edited by
DONALD J. RATCLIFFE
The Autobiography of
Benjamin Tappan
There are few more fascinating
characters in the early history of
Ohio than Benjamin Tappan. A sharp and
audacious man, "always
pungent and always ready," he was
formidable in argument, and few
people who openly disagreed with him
ever forgot his cutting sarcastic
wit. Besides tending to talk through
his nose "in a whining, sing-song
sort of style," he was also
slightly cross-eyed, which gave him a
somewhat malevolent look. He made no
attempt to conceal this defect,
not even when a national magazine
published an engraving of his por-
trait in 1840; he insisted only that
his sharp black eyes be portrayed
correctly-the left eye turning in, not
the right-and that he not be
made to look a fool. No one ever
accused this forthright, shrewd,
caustically witty man of that.1
The eldest of six brothers, Tappan has
been overshadowed histori-
cally by the two youngest, Arthur and
Lewis, the famous abolitionists.2
Although he himself detested slavery
and was unusually sympathetic to
freed Negroes, Benjamin disapproved
profoundly of the strident agita-
tion of this political sensitive issue
by "modern" abolitionists like his
brothers; and, in a fascinating
correspondence he maintained with
Lewis for over forty years, he
forcefully revealed the philosophical
differences that divided him from these
younger evangelical zealots.
Benjamin Tappan was essentially a man
of the Enlightenment, a deist
Mr. Ratcliffe is Lecturer in Modern
History at the University of Durham, Durham,
England.
1. This brief account of Tappan is based
on a reading of the Papers of Benjamin
Tappan, in The Ohio Historical Society
(OHS) and the Library of Congress (LC). All
manuscripts cited hereafter, unless
otherwise stated, are drawn from these collections. A
good brief account of Tappan by Francis
P. Weisenburger is in Allen Johnson and Dumas
Malone, eds., Dictionary ofAmerican
Biography (New York, 1928-1936), XVIII, 300-301.
The characterizations are taken from
Thomas Ewing to A. H. Goodman, May 26, 1868,
The Papers of Charles E. Rice, OHS; and
from Henry Howe, Historical Collections of
Ohio, 3 vols. (Columbus, 1889-91), I, 971-2, II, 698.
2. See especially Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis
Tappan and the Evangelical War
Against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969).
110 OHIO HISTORY |
|
and a rationalist who wished to destroy the tyranny which he believed traditional, orthodox religion exercised over the minds of men. He encouraged experimentation of all kinds, supporting the educational ideas of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and the communitarian schemes of Robert Owen. He took a great interest in advancing scientific knowl- edge, especially geology and chemistry, and he himself became the foremost expert on conchology in the antebellum United States. Inci- dentally he was first president of the Historical and Philosophical Soci- ety of Ohio. In a small way he was a latter-day combination of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. His career of public service was also remarkably distinguished. For thirteen years he was chairman of the commission responsible for building the first great canals across Ohio, the ambitious project which revolutionized the economic development of the state. A lawyer by profession and a President Judge in Ohio for seven years, he was nominated as a United States District Judge by President Andrew Jackson in 1833. Since he was, however, regarded as an excessively |
Benjamin Tappan 111
partisan leader of the Ohio Democratic
party, his nomination was re-
jected by the Whig-controlled Senate
during the panic session of 1834.
But in 1839, at the age of sixty-five,
he was elected a United States
Senator, and soon became an adviser of
President Martin Van Buren
and a leader of the Western "hard
money" Democrats. Though refus-
ing to countenance abolitionism, he
opposed the "aggressions" of the
"slave power," and in 1844
was responsible for leaking to the press
secret documents concerning the
proposed annexation of Texas. A
Free Soiler in 1848 and a Republican by
1856, Tappan died in 1857
before the final crisis of sectional
conflict arrived; yet his influence
continued to find expression through
the person of his former protege
and law partner-Edwin M. Stanton,
Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of
War.3
Most of these prominent public
services, however, were performed
after 1823, and it is usually forgotten
that Tappan had already had an
interesting career in the fifty years
before that date. Although he was
one of the earliest pioneers in
northern Ohio, the record of his experi-
ences has been largely ignored, while
his correspondence as an active
politician before 1812 has never been
properly utilized. Yet Tappan
himself left several accounts of
incidents in his early career, which
survive in their original manuscript
form. He wrote an important
critique of Henry Howe's Historical
Collections of Ohio when that
work was first published in 1847, and
towards the end of his life he
wrote an account of "The First
Settlement of Ravenna." What is here
published, however, is a more
systematic autobiographical account
which reveals the outlines of his
career down to 1823.4
This "Autobiography" was
written in 1840 at the invitation of The
United States Magazine and
Democratic Review, which, under the
editorship of John L. O'Sullivan, was
regarded as the literary and
intellectual mouthpiece of the
Democratic party. Tappan's account
was then used as the basis for an
article written by Matthew Birchard
of Ohio, Solicitor of the Treasury in
Van Buren's administration, with
the assistance of Attorney General
Benjamin F. Butler. This article,
published in the June and July numbers
of the Democratic Review, was
designed to celebrate the virtues of
"the venerable patriarch of the
Ohio democracy." Accordingly, it
was filled with long-winded rhetoric
in the Jacksonian style, and omitted
some of the historically more
3. Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M.
Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of
Lincoln's Secretary of War (New York, 1962), especially 19-38, 457; Howe, Historical
Collections (Columbus, 1889-91), I, 972.
4. All three manuscripts are at the Ohio
Historical Society.
112 OHIO HISTORY
interesting aspects of Tappan's original
account. We are, therefore,
printing Tappan's unpolished early draft
ot the autobiography, a ver-
sion which, though tantalisingly brief
on some points, has the virtue of
allowing the true character of the
writer to break through.5
Some features of the
"Autobiography" deserve further initial
comment. Tappan's character and outlook
were obviously deeply in-
fluenced by his upbringing in New
England in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century. The Toppans (as the
name was originally spelled)
were a family of orthodox Puritans who
had lived in Massachusetts
since 1637, a family of farmers and
storekeepers and village ministers.
Benjamin Tappan's father, as an
apprentice goldsmith in Boston, had
married his master's daughter; the
master, William Homes (or
Holmes), was the son of Mary Franklin, a
younger sister of Benjamin
Franklin.6 Tappan reveals early
in the piece that Franklin was his
great-great-uncle, and his account of
his early training as a craftsman is
clearly reminiscent of the latter's much
more famous Autobiography.
Tappan was similar to Franklin also in
his rejection of the religious
orthodoxies of New England. His mother
was a devout Calvinist, who
insisted on bringing her children up
within the framework of the strict
evangelicalism reinvigorated by the
Great Awakening; suitably, the
family lived for some time in the
Jonathan Edwards house in North-
ampton, Massachusetts. Benjamin Tappan
reacted strongly against
this religious indoctrination; his
brother Lewis said Benjamin suffered
in his youth from attempts to make him a
religious enthusiast at a time
of revivalistic excitement, and the result
was to make Benjamin a
scoffer at all religion and a disturber
of others in their more conven-
tional opinions. He had taken up the
anticlerical and rationalist outlook
which was fashionable in advanced
circles at that period; he found in
Voltaire and David Hume a sceptical
attitude which he preferred to the
bigotry and narrow-mindedness of
traditional religion. His prejudice
against religious enthusiasm was what
divided him from an evangelical
reformer like Lewis, whose crusade
against sin was buoyed by the
religious revival of the nineteenth
century. That same aggressive pre-
judice is all too evident in the
"Autobiography."7
5. Tappan to Lewis Tappan, June 6, 1840,
OHS. The United States Magazine and
Democratic Review, VII (June, 1840), 540-562, VIII (July, 1840), 42-51. A
fragment also
survives of what appears to be a later
draft of the "Autobiography," which is very similar
to a passage in the Democratic Review
article.
6. Dictionary of American Biography, XVIII,
300.
7. Lewis Tappan to Tappan, March 8,
1827, Tappan Papers, LC. See also the excel-
lent chapter, "The Legacy of Sarah
Tappan," in Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, which,
however, errs in sending Benjamin to
Harvard to learn his infidelity (p. 13).
Benjamin Tappan 113
Such hostility to traditional religion
inevitably turned Tappan against
the "Standing Order" in
Connecticut. In this state the established
Congregational Church was closely allied
to a secular government that,
even after the American Revolution, was
still based on a colonial char-
ter which effectively preserved the
power of the Federalist ruling
groups.8 When an opposition
party emerged in the 1790s, Tappan
naturally joined it, and he could
interpret the consequent party
contest-with more justice than perhaps
in any other state-as a strug-
gle between "aristocracy" and
"democracy." The "Autobiography,"
therefore, assumes a similarity-indeed, a
continuity-between poli-
tics around the turn of the century and
the political struggle of 1840
which most modern historians would
reject.
This partisan background helps to
explain the unattractive character
assassination which the
"Autobiography" indulges in. Certainly, Tap-
pan seems to have had a knack for making
enemies. Anyone who
irritated him, crossed him, or fell
short of his exacting standards was
sure to receive the rough edge of his
tongue; he was so self-opinionated
that he felt no restraint in repeating
his scathing criticisms. Yet, in-
terestingly, in the
"Autobiography" he overlooks some who had an-
noyed him most, such as his
brother-in-law John M. Goodenow; but,
then, Goodenow had become a sound
Jacksonian.9 Those held up to
our critical gaze were nearly all men
who subsequently opposed Tap-
pan in politics or who by 1840 had
deserted the Democratic party.
There were obvious reasons for wishing
to destroy the reputation of
political enemies such as William Henry
Harrison and Thomas Morris in
1840, and, indeed, of many of their more
obscure followers. Interest-
ingly enough, the version printed in the
Democratic Review omitted
most of these critical passages, except
for the criticism of the military
record of Whig presidential candidate
Harrison.
The "Autobiography" is
reprinted much as Tappan wrote it, includ-
ing his unusual spellings. In order to
assist the reader, however, it has
been fully punctuated and capital
letters inserted. There are some
minor verbal alterations and a few
changes of tense. Some of the origi-
nal crossings-out and corrections have
been included where they ap-
pear to add to the story. Since at times
Tappan slips over an episode
with tantalizing brevity, further
material has been inserted in square
brackets, some of it drawn from his
other reminiscences. Comments
have also been added where background
information seems desirable
8. Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut in
Transition, 1776-1818 (Washington, D.C., 1914).
9. Dictionary of American Biography, VII, 385-386.
114 OHIO HISTORY
or the historical record needs to be
kept straight. But, for the most
part, Tappan will tell his own tale.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Early Years, 1773-1796
B.T. was born at Northampton,
Massachusetts, on the 25 of May
1773. He received all the advantages of
the common school instruction
of his native state untill he was ten
years old, when his father, with
several other gentlemen of that town,
established an Academy &
placed at the head of it a Scotchman of
the name of Carson[?], who was
assisted by an Englishman of the name
of Fry. At this Academy he
remained untill he was 14 years old. In
this time he acquired a good
knowledge of mathematics, geometry,
surveying & navigation, beside
some knowledge of the Lattin &
French languages.
His father intended that he should be
entered as a student in Harvard
University as soon as he & the rest
of his class were quallified, which
was expected to be in the year 1787;
but overhearing his father, in
conversation with his mother, express
some doubt whether "if he gave
Benjamin a college education it might
not be doing injustice to his other
children" (which seemed likely to
be numerous), Benj. instantly de-
termined that his father should not be
put to the expense of educating
him, & the next morning he told his
father that he had been reflecting on
the matter & had concluded that it
would be best for him to learn a trade.
His father, not suspecting the cause of
this sudden change, urged his son
to continue his studies but did not
succeed in changing his determina-
tion. The next day he went to work in
his father's shop to learn the trade
of a Goldsmith, which he had carried on
for many years. This incident is
the more singular in that it occurred
in precisely the same way at the
same age to his father, who was the
oldest of twelve children of the
Revd. Benj. Tappan of Manchester,
Massachusetts, & at 14 commenced
learning the goldsmith's trade of his
(afterwards) father-in-law, Mr.
William Homes of Boston, who was the
son of Capt. Robert Homes, the
brother-in-law of Doctr Franklin.
At this time B.T. had learned to draw
with black lead & india ink so
that he could copy engravings with much
accuracy. One of the first
schoolmasters B.T. had was James
Shephard, who practised, in his
writing lesson, drawing the head of
some animal or bird in some part of
his capital letters. His pupil copied
all these with great care & so much
to the satisfaction of his instructor
as to induce the latter to take par-
ticular care & pains in giving
lessons in drawing out of school. Besides
he got much assistance from a deserter
from the British army in
Benjamin Tappan
115
Canada who had been a coach painter. The
writer of this has seen
drawings in black lead made when he was
9 or 10 years old which are
very exact copies of the engraved
portraits in [Tobias] Smollet's his-
tory of England.10
B.T. worked seven years at different
mechanic trades, first with his
father at the gold and silversmith's
business about two years, during
which he learned & practised copper
plate engraving & printing. He
had no instructor in this art but he
polished his own plates, made his
own press & printed from his own
engravings. After this he worked
some time with one Stiles [?] at making
arms & musical instruments for
a troop of cavalry. He then hired Jacob
Sergeant, an experienced
workman at clock and watch making, to
teach him to make clocks &
watches, for which Sergeant received one
hundred dollars. He con-
tinued working at various mechanic
trades untill he was 21 years of
age. He was not, indeed, a good &
finished workman for that requires a
practised hand, but he knew how to do
many things well enough to
pass for a tollerable journey man at
several trades.11
During this time he had read everything
he could get hold of &,
having a retentive memory, he had
acquired a good knowledge of
history & general literature. He
wrote also occasionally some poetry
for the newspapers, generally of a
rather satirical cast. In politicks [sic]
also he had taken his stand on the
democratic side by joining with that
party in a supper to rejoice at the
recapture of Toulon from the British
& Spanish.12
10. The British novelist Tobias George
Smollett (1721-1771) published a multi-
volumed Compleat History of England in
various editions between 1757 and 1765. In-
tended as a popular rival to David
Hume's history, at least one edition appeared in
sixpenny weekly numbers illustrated with
portraits.
11. He also assisted Prescott, the
original inventor of the carding machine, in making
his various improvements, none of which
could be seen by anyone else until the work
was finished. Tappan's brother-in-law
later said he had seen him described in the press
"as a Working Man-who in
youth could & did turn your hand to twelve different
occupations with energy & with
success." Tappan to his son, January 21, 1840, Tappan
Papers, OHS; William Edwards to Tappan,
December 26, 1833, Tappan Papers, LC.
12. The growth of partisan divisions in
the early 1790s was commonly related in this
way to individual reactions to the
growing crisis in Europe. By 1793 the French Revolu-
tion was threatened both by external
foes and civil war. In the summer conservatives had
handed over Toulon, the main French
naval base in the Mediterranean, and surrendered
the fleet to British and Spanish forces. The port was
besieged by a revolutionary army,
and its recapture in December 1793 was
followed by bloody reprisals. Such events
divided opinion in the United States,
with many American conservatives reprobating the
extremism of the French revolutionaries.
