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Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: PIONEERS.]




The Squirrel Hunters of Ohio


  or Glimpses of Pioneer Life

  by N. E. JONES, M. D.

  [Illustration]

  Cincinnati.

  ⁂ THE ROBERT CLARKE Co ⁂

  1898

       *       *       *       *       *

COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY N. E. JONES.




PREFACE.


It required long trains of complex circumstances, and peculiar
conditions for each, to give to the world a Moses, an Alexander, a
Napoleon, a Washington. Still greater were the pre-arrangements and
preparations for the development of the coming man of the Nineteenth
Century, that he might stand pre-eminently upon the summit of American
manhood. The habitation selected was the most elaborate and lovely
of all the gifts of nature: A domain dedicated to freedom forever,
bountifully supplied with animals, vegetables, and minerals; with
lakes, rivers, and running brooks, grassy lawns and fields of flowers;
making a fitting place for the best blood left of the American
Revolution; descendants of Anglo-Saxon kings; knights of Norman titles
and heroic deeds; supporters of William the Conqueror, whose ancestral
names appear in the Doomsday Book, but more imperishably written in the
law of descent and transmission. With such the new environment brought
forth an improved species, christened by a sovereign state, “_The
Squirrel Hunters of Ohio; or, Glimpses of Pioneer Life_,” and to whom
this volume is most respectfully dedicated.

  N. E. JONES, M. D.




INTRODUCTION.


As an actor and interested witness of the marvelous changes which
have occurred in the settlement and civilization of the “North-west
Territory,” the author places before the reader this book, entitled,
“_The Squirrel Hunters of Ohio; or, Glimpses of Pioneer Life_.”

Others have faithfully recorded the wars, bloodshed, victories,
defeats, dangers and deaths it cost to subjugate the savage and
establish the civilized. And it is as the gleaner follows the reapers
and gathers in the wayward straws, that the author hopes to interest
and entertain, by picking up some of the fragments, that nothing may
be lost which contributed to the elevation, pleasure, subsistence and
safety of the pioneer, or added attractiveness to his home during the
rise of the first state in the great empire of the North-west.

It is often the little things that become the most important--things
the immigrant in old age delights to recall--things that bring up
associations and pleasures of former days--“the good old times,”
when with dog and gun the pioneer walked the unbroken forest and made
himself familiar with the alphabet of beasts, birds and trees.

At the close of the Revolution, the Eastern States were old and
prematurely gray, and poverty, bankruptcy and starvation induced the
patriotic soldiers to accept pay for their services in unsurveyed wild
land in the “North-west Territory.” The new acquisition was lauded
as a country flowing with equivalents to “milk and honey,” and would
sustain a large population, make delightful homes, and furnish an
easily-acquired subsistence.

As soon as the Indian dangers were no longer detrimental, the homeless
poor, with guns, ammunition and land certificates, flocked in from all
quarters of the world, took possession of the country, and became the
progenitors of a great and pre-eminent people--“_The Squirrel Hunters
of Ohio_.”




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


  CHAP. I. OHIO--EARLY SETTLEMENT,                               1

       II. OHIO--EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL,            51

      III. OHIO--PROFESSIONS: MEDICAL, MINISTERIAL AND LEGAL,  107

       IV. OHIO--HER BEASTS, BIRDS, AND TREES: AIDS TO HIGHER
           CIVILIZATION,                                       166

        V. OHIO--HER COACH, CANAL, AND STEAMBOAT ERA,          267

       VI. OHIO--HER RAILROAD AND TELEGRAPH ERA,               310




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


  FRONTISPIECE.

  Home of the Pioneer,                                        7

  This is Freedom!                                            9

  The Gum Tree,                                              12

  Stray Pup,                                                 30

  Gamer,                                                     33

  Our Cabin, 1821,                                           37

  Ground Hog Club--Certificate of Membership,                58

  Ohio School-house from 1796 to 1840,                       64

  School-house of 1851, in which President Garfield Taught,  92

  The Olive Branch,                                          95

  Hunter and Dog,                                           118

  Man of Special Providences,                               128

  Church, Residence, and Court-house,                       131

  Public School Building, Pickaway County, O., 1851,        148

  A Squirrel Hunter,                                        171

  A Herd of Bison,                                          174

  Camp Red River Hunters,                                   176

  Turkey River, Iowa, 1845,                                 221

  Sequoia Park,                                             235

  Conflict in Pre-emption Claims,                           250

  Chillicothe Elm,                                          252

  Logan Elm,                                                253

  Map--Lord Dunmore’s Campaign,                             256

  Monument, Boggs Family,                                   263

  Indian Raid,                                              264

  Spinning Wheel,                                           275

  Canal Era, 1825,                                          290

  Log Cabin Luminary,                                       292

  Ohio Stage Coach,                                         301

  Prairie Schooner,                                         306

  New Passenger Car on the Toledo and Adrian R’y, 1837,     320

  Pontoon Bridge over the Ohio River,                       337

  Governor’s Certificate of Honorable Membership,           343

  The Squirrel Hunter’s Discharge,                          344

  Draft Wheel,                                              349

       *       *       *       *       *

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




CHAPTER I. OHIO--EARLY SETTLEMENTS.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Home of the Pioneer.]

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]

  “Ay, this is freedom!--these pure skies
     Were never stained with village smoke:
   The fragrant wind that through them flies,
     As breathed from wastes by plough unbroke.

  “Here with myrtle and my steed,
     And her who left the world for me,
   I plant me where the red deer feed
     In the green desert--and am free.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Stray Pup.]

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Gamer.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Our Cabin, 1821.]

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

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

  “Near to the gates, conferring as they drew
   Argus, the dog his ancient master knew,
      And not unconscious of the voice and tread,
   He knew his lord, he knew, and strove to meet;
   In vain he strove to crawl and kiss his feet;
   Yet, all he could, his tail, his ears, his eyes
   Salute his master and confess his joys.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I like dogs because they are faithful and generous.

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Native fruit: cranberries, huckleberries, blackberries,
raspberries, service berries, paw-paws (custard apples), persimmons,
plums, grapes, cherries, haws, crab apples.

[2] Mr. Havemeyer is the autocrat of the Sugar Trust of America after
the fashion of Mr. Arbuckle, the Coffee Baron. Under the chairmanship
of a committee the New York legislature, Senator Luxow investigated
the Sugar Trust and found Mr. Havemeyer controlled four-fifths of the
entire output of sugar in America.

[3] Mills erected on two boats, separated at an angle, with water wheel
near the bow. The natural current of the stream passing between the
boats turned the wheel that moved the machinery of the mill, which
would grind twenty to forty bushels of corn in twenty-four hours,
according to the current of the stream.

[4] Prof. Drummond.

[5] Buffon.




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


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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. The Seven Ranges and Congress Lands.

  2. United States Military Lands.

  3. The Ohio Company’s Purchase.

  4. The Connecticut Reserve and Fire Lands.

  5. The Military Bounty Lands.

  6. The Virginia Military Bounty Lands.

  7. Symmes’s Purchase.

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

  9. Canal, Turnpike, and Road Lands.

  10. School, College and Ministerial Grants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration:

THE HISTORIC GROUND HOG CLUB.

ORGANIZED FEBRUARY 2, 1800.

Certificate of Membership.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “_December 23, 1817._

  “MR. JOHN ROBINSON (Teacher)--

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

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

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

  “JOHN KELLEY,      }
  JAMES BROWN,       } _Committee_.”
  WILLIAM SMALLWOOD, }

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Ohio School-house from 1796 to 1840.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Sec. 25. “That no law shall be passed to prevent the poor in the
  several counties and townships within this state from an equal
  participation in the schools, academies, colleges, and universities
  within this state, which are endowed, in whole or in part, from
  the revenue arising from the donations made by the United States
  for the support of schools and colleges; and the doors of the said
  schools, academies, and universities shall be open for the reception
  of scholars, students, and teachers of every grade, _without any
  distinction_ or preference whatever contrary to the intent for which
  the said donations were made.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  _Second._ Colored and mulattoes were excluded from the schools; and,

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

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

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

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

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

  “_Anti-Abolition Meeting._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“From the printing office the crowd went to the house of A. Pugh, where
they supposed there were other printing materials, but found none,
_nor offered any violence_. Then to Messrs. Donaldsons, where only
ladies were at home. The residence of Mr. Birney, the editor, was then
visited; no person was at home but a youth, upon whose explanations the
house was _left undisturbed_.... And proceeded to the ‘Exchange’ and
took refreshments.”... “An attack was then made upon the residences of
some blacks in Church alley; two guns were fired upon the assailants
and they recoiled.... It was some time before the rally could again
be made, several voices declaring they did not wish to endanger
themselves. A second attack was made, the houses found empty, and their
interior contents destroyed.”

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

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

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

  “_For the Southern Confederacy,_
  _Jackson, Mississippi._”

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

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

To politicians, this seemed not only a deviation from all known
precedents, but, politically, an unfathomable mystery. But, no more
remarkable was the appointment than that, a lawyer at the summit of
professional ability and large income--a noted abolitionist--opposed
to the fugitive slave acts, should have accepted the position. But
those who knew Judge Matthews and his patriotism best, could discern
in it logical conclusions--the interests of freedom could be subserved
and the public mind attained by a shorter method than by arguing,
speaking, or publishing--“_the enforcement of the iniquitous fugitive
slave law_.” And for three years he prosecuted “offenders” _without_
just fault or favor--giving such lessons in its application, that made
loyalty to freedom, and magnified the blessings of the free.

