Ohio History Journal

318      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

 

STANTON DAY.

Tuesday morning at ten o'clock, the exercises of the day

opened at the opera house, with Capt. John F. Oliver master of

ceremonies. There was a fair audience of school children and

others, who had gathered to hear Dr. W. H. Venable's address

on Ohio Men and Ohio Ideas. After an invocation by Rev. E.

W. Cowling, rector of St. Stephen's parish, and lately from the

mother state of Virginia, the home of Jefferson, Mr. D. W. Mat-

lack, principal of Stanton grammar school, introduced Prof. Ven-

able, of Cincinnati, one of the most distinguished of Ohio's edu-

cators, who spoke as follows:

 

ADDRESS BY PROF. W. H. VENABLE, LL. D.

Ladies, Gentlemen and School Children :

On the Fourth of July of the present year the passengers in

a tourist car, while crossing the Mohave Desert, celebrated the

national anniversary by singing patriotic songs. The voice which

rang most clearly was that of a school-boy, going with his par-

ents from Columbus to a new home in Los Angeles. The lad

cherished two pets from his native Ohio, a caged bird and a tiny

Buckeye tree. In spite of the parching heat and killing alkaline

dust of the plain, the staunch plant, carefully watered in the flower

pot which protected it, added a green inch to its ambitious top,

during the journey from Chicago to the Colorado. "I will be the

first," shouted the boy, "to climb this tree when it grows big, in

California."

That boy from Columbus, singing on his way to the far south-

west, with his bird and his Buckeye tree, and his confident hopes

of growth and great doing, typifies the Ohio man and his prev-

alence. New York and Chicago each has a powerful Ohio Soci-

ety, and every state and every city in the Union feels the presence

of Ohio men and the influence of Ohio ideas. The widespread

recognition of this predominance was evidenced by the remark

of a barber on the Pacific coast to an Eastern stranger: "Ohio,"

said the barber, "is a noted state. She is noted for runnin' out

big men." Then, after a pause, the professor of shaving added the

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The Centennial of Jefferson County.     319

information: "McKinley is from Ohio." To be a Roman, in

the day when the empire was flourishing, was to be a man respected

because of his distinguished citizenship. The chief captain who

had bound St. Paul, not knowing his nativity, said unto him,

"Tell me, art thou a Roman?" He said, "Yea. I was free born."

The chief captain was afraid after he knew Paul was a Roman,

and because he had "bound him." The passage is sublime, show-

ing the dignity of the individual sustained by the mere name of

his native state.

The expression, "He is an Ohio man," derives potency not

because a nation's sword flames to guard every Buckeye who

goes abroad, but because our state, its people and its principles

are assumed to be enlightened and beneficent. Ohio and Ohio's

sons and daughters represent the best civilization and the best

ideas thus far attained in America. This is said not in boast,

but in grateful acknowledgment of what the present generation

owes to the past.

What is an Ohio man? Why do Ohio ideas prevail? What

is distinctive in the character of our state? How comes it that

the buckeye which you carry in your pocket not only cures rheu-

matism and keeps off witches, but admits you to the private boxes

of the world's theatre and insures you luck in the lottery of

fortune? What is the reason that we boys and girls are peculiarly

happy to have been born between Lake Erie and the Ohio river,

and are especially vain if born in a Buckeye log cabin and rocked

in a sugar trough? Surely not because a log cabin is intrinsically

better than a palace of marble, or a sugar trough more comfortable

than a satin-lined perambulator with a silken sun-shade. No, our

pride of local birth has an origin which antedates both cabin and

cradle. We inherit a pride derived from ancestors born in the

pavilion of liberty and rocked in the cradle of the Revolution.

Well-founded state pride intensifies national patriotism. The

British soldiers camped in a Crimean valley all sang Annie Laurie,

but each heart recalled a different name. Wherever the American

veteran may be when he hears the familiar hymn, "My Country,

'Tis of Thee," though, as a patriot, he thinks first of the Union

and the common flag, his heart quickly recalls a favorite state,

of whose rocks and rills and woods and templed hills his memory

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forever sings. As family pride fosters self-respect and ambition

in sons and daughters, city and state pride stimulate laudable

activity in corporations and individual citizens. Perhaps the chief

elements of the working energy which made the World's Fair at

Chicago so great and magnificent were derived from state pride -

from the friendly rivalry among the many which make up the one.