The more radical, like Tappan, identified them-
selves with the revolutionary cause and
demanded that George Washington's govern-
ment pursue a policy of greater
friendship to France than in fact it did. Thus foreign
affairs helped to sharpen and extend the
party cleavage which had already begun to
emerge in the capital over domestic
issues and which was soon to produce the virulent
conflict between Federalist and
Jeffersonian Republican.
116 OHIO HISTORY
At the time he arrived at 21 years of
age he was boarding in the
family of a Mr. Manna Wadsworth, a man a
few years older than
himself with whom he became very
intimate & to whom he was much
attached. Wadsworth had a pulmonary
complaint & was advised by his
Physicians, the celebrated Doct. Todd
& the no less celebrated Doct.
Hopkins of Hartford, to go to sea, upon
which he determined.13 He
was, however, too feeble to go without
some friend to take care of him.
B.T., finding that he was not likely to
succeed in getting a suitable
person to go with him, offered to go
with him at his own expense.
Wadsworth thankfully accepted the offer.
They went to Farmington in
Connecticut, where Mr. Wadsworth's
father resided, to prepare for the
voyage. There they spent about two weeks
in the society of Todd &
Hopkins, when they went over to
Weathersfield & then took passage
on board a sloop for New London. At
Lyme, Tappan landed & walked
across the country to New London, while
his companion continued on
board the sloop. At New London they
engaged a passage on board the
Brig Jason, commanded by Moses
Tryon, bound to Barbadoes, &,
after waiting 21 days for a wind, sailed
in June 1794. They had not been
at sea many days before T. discovered
that, of the three quadrants on
board, not one was in good order or
would give the correct latitude by
observation within five miles. His mechanical
skill enabled him to
correct them. He also applied himself to
learn practical (as he had
learned theoretical) navigation & he
was welcomed as a volunteer of
the old sailors & worked with them
at all branches of their duty on the
voyage out. Indeed, he learned so much
of the business of a sailor that
he has often boasted afterwards that he
could "bend, reef & steer"
with any old sailor, & Capt. Tryon
was so well satisfied with his
superior skill that on the homeward
voyage he gave up to him his
quadrant & log book & took no
observation himself. The vessel arrived
at Barbadoes in the usual time &
from there visited St. Lucia, Mar-
tinique, Eustatia, St. Thomas &
Turks Island & returned to New York.
13. Eli Todd (1769-1833), the son of a
wealthy merchant and a product of Yale, was a
personal friend of Tappan, with whom he
shared a democratic, worldly outlook. At this
time Todd was practising at Farmington,
Conn., though he was not to gain distinction as
a consulting physician until a decade
later. He subsequently did much work for the
improved care and treatment of
alcoholics and, especially, the mentally ill. Lemuel
Hopkins (1750-1801), a staunch Calvinist
and Federalist of the older generation, one of
the "Hartford Wits," was
already renowned for his pathbreaking methods of treating
tuberculosis, including the prescription
of fresh air. Wadsworth continued to suffer from
"ulcerated" lungs and
expressed dissatisfaction with the doctors Tappan had found for
him. Wadsworth to Tappan, September 15,
1795, and Todd to Tappan, May 1, 1798,
Tappan Papers, OHS; Dictionary of
American Biography, IX, 215, XVIII, 570-571.
Benjamin Tappan
117
Soon after his arrival here, finding
himself exposed to the small pox,
he went to the city dispensary & got
some matter with which he in-
noculated himself. He then formed the
design of going to France &
with that view he made arrangements to
sail in a merchant vessel which
was loading for Bordeaux. Mentioning the
circumstance of his having
inocculated himself for the small pox to
the Captain, this gentleman
advised him not to risk himself at sea
untill he had had the disease &,
his advice & reasons being
satisfactory, the voyage was for the present
given up.14
As I walked up from the vessel I noticed
several mechanic trades at
which I believed I could earn
journeyman's wages and I passed them in
review to determine to which I would
resort for employment & the
means of subsistance. The result was
that, as I intended to travel in
Europe, it would be better than any
mechanic trade were I to learn
portrait painting. I therefore took the
New York directory & wrote
down the names & places of residence
of all the portrait painters,
determined to visit them & find one
among them, if possible, who
would instruct me in this art. The first
on my list was the Columbian
Academy of painting kept by two men of
the name of Campbell in
Williams street. I accordingly went to
the Academy & talked to one of
these Mr. Campbells about his terms of
tuition, which he stated would
be 50 guineas. This was altogether
beyond my means so that if I had
liked the man, as I did not, I could not
engage with him.
The next on my list was Gilbert Stewart,
63 Stone Street.15 I went
there & was told by the English servant
that Mr. Stewart was not at
home. I knew this was a civil way of
telling me that he was engaged. I
told him therefore I would go in &
wait untill Mr. Stewart came in. The
servant stared at me but showed me into
a large room in which were a
number of portraits & two you[ng]
Frenchmen, refugees from St.
Domingo,16 learning to paint.
I staid here long enough to be satisfied
14. Tappan's design was "to join
the republican party in France," as had Thomas
Paine. The risk at sea arose because
"there would be no one on board capable of
rendering him proper assistance, in case
of sickness from that disease." Democratic
Review, VII, 543. At this point in his narrative Tappan breaks
away from the formal
third-person narrative and adopts a more
obviously autobiographical style.
15. Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) had
returned from Europe in 1792 or 1793 after estab-
lishing his reputation as a fashionable
portrait painter in London and Dublin during the
previous seventeen years. Later in the
year he moved to Philadelphia, and painted some
renowned portraits of George Washington
and other national leaders. Dictionary of
American Biography, XVIII, 166.
16. The revolution in the French colony
of Santo Domingo (later Haiti) had led many
wealthy whites to flee to the United
States where they had a considerable impact on the
cultural life of the leading seaboard
cities.
118 OHIO HISTORY
that Stewart was a painter of a superior
grade to the Columbia
Academicians. After an hour waiting,
Stewart came in & asked if I was
the person who wanted to see him. I told
him I was & that my business
with him was to see if he would teach me
portrait painting. He asked,
"How do you know that you can learn
that art? It is not everyone who
can learn it." I told him I could
not well answer that question but that I
was confident I could learn. He then
invited me up into his room where
he worked. I had no difficulty in making
an arrangement. So I set up
my easel at his room & painted
there, mostly in copying his portraits,
five or six months. I followed this
business some months afterwards in
the country.
My manner of spending my time in New
York was to go to the
Museum as soon as I had got my breakfast
& there read in Dobson's
Encyclopedia (a work in about 20 volumes
quarto which I read entirely
thro');17 there untill 11
o'clock; then to Stewart's for an hour; then on
[to the business ex] change [for] two
hours to hear the news & read the
newspapers; after having dined, to the museum
again & in the evening
generally to the theatre. I hired a back
chamber at 190 Pearl Street
where I could paint conveniently such
days as I did not go to Stewarts,
& I stored enough bones & c. for
a neighbour apothecary in the room
to pay my rent. My provisions I bought
sometimes at one place &
sometimes at another, living very
frugally from necessity, for I did not
like to write to my father for money
(tho' he was always very liberal
with me) because I thought that I ought
to support myself.
By Stewart's advice I went into the
country & painted a few portraits
& was getting some money &
reputation. At Stratford [Connecticut] I
became acquainted with Mr. Baldwin, the
amiable Rector of the
church in that place, & at his
suggestion wrote a satire upon Doct.
Timothy Dwight who then preached at
Greenfield hill.18 The state of
Connecticut had sold her western lands
(now the North part of Ohio) to
17. This work was the Encyclopaedia
Brittanica, which was already established as the
foremost and fullest reference work of
its kind. The third edition, which had begun to
appear in Britain in 1787, was also
published in the United States, under the imprint of
Thomas Dobson of Philadelphia, with the
simple title of Encyclopaedia.
18. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) had been
pastor of the Congregational Church at
Greenfield Hill since 1783, during which
time he had established his reputation as an
educator, preacher, author and man of
affairs. A bitter enemy of Democracy and infideli-
ty, he exerted all his talents to
preserve the "Standing Order" in Connecticut, in this
instance by buttressing the established
church. Later in 1795 he was appointed President
of Yale, where he exercised such
influence as to be called the "Pope of Connecticut."
Benjamin Tappan 119 |
|
a company for 1,200,000 dollars.19 The question was much agitated what should be done with the interest of the money. Dr. Dwight, with his characteristic impudence, maintained in two sermons the propriety of appropriating the whole to the support of religion & published these sermons in the Danbury newspaper. The sermon made much noise & the clergy of the same church with Doct. Dwight (the Congregational) felt pretty sure of handling the money. The other sects, however, who knew that they would get none of the money, joined the Democracy against it & defeated the project. Mr. Baldwin wrote a very severe article in prose which, with the satire in verse, appeared in the Dan- bury paper together & were thought to do much towards defeating Doct. Dwight's plan. [The money was instead devoted to the common school fund, and benefitted the state for decades.] From Stratford, I returned to Northampton & attended to my father's store while he went to Boston on some business. Before he got
19. These were the lands, stretching 120 miles to the west from Pennsylvania's western border, which Connecticut reserved to its own use in 1786 when it surrendered to the nation its other claims to lands in the West. They were sold to this consortium of private land speculators after Gen. Anthony Wayne's victory over the Ohio Indians and the consequent treaty of Green Ville in 1795 had made the settlement of northeastern Ohio feasible. |
120 OHIO
HISTORY
home I reed. a letter from my brother
John, who had been residing with
a cousin in New York but who had at the
commencement of the yellow
fever (1795) been sent into the country,
informing me that his cousin
was dead & that he should return to
New York in a few days to see
about his affairs. I immediately got me
a horse & rode to Horseneck
where I found brother John aboard a
sloop just on the eve of sailing to
New York. I brought him home with me by
riding & lying[?]. I re-
mained at Northampton untill the month
of April following, painting
some portraits & reading some but
rather idling my time away books
upon anatomy & medicine with a view to
study physic as a profession.
In April 1796 I signed with Mr. [Gideon]
Grainger of Suffield in Con-
necticut to study law with him.
Law Student, 1796-1799
In the month of April 1796 I commenced
studying law in the office of
Gideon Granger, Jnr., of Suffield in the
state of Connecticut. I studied
very dilligently with him three years,
when I was admitted to the bar at
Hartford. During this three years I
translated the whole of Voltaire's
Henriad into English verse.20 I did this to perfect
myself in the French
language and to indulge my taste for
writing in verse.
Party spirit ran very high while I was
studying & most of the students
were Democratic.21 The
Federalists had not in that time brought politi-
cal lying to near the perfection they
have it now & their press was not
as uniformly slanderous, but there was
as much if not more personal
animosity. This arose from the
Federalists' assuming and wearing a
20. Le Henriade was an epic
account of the heroic deeds of Henri IV which Voltaire
used as a vehicle for criticizing the ancien
regime in France. Tappan's manuscript
translation of the epic, and notes on
it, still survive in Tappan Papers, OHS.
21. By joining the staff of Gideon
Granger (1767-1822), Tappan was connecting him-
self with the leader of the opposition
party in Connecticut. Granger had been responsible
for the Common School Law of 1795, which
was preferred to Timothy Dwight's
ecclesiastical proposals. His articles
under the pseudonym of Algernon Sidney in the
Hartford American Mercury were
among the first evidences of opposition to the rule of
the "Standing Order" of
Connecticut. By 1798 he was definitely aligned with the national
Democratic-Republican party, and his
vigorous support of Thomas Jefferson in the Pres-
idential election of 1800 was to be
rewarded by his appointment as United States
Postmaster-General. These years when
Tappan studied in Granger's law office were,
indeed, a time when partisan conflict
reached almost unparalleled intensity. The war
crisis with France, exacerbated by the
publication of the XYZ letters, moved Federalists
to demand national unity and to pass the
repressive Alien and Sedition Laws; the
Democratic-Republicans opposed measures
they considered destructive of liberty, and
accused the Federalists of trying to
involve the country in the European war on the side
of reactionary Britain. In retrospect,
Tappan identified all his subsequent political oppo-
nents, and especially the Whigs of 1840,
with his Federalist enemies of 1798.
Benjamin Tappan
121
black cockade as a badge of distinction;
all the Federalists wore this
badge, the men in their hat & the
women in their bosom. I remember
well spending an evening at my father's
with the judges of the Supreme
Court of Massachussetts who were holding
a court at Northampton.
They all had the black cockade in their
hats. To show the violent
feelings of that time, I will state that
the conversation was upon Alien
and Sedition laws, & one of the
judges said that the Sedition law was an
amelioration of the common law and that
on that account it ought to be
supported by every just man: it allowed
the truth to be given in evi-
dence & the common law did not. I
asked the judge whether the com-
mon law was part & parcel of the law
of the United States, to which he
gave an evasive answer. He could not
answer affirmatively, & he had
been led by his violent feelings to
defend the Federal administration on
untenable grounds.22 It was
very common for the black cockade gentry
(as they were called) to insult those
who would not wear that badge,
particularly the young men. To prevent
this we procured stiff hickory
canes & did not go out without them
so that in a little time, as the
Federalists were distinguishable by
their black cockades, the Democ-
rats were by their white staves. I well
recollect seeing John Adams
while President wearing the black
cockade.
In 1798 John Adams issued a proclamation
for a general fast which
was kept more or less over New England
& probably the other states.
On this occasion I composed a parody on
the 148th Psalm & had it
published in a Democratic paper printed
in Suffield, from which it was
copied into the [Philadelphia] Aurora
& most of the Democratic papers
throughout the Union. It was entitled
"A Psalm for the Federalist
Fast." [The "Psalm"
accused the Federalists of wishing, not so much
to worship the Almighty, as to excite
the people into a war against
France. The Fast became a focus of
Federalist enthusiasm, and was
well observed in New England, though not
in New York and Philadel-
phia.]
In the winter of 1798-9 the Federal
lawyers in Connecticut had a
22. Tappan here is being myopically
partisan, failing to understand the Federalist
lawyer's dismay. The status of Common Law was a bone of
contention for a generation
after the Revolution, with the more
conservative arguing that the courts could exercise
a jurisdiction not authorized by statute law as long as
it was justified by long-standing
British precedents. The more radical,
like Tappan, refused to follow British example
and could see nothing good to say for
the repressive acts of 1798, themselves based on
British legislation of 1795 designed to
suppress potentially revolutionary activity. Iron-
ically, Tappan as a judge in 1819 ruled
that crimes under English common law should
be held as crimes by Ohio courts in the
absence of specific state legislation, a ruling
which was much criticized and never
accepted by other Ohio judges.
