ANDREW R. L. CAYTON
The Failure of Michael Baldwin: A
Case Study in the Origins of Middle-
Class Culture on the Trans-
Appalachian Frontier
In the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, it became
fashionable to publish massive volumes
detailing the histories of in-
dividual Midwestern counties. Very
often, these books were the
products of the cooperative efforts of
several county residents who
employed a topical rather than a
chronological approach to their
subject. With the obvious goal of
boosting local pride, the authors
traced the evolution of noteworthy
economic, social, and political in-
stitutions. Often, they would also
devote a substantial portion of their
histories to short sketches of the
lives of prominent local citizens.
Whatever the reason these
mini-biographies were originally writ-
ten, they now hold our interest as
points of entry into the character
and culture of nineteenth century
America. In generally attributing
the success and prominence of some men
to their industry, piety,
community service and, especially, to
their self-discipline, the
sketches implicitly advocated the idea
that success followed from
adherence to well-known standards of
behavior and belief. As such,
these biographies exemplify the
hegemony exercised by what David
Brion Davis has called the
"'official' middle-class culture" of Victo-
rian America. They affirmed the
importance of "respectable" be-
havior and belief in achieving fame and
fortune in an increasingly
complex world. The implication was that
people who were materially
and professionally unsuccessful would
find the source of their failings
within their private characters.
Indeed, the county histories some-
times explicitly defined people who
defied or deviated from accept-
able norms as, in Davis' words,
"aliens, outsiders, and degener-
ates."1
Andrew R. L. Cayton is Assistant
Professor of History at Ball State University.
1. David Brion Davis, ed., Antebellum
American Culture (Lexington, Mass., 1979),
xxiii.
The Failure of Michael Baldwin 35
This paper seeks to explore the origins
of that process of exclusion
through the life of Michael Baldwin, an
early settler of Ohio whom
the history of Ross County refers to as
"Poor, brilliant, boisterous,
drunken, rollicking Mike!"
According to the authors, Baldwin was
the classic example of a good boy gone
bad; his story was one of tre-
mendous potential dissipated in a career
of passion and drunkenness.
What had happened to Baldwin seemed
clear to people in the late
1800s: he had simply lost control of
himself and surrendered to the
allurements of depravity. Senator Thomas
Worthington had estab-
lished the dominant interpretation of
Baldwin's life in 1810 when he
described it as "a melancholy
instance of the depravity of human na-
ture."2 To some extent,
both the Senator and the authors of the
county history were right. Baldwin's
problems were partly a product
of his personal quirks and faults; under
different circumstances, he
would, perhaps, have been just as
unsuccessful. But Baldwin's rapid
decline from a position of prominence in
the Ohio statehood move-
ment was neither as simple nor as
idiosyncratic as the Ross county
history would have us believe.
Michael Baldwin was no more
"representative" of a particular peri-
od of American history than any of his
contemporaries. But he did
have much in common with many other
people in Jeffersonian Ameri-
ca. He was young, white, Protestant,
ambitious, and highly mobile.
Born in New England and blessed with a
good education, Baldwin
migrated to the Ohio frontier in his
eagerness to obtain fame and for-
tune. In Ohio, he became an important
lawyer and public figure,
serving in the state constitutional
convention and as the first speaker
of the Ohio House of Representatives.
Like many other young men in
the early American republic, Baldwin
possessed what Alexis de
Tocqueville called "a presumptuous
confidence in his strength."3 Be-
neath this bumptious exuberance,
however, lay a profound sense of
insecurity about himself and his
position in society. While the life of
Michael Baldwin may not have been
typical, it dramatically
illustrates the profound sense of unease
that characterized the citi-
zens of the early American republic,
people lost on the cultural fron-
tier that separated the traditional,
aristocratic world of colonial
America from the middle class society of
the nineteenth century.4
2. "Michael Baldwin," History
of Ross and Highland Counties (Cleveland, 1880),
73-74; Thomas Worthington, Diary, March
9, 1810, The Thomas Worthington Papers,
The Library of Congress (LC).
3. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed., J. P.
Mayer (New York, 1969), 507.
4. See Gordon S. Wood, ed., The
Rising Glory of America (New York, 1971) for a
36 OHIO HISTORY
Michael Baldwin's early history is
difficult to trace. He was proba-
bly born in the early 1770s, but the
exact date is not known. His fa-
ther, a Connecticut blacksmith,
invested much of his earnings in his
children's educations. When the father
died in 1787, Baldwin's half-
brother, Abraham, who had migrated to
Georgia in the early 1780s
and who would serve that state in the
Constitutional Convention, the
House of Representatives, and the
United States Senate, assumed fi-
nancial responsibility for Michael's
education. By the late 1790s,
Baldwin, who was probably in his
mid-twenties, had graduated
from Yale and received a license to
practice law in Pennsylvania.
In 1799, Baldwin, like countless other
young men, turned his atten-
tion to the opportunities for financial
and social advancement availa-
ble in the Northwest Territory. He came
to Chillicothe in the Scioto
River Valley with letters of
introduction, offering "the fullest assur-
ance of his qualifications, moral, and
good dispositions" to Nathaniel
Massie and Thomas Worthington.5 Within
two years, Baldwin had
become one of the more prominent
citizens of Chillicothe. To some
extent, his success was a reflection of
his talents. But it was also the
result of the patronage of Massie and
Worthington.
Massie was easily the preeminent figure
in the early settlement of
the Scioto Valley. A Virginia born
surveyor, Massie laid claim in the
early 1790s to a great deal of land in
the Virginia Military District, a
region of the Old Northwest Territory
set aside by Congress to ena-
ble Virginia to pay its debts to
veterans of the American Revolution.
Massie acquired the title to thousands
of acres of land by locating
claims for speculators (who had
purchased the soldiers' land war-
rants) at the usual fee of one-fifth of
the tract. Between 1791 and 1801,
he surveyed 708 tracts containing
750,000 acres. Eventually, seventy-
five men or partnerships, most of whom
were somehow connected
with Massie, divided the 3,900,000
acres in the Virginia Military Dis-
trict. In time, Massie's surveying
skills led to a concentration of eco-
nomic power in his hands which, in
turn, made him a figure to be
reckoned with in the social and
political evolution of the area that
became south-central Ohio.6
discussion of the transformation of
American society between 1760 and 1820.
5. J. Brown, Philadelphia, to
Worthington, March 19, 1799, The Thomas Wor-
thington Papers, The Ohio Historical Society (OHS), Box
1, Folder 3. See also, J.
Brown, Philadelphia, to Nathaniel
Massie, March 19, 1799, The Nathaniel Massie Pa-
pers, The Ohio Historical Society, Box
1, Folder 7; Dumas Malone, "Abraham Bald-
win," The Dictionary of American
Biography, ed., Allen Johnson (10 vols., New York,
1957), I: 530-31; and History of Ross
and Highland Counties, 73-74.
6. See David Massie, Nathaniel Massie
(Cincinnati, 1896), and William Hutchin-
son, The Bounty Lands of the American
Revolution in Ohio (New York, 1979), esp. 197.
The Failure of Michael Baldwin 37
Among Massie's proteges was a fellow
Virginian named Thomas
Worthington. Born in 1773, Worthington
was the youngest son of a
moderately wealthy Shenandoah Valley
planter. In the mid-1790s,
Worthington became interested in land
speculation in the Northwest
Territory and travelled to the Scioto
Valley. By 1797, Massie and
Worthington were business acquaintances
and friends. When the lat-
ter moved his family to Massie's new
settlement at Chillicothe in
1798, he arrived with an appointment as
a major in the militia and as a
judge in the court of common pleas.
