Ohio History Journal

664      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

AFTERNOON SESSION

 

AUDITORIUM OF THE MUSEUM

AND LIBRARY BUILDING,

1:30 O'CLOCK.

The addresses delivered at the afternoon session of

the meeting were of an unusually high order. Members

of the Society and their friends came in large numbers to

hear the two noted speakers on the program. They soon

filled the auditorium to the limit of its capacity and a

number were turned away for lack of room. The high

anticipations of the audience were not disappointed.

Both speakers were from outside of the State, but

each had a distinctive Ohio connection and their pres-

ence was, in a measure, a home-coming after the

achievements of honorable distinction in other fields.

 

ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR ARCHER BUTLER

HULBERT

After a few remarks President Johnson invited Dr.

William Oxley Thompson, President Emeritus of the

Ohio State University, to preside over the afternoon

session. Dr. Thompson was given an ovation on as-

suming the chair. In a few words he introduced the

first speaker of the afternoon, Archer Butler Hulbert,

college professor and historian, who delivered his ad-

dress on "The Provincial Basis of Patriotism."

From his first sentence, Professor Hulbert held the

close attention of his audience. The interest grew until

it reached a climax at the conclusion of his address of

one hour. He did not rehearse merely the facts of his-

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Forty-Second Annual Meeting       665

tory, but he used those facts as a basis for a philosophy

of history which was not commonplace and hackneyed.

In other words, he exhibited originality of thought in

tracing the development of our national patriotism from

love of home, locality and province.

He manifested none of the tendencies of recent writ-

ers of history to depreciate patriotism, to hold up to

public view the delinquencies of patriots, or to use a

slang expression of modern writers, to "de-bunk his-

tory." Those who heard him must have felt a healthy

optimism in regard to the future and a higher apprecia-

tion of an intelligent and all-embracing love of country.

He introduced his subject of American provincialism

by a description of his acquaintance with the topic at

first hand -- of his eighteen years in New England,

twenty years in the Ohio Valley, ten years in the Rocky

Mountain Region, and four years' experience in recent

days on the Pacific Coast. "I have begun in a slight

way," he said, "to become acquainted with this country

of ours; it is only by experience that one can come to do

that most important thing, To Love America First, how-

ever little in one brief lifetime one may happen to see;

for when one has seen the 'famous' places of interest, he

has read only the first page of a book of gigantic size."

The speaker said that, from the very colonial begin-

ning of our history, the United-States-to-be was a mar-

velous collection of curious provinces, kingdoms, prin-

cipalities and dukedoms, regal in their expanse, rich be-

yond counting, in their resources. In each province was

developed that province's own "peculiar people," so to

speak. As each region differed in conformation, soil

and products, so the people in each differed. This gave

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666      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

rise to a vast series of antagonisms based on different

outlooks, political bents, religious convictions, social cus-

toms, local conceits and prejudices. The speaker gave

many humorous illustrations of these antipathies, em-

phasizing especially the boundary-line disputes, taking

Pennsylvania's quarrels over each of her four boundary

lines as an illustration.

By such means, the speaker established his tenet that

the people of every one of these American "nations" (as

they would have seemed to a European) "discovered a

distinct pride in and love for their own section or prov-

ince, the peculiar type of provincialism which makes

Texans believe no land equals theirs, the Kentuckian to

hold the 'Blue-Grass Region' as the choice bit of God's

whole earth and the Oregonian to consider his North-

west a Heaven compared with either Texas or Kentucky.

The characteristics of such provincial affection was dis-

cussed from the standpoint of the various psychologists

of patriotism, that craving for the sense of 'at-homeness'

which made Webster, on his death-bed, desire the cows

should be driven from the barn to his window that he

might once more smell their breath; that longing which

made Napoleon cry out from his island prison for one

more smell of Corsican soil; that aching pain which

makes the 'mountain white,' a-dying in a stuffy city

apartment house, long to be carried back to his mountain

spring, certain that its waters will effect a cure."

