Ohio History Journal

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132 Ohio Arch

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