Worthington eventually became
the owner of 18,273 acres, as well as a
United States Senator and a
Governor of Ohio. A man of intelligence and
talent, Worthington also
possessed from the beginning advantages
unavailable to the average
immigrant to Ohio. And chief among them
was the patronage of the
most powerful man in the region,
Nathaniel Massie.7
Both Massie and Worthington considered
themselves to be rising
gentlemen of importance, men of obvious
distinction and growing
power. And they intended to govern and
develop their new region
through a personal system of patronage
among trusted, responsible
friends. They welcomed Michael Baldwin
with his letters of intro-
duction from gentlemen in the East as a
man of similar feelings and in-
terests. But they were less concerned
with Baldwin's pedigree or his
social status than they were with his
talents and character. In this
sense, they differed in a small but
significant way from the Federalist
hierarchy that governed the Northwest
Territory.
The men who were in charge of the
territorial government in the
1790s were attempting to establish a
traditional system of deference
and patronage on the frontier. Like
Massie and Worthington, Gover-
nor Arthur St. Clair, Judge Rufus
Putnam, and Secretary Winthrop
Sargent were desirous of fame. But like
other men of the Federalist
persuasion they did not believe in
positions of distinction being
awarded solely on the basis of merit.
Rather, these generally older
men clung to the more traditional
notion (learned in pre-
Revolutionary America and reinforced by
military service during the
war for independence) that political
office should be held by men of
established social standing. Under the
Northwest Ordinance of
1787, therefore, federal officials
appointed all territorial officials, in-
cluding the three judges of the territorial
court. President George
Washington, for example, rejected Israel
Ludlow for the position of
Surveyor-General in 1796 not because he
lacked the ability, but be-
cause he did not have the
"celebrity of character" and was "of too
7. See Alfred B. Sears, Thomas
Worthington (Columbus, Ohio, 1958), esp. 3-22.
38 OHIO HISTORY
short standing in the community to fill
an office of so much impor-
tance." To allow unknown men to
hold offices of consequence was to
invite anarchy and chaos: It was to
reject a stable social order for
confusion and discord.8
Where Putnam and St. Clair were
essentially trying to reproduce a
deferential social structure based on
property amid the confusion of
frontier life, Massie and Worthington
embraced an ideology that ad-
vocated the development of society, the
allocation of status, and the
existence of normal social
relationships on the basis of merit. Position
was to be acquired by men of talent and
moral sense, not through
birth or wealth. The revolutionary
implications of this belief notwith-
standing, however, the Chillicothe
gentry saw themselves as a natu-
ral aristocracy. In other words, they
believed that their ability and
merit entitled them to prominent
positions and to the right to recog-
nize and reward other men of talents.
This belief was at the bottom of the
conflict between the Federal-
ist and the Chillicothe gentries, and
was one of the basic concerns of
the latter in their efforts to replace
the territorial government with
that of an independent state. Almost
all of the advocates of state-
hood for Ohio agreed that merit rather
than social standing should
be the primary factor in determining
political position. But they did
not agree on how to determine who was
meritorious or what, in fact,
was meritorious. Thus, even as they
rejected Federalist notions of so-
cial organization, the future
Jeffersonian-Republican gentry enjoyed
no consensus about the nature of what they
were creating.9
It was in this atmosphere that Michael
Baldwin was admitted to
the bar in 1799. Almost immediately, he
built a strong practice and
became a strong advocate of statehood
and a fervent critic of Gover-
nor St.
Clair. By early 1801, Baldwin was accompanying Worthington
8. George Washington, Mount Vernon, to
Timothy Pickering, July 25, 1796, The
Writings of George Washington, ed., John C. Fitzpatrick (37 vols., Washington, D.C.,
1931-1940), 35: 167. See also, David
Hackett Fischer, The Revolution in American Con-
servatism (New York, 1965); Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in
Dissent (Ithaca, New
York, 1970); Charles Royster, A
Revolutionary People at War (Chapel Hill, 1979); and
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the
American Republic (Chapel Hill, 1969), esp.
519-64. On the ideology of the
territorial hierarchy, see Andrew R. L. Cayton, "'A
Quiet Independence': The Western Vision
of the Ohio Company," Ohio History, 88
(1981), 5-32; and Cayton, "The
Contours of Power in a Frontier Town: Marietta (Ohio),
1788-1803," Journal of the Early
Republic 6 (1986), forthcoming.
