Ohio History Journal

JOHN W. BEAR, "THE BUCKEYE BLACKSMITH"1

 

by ROBERT GRAY GUNDERSON

Associate Professor of Speech, Oberlin College

 

On the week end of February 21, 1840, twenty-three thousand

enthusiastic Whigs crowded into Columbus for the Ohio Whig

convention.² A heavy rain drenched the delegates as they milled

about seeking quarters in the thriving capital city, which that year

proudly reported six thousand inhabitants to the bureau of the

census. The arrangements committee announced that every Whig

house in Columbus had been requisitioned to accommodate the

guests. "Straw beds, mattresses, and even the naked floors" were

put to use; but sedate citizens got little sleep, for this was the

opening of the sensational "Tippecanoe-and-Tyler-too" presidential

campaign in Ohio. To insure proper enthusiasm for "Tip, Tyler,

and the tariff," thoughtful Whig managers had provided barrels of

hard cider, conveniently located on the downtown street corners, to

serve free as added stimulation for those whose spirits might be

dampened unduly by the rain.

"Columbus," according to one account, "was the very home of

ballad makers and ballad singers." Every gathering had its minstrel

and every crowd its orator. "Songs and shouts echoed alternately

from every part of the city." Outside John Neil's tavern excited

partisans debated the gubernatorial candidacy of Tom Corwin,

while around the square inebriated paraders sloshed through mud

a foot deep while taunting President Martin Van Buren with the

chant: "Van, Van, Van-Van's a used up man." Across the street

on the statehouse lawn, speakers harangued delegates from three

separate platforms, since a single platform was found to be in-

adequate for the immense crowd. "Twenty bands of music are

 

1 Based on a paper delivered before the speech section of the Ohio College Asso-

ciation, Columbus, April 9, 1948.

2 "The estimate of several judicious men who took much pains to make accurate

calculations." Niles' Register (Washington D.C.), March 14, 1840.

262

• 1
 

John W. Bear, "The Buckeye Blacksmith"           263

throwing their notes of exultation upon the breeze," exclaimed the

editor of the Ohio State Journal; "the loud mouthed cannon has

been speaking its notes of thunder-the pride and pomp of military

array fascinate the eye at every corner." A reporter for the Dayton

Journal predicted that "another such gathering of the people may

not be witnessed by the present generation." "Drunkenness, low

and filthy songs, the yells of the savage, and acts degrading to the

beasts of the field" prompted Democratic editor Sam Medary to

damn the gathering as "a BABOON CONVENTION."³

Amid this turbulent excitement, John W. Bear, a blacksmith from

Pickaway County, Ohio, made his first public speech-a speech

which was to initiate a stumping expedition of 331 appearances in

eight states and the District of Columbia. No other Whig orator

spoke so frequently or was in so much demand during the canvass

of 1840. "Barnum in his palmiest days," Bear recalled later, "was

not half so much sought after."⁴

Bear had not come to Columbus to make a speech. Unknown

outside his village of South Bloomfield, he had accompanied his

county delegation merely to enjoy the festivities. "I concluded to

go," he explained modestly in his autobiography, "in my blacksmith

clothes, leather apron and all." During a lull at one of the main

speaking stands, one of Bear's fellow townsmen started to cry, "Bear,

a speech from Bear." The shout was picked up by the crowd, and

soon the Pickaway blacksmith found himself on the platform.

According to his own account many years later, the sight of Sam

Medary gave him his opening story:

 

I dreamed that I was coming to this Convention, and met the devil who

. . . [asked what his] old and worthy friend Sam. Medary . . . [was]

doing.... "he is editing the Ohio Statesman said I." "What!" said he in

surprise. . ., "if Sam. Medary is at the head of the Ohio Statesman, and

3 Ohio State Journal (Columbus), February 22, 24, 1840; Cleveland Herald,

February 26, March 2, 1840; Ohio Statesman (Columbus), February 21, 22, 1840;

National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), February 29, 1840; Globe (Washington,

D.C.), February 28, 1840.

4 Log Cabin (Albany and New York), December 5, 1840; John W. Bear, The Life

and Travels of John W. Bear, "The Buckeye Blacksmith" (Baltimore, 1873), 53.

