WILLIAM D. ANDREWS
William T Coggeshall:
"Booster"of Western
Literature
Students of nineteenth-century America
have long been familiar with a type of person
that intellectual historian Daniel
Boorstin precisely labeled the "booster."1 Typically
he was a small-town, midwestern
newspaper editor or dry-goods entrepreneur,
anxious to make a killing for himself
and a reputation for his town--the order of
his desires was never clear. Promotion
was his method; the most insignificant occur-
rence in his town could assume, as the
object of his promotion, earthshaking impor-
tance. The arrival in his shop of last
year's best eastern finery or the erection of yet
another Gothic aberration on his town's
main street could be the occasion for inflated
praise intended to prove that
civilization had reached its zenith. Even though the
booster may be something of a bore, he
has not been without his defenders. It has
been argued, for example, that the
development of education, literature, and the
arts--what is commonly called
culture--came largely to America's heartland
through the efforts of promoters of this
type.
The achievements of Dr. Daniel Drake of
Cincinnati, the so-called "Franklin of
the West," have become legendary,
and his encouragement of the arts in early Ohio
is a matter of record. Less well known
than Drake's works are the efforts of a later
but equally dedicated literary booster
of the West, William Turner Coggeshall.2 Like
1. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans:
The National Experience (New York, 1965), 113-168.
On American literary boosterism see particularly
Robert E. Spiller, ed., The American Literary
Revolution, 1783-1837 (Garden City, N.Y., 1967) and Benjamin Spencer, The
Quest for Na-
tionality: An American Literary
Campaign (Syracuse, 1957). Two
informative essays on western
literary boosterism are Theodore
Hornberger, "Three Self-Conscious Wests," Southwest Review,
XXVI (1941), 428-448; and David Donald,
"Toward a Western Literature, 1820-60" in his
Lincoln Reconsidered (New York, 1956), 167-186.
2. Published sources of information on
Coggeshall include sketches in William Coyle, ed.,
Ohio Authors and their Books (Cleveland, 1962), 125; and Dictionary of American
Biography,
(New York, 1930), IV, 272-273. Both of
these rely on the information, provided by Coggeshall's
widow, in W. H. Venable, Beginnings
of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley (Cincinnati, 1891),
109-110, 116-118, a less than reliable
source.
An important biographical source is the
Coggeshall Papers in the Ohio Historical Society.
The eight boxes of Coggeshall
manuscripts in this collection include important letters, drafts of
essays, and diaries for 1861, 1863,
1865, 1866, and 1867. Also, Ralph C. Busbey, son of
Coggeshall's daughter Emancipation
Proclamation Coggeshall Busbey, excerpted material from
his grandfather's diaries for a series
of pieces published in the Columbus Dispatch Magazine,
October 26, 1958, November 9, 1958,
November 23, 1958, November 30, 1958. The first provides
biographical information on Coggeshall,
his wife and their daughter Emmancipation Proclama-
tion, nicknamed "Prockie." The
last three deal with Coggeshall's observation on Abraham
Lincoln's journeys through Columbus,
first on his way to his inaugural and later on the passage
of his body back to Springfield,
Illinois, for burial.
Mr. Andrews is Assistant Professor of
English, The Ohio State University.
William T. Coggeshall 211
Dr. Drake and many other westerners of
his day, Coggeshall engaged in a staggering
variety of activities. He was a
newspaper and magazine editor, writer of novels and
historical sketches, public lecturer of
wide acclaim, politician and political confidant,
secret agent in the Civil War, and, at
the end of his career, a diplomat. But only his
efforts to promote literature in the new
American West (which he identified in 1860
as Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Iowa, and Kansas) are the subject of
this essay. Coggeshall was born in Lewistown,
Pennsylvania, on the 6th of September
1824. At age eighteen he moved to north-
eastern Ohio, settling in Akron in 1842.
