“Ohio has for the last quarter of a century been a great state for presidents. But it never occupied a more conspicuous position in the sisterhood of states than to-day. The Ohio man comes very near being the whole thing.”
Ohio has made her mark politically high, and still manifests a modest willingness to furnish the nation with presidents and other high officials, although the New York World thinks the kissing of the words of Holy Writ by the last favorite son assumed a rather extravagant and monarchical appearance; that it cost only five thousand dollars to seat Thomas Jefferson, while the ceremonial bill for William McKinley and the tenth verse of the first chapter of the Second Chronicles footed two million five hundred and fifty-five thousand five hundred dollars; and bannered the fifteenth verse of the same chapter, for the time being at least. For with that “wisdom and knowledge,”—“the king made silver and gold at Jerusalem (Washington) as plenteous as stones.”
And in this line, not of boasting, but of greatness, it is not thought strange, after supplying the nation with a large ratio of leading statesmen, artisans, scientists and men of letters, the state should have had in readiness for the occasion—one general, U. S. Grant; one lieutenant-general, Mr. Tecumseh Sherman; twenty major and thirty-six brigadier generals; with twenty seven brevet major-generals and one hundred and fifty brigadier generals; a secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton; a secretary of the treasury, S. P. Chase; a banker, J. Cooke, with a contribution of three hundred and forty thousand armed men and twenty-six independent batteries of artillery, and five independent companies of cavalry.
Ohio had the men—had the will—and when the call came, went into the war to fight, and of which she did her share, as the eleven thousand two hundred and ten killed and mortally wounded on the battle-fields, attest.
The finances were so ably managed by the secretary and his advisor, Jay Cooke, that a rebel leader declared the treasury, and not the war department, had conquered the South. To take an empty and bankrupt treasury and agree to find, equip and pay the immense federal army was the portion assigned to secretary Chase. And when Mr. Cooke asked the amount required daily to meet demands—the reply was “two millions, five hundred thousand dollars. Can you raise the money?” “I can,” was the reply.
Mr. Cooke organized a plan for popularizing the loan, and soon had receipts coming into the treasury, averaging over four millions per day. It must be admitted that brains, as well as bullets, gave strength and success to the federal forces, and it can be truthfully as well as modestly assumed, that Ohio furnished her share of both, with honest scripture measure.
Ohio people are not given much to foolish pride, although considered sensitive; and those familiar with the resources, industries, wealth and learning, were surprised that the glorious first-born of the family of the “North-west Territory,” should come so far short of expectations at the World’s Columbian Centennial Exposition, at Chicago. The state was all right, however, and deeply interested. But political favoritism and incompetency often supplants meritorious ability, and determines adversely what otherwise would claim admiration and give general satisfaction.
Ex-Governor Campbell, in an address recently, would mislead a stranger, when he says, “The State of Ohio was at Atlanta in 1864, under Sherman, but is not now at Atlanta as part of the great exhibit of industrial products held there, because, under, and by virtue of the last general assembly, the state credit was reduced so low, and its coffers so depleted, that not money enough could be found for this purpose. The only official representation from our state at Atlanta, in the year 1895, is on the part of a few lady commissioners, who have the freemen’s privilege of paying their own expenses.”
Does anyone believe Ohio is poverty stricken? Has anyone known the state or people to be so since the squirrel hunters traded coon-skins for books, that it could not turn Lake Erie into the Ohio River—the army of the “Southern Confederacy” face about—or make a first-class exhibit in any competitive exposition? As a statement, it is true, “Ohio is not at Atlanta.” But the absence is not due to the causes assigned, and the wonder is, she is as rich and powerful as she is, after being forced so frequently to play the part of the individual that journeyed from Jerusalem down to Jericho.
Ohio is an agricultural state, populated with those who hold the handles of the plough and fear not poverty, discontent and strikes. The native inhabitants inherited a love of liberty and independence from an ancestry who came to a wilderness to secure homes for themselves and posterity. And it was in these homes a permanent foundation for a superior civilization was laid; and through the providences of a people with homes and families, supported by natural and cultivated resources, that has transformed unbroken forests into fertile fields and developed an intelligent, happy and prosperous people.