122 OHIO HISTORY
meeting and agreed thereafter to exclude
from admission to the bar all
Democratic students, & a short time
before I applied for admission
they had refused admission to a young
man in Tolland County who was
said to be of excellent character as a
gentleman & schollar. I was the
second to be excluded and, as some of
the Federal lawyers were my
personal friends, it was tho't
adviseable to make some charge against
me. The charge made was sedition &
blasphemy, and the "Psalm" was
produced as the evidence which was to
convict me of those crimes. It
had, however, a contrary effect with the
bar meeting, for when
Jonathan Brace, one of the oldest members
of the Hartford bar, de-
clared that he would have been
proud of the authorship of the Psalm,
the younger members gave it up (all
except Theodore Dwight, who had
borrowed a pigeon net of me & never
returned it, for which I had some
years before spoken sharply to him,
& Walter Edwards, who had
swindled me out of $200), so that I was
admitted on the next day.23
Perhaps, however, the bar who were nine
tenths Federalists were
somewhat quickened in this matter by
learning that if I was rejected I
should settle down in Hartford &
assist Major [Elisha] Babcock in
editing the American Mercury which
was then a Democratic paper.24
Journey to Ohio, 1799
[Tappan's fortunes were now influenced
by the state of Connec-
ticut's involvement in northeastern
Ohio.25 Connecticut had sold the
title to its lands to the Connecticut
Land Company, in which Tappan's
father was a stockholder. He drew as his
share at least fourteen widely
separated pieces of land, but the main
lot consisted of two-thirds of a
township which his fellow shareholders
agreed in 1799 should be called
Ravenna. Having invested more than he
ought in this speculation, the
father recognized that he could avoid
serious embarrassment only if
the lands in the West which he now owned
were developed and sold as
23. This Federalist relenting may have
arisen in part from their general appreciation of
satire as a literary form; in this case,
Tappan was beating the "Hartford wits" at their
own game. Jonathan Brace was also one of
the three trustees of the Connecticut Land
Company, and so played a significant
role in the settlement of northeastern Ohio. Theo-
dore Dwight (1764-1846), a younger
brother of Timothy, had been a Hartford lawyer (and
"wit") since 1791; in 1814 he
was to be secretary of the infamous Hartford Convention.
Walter Edwards was presumably a member
of the well-known Congregationalist family,
related to the Dwights and the Tappans.
24. Elisha Babcock became editor and
owner of the Hartford American Mercury in
1786 and in time made it the foremost
Democratic-Republican paper in the state.
25. For background information on the
settlement of Connecticut's Western Reserve,
see Harlan Hatcher, The Western
Reserve: The Story of New Connecticut in Ohio
(Cleveland, 1966), 1-80; and Mary Lou
Conlin, Simon Perkins of the Western Reserve
(Cleveland, 1968), 1-74.
Benjamin Tappan 123
quickly as possible. His eldest son
agreed to strike out to the frontier,
survey the land, and sell it to actual
settlers, on condition that the
proceeds should be divided evenly
between his father and him. Thirty
years later Tappan confessed that his
decision had been influenced
partly by his fear that he could not
succeed in his profession in New
England, where there were so many able
and learned lawyers-a fear
which he discovered too late was not
well-founded.26 Be that as it may,
Tappan now found himself a pioneer,
striking out for Ohio where his
family owned extensive lands which he
could sell or give away as
seemed most expedient in the cause of
promoting settlement.]
Soon after I was admitted to the bar, I
went to Northampton & on
the 19th April 1799 I left Northampton,
with a man I had hired for six
months, for the Western Reserve. I took
with me a yoke of oxen, a cow
and a box of plough irons, harrow teeth
& other farming tools. At
Schenectady uncle Ben Homes ["my
mother's youngest brother"]27
joined me & I hired another man for
six months. I let Homes have my
horse & started him on by land with
the cattle, while I purchased &
fitted out a three-handed batteau &
started by water. The first day we
worked hard to get the boat up against
the current of the Mohawk but,
as both my hands were new to boating, we
did not get out of sight of
Schenectady. ["The Mohawk was high
& rapid for my boat was the first
that ascended it that spring & the
ice had but just run out."] The second
day we doubled our distance and got six
miles further. The third day we
got 12 miles, from which time on we did
much better, tho' as the
Mohawk was high we had a labourious
voyage. At Johnstown, I was
very hospitably entertained by Judge
Fisher, whose boys were at the
river fishing & invited me and my
hands to their father's house.
The next day, a few miles above that on
the south side of the
Mohawk, we stopped to grind an ax &
took in David Kellog & his
family, consisting of a wife & two
young children. It was at a
blacksmith's shop we stopped to grind
the ax. David was a blacksmith
& had been at work there. While my
men were grinding the ax, he
enquired of me where we were going. I
told him & my account of the
country I was going to caught his fancy
much. I had expected my uncle
Homes to bring on his family, as he was
poor & had a number of boys,
26. Tappan to his son Benjamin,
September 29, 1829, Tappan Papers, LC. The most
useful sources on the background of the
Tappans' landholdings on the Western Reserve
are Tappan's MS account of "The
First Settlement of Ravenna" (written c. 1855), Tappan
Papers, OHS; and [R. C. Brown et
al.], History of Portage County, Ohio (Chicago, 1885),
189-190.
27. This and subsequent inserted
comments come from Tappan, "First Settlement of
Ravenna," Tappan Papers, OHS.
124 OHIO HISTORY
& I had offered to pay his expenses
& take him on with me & give him
200 acres of land when he got there.
Kellog's wife appeared to be a
smart woman & I encouraged them to
go with me & offered him 100
acres of land to go on & board me
& my hands, I to take them ["with
what little furniture they had"] on
gratis & pay them for all the work
they should do for me. I did not
perceive that he was a mere loafer who
was willing to go anywhere, provided he
could get someone to support
him.
We got on without difficulty & were
the first boat which
passed down Wood creek & across the
Oneida lake that season.
At Oswego, the wind being unfavorable,
we were detained three
days, during which time I employed my
men clearing the first ground
that was cleared in the town of Hannibal
[New York], for a barrel of
salt.28 From Oswego we boated
along the shore of Lake Ontario to
Gerundagut [Irondequoit] bay, up to the
head of which we went to take
in three barrels of flour & two of
pork which had been deposited there
for me. We did this & got again into
the Lake without accident.29 Our
next stopping place was Braddocks bay
where we were detained by a
head wind a day or two. From this we
reached the mouth of the Niag-
ara river. Our boat & loading was
waggoned by the path of
Queenstown to Chippewa, at which place,
besides the barracks, there
were then but two or three houses. I got
leave to occupy an old store
house for one night. [In other words,
the party has crossed Lake On-
tario and is journeying south on the
Canadian bank of the Niagara river
as a means of passing above the rapids
and the Falls. They are now about
to take to the river in order to
continue upstream into Lake Erie.]
The next morning we loaded & rowed
out of the mouth of the Chip-
pewa [in] about the middle of the stream
into the Niagara river, which
appeared to us, sitting in the boat, to
pass on with a very moderate
currant. We had got out but little into
the Niagara river when its cur-
rent struck the bow of the boat &
turned it in an instant, [pointing it
downstream]. I then perceived our
danger. We were at the head of a
descent of 160 or 70 feet in three miles
(the distance from the mouth of
28. Tappan was told that this clearing
became Hannibal by Martin Van Buren, who
later came to own this land; Tappan,
"First Settlement of Ravenna."
29. By this point Tappan had met up with
others travelling to the Western Reserve,
including David Hudson (1760-1836), of
Goshen, Conn. Hudson left an account of the
journey which at some points contradicts
Tappan, just as, indeed, Tappan's later ver-
sions slightly disagree with his 1840
version. For Hudson's version, see Henry Howe,
Historical Collections of Ohio ((Cincinnati, 1847), 470-472 (all subsequent references
to
Howe will be to this edition); William
H. Perrin, ed., History of Summit County, Ohio
(Chicago, 1881), 413-417; Hatcher, The
Western Reserve, 52-53.
Benjamin Tappan 125
Chippewa to the horse shoe fall) &
the boat driving down with great
velocity. Very fortunately I was
steering & my hands sat with their
backs to the shore & were ignorant
of the danger. I said, "We must go
ashore again, so pull steady,
steady." They gave three strong pulls
before I could perceive that the boat
gained any the least head way
towards shore, then it began to move a
little that way. I kept encouraging
them & they saw we were in a strong
current & exerted themselves so
that we reached the wing dam of
Bridgewater mill about half way to the
falls & were saved.30
This I think the most perilous adventure
of my life. We towed our
boat back into Chippewa creek where I
stopped only to tell the inhabit-
ants (who had stood on the bank &
had seen us going into such peril
without giving us any caution) my mind
as to their unfeeling conduct.
This made so strong an impression on me
that I was really gratified that
the whole village was destroyed in the
war of 1812.
When we got to Black rock ferry [the
crossing at the head of the
Niagara River], the ice was running out
of Lake Erie in large masses.
Five boats beside mine were waiting to
cross & we agreed to attempt
the passage. We drew lots to see which
should lead & my boat was the
second. We put in & the leading boat
soon got discouraged & put back.
I had got so sick of Canada that I was
determined to cross at all
hazards. We succeeded, but we were
driven down to the lower end of
an island about a mile and a half lower
down the river than we put in.
We passed the mouth of Buffaloe creek
about three miles, & there
beached, an operation which consisted in
unloading our boat & moving
it up on rollers well out of the water.
Where we were we had a ride
[ridge] of sand between Lake Erie &
the swamp, & we pitched our tent
on the side next the swamp & had our
boat by the side of the tent next
the lake. This was the evening of the
25th of May ["my birthday"], &,
except an open space along the shore,
the lake was full of ice for 30
miles to the west. That night the wind
blew strong from the North west
& the next morning the ice was piled
up between the boat & lake 10 or
12 feet high with a base of 20 or 25
feet, compleatly heming us in &
extending round on both shores of the
lake as far as the eye could
reach. I think that at no time since has
the ice remained in Lake Erie so
late in the season. ["It was out of
the question to think of getting the
boat thro the ice to the water, so we
remained in our prison another
night during which the wind blew a gale.
In the morning of the 27th our
30. "As I steped out on the land I
fainted & fell completely exhausted. We had gone
down a descent of what is said to be 50
feet per mile."
126 OHIO HISTORY
window of ice was all washed away except
enough scattering cakes to
shew where it had been & the lake
was clear."] At that time there was
a small log building where Buffalo now
stands, occupied by Dr. Chapin
who was a trader, or agent of
government, with the Indians.
I had dismissed one of my hands who was
troublesome & I thought
dishonest. We had left [in the party]
Kellog and his family, Bela Syl-
vester, who I had hired at Northampton,
Massachusetts, & David
Hudson, whom I had taken on at
Gerundagut and was giving him [and
his hired men] passage on to New
Connecticut where he was going to
make a settlement, which he afterwards
called by his own name. On
the 27th we started on our way &,
after some days rowing and delays
with headwind, we got into the mouth of
the Cuyahoga River.31
The only settler where is now the city
of Cleveland was Lorenzo
Carter, who lived by the river bank.32
We were joined here by a boat of
Hudson's, which kept company with us to
an open meadow on the
Cuyahoga bottom which is now the
township of Boston, Summit Coun-
ty, Ohio. Here I unloaded my boat &
made a tent of the sail to cover
the goods & Kellog's family, &
with B. Sylvester set to work to make a
road to Ravenna. I run a line with my
compass & he cut out bushes
enough for a sled to be got along, &
in this way we made a road to
Ravenna in two days. We arrived there on
10th June. I found Homes
with the cattle; he had got there a few
days before me.
[One of the difficulties facing the
first settlers of the Western Reserve
was that, as a result of the complicated
process of partition and allot-
ment, each proprietor had lands in the
heart of the forest, miles from
the nearest places of settlement. So
Tappan and Hudson needed to
penetrate inland up the Cuyahoga, which
in places had, at that season,
only eight or ten inches of water, and
then find their way eastwards to
their allotted townships. Fortunately
the first parties of surveyors,
beginning in 1796, had divided the
Reserve into townships (numbered
every five miles from south to north)
and ranges (numbered every five
miles from east to west), and had marked
the boundary lines, usually
by cutting notches into trees. These
lines were much used by the
pioneers as a means of finding their
route and locating their lands, yet it
was to take Hudson "six days'
laborious and painful search" before "he
31. Tappan gives an explicit account of
these delays in his "First Settlement of
Ravenna."
32. Lorenzo Carter settled in Cleveland
in 1797 and helped to build up the settlement,
trading with the Indians, providing
accommodation for pioneers, and even beginning the
shipbuilding industry.
Benjamin Tappan
127
discovered, towards night, a line which
led to the south-west corner of
his township."]33
Making a Settlement, 1799-1800
In the first place [we] made a dray
["of birch saplings"] to haul our
goods on. As soon as the dray was made,
I sent Sylvester for a barrel of
flour & one of pork. He brought
them back & informed me that he
found my tent abandoned & it
appeared that some of the property had
been stolen. The truth was that, as soon
as I had left Kellog & his
family to take care of my property on
the Cuyahoga untill Sylvester & I
could make a road & remove it, David
Hudson made Kellog an offer of
200 acres of land as a gift to go into
his township and keep house for
him. Kellog yielded to this temptation
& left my tent & goods to be
plundered by the Indians. This was all
the compensation I got from
Hudson for giving him a passage from the
Genesee country to New
Connecticut.
In the hurry of getting the goods over,
we [over] heat one of the oxen
so that he sickened & died before we
had finished.34 This was a great
misfortune & one that appeared
remediless, as I had expended all but
one dollar of my money. I immediately
sent Homes thro' the woods to
the fort at Presqueisle [now Erie,
Pennsylvania] with a letter to the
Commandant requesting him to give me
money for a draft on my
father. Capt. Cornelius Lyman, an
acquaintance of ours, commanded
there & readily complied with my
request. In the mean time I deter-
mined to try my credit to make up my
team, as my property was very
33. Howe, Historical Collections, 470.
We have what appears to be a fragment of
Tappan's own diary, recording these last
stages of the journey in slightly different terms:
"Arived at No. 4-11th R. [i.e.,
Township 4, 11th Range]. 9th June 1799 left the boat & c.
with Kellog & family. Doct. Miner,
Hudson, Blinn & two of Hudson's men set out with
me to run a line from the boats to where
the Indian path intersects the 9th Meridian. 10th
June MEM
[Memorandum]: Hudson had agreed to assist me in cutting a road from my
boat to No. 3-8th. We went on untill we
reached the Cuyahoga at Standing Stone and
blundered about to find the crossing
place-Pease's Map not correct in this place. Hud-
son tired, would go no farther. I told
him of his agreement-made no impression. (MEM:
Hudson was converted last winter from
Deism to Deviltry). Camped for the night.
Musquetoes, gnats &c. &c. very
busy. June 11th Hudson arose from his bed of turf &
with much solemnity bade me farewell
& took off one of his men with him. The rest of us
made the best of our way on to No.