There he published for two years (1844-45)
a temperance paper called the Cascade
Roarer.3 In 1845 he married Mary Maria
Carpenter, and two years later the
couple moved to Cincinnati, where Coggeshall
later became editor of The Western
Fountain, a newspaper established in 1846.4
Coggeshall's journalism career in
Cincinnati was interrupted in 1851 when he
joined the Hungarian patriot Louis
Kossuth on his tour of America. Serving as guide,
secretary, and reporter, the
enterprising journalist also attempted to write a biography
of Kossuth.5 Later, in the
autumn of 1852, after the manuscript of the biography
was rejected by a New York publisher,
Coggeshall reentered the Cincinnati news-
paper world, becoming the assistant
editor of the year-old Daily Columbian, a news
and business paper with circulation of
5,000 in 1854.6
By August of 1854 Coggeshall became
involved in a more literary enterprise, the
publishing of the Genius of the West,
a Cincinnati magazine that consciously pro-
moted local literature. This publication
had been started in October of 1853 by
Howard Durham, a native of New Jersey
who had settled near Cincinnati in 1847
to conduct business as a shoemaker.
Durham was shortly joined on the Genius by
Coates Kinney, a local poet who had just
left his position as a professor at Judson
College in Mt. Palatine, Illinois.
Apparently Durham and Kinney quarreled over
money, and in the late summer of 1854
Kinney bought out the magazine's founder
and took into partnership William
Coggeshall. Durham then established in January
of 1855 a rival publication, The New
Western, the Original Genius of the West,
but after a few issues he abandoned it.
Coates Kinney also soon sold out his share
in the Genius, leaving Coggeshall
the editor and chief proprietor by June 1855.7
Under his direction the Genius promoted
regional literature, publishing the work
of young western poets like the Cary
sisters, Alice and Phoebe, W. D. Gallagher,
Sarah Bolton, and the Fuller sisters,
Metta and Frances. Orville James Victor, who
later became the publisher of Beadle's
Dime Novels, contributed historical sketches
and book reviews.8 Even
though the magazine achieved genuine literary merit, it was
3. Samuel A. Lane, Fifty Years and
Over of Akron and Summit County (Akron, 1892), 225.
4. Venable's report (pp. 109-110) that
Coggeshall also worked for the Times and the Cincinnati
Gazette cannot be verified from the newspapers themselves. The
details of his journalism career
in Cincinnati are as confused as the
newspaper situation itself there, where papers came into
existence for brief periods and then
disappeared or merged with others. It is at least clear that
Venable's account is not trustworthy.
5. The unpublished manuscript is in Box
6 of the Coggeshall Papers. The title page says,
hopefully, "New York. 1853."
The publisher's letter turning down the piece is dated December 4,
1852.
6. Coggeshall was also probably
associated with a Cincinnati paper called the Commercial
Advertiser, no copies of which still exist. The Daily Columbian was
printed by the firmly
established weekly Columbian and the
Great West, which had a circulation of 75,000 in 1854.
See Columbian and the Great West, November
11, 1854.
7. Venable, Beginnings of Literary
Culture in the Ohio Valley, 109-110.
8. Editor of the Sandusky Daily
Register, Victor was a good friend and frequent correspondent
of Coggeshall. Twenty-eight of
Coggeshall's letters to Victor are in Box 1 of the Coggeshall
Papers.
still decidedly not successful in the colder terms of finance since it was not supported by western readers. As early as May of 1855 Coggeshall complained to his friend 0. J. Victor that the publication was in trouble. In October of the same year he wrote to Victor that "sometimes I'm almost discouraged with the Genius in the little interest it awakens among subscribers, but I am determined to hold on this year-- then we shall see what we shall see."9 In need of money to care for his growing family, Coggeshall secured an appointment from Governor Salmon Chase to the post of Librarian of the State of Ohio in May of 1856. The Genius was then sold to George True, who published it only until July of that year.10 Coggeshall continued as State Librarian under Governor William Dennison, making the position an important platform from which to encourage western literature. During this period he was at work on the anthology for which he is best known, The Poets and Poetry of the West. In 1858 and 1859 he also edited the Ohio Journal of Education, later renamed the Ohio Educational Monthly. In 1862 he purchased the Springfield Republic, which he edited until 1865, when he returned to Columbus to become editor of the Ohio State Journal.11 In both papers concerted efforts were continued to promote and publish western literature. Known and respected also in political circles, Coggeshall was asked to serve the Union as a secret agent during the first year of the Civil War. As a newspaper correspondent, he carried orders through enemy lines and performed other unspecified duties, the consequence of