9. See Lance Banning, The
Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology
(Ithaca, 1978), and Richard E. Ellis, The
Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the
Young Republic (New York, 1971).
The Failure of Michael Baldwin 39
to Washington to press Congress for
statehood. Michael's acceptance
into the circle of the gentry was
important to him. It gave him confi-
dence and validated his ambition.
But Baldwin also received validation
from the lower as well as the
upper levels of social structure. And it
was this dual popularity and
dual responsibility that eventually
destroyed his ambitions. Baldwin
was like a captain torn between two
courses to port. By 1801, he was
firmly opposed to deference and
patronage, but he was also torn be-
tween the increasingly divergent views
of the Chillicothe gentry and
Chillicothe populace as to the proper
form of social relationships. He
could downplay this conflict only so
long; eventually, he would have
to choose between them. Unfortunately
for Baldwin's career, he
chose the wrong side.
In the early 1800s, Baldwin was very
popular with a segment of
Chillicothe's population known as the
"Bloodhounds." Historians
have described them as a "band of
cursing, quarreling, fighting row-
dies" who were "obnoxious to
the law-abiding element of
Chillicothe." Harmon Blennerhasset,
the Irish emigre involved in
the Burr Conspiracy, denounced them as
"the rabble" among
whom Baldwin was "a giant of
influence." These pejorative labels re-
veal more about the nature of the
emerging culture of Ohio than they
do about the group itself; while there
is little concrete information
about the "Bloodhounds," it is
likely that they were mainly artisans
and transient laborers. Baldwin had a
hard-core of approximately
600 supporters in elections, almost all
of them in Chillicothe.10
In any case, Baldwin was clearly the
leader of the group, a position
he earned partly through intellectual
ability, but largely through
excelling at the Bloodhounds' favorite
activities-drinking, gam-
bling, and defying anything that smacked
of authority. The young
lawyer's favorite game was "vingt
et un," which he played with regu-
larity. And his excessive drinking often
got him into trouble with
tavern-keepers. In June, 1804, William
Keys sued Baldwin for debts
totaling over twenty-five pounds
accumulated in the process of enter-
taining.
Baldwin had a very high opinion of
himself. Refusing to defer to
anyone, he often found himself jailed
for contempt of court, and just
as often his Bloodhounds quickly set him
free. Despite his successful
legal practice, he was usually in debt,
a situation that he treated with
a carelessness shocking to modern
writers. On at least two occasions
10. Sears, Thomas Worthington, 68,
78; Harmon Blennerhasset, December 7, 1807,
quoted in Ross and Highland Counties,
73.
40 OHIO HISTORY
when his brothers lent Michael money to
pay his debts, he hired a
black man to carry the bag of specie,
and went calling upon his cred-
itors. Each man was allowed to keep
whatever he could garner in one
grab and, whatever the amount of the
debt, Baldwin considered it
paid.11
The fact that subsequent historians have
found such behavior ei-
ther amusing or anti-social testifies
only to the triumph of a different
set of values, a different cultural
context, than the kind held by
Michael Baldwin. By the standards of the
late nineteenth century,
his behavior may have been eccentric;
but in the earlier part of the
century he was acting in a relatively
acceptable fashion. Baldwin saw
himself as part of a community. In the
traditional society of the eight-
eenth century, drinking, gambling, and
participation in extra-legal
crowd activities were norms rather than
anomalies.12
As many historians have pointed out, the
most important function
of traditional crowd activity was the
ritualistic affirmation (and en-
forcement) of social and ideological
standards. Men in the eight-
eenth century did not conceive of the
world in pluralistic terms; they
put a premium on consensus and communal
harmony and treated
those who threatened that consensus as
deviants. The crowds that
mobbed British officials and
sympathizers before and during the
American Revolution, as well as those
which attacked people well
into the nineteenth century, were doing
little more than enforcing the
norms of their community by publicly
labeling those who deviated
from them. With the acceptance of some
degree of disagreement as
normal, Americans would develop
political parties, a wide-ranging le-
gal system, and other institutions to
mediate the inevitable differ-
ences among people.13
In this sense, Baldwin was a pre-modern
figure. His cavalier han-
dling of his debts, his contempt for
courts and jails, suggests the ac-
tions of a man seeking to integrate
himself into a traditional world.