• 2
 

264     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

can't lie the Whigs out of . . . [the election], all the devils in hell can't

do it."⁵

 

At this point, in Bear's version of the incident, Medary shouted

from the crowd, "That's a lie." The blacksmith prepared to take

off his coat as he retorted, "Say that again Sam, and I'll take off

the outside quires for you." Whereupon, the editor was said to

have hurriedly retreated from the scene.

Though Bear's account of his triumph was enhanced by the

passage of time, his performance was, in fact, described by con-

temporary Whig papers as sufficient to send the crowd into "the

wildest enthusiasm." His success as a speaker spread throughout

Columbus, and Whig leaders prevailed upon him to give a repeat

performance at the main platform next day. For this second speech,

he came prepared. Ascending the platform with a pair of black-

smith's tongs on his shoulder, he announced that he had a dirty

job to do. After picking up Medary's paper with the tongs, he

read a short paragraph, dropped the paper to the floor and

vigorously wiped his feet on it. Then he washed the tongs in

soap and water and apologized for defiling them with so dirty a

thing as the Ohio Statesman. Once again, the crowd responded

with hysterical applause, and Whig leaders from      every part of

Ohio came forward to request similar performances at Harrison

meetings in their respective counties.

The man who thus was made famous after a single speech had

a background typical of many pioneers in the Old Northwest.

Born of a poor family in Frederick County, Maryland, in 1800,

Bear was indentured to a tavern keeper at the age of ten. When

he was fourteen, he ran away from his indenture and crossed

the mountains to evade capture. Up to that time, he had never read

a newspaper or a book, and his only knowledge had come from

 

5 Bear, Life and Travels, 43 et seq. Bear incorrectly recalled that Sam Medary

"had devoted the half of his paper in abusing" him. No mention was made of Bear

in the issues of February 21, 22, or 24. No paper was issued on Sunday, the 23d.

A letter signed "SPECTATOR" in the February 28, 1840, Ohio Statesman, asked

why the Whigs failed to present "the doings of . . . Bare's [sic] to the public."

As state printer, Medary had been accused of using the outside quires of state

paper for his private printing.

• 3
 

John W. Bear, "The Buckeye Blacksmith"       265

 

those who had, as he said, "occasionally conversed in my presence."

Though he had set out on his lonely journey over the mountains

with only seventeen cents in his pocket, good fortune brought him

to Indiana where he found work clearing woods near Indianapolis

at a wage of two dollars a month, plus keep. After six months as a

Hoosier woodsman, the restless young fugitive decided to seek his

future in Ohio. There followed a brief interlude in Pennsylvania,

a return to Ohio with his parents, marriage, and eventual settlement

in the village of South Bloomfield, where he worked as blacksmith

for the stagecoach line. After his wife taught him to read, he

took an increasing interest in politics. The Whig party got his

allegiance because it supported education and a protective tariff.6

After his success in Columbus as a Whig orator, Bear hastened

to South Bloomfield where he said goodbye to his wife and

children and set out on a stumping trip which he thought would be

completed in less than a week. After speeches at Lancaster, Chilli-

cothe, and Portsmouth, he prepared to return home; but Whig

managers lured him into Kentucky, and his nationwide travels

were under way. He did not return home until election day, eight

months later. In Kentucky, George D. Prentice, editor of the

Louisville Journal, dubbed him "the Buckeye Blacksmith," a title

he continued to use long after it ceased to be appropriate. From

Kentucky, he was summoned to Cincinnati where Harrison's in-

formal campaign committee stuffed him with Whig arguments,

bought him a new suit, found a local belle to help him with his

grammar, and sent him back to the stump.⁷

Following a series of speeches in Ohio and Kentucky, Bear began

a trek to Washington. In every major city on the way, he repeated

performances similar to those of the Columbus convention. On his

arrival in each town, he took pains to secure the name of the leading

Democratic editor, which he substituted for Medary in the story of

his dream. When no local personage qualified for Medary's place,

he used the name of Amos Kendall, who resigned as Van Buren's

 