9. Letter to O. J. Victor, October 9, 1855, Coggeshall Papers. See also letters of May 23, and August 20, 1855, which further develop Coggeshall's views about the financial difficulties involved in the publication of the Genius. 10. Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, 109-110. 11. As editor of the Republic, Coggeshall was one of a number of Ohio journalists who accom- panied Governor David Tod to the dedication ceremonies of the Gettysburg Soldiers' Cemetery in Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. His report is in the Republic, November 30, 1863. On Coggeshall's participation see Frank L. Klement, "Ohio and the Dedication of the Soldiers' Cemetery at Gettysburg," Ohio History, LXXIX (Spring 1970), 87, 93. |
|
which was the failure of his health. The beginnings of tuberculosis (consumption) forced him to resign from the Journal to seek less taxing employment. He became private secretary to Governor Jacob D. Cox, and through political friends was appointed in 1865 as American minister to Ecuador. Coggeshall, accompanied by his fifteen year old daughter Jessie, arrived in Quito on August 2, 1866, to take up his new position. Before long, the Ohioan became bored and longed for the "Sins of Civilization," such as opera and theatre. Unfor- tunately, he was particularly sensitive to the high altitude and cold nights which aggravated his consumption, and one year to the day after his arrival in South America, Coggeshall died of the disease that had been plaguing him for several years. Because as a non-Catholic he could not be buried in consecrated ground in Quito, his body was stored for a time in a warehouse before being interred in a newly established cemetery in the capital city. Detained by red tape, Jessie was not able to start for home until December, and she died in Quayaquill of yellow fever before she could leave Ecuador. She was interred in the Protestant Cemetery in that coastal city. In the winter of 1869 the United States Congress appropriated funds to bring both bodies back to Ohio for burial. The two were buried in Columbus Green Lawn Cemetery in October 1870, following a funeral procession designed to honor one of Ohio's busiest and most persistent promoters.12 Throughout his career William Turner Coggeshall was a literary booster, devoted to the belief that authors living and working in the newly settled West deserved more attention--and more praise--than they customarily received. The sources of this attitude are not difficult to discover. He, of course, was influenced by the general boosterism of the times, but more precisely he felt a personal responsibility to defend western writers against eastern literary snobbery and to upgrade the literature,
12. Coggeshall to Friedrich Hassaurek, January 27, 1867, Box 2, Hassaurek Papers, Ohio Historical Society. A description of the funeral is in Ohio State Journal (Columbus), October 19, 1870. |
214 OHIO
HISTORY
reward pioneer writers, and
"encourage thereby strivings of Genius, which shall
accomplish what is worthy of the example
of the past, the inspiration of the present,
and the promise of the future."13
As has been mentioned, Coggeshall's
early contact with boosterism came largely
through his experience in Cincinnati
journalism, and particularly through his friend-
ship with William D. Gallagher, an
important booster himself. In fact, Gallagher's
anthology, Selections from the
Poetical Literature of the West (1841), was the first
collection of western poetry and is also
an important source for western cultural
history.14 By way of
introduction, the anthology began with self-conscious apologies
from the editor, who confessed;
Of the productions generally, which make
up the volume, this remark may be made: they
look not, for their paternity, to men of
either leisure, wealth, or devotion to letters,--but
find it, some amid the din of the
workshop, others at the handle of the plough, a third
class in the ledger-marked
counting-room, and a fourth among the John Doism and Richard
Roism of an attorney's office. For the
most part, they have been mere momentary
outgushings of irrepressible feeling,
proceeding from the hearts of those who were daily
and hourly subjected to the perplexities
and toils of business, and the cares and anxieties
inseparable from the procuring of one's
daily bread by active occupation.--As such, let
them be judged.15
This statement serves two purposes, both
consistent with the western booster spirit.
It acts as defense against possible
attacks on the quality of the verse, since the
writers are shown to be amateurs in
literature who steal time from their professional
pursuits to court the muse. It also is a
kind of a boast, picturing the westerner as
hard working and productive, both on
practical and artistic levels, unlike--the
suggestion seems to be--effete eastern
writers who do not participate in the hustle
and bustle of daily life.
The best work in the collection is
Gallagher's own rather interesting blank-verse
poem "Miami Woods." Most of
the others are occasional pieces, effusions on aspects
of nature or domestic bliss,
topographical poems on landmarks like Indian mounds,
or derivative romantic set pieces.