Baldwin put a greater emphasis upon his
standing in the opinion of
11. Ross and Highland Counties, 73, 74.
12. The best analysis of a traditional
society in America is Rhys Isaac, The Transfor-
mation of Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1982). See also Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern
Honor:
Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York, 1982), and E. P. Thompson, "Patri-
cian Society, Pleibian Culture," Journal
of Social History, 7 (1974), 382-405.
13. See E. P. Thompson, "The Moral
Economy of the English Crowd," Past and
Present, 51 (1971), 71-136; Gordon S. Wood, "A Note on the
Mobs in the American
Revolution," William and Mary
Quarterly, 3d Ser. 23 (1966), 635-42; Paul Gilje, "The
Baltimore Riots of 1812 and the
Breakdown of the Anglo-American Mob Tradition,"
Journal of Social History, 13 (1980), 547-64; and Peter Shaw, American Patriots
and the
Rituals of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1981).
The Failure of Michael Baldwin 41
the Bloodhounds than he did upon the law
or its institutions. An
unrestrained man who loved to drink and
talk, he sought to prove
himself worthy of his friends' respect
by gambling, drinking, and en-
tertaining. He enjoyed being a public
man, concerned more with the
impact he had on society than with the
accumulation of money or a
steady rise to political prominence.
Never one to restrain himself or to
delay gratification, Baldwin was simply
following social cues that
were themselves under attack in the
early American republic.
Still, Michael was not entirely of the
eighteenth century. In the
spirit of the American Revolution, he
entirely rejected deference and
aristocracy. He attacked St. Clair as an
arbitrary tyrant with the ven-
om that can only be directed at someone
who has become more sym-
bol than person. He advocated almost
complete democracy. In 1802,
Baldwin announced his political creed as
the belief
that all power flows from the people . .
. that the people are fully competent
to govern themselves; that they are the
best and only proper judges of their
own interests and their own concerns;
that in forming governments and con-
stitutions, the people ought to part
with as little power as possible.
Baldwin always advocated "frequent
elections; equal rights to all
men; protection to the poor from the
avarice and oppression of the
rich-to the weak from the grasp of the
might." He vehemently op-
posed slavery, believing that the
existence of the institution in Ohio
would create an unequal distribution of
property and bring individ-
ual labor into contempt. In short,
Baldwin and his Bloodhounds
stood for a social as well as a
political democracy. They were anti-
institutional in all respects and
advocated in their behavior the right
to assert themselves to degree that
bordered on anarchy. In simplest
terms, they believed they had the right
to do as they saw fit.14
Defiant and ambitious, Baldwin pursued
fame by assuming the
leadership of a group with
non-traditional ends but very traditional
means. By December, 1801, when the
territorial legislature met in
Chillicothe, Baldwin and his friends
were thoroughly disgusted
with Governor St. Clair's opposition to
statehood and what they per-
ceived as his tyrannical condescension.
The Bloodhounds had no
doubt that they stood in relation to St.
Clair precisely as the Ameri-
can patriots had stood to King George.
And they proposed to deal
with St. Clair in an immediate and
time-honored fashion. They
14. Baldwin to the Electors of the
County of Ross, Scioto Gazette, August 28, 1802,
III, 119, p. 2, c. 1.
42 OHIO HISTORY
would label and expel a man who refused
to accede to the wishes of
the community.
On Christmas eve, 1801, a crowd gathered
outside the Chillicothe
tavern where St. Clair and his
supporters were staying. Led by Bald-
win, the group prepared to burn the
governor in effigy and ominously
heated a barrel of tar. The implication
in an era in which tarring and
feathering was a common reward for the
target of a mob was clear.