6 Bear, Life and Travels, 7 et seq.

7 Ibid., 45-50; Lexington Observer & Reporter, May 9, 1840.

• 4
 

266     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

postmaster general to become editor of the Extra Globe.⁸ Local

Whigs posted the peripatetic blacksmith on rival Democrats in

their respective communities; consequently, as Bear phrased it, "I

was able to pitch into them on private matters that would generally

floor them." His usual course was to "tear down Van Buren and

build up Harrison"; but as he progressed, he became versatile

enough to discuss less personalized issues. By the time he reached

Uniontown, Pennsylvania, for example, he felt confident enough

to discuss the tariff. "[Through] constant practice and the in-

structions I received daily from . . . members of Congress who

were furnishing me with documents," he boasted later in his auto-

biography, "I had so improved in speaking that I had no fears

of any man.^"9

On June thirteenth, Bear addressed the Whigs of Washington,

D. C., from the steps of the City Hall. Though Whig papers gave

scant mention of what Bear said in the capital city, they were im-

pressed by the spirited response he evoked. Exploiting the theme

of hard times, the Ohio blacksmith proclaimed that "as Mr.

Van Buren had turned him out of employment, he should do what

he could to turn Mr. Van Buren out of employment." At the con-

clusion of his speech, he sang "Old Tip's Raisin'," a popular cam-

paign ballad which promised that on the fourth of March "little

Martin will have to shin it." So thrilled were Washington Whigs

that the Buckeye orator "was not allowed to walk through the gate

in front of the City Hall, but was borne over the fence on the

shoulders of his fellow citizens."¹⁰ In retrospect, Bear fancied

President Van Buren as a member of his audience:

 

Mr. Van Buren heard me speak at this meeting, and was very much

amused at some of my anecdotes that I told on him, and said to Mr.

Crittenden that he never heard a man speak, that could carry the people

away with him, better than I could; he said that with a few such men

as I was in the free States, the Whigs could beat any man the Democrats

could get up at this time, for it was a new thing for a working man to

speak at public meetings.11

8 Northwestern Gazette & Galena Advertiser (Galena, Ill.), July 17, 1840.

9 Bear, Life and Travels, 52.

10 National Intelligencer, June 15, 1840; Axe (Cleveland), June 25, 1840.

¹¹ Bear, Life and Travels, 63-64.

• 5
 

John W. Bear, "The Buckeye Blacksmith"       267

Bear later recalled that he was entertained in Washington by John

Quincy Adams, who supposedly complimented his guest by ad-

mitting, "I think that you are able to hold your own with any

of us."12

Newspaper accounts of Bear's Washington performance varied

with the political inclinations of the editor. "Much as has been

said of him in advance," reported the Whiggish National In-

telligencer, "he surpassed expectation. . . . If strong sagacity, ac-

curate information, and an effective eloquence . . . can avail, Mr.

Bear's efforts are likely to be crowned with glorious success."13

The Cleveland Axe informed Ohioans that their itinerant black-

smith was "lion of the Capital."¹⁴ The hostile Washington Globe

gave a contrasting account: "If low and vulgar ribaldry, stale jokes,

and the manners of the Harlequin, be eloquence, then indeed was

the Buckeye eloquent." "The Whigs are so proud of their prize,"

the Globe added, "that they are carrying him about for exhibition

as though he were a bear in fact as well as in name. . . . Only fancy,

a Whig blacksmith!" Interested in audience reactions, one Loco-

Foco reporter asked a Whig listener "if the rant of the blacksmith,

his ignorance and vulgarity, were not too great to enable him to

be popular with the people." "Yes," the Whig replied, "for the

cities, but he will catch a great many of the country people." In an

editorial, the Globe deemed it one of the "political wonders of the

day" that "men of character, of talents, and of taste, should par-

ticipate in such raree shows as that at which Mr. Bear figured."¹⁵

After performing for numerous gatherings in Maryland, Bear

journeyed to Philadelphia for the Fourth of July holiday. The

Philadelphia Whig committee engaged quarters for the Ohio

orator at the Madison House and informed him of the local political

situation. Thus fortified, he harangued five separate congregations

in honor of Old Tippecanoe and the independence of the country.

Thoughtful Whig propagandists provided him with an anvil, sledge,

and other necessary implements of a smithy, and for each audience

Bear refuted slanders that he was "no mechanic, but a broken down

12 Ibid., 64.

13 June 15, 1840.

14 June 25, 1840.

15 June 16 and 20, 1840.

• 6
 

268     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

lawyer" by giving public demonstration of his trade. Once his

talent was proved, he "riveted the whole attention ... for an hour."