3-8th. As we did not know where Mr. Homes had
come to anchor, we frequently halted for
him. We found him at last near the west end of
Granger's pond [one mile south of
Ravenna] with a beard of two inches length. He had
been there a fortnight & nothing to
eat or drink but milk. Our sudden appearance
somewhat deranged his intellect, but he
recovered after swallowing about 2 pounds of
raw pork. Thus ended the journey
out." Tappan Papers, OHS.
34. According to Hudson, all the oxen
were troubled by blood-sucking flies, which
"actually killed one of Tappan's
oxen this season." Howe, Historical Collections, 471.
128 OHIO HISTORY
much exposed at the tent. [He also
needed a second ox because "un-
less mine had a mate no ploughing could
be done." As he had also lost
the horse which Homes had brought with
the cattle, Tappan had to
travel on foot, using the surveyors'
lines to guide him.] So as there was
no road in that country, I took the
township line, the north line of the
township numbered two, & travelled
on that East untill I came to a
road from Warren to Youngstown. I went
to Youngstown & found no
difficulty in persuading James Hillman,
Esq., to trust me with an ox
which I thought would be a good mate for
mine.35 I tied a rope round
the horns of the ox and in less than a
day I led him the way I had come
back to Ravenna. Fortunately he proved a
very excellent match for my
ox, but these things so delayed my work
that I was not able to raise any
provisions that season. While the pork I
had brought on lasted, we
lived on that & such wild meat as we
bought of the Indians. When the
pork was gone, we depended on the
Indians & our hunting for meat, &
sent to Pennsylvania for flour.36
On the 10th of July Hudson came to see
me. He looked very grave
&, as he was a very religious man, I
suspected at once that he had got
tired of Kellog & had come to get me
to take him off his hands. I let him
begin, however, which, after sitting a
few minutes, he did by saying,
"Squire Tappan, I have done wrong
in inducing Kellog to break his
contract with you, & I have now come
to ask you to forgive me & I
hope God will forgive me." My reply
was, "You did a very roguish
trick in getting Kellog to leave my
goods to be plundered by the Indians
& to break his contract with me. God
will do as he pleases as to
pardoning you, but, as to myself, if you
mean by my pardoning you
that I will take Kellog back again, I
shall do no such thing. You thought
by getting him from me you was gaining
some advantage, & you now
35. Col. James Hillman (1762-1848), a
Pennsylvanian, fought in the West in the Re-
volutionary War, then settled in
Pittsburgh and traded with the Ohio Indians and con-
veyed goods by land as far as Detroit.
He commenced the settlement of Youngstown in
1796 (though Tappan claimed the date was
1798) and he built what was perhaps the first
house on the Western Reserve. He was
remembered for his essential services to sub-
sequent pioneers; in this instance his
decision to sell Tappan an ox "on credit at a fair
price" was "an act of
generosity which proved of great value, as the want of a team must
have broken up his settlement" (Democratic
Review, VII, 435). Howe, Historical Col-
lections, 339, and Tappan's MS critique, Tappan Papers, OHS.
36. In his later account of "The
First Settlement of Ravenna," Tappan slightly con-
tradicts these last statements. After
securing the second ox from Hillman, "we made the
wood work for our farming tools, cleared
& fenced in a garden plot & a field on the
bottom of about four acres, &
planted them. The corn was planted on the 26 of June &
yielded a good crop." See also
additional information about the first winter in First
Settlement.
Benjamin Tappan 129 |
|
find him a lazy, worthless fellow, a burden instead of a help to you. This is as it should be. You have punished yourself for your ungratefull & dishonest conduct towards me. There let it rest & let us think no more about it." I then began upon some other subject & Kellog was never again mentioned.37 This Hudson was a singular character, a man of impulses, at the time I knew him very religious, a zealous Federalist, and, what perhaps exhibits his character as well as any one thing, he joined a Masonic lodge after he was 60 years of age. He published what he called an account of the first settlement of Portage Co. in a religious newspaper,38 in which he did not (as I hear) mention my name. He calls himself the first settler in that County. This is doubly untrue, first as respects myself & second Abraham Honey, who built a small cabbin in Mantua in the fall of 1798 &
37. Hudson made this visit on a Monday & "found Tappan & his hands resting, supposing it to be Sunday, for it seemed they had lost the true reckoning." Tappan's critique of Howe, Tappan Papers, OHS. 38. Tappan is probably referring to a series of articles, drawing on Hudson's reminis- cences but written by the Rev. John Seward and published in the Hudson Observer about 1835. |
130 OHIO HISTORY
was living there with his family when
Hudson & I went into the Reserve.
Having wintered there & made a
small clearing, he was the first white
man who settled in Portage County.
[Tappan was deeply annoyed by Hudson's
account, which had em-
phasized "the privations and
hardships of the undertaking, giving him-
self considerable credit with scarce an
allusion to Tappan,"39 since
Tappan had conducted him from Lake
Ontario and Hudson had gener-
ally preferred to travel in Tappan's
boat rather than in his own. The
clash between the two men was, however,
basically one of tempera-
ment and outlook, in which Tappan was
also to blame. For example, in
1801 Hudson, like the good neighbor he
was, invited Tappan to give the
oration at a July Fourth celebration to
be held at his cabin in Hudson.
To the annoyance of his more religious
hearers, including the missio-
nary Joseph Badger, Tappan's oration
was "interlaced with many
grossly illiberal remarks about
Christians and Christianity."40 Hudson
himself was to play a decisive role in
the development of the Reserve,
building up orthodox religious and
educational institutions, including
Western Reserve College. In the end,
even Tappan acknowledged that
"David Hudson was an honest &
very devout man, but was too weak
to resist temptation. It is rare that
men of so much pretention to sanc-
tity are honest, but Hudson was an
exception, notwithstanding his
conduct as to Kellogg & some other
aberrations, & his general charac-
ter & deportment was that of an
honest man."]41
As I determined to spend the winter
there, I made preparation to
build a log cabbin, but could not
accomplish it untill the six months for
which Sylvester was engaged had expired
& he and Homes left me to
return to New England.42 I
was left entirely alone for 21 days, expect-
ing one [Benjamin] Bixby & his
family to come on to settle there on 100
acres of land I had given him on
condition of settlement.
[The great inducement Bixby, or Bigsby,
had to offer was his wife,
who was to take over the cooking from
Tappan. "I had done most of
our cooking during the summer, and was
quite tired of it. ... I did not
feel as though I ran much risk in
getting a woman to do my cooking and
39. Democratic Review, VII, 549.
40. Joseph Badger, Memoir of the Rev.
Joseph Badger (Hudson, 1851), 26-27.
41. Tappan's MS critique of Howe's Historical
Collections, 470, 473, Tappan Papers,
OHS.
42. Homes had wished to see the land
Tappan offered before he moved his family on
to it. Though he liked the land, he
never came back from Vermont. He apparently
disliked farming, though he was an able
surveyor and had found no difficulty in travelling
hundreds of miles through the forest by
himself. Tappan, "First Settlement of Ravenna"
and critique of Howe, ibid.
Benjamin Tappan
131
washing, the latter of which had not
been as well done as the former
during the summer."] After Bixby
had got on & we were ready to raise
our cabbin, two men of the name of
Purviance, Quakers of Brownsville
in Penn[sylvani]a, came along. They were
looking for land. At my
request they joined us in raising a
cabbin of 22 feet by 18 a story and a
half high. [The cabin was raised and
shingled in a single day. Tappan
had found it difficult to gain
assistance from neighbouring settlements
because some settlers had returned East
for the winter, while others
considered the season too advanced for a
"raising." The two Quakers
who came to his assistance refused
payment; according to his later
account, they came from Smithfield in
Jefferson County, Ohio. There-
after] Bixby & I worked dilligently
to make the cabbin habitable by
good puncheon floors & chunking,
& on the 1st of January 1800 we
moved into it. Untill then we had lived
in a bark camp, as it was called.
It was a place about eight feet square,
open towards the East & close
on the other three sides & on top,
built of Linn bark.43 At the front side
it was high enough for a man to stand up
& it sloped back to about 2
feet of the ground. Our fire was in
front, in the open air.
Nothing remarkable occurred this first
winter. I found use for all my
mechanical skill in making furniture for
my house & tools for farming. I
split puncheons of cherry (which was
abundant) &, having hewed them
thin enough, made partitions so as to
divide my cabbin into three
rooms. In February about 20 inches of
snow fell, and, as we were
entirely out of flour, I took my oxen
& sled & went to buy some. I first
went of William's mill near Greensburg,
but could get none there; the
mill was frozen so that it could not
grind. I went from there across the
Ohio River at Georgetown about 3 miles
to Laughlan's mill.44 There I
bought a barrel of corn meal-no flour
was to be had, so I went home
with that. On my way between Canfield
& Deerfield one of my oxen
was taken sick & I had to go on
without my sled to Deerfield, where I
got someone to go back for it & in
this way I hired it hauled to Raven-
na. With good care my ox recovered, but
my barrel of meal cost me
much labour & money.
43. Linn is Basswood or American Linden.
Puncheons were pieces of timber split
from trees about 18 inches in diameter,
and hewed smooth with a broad-axe; they usually
ran about half the length of the cabin
floor. "Chunking" means filling the crevices
between the logs forming the walls with
"chinks," or split pieces of wood, and then
daubing them with mud.
44. The early pioneers of Portage County
had to travel 45 miles to the nearest grist
mill, until water-powered mills were
built locally in 1801 and 1802. History of Portage
County, 248, 393, 521. William's mill had been specially
provided by the Connecticut
Land Company for the convenience of
settlers.
132 OHIO HISTORY
In the spring of 1800 I hired two good
ax men & much extended my
clearing. Settlements were commenced in
Deerfield, Aurora & At-
water, & some families came into
Mantua & Nelson. Settlements had
been commenced in 1799 in Canfield
& Warren.
In June 1800 two Indian men & a
child were shot by Joseph McMa-
hon & another fellow at the Salt
Springs, & in August or September
Gov. St. Clair & Judges Gilman
& Meigs of the Supreme Court & Mr.
Bachus, an Attorney of Marietta, came
to Youngstown to try McMa-
hon for murder, he having been taken.45
I was employed by a friend of
the prisoner to assist in the defense.
The counsel he had employed
were Stark Edwards of Warren &
Cunningham Semple of Pittsburg.46
He was acquitted. This was the first
cause I ever argued to a jury &, as
I knew both my associate counsel
thought our client ought to be
hanged, I felt that his fate probably
depended on what I might say. I
was very much embarrassed, so much so
that it would have been
impossible for me to proceed beyond a
few sentences which I had
committed to memory for a beginning,
but Bachus, who sat by me,
seeing my embarrassment, said over some
sentences ending with "I
will read you the law upon this
subject," which I repeated after him &
then read my authorities, by which I
gathered confidence to go on. I
gained some reputation by my defense of
the prisoner, but the settle-
ment was too new to give me much
business.47
Return to New England, 1800-1801
In December I went a journey to
Northampton on horseback, in
company with four others who were
returning to New England. We
found tollerable accomodations untill
we came to the settlement of
Lowry at 16 mile creek (east of Erie).
From this to Buffalo there was no
45. The Salt Springs on the Mahoning
were an early place of concentration for both
Indians and white men. Arthur St. Clair
(1736-1818), a Scot by birth, after careers in the
British and Revolutionary armies and in
Pennsylvania politics, was appointed Governor
of the Northwest Territory in 1787. He
was particularly concerned about relations with
the Indians. Joseph Gilman, the father of Benjamin Ives
Gilman, moved from New
Hampshire to Marietta as one of its
earliest settlers. Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr. (1764-
1825) was a Yale-educated lawyer who was
appointed a judge of the territorial Supreme
Court in 1798. He later became Chief Justice of the
State Supreme Court, U.S. Senator,
Governor of Ohio (1810-1814), and U.S.
Postmaster-General (1814-1823). Elijah Backus,
who later became an active Republican
politician and editor in Marietta, on this occasion
acted as prosecuting attorney.
46. John Stark Edwards (1777-1813), a
grandson of Jonathan Edwards and related to
Tappan, represented his father's
extensive proprietorial interests. He was to become the
leading lawyer on the Reserve.
47. On the McMahon case, see Howe, Historical
Collections, 480-81.
Benjamin Tappan 133
inhabitants but Indians, & no road
but an Indian path. Each man laid in
his own stores for himself & horse.
The first night we had rain & some
freezing. We laid down round a large
fire. I had two large bear skins,
one under & the other over me,
& was able to sleep some. The others
took turns in crawling under my bear
skin which would shed the rain
off of two of them at a time. The next
night we got to Cataraguas where
we found shelter in the hut of a
Canadian Frenchman who was living
there with an Indian woman. My
companions had consumed the last of
their provisions. What I had left I
divided with them at noon. That
night we got to Buffalo & put up at
Landon's tavern. From this to
Northampton I had no difficulty, as the
country was so well settled that
I could put up at taverns to [the]
Genesee river, & beyond that the
settlement was well advanced.
In about a fortnight after my return
[to New England], I went to
Hartford [Connecticut] on some business
connected with our purchase
of land, & at the same time made a
visit to my friend Todd at Far-
mington. Todd went over to Berlin with
me to visit Doctor Sylvester
Wells & Elnathan Smith, with whom
we were intimate.48 At Smith's I
saw again (after nine years) Miss Nancy
Wright, with whom I had
formerly had a slight acquaintance. I
returned the next day to Far-
mington with Todd &, after staying
one night with him, I left him for
home, but I concluded to take Berlin in
my way where I spent two days
with Miss Wright. In the spring we were
married & started in a waggon
drawn by two horses for the Western
Reserve. We went from Berlin
thro' Litchfield, New Windsor, Easton,
Harrisburg & Bedford to
Pittsburg; thence by the way to Poland,
Deerfield, & Atwater to
Ravenna. We were 45 days from Berlin to
Ravenna. I drove my own
waggon, in which I carried my wife
& her sister with a rather full load
of furniture. It was a very tedious
journey & was not without its variety
of incidents, tho' not of sufficient
importance to be here mentioned.
Pioneer Politics
[Initially the Western Reserve had no
government because the right
of jurisdiction was disputed between
Connecticut and the federal gov-
ernment. In May 1800 Connecticut
released her claims to jurisdiction,
with the result that the Reserve came
under the government of the
Northwest Territory, headed by the
increasingly unpopular Governor
48. These three were all active leaders
of the Republican and Tolerationist cause in
Connecticut. Wells was a Yale-educated
Universalist, Smith an Episcopalian attorney.
For Todd, see n. 13.
134 OHIO HISTORY
Arthur St. Clair, who was appointed by,
and responsible to, the federal
government. The Reserve was organized as
Trumbull County in July
1800, and its first military and
civilian officials appointed. There was
already a strong move afoot, however, to
advance from "colonial"
status to the greater autonomy of
statehood-a move in the direction of
greater popular rule which Tappan was
wholeheartedly to support.]