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

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

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

It is not stated that any _promise_ had been made by Judge
Matthews--_none violated_; and differed materially from ordinary cases,
like that of O. A. Gardner, a Master Mason, arrested for robbing the
mails at Minneapolis, who said in court that his confession was made to
Postal Inspector Gould, a brother Mason, on the promise that Gould, as
a fellow Mason, would see that he was acquitted--“that his acquittal
was assured--that the judge, the lawyers on both sides, and most of the
jury were _Masons_.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: School-house of 1851, in which President Garfield
taught.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: THE OLIVE BRANCH

VOLUME I.] JUNE 6, 1818. [NUMBER 33.]

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

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

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

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

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

  “PROSPECTS

  “FOR CONTINUING THE PUBLICATION OF THE OLIVE BRANCH.

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

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

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

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

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

  “The _inducements_ we offer are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Renick, Doan & Co.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[6] History United States, by C. A. Goodrich, 1823: “This fund, in
May 1821, amounted to one million seven hundred thousand dollars--the
yearly income of which, together with twelve thousand dollars of the
public taxes, is annually devoted to the maintenance of common school
masters in every town in the state. The amount paid to the towns from
this fund, in 1818, was more than seventy thousand dollars--a greater
sum by twenty-two thousand dollars than the whole state tax amounted to
in the year preceding.”

[7] Mathews.

[8] “The Builders of the Nation.”




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


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

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

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

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

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

The following forms were used:

  “CERTIFICATE OF QUALIFICATION.

  [Illustration: SEAL]

  “STATE OF OHIO,
  MEDICAL DISTRICT NO. 3.

  “_To Whom It May Concern._

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

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

  “E. PERKINS, _President_.
  COLUMBUS BIERCE, _Secretary_.”

  “LICENSE.

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

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

  [Illustration: SEAL]

  __________________________
  “_President Court Common Pleas._

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

  “COLUMBUS BIERCE,
  _Secretary Third Medical District._”

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

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

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

  “DIPLOMA.

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

  [Illustration: SEAL]

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

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

  “JOHN THOMAS, _President_.

  “Attest: JOHN BARNES, _Secretary_.

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

  “C. BIERCE,
  _Secretary Third Medical District, Ohio_.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Hunter and Dog.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  [Illustration: Man of Special Providences.]

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

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

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

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

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

Stated preaching places were free to all denominations.

[Illustration: Church, Residence, and Court-house.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early in the nineteenth century a citizen and observing author[14]
says: “There is a prejudice against all preachers in this (Ohio) and
all other states is certainly true; but, so far as we are acquainted
with them, and we know them well, we are compelled to say that our
clergymen in Ohio, especially those who have lived here ever since
our first settlement, deserve unqualified praise for their zeal and
good works. _No men in this state_ have been _so useful in building up
society, in making us a moral and truly religious people_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The people most deserving of _a representation_, and most in need of
_legislative protection_, are the _farmers_, the small _store-keepers_,
the _artisans_, and the _day-laborers_, and I stand by _them_, and
against this ‘league.’ I go into the barricades with the _bourgeoisie_
and the men in blouses.

“There must be less business and more _people_ in our politics, else
the republican party and the _country_ will go to wreck. The _business_
issues are making our politics sordid and _corrupt_. _The tremendous
sums of money furnished by business men, reluctantly_ in most
instances, are _polluting the well-springs of our national being_.”

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Dr. R. Dunglison.

[10] Charles Whittlesey.

[11] Charles Whittlesey.

[12] “Ohio Valley,” by Samuel Williams, p. 40.

[13] “Autobiography of a Pioneer,” by Rev. Jacob Young.

[14] Atwater, “History of Ohio.”

[15] NOTE--1895.--“Out of eight new Republican United States Senators
just sworn in, four were born in Ohio. There are now eleven Ohio-born
Senators. Ohio does a good business in ‘raising men,’ to say nothing
about the good women.”--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

“True. It might be added that the managing editor and chief
political writer of the _Inter-Ocean_ are Ohio men. And, according
to Mr. Dana and Mr. McCullagh, to be an editor is ‘greater than a
king.’”--_Exchange._

[16] Howe’s Hist. Coll.

[17] Minnesota, with an area of 46,000,000 acres, gave 20,000,000 acres
to 3,200 miles of railroads.




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


BEASTS.

In the absence of native beasts, birds, and trees, a country is
unfitted for the habitation of man. Nature had given to Ohio these
supports to life and aids to civilization in great abundance.

The Indian was not inclined to improve his “talents,” still he was
exceedingly kind, through instinct or wisdom, in preserving in nature’s
superlative beauty things necessary for the coming man.

Of the various wild animals in Ohio, no one species has ever shown
greater numerical strength than the gray squirrel. In the early
settlements, he often annoyed his new neighbors with his mischievous
habits and petty larcenies; nevertheless, the pioneer was generally
pleased to see him, as at all seasons he was good for a savory meal.

At times these little animals became so numerous and destructive to
crops they were more to be feared than is the rabbit in California or
grasshopper in Kansas. For many years, settlers were obliged to guard
their fields when planted with corn, or droves of foraging bands would
dig up the hills and eat the growing grains; when the crops matured,
they were still more destructive, and boys when quite young were
taught to handle the rifle, and when employed as guards became expert
marksmen. Most every one old enough to use a gun could put a ball
through the head of a squirrel three times in five or better on the
topmost boughs of the lofty hardwood timber which covered the face of
the country.

The amount of forest was so extensive and undisturbed that the squirrel
at times increased to a degree which made him disastrous to crops in
spite of guards, guns, traps, and “deadfalls,” and caused him to become
a subject for legislation, encouraging his destruction by obligations
and rewards. When becoming too numerous, and subsistence scarce, they
migrate to other parts, and often in numbers so great it would require
many days for the marching column of several miles in width to pass any
given point. The Ohio river was a favorable place to capture and kill
them, as they arrived on shore weak and wet. Many were drowned in the
attempt to swim. The inhabitants along the river at such times made it
a business to kill them by wagon loads to feed and fatten hogs.

The country through which an army of this kind marched left nothing
out doors in the way of subsistence. The first migration of this kind
causing serious alarm occurred in 1807 directly after corn-planting;
and in all the southern counties of the state, it became impossible
to guard the fields, and continued so long that the corn crop was a
failure over a large extent of country, and farmers were obliged to buy
grain for bread.

The legislature was appealed to, and a statute enacted the same year,
making it imperative for every person within the state, subject to
the payment of tax, to furnish a specified number of squirrel scalps,
to be determined by the trustees of the township, whose duty it was
to give the lister the number required from each individual. This was
intended as a tax in addition to other taxes, making the penalty for
refusal or neglect the same as that of a delinquent tax-payer. And
a non-tax-payer, and tax-payers furnishing scalps in excess of the
required number, were entitled to two cents per scalp, to be paid from
the funds of the county. But, with all the boys and guns and other
devices for destruction to keep the number down to a minimum, the
usual amount seemed but little changed, and squirrel raids continued,
occasionally, all the same.

A good story is told by an old lumberman, who, in the early days of
steamboating on the Ohio river, contracted to deliver on board of
steamboat one hundred thousand shingles at a “wood-landing” of one of
the river counties in Ohio. The shingles were stacked on the bank of
the river ready for shipment. A few days after, the lumberman heard
most of his “stuff” had been stolen, and that it was probable it had
gone to Pittsburg. On receiving this unwelcome news, he drove down to
the river to look after the condition of things. Before he reached the
place he found the woods alive with squirrels marching toward the river.

On his return the workmen asked what discoveries were made. The reply
was, “The shingles never went to Pittsburg;” “they all went down the
river, and it is useless to look in Pittsburg or any other place for
them.”... “I got to the river just in time to know all about it. You
see, the squirrels are marching and crossing the river at that point;
and the commanding general is not much on a swim, and he carried one of
my shingles down to the water and rode over on it, and every colonel,
captain, lieutenant and commissioned and non-commissioned officer did
what they saw their general do, and finally the rank and file made a
raid, and I got there just as an old squirrel came down to the water
dragging a shingle, which he shoved into the river, jumped upon it,
raised his brush for a sail and went over high and dry; and when near
enough the other shore leaped off and let his boat float down the
stream. As soon as these observations were taken in, I went up on the
high bank where the shingles had been stored, and found there was not a
shingle left--they are down the river, gentlemen--down the river, sure.”

This story receives a shadow of support from the learned and cautious
Buffon, who observes: “Although the navigations of the grey squirrels
seem almost incredible, they are attested by so many witnesses that
we can not deny the fact.” And in a note on the subject says: “The
grey squirrels frequently remove their place of residence, and it not
unoften happens that not one can be seen one winter where they were in
multitudes the year before; they go in large bodies, and when they want
to cross a lake or river they seize a _piece of the bark of a birch
or lime, and drawing it to the edge of the water, get upon it, and
trust themselves to the hazard of the wind and waves, erecting their
tails_ to serve the purpose of _sails_; they sometimes form a fleet of
three or four thousand, and if the wind proves too strong, a general
shipwreck ensues ... but if the winds are favorable they are certain to
make their desired port.”[18]

The squirrel is an industrious and sagacious animal. He lays up stores
of provisions for future use, and conceals them where others of his
kind are unable to find them. And his memory is so perfect, and
location of place so unerring, that in dead of winter, and short of
a meal, he will quit his warm nest in the hollow limb of some tree,
plunge into deep snow and go direct a long distance to the exact spot
where months before he had buried a walnut or an acorn, and dig down
and get the treasure and return with it to his home.