After four such exhibitions, the Buckeye concluded his day at a

"monster meeting" on Smith's Island in the Delaware River. In

testimony to Bear's exertions that day, the committee treated him

to champagne disguised as "New Jersey cider." This the exhausted

orator drank "as free as water." It was two days before the sturdy

Ohioan could resume his travels.¹⁶

During the next four months, Bear stumped through Penn-

sylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. At Lancaster,

Pennsylvania, he spoke to a crowd estimated at twenty-five to fifty

thousand. At Easton, he was presented with a silver cup by admiring

Whig ladies of the Keystone State. Everywhere he spoke, he kept

"the sledge and small hammer flying at a busy rate, with great

effect."17 After giving six speeches in New York City, he began his

trek back to Ohio. He reached Cleveland on October twenty-ninth,

the night before the election. In a rally at the Cleveland Log Cabin,

he "laid off his overcoat, and with the sledge hammer of 'Truth'

broke the Sub-Treasury and standing army scheme of Van Buren

to flinders." Next day, Cleveland Whigs hired a special stagecoach

to take him to South Bloomfield. He arrived one hour before the

polls closed "amid the shouts of the Whigs of our little town."

Noting his exploits, the Cleveland Herald concluded, "He is a man

of strong mind, quick perception, retentive memory, fluent tongue

and iron constitution."¹⁸

Bear's iron constitution was not an unimportant requisite to his

campaigning, for while his friends greeted him with enthusiasm,

his opponents often met him with violence. Only a quick draw on

his pistol, for example, prevented three men from tossing him into

Chesapeake Bay during his stay in Baltimore. Loco-Focos at Ellicott's

Mills, Maryland, disrupted his speech by steaming a whistling

locomotive back and forth past his platform. At times, the hostility

of his Pennsylvania opponents led to extreme measures. Near

16 National Intelligencer, July 23, 1840; Bear, Life and Travels, 60-70.

17 Axe, June 25, 1840; National Intelligencer, September 26, 1840; Niles' Register,

September 26, 1840; Bear, Life and Travels, 70-80.

18 Bear, Life and Travels, 90; Cleveland Herald, October 30, 1840.

• 7
 

John W. Bear, "The Buckeye Blacksmith"             269

Millerstown, thugs pushed a huge rock over a cliff into the path

of his carriage. Democrats in Lewistown lowered the water level

of the canal in an attempt to prevent his passage to Harrisburg. An

effigy of Harrison, "the Petticoat General," was tossed into his

audience at Kutztown. Ruffians in Huntington stoned the windows

of the hall in which he spoke, and then drove him from the town

barely ahead of a volley of eggs.¹⁹

Using less direct methods to drive him from the stump, the

Democratic press denounced him as a hireling, an impostor, and an

embezzler. A correspondent for the Ohio Statesman reported that

Bear absconded "with nearly a thousand dollars . . . [from his

former home in Zanesville] and left his securities to pay the

piper!"20 Eleven citizens of Zanesville testified in a public letter

that Bear was "a dishonest man of base character."²¹ The Globe

proclaimed him to be "one of the greatest imposters and swindlers

in existence! A true Federal Whig Mechanic is he! A cheat-worse

than humbug-a cheat of the people!"²² "The whole land is now

rife with the itinerant orators," concluded the Globe; "from

DANIEL WEBSTER down to the TRAVELLING BEAR, they are

known to be all mercenaries."²3

Bear's noisy audiences helped to determine the style of his

speeches. Subtleties were not easily projected to the cider-soaked

partisans he faced. Thus his humor was crude and, in the testimony

of his critics, vulgar. His homely stories were refreshingly intelligible

to audiences accustomed to hearing speeches in which imagery and

allusions were predominantly classical, and consequently unfamiliar.

His anecdotes about the eccentricities of leading Democrats in-

variably led to a vigorous audience response. The open interchange

with hecklers added zest to his speaking, and no small measure of

his popularity lay in the pungency of his replies. Once, for example,

19 Bear, Life and Travels, 65, 66, 77, 84, 86; Log Cabin, October 10, 1840;

Political Tornado (Columbus), October 9, 1840.

20 Ohio Statesman, February 28, 1840.

21 Globe, June 29, 1840. A. R. Cassidy, sheriff of Muskingum County in 1835,

wrote to testify, "He is the same John W. Bear that I arrested. . . . There is no

doubt about his identity." Ibid., September 9, 1840.