E pluribus unum is a phrase which requires small Latin to

translate. The babe in the kindergarten can render it. From

many, from about fifty states and territories, a union is composed,

a unit, one, the United States of America. But each of the many

is also one, complete in itself, yet only a part of the greater one.

Each part, however, is not an equal fiftieth of the whole. Some

states are large; others little; some have a grand history, others

are scarcely remarkable in the annals of the world. Recently I

conversed with the daughter of John Brown, of Ossowotamie -

old John Brown, whose soul goes marching on. The daughter

of the man who saved Kansas placed in my hands a cavalry rifle,

a "Border Ruffian," she called it, "which had quickly changed

its politics," a weapon captured from a slave-holder who had

used it to shoot Abolitionists. That fire-arm was eloquent. It

told the story of bleeding Kansas, a state known to everlasting

fame. Doubtless there are educated persons in this audience who

cannot name all the state capitals, perhaps cannot name all the

states and territories, without book. But who has not heard of

Massachusetts, of Virginia, of New York? Who in the wide world

has read no eulogy or heard no rumor of Ohio? What is the

value of the state taken as a fraction of the nation, Ohio the numer-

ator, the Republic the denominator? Surely the ratio is vastly

greater than one to fifty. The extravagance of some editors and

orators appears to assume, indeed, that Ohio divided by America

is what arithmetic styles an improper fraction, a part greater than

the whole.

A lunatic author in a western village submitted to a literary

critic a manuscript book entitled, "What God Almighty was Doing

Before He Created the World." The human mind, sane or crazy,

has a tendency to seek antecedents, causes, original conditions.

Before men created Ohio the state, nature prepared Ohio the

primeval wilderness, with its hills and plains, rivers and lakes,

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woods and meadows, minerals, plants, animals. Those pioneers

who first spied out the land were delighted with its natural re-

sources and described it as the finest region in the world for set-

tlement and cultivation. The lands chosen by the founders of

Marietta, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Steubenville, were most eligible

for the purpose of agriculture and commerce. A beautiful river

on the south, a majestic lake on the north, afforded large oppor-

tunities to navigation. Stone and timber and fresh water were

abundant. No part of the country was inaccessible to industry.

The summer was not too hot nor the winter too cold for human

endurance. Here was nature's garden spot to be perfected by

man's science and art. Families flocked to the virgin wildwood.

Trees fell. Towns sprang. Fields were tilled. Boats and wagons

were taught to fetch and carry. Canals were dug. Then railroads

were stretched across from east to west, the endless trunk lines

which have poured wealth into our great cities and connected

Ohio with the world. Manufacture joined with her sisters, agri-

culture and commerce, to bless the Buckeye state with all material

products in richest abundance. Such are the natural advantages

of Ohio. Physical geography encourages, almost compels, the

thrifty inhabitant to prosper. The surface which he ploughs, and

the strata which he mines; the water courses which fertilize his

crops, or float them to market; the airs which play through his

orchards and billow his golden harvest fields; and the sun in

heaven, "like God's head," combine and co-operate to favor the

Ohio man.

Nature's genial forces may conspire to aid human beings,

the Creator may afford the creatures good physical opportuni-

ties, but soil and climate alone can never produce a superior race

or a noble man. Heroic peoples and admirable governments

have been developed on sterile mountains and barren plains. It

is moral force which removes mountains and reclaims deserts.

Ideas, convictions, principles, character, conduct and not chance

or circumstances, build states and give them renown.

Ohio is famed, as the barber put it, "for running out big

men." But what is a big man? You all recollect Sir William

Hamilton's "There is nothing great in man but mind." This the

framers of the Ordinance of '87 regarded as practical truth, and

Vol. VI-21

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the very soul of the body of law which organized Ohio, is the

clause which provides for the education of the whole people.

There are countries professedly free in which liberty is only a

name. There are states in which the free school system exists

as a perfunctory institution, but which are actually indifferent to,

and, therefore, neglectful of the intellectual and moral needs of

the young.

But in Ohio popular education means something - means

almost everything. True, our legislature cares less than it should

for the mechanical forms and appliances of the system. Our

public does not trouble itself whether the township or the dis-

trict be the unit of school organization, whether or not we have

county supervision, state normal schools, new methods of con-

struction; but the popular feeling everywhere demands that the

boys and girls have a good schooling, a better bringing up than

their parents had, if not by the regulation pedagogical machine,

then by hand, any way, provided they learn to do something

with their learning. A favorite Ohio idea is crystallized in that

saying of Garfield: "A log in the woods, with Mark Hopkins

seated on it, is a great university."