[Illustration: The Squirrel Hunter.]

It was once said, “To number the Bison would be like counting the
leaves of the forest”--so, too, the myriads of squirrels that inhabited
the unbroken forests of Ohio evidently approached in number the
incalculable hosts of buffalo that in the grandeur of their numerical
strength swept over the western plains.

The rabbit multiplies six times as fast as the squirrel, yet he has
never appeared in such multitudes as that of his bushy-tailed cousin.
Happen what may he is, however, always on hand. He loves civilization
and prefers the grassy fields, standing corn and sunny hillsides to
the wilds of the forests, and is always as ready to care for the waste
apples in the orchard as he is to bark around the young trees. He is
an annoying tenant--timid by nature and easily captured. Millions are
sold in the markets every year, but can not come up in numbers with the
squirrel in his palmy days. The “one day’s rabbit shooting” at Lamar,
Colo., by two hundred guns, December 31, 1894, resulted in the capture
of five thousand one hundred and forty-two (5,142); but compared with
a squirrel hunt in Franklin county, Ohio, August 20, 1822, it does not
appear so large; when a less number of guns killed nineteen thousand
six hundred and sixty; and evidently not a “very good day for squirrels
to be out either.”

No part of the North-west, in a state of nature, was so well adapted
to the propagation and preservation of game beasts and birds as that
within the geographical limits of Ohio. To show the immense amount of
large game which also existed long after settlements had been made, it
is but necessary to give the results of a single day’s hunt, confined
to one township of five miles square, in the county of Medina, December
24, 1818, and which is authentically described by Henry Howe in his
“Historical Collections of Ohio,” Vol. II, pages 463 to 467, inclusive:
“The accurate enumeration of the game killed at the center (of the
drive) resulted as follows: _Seventeen_ wolves, _twenty-one_ bears,
_three hundred_ deer, besides _turkeys_, _coons_ and _foxes_ not
counted.” The wolf-scalps were good for fifteen dollars each, making
a draw on the treasury for two hundred and fifty-five dollars. Many
counties in Ohio were not formed nor settled for nearly a quarter of
a century after becoming part of the state, and a few much later, the
last being that of Noble, in 1851, making in all eighty-eight counties.

Consequently, game of all kinds remained in abundance in Henry,
Hancock, Hardin, Lucas, Marion, Noble, Williams, and some others. As
late as 1845 two men in Williams county made an effort to see who could
kill the greater number of deer, each confining his operations to a
single township of his own election. One selected Superior and the
other Center township; the hunt to last sixty days.

At the expiration of the time, one had killed ninety-nine and the other
sixty-five. The success of neither caused remarks of admiration among
the “squirrel hunters,” a few of whom boastingly declared they could
show a much greater list in the given time if they were inclined to
hunt for quantity.

When the “Reports, Explorations and Surveys” were made to ascertain
the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the
Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, under the direction of the
Secretary of War, in 1853 to 1856, the vast public domain was shown to
be rich in herds of buffalo, elk, deer, and smaller game of both beasts
and birds. It was at this time the bison swarmed over all the Western
plains and hills, from the great rivers to the ocean and from Canada to
the Gulf in numbers beyond the power of computation.

[Illustration: A Herd of Bison.]

Of all the quadrupeds known to inhabit the earth, no one species ever
marshaled such innumerable armies as that of the American bison. As
late as 1871, it was estimated that south of the Union Pacific Railroad
line there were between three and four million head. As soon as the
road entered the territory the destruction began, and by the reports of
the Smithsonian Institution, the miserable “pot-hunters” in 1872 killed
over a million and a quarter; and during the first three years after
the road was completed this band of thieves and murderers slaughtered
over three millions of these valuable animals, taking the hides of some
and tongues of others, but leaving untouched where they fell more than
half of this immense number. As American game the bison exists no more.
The only few remaining out of captivity are at Yellowstone Park.

It is to be regretted that the policy of the government in regard to
the natural wealth of the “public domain” has ever shown such a lack of
wisdom, forethought, and power as to permit the immediate exhaustion
leaving nothing for the legitimate heirs. And it seems singular that
such a well known and immense storehouse of national wealth, as that of
the buffalo, the annuity of which supported more than thirty thousand
natives of the country, should have been left unprotected against those
who have destroyed the forests and killed the cattle on a thousand
hills.

Governor Isaac I. Stevens, in his report of estimates of the Pacific
Railroad in 1854 to Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, says: “The
supplies of meat for all the laborers on this line east of the
mountains ... will be furnished from the plains. The _inexhaustible_
herds of buffalo will supply amply the whole force till the road is
completed.”

[Illustration: Camp Red River Hunters.]

There were at that time twenty-seven known tribes of Indians west of
the Missouri river, of which the greater part subsisted by hunting the
buffalo; and he says of the hunters from Mouse river valley to the Red
river of the North: “They make two hunts each year, leaving a portion
of their numbers at home to take care of their houses and farms:
One from the middle of June to the middle of August, when they make
‘pemican’ and dry meat, and prepare the skins of buffalo for lodges
and moccasins; and again from the middle of September to the middle of
November, when, besides the pemican and dried meat, the skin is dried
into robes.

“I estimate that four months each year two thousand hunters, three
thousand women and children, and eighteen hundred carts are on the
plains; and estimating the load of a cart at eight hundred pounds, and
allowing three hundred carts for luggage, that twelve hundred tons of
meat, skins, and furs is their product of the chase.[19]

“These people are simple-hearted, honest, and industrious, and would
make good citizens. Each year they carry off to the settlements at
Pembina at least two million five hundred thousand pounds of buffalo
meat, dried, or in the shape of pemican.” Large tribes, as the Gros
Ventres, Bloods, Piegans, and others, had hunted and feasted for ages
without diminishing the number or strength of “the _inexhaustible_
herds of buffalo,” described by Governor Stevens in 1854.

This source of subsistence to a numerous and poor people, and immense
wealth to the nation, was wantonly destroyed by the “_pot-hunter_,”
who is in no way related to the “squirrel hunter,” but stands in about
the same relation to the sportsman as does the “missing link” to the
species he disgraces. He is a destructive animal, and it is as useless
to hope any species of game, beast or bird, will ever exist in numbers
too great for this wily loafer to destroy, as it is to expect legal
enactments and penalties will ever prevent him doing evil.

The selfishness that exterminated the buffalo--“_might makes
right_”--runs through the veins of the white man. In the same report to
the Secretary of War in which Mr. Stevens calls attention of settlers
to “many pleasant valleys” that are occupied by “friendly Indians--in
some instances described with log houses, cultivated fields, barns,
flocks and herds, mills and churches, with good morals and observance
of the Sabbath day--that many tribes live in a rich and inviting
country, and are wealthy in horses, cattle, and hogs.” He closes by
saying: “Laws should be passed for the extinguishment of the Indian
title. Posts are recommended with half regiments of mounted men, with a
battery of horse artillery, and one of mountain howitzers; that all the
Indians west of the mountains ‘should be placed in reservation,’ and
the country opened to settlement.”

It is stated that with a small distribution of presents and “prudence,
judgment, and _display of a small military force_, no difficulty will
be experienced in accomplishing these arrangements so essential to the
construction of the road.” And it does not appear that the government
protected the rights of those in possession of the “fertile valleys”
any more than it did the game it knew gave support to the people
inhabiting the country. If the same careless indifference and love of
greed that wantonly destroyed the game beasts which existed upon the
vast unoccupied domain west of the Mississippi had in like manner
forestalled the settlement of the “North-west Territory” by killing all
the game, population and civilization would have been suspended if not
made improbable within the past century.

The area of Ohio was well supplied with a variety of the most
attractive game, fed and marked by Nature as her own, free for
all--which made the early settlements contented, independent, and
observing. No means of education gives the mind so much satisfaction
and confidence in truth and reality as the study of the object lessons
received while living in a garden of Nature, an invited guest.

“All self-educated persons,” says Doctor Newman, “are likely to
have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, than those who are
forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an
examination--who have too much on their hands to indulge in thinking
or investigation.... Much better is it for the active and thoughtful
intellect ... to eschew the college and university altogether than to
submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious.

“How much more profitable for the independent mind after the rudiments
of education to pursue the train of thought which his mother-wit
suggests! How much healthier to wander in the fields, and there with
the exiled prince to find

  ‘Tongues in trees, books in running brooks.’

How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the poem--

  ‘As the village school and books a few supplied,’

contrived from the beach, and the quay, and fisher’s boat, and the
inn’s fireside, and the tradesman’s shop, and shepherd’s walk, and
smuggler’s hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and
restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and poetry of his
own.” Sir Walter Scott long ago declared: “The best part of every man’s
education is that which he gives himself.”

This was the nature of the school system in Ohio. The young population
grew up among the beasts and birds and trees; each of which in turn
served as teacher. Not only the burley bear and nimble deer, but even
the pestiferous vermin, were aiders and abettors in education and the
rise of the new civilization. The coons, the foxes, the beavers, the
otters, minks, muskrats, and skunk, carried _legal tenders_ with them
and furnished the chief circulating medium known to the country for
many years.

