spirits by tavern-keepers.”

For want of roads, traveling by coach was slow and laborious, in all the north-western states. In 1840, the writer was treated to a five cents per mile ride across the State of Michigan, from Detroit to New Buffalo, now Benton Harbor, on Lake Michigan, a distance of two hundred miles. It was mid-winter, but not frozen hard, and required nearly three days and two nights of joltings and fatiguing monotony. The joys felt on arriving in sight of steamboat navigation are still fresh in the recollections of the past.

Stage coaches had their centers for distribution in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, and were used in the principal mail lines over the state. Here too, the African skin became a perplexing question. The dictum of slavery had to be respected. If a colored person desired to be carried to a given point, he could prepay to such—his money was never refused on any account but for his color there was no time-table of departure or arrival. If no objections were raised by a passenger, he would at once be started on his way as an outside incumbrance. But if at any time while on the route, at a station or “change,” a passenger should be added who objected to riding in the same coach with a “free nigger,” as was no unusual thing, the colored passenger would be obliged to stop off and wait for a coach containing more liberal sentiments, or take the road on foot. This treatment on all the coach lines was witnessed so frequently that it ceased to call forth marks of disapproval. The principle in a milder form appears to have been transferred from the old stage-coach to the great railroad Cincinnati built South, by ignoring the constitution of the state, and as some thought at the time, subsidizing the Supreme Court. On this road the American born citizen with African blood, however remote the descent, or great the admixture, is refused admittance to coaches accorded to all other nationalities. Why? it is not necessary to state.

The wagons for freight were large and strong, and, having a cover of white canvas, gave them the name of “Prairie Schooners.” They were usually drawn by six horses, and on long routes traveled in companies; and trains could be seen moving slowly along in line, all laden with merchandise of the East, or on their way East, carrying the products of Ohio industry to an eastern market. The style of the “schooner” and the wagons themselves have “been out of print” so long, not one appeared on exhibition at the Centennial World’s Fair. They were all of the same pattern, and as “near alike as peas;” differing in every respect from the emigrant wagon of later date.

Prairie Schooner.

The bed or body of the “schooner” was formed by a stout frame-work of the best seasoned bent-wood, and put together as immovable and durable as any railroad coach body of the present day. The shape, covering, etc., is shown by [annexed illustration]. The teams were composed of large draft-horses. The “near” wheel-horse carried a saddle, in addition to his harness, for the accommodation of the driver. This saddle-horse, with the near front animal, or “leader,” constituted the managing horses of the whole team. All orders were given, as required, to these; they were always wakeful, watchful, and obedient. A good leader and a reliable near wheel-horse were boastful prizes of their owners; and most teamsters in those days owned their entire outfits, and were exceedingly kind to their animals.

What may seem peculiar, whether having four or six animals in the team, the driver used only a single line—one string attached to the “leader,” and to him, with the aid of the “saddle-horse,” safety and correct actions of all the members of the team were assured.

Many were the thousands of tons these lines carried over the mountains. But the tread of the caravan and the crack of the “black-snake”[26] were no longer heard on the Alleghanies after the completion of the Erie Canal (in 1825); and ceased entirely as a system of transportation on the operation of the Ohio Canal (in 1832). The “schooners” and “Branches of the United States Bank” wound up and quit business in Ohio about the same time. It was an off year for political speculators. President Jackson vetoed the bill to renew the charter of that monster monopoly entitled “The United States Bank,” an institution owned and controlled by a few wealthy foreign and American citizens, who were receiving exclusive privileges, favors, and support from the government.

Ohio did not feel the suspension of this great monopoly with its thirty-five millions so severely. Millions of money had just been distributed over the state for labor in the construction of internal improvements, and with canals, coaches, and steamboats, and agriculture in a nourishing condition, the prosperity that seemed lost in the ruins of speculation and bankruptcy, proved a small impediment in line of progress or march of empire.

The people did not become idle or discouraged; farming interests were increasing all the time, and more attention was directed to schools and education than ever before; and civilization was manifestly and permanently on the advance. Still the conditions of trade suffered serious embarrassments connected with the unstable condition of the currency or money of the country. Bank-notes of one state were at a heavy discount in every other. This, with bank and individual failures, caused much inconvenience for a time, but things soon grew better. Population and aggregate wealth of the state increased, and in 1847 gave the greatest yield of produce ever previously harvested, and which, owing to the “Irish famine,” was disposed of at speculation prices, and the state went on to prosperity and comparative excellence and influence.

The mass of descendants of pioneers in Ohio looked forward to agriculture as the source of subsistence and independent competency. “Millionaire,” in early days, was a word seldom used, and entirely unknown in biography. The pioneer saw the necessity for the promotion and advancement of true civilization, that every citizen should own a home—a place he might call his own—a place to live and labor for the good of himself and others. And not until the introduction of the railroad president, private palace cars, trusts, combines, and transformation of the public service into party machines for becoming suddenly rich, did the more observing recognize the true estimate and sound brotherhood existing with the gold bags of the nation. Nor did the poor suspect that combined wealth would ever dream as did the thirsting Turk at midnight hour—“that Liberty, her knee in suppliance bent, should tremble at its power.”

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CHAPTER VI.
OHIO—HER RAILROAD AND TELEGRAPH ERA.

The canal era proved so satisfactory that people took their steps more rapidly than ever before, and began measuring the hours by dollars and cents, and the value of life by the amount of labor performed. The feeling that something should be done to increase time and diminish space became universal, and not a few prospectors had their eyes open for the “old stone” that turned all it touched to gold.

The application of steam as the coming motor power for transportation and travel was pictured in the minds of many inventors in this country and in Europe; and trials of engines and their working abilities became the all-absorbing subject of the times, and as early as 1835 it could be seen that provincialism was passing away and that the citizens of Ohio felt that coaches, wagons and canal-boats were too slow and insufficient for advanced civilization.

The opening of a road between Manchester and Liverpool, September 15, 1830, and one in South Carolina the following January, gave the subject increased interest, although the efforts were exceedingly crude, and often bordering on the ridiculous. It was, however, a problem that had to be worked out, and every one having a mind for construction became a model maker of locomotives and railroad tracks. Even Peter Cooper built an engine and named it “Tom Thumb,” and in his attempt to test its superiority over horse-power was beaten owing to that “if” which always catches the rear contestant. It appears that in 1830 the Baltimore & Ohio road had a double track finished from Baltimore to Ellicott’s Mills, a distance of fifteen miles, and was utilized by means of horse-power. Mr. Cooper, who had built a small locomotive after his own mind to demonstrate to his own satisfaction the possibilities of steam as a motor power on roads, after making a number of successful trips to the mills and return, a race was proposed between “Tom Thumb” and its light open car, and a car and one horse of those run by the company occupying the road. The race was to start at the Relay House and end in Baltimore, a distance of nine miles.