Thirty-eight poets are included in the anthology,
with a total of 109 poems. Aside from
Gallagher, the only poets whose names carry
literary weight in our day are Otway
Curry and Amelia Welby, who are represented
by eight and seven poems, respectively.
As the major commentator on the volume
has remarked, it is of more historical
than aesthetic interest, and the modern reader
is attracted to it mostly out of
curiosity.16 In its day, though, Gallagher's anthology
was of considerable significance. The
Duyckinck brothers, arbiters of eastern literary
taste, mentioned it with admiration.17
Certainly young poets of the West looked to
it as a standard to guide their own
work. As a literary booster, William T. Coggeshall
must also have been attracted to the
collection for its literary merits as well as for
its potential for further exploitation.
13. William T. Coggeshall, The
Protective Policy in Literature: A Discourse on the Social and
Moral Advantages of the Cultivation
of Local Literature (Columbus, 1859),
16.
14. For comments on Gallagher, see John
T. Flanagan's introduction to the facsimile edition
of Selections from the Poetical
Literature of the West (Gainesville, Fla., 1968).
15. William D. Gallagher, ed., Selections
from the Poetical Literature of the West (Cincinnati,
1841), 8.
16. Flanagan, ed., Selections, xvi.
17. See the comment in Evert A.
and George L. Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American Litera-
ture (New York, 1855), II, 471.
William T. Coggeshall
215
It is impossible to fix with precision
the moment of Coggeshall's decision to follow
Gallagher's lead in producing another
anthology of western poetry. We know that
at least as early as 1855, Coggeshall
was thinking about such a project. In a letter
to his friend Orville J. Victor in
October, Coggeshall wrote: "I am now hard at work
upon 'The West and its Literature.' I
shall aim to make some hits which shall seem
as rebukes to a certain class of people
whom you know."18 The last reference is
probably to the New York literary
establishment, particularly to Rufus Wilmot
Griswold and Evert and George Duyckinck,
who were to Coggeshall the arch
enemies of western literature. "The
West and Its Literature" is a major statement
of regionalism in American
literature--and is a key document in Coggeshall's
booster campaign for western writing. It
was first presented as a lecture on June 22,
1858, to the Beta Theta Pi Society of Ohio
University during the school's fifty-fourth
commencement activities, and then in
1859 it was retitled and published by Follett
and Foster of Columbus as The
Protective Policy in Literature: A Discourse on the
Social and Moral Advantages of the
Cultivation of Local Literature.
Like most boosters, Coggeshall began his
speech with the statement that the
character of westerners, formed partly
by a distinctive natural environment, is so
unlike that of easterners that only
local literature can properly express it. Since similar
arguments about regional peculiarities
were already in use in 1858 by southerners
bent on separating themselves from the
Union which Coggeshall so firmly supported,
he was forced to defend his "sectionalism."
"Literature which lives," Coggeshall
said, "represents the spirit of a
people. In that sense it must be 'sectional,' or local;
in a word, native."
But Coggeshall was aware that this
"spirit of a people" was not always evident in
the writings of westerners--and that
works which did express it were only infre-
quently monetary or critical successes.
Remembering the financial troubles with his
Genius of the West, he felt some measure of blame must be shared by
westerners
themselves. To account for early
failures of the region's literary endeavors, par-
ticularly magazines, Coggeshall pointed
to the West's "servile dependence upon the
Atlantic States, and in ungenerous
distrust of home energy, home honesty, and home
capacity." He then endeavored to
show what would happen if this spirit of indiffer-
ence were allowed to chill the
development of "an individual literature." The West
would become as barren of local talent
as the land cleared of its virgin forests by
foolish but ambitious pioneers, and
quick growing replacements (eastern literary
works) would be poor substitutes for the
native monarch oak, beech, or elm.
Even if recognized at home, Coggeshall
thought that western writers who en-
deavored to express the true character
of their region might still not fare well. The
reason, which is the main target of his
wrath in the lecture, was the deliberate
neglect of western writing by eastern
critics, particularly by Rufus Griswold and the
Duyckincks. Coggeshall complained that The
Prose Writers of America, one of
Griswold's anthologies, recognized with
biographical notices only two westerners,
Timothy Flint and James Hall; this was
serious enough, but it became even more
serious when one realized both of these
"westerners" were born in the East. "The
student of Literature," Coggeshall
declared, "could never ascertain, from 'standard
authority,' that there had been prose
writers in Ohio, or Indiana, or Kentucky, or
Illinois, or Michigan."