22 Ibid., June 29, 1840.

23 Ibid., August 19, 1840.

• 8
 

270     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

when heckled that he was not a blacksmith, Bear hurriedly retired

to his anvil and hammered out a horseshoe. Flourishing the finished

shoe aloft, he cried, "I would like to nail it on the jackass who just

said that I was not a blacksmith."²⁴ His commentary on political

issues was vastly oversimplified. As he explained it, the election

was a contest between two ways of life: the log cabin versus the

palace; linsey-woolsey versus broadcloth; hard cider versus cham-

pagne; and the people versus the officeholders.²⁵

The success of "the Buckeye Blacksmith" was reflected in his

imitators. "The contest of 1840," said one contemporary frankly,

"soon became too uproarious for gentlemen of refined taste, and

orators of a different class held the rostrum."²⁶ Indeed, there were

many "practical hard hitters of the masses" who dramatized Whig

solicitude for common folk. There was "the Kinderhook Black-

smith," Mr. Chamberlain, who, "full of anecdote and humor,"

excited "shout after shout" by detailing unsavory stories about his

fellow townsman, Martin Van Buren.²⁷ There was Elihu Burritt,

"the Learned Blacksmith," widely renowned as a linguist, who

marshaled his "vast erudition" in behalf of Old Tippecanoe.²⁸

There was Longhead, the blacksmith from St. Louis, who roved the

Midwest "striking while the iron was hot" against the evils of

Van Burenism.²⁹ There was Henry Wilson, "the Natick Cobbler,"

who spoke at a great gathering in Concord, New Hampshire, as

one of his first efforts in a political career from indentured servant

to the vice-presidency.³⁰ Another shoemaker, F. W. Kellogg, "a

whole souled Tippecanoe mechanic," entertained Harrison meetings

with some of "the most amusing, side-shaking, hearty ha-ha speeches

ever listened to." "Bear and Kellogg," proclaimed the Cleveland

Axe, "make a full team, the regular Davy Crockett line."³1

Prominent politicians also adopted Bear's methods. The aris-

 

24 Bear, Life and Travels, 69.

25 Log Cabin, October 10, 1840.

26 Richard Smith Elliott, Notes Taken in Sixty Years (St. Louis, 1883), 127.

27 Ohio Whig (Perrysburg), June 12, 1840.

28 National Intelligencer, July 25, 1840.

29 Northwestern Gazette & Galena Advertiser, May 29, 1840.

30 Log Cabin, June 27, 1840.

31 May 7, 1840.

• 9
 

John W. Bear, "The Buckeye Blacksmith"            271

tocratic Hugh S. Legare of South Carolina, erudite student of law

and the classics, donned rough clothes and a coonskin cap, spoke in

the idiom of the frontier, and "engaged in cider drinking and

general carousing" in a desperate effort to woo the crossroads' vote

in the South.³² Governor William H. Seward of New York stumped

the western hustings of the Empire State in a green country wagon.³³

A "Railsplitter" stood on a stump at a Whig convention in Spring-

field, Illinois, and regaled 15,000 Whigs with his rustic humor and

risque anecdotes. Rival Democrats charged that all the buffoonery

was a part of the strategy of the Whig managers. "Contempt for

the people," insisted the Rough-Hewer, "lies at the bottom of

their whole scheme of electioneering."³⁴ The Democratic Review

contended that it was "a ludicrously impudent imposture" for

Whigs to masquerade as spokesmen for the common man.³⁵ But

as one Whig leader replied, "It is but fair to . . . prostrate our

opponents with the . . . weapons with which they beat us."³⁶

Orators of "the Davy Crockett line" like John W. Bear thus con-

tributed an important element to Harrison's success in 1840: the

feeling that the Whig party was the party of the blacksmiths,

cobblers, and railsplitters of America.

32 Linda Rhea, Hugh S. Legare, A Charleston Intellectual (Chapel Hill, 1934),

191-193.

33 Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York

(New York, 1919), 412-413.

34 Albany, N.Y., June 25, 1840.

35 United States Magazine and Democratic Review, VII (1840), 486.

36 M. Bradley to Thurlow Weed, August 29, 1839. Thurlow Weed Collection,

University of Rochester Library.

• 10