On the 28th day of August, 1830, just seventeen days before the Manchester and Liverpool Exhibition, the start was made, and, as reported at the time:

“At first the gray had the best of it, for his steam would be applied to the greatest advantage on the instant, while the engine had to wait until the rotation of the wheels set the blower to work. The horse was perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead when the safety valve of the engine lifted, and the thin blue vapor issuing from it showed an excess of steam. The blower whistled, the steam blew off in vapory clouds, the pace increased; the passengers shouted, the engine gained on the horse; soon it lapped him; the silk was plied; the race was ‘neck-and-neck, nose-and-nose;’ then the engine passed the horse, and a great hurrah hailed the victory. But it was not repeated, for just at this time, when the gray’s master was about giving up, the band which draws the pulley which moved the blower slipped from the drum, the safety-valve ceased to scream, and the engine, for want of breath, began to wheeze and pant. While Mr. Cooper, who was his own engineer and fireman, lacerated his hands in vain attempts to replace the band upon the wheel, the horse gained on the machine and passed it, and although the band was presently replaced and steam again did its best, the horse was too far ahead to be overtaken, and came in the winner of the race.”

The numerous excursions, trial trips of engines, and public demonstrations made in the interests of improvements, from 1830 to 1840, on roads chartered in 1825-26-27-28, did not inspire confidence as good investments. They were looked upon chiefly as curiosities, mixed with great discomfort and danger, and received huzzahs and new patrons at each juncture, those making the trip one day surrendering their places with admiration to others, much after the plan of those who took in the curiosity show of the horse “having his tail where his head ought to be.” A railroad excursion of governors, senators, judges, lawyers, divines, doctors, and other good people—special guests of several hundred—to ride on strap-iron rails, housed in old coach bodies or on open platform boxes, with the bumping and jerking of trucks attached to each other by abundance of slack chain, a beer-bottle engine and pine knots to make steam, enables the imagination to see the likeness of the unfortunate colored fireman with respect, though a slave, for the exhibition of a sense of comfort before, if not after, he “punched up the fire and closed down the lever to the safety-valve and sat upon it to keep the steam and smoke out of his eyes.”

While great enthusiasm existed in favor of railroads every-where during the thirties, the moneyed man and the man who desired to travel with comfort regardless of time did not take much stock in the enterprise. And the gentleman who wrote the following in his diary was one of a large class who viewed the present as complete, and that they could not endure pleasantly any discomfort that might repay to others in the future great pleasure:

“July 22, 1835.—This morning at nine o’clock I took passage in a railroad car (from Boston) for Providence. Five or six other cars were attached to the locomotive, and uglier boxes I do not wish to travel in. They were made to stow away some thirty human beings who sit, cheek by jowl, as best they can. The poor fellows who were not much in the habit of making their toilet squeezed me into a corner, while the hot sun drew from their garments a villainous compound of smells made up of salt fish, tar and molasses. By and by, just twelve—only twelve—bouncing factory girls were introduced, who were going on a party of pleasure to Newport. ‘Make room for the ladies!’ bawled out the superintendent. ‘Come, gentlemen, jump up on the top, plenty of room there.’ ‘I’m afraid the bridge knocking my brains out,’ said a passenger. Some made one excuse and some another. For my part, I flatly told him that since I belonged to the Corps of Silver Grays, I had lost my gallantry, and did not intend to move. The whole twelve were, however, introduced, and soon made themselves at home, sucking lemons and eating green apples. The rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the polite and the vulgar, all herd together in this modern improvement in traveling. The consequence is a complete amalgamation. Master and servant sleep heads and points on the cabin floor of the steamer, feed at the same table, sit in each other’s laps as it were in the cars; and all this for the sake of doing very uncomfortably in two days what would be done delightfully in eight or ten. Shall we be much longer kept by this toilsome fashion of hurrying, hurrying, from starting (those who can afford it) on a journey with our own horses, and moving slowly, surely and profitably through the country, with the power of enjoying its beauty, and be the means of creating good inns? Undoubtedly a line of post-horses and post-chaises would long ago have been established along our great roads had not steam monopolized every thing.

“Talk of ladies on board a steamboat or in a railroad car—there are none. I never feel like a gentlemen there, and I can not perceive a semblance of gentility in any one who makes part of the traveling mob. When I see women whom, in their drawing-rooms or elsewhere, I have been accustomed to respect and treat with every suitable deference—when I see them, I say, elbowing their way through a crowd of dirty emigrants, or low-bred homespun fellows in petticoats or breeches in our country, in order to reach a table spread for a hundred or more, I lose sight of their pretentions to gentility, and view them as belonging to the plebeian herd. To restore herself to her caste, let a lady move in select company at five miles an hour, and take her meals in comfort at a good inn, where she may dine decently. After all the old-fashioned way of five or six miles, with liberty to dine decently in a decent inn, and be master of one’s movements, with the delight of seeing the country and getting along rationally, is the mode to which I cling, and which will be adopted again by the generations of after times.”[27]

Information in regard to railroading in its true sense, was circumscribed to experiment, which retarded the progress of improvement. The belief in lasting solidity, making the expense of building the road-bed more than necessary, so much so that it was estimated in the Eastern States, that about ten miles a year were all one company could properly construct.

Most engineers at first fell into the same error—making heavy stone walls for the road-bed. The blocks into which the wooden plugs were driven for the spikes to hold the rails were frequently resting upon solid masonry, four feet high and two and a half feet wide. After done, it was discovered a mistake; that an inelastic road-bed and speed were incompatible and disastrous to the machinery, and the intelligent State of Massachusetts, from the time the first locomotive was put upon the track (March, 1834) until 1841, had shown little advancement in the proper application of steam, as well as construction of road-beds and rails.

Robert Fulton expected his discovery would find its highest usefulness as a motive-power on railroads, as it has done; but his brother-in-law and partner did not deem the thing practicable as long as the insuperable objections named existed, and all attempts were passed to others, as the following letter shows, with day and date:

“Albany, March 1st, 1811,

“Dear Sir: I did not until yesterday receive yours of February 25th; where it has been loitering on the road I am at a loss to say. I had before read of your very ingenious proposition as to the railway communications. I fear, however, on mature reflection, that they will be liable to serious objection, and ultimately more expensive than a canal. They must be double, so as to prevent the danger of two such bodies meeting. The walls on which they are to be placed should at least be four feet below the surface and three feet above, and must be clamped with iron, and even then would hardly sustain so heavy a weight as you propose moving at the rate of four miles an hour on wheels. As to wood, it would not last a week. They must be covered with iron, and that, too, very thick and strong. The means of stopping these heavy carriages without great shock, and of preventing them from running on each other—for there would be many running on the road at once—would be very difficult. In cases of accidental stops to take wood and water, etc., many accidents would happen. The carriage of condensing water would be very troublesome. Upon the whole, I fear the expense would be much greater than that of canals, without being so convenient.

“R. R. Livingston.”

Ordinary business men, and even accomplished engineers, manifested as little knowledge in regard to the principles of science in railroading as they did in regard to the telegraph. Both were new fields for experiment, and both operators made many ridiculous mistakes.

When William D. Wesson announced he would demonstrate the practicability of sending and receiving messages over his wires stretched on poles from Chillicothe to Columbus, and vice versa, many persons had business into the city on that day, but ostensibly to witness the wonderful performance.

Early in the morning advertised for free messages, an honest patron of science living on the line a short distance out of town went up one of the poles and hung a letter on the wire, and secreted himself in view of the missive and in vain watched it all day, that he might obtain the secret of the process.