With the trained dog, the boys in the wilderness were enabled to secure
pelts to send to Boston for books, which erected the superstructure of
more great men than can be found as the production of any other state
or country in a single century. And to-day the intelligent squirrel
hunter makes a respectful bow to the little animals for the honorable
part they so successfully performed in creating the new species and
placing Ohio permanently in the lead of a nation of the best informed
people in the world.


BIRDS.

  “For wheresoe’er your murmuring tremors thrill
   The woody twilight, there man’s heart hath still
   Conferred a spirit breath, and heard a ceaseless hymn.”

The number of species of birds found at various times in Ohio amount
to two hundred and ninety-two; while the number breeding in the state
is placed at one hundred and twenty-nine; and if the probable summer
residents are counted the number would be increased to one hundred
and seventy-one. An eminent ornithologist says in a recent work: “To
cast the horoscope of the bird-life of the future is uncertain work,
and perhaps without profit; but the stars certainly predict utter
extermination of the finest of all game birds--the wild turkey--and
the diminution to the point of extermination of the ruffed grouse, the
quail, the wood duck and wild pigeon.”[20]

Game birds as well as song birds would from natural causes alone
diminish in number, as their selected homes or breeding places become
destroyed by clearing up the country. But in addition to this, the
unseasonable and inhuman destruction by means of firearms has become
so alarmingly great as to foretell that at no distant day most of the
desirable species of birds that are permanent residents will have been
destroyed.

It is generally known by the older “Squirrel Hunters” that from their
first knowledge of the North-west to beginning of the railroad era,
1855, Ohio was a paradise for the sportsman with dog and gun. The
fields abounded with covies of quail; the forests with wild turkeys,
grouse, pigeons and squirrels; and the streams with ducks and geese.
Up to the period named the conditions of the country underwent but few
changes detrimental to the propagation and preservation of game, and
the abundant supplies afforded amusement and subsistence equaled at
present nowhere within the limits of the United States.

The settlements as yet contained many reservations of continuous
tracts of undisturbed forest, wild ranges, islands along the larger
water-courses, overflowing lands, unmolested parts of large estates,
military and school reservations, etc., often embracing sections of
rich soil heavily timbered and densely covered with an undergrowth of
bushes, and in topography well adapted for resorts and homes of game
birds and beasts.

Few, if any, of those timbered reservations failed to be occupied by
every species and variety of nature’s household. Some locations from
time immemorial had been the favorite and undisputed habitation of
that most wonderful American bird, the wild turkey. For he is not
migratory, nor an aimless wanderer of the forest. His instincts and
attachments to place, the home of his ancestors, are so great that
generations after generations live and die in the same selected site of
wild territory. No persecution can induce him to abandon his accustomed
haunts. Nothing but death or the removal of his forest ends his family.

The area of his home requires several square miles, and includes a
nursery, feeding grounds, ranches, roosts and places of refuge in times
of danger. And if by pursuit he is obliged to flee beyond the limit of
his range, he returns to his associates, to his familiar trees, rocks
and mountain streams.

The turkey is indigenous to America, and not found wild in any other
part of the world. He resides in unsettled sections of timbered
countries, from Mexico to the forests of Canada, and is the wildest,
most intelligent and untamable of all the birds. When taken directly
from the shell, and reared either by hand or with domesticated turkeys,
he will, when grown, separate from friends and accustomed comrades,
and instinctively seek the more attractive life of the forest. No
care and kindness can in one or two generations overcome the fear
of man and love for the wilds, and it requires many generations of
skilled schooling to extinguish the desire for roving and give to him
that contented and confiding disposition which characterizes the
domesticated bird. The writer does not believe it possible for a bird
that has been reared in a state of nature, and felt the charms of
the wilderness, to ever become reconciled to any other conditions of
life. He once brought down a young full-grown female bird and captured
her. When she found resistance useless, she cried most pitifully. She
had suffered no injury excepting a broken tip of one wing, which was
amputated and dressed. The bird was kept in a large cage in the back
yard for two years, remaining concealed during the day and partaking of
food and water late in the evening, and then in the absence of every
object of fear. In due time she was removed to a garden overgrown with
bushes of currants, gooseberries, raspberries, etc., interspersed
with strawberry plants, and with her a pair of tame turkeys. Here she
remained over two years without manifesting the least indication of
making the acquaintance of her civilized relations. A misplaced board
on the fence gave her the boon so much desired--freedom. It was the
beginning of summer when she escaped and was searched for, but seen no
more until the following spring, when she was noticed several times
near the tame turkeys, and this always very early in the morning.

That she could get there at that hour, or get there at all from the
timbered land near a mile distant, through farms and fences, seemed
remarkable, as she could not fly. After harvest of that year she
frequented the stubble fields near the timber, with four well-grown
half-breeds, as wild as herself. The next spring she commenced visiting
her old acquaintances again, but, unfortunately, fell in sight of a
pot-hunter, and was brought in as a great prize. But those who had
kindly cared for the misfortunes of the bird, and now looked upon
her lifeless form, had feelings which the word indignation failed to
express.

The turkey propagated in foreign countries soon becomes degenerated,
and in every way much inferior to the American type, the high standard
of which in this country is kept up by infusion of wild blood and
liberal forest ranges adapted to the nature of the bird.

The wild turkey has many peculiarities not found in any other species.
Other birds elect certain localities to spend their nights, while the
wild turkey puts up wherever night overtakes him; for his range is
his home, and he is at home any-where in his range. When roosting in
considerable numbers, the flock is dispersed over an extensive area
of forest. He seldom, if ever, roosts two consecutive nights in or
near the same place. When the leaves are on the trees he goes to the
topmost twigs of the highest trees, and lets his heavy body down upon
the foliage and small branches, and fixes himself for the night so he
can not be seen by enemies from above nor from below. When the forest
is bare he is still more careful to withdraw from observation, and for
this purpose selects large, rough and broken trees--trees with ugly,
crooked limbs, with knots and deformities--and places himself near some
bump, crook, or place where the addition of his body will be readily
overlooked; for well does he understand that the ordinary pot-hunter
expects to see him perched upon a small limb far out from the body of
the tree, standing on his legs, with outstretched neck and elevated
head. But, instead of making a show, he always does the best he can to
conceal himself, and if nothing better appears at hand, he will take
to a large horizontal limb, and near the trunk of the tree flatten his
body down on the upper part and stretch out the neck and legs on line
with the limb, so to resemble closely a slight enlargement on that part
of the growth.

He knows so well how to conceal himself when roosting that he laughs at
the possibility of being seen and captured by the marvelous hunters who
have _killed so many by moonlight_! The arrival of man and gun in his
forest is scented and signaled at once. The birds most exposed fly far
in advance of the hunter, and those that feel safe keep still and are
safe from observation.

The writer admits, after testing this mode of hunting after night, many
times, many seasons, and with many persons, that he has never been
able to find a turkey on a tree while roosting. He has seen, however,
and measured the credibility of the individual who insists that he has
captured a great many snipe in cold, dark winter nights, by holding a
light at the open mouth of a bag while other persons drive them in, but
has never been able to find the individual who shot a wild turkey while
sitting on the roost.

A friend who had become infatuated with the idea of night-hunting,
insisted that turkeys could be seen on bare trees when the moon was as
light and bright as then; and the reason he had not been heretofore
successful was owing entirely to the “if.” As soon as the moon was
declared all right we were on the grounds; could hear birds flying off
the trees in advance of us as soon as we entered the border. Every
tree in our pathway was scanned, without seeing an object resembling a
turkey. The writer soon tired of the amusement and retraced his steps
some distance, and sat down upon an old log lying on the sand in the
deep-cut bed of a creek.

After waiting a reasonable time and hearing nothing from the friend,
the writer called--waited and called a number of times; but all
remained silent. Thinking the hunter had become bewildered and wandered
beyond the range of vocal sounds, fired one barrel of the gun off,
pointing it in the direction of the moon, which was partially obscured
by some of the small branches of a large sycamore tree, standing on
the bank of the opposite side of the creek.

The gun made a loud report, and so did a large gobbler as he came
flapping down through the branches into the creek, having received a
mortal charge of shot. The signal gun soon brought in the absent member
of the expedition, who, on feeling a twenty-pound bird and hearing the
explanation, moved it be made unanimous, as the only successful way to
shoot wild turkeys by moonlight.

Another peculiarity of this bird may be mentioned. In the spring of
the year the female birds straggle long distances from the flock, and
seek temporary separation in the more open but unfrequented parts of
the forest, where the male birds seldom, if ever, resort. Here they
nest and rear their young. When the offspring is well grown the mother
birds, with young, return to the flock, after which old and young, male
and female, remain together as one family during fall and winter.

In-door naturalists and authors have given to the world many singular
and absurd statements respecting the habits, sagacity and instincts
of the wild turkey, since the truthful descriptions penned by John
James Audubon, F.R.S., S.L. and E. And it is singular that the eminent
naturalist, Thomas Nuttall, A.M.T., L.S. and C., should say he is not
gregarious.

