Many States have been created, many important acts have been passed by the various Congresses that have sat in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Washington, but there was in this measure something that saved the nation from being sometime all slave; that reserved for freedom an empire that by mere stress of moral example if in nothing else, was a menace forever before the slaveholder. In that ordinance was one little clause that made Ohio and Wisconsin and Illinois what they afterwards became.
“There shall be,” it recited, “neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes.” Simple enough these words sound now, when human bondage upon American soil is but the echo of a dead past, but for the day in which they were uttered, they were the clarion call of a new era—the death knell of a monster wrong; and the voice was none the less that of God speaking in human legislation, because many of the men who had become His instrument, had no dream of the great things to which they had put their hands, and to which they had given their votes.
So, in one sense, Ohio may be said to have had her beginning in New York. From the days of her earliest childhood, she has been a willing neighbor, willing to give and take of friendly offices with her elder sister to the East. Two of her chief magistrates were the sons of the Empire State; she has borrowed not a little of her legislation from the experience of the older State; she patterned her canals after those which DeWitt Clinton had so largely aided to bring into being; she has developed many of her native resources by New York’s financial aid; she has sought to build her railways so that they should lead direct to the metropolis; she has in a thousand ways acknowledged the commercial and financial supremacy of the greater city and State; and last, but not the least, she has sent scores of her sons to the East, to prove that the Buckeye is capable of gaining and holding his own among the best, in any lines of human labor or human thought—and it is with this subject largely, that we have at present to deal.
There hangs in certain cheerful rooms at No. 236 Fifth avenue, a modestly framed document that is more significant in that which it suggests, than in what it declares. It is a call for a meeting, and a pledge of certain gentlemen whose names are attached, that they will do what lies within their power to create in this great metropolis, a hearthstone around which those who claimed Ohio for a mother or a foster-mother, might congregate now and then, for such mutual help or association as would keep the memory of the old home alive in the new. The beginning was modest and quiet, and yet out of it has grown an organization that is in many ways a model of its kind, and that certainly has fulfilled the intentions of its originators.
“We the undersigned,” to quote from the language of the call, “hereby agree to unite with each to form an association to be known as The Ohio Association in New York, and to that end will meet at any place designated, for the purpose of completing such organization upon notice given to us whenever twelve persons shall have signed this agreement. There is to be no expense incurred until the organization is completed, and assented to by each member.”
“New York, October 7th, 1885.”
Attached to this document were names that would have carried weight in many of the walks of the business and professional life of the metropolis. General Thomas Ewing, an honored member of the New York Bar, Samuel Thomas and Calvin S. Brice, of the more active fields of Wall Street and the railway world, C. W. Moulton, Col. W. L. Strong, one of the leading merchants of the city, Hugh J. Jewett, Wallace C. Andrews, Homer Lee, J. W. Harman, Warren Higley, Milton Sayler, Anson G. McCook, Col. Fogg, Mahlon Chance, J. Q. Howard, General Henry L. Burnett, and others who had acquired reputation at home, before making New York the scene of later operations and more recent successes. There was more than mere formal agreement in this compact; it was understood by all that such a society should come into being, and all were in one mind that then was the time for beginning.
Other attempts looking in the same direction had been made in times past, but had come to naught. Early in the days of the great war, many of the sons and daughters of Ohio, residing in this city, met at the Murray Hill Hotel, and took steps to give active aid to the soldiers in the field; but these weekly gatherings ended with the noble purpose that called them into being. In the first annual report of the Ohio Society, its first secretary, Homer Lee, gives a brief sketch of this effort, and of the things that followed in its wake. “The object,” says Mr. Lee, “was to send supplies, clothing, medicines, etc., to the soldiers at the front. A handsome silk and satin banner was made at a cost of some $500, upon which was a beautifully embroidered Coat of Arms of the State of Ohio, to be presented to the bravest Ohio regiment. As might have been expected there was much rivalry for the possession of this prize, as glowing descriptions of the beautiful souvenir were given by the newspapers at that time. The commanding officers were appealed to, but could not be prevailed upon to decide the question, because, as one officer put it ‘It could not easily be decided which was the bravest, where all the regiments by their valor and heroism had covered themselves with glory.’ At the close of the war the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, of Cleveland, secured the prize.”
Another organization, somewhat similar in character and purpose, was called into being about the same time. It was the Ohio Soldier’s Aid Society, and Theron R. Butler, was its president, and Mr. John R. Cecil the treasurer. Its members made it their duty to call upon the Ohio soldiers in the New York hospitals, and to minister to their wants. In various forms of help, this society expended over fifteen thousand dollars, and performed many eminent services for the wounded and the sick, and like its companion organization above described, its days ended with the close of the war.
In 1877, the subject of an association of Ohio men was again discussed, when a number of gentlemen had been called together by the death of Chief Justice Chase, but it came to naught. Again, in 1874, some of the younger sons of the Buckeye State in this city, held various meetings and talked organization, but nothing came of the movement beyond talk. It was reserved for the call above quoted to produce enduring results, and to bring into being the flourishing society that has bound the Ohioans of New York together with bonds of enduring union.