To the average conception in Ohio, education is a tangible

good, a necessity, not a luxury, a part of one's working capital,

like money and land and tools, a staple without which families

cannot keep house. Hence the commonwealth is peppered and

salted with schools, academies and colleges, and sugared with

sweet girl graduates. On the question of woman's right to

equal education with man, Ohio is sound. Our claim is that the

co-education of the sexes in college was inaugurated in this state,

and that co-education is an original Ohio idea. So is the idea

of giving the colored race a fair opportunity, by founding such

a university as that of Wilberforce. Yes, the "nigger" has a

chance in Ohio. The city of Dayton produced the first noted

African poet, my friend, Paul Dunbar.

The Chautauqua movement was initiated by the generosity

of an Ohio man, Miller, of Akron, who supplies Dr. Vincent with

means of carrying his great plan into practice. Emphatically,

the greatest of all Ohio ideas is that of making good the promise

of the wise ordinance, by inculcating, by means of church and

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The Centennial of Jefferson County.       323

 

school, the fundamentals of "liberty, knowledge, morality and

religion." And the "biggest men" whom the state has "run out"

or kept in, have been those versed in the theory and trained in

the practice of liberty, knowledge, morality and religion.

If there be any secret of success to account for the conspicu-

ous achievements and reputation of so many Ohio men who

have risen from humble to high station, half that secret is told

in the tremendous fact that the state has more teachers, more

children in school, and spends more money for school purposes

than any other state in the Union. Very happily did Coates

Kinney state the exact truth in fine poetry, when he wrote:

 

"Our learning has not soared, but it has spread;

Ohio's intellects are sharpened tools

To deal with daily fact and daily bread.

The starry peaks of knowledge in thin air

Her culture has not climbed, but in the plain,

In whatsoever is to do or dare.

With mind or matter, there behold her reign."

Not only, then, because Ohio ranks first in value of quarry

products, value of farm lands, manufacture of agricultural im-

plements; not only because, in the long list of states she stands

next to the first in iron and steel, petroleum, natural gas, num-

ber of farms, and miles of railroad; not only and not chiefly for

these evidences of material supremacy, do we rejoice in our

heritage of citizenship. These gifts of nature and results of in-

dustry are indeed the physical basis of higher mental achieve-

ments. Farms more valuable than those of any other state!

Think of that! Farm implements to occupy millions of working

hands! And railroads to transport everything and everybody

everywhere, and bring the rest of the world and its people and

products to Ohio! Yet not so much for its output of things is

the Buckeye State pre-eminent as for its product of men. It is

distinguished for raising stock - human stock. Our best in-

dustry is not agriculture but homoculture. Our royal roads are

not railroads but paths to the schoolhouse and the house of God.

But the college degree and the church communion, the Ohio man

cares for as means, not ends. Having made a man of himself

he can do a man's duty in any sphere, can make a living, can

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324      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

make money, can make machines, speeches, books, can find the

road to Washington, can lead armies, can do a big citizen's big

work, can materialize and mobilize Ohio ideas into deeds.

An inscription over an ancient sacred gate reads: "Be bold!

Be bold! Be not too bold!" Trust, trust - trust not too much

in aids of any kind. Education is good, but he who depends

altogether or mainly on the helps which schools can render, will

be disappointed. The teacher cannot make, nor the preacher

save, an inert soul. Why do we go to school, asks a wise man,

but that we may not need always go to school? Alma mater is

a nursing mother, yet what a booby-baby he who sits on her lap

forever. Academic training is at best an apprenticeship, not a

mastery. Stuart Mill makes a clear distinction between educa-

tion under professors and self-education - the self-education

that is post-graduate. How can a scholar become an efficient

man not being "Tried and tutored in the world?" Men may

gather grapes from thistles. Ohio has produced men who, with-

out the advantages of collegiate or even of common school edu-

cation, took fast hold of such chances as were left them, studied

the curriculum of experience and went up head in the world,

above a long class of competitors with A. M. and Ph. D., at-

tached to their names. These successful men missed college,

missed helpful degrees, but did not miss education. Lincoln

said the Civil War developed him. Browning said, "Italy was

my university." He who is docile, resolute and industrious,

whether in school or out of school, will attain. Time is an im-

portant factor. Time and labor accomplish the impossible.