Charles Hallock, the able editor of “Forest and Stream,” author of
“Camp Life,” “Sportsman’s Gazetteer,” etc., states that in the spring
wild turkeys “pair off” (like blue-birds), “and after the young are
hatched both parents take great interest in the growth and progress
of the young family;” that they are “easily tamed; are slaughtered
by moonlight while roosting; that it is rarely a wing-shot can be
procured; that they are killed by sportsmen in various ways,” most
of which is not much less at variance with facts in nature than the
statement of Mr. Burrell Symmes, who claimed that he had outwitted
the sagacity of the bird, and killed at one shot, with a rifle, a
large flock that infested a wheat-stack near their range. “The turkeys
would gather around the stack, every few days, as close as they could
crowd their bodies, pulling out wheat-heads to eat;” and, taking in
the situation, says he bent the barrel of his gun to the segment of
a circle corresponding to the diameter of the area of the base of
the stack. And well loaded with powder and leaden ball, concealed
the weapon at the proper adjustment, placing himself in view of the
situation, with a cord attached to the trigger. The turkeys came, and
unsuspectingly crowded around the stack, and began their accustomed
repast. Now was the moment for action--“the cord was pulled, and the
gun fired, which sent the ball round and round the stack, until it
mowed down every last turkey in the flock.”

Respecting the habits and peculiarities of the wild turkey, the author
turned up a slip from the lips of an old North Carolina negro, who
gives the best pen-picture of the home-life of the bird that has
fallen to the notice of ornithologists. The authography is somewhat
objectionable, but the whole story is well told. Among other things he
says the wild turkey is a “mighty peert fowl;” that he can sometimes
teach a fox how to be smart, while at other times a sucking calf is not
half so big a fool as he makes of himself; that he had known gobblers
to outwit all the hunters in the country, and then walk into some
ordinary colored man’s “pen” and stay there, “a cranin he neck, an’
tryen to get out at de top w’at been all roof over, wile de hole in de
groun’ w’at he came in at stans wide open.”

The “pen” was a fatal device, capturing annually thousands of
those birds during early settlements. Before the extensive forests
disappeared turkeys lived well in the fall and winter and fattened on
the mast. But owing to the love for Indian corn they were by a moderate
display of this food easily enticed into traps, called “pens,” when
placed in secluded sections of forest where the birds were known to
seek subsistence.

Pens were usually constructed of windfalls--old limbs of various
sizes--making an inclosure of ten or twelve feet square, four feet in
height, and covered with similar limbs weighted down with other limbs
placed across the covering. A trench, eighteen or twenty inches deep
and about the same width, cut to enter the pen two feet, terminating
abruptly slanting upward. Over the part of the trench next to the wall
were secured a number of small poles forming a bridge a foot wide.
Outside of the pen the trench extended, rising gradually, until it
reached the level of the surrounding ground.

When finished, the trap would be well-baited with corn in the center
and in the trench. Small quantities were scattered off in different
directions from the pen, and a few grains here and there for a mile
or more. After the birds would find a few grains, the entire flock
would engage in search for more, and soon the trail of corn leading to
the pen would be discovered, and rushing along in haste would enter
the trench unawares, and forcing the front birds in the trench under
the bridge and up into the pen before danger was suspected. As soon
as those in the inclosure discovered the situation, they would try to
force their way through the openings in the pen, passing and repassing
around and over the bridge with heads erect, never observing the
opening by which they entered--their comrades would soon disappear,
leaving the unfortunate birds to be taken out by the trapper.

In a good location a single pen would furnish one hundred or more
turkeys during a winter. One year, J. J. Audubon kept an account of
the produce of a pen which he visited daily and found that seventy-six
had been caught in it, in about two months. Seven was the highest
number he had ever succeeded in taking from a pen at one time, but knew
of as many as eighteen being captured by others. The average success
of a pen, per capture, ranged from four to five. The writer has known
fifteen to be the fruits of the first visit, and no more caught that
season.

To make the pen a success, required great care and attention. The
timber necessary for the construction was gathered from windfalls
showing woodland decay; any marks of the axe, or civilization were
considered objectionable. The earth taken out to make the trench,
leading to and into the pen, was carefully removed to other parts; old
leaves were thrown into the trench and about the pen, making every
thing in the vicinity look ancient and accidental.

In many settlements the success of trapping pens was of short duration.
As the country soon furnished easy access of the birds to large fields
of their favorite food, they no longer could be induced to enter
the baited pens. Notwithstanding the number captured by means of
pens--“slaughtered by moonlight”--“by baiting”--“by treeing with dogs,”
turkeys remained quite plentiful for more than sixty years after the
settlement of Ohio. They were to be found in the woodlands all over the
state, and for half a century remained the king-bird of the sportsman.
When frightened, he seeks cover and lies well to a point. Early in
the morning is the most propitious time to find him. When a flock is
flushed and frightened by the rapid motions of a dog, some will fly
and others run in the direction of security and cover; it may be a
mile or more distant, and if so the sportsman will most surely pick
up a straggler or two on his way, if he and his dog understand their
business.

If any have taken to the trees, it will be lost time to look after
them--they have made another fly in the direction taken by the leaders,
who prefer the use of feet to wings. The dog must now keep close
to his master, who moves so cautiously and quietly, that he talks
to his companion by signs and motions altogether. The birds are so
wonderfully fearful of a dog, and are now so frightened that some,
while on the way to the place of refuge, will drop down in a secure
looking spot to regain composure or to await till all is quiet. It is
these the sportsman is after. Old logs, fallen tree-tops, piles of
old brush, blackened limbs, tufts of weeds and spots of dead prairie
grass grown in small openings among timber, afford attractive points
for concealment, and are all remembered with reverence and respect as
monuments of departed birds, at the death and obsequies of which the
writer had been present.

The hunter must be prepared to find a bird anywhere on the line of
march. The dog carries the scent and his every movement determines the
distance the birds are off. Now he moves with cat-like stealth--he
stops with tetanic muscular tension, quivering in every fiber, stands
elongated--a fixed immovable figure--his marvelous nose has caught the
image and measured the distance, which in silence says, stop!--move
not, as eyes and nose direct to the place some twenty or thirty yards
distant. The bird is there, and the canine head knows the result of
another step in that direction--the hunter summoning all his skill and
coolness, takes a step or two forward, and the bird is flushed, and
starts off with the velocity of a grouse, testing sporting ability
and rapidity of motion that rewards in hearing the monster fall; and
a second later the quiet salute by the faithful and well-trained dog,
showing he is elated equally with his master.

Quite often a turkey will carry a mortal charge a long distance and
drop dead. Remains of dead birds are so frequently found during the
hunting season, that there can be but little doubt many shot at and
get away, die from their wounds. And the hunter should not despair
of success if his shot on the wing does not come to the ground
immediately. Instances in great numbers are before the writer, some of
which are marked by more than ordinary singularity, where the recovery
of the bird has taken place, quite unexpectedly, after a pronounced
miss. One bitter cold afternoon, while out with a friend, who shot at
a bird as it was flying through the timber; it continued on its course
and was observed for a long distance to fly naturally but to go down
too abruptly. The locality where observation ended was hunted closely
and easily, as there was a crusted snow on the ground, but without
finding as much as a feather. As we were returning, and within a few
rods of the spot where the bird we had been searching for was shot at,
another turkey came sailing over with tremendous velocity, going in the
direction taken by the first one. It was given a barrel loaded with
Ely’s Green Cartridge, No. 5 shot. The bird went on and down, but this
time we marked the locality more accurately and were soon at the place
and found two turkeys, dead and warm, within a few feet of each other.
Some years before this, while standing in a little opening, early in
the morning, listening for turkey sounds, the report of a gun was heard
near half a mile distant, and in a moment a large gobbler fell dead at
the writer’s feet.

While out with two young dogs, a bird was flushed on the bank of the
Scioto river, and received a shot when near the opposite side, which so
injured and confused him that he came back and fell upon the side of
the stream from which he started. The heavy body came down with a thud,
close to the shore, among some weeds and bushes near a large pile of
drift-wood. The dogs were at the place in quick time, but could find
no turkey. Thinking it had crawled into the drift, we tried to have the
dogs hunt the drift. But they knew better and took no heart in spending
time at that point, and required constant restraint to prevent them
from taking the forest. After an ineffectual examination of the cover
afforded by the drift, the superior judgment of the dogs was taken, and
with management, their noses kept the course of this wounded bird and
followed his meanderings one and a half miles in an air line from the
drift to the point where they came to the bird on a stand. Walking up,
expecting a flush, I was surprised to find a dead turkey, warm, muddy,
and wet with the dew of the morning.

While it is quite common for a turkey, when mortally wounded, to
continue his flight considerable distances before falling, and equally,
if not more so, to fall dead at once from the shot, it is not often one
will, while on the wing making his escape, change his course of conduct
and come down and give himself up without being touched by shell or
shot. Still, it is not impossible, for he has been known to do so, but
not, perhaps, for the reason said to be entertained by Captain Scott’s
coon.

One still, warm afternoon in December, 1860, with dog, the writer
visited the “Fenced-in Wilderness.” On arrival in the woods a concealed
position was selected and the dog sent out to look up the birds. Soon
a large male bird came so near, on foot and unseen, that he scented the
hunter, and rose within less than twenty yards of the writer, who fired
after him one of Ely’s green wire cartridges, one and a half ounces No.
5 shot, driven by three drachms of Hazard’s electric powder. The bird
was up in the air about thirty feet, going off directly in line with
the shot. When the gun reported the turkey did not limber nor tumble
like a bird shot, but came down precisely like a paper kite--full
spread of wings and tail, with outstretched neck and legs. When the
writer came up he was lying upon the ground, spread out like a bat,
and the captor placed one foot and weight of the body on his neck, and
commenced reloading the empty barrel. Before this was half accomplished
it became necessary to suspend reloading and attend to the customer
by changing his neck from the foot to the hand, in order to keep him
long enough to cut his throat. During the time required to open the
knife and perform this little surgical operation he used his legs and
toenails most vigorously and effectively, and the operator came out
of the fray bleeding and lacerated, with loss of the greater portion
of coat, vest, shirt and pants. The wounds, however severe, were as
nothing compared with the knowledge demonstration revealed--that this
turkey was knocked down by the generation of some force, without making
a scar, mark, or sign of traumatism, external or internal. A critical
examination revealed no injury whatever, except the cut made by the
knife. The explanation is for the scientist.