Another individual of inquiring mind on his way to the city boasted he intended to know before he returned how the thing was done. On his way home he was accosted by a neighbor who wished to know how it was possible to send a message to Columbus with safety on one of those little wires. The Squire said to himself it was no longer a mystery—he was a justice of the peace, and above the average as a lawyer—saying: “You see, they have a machine that rolls and compresses a letter into a little bit of an oblong roll, which just fits into a little brass cylinder, and when ready to send it is pushed up to a kind of machine all full of cog-wheels and ticking clock-work, and the man at the head says, ‘All ready—go’—and he touches a button, and the electricity runs out on the wire, and strikes the head of the cylinder in which the letter is placed, and it goes, chebang, to the other end of the wire, and drops into a basket.”

All this was worked out by the mental process of the Squire, who actually believed he had solved the process of telegraphing, as much as the engineers did that of railroading when they constructed the track of solid masonry.

In 1837, the horse-car running from Toledo to Adrian, Michigan, on oak rails was remodeled, road-bed improved in grades, rails strapped, an engine to take the place of horses, “and a beautiful new passenger coach to supply that of the old coach bodies.” It was also advertised the road would be “running regularly on and after October 1, 1837,” and that the “speed would be greatly increased, and would be able to carry passengers and the United States mail at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, making the entire distance, thirty miles, in two hours.”

New Passenger Car on the Toledo & Adrian Ry. 1837.

A fair likeness of the new passenger coach is [here given], which, in days of primitive railroading, was looked upon as a step in the right direction. But this road was soon obliged to again suspend operations, temporarily, for other changes—many discouragements stood in the pathway to prosperity. Strap-iron rails on parallel timbers and stonemasonry and solidity proved failures, and the locomotive added no advantage over the horse, as existing conditions would not tolerate great velocity, the very thing in chief that would insure supremacy over a canal.

And England was twenty years in search of an adjustment of road and machinery by which velocity could be increased without an increase of danger. But the discouragements were so numerous, many hopeful workers abandoned the field. Only six years previous to George Stephenson’s locomotive, “Rocket,” making twenty-nine and a half miles in an hour, a book was published on “Railways,” in which the author says: “That nothing could do more harm toward the adoption of railways than the promulgation of such nonsense, as that we shall see locomotive engines traveling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, and twenty miles an hour.”[28]

This may have been intended for Americans as well as Mr. Stephenson, for the “promulgation of such nonsense” did not cease, and power and speed increased with the increase in size of the parts of the machinery insured. So rapidly was this increase, that strong attempts were made from time to time to fix a legal limit at some point below twenty miles—in England.

In the United States, however, the faster the better, and from five rose to fifty, and then began looking around for rails and road-bed that would withstand the racket.

All the expense and experiments were not thrown away; true, investments and results failed for many years to inspire that confidence which opens the money vaults of the capitalists, but, not in the least discouraged, artisans, scientists, and genius, under any and every name, worked on and on, and when asked gave the coalminer’s answer to the House of Commons: “I can’t tell you how I’ll do it, but I can tell you I will do it.” The engineers, machinists, and model-makers kept at work, and so many improvements had been suggested to Peter Cooper’s locomotive that the first thing of the kind that had ever been made in the United States became transformed from a little competitor of the horse into a mammoth institution breathing impatiently for a track on which might be tested its speed and wondrous power.

The locomotive came—the heavy iron rails were in sight—but no one had yet suggested a satisfactory road-bed and rests for the rails. It had baffled the attempts of engineers. At this critical juncture a voice was heard from the wilderness—an axman, an Ohio “Squirrel Hunter”—one who had constructed many miles of substantial wagon roads through new sections of marshy country by means of “corduroys”—placing pieces of split timber, or sections of a younger growth, sixteen feet long, in close contact at right angles to the line of intended road-bed, then pinning long pieces of split saplings on the upper surface near the ends of the cross-ties on either side, and filling the interstices with earth, gravel, rotten wood, or other material, making a substantial and elastic track.

At a meeting of the president and directors of a section of unsatisfactory strap-iron road, this man appeared before the board with a model showing the relations of road-bed, cross-ties, and rails as now in use, claiming the plans proposed would insure the desirable essentials to safety, speed, cheapness, and durability, by giving elasticity and securing an absolute gauge at high rates of speed.

Seeing the model, and hearing the common-sense arguments and practicable philosophy of the “Squirrel Hunter,” all present clapped their hands and cried—“Eureka!”

Before the close of the session, a resolution was adopted in favor of “cross-ties and heavy iron rails.” With the correct idea for construction, it required but little time to satisfy the most credulous that velocity and power could be obtained with safety, and time saved; for time was fast becoming an important factor in the prosperity of the state. Charters were granted for roads in every direction, and each important village had aspirations for “a railroad center;” and capital, by millions, flowed into the state, and in a short period Ohio found herself with eight thousand five hundred miles of railroad, representing a capital of more than five hundred and fifty million dollars.

The officers of the first railroads felt or seemed to feel and act like ordinary people. This, however, was long before the procuration of a prohibitory tax on foreign steel rails. On one occasion, in 1849, the passengers on the line of coaches from the South, bound for Cleveland, Ohio, found on arrival at Columbus that “a new and expeditious route” had just been opened to Sandusky City, and thence to Cleveland, Buffalo, and other points east and west.

This “new and expeditious line” consisted of stage-coaches from Columbus to Mansfield, from Mansfield to Sandusky by the new railroad, and thence by boat to all other points. The railroad was part of the incomplete first through line from the lakes to the Ohio river, and was completed from Sandusky to Mansfield, fifty miles. The writer was one of the second installment of passengers sent over the new route. Four coaches left Columbus at an early hour, loaded with passengers and baggage, to make the connection at Mansfield, nearly seventy miles, over rough mud roads.

All went well until the Delaware county corduroys were reached. Here the leading coach got off the track and was down, with one wheel in the mud up to the hub. Getting out of this difficulty caused the time-table to be broken, and on reaching Mansfield in the evening we found the train to Sandusky had just left—so recently that the smoke of the motor was still visible in the direction of the lake.

The arrival of this caravan created no little excitement in the small town of Mansfield (Secretary Sherman’s home). Thirty angry passengers to be detained until the next day at a fifth-class hotel, destitute of accommodations, was not considered in the storm of invectives that were hurled in every direction, after taking in the situation. Accusations were publicly made that the landlord and the directors of the railroad were in partnership to rob the public by assertions enticing them into this trap.

The party was in no mood to remain idle, and at once took possession of the large room called “the parlor,” elected a chairman, adopted resolutions, and made a report and placed it in the hands of the printer, headed with familiar English epithets, warning the public to shun this impious swindle—making the most imposing specimen of literature, on large sheets, ever printed in that highly-intelligent town.

Before eleven o’clock that night the bill-posters had finished their work, as no more space could be found on which to spread the attractive sheets. About this time four good-looking, elderly gentlemen appeared and announced that they represented the president and directors of the road; that they were sorry the break of connection had occurred; that such a thing would not occur again, and asked, if they should reimburse all the fares paid at Columbus and give each a through ticket to place of destination, and pay the hotel expenses while detained in Mansfield, would the party surrender all the posters in their possession and call it even?

