Ohio History Journal

128        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

the citizens of all the states and the republics to the south of us may

spend many pleasant hours and may find rest and comfort. It is my

duty to turn our building over to the Pan-American, and in doing so I

express the sincere hope that your exposition may have the great success

which always should accompany efforts so earnest, so able and so mag-

nificent and wonderful in results as are those made by the officials of

the exposition and the citizens of Buffalo. I thank you for your attention

and I again wish you great success."

 

PRESIDENT MILBURN.

Gov. Nash's brief speech was applauded enthusiastically.

President John G. Milburn then accepted the Ohio Building

in behalf of the Exposition. He referred earnestly to the very

cordial encouragement and effective co-operation which had been

given to the Pan-American by the State of Ohio from the incep-

tion of the exposition project. He assured the Ohioans that their

assistance and their presence on their day was greatly appreci-

ated. It was only through such sympathy and co-operation as

had been extended by Ohio that the great purpose of the Pan-

American, the making better known to the people of South and

Central America of our people, and the making of them better

known to the people of this country, the bringing together of the

Americas, could be accomplished.

"Those of us engaged in this work," said Mr. Milburn, in

conclusion, "are sincerely grateful and the day will never come

when we will forget how Ohio stood by us and helped us to ac-

complish what we have done."

 

 

OHIO THE FIRST CHILD OF THE NORTHWEST.

The Hon. Charles W. Baker of Cincinnati followed with an

eloquent address upon the topic, "Ohio, the First Child of the

Northwest." He said:

"The fair fame of Ohio, as you may have observed, does not rest

merely upon the natural productions of her soil or the very many and

versatile results of her skill and labor.

"Ohio produces men--men of action. Men who can work and

plan. Men who can talk and think and fight; and it would hardly be

a full and fair description did I not add, men who can and do hold office

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"It has been so ever since Ohio became a State, nearly one hundred

years ago; for Ohio was not long in getting into the Union after it was

once well started, and she has had a great deal to do and say about

things ever since.

"Virginia used to be called the Mother of Presidents. Virginia

will have to be content with the title of grandmother now, for the other

distinction has passed from her. Ohio has assumed it.

"Nor are we without hope that the years of the future will still

justify this distinguished and distinguishing title.

"It is said at home that we have several very able men on both

sides who look not upon the mention of their names in connection with

the Ohio succession reproachfully.

"Did not the Twelfth Amendment forbid, we might furnish both

the President and Vice President.

"That inhibition is not nearly so forbidding that I should indulge

in such suggestion, however, as is the preamble of the Constitution,

which says that one of its objects is to 'insure domestic tranquillity.'

There would be no domestic tranquillity in Ohio, I mean constitutional

domestic tranquillity, with such a ticket. The most amiable of hopes

would not underwrite such an insurance.

"In New York you are said to have similar congestion and plethora.

Speaking as an Ohioan, I beg to say to you of New York, that when the

long roll is called and counted, the Ohio man will be in the first place,

and you may have the second only because the Constitution says we can-

not have them both.

"But, ladies and gentlemen, there are a great many persons in

Ohio who do not hold office, and, although they may be perfectly willing

to do so, are not particularly concerned about it as the chief end of life.

"They are represented in the material things you see about you,

that in this exposition stand for Ohio's industries and endeavor.

"Ohio was the first fruits of the Ordinance of 1787. That ordin-

ance was not merely the political creation of a Congress enactment, but

a solemn perpetual covenant between the thirteen Colonies and the people

of the Northwestern Territory, that slavery and involuntary servitude

should be forever prohibited within its borders, and, in its own language,

'religion, morality and education being essential to good government

and the happiness of mankind should forever be encouraged.'

"This vast Northwest, that in the ambiguous text of the treaty ceding

it, extended 'up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and

northwest,' radiated between the Ohio River and the lakes, to the

Mississippi,and was destined within fifty years to form six great States,

of which Ohio was the first, as she was the fourth after the thirteen

Colonies, to be admitted into the Federal Union.

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130        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

"She was settled by a commingling of people, a part entering from

the Northeast, type and descendant of the best Puritan blood of New

England, the other strain of migration entering from the South, bringing

the warm and chivalrous traits and characteristics of the cavalier, whose

ancestors had peopled Maryland and Virginia, while flung across her

central border as if to reinforce and fuse these varied elements, New

York and Pennsylvania lent Dutch and Huguenot, producing in the

amalgamation as great and strong and mighty a race of people as ever

trod the globe.

"It is not surprising that Ohio, like some central, shining sun,

scattering light and heat and life, has sent in drifts and masses westward

and north and south and back again and eastward, men and women

who have won distinction in every field of opportunity and endeavor.

She has given Governors and Senators to other States, and judges and

statesmen to supreme courts and national assemblies. Her soil has been

the birthplace of Presidents whom other States have presented to the

Nation, as her own sons have been lifted to that high office by the

suffrage of their countrymen. She consecrated the brain and blood and

bodies of 500,000 sons to God and glory to preserve the Union, as she

gave the great commanders of that heroic struggle to country and to

history.

"Her artisans and mechanics have filled the earth with implements

and evidence of skill and genius. They invent them and then teach

mankind to build, as well as use, them.

"Her wood and iron-working machinery fills the markets of Russia

and the East. She sells her oil to India. Her wagons trek the dusty

roads of Africa, as her plows and reapers plant and gather the harvests

of Australia.