It requires a good gun, a good load and a good shot to bring down a
full-grown, well-feathered turkey. Seldom they rise short of thirty
yards distant; then, by the powerful motor assistance of the legs at
the start, the next thirty yards are made with such velocity that by
the time the gunner has “spoken his piece,” the bird is off so far that
loose No. 5 shot and a fair charge of powder will not be effective
unless by mere accident. This became manifest at the beginning of
the Fifties. Having flushed a very large flock of turkeys near town
by means of a little cocker, that made a terrible ado after them in
the standing cornstalks, near the Scioto river--after hunting them
unsuccessfully in the timber, a strip of prairie grass was entered,
full of “nigger-heads,” extending parallel with the river for a full
half-mile. The grass was tall, and the freezing weather had stiffened
the ground and frozen over the pools, so it could be walked over with
safety. As the grass was entered the little dog became invisible; but
it was soon discovered where he was by the flight of a turkey out of
range, and before the cocker could be brought under control he flushed
several more. It was not long, however, before a good wing shot was
obtained, and the writer started home with a load. This success and
the close proximity to town induced a number of amateur gunners to try
their luck, and they were directed to the locality; for it was certain,
if the turkeys were concealed in the grass, they would remain there if
undisturbed until their time for moving--the dusk of evening.

From what was subsequently known, it would appear that the whole flock,
consisting of forty or fifty birds, still frightened, had found their
way back to this place of security and concealment, and, without the
aid of dogs, were walked up and shot at by the party, but without
capturing a single bird.

The hunters returned with sorrow and disappointment. One of their
number, a prominent lawyer and ex-member of Congress, came in with the
loss of one eye and otherwise disfigured for life by the explosion of
his gun.

At the close of the War of the Rebellion a large amount of
uncultivated, wild land, owned by non-residents, was sold in small
farms to settlers; and a general disposition prevailed, from high
prices of produce, to improve much of the better class of timber lands
every-where, underbrushing for pasture, or deadening the large timber
for corn, and this had some influence in decimating game. Still the
game resorts, uninhabitable in this way, amounted to little compared
with influence and facilities increased railroads gave the pot-hunter
to go on with his work of extermination in those mammoth parks of
forests in the eastern and southern borders of the state, where the
deer, turkey, grouse, and wild-pigeon should have found protection and
a home to the end of time.

And with a diversified and wild section of country large enough to
accommodate and furnish annually thousands of game, beasts, and birds,
some are entirely extinct, and others scarcely known within the limits
of the state. Such destruction is truly an injustice to a beneficent
creator that fed the hungry, clothed the naked, made pioneer homes
happy and a savage wilderness a desirable habitation for the pilgrims
of a better civilization.

It is more to be regretted that in the general destruction the grandest
bird in the world--indigenous alone to America--and whose love for
“liberty” exceeds all other species, should be denied room enough among
a liberty-loving people for a home. It seems a pity Benjamin Franklin
had not been more than “half in earnest” when he suggested this bird as
the emblem of our national independence. But as it is, in other ways he
has advanced civilization and been a benefactor to the human race. His
surpassing size, tender, juicy, and gamey-flavored flesh, places him
far above all other gallinaceous birds; and his goodness and greatness
are known over the world, and those who occupy his native country have
secured for his name a _place_ among the saints, to be chanted annually
on a day set apart for _thanksgiving and praise_.

Railroad facilities enabled pot-hunters to flood the country, to shoot
for eastern saloons and cold-storage houses, until the rapid decimation
of valuable game gave reasons for serious apprehension that both birds
and beasts will become exterminated or taken from the sources of food
supply. An annual depletion of the quantity of game in a given locality
is generally borne well, and is, to a limited extent, beneficial. They
usually stand assessments of numbers much better than encroachments
upon their borders. And it is sometimes singular where they all go
to, when the woods in which they have always lived become cleared up,
so they are obliged to transfer their possessions. An estate in the
Military District, consisting of two thousand acres, remained wild
until 1862. The agent at this date had the land cleared of the young
growth of trees and bushes and put in grass.

Two years after, while riding along a road that led through this piece
of timber, the writer saw a stately wild turkey, with head erect
and measured steps, marching through the open timber, occasionally
stopping, as though looking and listening for former companions. On the
same road, after several hours, we again saw the disappointed bird on
his way back to tell the sad story.

The wild turkey is now exterminated in Ohio, and the indications are
he will soon be as little known as the Dodo. During his stay in the
aid and interests of civilization, thousands of Squirrel Hunters were
made happy, and for nearly three hundred years he has been placed
at the head of the feast with all the compliments bestowed upon him
in 1621 by Priscilla Holmes: “The foremost of all delicacies--roast
turkey--dressed with beech-nuts.”

The quail, another valuable game bird, has, until within a few years,
been an abundant, permanent resident of the state. It is scarcely
necessary to say a word in his praise, for Bob White is a smart little
fellow, an early riser, and worth millions to agricultural interests
while living, and unequaled on toast when dead.

At the date of the first settlements in the territory the bird was
undoubtedly very retired, as well as few in number. The extensive and
dense forests, covering almost the entire country, made it ill adapted
to his nature; and those which were enabled to perpetuate existence
occupied some of the limited open tracts of land found here and there
over the country. Bob White is really a bird of civilization. He
flourishes most near the abodes of man. The cultivation of the soil and
settlement of the country increases his numbers. In support of these
conclusions we will here refer to the fact contained in a statement
made by a gentleman who, with family, settled in Ohio in the spring
of 1798, and located on the border of a small prairie--seemingly a
favorable situation for the bird. He resided several years in that
locality, raising wheat, corn, and other kinds of produce, without
hearing the voice of the quail. He had about abandoned the anticipation
of quail shooting, and questioned if it would ever be recognized as a
sport in Ohio.

One day in early summer of 1802 he thought he heard the recognized
though suppressed sound, “Bob White.” Somewhat doubting the sense of
hearing, he immediately made observations and procured additional
evidence--that of sight. Yes, he actually heard and saw the bird for
the first time in Ohio. Elated with the good news, he proceeded to the
cabin and told his discovery with so much excitement and enthusiasm
that it created a laugh at his expense. He excused his manner, however,
by saying, “It was sufficient to excite any one to know that a
highly-esteemed and familiar friend had found the way through such an
interminable wilderness, and announced his arrival in that modest and
meaning way, ‘Bob White.’” Since then he has been known as a permanent
resident.

The greater portion of the year the old birds, with the family
increase, remain in coveys. In early spring this general attachment is
broken up by pairing, each pair selecting a locality, where they remain
during the breeding season. When mating and selection of locality
has taken place, it is known by the demonstration of the male, who
gives the whole neighborhood due notice of his domestic intentions by
frequent repetitions of his cheerful and well-known notes, “Bob White!
Bob White!”

When paired the two are constant companions, ever watchful and
devoted to the welfare of each other, sharing equally the duties and
responsibilities of wedded life; and from the appearance of the first
offspring to their settlement in the world, as faithful father and
mother, remain unceasing protectors and providers for the family.
This extraordinary strength of attachment and exhibition of natural
affection has attracted the attention of all their friends.

While living on a farm the writer discovered a nest, nicely concealed
by tufts of grass after being constructed, under the projecting end
of a fence rail. At the time there were in it five eggs. This number
increased daily until twenty-three eggs filled the nest, and incubation
began. All went on happily, until one morning there was evidently
great distress in that little household. The male bird was sounding
his anxious alarm--going hurriedly from one part of the farm to that
of every other--sometimes flying, sometimes running; stopping a moment
here, a moment there; calling at the top of his voice for his mate,
in his peculiar tone of distress. His unanswered cry soon told the
tale--some accident, some ruthless hawk, some sneaking cat, or some
other enemy, had captured and destroyed his faithful companion.

He kept his calling for several hours, sometimes coming quite near,
making a low chittering noise, as if suspicious something could be
told--that the writer could tell him where his love had gone. Far from
it, he too was in search of anything that could give a clue to the
whereabouts of the unfeeling wretch that had done the bloody deed--he
too was excited, and would have executed the severest penalty known on
the guilty one, if found.

The nest was occasionally observed during the forenoon, with merely the
thought she might be testing the affection of her lord, or playing him
a practical joke; but no, the eggs were, at each visit uncovered. About
noon-day, his lamentations ceased, and hoping his mate had returned,
the nest was again visited, and was surprised to find Bob on the nest,
keeping life in the prospective family.

For several days he left the nest frequently to make further search
for his missing sweetheart. One morning, as usual, I called to see how
the little widower was getting along, and found nothing but a bundle
of shells--every egg had been hatched. Not far from the nest was heard
a crickety sound--“chit, chit, chit”--and soon discovered Bob with his
brood. He continued to care for the motherless young, as the writer
can testify from frequent meetings, and reared a fine, large covey,
which received protection and sympathy during the following fall and
winter, of all the farm hands and sportsmen, who knew him and his
well-behaving family.