This was agreed to—posters surrendered and fares adjusted, and the whole party invited to a well-prepared but unexpected supper, which wound up with a jolly good time, and the dissatisfied were sent on their way next morning in full praise of the “new arrangement,” which became the most popular and best-patronized through fare route of any previous combination of the kind ever made in Ohio.

Railroads developed their importance rapidly, as did also the officers and employes. The systematic training and experimental management of roads have accomplished wonders in nationalizing the people of the United States. And by the reports of the Commissioner of “Railroads and Telegraph,” no necessity exists any longer for Ohio roads to compromise or give drawbacks to patrons in order to hold their influence and business. At least it would seem so, when the roads within the state, in 1894, carried twenty-seven million, two hundred and thirty-one thousand passengers, and fifty-nine millions, six hundred and thirty-nine tons of freight—earning sixty million, one hundred and forty thousand, eight hundred and thirty-one dollars; giving employment to fifty-four thousand, seven hundred persons, whose salaries amounted to a fraction less than thirty million, six hundred thousand dollars in aggregate. All this great wealth and industry has arisen from exceedingly small and crude beginnings.

Profitable private enterprises resulting from railroad investments in the states, at the commencement of the fifties, awakened a dozing Congress to the national importance of the subject, and in 1853, the Government commenced a road at an estimated cost that would have made the head of a Thomas Jefferson swim with constitutional objections—involving an expenditure of one hundred and thirty millions, with an additional five millions for engineering. It proved a success; the expenditure of labor enriched the people, and the road helped save the United States as a nation.

With canals, railroads, turnpikes, large crops, quick and cheap transportation, growing cities and increasing knowledge, wealth and happiness, to Ohio the sky was clear overhead, and every thing prosperous, West, East and North, until 1860. Something was transpiring South—Northern men were returning from the slave states with the belief the country was on the verge of a civil war—a gigantic insurrection. Some, to whom such opinions were rendered, believed, but most Northern men made light of the idea of the South seceding, as there appeared no justifiable cause for secession or rebellion.

But there was that quarrel about the black spot on the face of the Goddess of Liberty, which had grown large and was giving pain and mortification to all her Northern friends. It was evident the disease was destroying the life as it had the beauty, unless something was done to remove or check its growth.

Consultation after consultation had from time to time been made by the wise men of the nation, ending in disagreement in regard to the etiology, pathology and treatment. Still it was evident, to both North and South, that something must be done. And the South, claiming the patient, assured the country the affection and disaffection could be removed by the law of nature Samuel Hahnemann made—“similia similibus curantur,” and retired with the intention to capture Washington before the North could make resistance, and then proclaim the slave-power, the true and lawful friend of Liberty, and insist upon a hasty recognition of the Government of the United States, by the foreign ministers at the federal capital and the leading powers of Europe. But the Southern blood could not be restrained, and the premature overt acts defeated the scheme, saved Washington, and led to the recovery of universal freedom in the United States through a prolonged and bloody law.

General Sherman says in regard to the cause of the War of the Rebellion, that “The Southern statesmen, accustomed to rule, began to perceive that the country would not always submit to be ruled by them;[29] and they believed slavery could not thrive in contact with freedom; and they had come to regard slavery as essential to their political and social existence. Without a slave caste they could have no aristocratic caste.... That the northern politicians, accustomed to follow the lead of their southern associates generally, believed that the defeat of Fremont, in 1856, as the Republican candidate for the presidency, had insured the perpetuity of the Union; the southern politicians, generally, believed that the date of its dissolution was postponed during the next presidential term, and that four years and a facile President were given them to prepare for it. And they began to do so.

“Accordingly, during Mr. Buchanan’s administration, there was set on foot throughout the Southern States a movement embodying the reorganization of the militia, the establishment and enlargement of state military academies, and the collection of arms, ammunition, and warlike materials of all kinds.

“The Federal Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, thoroughly in the interests of the pro-slavery conspirators, aided them by sending to the arsenals in the slave states large quantities of the national arms and military supplies; the quotas of the Southern States under the militia laws were anticipated in some cases by several years; and he caused large sales of arms to be secretly made, at low prices, to the agents of those states.[30]

“The pro-slavery leaders then began, quietly, to select and gather around them the men whom they needed and upon whom they thought they could rely.

“Among the men they fixed upon was Captain Sherman.... It was explained to him that the object of establishing the State Military Academy at Alexandria, was to aid in suppressing negro insurrections, to enable the state to protect her borders, ... and to form a nucleus for defense in case of an attack by a foreign enemy.”

Captain Sherman did not remain long in his high salaried office before he saw enough to convince an intelligent mind war was near at hand, and on January 18, 1861, he sent in his resignation to the Governor, as follows:

“Sir: As I occupy a quasi-military position under this state, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such position when Louisiana was a state in the Union, and when the motto of the seminary, inserted in marble over the main door, was: ‘By the liberality of the general Government of the United States—the Union—Esto Perpetua.’ Recent events foreshadow a great change, and it becomes all men to choose. If Louisiana withdraws from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance to the old Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives, and my longer stay here would be wrong in every sense of the word. In that event, I beg you will send or appoint some authorized agent to take charge of the arms and munitions of war here, belonging to the state, or direct me what disposition should be made of them.

“And furthermore, as president of the board of supervisors, I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as superintendent the moment the state determines to secede, for on no earthly account will I do an act, or think any thought, hostile to or in defiance of the old Government of the United States.”

Up to this date, Captain Sherman was not much known as a lawyer or statesman, and as a military genius, the South found they had mis-measured his patriotism and that which constituted his make-up. Few, if any, had heard the reply of the little fatherless boy to the minister who hesitated to give him the name of “a heathen,” (Tecumseh,) in baptism.

“My father called me Tecumseh, and Tecumseh I’ll be called—If you won’t, I’ll not have any of your baptism.”

This was the character of General Sherman, whose talents were as bright as was his life, pure and courageous. At the commencement of the war he was assailed on all sides, by the petty jealousies indigenous to public life; but nothing could retard his progress to the front, any more than it could his march to the sea—one of Ohio’s legitimate “Squirrel Hunters” born with his hand on Esau’s heel.

The war came, and on the 12th day of April, 1861, the first gun was fired. The Government was not alarmed, but was firm in the determination to preserve the Union at all cost, and looked upon the prospects of final success of secession as impossible against the will of the vast population and resources of the North-western States, and held to the truth of General Jackson’s answer to Calhoun: “Secession is treason, and the penalty for treason is death.”

At the outbreak of the Rebellion, the State of Kentucky had a governor named Beriah Magoffin. He had by some unknown means escaped the familiar Kentucky military title, and was known simply as “Beriah Magoffin, the Secessionist.” Beriah concocted a brilliant scheme, and gave out a manifesto that “Kentucky will not sever connection from the National Government, nor take up arms for either belligerent party, but arm herself for the preservation of peace within her borders, and a mediator to effect a just and honorable peace.”