"The roots of patriotism," the speaker insisted,

"thrive in provincial soils. He is a real patriot who is

truly fond of his 'home,' his 'section'; and the greatest

of patriots is he who truly loves the greatest number

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Archer Butler Hulbert, college professor, historian and author of many standard publications, is widely and favorably known in Ohio. He was graduated from Marietta College in 1895; was editor of the Korean Inde- pendent in the Far East; Professor of American History in Marietta Col- lege, 1904-1918, and in Colorado College, 1920-1925. He has been a lecturer in the University of Chicago and other universities. He is a voluminous writer. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity and author of almost forty volumes of standard books, including the Historic Highways of America, in sixteen volumes. His latest published book is The Making of the American Republic. His contribution in the December Atlantic, of last year, entitled "The Habit of Going to the Devil," is said to have been the "most widely quoted magazine article published in 1926."  Professor Hulbert is a life member of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and has contributed to its publications. (667)

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668     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

of provinces -- sees why Kentuckians and Texans and

Oregonians are so biased and loves them for it! The

Man Without a Country' could never have been so

dubbed had he had any real affection for Gratiot, He-

bron or Kirkersville," said Professor Hulbert. This

development of his theme was happily illustrated by the

fact that seldom in any land do the so-called "national"

songs have the vital hold upon the masses that do the

songs redolent of section and province. "The songs

which humanity hugs to its bosom through generations

are the songs vibrant with specific local phenomena, sat-

urated with provincial color, redolent of indigenous

things; songs of Maxwelton's breezes, of Alsatian

Mountains, of Beautiful Ohios, of Kentucky Homes, of

Silv'ry Rio Grandes, of Suwanee Rivers." The song

"Goodbye Broadway, Hello France," the speaker said,

"would hardly have made the hit it did had it been

worded 'Goodbye America, Hello France.' The local

tang was requisite and, while few men in those armies

could have given the various verses of 'My Country 'Tis

of Thee' or 'God Save the King,' every man-jack in any

of them could have told every word of 'Tipperary' (with

its provincial references to Piccadilly), or every word of

'My Indiana Home' or 'Dixie'."

"This exceedingly necessary place of provincialism

as a true basis for nationalism," the speaker said, "has

been ignored by the formal historian, largely because

the geologist has been the historian's guide and mentor

and not the agriculturist. We have been taught how the

frame-work of the continent was put together; we have

learned much of 'faults' and 'anti-clines' and all the rest

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Forty-Second Annual Meeting      669

of the important story of the building of the continent's

skeleton; but we have been told little about the super-

ficial background of our soils. We have learned much

about the framework of which the pioneers knew noth-

ing and we have remained in ignorance of the soils

which meant everything in the world to those pioneers;

for soils were the one and only topic of vital importance

to our migrating fathers; they dominated the planting

of colonies, determined whither men should go and how

far; where turn and when to stop. The planting of

every frontier was always a soil proposition, whether it

were the founding of an Ohio, a Texas or an Oregon.

Strike out, from migration, propaganda to any impor-

tant zone of colonial expansion the soil arguments and

you have practically a blank page. Yet what of our

school histories even mention the subject?"

"This story of province-creation has been neglected,"

said Professor Hulbert, "just as, formerly, the story of

the European background of American history was neg-

lected. Here the geologist has his important funda-

mental story; yet when he is done, the most important

part of the tale remains to be unfolded, so far as man's

actual experience in Republic-making is concerned. For

only by seeing such a thing, as the Valley of Virginia,

come into existence, and noting how it resembled the

limestone Pennsylvania lands and differed from tide-

water Virginia, on the one side, and the Ohio Valley on

the other, can we sense the creation of a distinct prov-

ince which gave birth, let us imagine, to a distinct 'race

of giants'; a provincial type of pride, attitude to the rest

of the world; a granary thrust providentially into the

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670       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

Southland from which Lee and Jackson might get their

grain in times of trouble." The speaker illustrated the

profusion of these distinct American "nations" within

our Republic by letting them pass in review before a

traveling automobile:

All delights of touring are, to me, as nothing compared to

the sensation of crossing, every now and then, an unseen

Tropic of Capricorn, so to speak, and entering a new world.

Leave the western gate of Yellowstone, for instance, and

cruise southward for a day. From Fire Holes, Mud Pots, and

Geysers, you pass into the Big Woods, another world; and on

to the Henry Lake Country; and on to a former desert valley

now blossoming as only water can make calcareous soil blossom;

and on to the magnificent farming lands of northeastern Utah;

by eventide you are sliding down into the lovely meadows and

orchards and fertile truck gardens about princely Salt Lake

City. In the morning the smell of spruce gum was in your

nostrils, and mosquitoes, big as bats, hummed in your ears. At

night, boys and girls were offering you, from the roadside,

peaches, plums, pears, grapes -- and you are in a new King-

dom.