Quail are not strictly granivorous. In autumn and winter they subsist
chiefly on grain, berries and weed seeds. But in the spring and summer
their food is almost exclusively composed of worms and insects. While
Henry William Herbert extols the benefits the agriculturist derives
from the consumption of weed seeds by these birds, he does not seem
to have been aware the quail is the greatest worm and insect enemy of
all the birds of North America, and are of more valuable service to
crops and trees than all other birds combined. A few coveys carefully
preserved would protect the farmer against the ravages of many
destructive insects, which are more to be feared than the “rag-weed,
the dock, or the brier.” The writer examined one accidentally killed,
several years ago, in the month of June, and its crop contained
seventy-five “_potatoe-bugs_,” besides numerous smaller insects.
And, if for no other reason, the farmer should protect the bird as
his best and most reliable exterminator of worms and insects, which,
if undisturbed, accumulate to the great detriment of growing grain
and grass, and to orchards and gardens. The quail regards man as his
friend, though a stranger to his sympathy and protection. If not for
ill-treatment and general manifestation to exterminate his species
by those whose friendship he courts, he would soon become quite as
domestic as the barnyard poultry. In fact, he frequently presses his
claims perseveringly in this line by establishing partnership and
social relations with domestic fowls. It is not uncommon to find a hen
and quail occupying the same nest, until the complement of eggs are
deposited by each, at the end of which time the quail usually submits
the incubation to her partner.

Quail are pursued by man, beast, bird, and reptile; but with a fair
opportunity and timely warning they manifest a wonderful faculty for
evading their foes; and, excepting the “pot-hunter,” they are provided
with ample means for self-preservation. He who steals upon a covey
while enjoying the sunshine by some stump, log, or fence-corner, seated
in a space less than the circumference of a half-bushel measure, and
betrays a confidence by firing upon them in this unsuspecting attitude,
filling his bag with the dead, and marching off with the brand of
“sneak-thief” upon his brow, is a “pot-hunter.” He, too, who, with a
show of indifference, rides about, pretending to be overseeing his own
affairs, whistling around until the poor unsuspecting birds, in order
to get out of his way, unconsciously walk into a net prepared for them,
and as a reward for this confiding friendship triumphantly mashes their
heads, is a pot-hunter. Against such the bird has no protection.

When coveys have warning of danger, and wish to evade detection, they
will conceal themselves from their enemies, in a most magical manner,
by a singular concerted action, seemingly, withholding their “scent,”
so it is often impossible for the best dogs to detect them, even in
the most favorable cover. It is quite amusing to witness the changes
that come over the amateur sportsman when he fails to put up his birds.
He knows where they are, at least he thinks he does, for he “marked
them down” in the meadow of short grass within a few yards of a stump
or tree. Then, it is such a commentary on his dogs, for he knows they
are all right--never better, truer noses; still they go over and over,
round and round, without winding a bird, or coming to a point. There!
that dog has flushed a bird! Now he is assured the whole covey are
within twenty feet of that spot; and he renews his search, and keeps
his dogs going over and over the same locality, until both dogs and
gunner, disgusted, quit the place.

How they got away, and where they all went to, and why that single bird
remained where the covey went down, and why the dogs did not point that
bird, all passed through the mind of the hunter, as he marched on in
search of better luck.

The amateur perhaps meets his experienced friend, to whom he relates
his disappointment, and who in reply proposes to return to the meadow
of the “marked down” covey. After a time they do so, and every dog at
once winds his bird; and each come to point--these are flushed and shot
at. The dogs are made to move cautiously, and again the trio stand,
each having a bird under point. This is repeated until every bird has
gone the gauntlet.

Quail shooting has been, but is no longer, an interesting field sport
in Ohio. Wing shooting, while diminishing the aggregate number, by
subtracting from each covey, does not often destroy the entire family,
and under proper legislation, has its benefits and advantages, and
generally insures the preservation of an abundance to propagate another
season. The sport, also, to some extent, draws from the destructive
spoils of the pot-hunter and trapper, making the birds coy, suspicious
and not easily seen. True, there is a possibility that the sportsman
with dog and gun may destroy a whole family by shooting on the wing.
A chapter of this kind occurred to the writer. While riding along the
road in a buggy with a friend, our pointer companion came to a stand
some distance in front, with nose and tail paralleled to the line of
fence. The birds rose by concert in line along the fence, while the
rear bird, or first to rise was covered and fired at. The atmosphere
was so the smoke obscured results, excepting that of a wounded bird
crossing the road for a sorghum field. An effort was made to intercept
and capture it, but failed. The friend who sat in the buggy and had a
good view of the situation, declared every bird fell. A walk over the
ground proved it true, as from the first to the last in the distance of
about twenty yards or more, eleven dead birds were picked up. The next
day on passing the spot, the dog came to a point on a wounded bird,
which was captured and killed as a kindness. Here the whole covey was
exterminated; but as the perpetrator felt “sorry” for the act, and did
not intend it, and would never do it again, it should not be considered
unpardonable.

The quail is a bird favorable to the happiness of man and advancement
of civilization, is of inestimable value as a permanent resident,
for the reason he is independent of forests for the maintenance of
existence and perpetuation. He is the bird of field and farm and the
only one from which a single pair can produce and rear to maturity more
than half a hundred young in one season, to present as choice morsels
of food for the weary farmer and protector.

It is comforting to the sportsman to feel assured there is one resident
game bird the iniquity of the pot-hunter can not exterminate. So long
as forests and mountains last, the Ruffed Grouse will be able to
maintain an abiding place. And many are the pleasant reminiscences of
the hunter connected with the pursuit of this wary bird; it is a sport
once enjoyed can never be lost from among the sunny associations of
the past. Even the name brings to view the ragged mountains, rocky
ravines, shady dells, babbling brooks and quiet streams in forests,
ripe with every shade and tint of autumn colors, quiet secluded places
where nature reveals her sweetest charms in inimitable splendor that
mocks the artist’s pencil and poet’s pen--the home and haunts of this
beautiful bird.

It does not seem reasonable that the indifference of the people should
permit the depopulation of the earth of all its birds! It is sorrowful
to contemplate a place where no bird exists excepting the “English
sparrow.” Of the known species, amounting to over five thousand, that
once glorified the life and beauty of the earth, more than one-half the
number has already disappeared forever.

The Chicago Tribune, of August 11, 1895, on the “Destruction of Birds,”
tells the truth, a horrible truth, when it says: “If masculine greed
and cruelty, and feminine vanity and thoughtlessness, are not in some
manner restrained or punished, it is only a question of time, and very
short time at that, how soon the earth will lose its birds.” That the
Seattle Argus called attention to the danger of the utter extermination
of game birds by the destruction of their eggs on the Alaska breeding
grounds--ducks, geese, swans, and other migratory birds, seek the low
lands along the Yukon river for their nesting places. The egg-hunters
gather their eggs by millions in these as well as other localities
in South-western Alaska, where the birds resort, and sell them for
the purpose of manufacturing egg albumen, a commercial article. The
destruction of these millions of eggs every spring and summer is
rapidly reducing the number of game birds, and the flocks every year
grow smaller and smaller. Senator Mitchell, of Oregon, introduced a
bill at the last session of Congress for the protection of these game
birds, but of course it did not come to vote, and it probably never
will. The game birds will share the fate of the four-footed game; grow
fewer every year, and finally disappear altogether.

“When one remembers that thirty years ago the skies were almost
darkened by flights of pigeons across Indiana and Illinois, and that
branches of trees were broken by their weight and numbers, and that
the other day a wild-pigeon shot in Southern Indiana was regarded as
rare a curiosity as a white blackbird, it can be realized how rapidly
game birds are disappearing. The game birds which are not migratory are
also hunted down in spite of game laws, and every year grow scarcer and
dearer in the markets. If nothing is done to protect (more effectually)
there will soon be an end of game birds. The greed of gain will end
their existence.”

Of all the birds in Ohio and the North-west, the wild pigeon was by
far the most numerous. Those who have witnessed their flight, from
early morn until approaching night, all going in one direction, without
cessation for a number of consecutive days, were ready to believe
pigeons were as the sands of the sea, innumerable, and could never be
exhausted. But, alas! inventions came, the foes of bird-life: railroads
and telegraphs. And for many years, winter and summer, the pigeon
was traced, pursued, netted and trapped, at feeding places, by gangs
of pot-hunters, keeping tons of dead birds all the time in transit
to the large cities. Year after year, from coast to coast, this bird
was followed, invading the breeding places and destroying the young
and old, until the wild pigeon now exists in history, and may be seen
mounted by the taxidermist.

The birds that are not game, the women in their vanity and
thoughtlessness are rapidly destroying those having an attractive
plumage, and millions of humming-birds, orioles, bluebirds, starlings,
indigo-birds, redstarts, redbirds, and many others, are annually
slaughtered to gratify an _inhuman_ and uncivilized fashion. For more
than ten years this destruction has been increasing, and birds are
diminishing in this and other countries until extermination is near
at hand. Jules Forest says of the bird of paradise: “They are so
industriously hunted that the males are not permitted to reach full
maturity, and the birds which now flood the market are for the most
part young ones, still clothed in their first, plumage, which lacks
the brilliancy displayed in the older bird, and are consequently of
small commercial value.” As to the tuft of delicate plumes which are so
much in demand by milliners, and sold by them as real, are often mixed
with ospray tips, which, to the shame of womanhood, have so long been
in fashion and are still used. I may state on trustworthy authority,
that “during the last season one warehouse alone has disposed of no
less than sixty thousand dozen of these mixed sprays.” And the question
comes: Is there no way to stop it? Must bird-slaughter go on to gratify
a weak and cruel vanity, that should be met not only with public scorn,
but also by the strong arm of the law, to reach the possessor or the
hat, as it does the fisherman and his net or the hunter and his gun.