"The world belongs to those who come the last," sang

Longfellow. The young are bi-millionaires because they have

so large a capital of time and strength. "Youth is the time for

toil," said Goethe; and Emerson wrote, "Work is Victory."

Only when a man perceives the "abhorred approaches of age,"

does he understand how true it is that life has only one spring-

time, one seed time, and that no harvest can be gathered where

no field has been tilled, no harvest except, perhaps, a thin crop

of wild oats. These reflections are commonplace, I know, hack-

neyed and old and homely, but how true! The boys and girls

own the Klondike mines, and need not go to Alaska to work

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The Centennial of Jefferson County.      325

 

them. Here in Ohio are Eldorado and the Golden Gate. Not

lo! here, nor lo! there, but within the man is the kingdom of

success.

There is a wonderful poem called "Childe Roland to the

Dark Tower Came." Roland is journeying to seek he knows

not what fortune, over a seemingly boundless plain. He plods

wearily on and on, yet the wide reaches of drear level stretch

away to the horizon, and the pilgrim thinks himself "just as far

as ever from the end." But Roland was deceived. The end

was not so far as he imagined. A sudden, awful hope-destroy-

ing surprise lay in wait for him. The air grew dusk. Looking

up the traveler was somehow aware that the plain had given place

all round to mountains, "ugly heaps and heights stolen in view,"

and he recognized that by some "trick of mischief" he was

trapped and penned against all farther progress -  caught as

within a den, no way forward, backward or to any side. Despair

seized Childe Roland, but still he sullenly stumbled on, and the

inevitable Dark Tower ended the journey.

The journey of life is not so long as it seems to the boy or

girl who, on commencement day, tells all about it in the valedic-

tory. By and by the plain vanishes, as by some devilish mirage;

the mountains of age steal into view, enclose the weary wanderer

on every side, cut off progress and retreat, warn him that the

night has come in which no man can work and that the Dark

Tower is hard ahead.

I dwell upon the importance of education, in school and

out of school, the value of time and toil, because this day is set

apart, on the progress of centennial ceremonies, as belonging

peculiarly to the young people of Steubenville and of Jefferson

county, to those whose main business in life now is to fit them-

selves for more life, by going to school, in schoolhouses. By

and by other than books and teachers will school them further.

President Hayes in a speech at the centennial of Marietta, in

1888, said the founders of Ohio were the best educated men of

their period, for they had gone to school seven years to George

Washington. The occasion which brings us here on this 24th

of August, 1897, is historic, will be memorable to those here

assembled, and should not pass by without leaving a historic im-

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pression. We are here to give and receive object lessons in his-

tory and patriotism; to reconsecrate ourselves to our best prin-

ciples as American citizens and as Ohio men and women, intent

on promulgating and bettering what we are pleased to call Ohio

ideas.

Time will not permit us to more than glance at that great

history which made Ohio what she is, and which explains why

the Buckeye State became the mother of so many presidents,

statesmen and warriors. The history of Ohio is essentially the

history of the nineteenth century. The older cities of the state

have just completed or are near completing their first century.

Turn to the map of Ohio and note what it recalls and sug-

gests of significant events and mighty men. What is the name

of the first county organized in the state? Washington. The

second? Hamilton. The third? Wayne. The fourth? Adams.

And the fifth, what? Jefferson. Let your eye travel from

county to county, and you read such shining names as Warren,

Franklin, Putnam, Madison, Monroe, Green, Knok, Jackson,

Harrison. Finds the ambitious boy no meaning, no moral in

his geography book? Its very names inspire, and the dry page

becomes, to intelligent brains and heroic hearts, a very holy

Bible of patriotism and manliness.

We peruse the map and discover on the eastern edge of Jef-

ferson county a dot and a printed word - Steubenville. That

dot and that name are symbols and signs of much. It is easy

for the school-boy to find the dot and to say the name, but he

must read volumes and have speech with thousands, and use all

his faculties of out-door observation to understand what the

speck of ink really represents. Steubenville!

