Ohio History Journal

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BACKGROUND AND YOUTH OF THE SEVENTH OHIO

BACKGROUND AND YOUTH OF THE SEVENTH OHIO

PRESIDENT1

 

BY RAY BAKER HARRIS

 

News still traveled slowly in the 1860's. Although the tele-

graph was by that time in use between principal cities, news, to a

large degree, continued to be transmitted by stagecoach, by trains

[such as they were], by boats and by human carriers. However be-

lated its appearance in print, the news in the public press during

the week of October 30, 1865, was of considerable historic im-

portance. In England it was the ending of a long era which had

been largely dominated by Lord Palmerston, and the delayed report

of his death was received in America with a renewed optimism that

the tense differences between the two countries might now be more

easily reconciled. It was the ending of an era in America too, and

the beginning of after-war readjustments. The words "return to

normalcy" had not then been devised. The end of war brought,

as it always does, a new economic and social day, frought with

difficulties, uncertainties and many dangers. The Emancipation

Proclamation and the termination of the War between the States

had cleared the air by the end of 1865, and the national politics

turned largely upon the President's program of reconstruction.

President Johnson was having his hardships and was soon to have

greater ones.

During the week of October 30, with all its eventful news,

no newspaper reported that on November 2, at Blooming Grove,

Ohio, a son had been born to George Tryon and Phoebe Dicker-

son Harding. The New York Times, with all of its superior fa-

cilities for gathering and presenting the news of the day, did not

report it; and not even the Ohio State Journal at Columbus, fifty

miles from the scene, took notice of the event. There was abun-

 

1 Other Presidents of the United States whose native State was Ohio were: U. S.

Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William Mc-

Kinley and William H. Taft.

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