Head north from the "High Tide of the Confederacy," at

Gettysburg, and you soon enter the more fertile of the Penn-

sylvania Dutch country; on nearing the Hudson, further north,

the gates of another land swing open to you on the Divide -- a

world too busy, almost, for agriculture; beyond the Hudson

your engine tells you that the Berkshires are at hand, and you

cross that beautiful barrier which once half-guarded New Eng-

land from the savage raids of the Iroquois; stone walls, long

white houses, cod-fish and rustless window-screen signs herald

the fact that you have, indeed, entered another land.

Strike west from Santa Fe and you cross the Rio Grande

and climb up and up to Gallup-land; painted deserts and petri-

fied forests bespeak a strange new province; the pines of Flag-

staff betoken another; faring south from Ash Fork you cross

the rangy Bradshaws into an immense mesa when -- look! as

the little boy said, "There are trees with their pants on."

Palm trees! Giant cactus! Gila Monsters! And from shiver-

ing in the cold by the Grand Canyon (in February), in the morn-

ing, by night you are star-gazing through the Phoenix palms.

And all that, to me, is my country. I am the heir of my

friend on Long Island, with its lovely vistas between glorious

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roads; princely houses; exquisite gardens; foam-covered rocks

white with the spray of the sea. I love the swift tide of his

life; the crush and crash of commuting; the intensity of business

rush; pleasure rush; contact with men who are moving the

world, preaching its great sermons, writing its great books and

plays, curing its great maladies, building its Woolworth towers;

I revel in his pride of life, sense of power, thrill of victory.

And yet I smile at the thought of his suave certainty that the

world is bounded by his roads, skyscrapers and offices!

I am heir of my friend in his ranch on Wagon Hound

Creek. How interminable are those level plains -- "where thar's

plenty o' elbow room to spit," as he would say. How he de-

tests cities -- where folks live so "hunched up" that you "can't

cuss a cat without gittin' hair in yer mouth." How he glories

as King of a Royal Domain. How little mere miles mean to

him -- with a Pharaoh's train of horses! He looks abroad and

sees things I will never learn to see; hears things I can never

expect to hear; senses changes, signs and wonders on a dead

level prairie, where I sense nothing,

. . . .  The stars break out in millions on a velvet summer sky;

and feels:

. . . . the ardent yearning pain

Wide sage lands bring when damp with summer rain.

The way the buffalo grass slants informs him, but leaves me

ignorant. The piercing notes of birds tell him a story; to me it

is but a song. In vast lands, he tells me, the bird notes must carry

further, for flocks are few and far between, and, if mates are to

find each other, the call must be louder than in a hilly land "where

echoes live." The eyes of wild life are, similarly, sharper, he says,

because distances are greater, and foes and prey must be sighted

from afar, if at all. There is a sweep, a majesty, in his outlook,

in his planning, in his care of loved ones and stock, in the way his

latch-string hangs out his door. I am a dullard in his presence

because I am only educated while he has been educed.

Likewise, I am heir of my friend on that old homestead in

Vermont; of my fisherman-friend in an Alleghany cove who

knows "hants"; of my poet-friend. "Joe, the Desert Rat," in his

Arizona foothills; of my golfing-friend in his California orange

grove. No one of these friends would feel much at home in the

shoes of another. Each is of his own land -- knows its peculiar

secrets, cherishes the glories and illusions belonging to it, breeds

its traditions. If you know them all well enough to catch at least

a faint glimpse of their happiness and virile pride, you are the

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672       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

American patriot par excellence because of your pride in so many

"nations" within your Country. I could fight for "my" Otter

Creek in Vermont, for "my" Goshen Hole in Wyoming, for

"my" Staked Plains in Texas, for "my" Black Pool of the Little

Blue in Kansas, for "my" Sapphire Land of the Carolinas, "my"

Squaw Hollow in Ohio.

 

The succeeding phase of the speaker's theme was

also illustrated from nature:

A maple's patriotism is illustrated in two ways; by growing

strong where it is -- right there -- not somewhere else; in devel-

oping, let us imagine, a real love of environment, of "home"; and

then, paradoxically, throwing all its life, all its strength, enthusi-

asm and ardor into creating winged seeds which will do everything

except stay at howe. We have long been taught that our nation,

politically, was of a curious two-fold, two-in-one form; part na-

tional, part federal. So, too, we have had a similar two-fold de-

velopment socially, psychologically. Men, deeply loving New

England, or Virginia, or Tennessee, have gone out to plant and

cherish just as lovingly an Ohio, a Kentucky or a Missouri; and

Kentuckians and Missourians have, while holding those home-

lands to be the garden-spots of the world, readily cut home ties

to plant Californias, Montanas and Arizonas and find nesting-

places for new broods of Americans; and while these sang "My

Colorado" or "Little Gray Home in the West," with the same

ardor with which their forebears sang "The Hills of My Old New

Hampshire Home" or "Beautiful Ohio," all were ready to unite

in "America" without any loss in national affection, because they

had conceived so royal a provincial pride and love of a specific

section.