Conjure with the name, and it raises, first, the spirit of old

Baron von Steuben, the stern drill-master, who taught our stub-

born forefathers the meaning of discipline. He was a man who

would permit no fooling and had no use for a smart Alic. Von

Steuben! We have in Eden Park, Cincinnati, tough young oaks

grown from acorns brought from the Steuben estate, in Ger-

many. History, history, and sermon in everything - in buck-

eyes transplanted in California, in acorns migrated from Ger-

many, in dots upon a map.

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The Centennnial of Jefferson County.       327

 

To-day a bronze tablet was set in a conspicuous place in

Steubenville, and dedicated, in your presence, to the memory of

an Ohio man, honored by the State and by the Nation. The

school children of his native county and city contributed to de-

fray the expense of preparing this memorial tablet, every boy

and every girl being privileged to take a share in a property more

valuable, in a moral sense, than we can estimate. Do we not

all feel that Steubenville is richer to-day than she was yesterday,

not by a weight of metal, but by an access of civic dignity, an

inflow of noble sentiment, a revival of patriotism! You have

baptized your sons and daughters in a stream and current of en-

nobling thoughts and feelings - you have dedicated them anew

to whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of

good report by encouraging them to admire, emulate and glorify

a good and great Ohio man.

For Edwin M. Stanton was good and great. He was firm

and brave, a right manly man, stalwart of body, strong of intel-

lect, and stubbornly virtuous. To the discipline of a college edu-

cation he added self-discipline, he could think and speak, con-

trolled his own mind and therefore could master other minds

and direct the action of legislatures and armies. His rich read-

ing, like wholesome food, went into his brain and blood, making

him vital and virile. Stanton did much to save the Union. He

staked all upon the issue. "If the cause fails," he wrote to Gov-

ernor Morton, "if the cause fails I do not wish to live." The

cause did not fail. Such Ohio men as Stanton and Grant do not

let causes fail. Their business is to win, not to lose. Stanton

indeed, sacrificed fortune upon the altar of his country. He died

a poor man, but he saved his reputation unsullied. "What will

it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul,"

his integrity? His life and the lives of others like illustrious,

answer our question, "What is an Ohio man?" Stanton, of

Steubenville, represents the superior class of American publicists

and politicians -- the able, the agressive, the conscientious, the

incorruptible. The boy who aspires something to hold a place

among the nation's councillors, or to sit on the high bench of

justice, may well take such men as models.

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No less are such men patterns for imitation by the boy who

has not such aspirations for public distinction. Ewing, Corwin,

Chase, Stanton, and their ilk, typical Ohioans, did not in youth

conceive that they were born for extraordinary careers. They

did not have the "big head." They were modest, honest, obedi-

ent, common boys. Ewing sold coon skins to make money to

buy books, and helped found the coon-skin library. Corwin was

the wagoner boy of Ohio, Chase drove cows to pasture, took

grists to mill, and for a time was a hod-carrier. Neither Grant

nor Sherman nor Sheridan dreamed, in boyhood, of becoming

a general or a great man of any kind. Ulysses ground tan bark

at Georgetown; Tecumseh, or "Cump," as his mother called

him, was summoned from playing in a sand bank and sent to

school. Phil. Sheridan, the child of an Irish laborer, began life

as clerk in a hardware store; chance sent these three lads to

West Point, and so they became soldiers. Harrison, Garfield,

Hayes, McKinley were innocent of any desire for the Chief

Magistracy, when they set out on life's journey. But each and

every one of these Buckeye boys possessed the plain, practical,

common sense Ohio idea of doing something of some account.

Like Lincoln (who ought to have been an Ohio man) they be-

lieved in "pegging away." They were resolved to "fight it out

on this line if it takes all summer." Every one of them had a

ravenous appetite for knowledge. They were, without excep-

tion, active, enterprising and courageous. Their character and

education were such as fit men for any respectable occupation in

life, professional, business or mechanical, in town or country.

They were what we familiarly call "all round men." They rose

to high positions of public trust and were equal to the tasks re-

quired of them. But Grant in the tannery was essentially the

same man as Grant in the White House, and any self-respecting

Ohio man is intrinsically as great and as good, in a tannery as

in the Capital. "A man's a man, for a' that." If mean and small

in himself, a throne cannot make him royal and great. A puny

character in the president's chair betrays itself, and is contempt-

ible; a grand personality though in the humblest position, com-

mands admiration.

"Act well your part, there all the honor lies."

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