We began to talk about a State
government. All but the officers were
tired of the Territorial government. I
had seen Govr. St. Clair & got
acquainted with him at Youngstown. He
offered me a commission as
Justice of the Peace, which I declined
accepting, telling him that I
could not hold office under a government
I was endeavoring to change.
He thanked me for my frankness. I was
first introduced to him at John
Young's in Youngstown. He invited me to
drink with him. I did so. He
poured into a half pint tumbler about a
gill of Brandy &, after adding a
small quantity of water, drank it. I had
heard of his drinking powers &
therefore observed, & counted that
after me 24 gentlemen were intro-
duced to him the same evening, with
every one of whom he drank
about the same quantity of brandy, &
yet he seemed as steady &
conversed as well as early in the
evening. St. Clair required more than
his salary to supply him with drink,
& to get this he made a regulation
by which he allowed himself fees for
almost every thing he did. For
instance, he required every one who
wished to marry to obtain a li-
cence from him, & some he made pay
more & some less for it, accord-
ing to their ability. The late Jeremiah
McLane of Columbus told me
that he paid him fifteen dollars for a
licence to marry his wife. He sent
me a licence to practice law & a
message with it to send him $20 as a
fee. I sent back the licence with a
message that I could practice law
without a licence. I heard no more about
it.49
The next evening after I was introduced
to St. Clair, I found him
after supper in his room alone &
entered into conversation with him on
the subject of organizing the militia.
After conversing a few minutes,
say[s] he, "why don't you attend
the meeting?" I told him I knew of no
meeting. "I am surprised at that.
There is a meeting up chamber on this
subject & I wish you would attend
it." I told him, altho' I was not
invited, at his request I would seek
admission to the meeting. I went up
49. The demand for arbitrary fees was
one of the main complaints that the statehood
party levelled against St. Clair. David
M. Massie, Nathanieal Massie, A Pioneer of Ohio
(Cincinnati, 1896), 79, 180, 186, 195.
Jeremiah McLene (1767-1837), a Pennsylvanian
who had served in the Revolutionary War,
had a distinguished career in the public
service in Ohio, first as Assemblyman
(1807-1808), then as the longest-serving Secretary
of State (1808-1831), and finally as a
Democratic Congressman from 1833 until his death.
Benjamin Tappan 135 |
|
stairs & found in a small back room Simon Perkins, John Stark Ed- wards, John Young, Calvin Pease, George Tod & about half a dozen more, all officers of the territorial government, making out a nomina- tion of themselves for the various militia offices.50 I proposed to them to leave it to the people to make the nominations at the approaching election at Warren for Representative in the assembly (or at the next court, I am not certain which). They said at once that St. Clair would not agree to any such thing. I urged them to try it & see what he would say, whereupon the meeting appointed me a committee to wait on the Govr. & request him to refer the nominations to the people. I went down to him immediately & had no difficulty in persuading him to leave the nomination to be made at the next county meeting. I soon returned with this consent of the Govr., to the great disappointment of the meeting. The appointment to the civil offices had been before made, in this way. The Connecticut Land company made out a nomination for
50. Each of these men represented an important landed interest on the Reserve. Simon Perkins (1771-1844) was land agent for the Erie Company (a consortium of 19 proprietors) and was to be highly important in the commercial development of northern Ohio. |
136 OHIO HISTORY
sheriff, judges, clerk of the court,
Recorder, &c., and sent [John] Stark
Edwards with it to Cincinnati to get it
confirmed. This was in 1799
[1800].51 St. Clair, who knew nothing
about the persons nominated,
made the appointments accordingly.
Edwards got the most lucrative
office, that of Recorder; [Calvin] Pease
the next, that of clerk; John
Young, in consideration of making the
first settlement in 1798 at
Youngstown, was made chief judge of the
county court; [John]
Kinsman, [James] Kingsbury & . ..
[?] Griswold? were appointed
judges; [David] Abbot sheriff.52
In the fall, I think October [1800],
there was a court held at Warren &
in the evening we organized a meeting to
nominate militia officers.
Judge Kingsbury was chairman & I was
secretary of the meeting.
Young and the other officers of the
territorial government tried to
break up the meeting, but, finding they
could not do this, they with-
drew & made out a nomination for
themselves which they got ap-
pointed by the governor. Mean time we
went on with the meeting of the
democracy & nominated officers. I
then drew up an address to the
Governor telling him very plainly the
duty of a governor of a free state
& recommending the appointment of
our nominees. The address was a
very plain spoken thing, for as I was
well assured that the recommen-
dation of the office holders would have
most influence with the Govr., I
drew up the recommendation for political
effect. It was adopted unani-
mously but was disregarded by St. Clair.
In May 1801 [?], Elijah Boardman of
Connecticut & Eli Baldwin
came to my house to see me. Boardman
owned considerable land on
the Reserve & was a Democrat.53
His visit to me was to induce me to
do what in these times is called
"taking the stump" in favor of going
into a state government. I coincided
with him in opinion but could not
agree to travel over the Reserve. The
Deerfield people, however, in-
vited me to deliver to them an oration
on the approaching 4th July &
collected a considerable number of
people for so new a settlement. I
51. [Mary L. W. Moore, ed.,] Diary of
Turhand Kirtland (Poland, Ohio, 1903), 34
(entry for July 27, 1800); Conlin, Simon
Perkins, 35-36.
52. John Kinsman was a wealthy
proprietor who had founded the town of Kinsman,
Trumbull County. James Kingsbury, whom
Tappan considered the first settler on the
Reserve, had settled with his wife at
Conneaut in 1796. David Abbot (1765-1822), a Yale
graduate and a lawyer, emigrated from
Massachussetts in 1798 and settled in what is now
Willoughby. He sat in the Constitutional
Convention of 1802 and in the General Assem-
bly, and in 1809 moved to Huron county,
where he laid out the town of Milan.
53. Eli Baldwin was one of Boardman's
first settlers, a land agent and merchant,
whose long career culminated politically
when he ran as Jacksonian candidate for Gov-
ernor of Ohio in 1836.
Benjamin Tappan 137 |
|
discussed the question of state government & pointed out the advan- tages of such a government over the arbitrary sway of St. Clair. I got this oration printed & circulated over the Reserve, & at the next fall election, when Genl. Paine was chosen our first representative, we were unanimous (with the exception of the officers of the territorial government) in instructing him to work for a state government. The Genl. promised to do so, but he forfeited his word & voted against going into a state government.54 The majority of the assembly, how- ever, decided to call a convention, & in August 1802 we elected Saml. Huntington & David Abbot our delegates. I voted for them both. Hun-
54. Edward Paine (1746-1841), the former Revolutionary soldier and Indian trader who founded Painesville in 1800. Paine voted with other Trumbull County representa- tives in favor of dividing Ohio at the Scioto, which would mean postponing statehood. Tappan's dates are confusing around this period. His July Fourth oration of 1801 was delivered at Hudson, according both to Joseph Badger and to the MS copy of the oration, Library of Congress. The Deerfield address was most probably delivered either later in 1801, in time for Paine to be instructed before the Assembly actually met (as the state- hood leaders advised), or perhaps in 1802 just before the elections for the state conven- tion. |
138 OHIO HISTORY
tington was elected by a majority of one
over me, so that, if I had voted
for myself & Abbott, I should have
been elected.55
The Convention sat in Decr. & formed
the present constitution of the
state. They gave the Reserve one senator
& two representatives, &
appointed the election in the month of
February, & the first session of
the assembly in April 1803. The nearest
Post office at this time was
Canfield 27 miles distant, & we sent
there but seldom & had but little
communication in that season of the
year. I heard of the apportionment
of Representation for the Reserve &
offered myself as a candidate for
the senate & had a fair prospect of
success. Shortly before the time
fixed for the election I received a
letter from Huntington informing me
that the election was to be holden at
the two places of holding the
election (Warren & Painesville) on
the day of February, of which I
gave notice to the inhabitants of what
was since the County of Portage.
Two weeks before the time mentioned in
Huntington's letter as the
time for holding the election, Alijah
Peck rode up to my house at a little
past ten o'clock in the morning &
asked me why I had not gone to the
election. This was the first intimation
I had as to the true time of
holding the election. It was about a
day's ride to Warren &, if I had
started with him, it was doubtfull
whether I could reach Warren before
the election would close. So I remained
at home, as did every voter in
that part of the Reserve included in the
late county of Portage, all
deceived by the false statement of
Huntington. As I did not attend the
election, it was generally supposed that
the story circulated by the
friends of Huntington that I had
declined being a candidate was true, &
I got but few votes. Huntington was
elected senator. This trick of
Huntington's easily succeeded because I
did not then know him.56
About 10 days before the sitting of the
Assembly, Calvin Pease made
me a visit.57 He said he had
come out to see if I would not be a
candidate for the office of President of
the court of common Pleas. He
did not know any lawyer in the circuit
fit for the office but me, for, as to
himself, all he wanted was to be
continued as clerk of the Court. I had
55. Samuel Huntington (1770-1818), of
Connecticut and Yale, settled in Cleveland in
1800 and later became Supreme Court
Justice in 1804 and Governor in 1808. The Con-
vention was called, not by the
territorial Assembly, but by Congress.
56. As Tappan's father said, he really
should have taken proper pains to learn about
the new Constitution and the prescribed
dates of elections. Benjamin Tappan (Sr.) to
Tappan, April 22, 1803, Tappan Papers,
LC. The election was actually held in January.
57. Calvin Pease (1776-1839), the
brother-in-law of Gideon Granger and an old friend
of Tappan with whom he shared an
anticlerical outlook, moved west from Connecticut in
1800 and settled as a lawyer in Warren
in 1803. After serving this one term as President
Judge, Pease became a justice of the
Ohio Supreme Court, 1816-1830.
Benjamin Tappan
139
not thought of the possibillity of
being elected to that office nor did I
wish to have it, but I knew Pease
&, as he had come 30 miles to see me
& staid all night, I appeared to
him to wish for the office &, as he said
he was going to Chilicothe & would
do all he could to promote my
success with the assembly, I thanked
him & he went away satisfied
that he had duped me. I told my friends
that Pease was a candidate for
the office of Prest. Judge and would
get it, as he would have no com-
petitor, & so it turned out. I had
cause to regret playing this game with
Pease. I had better at once have
declined his insincere offer, for, as it
turned out, he believed he had duped
& deceived me & was ever after
my most bitter enemy, &, as he was
destitute of moral principle, he
injured me greatly in all my business
before him in the common Pleas.
At our first election under the
constitution Capt. Wadsworth of Can-
field was elected sheriff.58 The
first assembly under the Constitution
elected Huntington one of the judges of
the supreme court, which
vacated the office of senator from
Trumbull Co. I determined to be a
candidate for the office. I do not
recollect who the Federalists ran in
opposition to me, but I succeeded by a
large majority. Ephm. Quinby
& David Abbot were the
representatives.59 The assembly met at
Chilicothe on the 1st Monday of Dec.,
1803. We had a very busy
session. I drew up an act for the
partition of real estate which passed
and has remained, with but slight
alterations, the law of the state ever
since.60 I also drew up
& reported a bill establishing boards of county
Commissioners, which passed (before
this the business had been done
by a court of quarter sessions
consisting of the justices of the peace);
also a bill for organizing &
discipling the militia, which passed; & many
other laws.61
58. Elijah Wadsworth (1747-1817) was a
leading man in Canfield, in the southeastern
corner of the Reserve, and a business
associate of Tappan. In 1804 he was to be ap-
pointed one of the four Major-Generals
in command of the Ohio Militia.
59. Ephraim Quinby, proprietor and
founder, in 1799, of Warren, was an influential
leader of the early pioneers, especially
since Warren was named county seat in 1800.
60. Tappan's claim is a little
exaggerated, since his bill was based on an act drawn up
by Jacob Burnet and passed by the
Territorial Legislature in 1801. The purpose of the act
was to enable, upon petition, the
division of any land held jointly. Jacob Burnet, Notes
on the Early Settlement of the Northwestern Territory (Cincinnati, 1847), 330.
61. These measures can all be
interpreted as furthering the democratization of the
state. The reform of local government
shifted power from officials appointed by the
territorial government to commissioners
elected by the various county electorates; the
militia were to elect their own
officers; while the partition of real estate would facilitate
the break-up of large landed estates,
just as, indeed, the taxing of lands owned by
non-residents would encourage wealthy
Eastern landholders to sell their lands quickly
and cheaply to actual settlers.
140 OHIO HISTORY
A very important question was agitated
this session, whether the
lands of non-resident proprietors should
be taxed. I took the affirma-
tive of this question, & drew up
& advocated the bill which was passed
for laying & collecting a land tax.
My constituents paid at that time one
fourth part of the land tax & so
were deeply interested in the question.
After we returned home [David] Abbot, who
disliked me much, circu-
lated a tale that I had been opposed to
taxing non-residents & gave it
extensive circulation before I heard of
it.62 It had the effect to prevent
my election, or indeed to prevent my
being taken up as a candidate
again. Afterwards when the truth became
known Abbot's character
suffered for this falsehood, added to
many others. [On the other hand,
as his father said, Tappan was so
irritable and tactless that he re-
peatedly provoked quarrels and so
created enmities which prevented
his election to the public offices his
talents deserved.]63
Captain Elijah Wadsworth, a very
intimate friend of mine, had been
elected Major General of the division we
lived in (the 4th) & he urged
me to accept the office of aid to him,
because he wanted my help in
organizing the militia. He had been a
good cavalry officer in Sheldon's
regiment of light horse in the
Revolution but knew nothing of infantry
regulations or tactics. I accepted the
office & was commissioned as a
Major.
This same season (1804) we had an
election at Deerfield at which a
justice of the peace was to be chosen.
Robt. Eaton, who lived near
me,64 was a candidate &
our best informed people, fearfull that he
would be elected, strongly urged me to
be a candidate. I gave way to
their request reluctantly, knowing that
it would be a very troublesome
office. My commission came on in Oct.
& I had it a year without taking
the oath of office. Eaton complained
much of this & I, finding that he
was getting up a party to force a new
election, took the oath of office in
1805. I acted in this office about a
year & then resigned. I lived during
this time about a mile from any other
person &, when I held a justice's
court, I entertained all parties &
witnesses, because they could not
well do without food for themselves
& horses. This, and my never
charging any fees, made the office
rather burthensome & I was glad to
be rid of it. I continued in the
practice of the law in Trumbull &
Columbiana Counties, having after I
resigned moved to Canfield in
Oct. or Nov. 1806.
62. Elijah Backus to Tappan, August 24,
1804, Tappan Papers, LC.
63. Benjamin Tappan (Sr.) to Tappan,
August 9, 1805, ibid.
64. Robert Eaton settled in the township
in 1802 and built a house which was later
used as Court House and Jail until the
completion of the first public buildings in 1810.