Although Coggeshall admitted that
Griswold's attitude toward western poets, as
18. Coggeshall to O. J. Victor, October
9, 1855, Coggeshall Papers, Box 1.
216 OHIO
HISTORY
manifested by their inclusion in The
Poets and Poetry of America, was somewhat
more liberal, he still complained that
most who appeared were eastern-born. If one
were not by birth an easterner, only one
route to inclusion in Griswold's anthology
existed: "Only those men who,
writing prose in the West, published it in the East,
have been considered by Mr. Griswold
worthy of notice; consequently, a large
number, whom the people of the West
should honor and respect, and who deserve
to be introduced to every student of
American literature, are grossly slighted."
Toward the Duyckincks Coggeshall's
attitude was equally vituperative: "[with only
a few exceptions] the world is left in
ignorance, so far as the Cyclopedia of American
Literature can leave it, of native
talent for authorship in any Western State." In
neither the Cyclopaedia nor
Griswold's anthologies did Coggeshall see much hope
for the encouragement of western literature:
Without fear of successful
contradiction, I affirm that neither Griswold's Survey of Amer-
ican Literature, in three volumes, nor
Ducykink's [sic] Cyclopedia, in two volumes, nor
both together, can be given credit for
due respect to western authorship, while they exhibit
active diligence in 'making a good show'
for all the giants and many of the dwarfs of
eastern authordom:
After this dismal review of the past
fortunes of western literature, Coggeshall con-
cluded his discourse on "The West
and its Literature" with a paean to western
character and the writing that expressed
it. The future, he prophesied, would be
much brighter.19
This optimistic prediction is in reality
an announcement--the West's answer to
Griswold's Poets and Poetry of
America. Since western writing fared so miserably
at the hands of eastern critics, the
solution to neglect was obvious: what the West
needed was its own anthology, a thorough
compendium of the accomplishments of
native writers which would prove to
easterners and westerners alike that the muses
of literature were well established in
the Ohio Valley. Advance sheets of Coggeshall's
Poets and Poetry of the West--the only one of the three intended volumes that was
published, probably because of the
intervention of the Civil War--were apparently
ready by the spring of 1860.
On May 5, 1860, in an unsigned review in
the Ohio State Journal, William Dean
Howells commented on the anthology which
was originally scheduled for publication
that June. A contributor to the volume
himself, Howells welcomed it as a much-
needed work but was hesitant in his
praise. He said that Coggeshall's editorial policy
seemed to favor quantity over quality,
"so that while every poem of positive merit
which the west has produced, will be
included in the book, the work will be made
representative of what is respectable in
our poetical literature, and no writer of
reputation will be passed over, because
his verse cannot be tried by the highest
[eastern] criticism."20 When
The Poets and Poetry of the West was finally published,
probably in the autumn of 1860, by
Follet, Foster and Company of Columbus, the
fruits of Coggeshall's labor--and the
wisdom of his policy of liberal inclusion--
19. Coggeshall, Protective Policy in
Literature, 3, 17-24.
20. Ohio State Journal (Columbus), May 5, 1860. For a fuller review of the
published
anthology, see Ohio State Journal, September
1, 1860. Also the work of Howells, this review is
somewhat hesitant but generally more
favorable than the first. Of Coggeshall himself Howells
remarks: "Few men in the country
could have brought so much patience and ardor to the work-
no other man in the West could have done
so. Eager to render justice--perhaps too eager to
encourage--yet keeping the endurance of
the reader in view, he has made a book entirely
creditable to himself. - And we think it
creditable to the West, too."
William T. Coggeshall
217
were ready to be judged by all. Sold by
subscription only, the anthology was a
handsome octavo volume of 688 pages as
well printed and bound as its publishers
had earlier advertised.21
In his brief and business-like preface,
Coggeshall echoed William D. Gallagher's
statement from the 1841 anthology to the
effect that few of the authors represented
were professional writers. Only ten
devoted themselves full time to the profession
of authorship. The rest snatched time
for art from their daily pursuits of law, medi-
cine, politics, teaching, preaching,
farming, laboring, editing, printing, and house-
keeping. To counter the eastern
influence in Griswold's anthologies, Coggeshall
took pains to point out, statistically,
the western origins of the writers he included.