This breeding of frontiers by frontiers is as perfectly illus-

trated by the Rhode Islanders who, with other Yankees, founded

Marietta in 1788, as in any instance afforded by American history.

Let us turn to another type of breeding-ground, one termed

by the late Professor Dunning, the most "delicious" instance of

that lunging-forward instinct of American frontiersmen. Many

of the New Englanders, whom General Rufus Putnam led to

Marietta, were from the seafaring towns of Rhode Island and

Massachusetts; block and tackle, mast and jib, hawser and an-

chor-lore was a part of their very blood. Before them they saw

the "Beautiful Ohio" stretching away to the Mississippi, and that,

in turn, to their beloved ocean -- two thousand miles away.

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Forty-Second Annual Meeting             673

 

Washington had foreseen, in 1784, the phenomenon of ocean-

rigged vessels descending the Ohio River. But within three years

of Wayne's victory at Fallen Timber, those irrepressible Ohio

Yankees had a brig, the St. Clair, of 110 tons on the stocks at

Marietta! From the forests they had dragged the black walnut

for the hull; from their fields they plucked the hemp for cordage;

and soon iron-works at Pittsburgh were, to quote a pious contem-

poraneous advertisement, "sufficiently upheld by the Hand of the

Almighty" to be able to furnish the necessary metal. In every

major port on the Ohio, ship-building yards were soon echoing

with tools of migration and commerce. Far up on the Monon-

gahela, men of Delaware were constructing the Monongahela

Farmer. These ships set sail for the Atlantic Ocean in the first

year of the Nineteenth Century and without a doubt the pessimists

laughed loudly at the idea of their ever getting there! "How can

they make the innumerable bends in the rivers ?" sneered the icon-

oclasts. But Yankee ingenuity met this test as nonchalantly as

all the others -- and let the heavy tubs down backwards, with

anchors dragging from the prows! By alternately tightening and

slacking those anchor-lines, the ships were safely eased around

the bends. Within seven years a hundred ocean-rigged vessels.

some with a tonnage of 500 rating, had been built between Pitts-

burgh and the mouth of the Ohio. How far afloat these land-

lubber ocean vessels went will never be known. The first to ar-

rive at Liverpool was the Duane, of Pittsburgh, on July 8, 1803.

Two years later, "in the Year of Human Salvation, 1805," the

non-plussed harbor master of Trieste, Italy, at the head of the

Adriatic, made out papers, (now in the Marietta College Li-

brary), which permitted the Louisiana of Marietta, to set sail

from Trieste for London with a cargo of oil, wood, box-wood,

apples, juniper berries and "other things."¹

And not the least "delicious" phase, of this unique episode in

pioneering, was the consciousness of those irrepressible Yankees

that they were doing clever things!

He hath oped the way to Commerce,

sang a poet, on the occasion of the sailing of the St. Clair, from

Marietta, in honor of the captain of the ship, who was none other

than Admiral Abraham Whipple, who had helped to fire the

Gaspee in Narragansett Harbor and precipitate the Revolution-

ary War.

1 Hulbert, A. B., "Western Shipbuilding," American Historical Review

XXI, No. 4.

Vol. XXXVI--43.

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674       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

Sirens attend with Flute and Lyre

and bring your Conks my Tritons

in chorus Blow to the Aged Sire

in welcome to my Dominions

continued the poet of the day, Col. Jonathan Devol, picturing

Neptune, welcoming to his waves once more, a hero of Narra-

gansett Bay.

By such a spectacular thrusting of one frontier, the Ohio

Valley, upon another, the Mississippi Valley, with all the inter-

national complications involved, a great chapter in history was

written; because of the demand of the West for an open Missis-

sippi channel this million-dollar fleet of the Pittsburgh-Cairo fron-

tier was the dominating factor in securing the Louisiana Purchase.

It may have surprised Jefferson's delegates to Paris to be con-

fronted suddenly with the project to purchase all of Louisiana, in

1803, instead of just the island at the Mississippi's mouth, which

they intended to buy. But if the idea was new to them, they had

not been reading the pugnacious western newspapers, for, a whole

year earlier, in 1802, Pittsburgh papers were advising the purchase

of the whole province and were even stating the exact price,

of Fifteen Millions, (which was later paid), as one which Na-

poleon would take for the entire province.