Benjamin Tappan
141
In June 1806 I went with my wife to New
England on horseback. We
rode from Canfield to Litchfield in
Connecticut in eleven days. We
spent the summer in New England with our
friends, & in October I
accompanied my wife to Philadelphia
where I parted with her, she
going with her brother James to
Petersburg in Va. & I returned to Ohio.
I stopped in Canfield, where I had
resided a few months, & was visited
by the agent of Colo. Burr, who laboured
to engage me in his expedi-
tion, preparations for which were then
going on at Beaver.65 I soon
suspected there was some villainy in the
business & endeavour'd to
find out what it was, but could not
learn more than that many persons
were engaged in a military expedition
southward. I went on in De-
cember to spend the winter with my wife
&, on my way, called in
Washington City on Genl. Dearborn, the
then secretary of war, & told
him what I knew about the matter. He
told me that all Burr's move-
ments were watched & that every step
he took was known by the
President. [Indeed, Jefferson had
already sent his agent to the West to
investigate Burr's preparations and to
warn the local authorities. Gov-
ernor Edward Tiffin of Ohio took steps
to prevent the expedition, and
by December 15 could report the seizure
of nearly all its boats and
supplies.]
I stopped but one day in Washington
& went on to Petersburg [Vir-
ginia]. I staid there untill about the
20th Feby. 1807, when we returned
to Ohio. I stopped three days to hear
the debates in Congress. The
House of Representatives was then a body
in which there was great
order & decorum. Nathaniel Macon was
the speaker. I heard John
Randolph, Josiah Quincy, James Smiley [sic],
Wm. Findley, Benj.
Tallmadge & some others.66
65. Tappan was apparently under some
obligation to Burr for the part Burr had played
in securing Tappan's admission to the
bar in Connecticut; Democratic Review, VII, 553.
66. The House had been troubled by
scenes of disorder on several occasions in the
late 1830s. Nathaniel Macon (1758-1837)
of North Carolina served in Congress from 1791
to 1828 and was revered by Tappan as a
consistent, high-principled Jeffersonian. Macon
was Speaker of the House from 1801 to
1807, by the end of which time he was estranged
from President Jefferson as a result of
his support of John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-
1833), who criticized the administration
for behaving like Federalists. The brilliant but
erratic Randolph served in Congress
until 1829, and, like Macon, transmitted old party
principles into the Jacksonian era. John
Smilie was a member of Congress from Pennsyl-
vania for a number of years. He died
about the turn of the year, 1812-1813. William
Findley (1741-1821), a Scotch-Irishman
from Pennsylvania, was an expert defender of
the interests of frontiersmen and
another firm opponent of Federalist measures during his
years in Congress, 1791-1799 and
1803-1817. Benjamin Tallmadge (1754-1835) of New
York, a former revolutionary soldier,
was a moderate Federalist of much influence even in
the Republican Congresses of 1801-1807.
142 OHIO HISTORY
The Making of Ravenna, 1808-1809
As I had purchased the whole of my
father's land in Ravenna, we
returned to & settled again in that
place. In the session of Assembly of
1807-8 the county of Portage was
divided off from the county of Trum-
bull & my friends in the assembly
put in Aaron Norton, Wm. Wetmore
& Amzi Atwater associate judges.
They held the first court at my
house in May 1808.67 I perceived great
coldness in the judges towards
me & for some time I was at a loss
to account for it. It was owing to a
lie that Stark Edwards had told them,
which was that I had said they
would know the God that made them. I
shall not pretend to record the
one thousandth part of the lies the
Federalists told to injure me; this is
one.
[On the other hand, this story does
indicate the extent to which the
creation of the new county was a
personal triumph for Tappan. When
the first serious proposals were made
in 1805 to divide the Reserve into
a number of counties it had appeared
for some time as though the plan
of division would place Ravenna
township on the edge of a county.
After political manoeuvrings, however,
Trumbull County was divided
up so as to place Ravenna township at
the center of the new county of
Portage. Accordingly, in the spring of
1808 Tappan laid out the town of
Ravenna, which was duly selected as the
county seat, though its re-
moval was threatened for several years.
Ravenna thereby became a
focus of settlement, land values rose,
and since Tappan had bought out
his father's share in 1806, he soon
became relatively wealthy.68 How-
ever, he and his wife disliked living
in Ravenna because of its lack of
amenities, for, like other places on
the Reserve, it settled only slowly
and remained fairly crude, isolated and
backward until the 1820s.]69
In making the settlement of Ravenna, it
was so far in advance of the
other settlements that, to get people
to settle there, I was at first
67. Unverified tradition claims that
when the various officers arrived at Tappan's
house to hold the first court, they
found it burned to the ground. Tappan's failure to
mention the incident casts further doubt
on the tradition. It is true that the officers
adjourned to Eaton's house, but this may
have been a result of the hostility Tappan
proceeds to refer to. Amzi Atwater, one
of the original surveyors of 1796 and 1797,
moved from Connecticut to Mantua in
1800. A large landholder and very public-spirited,
he had a considerable influence on the
development of the county. The associate judges
were laymen who sat on the bench at
county sessions of the Common Pleas court under
the chairmanship of the President Judge
for the District, who was usually a lawyer by
profession.
68. Tappan to John Sloane, November 28,
1805, Tappan Papers, OHS. Tappan to
Nancy Tappan, October 6, 1806, and John
Tappan to Tappan, July 2, 9, September 6,
1809, Tappan Papers, LC.
69. Hatcher, The Western Reserve, 62-74.
Benjamin Tappan 143
obliged to take such as offered, &
thus I got for my first settlers a
parcel of rough fellows & some of
them great villains & these kept off
better men, for those who were of better
character & in good cir-
cumstances would not settle there. Among
them were Sam Simcox, Jo
Wright & David Wright, horse thieves
and the two latter forgers. After
I had detected these fellows &
arested some of them, the others with
Moses Bradford burned down two cabbins
& a barn & cut down all my
apple trees. It was necessary to get rid
of these fellows & I finally
succeeded & in the spring of 1809
they had all cleared out. [These, no
doubt, were the settlers who, according
to Charles Whittlesey, moved
over to the more idealistic community of
Tallmadge, driven out of
Ravenna "by the systematic
oppression of a large proprieter (sic) and
agent, Benjamin Tappan."]70
But Ravenna was not a place in which
much business was to be done
in my profession, & besides, my
family were without the reach of
medical advice & assistance & my
wife nearly lost her life by a prema-
ture parturition brought on by following
the advice of Dr. Thompson of
Hudson, a most miserable quack but the
best doctor in our reach.71
This reason determined me to remove to
Steubenville, Pittsburg or
Cinncinnati. About this time I was
applied to by some persons in
Jefferson County to undertake their
suits & I went to Steubenville &
attended the April court, 1809. I found
the business here so promising
that I bought me an house & agreed
to take possession of it on the 13th
May, on which day I accordingly moved
into it. I immediately got into
a very good practice, tho' it was more
than a year before any of the
Federal women called on my wife; we got
along very comfortably
without much society. When I went to
Steubenville four Federal
lawyers resided there, [David] Jennings,
[?] King, [John] Patterson &
[Jesse] Edgington. In less than four
years they had all cleared out.
Dispute Over the Judiciary,
1809-1810.
In Dec. 1809 I was employed by John
Bever to go to Chilicothe &
attend the session of the assembly as
what has since been called a
lobby member. 72 Bever owned the town of
Wooster in Wayne County
70. Quoted in Hatcher, The Western
Reserve, 173. For a criticism of Tappan's treat-
ment of his settlers, see his brother
John's letter, February 12, 1811, Tappan Papers, LC.
71. Dr. Moses Thompson settled in Hudson
in 1800, having been promised $50 in
medicine by Hudson if he did so. Perrin,
Summit County, 417-419.
72. John Bever, or Beaver, of
Pennsylvania, founded and owned several towns in
Ohio, including Wooster and Mansfield,
in association with James Hedges and Joseph H.
Larwill.
144 OHIO HISTORY
& the Commissioners had very
improperly, as he thought, fixed on a
place for the seat of justice two or
three miles from Wooster, & my
services were required to get the
judgement of the Commissioners put
aside & the seat of justice fixed at
Wooster, which was accomplished
without difficulty.73 This
session of the assembly Genl. [Duncan] Mc-
Arthur was speaker of the Senate &
Mr. Tiffin of the house. I boarded at
Irwin's tavern where about 30 members of
the assembly were.74
A very interesting question arose during
this session which, as it has
been much misrepresented, I will state
with some minuteness. The
constitution of Ohio has this provision:
"the judges of the supreme
court & the Presidents of the Courts
of common Pleas shall hold their
offices for the term of seven years if
so long they shall behave them-
selves well & they shall receive for
their services a compensation to be
fixed by law which shall not be
diminished during their continuance in
office." The time was approaching
when the first period or term of
seven years from the first appointment
of judges in April 1803 was
about to expire, & it was agitated
whether the Constitution had fixed a
septenial term for the service of the
judges so that those who had been
elected to supply vacancies could only
serve the residue of the term, or
whether each judge was appointed for
seven years. In favor of the
former construction it was urged (beside
the import of the words,
which was supposed to favor that
construction) that it was a rule of
universal obligation so to construe a
law or constitution as to give
effect to every part of it, if possible,
& in accordance with the will &
interest of the law makers if that will
& interest could be fairly inferred
from the language used. Here, it was
said, it is very evident that the
makers of the constitution intended to
put it in the power of the legisla-
73. The commissioners had chosen the
Federalist-sponsored town of Madison, which
consisted of only one building, whereas
Wooster was growing rapidly. The decision was
finally reversed, but not as smoothly as Tappan
suggests. The General Assembly of
1809-1810 postponed action over the
Wayne County seat, and not until 1811 were new
commissioners appointed and Wooster
chosen. See Edward T. Heald, Bezaleel Wells,
Founder of Canton and Steubenville,
Ohio (Canton, 1942), 92-100; Ohio,
General As-
sembly, House Journal, 1809-1810, 296,
312-313, 359.
74. Duncan McArthur (1772-1818) had
gained wealth through his pioneering work in
surveying and locating warrants in the
Virginia Military District of Ohio and had built his
famous residence of Fruit Hill near
Chillicothe in 1804-1805. Since 1805 he had served in
the state senate, and he was later to
gain distinction in the War of 1812 and as a con-
gressman and governor (1830-1832).
Edward Tiffin (1766-1829), an Englishman who
emigrated to Virginia and married Thomas
Worthington's sister, settled in Chillicothe in
1796 and became the first Governor of
Ohio, 1803-1806. He subsequently sat in the U.S.
Senate and the state legislature, and
served as Commissioner of the U.S. Land Office
and Surveyor-General of the West,
1813-1829.
Benjamin Tappan
145
ture to reduce the salaries of the
judges at some time, if they should
judge it expedient. Was this power
intended to operate on the whole of
the judges at the same time when they
should all come into office
together? Or at the three or four
different periods as they might come
into office in succeeding the
incumbents? The constitution, it was
urged, contemplates raising the
salaries, if they are raised, at once
when the necessity exists for raising
them, & not periodically & in
future as the present incumbents go out
& new judges come in; & it
was said that in no other way could that
part of the constitution be
carried into effect but by the legislature
exercising the power of lower-
ing the salaries of all the judges of
the supreme court or of all the
Presidents of the common Pleas at the
same time. On the other hand it
was said that the difficulty of lowering
the salaries was merely imagi-
nary, for a law could be passed that the
salaries of the judges of the
supreme court or Presidents of the
common Pleas should be reduced
from & after the expiration of the
terms for which they have severally
been elected.75
During this discussion the Democratic
members of the assembly met
at Irwin's to consult upon the matter.
Mr. [Thomas] Morris, who was
one of the judges of the supreme court,76
& myself were present by
invitation. Mr. Tiffin took the chair
&, while they were talking about
the matter, I wrote a resolution, in
[the] form of a joint resolution of
both houses, declaring what I thought a
true construction of the con-
stitution & resolving to proceed on
such a day to elect three judges of
the supreme court. I handed this
resolution to Morris. He read it and
told the meeting that it contained what
he believed to be the true intent
75. Tappan's exposition of the issue has
concealed the true nature of the contest. The
dominant party in Ohio, the
Democratic-Republicans, had divided in the course of 1807-
1809 over the question of judicial
review; did the state's judges have the power to nullify
measures passed by the popularly-elected
legislature if they considered the measures
unconstitutional? The more democratic
faction, with which Tappan was closely as-
sociated, decided that judges could not
overrule the popular will, and that judges who did
so (like Judges Pease, Huntington and
Tod, all Tappan's personal rivals) must be re-
moved as soon as possible. In 1808-1809
an attempt to impeach Pease and Tod failed
narrowly to secure the necessary
two-thirds majority. The idea of proposing a resolution
that the terms of all state office-holders, including
judges, would expire in 1810 was then
adopted, since such a resolution would require only a
bare majority of votes to pass it.
The defenders of the judges naturally argued that this
constitutional ploy was adopted by
their rivals simply in order to secure
all the offices of the state for their friends.
76. Thomas Morris (1776-1844), a
Pennsylvanian who moved to Ohio in 1796 and
became a lawyer in Clermont County, had
been chosen in the 1808-1809 session to
conduct the impeachment of the Supreme
Court judges. Though the impeachment failed,
he was appointed to the vacancy created
by the election of Huntington as Governor,
though Morris was never actually to
exercise the office of Supreme Judge.
146 OHIO
HISTORY
& meaning of the constitution; that
any construction which would
make each judge hold office for seven
years was a plain violation of the
constitution. Others expressed their
opinion on the subject & it was put
to vote, & the meeting, by a nearly
unanimous vote, adopted it &
determined that it should be offered in
the house by [Samuel] Dunlap of
Jefferson County. It was so offered
& passed both houses.77
At the election consequent upon this
proceeding, [Ethan Allen]
Brown, [Thomas] Scott & [William W.]
Irwin were elected judges of
the S. Court.78 I was run
against Brown & he beat me on the 1st ballot.
Morris was also a candidate & was
beat by Scott on the second ballot.
Morris was in my room at Irwin's near
the state house during the
election & Jere. Munson brought us
word as to every balloting. 79 I was
not much disappointed that Brown was
preferred to me, but when
Munson brought the account of Morris'
defeat, Morris behaved like a
perfect madman. He walked about the room
striking his fists together
&, with great vehemence, declared
that he would not submit to it, he
would hold on by his commission as judge
of the supreme court which
had several years to run yet to make up
the seven years. He declared
that before he would submit to be turned
out of office in this way, he
would carry the question up to the
Supreme Court of the United States.
I thought this conduct strange, but,
what was still more so, on his return
home he wrote an address to the people
of the state in which he de-
clared the "sweeping
resolution," as it was called, a violation of the
constitution, an unwarrantable invasion
of his rights, & a measure
against which he had warned the members
of the assembly. Morris was
77. Ohio, House Journal, 1809-1810. Samuel
Dunlap was an important manager of
business in this legislature.