By birth many of the 159 writers
(ninety-eight men and sixty-one women)22 were,
of course, easterners, fifteen from New
York, twelve from Pennsylvania, thirty-one
from New England; but seventy-five were
natives of the Ohio Valley, thirty-nine
from Ohio itself. Over a third resided
in Ohio (60 by Coggeshall's count, really 61);
the next best represented states, in
order, are Indiana (23, in fact 25); Kentucky (14,
in fact 16); Illinois (13); Michigan
(5); Wisconsin (4, in fact 5); Missouri (3, in
fact 5); Iowa (2); Minnesota (2); Kansas
(1). By the numbers alone it is clear
that the anthology is a western
product, an answer to the East, and a monument to
the literary work of native sons of the
Ohio-Mississippi Valley.
Each poet in the volume is introduced in
a biographical notice supplied by
Coggeshall or by one of his associates,
Gallagher, Coates Kinney, O. J. Victor,
Benjamin St. James Fry, and William Dean
Howells, among others. Howells wrote
four of the notices, all relatively
short and on minor Ohio poets: John H. A. Bone,
an Englishman involved in Cleveland
journalism; Gordon A. Stewart, a former
journalist and Kenton lawyer; Helen L.
Bostwick, a Ravenna poetess and writer of
children's stories; and Mary R.
Whittlesey, a Cleveland poetess. All of the notes,
although not always accurate, are a
valuable source of information about the writers
and constituted a sort of biographical
cyclopaedia along the same lines as the
Duyckincks' work.
The verse in The Poets and Poetry of
the West was as western as its contributors,
at least in the way Coggeshall
understood that adjective. Much of it had western
themes: Indians, the difficulties of
settlement, the beauty of the Ohio Valley, local
legends and myths. But a considerable
number of the poems could just as well have
been written in the East, or in any
other part of America. Many poems deal with
domesticity, love, issues of philosophy
and religion. Such were not excluded since
Coggeshall intended to produce an
anthology that would also demonstrate that the
West could write poetry quite as
copiously as did the East. Certainly the anthology
achieved this goal, since it included a
great quantity of verse. Much of it, however,
is mediocre--not really dull but not
distinguished either, and again is of more
interest to the historian than to the
connoisseur of literary art. The same can be said
for the poetry in Griswold's anthology
and for much of mid-nineteenth-century
American verse, for that matter.23
21. In a lettter to O. J. Victor, August 1, 1860, Coggeshall noted: "We are
not going to finish
the Poetry till late in the fall. The
prospect is good." Coggeshall Papers, Box 1.
22. In his preface Coggeshall says there
are 152 writers, 97 men and 55 women. This minor
error, explicable only by poor editing,
has been repeated by all commentators on the volume.
23. Poets of historical interest in the
anthology include Salmon P. Chase, Sarah T. Bolton,
Alice and Phoebe Cary, Otway Curry, Anna
P. Dinnies, Julia Dumont, William D. Gallagher,
Coates Kinney, John J. Piatt, George D.
Prentice, Sarah L. P. Smith, Laura M. Thurston,
William R. Ross, Amelia B. Welby, and
the Fuller sisters, Frances (Barritt) and Metta (Victor).
The only poet who later became famous is
William Dean Howells, an Ohioan, who is represented
by six poems from his very early
literary career.