But when the President of the United States called on Kentucky for volunteers to defend the Union, he received the reply: “I say emphatically that Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States.” On hearing of the reply of Governor Beriah Magoffin, the Governor of Ohio immediately telegraphed the War Department, “If Kentucky will not fill her quota, Ohio will fill it for her.” And within two days, two regiments were on the road to the credit of Kentucky, and other regiments came in so rapidly, that within a few days after the announcement of quotas, the Adjutant-General stated the offers of troops from Ohio were enough to fill the full quota of seventy-five thousand men allotted to the entire country.

The people of Ohio, and especially some in Cincinnati, became indignant at the muddle in which Kentucky had placed herself, causing Cincinnati to occupy an extra-hazardous position. The Governors of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois foresaw the tempting prize Cincinnati would be to the Confederates, and early urged the policy of seizing Louisville, Paducah, Columbus, Covington, Newport and the railroads. But this wise suggestion was postponed in its execution for want of troops, until the opportunity became lost. Columbus was strongly garrisoned, Buckner had committed his treason, Bowling Green was fortified, Tennessee was gone, and Kentucky held back all the armies of the West until March, 1862.[31]

Still, for the kindness, Kentucky came near getting Ohio into trouble during the second year of the war. And this, too, at a time when the Union forces were scattered and disseminated by disasters, disease, and desertions until the War Department showed an inability to maintain many important positions, especially in the border states. Rebel raids were moving in several directions. John Morgan, with his cavalry, found the City of Cincinnati defenseless and virtually besieged. Rough secession citizens were rioting, mobbing, and destroying property of peaceable persons of African descent, requiring “one thousand” extra policemen to save enough of the boodle to make an inducement for rebel raiders to call that way.

The cultivated hatred and unlawful acts toward the colored race prevailed to such a large extent by Cincinnati rebels and sympathizers, that the sentiments of officials were so uncertain that, when danger was in sight and the city came under the management of men who had actually taken side with the Federal Government, the police were required to take the oath of allegiance in a body as their official certificate of loyalty.

The rebel element was disappointed that John Morgan and cavalry did not attempt to take the city, which was joy and gladness to the Union portion of the inhabitants. But new and more alarming trouble to the loyal citizen was approaching. The Union forces had just met with disaster at Richmond, and General Kirby Smith had entered Lexington with Morgan and started an army for Cincinnati.

Bragg was just crossing the Kentucky line for Louisville, and no time could be lost. Cincinnati was without preparation or means of defense, and all was literally blue around recruiting offices; government troops were powerless, for want of time, and the emergency was great, for the rebels were near at hand.

If the Federal forces were ever at any time subject to despondency and discouragements it would have been excusable during July and August of 1862. General McClellan had been recalled from the Peninsula, Pope driven back and forced to seek refuge in the defenses of Washington, raids were menacing the borders of the free states, and many were claiming the war “a failure.”

General Wallace had been placed in command for the protection of the cities of Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport, and arrived in Cincinnati at nine o’clock at night, September 1st. And after consultation with Governor Tod and the mayors of the above-named cities, wrote his proclamation of martial law, and after midnight sent it to the city papers.

While this was going on, the Governor was busily engaged at the telegraph station. He knew the power and the loyalty of the “Squirrel Hunters.” As one of their number, he asked them to come—to come without delay, and to come armed—and then telegraphed to the Secretary of War, that a large rebel force was moving against Cincinnati, “but it would be successfully met.” He had faith in the expected troops. Though fresh from the rural districts, they all knew how to shoot; all fellow “Squirrel Hunters,” never known to turn their backs to the enemy with the trusty rifle in hand.

History tells the result. Whitelaw Reid says of the next morning:

“Before daybreak the advance of the men that were thenceforward to be known in the history of the state as the ‘Squirrel Hunters’ were filing through the streets.”

The citizens knew little or nothing of what had been transpiring throughout the night, and when aroused by the tramp, tramp, tramp, and as they gazed out upon the dimly-lighted streets, the greater their wonderment grew. Armed men, with all shades, colors, and kinds of uniforms! No one, awakening from sweet slumber, could say from what country, place, or planet, such a vast multitude could have dropped during the night. It could be seen the army was not blue enough for federals, nor gray enough for rebels; and “good Lord, good devil,” was about all that could be said.

In due time the morning papers came, announcing the city under martial law and protected by the “Squirrel Hunters” of Ohio, and the excitement became so great that many expressed themselves much after the fashion of “the little woman who went to market all on a market day.”

For patriotism, executive ability, and business talents, Governor Tod had few equals. With him the line of duty was always clear. Before General Wallace had written his proclamation of martial law the Governor was on his way to Cincinnati. From this point he at once telegraphed to the people, press, and military committees, saying: “Our southern border is threatened with invasion.... Gather up all the arms and furnish yourselves with ammunition for the same.... The soil of Ohio must not be invaded by the enemies of our glorious government. Do not wait. None but armed men will be received.”

---

“From morning till night the streets resounded with the tramp of armed men, marching to the defense of the city. From every quarter of the state they came, in every form of organization, with various species of arms. The ‘Squirrel Hunters,’ in their homespun, with powder-horn and buckskin pouch, ... all poured out from the railroad depots and down toward the pontoon bridge. The ladies of the city furnished provisions by the wagon load; the Fifth-street market-house was converted into a vast free eating saloon for the ‘Squirrel Hunters.’ Halls and warehouses were used as barracks.”

---

Pontoon Bridge, Ohio River.

As soon as it was known the city was under martial law, the sounds of hammers and saws came up from the river, and in a few hours a pontoon bridge was stretched across to Covington, and streams of wagons loaded with lumber and other materials for fortifications were passing over; and on the 4th of September Governor Tod telegraphed to General Wright, commander of the department: “I have now sent you for Kentucky twenty regiments. I have twenty-one more in process of organization,” and the next day said to the press:

“The response to my proclamation asking volunteers for the protection of Cincinnati was most noble and generous. All may feel proud of the gallantry of the people of Ohio. No more volunteers are required for the protection of Cincinnati.”

The exertions of the city were, however, not abated. Judge Dickson organized a colored brigade for labor on the fortifications. This with the daily details of three thousand white citizens, composed of judges, lawyers, merchant princes, clerks, day-laborers, artists, ministers, editors, side by side, kept at work with the ax, spade, pick, and shovel, and all promised the same wages—a dollar per day—went on most enthusiastically.

The engineers had given shape to the fortifications. General Wallace was vigilant night and day, as the rebel forces gradually moved up as if intending an attack. The Squirrel Hunters were drilled during the day and manned the trenches every night, and it was no longer a possibility that the forces under General Kirby Smith could take the city. But, owing to a few skirmishes, Major-General Wright, commander of the department, thought it prudent to call for more “Squirrel Hunters,” as it was believed a general engagement was near at hand. The papers of the city, September 11th, announced that before they were distributed the sound of artillery might be heard on the heights of Covington, and advised their readers to keep cool, as the city was safe beyond question.

It was under these circumstances Governor Tod sent the following telegram to “The Press of Cleveland”—“To the several Military Committees of Northern Ohio:

“Columbus, Sept. 10, 1862.

