In every department, the chosen citizen of this magnificent empire has shown himself master of the situation. In art, literature, and sciences; in war and times of peace, he has given strength to the Union and credit to a central power that will surround itself with national influences the most impregnable of any government in the world. And under all the disadvantages—the absence of public schools, and the opening up of a new world isolated from civilization, he came forth like a vision of beauty and glory from a chrysalis on which was written the destiny of future greatness.
A short time before execution, John Brown said—“I know the very errors by which my scheme was marred were decreed before the world was made. And I had no more to do with the course I pursued than a shot leaving a cannon has to do with the spot where it shall fall.” That hunger and thirst for knowledge which prevailed in the North-west seemed to contradict all theories of man’s proneness under favorable circumstances to degenerate, and favors the theory advanced by the hero of Ossawatomie in regard to power and purpose. Some of the first generation of boys of Ohio (those that lived in the territory) previous to 1796 were born elsewhere to disappoint the Indians, but were all the same shareholders of the great estate. And at the early dawn of the present century many of these young men found their way to Eastern institutions of learning, taking the front in physical and mental culture, as they did afterward in positions of national honor.
As boys, squirrel hunters, men, scholars, lawyers, soldiers, civilians, and statesmen, history shows they filled their places well as American models of superior manhood. Poor as the isolated inhabitants were in regard to worldly goods, they had an abundance of that which gave vitality, energy, and power of will to do. It was no uncommon thing for boys in this vast forest to obtain by their own efforts full preparation to enter college, and with a knapsack of luncheon, tinder-box, and scantily-filled purse, walk hundreds of miles to a seat of learning, and there remain four years without seeing home or friends until they obtained the high honors of the institution.
Ex-Governor Seaberry Ford is but the sample of many. When it came time to go to college, the family of the young squirrel hunter was living in a log cabin in the backwoods of Ohio. His ambition, however, was for Yale, and so expressed it. His father replied, “How are you to get there!” The answer was, “I can walk,” and did walk—reached Yale, where he remained the “boss” young man of the town and institution for four years, and returned to Ohio with the first diploma issued by that college to an Ohio boy. Many years without public schools papers or libraries did not dampen the ardor of the young for knowledge. The inhabitants were destitute of a circulating medium, but managed to keep apace with all the world in that synonym for power. The means employed, as given in the autobiography of one of the first two college graduates in the North-west, illustrates well the thousands of that and later dates who managed to obtain books, and worked their way to the highest standard of education.
The Hon. Thomas Ewing says—“About this time” (1803) “the neighbors in our and the surrounding settlements met and agreed to purchase books and make a common library. They were all poor and subscriptions small, but they raised in all about one hundred dollars.
“All my accumulated wealth, ten coon-skins, went into the fund, and Squire Sam Brown, of Sunday Creek, who was going to Boston, was charged with the purchase. After the absence of many weeks he brought the books to Captain Ben Brown’s in a sack on a pack-horse. I was present at the untying of the sack and pouring out the treasure. There were about sixty volumes, I think, and well selected; the library of the Vatican was nothing to it, and there never was a library better read. This with occasional additions furnished me with reading while I remained at home.
“Dec. 17, 1804, the library was fully established and christened, ‘The Coon-skin Library,’ and a librarian duly elected by shareholders.”
Five years later, at the age of nineteen, with consent of his father, young Ewing left home to procure means to obtain a collegiate education. He set out on foot and found his way through the woods from his home in Athens county to the Ohio river, and from thence to the Kanawha Salt Works, where he engaged as a day laborer, and in three months saved enough money to pay his way at school through the winter at Athens College. He became well satisfied with the success so far, and in the spring returned to the Salt Works and made money enough to pay off some indebtedness that was troubling his father, devoting the winter to the study of some new books obtained by the “Coon-skin Library.”
The third year he returned with enough to induce him to enter college as a regular student, where he remained until 1815; and, after taking the degree of A. M., returned to the Salt Works, and earned enough to aid in the study of law. Thus, ten years were spent as a necessary apprenticeship—performing the arduous and monotonous labors of boiling salt, that he might be enabled to cultivate the various talents nature had so bounteously bestowed upon him, and at the same time avoid financial embarrassments.
Many thousands of squirrel hunters since have imitated the example of this great man, and have arisen to high eminence, but none—not one—to the height of “The Ohio Salt-boiler”—the greatest man America ever produced. In stature Mr. Ewing was six feet two inches tall—well proportioned, with remarkable physical ability. It is related—that many years after athletical exercises had been lain aside for law, on passing near the old court-house in Lancaster, Ohio, he found a crowd of able-bodied men who had been trying to throw an ax, handle and all, over the building, but it could not be done. Mr. Ewing halted, and took the ax by the handle and sent it sailing five feet or more above the building and passed on.