78. Interestingly, all three men later
became Jacksonians. Ethan Allen Brown (1776-
1852), a New Englander who settled in
Cincinnati in 1804, later became Governor of
Ohio (1818-1822), U. S. Senator
(1822-1825), U.S. charge d'affaires in Brazil (1830-1834),
and commissioner of the general land
office, before moving to Indiana in 1836. William
W. Irwin, or Irvin (1778-1842) was a
Virginia lawyer who moved to Lancaster in 1801,
served in the state legislature
(1806-1808 and 1825-1827) and later in Congress, 1829-1833.
Thomas Scott (1772-1856) was an active
Chillicothe politician and lawyer who had been
secretary of the constitutional
convention.
79. Not quite. A common election was
held for all three judges, each member having
three votes and each successful
candidate needing a majority of the members to vote for
him. Scott and Irwin both gained
majorities on the first ballot, with Tappan, Brown and
Morris coming next. These three
continued to be voted for, and not until the fourth ballot
did the strongest of the three, Brown,
gain an absolute majority. Ohio, House Journal,
1809-1810, 349-350.
Benjamin Tappan 147
not much noticed.80 The new
judges went on to discharge their duties
very quietly, & the Federalists had
influence enough to have all future
elections held in utter disregard of the
resolution so acted upon in Jany.
1810, & to stigmatise the sweeping
resolution as a gross outrage upon
the constitution.81
On my return home I found J. C. Wright
(my wife's brother) with his
wife & one child at my house. He had
been broke up by libel suits. He
engaged in the study of law with me
& lived in my family untill he was
admitted to the bar & was able to
support himself.82 In June 1811 I
started on horseback with my wife for
New England by the way of
Buffalo. We spent the summer visiting
our friends & returned in
November, her health much improved.
War of 1812
In July following, war was declared,
& on the 20th day of August I
received by express a letter from Major
General Wadsworth, dated at
Cleveland, giving me an account of
Hull's surrender of Detroit & the
intelligence that the British &
Indians were coming down the lake in
great force destroying all before them,
& ordering me to collect the
80. He was, however, elected to the next
General Assembly, where he played an
active part in securing the repeal of
the "sweeping resolution" in January 1812. Tappan
had good reason for denigrating Morris.
In 1833, after over twenty years in the Assem-
bly, Morris had been elevated as a
Jacksonian to the United States Senate where he
began to attack slavery on abolitionist
grounds and refused to obey the Democratic party
line. When the Democratic majority in
the state legislature accordingly refused to re-
elect him in 1839, Morris deserted the
Democrats and became one of the leaders of the
new Liberty Party in 1840. Tappan had
been elected to the Senate in Morris's place, and,
as a moderate opponent of slavery
himself, clearly wished to show that Morris was
altogether an unreliable man.
81. Just such a criticism had been
published in 1838 by Caleb Atwater in his History of
Ohio. Atwater not only condemned the "sweeping
resolution" as "violent and uncon-
stitutional," and impugned the
honesty of its supporters; he also described the consider-
able confusion it created, especially in
the lower courts where there were often two sets
of judges exercising the office. In
branding such critics as Federalists, Tappan de-
monstrated that he thought that all
those Democratic-Republicans who took the other
side of this question were Federalists
at heart. Though he co-operated with them later, it
is interesting to note how many of the
conservatives of 1810 had joined the Whig opposi-
tion by the late 1830s-including Caleb
Atwater. Caleb Atwater, A History of the State of
Ohio, Natural and Civil (Cincinnati, 1838), 182-186.
82. John C. Wright (1783-1861) had
learned printing in his native Connecticut and then
moved to New York to edit the Troy Gazette,
which involved him in financial and legal
difficulties. He became a leading
Steubenville lawyer, and after 1823 served with distinc-
tion in the U.S. Congress, where Davy
Crockett thought him singularly ill-looking. De-
feated as an Adams man in 1828, he later
became a Judge of the Ohio Supreme Court and
editor of the Cincinnati Gazette. With
his intellectual acuteness and sense of humor, he
was a suitable foil for Tappan, with
whom he came increasingly to differ in politics.
148 OHIO HISTORY
drafts in the brigade composed of
Jefferson & Harrison Counties &
march them to Cleveland as soon as
possible.83 It was on Sunday
morning about daylight that I rec'd the
order. I gave notice of it in town
& sent orders that day to all parts
of the Brigade for the drafts to repair
to Steubenville, with arms &
equipments ready for marching. The men
came in, but without arms, accoutrements
or camp equipage. I engaged
in providing for them. I collected all
the arms which could be got &
employed all the gunsmiths in repairing
them. I purchased sheet iron &
set all the tinners at work making camp
kettles. I purchased powder &
lead & cloth for tents & had
tents made. I hired waggons & purchased
provisions for forty days' consumption
of the men. I gave my certifi-
cates to all who sold their property to
me of what had been purchased
& its prices. So dilligent were
these preparations that, on the next
Friday after receiving the order, I
marched the men out of Steubenville
armed & provided with everything
necessary for service. Two com-
panies of volunteers composed part of
the force, one of infantry raised
in Steubenville by Captn. Nich[ola]s
Murray & the other of riflemen
commanded by Capt. James Alexander.
Three days' march brought us
to Canton where we met the Columbiana
militia under Genl. [Reasin]
Beall waiting orders.84 I
left my command with Colo. Andrews and
went to Cleveland where I met the Major
General, who had about a
thousand men with him. The M.G. sent
orders for the militia who were
at Canton to move on to Mansfield, while
he prepared to march to
Huron. As he found the enemy were not
coming down the Lake, he
determined to move his force towards
Detroit as soon as possible.
The mode of supplying the troops at that
time was by contracts made
with the secretary of war & the
contractor for the country north of the
fortieth degree of north latitude was
Augustus Porter, father of the
senator from Michigan.85 He
had for partner & agent a man by the
name of Tupper. The army with Genl.
Wadsworth was not well
supplied with provisions, nor was the
force with Beall, except those I
had brought on. The first care of the
General was, therefore, to obtain a
supply. For this, requisitions were made
upon the contractor to supply
83. Not quite right: the letter
survives, dated "Canfield, August 22, 1812," Tappan
Papers, OHS. Tappan's response to the
sudden threat of invasion through northwestern
Ohio was typical of the urgent rush to
arms by the militia in most parts of Ohio in the late
summer of 1812.
84. Reasin Beall (1769-1843) had fought
against the Ohio Indians in the early 1790s and
moved in 1803 to New Lisbon where he had
held various public offices. He later served
as registrar of the land office at
Wooster, 1813-1824.
85. Augustus Porter was one of the early
surveyors of the Western Reserve.
Benjamin Tappan 149
rations at Cleveland, the Portage,
Canton, Wooster, Mansfield &
Huron at such times & in such
quantities as was calculated to be
necessary to supply the troops. The
times given to comply with the
requisition was agreed upon by the M.G.
& Mr. Tupper, & we were
assured by the latter that there should
be no failure on his part.
As some days must elapse before the
contractor was to deliver his
provisions & no movement could be
made untill that was done, I
was ordered by the Genl. to exercise the
men in the new system of
tactics, as I was the only officer under
his command who had any
knowledge of it, all the rest adhering
to Steuben. I went to work &,
with the aid of diagrams of the eighteen
manoevres which I had bor-
rowed of the widow of an English
officer, I was able to give the troops
considerable readiness in the drill.86
I must here observe that I knew
nothing of this but what I had gathered
from books. Colo. John Miller
& myself had for several years
studied the new system together &
knew more than those who knew nothing,
but I was far from being able
to teach others very accurately.87
The General had ordered a deposit of
provisions to be made at the
Portage, as it was not thought safe to
march to Huron or Sandusky on
the Lake shore, for it would be in the
power of the enemy to annoy, if
not capture, the force if they should be
on the look out, as was sup-
posed. The intention was to fall back to
the Portage & march from
there west to Lower Sandusky [i.e.,
Fremont], while the militia with
Beall marched to the same point thro'
Mansfield.88 I was ordered to
86. For 30 years military training in
the United States had been based on the drill
manuals of Baron von Steuben
(1730-1794), the Prussian officer who trained
Washington's Continental Army at Valley
Forge. On the eve of the War of 1812 the
regular army still used "the rules
& discipline of Baron Steuben," while "the new
officers advocated the introduction of
French tactics" (Thomas Worthington to Samuel
Huntington, December 31, 1811,
"Letters from the Samuel Huntington Correspondence,
1800-1812," Western Reserve
Historical Society Tracts, XCV [1915], 147-148). It is just
possible, however, that Tappan is
referring to the British system of light infantry tactics
worked out to contain the mad rush of
the massed French infantry, and introduced into
the British Army by Sir John Moore
(1761-1809) and used subsequently to good effect by
the Duke of Wellington. For these
maneuvers, see J. F. C. Fuller, Sir John Moore's
System of Training (London, 1924).
87. John Miller, Tappan's friend and
neighbor in Steubenville and an editor of the
Western Herald, was to serve with distinction as a field officer in the
Northwestern army
during the war, leading "the
brilliant sortie" during the siege of Fort Meigs in 1813. He
later emigrated to Missouri, where he
was elected Governor and served in Congress,
1837-1843, as a Democrat. In Washington
he shared lodgings with Tappan. Democratic
Review, VII, 555.
88. Fear of a flank attack on any
American troops marching along the Lake Shore
arose from Britain's undoubted, if
short-lived, naval control of Lake Erie. Cf. Conlin,
Simon Perkins, 82.
150 OHIO HISTORY
take a few men & go to the Portage
[in the present Summit County] &
select a good site for the troops to
encamp, &, after marking out the
ground, to go to Jefferson County &
collect & march out the second
draft amounting to over 300 men. In
obedience of this order, I went to
the Portage & chose a place for a
camp on the west side of the Cuyaho-
ga. I was here taken sick, but I
hastened to Steubenville & ordered out
the militia. I had sent to Pittsburg
for arms & camp equipage so that the
men were well supplied, but, when I got
them ready to march, I was
not able to go with them but was
obliged to take to my bed to which I
was confined three weeks.
While I lay sick the M.G. sent three
expresses, one after the other, to
hasten my return to camp, for as I had
written all his orders & was
mainly depended on in the business of
his office, the M.G. found it
difficult to get along without me. I
was also very anxious to get to the
camp &, as soon as I was able to
sit on horseback, I was helped on to
my horse & started, notwithstanding
the remonstrances of my physi-
cian who prophesyed that I should not
live to get to Canton. I rode
sixteen miles without stopping to
[East] Springfield [Jefferson Coun-
ty]. I was so weak when I dismounted
that I could not stand, but, being
in very good quarters, I recruited [my
strength] so as to proceed on my
journey the next day with increased
strength. By the time I reached
Camp Avery on the Huron river where the
whole force of the M.G.
was concentrated, I was well.
I found the camp somewhat disturbed by
a court martial which had
been ordered by the M.G. & was then
sitting upon Genl. Beall for
disobedience of orders. I was ordered
to conduct the tryal as judge
advocate. Beall was acquitted of the
charge exhibited against him, tho'
he would have been broke had such
charges been made against him as
the facts of the case would have
warranted.89
Two days before I arived at Camp Avery,
General Harrison who
89. Tappan was originally recalled in
order to take part in Reasin Beall's trial as a
witness and counsellor. Beall had failed
to follow his orders to co-operate with General
Simon Perkins in building blockhouses
along the road from Mansfield to Huron and to
march his troops forward to reinforce
Perkins in his more exposed position. After the
court's generous verdict, Beall
resigned. In April 1813 he ran against Perkins in a Con-
gressional election in which Perkins
refrained from revealing Beall's record even though
Perkins' own record was under attack.
Beall's political career led him a decade later to
join the Jacksonian Democrats, but in
the late 1830s he deserted to join the Whigs.
Tappan's revelation of Beall's war
record may therefore be politically motivated, as his
following comment on William Henry
Harrison undoubtedly is. Elijah Wadsworth to
Tappan, October 30, 1812, Tappan Papers,
OHS; Conlin, Simon Perkins, 81-85, 91-93.
Benjamin Tappan 151
commanded the N.W. army had left there
for Delaware.90 I was told
that he had formed an hollow square of
the troops, about 1500 men,
and made a speech to them in which he
had promised them that they
should eat their Christmas dinner in
Maiden [the strategic British fort
guarding Canada from invasion across the
Detroit River]. A few days
afterwards an express arrived from
General Harrison with a letter to
the M.G. which stated that there was a
large quantity, supposed to be
1500 or 2000 bushels, of corn standing
in the field at Maumee, and that
it was extremely desireable that it
should be saved for the use of our
army, & there was reason to fear, if
immediate measures were not
taken to save it, that the British &
Indians would appropriate the whole
to their own use. The letter concluded
with a request to the M.G. to
detach 500 men immediately to gather and
rescue the corn.
The M.G. immediately called the general
& field officers together &
laid General Harrison's letter before
us. They all advised the M.G. to
send the detachment forthwith. After the
superior officers had given
their opinions, the M.G. called on me
for my opinion. I observed that,
as Genl. Harrison had recently visited
Camp Avery, it was to be pre-
sumed that he was well acquainted with
the material in possession of
that wing of the army, that I presumed
while here he had called for &
taken with him full returns of our arms,
amunition, camp equipage &
provisions. The M.G. observed that such
returns were made out for
Genl. H. as it was expected he would
call for them, but he said nothing
about such matters & the returns
were not offered to him. He went
away from the right wing of the army
with as little knowledge of its
military means as he had before he came
there. I expressed some
surprise at this & produced the
returns & laid them before the council.
They proved that we had not the means of
issuing one day's rations to
the troops in camp; we had a plenty of
fresh beef, but no flour, a few
potatoes, no whiskey, & nothing of
the smaller parts of the ration. I
stated to the council that it was five
days' march for well-provided
troops to Maumee & that we could not
march 500 men there & give
them time to secure the corn without at
least fifteen days' provisions, &
that, as we had not one day's provisions
for 500 men, it was out of the
question attempting to comply with Genl.
H.'s order. Such was the
90. William Henry Harrison (1773-1841),
a Virginian who fought against the Ohio
Indians, settled near Cincinnati, served in the
Territorial government, and governed the
Indiana Territory, 1800-1812. After
commanding the Northwestern army during the war,
he served in Congress and as Minister to Colombia, and
ultimately ran successfully as
Whig candidate for President in 1840.