218 OHIO HISTORY An example of the verse in the anthology illustrates the literary
standards of Coggeshall's time and shows the western nature of the works he
included. "To the Ohio River," a paean to the natural beauty of the West, was
written by William Dana Emerson. A native of Marietta, Ohio, Emerson practiced law in
Cincinnati and contributed to literary periodicals there in the late 1840's. The poem
was first printed in Occasional Thoughts in Verse, a collection of thirty-nine of
the lawyer's poems, printed for private circulation in Springfield, Ohio, in 1850. |
TO THE OHIO RIVER. |
Flow on, majestic River! A mightier bids thee come, And join him on his radiant way, To seek an ocean home; Flow on amid the vale and hill, And the wide West with beauty fill. I have seen thee in the sunlight, With the summer breeze at play, When a million sparkling jewels shone Upon thy rippled way; How fine a picture of the strife Between the smiles and tears of life! I have seen thee when the storm cloud Was mirrored in thy face, And the tempest started thy white waves On a merry, merry race; And I've thought how little sorrow's wind Can stir the deeply flowing mind. I have seen thee when the morning Hath tinged with lovely bloom Thy features, waking tranquilly From night's romantic gloom; If every life had such a morn, It were a blessing to be born! And when the evening heavens Were on thy canvas spread, And wrapt in golden splendor, Day Lay beautiful and dead; Thus sweet were man's expiring breath, Oh, who would fear the embrace of death! |
And when old Winter paves thee For the fiery foot of youth; And thy soft waters underneath Were gliding, clear as truth; So oft an honest heart we trace, Beneath a sorrow-frozen face. And when thou wert a chaos Of crystals thronging on, Till melted by the breath of Spring, Thou bidst the steamers run; Then thousands of the fair and free Were swiftly borne along on thee. But now the Sun of summer Hath left the sand-bars bright, And the steamer's thunder, and his fires No more disturb the night; Thou seemest like those fairy streams We sometimes meet with in our dreams. How Spring has decked the forest! That forest kneels to thee; And the long canoe and the croaking skiff, Are stemming thy current free; Thy placid marge is fringed with green, Save where the villas intervene. Again the rush of waters Unfurls the flag of steam, And the river palace in its pomp, Divides the trembling stream; Thy angry surges lash the shore, Then sleep as sweetly as before. |
William T. Coggeshall 219 |
Then Autumn pours her plenty, And makes thee all alive, With floating barks that show how well Thy cultured valleys thrive; The undressing fields yield up their grain, To dress in richer robes again. Too soon thy brimming channel Has widened to the hill, As if the lap of wealthy plain With deeper wealth to fill; Oh! take not more than thou dost give, But let the toil-worn cotter live. Oh! could I see thee slumber, As thou wast wont of yore, When the Indian in his birchen bark, Sped lightly from the shore; Then fiery eyes gleamed through the wood, And thou wast often tinged with blood. The tomahawk and arrow, The wigwam and the deer, Made up the red man's little world, Unknown to smile or tear; The spire, the turret and the tree, Then mingled not their shades on thee. |
Now an hundred youthful cities Are gladdened by thy smile, And thy breezes sweetened through the fields, The husbandman beguile; Those fields were planted by the brave,-- Oh! let not fraud come near their grave. Roll on, my own bright River, In loveliness sublime; Through every season, every age, The favorite of Time! Would that my soul could with thee roam, Through the long centuries to come! I have gazed upon thy beauty, Till my heart is wed to thee; Teach it to flow o'er life's long plain, In tranquil majesty; Its channel growing deep and wide-- May Heaven's own sea receive its tide!24 |
If the quality of the poetry is debatable, the achievement of William
T. Coggeshall in collecting and presenting it is not. In The Poets and Poetry of
the West Coggeshall proved the fertility of western writers; he knew their limitations,
but he knew, too, that they had been neglected. His anthology helped to redress the
grievance and to show that western literature was no longer going to be ignored.
Later critics, particularly those interested in "local color" writing,
became familiar with the accomplishments of western literature precisely because men like
Coggeshall had promoted it so vigorously. It is perhaps fitting that William Dean Howells, an associate of
Coggeshall's and contributor of four biographical sketches and six poems to the
anthology, came, in time, to replace Griswold and the Duyckincks as the chief arbiter of
eastern literary taste. As editor-in-chief from 1871-1881 of Atlantic Monthly, the
proper Boston magazine that set the tone for eastern writing, Howells helped to
educate the East to understand new writers, many of them westerners. At Atlantic
Monthly and later 24. William T. Coggeshall, ed., The Poets and Poetry of the West (Columbus,
1860), 285-286. |
220
OHIO HISTORY
when he conducted the "Easy
Chair" column of Harper's Monthly in New York, the
Ohioan promoted such western writers as
Hamlin Garland and Frank Norris. In
some respects, then, Howell's literary
career may be seen as a direct product of
western boosterism and a triumph of
Coggeshall's aspirations.25
25. Coggeshall's boosterism was
continued also by William Henry Venable (1836-1920), an
Ohioan whose energies were directed
toward promoting the work of writers of his native state.