As the country became partially settled and the larger game supply
diminished by unseasonable killing, clubs of squirrel hunters organized
and laws wore enacted protecting beasts and birds with a close season.
The good, the social and intelligent, became members for what there
was in it. These clubs entertained no secrets, and did not pattern
after any of the ancient orders with which the United States appear
overblessed, nor were they given to boasting of their pedigrees. No
one ever claimed King Solomon was “the father and founder,” although
he might have been; and members were satisfied and sanguine that Mr.
Nimrod, the mighty hunter, for a _saint_, was in morals as good as any
of them.

These clubs had also many improvements over ordinary societies. A
candidate for membership was not obliged to ride a goat to get in,
nor with bandaged eyes go down into a dangerous pit to search for
the tables of stone that Moses brought home the ten commandments on.
Neither had the clubs any use for a catechism of secret signs to let
the brethren know when a member had been guilty of something unwelcome
to society, and needed assistance. They were all Squirrel Hunters,
and members recognized each other by the absence of society pins and
want of superlative adjectives at the front end of their names. The
only thing recorded in which these clubs resembled any other order or
society was in having a great many glorious banquets. They cultivated
the social and democratic principles, owing allegiance nowhere, to
no one or any thing, but the government and country covered by the
American flag.

The objects of these clubs were the study of natural history and to
secure and enforce all laws for the preservation of game beasts and
birds, as well as the summer songsters that give life and happiness to
forest and field.

These clubs labored hard to enforce legislative enactments against
pot-hunting and thoughtless destruction of birds, but found it more
difficult to capture the violator and public opinion than to subdue
British and Indians or frighten an army. People generally had embraced
the idea that birds, beasts and trees could never become seriously
decimated, and it was useless to offer them protection, which made it
troublesome to obtain a verdict against offenders by either judge or
jury. The motives of such prosecutions were generally misconstrued, or
plaintiffs made subjects of sport or ridicule.

The following is taken from the records and proceedings of one of the
earliest organized and most worthy game clubs in Ohio. It appears the
offender was a lawyer, who enjoyed fine grounds and an elegant garden,
and amused himself shooting little birds that came to share his bounty,
or obtain a pittance by way of interest for the good they had by nature
rendered. The club gave the lawyer notice and request to desist such
cruelty, or it might become necessary to call the attention of the
officers of the law to the matter.

To this the club received the following reply, worthy of preservation
for its wit, humor, and literary ability:

  “_To N---- E----, Secretary of Branch No. 3, Ohio Game Club_:

  “MY DEAR SIR--Your esteemed favor of yesterday has been received, and
  at an early date I hasten to reply, not knowing just what punishment
  would await me should I fail to be prompt in my responses. As to the
  ‘birds of various kinds’ of which you speak, I move to amend in order
  to make more specific and certain, by stating what kind of birds,
  what number, when killed, and by what means. If required to plead to
  the general charge, I would enter a plea of ‘not guilty.’ Permit me
  to say that I only killed birds of _prey_, and I only _pray_ that
  I may kill more of them. I always bury all I kill; I _berry_ them
  before I kill them, and _bury_ them afterwards.

  “I am exceedingly sorry that my fancied misdeeds have rendered
  necessary a special meeting of the ‘club,’ or to have been the
  innocent occasion of the least trouble to either the officers or
  members of that useful and ornamental body. Be kind enough to say,
  with my compliments, to the association of which you have the honor
  to be secretary, that the doors of the Temple of Justice, like ‘the
  glorious gates of the gospel of grace,’ stand open night and day, and
  the ‘club’ will please consider itself invited to enter and become
  ‘involved in the intricate meshes of the law.’

  “Allow me further to say that I expect tomorrow morning to be on my
  premises, near the city, engaged in my usual and ordinary amusement
  of destroying birds of prey; and as it is the ‘early bird that
  catches the worm.’ I would suggest to members of your valuable
  association, through their secretary, that they meet at an early
  hour, say half-past five in the morning, either at Dodson’s store
  or at the well-known grocery stand of John L. King, and proceed
  in a body, in full uniform, to the premises alluded to in your
  correspondence. It might be well to have music, and march to the tune
  of ‘Listen to the Mockingbird,’ or such other appropriate music as
  your orchestra may select.

  “One other suggestion: I am constitutionally and proverbially
  careless in the handling of firearms, and it may be well to make that
  statement to the members of your organization, so that should a stray
  shot fall wide of the mark at which it was aimed, they may feel a
  sense of security behind such intrenchments as nature or art shall
  have provided. Ice-water and sponges will be furnished free to each
  and every member who attends, but no gin cocktails will be given.

  “Very truly yours, H----.”

It seems an unanswered question, how the natives preserved the forests
from fires, and maintained the numerical strength of the species of
animals on which they subsisted. The countries in which Indians have
been found subsisting by hunting, are known to have forests undisturbed
by fires for thousands of years, and containing a full complement of
all kinds of game indigenous to the locality. This country, at the
time surrendered, was fully endowed with all the gifts of nature. Love
had preserved the forests from fires, protected the game beasts and
birds, and shown natural wisdom enough not to kill the goose to obtain
the golden egg.

How these wise results were accomplished are unknown to civilization.
But it can be stated as a fact, new countries have never suffered from
forest fires or the destruction of their game at the hands of the
Indian hunter. Even in limited and crowded reservations he manages
to preserve the forests, and in some way to keep on hand a supply of
animals to the full extent the conditions of nature will admit. The
instinct to kill no more than enough for present use, though he may
suffer from hunger the next day, probably has had a favorable influence
on game and its preservation.

While practically a resident of an unsettled Indian country (the
northern portion of Iowa Territory), in 1845, it was noticeable that
there existed no lack of game, nor variety, although pretty densely
populated with Winnebagoes, Sioux and Fox Indian, who derived their
meat chiefly from the yearly increase of game furnished within a
limited territory.

Soon after the close of the treaty with those tribes, made by General
Dodge in the summer of 1845, at Fort Atkinson, the writer, with a
friend, passed through the hunting grounds for more than one hundred
miles, and saw a number of large flocks of wild turkey and larger game
in abundance. We followed the deep-cut channel of the romantic Turkey
river for sixty miles in the Indian country, and during this ride the
young birds were seen flying from bluff to bluff, crossing the river on
their daily round in search of food.

And we believe it is true: No game laws enacted by white man can prove
as effective in the protection of game as those enforced by Indian
hunters. The red man never scares game from the region in which he
hunts. He steals upon the deer or wild turkeys with the soft tread of
moccasined feet, and dressed in accord with the tints and tones of
plain and forest, the animals are satisfied with trying to avoid his
presence without quitting the region selected as their home.

[Illustration: Turkey River, Iowa, 1845.]

An old-time hunter in the West makes the statement that ever since the
general adoption by Indians of firearms for hunting, it has not been
found that game has diminished in regions where the white man is an
infrequent visitor. It is when white hunters invade their haunts, with
the tread of booted feet, their clothes alien to surrounding nature and
with dogs and bluster, that all kinds of game are bound to be killed or
driven away. And as Sir Samuel Baker, the explorer, asserts of African
game and predatory creatures: “Animals can endure traps, pitfalls,
fire, and every savage method of hunting, but firearms may be used
to clear them out from extensive districts.” Still, under prudent use
known to Indians only, game of our forests and plains may be preserved
indefinitely and in abundance of all kinds.


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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Barr’s Buffon, Vol. VII, page 175.

[19] Stevens’s Report.

[20] Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio.

[21] Hon. J. M. Rusk, Secretary Agriculture Report, 1889.

[22] Minneapolis Journal.




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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.”

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Sixteen articles of amendment to the adopted Constitution were
approved by Congress, September, 1789, ten of which were approved by
the states.

[24] Excise act in Pennsylvania in 1794. This revolt required fifteen
thousand armed men to quell, and cost the United States $1,000,000.

[25] Editor “Olive Branch” (No. 2).

[26] Whip.




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.”

[Illustration: 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.”

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: 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_.”

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.”

[Illustration: 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Recollections of Samuel Brock, pp. 275-7.

[28] Wood’s book on Railroads, 1825.

[29] Sherman and His Campaigns.

[30] W. T. Sherman.

[31] “Ohio in the War.” Reed.

[32] Ten miles in length.

[33] “The Making of the Ohio Valley States.”

[34] The death rate per 1000 of the inhabitants of the present capital
is nearly double ordinary mortuary statistics of other cities. A single
fatal disease--consumption--shows a death ratio per 1000, seven times
greater than any city west of the Alleghany Mountains.--_Hess._

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.

Captions were added to illustrations for text in the illustration as
follows:

p. 95: THE OLIVE BRANCH

p. 109: SEAL

p. 110: SEAL

p. 111: SEAL

p. 256: _LORD DUNMORE’S CAMPAIGN._

The following changes were made:

p. 40: ” inserted (had existed.” Without)

p. 47: Scoth changed to Scotch (sable Scotch Collie)

p. 219: Lo changed to Love (nature. Love had)

p. 333: deciminated changed to disseminated (and disseminated by)





End of Project Gutenberg's The Squirrel Hunters of Ohio, by N. E. Jones