In this necessarily brief and somewhat random re-

view, we have touched only upon the speaker's chief

lines of argument. In one instance, he tellingly outlined

the distinctive characteristics of provincial life by form-

ing a reception line from great American novels and

holding a unique inter-provincial reception. The au-

dience was asked to "shake hands, for instance, with

such outstanding individuals as Hester Prynne, Ruggles

of Red Gap, David Harum, Ramona, Peter Sterling,

Huck Finn, The Despot of Broomsedge Cove, The Vir-

ginian, Janice Meredith, Old Man Enright, Specimen

Jones, and an Outcast of Poker Flat."

In conclusion, Professor Hulbert applied the theme

of his address to present day frontiers.

"The need of equal individuality is as great in this

day as it was in a former," he said; he expressed a lik-

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Forty-Second Annual Meeting             675

ing for the picturesque provincialisms put in circulation

today by intercollegiate athletics, for the flavor, (which

has its genuine background components), carried by the

words "The Golden Bears of California," the "Huskies"

of Washington, the "Badgers," "Buckeyes," "Jayhawk-

ers," and "Sooners" who, in athletic togs, epitomize the

sense of provincial strength, local pride, a virility ex-

uded by specific environments. "After all," the speaker

asked, "is not provincialism the merriest thing in our

national kaleidoscope, if not the most American thing,

if carefully considered? It is even illustrated today in

antipathies which echo the old colonial bitternesses; as

when the Oklahoma gentleman stands back from his

recalcitrant Ford and tells it, in an even tone of voice

more deadly than if accentuated, that it 'can go straight

to Hell and New England,' for all of him!"

In conclusion Professor Hulbert said:

Today, frontiers are still planting frontiers; tools for con-

quering our "Seas of Darkness" in the air, are in the making,

just as in Henry of Portugal's time, tools for the Lindberghs

and Chamberlains of centuries ago were being fashioned; and

as boldly as ever do Hudsons and Magellans and Cabots sail away

-- never to return. Let us not fear to preserve the idiosyncrasies,

the colorful individualities, the unpremeditated oddities of section

and province; for in them, in essence, we have the factors which

make up a sincere and genuine patriotism, virile with that confi-

dence that our national sense and tolerance and even-mindedness

will always be equal to the gigantic emergencies of the future.

Insofar as the erroneous educational theory is abroad that any

educational institution puts a peculiar "stamp" on its sons or

daughters, let us combat the implication vigorously. Just so far

as resources are used to produce a peculiar, institutional "stamp,"

instead of being used to develop the individuality of the student

and prospective graduate, to just that degree, human provincial-

ism is being stifled and our country is being deprived of inherent,

creative assets -- perhaps blighting a soul-frontier which might,

if encouraged to develop its own individual role, plant new fron-

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676       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

tiers of imperishable renown, such as our Millikans, Eliots, Bur-

banks, Fords, Shapleys, and Grenfells have given the world.

Professor Hulbert was generously applauded at the

conclusion of his address.

Dr. Thompson then introduced the second speaker

of the afternoon, Dr. G. Clyde Fisher, Curator of Visual

Instruction in the American Museum of Natural His-

tory, New York City. Dr. Fisher is a native Ohioan,

whose scholarly attainments and enviable record are a

source of pride to nature lovers within and beyond the

limits of his native and adopted states. His lecture was

instructive and entertaining.    It was illustrated by a

large number of colored lantern slides. The delighted

audience felt that they, through their speaker, were

 

"WITH JOHN BURROUGHS IN HIS FAVORITE

HAUNTS."

This subject Dr. Fisher introduced briefly as fol-

lows:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the Ohio State Archaeological

and Historical Society:

It is a privilege and an honor to be welcomed back to my

home State, and to speak before this Society this afternoon.

I do not intend to try to talk about the literature that John

Burroughs produced; except casually. It was my privilege to

know John Burroughs a great many years. In fact, I began

correspondence with him when I was a boy on a farm in western

Ohio more than twenty-five years ago. I later knew him per-

sonally, and had the privilege of visiting him, during his last

years, in his various haunts.

It will be my plan to bring before you, if I can, John Bur-

roughs the man, John Burroughs the very human man. To know

John Burroughs was to love him. I have been told by his pub-

lishers, who also publish the works of other eminent naturalists,

that many more copies of Burroughs' books have been sold than

of the others. I do not wish to make comparisons, and I do not

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