"Go into any field of industry the wide world over, and on the

simplest, as well as upon the most intricate and delicate machinery

utilized, you will find the stamp of Ohio.

"Nature intended it should be so. Her valleys are beautiful and

prolific, the fairest the sun e'er shone upon; redolent with the fragrance

of the wild grape and cherry that still bloom and blossom beside culti-

vated orchards, and green and yellow with wheat and cornfields nodding

in the sunshine, keeping time to the music of the harvest. The Miamis,

fertile and picturesque, stretch away into the Scioto and Muskingum,

and these melt again into the Hocking, the Mahoning and the Tuscara-

was, that in turn touch the Cuyahoga and the old black swamp, fountain-

head of the Sandusky and the Maumee.

"Ohio is still among the first of all States in the production of

wheat and corn and other cereals, in grapes and fruit, in tobacco,

flax and hemp; in cattle and sheep, in hogs and horses, in every product

of the soil, Ohio is Arcadian. She is like some vast cornucopia filled

to the overflow with abundant harvests.

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Ohio Day at Pan-American Exposition.              131

 

"Her hills, like her valleys, are prodigal in natural resources.

Not Alpine in height, but Apennine in beauty; full of coal and lime

and iron, of building stone and granite. They need but labor and the

torch to start the smoking furnaces that pour out steel and iron in

endless torrent; to pile mountain high the diamonds that are black that,

put to crucible, with eager fire drive wheels and shafts and gearings

that crown human industry and give light and heat and fuel; to rear

aloft architrave and column upon foundations of stately edifices and

business blocks.

"We bore beneath the wheat and corn, and oil and gas and salt

bubble and burst surfaceward.

"Yonder upon the eastern border is a clay deposit that, aside from

tile and brick, deftly fashioned in the potter's hands, makes famous

Ohio's potteries.

"In our own city of Cincinnati the genius of a gifted Ohio woman

fashioned wares that in exquisiteness of blended color, fused and welded,

and in fineness of texture and finish, make Rookwood as famous and

as artistic the world over as Wedgwood, Majolica or Delft.

"Ohio stands the great connecting Isthmian way between all the

States. It was so of old, when the national pike joined the West to

the East. It is now, when the slow locomotion of wagon and stage

coach has given way to the iron horse speeding upon steel rails.

"All continental lines of travel cross her territory. Converging

as they come from eastern terminals, they traverse Ohio upon closely

drawn and almost parallel lines, and then diverging like loosened tan-

gents, they spread abroad from Texas to Oregon. All States pay tribute

to us. We levy tax on traffic and gather toll from trade as the com-

merce of the world crosses our borders. Little wonder is it that men

go forth from Ohio, carrying the dear old State in their heart of hearts.

Little wonder is it that in every city of any size in this Union, and in

many, very many smaller towns, there are Ohio societies that foster

and minister to the love and pride they bear her memory and her greatness.

"But I must not prolong this recital.

"New York may call herself the Empire State; Ohio is imperial, too.

"Pennsylvania may style herself the Keystone State; Ohio is key-

stone and arch.

"Alabama's name means 'Here we rest;' but Ohio is the abiding

place of all that stands for life, for home, for hope, for happiness.

"Those of us who were born on her soil, together with her adopted

sons and daughters, voice that triumphant outcry of devotion: 'Thy people

shall be my people, and thy God, my God. The Lord do so to me and

more if aught but death part thee and me.'

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132        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

Mrs. Bishop sang again. Her glorious voice was heard first

in Handel's "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" and then in

"Comin' Thro' the Rye."

 

"THESE ARE MY JEWELS."

Hon. Emmett Thompkins, Congressman-elect from the 12th

Ohio District (Columbus) delivered an address replete with most

interesting historical and statistical information:

 

"Out of the days devoted to the exposition of the arts and the

products of the two Americas, this one is dedicated to Ohio, in order

that we, her citizens, should have special opportunity to make man-

ifest her worth to others and among ourselves to rejoice over her achieve-

ments and her status, and to hopefully contemplate, and find inspiration

for, the future. Ohio is a great State. One of the greatest of all the

States. That may sound like vanity and boastfulness. It is not. I have

heard many who never lived there, but who knew what they were talking

about, say the same thing. If such others so speak, why should it be

vanity or boastfulness for me to speak as they do? There are many

reasons for this conceded greatness, and reasons readily found and easily

understood.

"Location has had much to do in bringing about her present condi-

tion. It secured for her that sturdy and healthy pioneer population which

was richly capable of laying the civic and industrial foundations of the

commonwealth and the later population, descendant from these pioneers

or admitted from other places, which has builded wisely and well the

superstructure now resting so firmly and gracefully upon these foun-

dations.

"Many of the New Englanders at the close of the Revolution and

the establishment of the Union were content to stop where they were

and seek no further. The trials of the long struggle for independ-

ence had wearried them, and the magnitude of their achievements filled

their cups, so that they neither sought nor desired acquisition of ter-

ritory or change in conditions. Indeed, many of them believed and

urged that when the thirteen Colonies passed into the Union under the

Constitution the ultimate had been attained; that expansion of terri-

tory or migration of the inhabitants to outside fields were neither toler-

ated nor contemplated by the instrument and the spirit of the federation;

that the Appalachian range was the western boundary for all time,

and that whatever lay beyond should be the uninvaded home of the

Indian and the undisturbed lair of the wild beast. In short, they denied

the right and propriety of growth or change. Even to this day there

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