Venable, educator, historian, poet, and
novelist, was a devoted student of the early literature of
Ohio. He contributed important notes on
Ohio authors and their work to the first volumes of
Ohio Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly: "Literary Periodicals
of the Ohio Valley," I
(1888), 201-205; "Some Early
Travelers and Annalists of the Ohio Valley," ibid., 230-242;
"William Davis Gallagher," ibid., 358-375;
and ibid., II (1889), 309-326.
Venable's most important booster project
is his Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio
Valley (1891), still the standard source for much information
about the early literature of the
Ohio Valley West. In 1931 W. H.
Venable's son, Emerson, and Emerson's daughter, Mrs.
Evelyn Venable Mohr (Mrs. Hall Mohr),
presented to the Ohio Historical Society the Dolores
Cameron Venable Memorial Collection in
honor of Emerson's deceased wife (Dolores Cameron
Venable, Evelyn's mother). This
collection of books, letters, manuscripts, and photographs deal-
ing with nineteenth-century Ohio authors
(most notably W. H. Venable and Coates Kinney)
includes many important letters and
other documents assembled by William Henry Venable in
his "booster" campaign to
promote the literature of Ohio. The Venables obviously followed the
same honorable tradition as did William
T. Coggeshall.
WILLIAM D. ANDREWS
William T Coggeshall:
"Booster"of Western
Literature
Students of nineteenth-century America
have long been familiar with a type of person
that intellectual historian Daniel
Boorstin precisely labeled the "booster."1 Typically
he was a small-town, midwestern
newspaper editor or dry-goods entrepreneur,
anxious to make a killing for himself
and a reputation for his town--the order of
his desires was never clear. Promotion
was his method; the most insignificant occur-
rence in his town could assume, as the
object of his promotion, earthshaking impor-
tance. The arrival in his shop of last
year's best eastern finery or the erection of yet
another Gothic aberration on his town's
main street could be the occasion for inflated
praise intended to prove that
civilization had reached its zenith. Even though the
booster may be something of a bore, he
has not been without his defenders. It has
been argued, for example, that the
development of education, literature, and the
arts--what is commonly called
culture--came largely to America's heartland
through the efforts of promoters of this
type.
The achievements of Dr. Daniel Drake of
Cincinnati, the so-called "Franklin of
the West," have become legendary,
and his encouragement of the arts in early Ohio
is a matter of record. Less well known
than Drake's works are the efforts of a later
but equally dedicated literary booster
of the West, William Turner Coggeshall.2 Like
1. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans:
The National Experience (New York, 1965), 113-168.
On American literary boosterism see particularly
Robert E. Spiller, ed., The American Literary
Revolution, 1783-1837 (Garden City, N.Y., 1967) and Benjamin Spencer, The
Quest for Na-
tionality: An American Literary
Campaign (Syracuse, 1957). Two
informative essays on western
literary boosterism are Theodore
Hornberger, "Three Self-Conscious Wests," Southwest Review,
XXVI (1941), 428-448; and David Donald,
"Toward a Western Literature, 1820-60" in his
Lincoln Reconsidered (New York, 1956), 167-186.
2. Published sources of information on
Coggeshall include sketches in William Coyle, ed.,
Ohio Authors and their Books (Cleveland, 1962), 125; and Dictionary of American
Biography,
(New York, 1930), IV, 272-273. Both of
these rely on the information, provided by Coggeshall's
widow, in W. H. Venable, Beginnings
of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley (Cincinnati, 1891),
109-110, 116-118, a less than reliable
source.
An important biographical source is the
Coggeshall Papers in the Ohio Historical Society.
The eight boxes of Coggeshall
manuscripts in this collection include important letters, drafts of
essays, and diaries for 1861, 1863,
1865, 1866, and 1867. Also, Ralph C. Busbey, son of
Coggeshall's daughter Emancipation
Proclamation Coggeshall Busbey, excerpted material from
his grandfather's diaries for a series
of pieces published in the Columbus Dispatch Magazine,
October 26, 1958, November 9, 1958,
November 23, 1958, November 30, 1958. The first provides
biographical information on Coggeshall,
his wife and their daughter Emmancipation Proclama-
tion, nicknamed "Prockie." The
last three deal with Coggeshall's observation on Abraham
Lincoln's journeys through Columbus,
first on his way to his inaugural and later on the passage
of his body back to Springfield,
Illinois, for burial.
Mr. Andrews is Assistant Professor of
English, The Ohio State University.