152 OHIO HISTORY |
|
unanimous opinion of the council & an express was sent to Genl. H. informing him of what, if he had paid any attention to his duty, he would have known before, the inability of the M.G. to execute the order. In truth, the right wing of the army was strong enough to have taken Malden if they had had provisions, but the contractor wholly neglected all the requisitions for the different depots & it was with the utmost exertion that that part of the army was kept from disbanding.91 In Dec. the M.G. gave up command of that wing of the army to General Perkins & [as a matter] of course I returned home with him. [Wadsworth resigned, on November 29, partly because the Beall deci- sion undermined his authority, and partly because he had indebted himself considerably in equipping the militia. Perkins led his command in Harrison's counter-offensive of January 1813, which ended in deba- cle and disappointment; disgusted with the government's handling of
91. Tappan expressed this view at the time in a letter to U.S. Senator Thomas Worth- ington, November 28, 1812, Tappan Papers OHS. It would seem fairer to say that Harrison should have recognized the difficulties of supply, the lateness of the season and the rawness of his troops, and so avoided overly optimistic promises that he could retrieve the situation on the Detroit frontier by Christmas, 1812. Dorothy B. Goebel, William Henry Harrison (Indianapolis, 1926), 144-154. |
Benjamin Tappan
153
the war, Perkins resigned in February.92
Tappan shared this disillu-
sionment and expressed his views
forcefully in a letter to Congressman
Jeremiah Morrow which appears ultimately
to have reached the Sec-
retary of War. Fundamental weaknesses,
Tappan said, existed in the
army's supply system; because the
commissariat was not under martial
law, the various suppliers could with
impunity default on any contract
which appeared likely to make a loss;
and so the army found itself
paralysed at critical moments. Until
changes were made, he was unwil-
ling to enlist again, even at the head
of a regiment.93 Thus Tappan
stood aside through the rest of the war,
even when Ohio was invaded
once more by the British and Indians in
July 1813. Instead he entered
into dispute with the general government
over requisitions and the
payment of the expenses he had incurred
on his own account, most of
which were finally settled in 1816.]
Judge Tappan, 1816-1823
Nothing occurred out of the usual course
with me untill the spring of
1815 [1816], when I heard early in March
that the assembly had elected
me President of the common Pleas in the
fifth circuit, which was soon
confirmed by receiving a commission. I
was engaged in a very lucrative
practice at this time & did not want
the office. I had been elected
without my knowing that I was thought of
as a candidate.94 Under
these circumstances I hessitated much as
to accepting the office & it
was some weeks before I concluded to
accept it. I served in this office
seven years & I can truly affirm
that I never gave an opinion in a cause
unless I believed that I had no
partiallity for any of the parties. [This
protestation probably derives from the
impeachment proceedings com-
menced against Tappan in the General
Assembly of 1817-1818, when
the various charges of improper judicial
behavior had been dismissed
by the House.]95
When my time was near expiring, I was at
Columbus attending to my
92. Conlin, Simon Perkins, 85-90.
93. Tappan to Morrow, January 13, 1813,
The Papers of James Monroe, New York
Public Library. Jeremiah Morrow
(1771-1852) came from Pennsylvania in 1795 and soon
became the leading man of Warren County.
He served in the territorial legislature and
constitutional convention, and was
Ohio's sole congressman, 1803-1813. In 1813 he was
elected to the U.S. Senate, and was
Governor of Ohio, 1822-1826.
94. Tappan's memory fails him here, for
he not only mistakes the year, he also forgets
that he had been informed previously
that the number of judicial circuits was going to be
increased and that he had been asked if
he would accept ajudgeship. Robert Patterson to
Tappan, January 10, 1816, Tappan Papers,
LC.
95. See the letters of September
1817-January 1818, ibid.
154 OHIO HISTORY
duty as canal commissioner, to which
office I had been appointed in
January 1821 [1822]. [Jeremiah H.]
Hallock was a representative from
Jefferson County & wanted to be
President of the common Pleas. So to
give him a chance & prevent my being
a candidate, a few days before
the election was to come on he started
the notion of running me for a
judge of the Supreme Court against
Pease. I was opposed to this, for I
did not think Hallock & his friends
could be depended upon & it would
fail. But Hallock got up a meeting of my
friends the evening before the
election in which he and his
Presbyterian friends pledged themselves to
vote for me for judge of the supreme
court &, as they with my friends
for that office numbered 60, which was
more than a majority of the
whole, my friends believed that my
election to the supreme court was
safe. They told me of this agreement
& that they had agreed to make
Hallock President. I told them that they
were deceived, that I could not
get but 36 votes out of 108 against
Pease, for that neither Hallock or his
friends would vote for me. Those I
talked with were hurt at my want of
confidence in their allies, but I told
them to go on their own way, that I
had no reluctance at returning to the
bar. It turned out as I had ex-
pected. I had 36 votes on the first
ballot & Pease was elected on the
second, & Hallock was elected
President without opposition.96
When I was appointed judge, J.C. Wright
was the prosecuting Attor-
ney. In 1816 he told me that he should
resign at the next court. But, to
go back, when I concluded to accept the
office of Pres of the C.P., I
considered into whose hands I should put
my business. Hallock then
resided at Canton & I proposed to
him to remove to Steubenville &
take my office & finish the business
I was engaged in, he to have all the
fees which had not been paid in advance,
which was four fifths of the
whole, & to have the use of my
library gratuitiously. Hallock very
96. Tappan was more disconcerted by his
defeat than he allows, for he immediately tried
to secure an appointment as United
States District Attorney, but in vain. There were,
indeed, good reasons why he failed to
secure federal office, promotion to the Ohio
Supreme Court, and even re-election. He
had been in bitter controversy with his
Steubenville neighbor (and another
brother-in-law), John M. Goodenow, and had been
found guilty of slandering Goodenow.
When the local paper published this news, Tappan
fell out with its editor, his former
protege, James Wilson; and then suspected that Wilson
"declined an election to the
legislature, & that Mr. H was pushed in, for the purpose of
ousting him" as judge. Tappan was,
in fact, losing popularity and his reputation was in
decline, though no less an authority
than Charles Hammond still thought him one of the
three most capable lawyers in Ohio.
James Wilson to E. A. Brown, December 7, 1822,
Tappan to E. A. Brown, January 29, 1823,
The Papers of Ethan Allen Brown, OHS.
Hammond to J. C. Wright, December 15,
1822, January 19, 1823, The Papers of Charles
Hammond, OHS. Lewis Tappan to Tappan,
January 29, February 4, 20, 1823, Tappan
Papers, LC.
Benjamin Tappan 155
gladly accepted my offer &, when
the office of prosecutor was resigned
by Mr. Wright, I had Hallock appointed
in his place.97
When I first went on to the bench, I
took minutes of my decisions &
kept them so that I need not, in the
hurry of business, decide matters of
practice different ways. These minutes
were sometimes tollerable full
reports of the cases & after a
while the bar desired that I should publish
them. A subscription was opened &,
enough subscribers appearing to
nearly pay the expense, I published
"Tappans reports" which was well
received by the profession generally.98
In the law which authorised an
examination as to the practicabillity
of connecting the Lake with the Ohio by
a navigable canal, I was the
first named Commissioner with
[Jeremiah] Morrow, [Ebenezer] Buc-
kingham [, Jr.], [Thomas] Worthington,
[Ethan Allan] Brown, [Alfred]
Kelly & [Isaac] Miner.99 At
the first meeting of the commissioners in
May 1821 [1822], Worthington, as soon
as we met, moved that we
should proceed to elect a chairman. I
seconded the motion. We bal-
loted & he had three votes (his
own, Buckingham & Morrow), I had
two (Kelly & Miner), and I voted
for Miner. Brown was absent. Upon
this Buckingham declared Worthington
elected & he took the chair,
but after holding it a year he was
compelled to resign & I was chosen to
97. His role in the appointment of
Hallock as prosecutor was the basis of the most
substantial charge brought against
Tappan in the impeachment proceedings of 1817-1818.
No doubt this made Hallock's subsequent
lack of gratitude doubly annoying, and the
personal and political enmity between
the two men culminated when Tappan himself
brought complaints against Judge Hallock
before the legislature of 1830. Hallock, how-
ever, continued as judge until 1836,
preserving a high reputation for uprightness-and for
having fewer decisions reversed in the
higher courts than any contemporary.
98. This volume, entitled Reports of
Cases Decided In The Courts of Common Pleas
of the Fifth Circuit of Ohio, provided the first record of decisions in Ohio courts.
Cases in
the state Supreme Court were not
reported before 1823, the year when sessions en bane
were inaugurated. Even brother Lewis
approved Benjamin's decisions, except for his
ruling that fornication between a
married man and an unmarried woman is no adultery,
since adultery occurs only if the woman
is married. Lewis Tappan to Tappan, October
30, 1818, Tappan Papers, LC.
99. Ebenezer Buckingham, Jr., was a
wealthy merchant and salt manufacturer from
Putnam, near Zanesville. Thomas
Worthington (1769-1827), a Virginian known as "the
father of Ohio statehood," had
already served in the constitutional convention, as U.S.
Senator (1803-1807 and 1810-1814) and
Governor of Ohio (1814-1818), and now rep-
resented Ross County in the General
Assembly. Alfred Kelley (1789-1859), a New En-
glander who settled in Cleveland in
1810, was an active lawyer and politician who had
served in the legislature since 1814. He
was to be one of the two "acting commissioners"
who actually directed the building of
the main canals. Transferring after 1836 to the canal
fund, he was responsible for saving the
state's finances and, as a leading Whig politician
from Columbus, initiated important financial
legislation in the mid-1840s. Isaac Minor
was a lawyer and politician from Madison
County. For Morrow and Brown, see notes 93
and 78.
156 OHIO HISTORY
succeed him, for it was found that he
could not draw up a report to the
assembly which any of us were willing to
sign.
After the first meeting of the Canal
Commissioners, I went with my
wife to Hartford to have a cancer
removed with which she was af-
fected. It was done at Doctr. Todd's by
Doctr. Cogswell with some
hope of success & it appeared to do
well for some months, but after our
return home the disease appeared again
& in the summer of 1822 ended
her life. She was a woman of very
uncommon mind & of a form the
most perfect.100
Shortly after her decease I went with
Judge Geddes101 on an explor-
ing tour by the heads of Black river,
Chippewa lake, the Portage &
Congress pond, and from there thro'
Randolph & Ravenna to the
Cuyahoga in Mantua. Our object was to
ascertain the difference of
level between the Black river summit
& the others east of it, & to
determine whether a canal could be made
by the way of the Cuyahoga
& little Beaver between Lake Erie
& the Ohio river. We found that it
was unpracticable to bring the canal
into the Ohio river above the
mouth of Muskingum. [On the other hand,
they had discovered that it
was feasible to build a canal over the
height of land between the
Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas valleys, and
this was ultimately the route
that was selected for the main canal.]
From this time untill the board of
Canal Commissioners were superceded by
the board of public
works,l02 I spent part of
every winter at Columbus. In June 1823 I
married again, Mrs. Frazer of Columbus.103
[Here the manuscript breaks off
abruptly-but appropriately. For the
taking of a new wife symbolized a shift
in the character of Tappan's
career. By 1823 he was devoted to the
cause of economic improve-
ment, and especially to the great canal
project that was to alter the
character of his Ohio, removing it ever
further from the wilderness and
frontier conditions he had confronted
for a quarter of a century. In 1824
he sided with the Jacksonians in the
contest for the Presidency, and
100. His correspondence shows his wife's
long illness to have been an agonizing
experience for Tappan, and after her
death he was described as "heartsmitten." Lewis
Tappan to Tappan, September 13, 1822,
Tappan Papers, LC.
101. James Geddes, a senior engineer on
the staff of New York's Erie Canal, was
engaged by Ohio in 1822 to give
professional aid in surveying possible canal routes.
Tappan's survey notes and maps survive,
OHS.
102. On the completion of the main canal
projects in 1833, Tappan favored the re-
placement of the Canal Commissioners by
a more broadly based Board of Public Works,
but the reorganization was not in fact
carried out until 1836.
103. Sadly, his second wife was to die
in 1840 shortly after this draft was written.
Benjamin Tappan 157
thereafter increasingly threw himself
into a party conflict which he saw
in terms of the ideological struggles of
his younger years. Yet by the
mid-1830s it appeared as though this
phase too was completed. The
main canals were built; he had failed to
secure federal office; and
repeated ill-health seemed to doom him
to retirement and armchair
concentration on his geological
interests. But, in fact, great things lay
ahead, even at the age of sixty-five. In
the end he achieved a political
position of such eminence that a
national magazine invited him to
prepare an autobiographical sketch for
the edification of its readers-
and, as it happened, of posterity. For,
to borrow a phrase from his
admiring brother-in-law, later
generations could see in Tappan's many-
sided career "an evidence of the
enlarged genius and various capacity of
the American Character," as called
forth by the social and cultural
conditions of the Early Republic.]104
104. William Edwards to Tappan, December
26, 1833, Tappan Papers, LC.
edited by
DONALD J. RATCLIFFE
The Autobiography of
Benjamin Tappan
There are few more fascinating
characters in the early history of
Ohio than Benjamin Tappan. A sharp and
audacious man, "always
pungent and always ready," he was
formidable in argument, and few
people who openly disagreed with him
ever forgot his cutting sarcastic
wit. Besides tending to talk through
his nose "in a whining, sing-song
sort of style," he was also
slightly cross-eyed, which gave him a
somewhat malevolent look. He made no
attempt to conceal this defect,
not even when a national magazine
published an engraving of his por-
trait in 1840; he insisted only that
his sharp black eyes be portrayed
correctly-the left eye turning in, not
the right-and that he not be
made to look a fool. No one ever
accused this forthright, shrewd,
caustically witty man of that.1
The eldest of six brothers, Tappan has
been overshadowed histori-
cally by the two youngest, Arthur and
Lewis, the famous abolitionists.2
Although he himself detested slavery
and was unusually sympathetic to
freed Negroes, Benjamin disapproved
profoundly of the strident agita-
tion of this political sensitive issue
by "modern" abolitionists like his
brothers; and, in a fascinating
correspondence he maintained with
Lewis for over forty years, he
forcefully revealed the philosophical
differences that divided him from these
younger evangelical zealots.
Benjamin Tappan was essentially a man
of the Enlightenment, a deist
Mr. Ratcliffe is Lecturer in Modern
History at the University of Durham, Durham,
England.
1. This brief account of Tappan is based
on a reading of the Papers of Benjamin
Tappan, in The Ohio Historical Society
(OHS) and the Library of Congress (LC). All
manuscripts cited hereafter, unless
otherwise stated, are drawn from these collections. A
good brief account of Tappan by Francis
P. Weisenburger is in Allen Johnson and Dumas
Malone, eds., Dictionary ofAmerican
Biography (New York, 1928-1936), XVIII, 300-301.
The characterizations are taken from
Thomas Ewing to A. H. Goodman, May 26, 1868,
The Papers of Charles E. Rice, OHS; and
from Henry Howe, Historical Collections of
Ohio, 3 vols. (Columbus, 1889-91), I, 971-2, II, 698.
2. See especially Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis
Tappan and the Evangelical War
Against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969).