“By telegram from Major-General Wright, commander-in-chief of Western forces, received at two o’clock this morning, I am directed to send all armed men that can be raised immediately to Cincinnati. You will at once exert yourselves to execute this order. The men should be armed, each furnished with a blanket and at least two days’ rations. Railroad companies are requested to furnish transportation of troops to the exclusion of all other business.”

The expected attack did not come. “General Wallace gradually pushed out his advance a little, and the Rebel pickets fell back. By the 11th, all felt that the danger was over. On the 12th, General Smith’s hasty retreat was discovered. On the 13th, Governor Tod checked the movements of the Squirrel Hunters, announced the safety of Cincinnati, and expressed his congratulations.

“Columbus, September 13, 1862.
Eight o’clock A. M.

“To the Press of Cleveland:

“Copy of dispatch this moment received from Major-General Wright, at Cincinnati: ‘The enemy is retreating. Until we know more of his intention and position, do not send any more citizen-troops to this city.’” And the Governor’s dispatch to the Cleveland Press, accompanying the good news from Major-General Wright, says: “The generous response from all parts of the state to the recent call, has won additional renown for the people of Ohio. The news which reached Cincinnati, that the patriotic men all over the state were rushing to its defense, saved our soil from invasion, and hence all good citizens will feel grateful to the patriotic men who promptly offered their assistance.”

The clear-minded Governor Tod, without troops, guns or works of defense, telegraphed the Secretary of War that a large Rebel force was moving on Cincinnati, “but it, would be successfully met;” thirteen days after wired the following:

“Columbus, September 13, 1862.

“To Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War,
Washington, D. C.

“The Squirrel Hunters responded gloriously to the call for the defense of Cincinnati—thousands reached the city, and thousands more were en route for it. The enemy having retreated, all have been ordered back. This uprising of the people is the cause of the retreat. You should acknowledge publicly this gallant conduct.”

The entire North-west resounded with praises for Governor Tod and his thoughtful and successful expedient. To the “Squirrel Hunters,” it was not an entirely new thing; they had often heard of the times when their fathers were the actors at Cleveland, Fort Meigs and the Miamies, and bore their honors with a degree of modesty becoming their military equipments. When Lewis Wallace, Major-General commanding, bid these gallant men farewell, he said: “In coming time, strangers viewing the works on the hills of Newport and Covington, will ask, ‘Who built these intrenchments?’[32] You can answer—‘We built them.’ If they ask ‘Who guarded them?’ You can reply—‘We helped in thousands.’ If they inquire the result, your answer will be—‘The enemy came and looked at them, and stole away in the night.’ You have won much honor; keep your organizations ready to win more. The people of Ohio appreciated this noble act of the ‘Squirrel Hunters,’ in saving the City of Cincinnati, by turning back the Rebel army and prevented the destruction of property by a dissolute and desperate army.”

And the Ohio Legislature, at its next session adopted the following resolution:

“Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Ohio, That the Governor be and he is hereby authorized and directed to appropriate out of his contingent fund a sufficient sum to pay for printing and lithographing discharges for the patriotic men of the state who responded to the call of the governor and went to the southern border to repel the invader, who will be known in history as ‘The Squirrel Hunters,’

“James R. Hubbell,
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
P. Hitchcock,
President pro tem. of the Senate.
Columbus, March 11, 1863.”

Governor’s Certificate of Honorable Membership.

To this joint resolution of the legislature the governor responded with a handsome souvenir entitled

THE SQUIRREL HUNTER’S DISCHARGE.

Honorable Discharge.

A year after the services were performed, fifteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-six were issued to Squirrel Hunters, which, however, did not embrace more than one-third of the number that responded to the call and took part in the defense of Cincinnati and the Kentucky cities.

Those with certificates and those having none, but who responded to the call, are no less “Squirrel Hunters,” descendants of the Spirit of ’76—a chosen people to maintain and perpetuate the model government of the world.

From the Declaration of Independence to the present time the power of this free people has been as manifestly directed by unseen forces as ever was that of the favorite nation which came out from Egypt under a cloud; and the influences which dictated the dedication of the North-west to freedom will not likely permit the purpose to be compromised or changed.

That which was considered a long duration of the war, with frequent calls for troops, became exceedingly discouraging. And it was evident, after two years, that the strength of the federal army was inadequate for successful offensive operations. At the beginning of 1863, it required nearly four hundred thousand recruits to fill the companies and regiments then in service up to the standard enumeration. Death, disaster, and desertion begat inactivity, with an apparent exhaustion of former volunteer supplies; and secession was becoming more noisy and defiant in all the loyal states. This condition of things brought out the conscript act, and under it the Provost-Marshal General’s Bureau was organized June 1, 1863, by James B. Fry, and early in 1864, this efficient officer and his assistants had the loyal states well canvassed, and thoroughly organized, to obtain all the men necessary to put down the Rebellion. Each state was divided into districts; each district was placed under the management of commissioned officers, termed a Board of Enrollment, consisting of a provost-marshal, commissioner, and surgeon, whose business it was to make a full and exact enrollment of all persons liable to conscription under the law of March 3, 1863, and its amendments, showing a complete exhibit of the military resources in men over twenty and under forty-five years of age, with the names alphabetically arranged, with description of person and occupation in each sub-district.

The enrollment being cleared of persons having manifest disability of a permanent character, each sub-district (township or ward) was required to furnish its assigned quota under calls for men, whether the able-bodied individuals enrolled continued to reside in that sub-district or not. Unless it could be shown such person or persons were correctly enrolled in another sub-district, were in the service uncredited or credited to another sub-district, the removal of residence could not relieve the obligation of the sub-district where such person or persons were enrolled.

This new arrangement at first was exceedingly unpopular with rebel sympathizers in the loyal states, but the bureau soon established a business that impressed a belief in secession circles that it was an energetic war measure that would soon end the unpleasantness. This system of furnishing soldiers showed many advantages over that of voluntary enlistments. Large demands for men could be met immediately, and at the same time it made every citizen, whether loyal or disloyal, equally interested in having the quotas filled by means of bounties in order to avoid sub-district drafts.

And from an enrollment of two million two hundred and fifty-four thousand persons liable to do military service, the bureau, in a brief period, forwarded under calls of the government one million one hundred and twenty thousand six hundred and twenty-one able-bodied soldiers, and with these, and those already in the field, the would-be Southern Confederacy crumbled before the federal power.

It cost the government for raising troops from the commencement of the war until May 1, 1863, the date the recruiting service was turned over to the Provost-Marshal General’s Bureau, forty-six million one hundred and twenty-four thousand one hundred and sixty-two dollars, or thirty-four dollars for each man, exclusive of pay or bounty, while putting soldiers in the service under the conscript act cost the government nothing. The Provost-Marshal General neither asked nor received an appropriation, but under the law he made the bureau pay all attendant expenses, and after paying out sixteen million nine hundred and seventy-six thousand two hundred and eleven dollars for recruiting over one million men and capturing and forwarding seventy-six thousand five hundred and twenty-six deserters (now wards), General Fry turned into the Treasury of the United States, to the credit of the bureau, nine million three hundred and ninety thousand one hundred and five dollars, all of which proved a matter of great economy to the government, while the recruiting of the army cost less than one third as much as that adopted previous to the organization of the bureau, and that without cost to the government.

The draft-wheel and its uses were not the most pleasant things to contemplate, and to soften down the enactment Congress authorized recruiting in Southern states, regardless of color or previous condition, that by means of agents and liberal bounties very little drafting would likely be necessary. And it was soon discovered that blue suits and muskets were quite becoming to the colored man. “The shape of the cranium, the length of the forearm, thinness of the gastrocnemius muscles, and flatness of the feet,” all disappeared at the War Office, and for which was substituted, “He can be made a mechanical soldier to great perfection, skilled in the use of arms, and the machinery of tactics; and, by reason of the obstinacy of his disposition and the depth of his passions, may become most powerful in a charge or in resisting the onset of an enemy.”

Draft Wheel—Twelfth District, Ohio.

BOARD OF ENROLLMENT:

CAPT. GEO. W. ROBY, Provost Marshal.
A. KAGY, Commissioner of Enrollment.
DR. N. E. JONES, Surgeon Board of Enrollment.

The race was tried and showed the better predictions true. Slavery had woven prejudices around the name and color, until the government, under Lincoln, Stanton, Chase, and a Congress of loyal states, could find no place or mustering officer (previous to the operation of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau), short of Massachusetts, that could make the man of color ready to obey orders and use a gun. Nothing in history gives a clearer view of the height and depth of the degrading influences of the institution upon those who were free than the treatment of the loyal colored man and citizen during the efforts of the government to save the Union. Through fear or cowardice his proffered aid was rejected at government recruiting offices, while Massachusetts was procuring colored credit from the loyal states at unusually small bounties.

It may have been so ordered; the diet may have contained enough meat to offend. Still, the colored troops got to the front before the war was over, and did much in reinforcing the wasting armies and lifting anxious sub-districts out of the draft, as well as covering their race with glory by their bravery and efficiency.

Persons placed in the service by means of the draft-wheel generally procured substitutes—persons not liable to draft—aliens and under-age individuals, who, for three years’ service or during the war, commanded one thousand dollars, while the bounty for enlistments of those liable to draft varied from three to five hundred dollars. During the war much of the territory of Ohio was unimproved woods, though thickly settled with cabin civilization. These new settlements were made by the descendants of original Squirrel Hunters—persons born in the state, and with this legacy generally established homes in new counties, in the woods, with like primitive beginnings to those of their ancestors. At the announcement of secession they were ready to serve their country, and it was from these newer and poorer sections that Ohio obtained her volunteers—from a hardy and efficient class of young men, accustomed to active life and the use of the gun.

The recruits from Ohio were chiefly volunteer enlistments. This was manifestly so in the Twelfth district, in which the author was personally and officially interested. The district was composed of Ross, Pickaway, Fairfield, Hocking, Perry, and Pike counties, embracing sixty miles in length of the fertile Scioto valley, containing in 1860 one hundred and thirty-nine thousand four hundred and fifty-six inhabitants, with a corrected enrollment of eighteen thousand three hundred and seventy-one persons liable to military service. Of this enrollment, thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-eight were farmers, and the remaining four thousand seven hundred and forty-three comprised persons of other occupations.

Taking this district as an average of the other districts in the state, it shows the volunteers sent to the front from Ohio were chiefly young men born in the state—hardy and well-developed Squirrel Hunters. Of seventeen hundred and fifty-five volunteers forwarded by this district, from July 4, 1864, to April 30, 1865, one thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine were Ohio boys, with an average of 23.77 years—the remaining five hundred and twenty-six were from twenty-four states and fifteen foreign countries, with an average of 27.13 years. Notwithstanding the more favorable age of the latter group for physical development, the measurements stand decidedly in favor of the Ohio born, and if adding to the latter the nine hundred and eighty-seven drafted men, natives of Ohio, the favorable difference becomes still more apparent.

The Provost-Marshal General, in his report to the War Department, states there was not a single district in all the loyal states in which the board of enrollment was free from the annoyance of evil disposed persons hostile to the Government, who were ever ready and willing to embarrass its operation by stimulating resistance to the draft or discouraging enlistments. It was when the disloyal element experienced the firmness and earnestness of the boards, and felt the power behind them for the enforcement of the law, that they became co-laborers and most successful recruiting agents. This was exceedingly gratifying to the Government, and caused the Provost-Marshal General to say to the Secretary of War: “I am confident there is no class of public servants to whom the country is more indebted for valuable services rendered than the District Provost-Marshals and their associates, comprising the Boards of Enrollment, by whose efforts the army of the Union, which suppressed the Rebellion, was mainly recruited.” Still, Hon. Hoke Smith, ex-Rebel and Secretary of the Interior, published the information that these recruiting officers are not pensionable under the disability act of Congress, June 27, 1890, for the reason “these officers were not in the war,” and so says the present Commissioner of Pensions, Hon. Henry Clay Evens. Autocratic decisions are sometimes quite at variance with sound sense as well as suggestive of one of ex-President Lincoln’s best stories.

It can not be said that the Ohio Squirrel Hunters were not in the war, for not a few of them were pensioned long before the ex-secretary surrendered his arms of rebellion against the Government he now fosters. The oppressors of slavery in their wicked attempts to destroy the Union, induced a war that brought with it incalculable sorrow and suffering—a war that words and figures fail to give an approximate realization of its magnitude. Dollars can be measured by millions, but the tears, heart aches and loss of two hundred and eighty-seven thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine loyal men who gave their lives for liberty, and are historically represented by head-stones that whiten the national cemeteries, can no more be estimated than can the good that must forever flow to the United States in wiping out the iniquitous chattel slavery.

Some persons are inclined to look upon the evils following the war—dissolute legislation, moral turpitude, and political party profligacy, as neutralizing much if not the entire national benefits acquired at the enormous cost of the Rebellion. While it is possible, the corruption following in the wake of protracted wars with large armies may more than counterbalance the good accomplished by successful military achievements, it is to be hoped that the subjugation of southern rebels, giving freedom to millions of slaves, and showing to credulous monarchs the ability of a republic to coerce obedience to the constitution and laws, may ever for good outweigh the evils following the war that accomplished such everlasting benefits. That the laxity complained of has greatly increased within the last three decades can scarcely be questioned. Every department of the government has been more or less criticised for want of faithful performance. No department has perhaps suffered more in the confidence of the people than that political plum styled “The interior.”

The just and honorable cause for pensioning disabled soldiers soon became merged into politics, and from head to foot the distance was made short from fact to fraud. Noah’s Ark did not exceed in variety with all the species of beasts, birds, and creeping things, that of the contents of the Pension Building with a single species of ex parte creation. Applications of all kinds, shapes, and forms. This has never appeared unsatisfactory to that unscrupulous, unmentionable, who is paid per head by the bureau for the art of filing claims. He knows by experience the wonderful ability of the institution and its consulting politicians to overcome objection and get the most angular cases through the hole that leads to the public treasury.

If stated, it would scarcely be believed that absolute fraud could find unrequited favor in an office devoted to the most deserving of the nation—cases as groundless as the following: After enlisting, a soldier changed his mind, and when called upon to report forwarded a joint affidavit of himself and physician, in which was stated said soldier had before and at the date of enlistment permanent disabilities (naming them), which disqualified him for military service, and that he should have been rejected. (Soldiers at that date were sent forward without regulation examination.) Soldier received a discharge on the affidavit and was happy.

In due time an application was made under the arrears act, giving the diseases named in the joint affidavit as having “occurred in the service in line of duty.” In days of honest administration, in looking up the history of the applicant in the War Office, the affidavit was found and placed with the file in the Pension Office.

This ended the case, and under several administrations it slept with attempts at fraud. Perseverance is said to be the road to success, and by the stimulant of contingent fees intercession was secured, and by management of good legal advice the case was placed in the hands of a “special examiner,” and went through without the loss of a dollar, securing a small fortune in arrears, but claiming the rating too low, and making immediate application for increase.

It would seem improbable for the heads of the bureau not to know and fully understand some of the many instances of perjury and fraud that passed current through the office. It is the old rejected or suspended cases with large arrears that are attractive and are thoroughly investigated for new evidence. In this attempt parties generally receive the courteous assistance of those officially connected with the office. Even a medical referee has been known to show great interest in barefaced fraud, and give tips to aid in getting such through the bureau successfully. General Phil Sheridan, who was well informed in regard to the contents of the great Pension Office, was told the contents were safe, as the building was fire-proof, and could never burn down, replied: “That would be my serious objection to it.”

Notwithstanding reports of corruption, fraud, avarice, and greed for public plunder, which may slow the advancing pace of civilization, there are enough common people to preserve the nation—people who worship not at the feet of the God of Aaron; poor people; people who pay legal tribute to the government; honest, stalwart standard-bearers of morality, intelligence, and patriotism; supporters of common-schools and churches; people who are ever watchful of the interests of the nation, protect the sanctity of the ballot-box, and direct the legal machinery for the protection of virtue and suppression of vice, possessing salt with the savor of moral honesty that passes current in business and social life.

The expressed will of the people is the law of the land. It has made and amended constitutions; by it black has become white; the bond free; slaves, citizens. It has erected monuments; built towns and cities; and in war and times of peace has accomplished much for the good of all. It has muzzled many of the national vices, and given civilization long strides in the right direction. And the spirit of the age should by law hasten the end of growing political struggles for place regardless of qualification.

It has become a matter of common report, and one that is generally believed, that successful applicants for office by the suffrage of the people are but seldom as much interested in the welfare of their constituents as they are in their own sycophantic obedience to selfish bosses, who, under party cover, willingly contribute of their wealth to perpetuate a party power that assures the gratification of their own greed for ill-gotten gain.

Qualification is recognized as essential by law, and lies at the foundation of civil and military service. State laws require that teachers of common schools furnish legal evidence of qualification for the position. The commander of an army must have a military education and qualification; so, too, every appointment made through the civil departments of the government, for a short distance up the base, requires of the applicant a certificate from a qualified board of censors, stating that said applicant is in all respects fitted to perform the duties of the position applied for. This is termed Civil and Military Service, and has been declared constitutional.

If so, why may not the people demand more? If a little civil service meted out to those filling subordinate positions is a benefit, why may not the like treatment be accorded to all candidates seeking national positions, by appointment or directly from the people? It is admitted that civil service is a matter of safety and efficiency in subordinate civil positions. If so, it is not unreasonable to suppose the salutary effects would be infinitely greater if applied to the more responsible positions. Education and qualification for all positions is the law of military government; and most certainly similar requirements might be made equally advantageous to the civil government. Military government could not long sustain existence without the service of prescribed regulations. The commanding general of the army obtains the high honor of the position from his education and certified ability, and efficiency as master of the science of war. The President of the United States, being over all as commander-in-chief, should be thoroughly versed in the civil and military, as Master of the Science of Government, not only of our own, but that of every nation on earth.

There does not appear to be any sufficient reason why a government civil service should not exist and be as open to the election of coming generations as that of law, medicine, literary or other pursuits; and it is not saying a word too much to urge the necessity for an institution adapted to the civil as West Point is to the military power, where persons having taken the degree of A.M. may matriculate and qualify themselves for the civil service, and obtain a certificate of such qualification from the institution, having a prescribed curriculum, requiring four years of study to entitle one to examination for the honors of graduation.

Individuals highly educated in the science of government and the art of governing, fitted for a field exclusively their own, would promote an agreement upon the complex questions that now agitate and endanger the peace of society by keeping at fever heat party differences that are magnified by designing politicians.

The high authority of the teachings of the court of instructions, would define the policy and give stability to the Government, and would remove party press for office by incompetency. It would also determine the exact relations between the several departments of the Government, especially how far the President has power to involve the country in war against the will of Congress by recognizing belligerency or independence in cases in which Congress refused such recognition.

As the nation increases in population and number of states, it requires increased wisdom and knowledge to rule and make the people prosperous and happy. The great central region lying between the Ohio river, Lakes and Mississippi will ever be the heart of the Republic. Within it are the life springs of three-fourths of our country’s whole area. Nowhere in the United States is there a basin of such vast extent, capable of feeding so great a population. “Hence its destiny is to hold the balance of power between East and West, hence it is truly regal.”[33]

When the first-born of the states of this great basin came into the Union (Ohio), it brought with its baptism the inauguration of National Internal Improvements—a policy that has enriched the nation by liberality of expenditures, improving harbors, water-ways and roads, in building custom-houses, post-offices, and in assisting the states in many laudable undertakings, while like the miser, in all its vast wealth has been wearing old, unbecoming, unfashionable clothes and doing the business of the nation in rented and other ill-begotten shops, located here and there, as best suited real-estate sharks and speculators in a sickly city.[34] But the dawn of day is coming by which the people of the North-west now see it is high time the Government should make for itself a permanent home—a place of security for all the valuable records of the nation. A spot for the Government alone, called “The Capitol of the United States,” near the center of population controlling representation, free from private property. A capital with capacious senatorial, representative and judicial halls, contiguous to the several departments, with state dwellings for senators and representatives of the several states, and other necessary buildings, all to be owned and controlled by the Government, each constructed with reference to the intended uses, large enough to accommodate an ordinary peaceable assemblage of American citizens, with room to spare.

The most celebrated speaker now living in America, on reciting a visit to the present capital during the sitting of Congress, states: “Another thing that impressed me was, that the hall of the House of Representatives was built in defiance of all laws of acoustics. There are more echoes than can be counted to play havoc with a speech, and turn the finest oratory into a senseless gabble.” A capital situated on the border of an inland sea, with large grounds, parks, lakes, lagoons, gardens, and fountains, in beauty all that art and nature is able to make one place on this continent fitly dedicated to the keeping of the charter of the best government on earth. And, then, if the crowned heads of the world have a desire to see the majesty of a Republic, owned and preserved by the people, let them come and look upon “The Capital of the United States”—where just laws are made and interpreted alike for all the people.

A capital with the architectural requirements of so great a nation, bristling with “peacemakers” and a floating navy in sight, would increase American pride and attachment, and do more to advance the arts, sciences, and sound civilization than all other national improvements combined. It would “copy the Monroe Doctrine into international law,” and secure peace over the entire world.

The Squirrel Hunters
of
Ohio and North-west will do it.
Good Night.

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