Raucous and unruly, the heavily drinking
Bloodhounds were taking
matters into their own hands. But they
were never able to accom-
plish their goals.
They were stopped not by St. Clair but
by Thomas Worthington,
the leader of the opposition to the
governor. Worthington rushed to
the governor's tavern to prevent
"evil consequences," confiding to a
friend on the way that Baldwin had
promised him there would be
no riot. But Worthington did not trust
his young ally. When the two
men met in the night before the tavern,
they argued violently. Ac-
cording to a witness, Worthington
angrily told Baldwin that if he
tried to enter the governor's lodgings
he would "prevent it at the ris-
que of his life, and would go and fetch
his weapon, and if said Bald-
win went there, he would kill him the
first person."15 The threat
worked. Baldwin warned Worthington not
to threaten him, but
promised that there would be no attack
upon St. Clair.
The crowd broke up, only to reassemble
on Christmas evening.
This time some of the participants,
including Baldwin, broke into the
tavern defiantly "caling for
liquor-saying it was a Tavern and they
had an equal right to that room with any
others." Baldwin's chal-
lenge to the territorial hierarchy was
not subtle. In the ensuing scuf-
fle, a knife was drawn and guns were
loaded. But Worthington again
prevented an explosion, arriving with a
justice of the peace in tow.
Baldwin and his friends withdrew after
an exchange of threats.16
These incidents were not simply some
episodes of frontier violence or
rowdiness; rather, they were symptomatic
of the profound confusion
in the Ohio Country over the nature of
social relationships and politi-
cal processes. In the absence of
legitimate (meaning widely accepted)
authority, all persons or groups were
left to assume that role them-
selves.
Worthington and his allies refused to
cooperate in St. Clair's futile
15. Worthington quoted by Sheriff McLene
in "Depositions," Scioto Gazette, Janu-
ary 2, 1802, II, p. 3, c. 3.
16. Arthur St. Clair, Chillicothe, to
Paul Fearing, January 15, 1802, The Samuel
Prescott Hildreth Papers, The Dawes
Memorial Library, Marietta College.
The Failure of Michael Baldwin 43
attempts to prosecute Baldwin for his
participation in the "several un-
lawful and riotous assemblies."17 And
the two former allies contin-
ued to work together for the removal of
St. Clair; they travelled to
Washington together and achieved the
passage of a congressional act
enabling Ohio to become a state in the
spring of 1802. But Worthing-
ton and Baldwin were no longer friends.
In April, Michael tried to
conciliate Worthington by promising to
forget the "little sparring" be-
tween them. Yet, in the same letter, the
young lawyer announced his
intention "to stand on my own
legs" by running as a candidate for
the Ohio constitutional convention.18
Baldwin would be polite, but
he would not allow Worthington to
determine his role in the new
state.
The people of Ross County chose Baldwin
as one of their five dele-
gates to the convention, and Michael
played an important role in writ-
ing the new constitution. In the
January, 1803, state elections, he ran
for the Ohio House of Representatives.
But his campaign received no
support from Worthington or his allies.
Gubernatorial candidate Ed-
ward Tiffin declared Baldwin to be
"like the wind, and beats round
to every point of the compass in as
short a period." He was "too bad
to talk about; he publickly has said he
will use means to accomplish
his purposes foul as well as fair-he is
an infamous young man."19
What Tiffin and Worthington objected to
most about Baldwin was
his behavior. Michael had all too
clearly hitched the wagon of his
ambition to the Bloodhounds rather than
the gentry. He practiced
"violence in politicks";20
he had no patience, no respect for institu-
tions and procedures. Baldwin was, in
short, too spontaneous, too re-
sponsive to the wishes of the people,
beating around to answer their
every whim. His behavior was demagogic;
he told people what they
wanted to hear. He did not lead; he
followed. Tiffin's ideal states-
man was a man who was "never . . .
awed by the frowns or allured
by the smiles of any Man, or set of
Men." The Chillicothe gentry
were for more democratic government but
not absolute democracy.
"The Sovereign People," wrote
William Creighton, could not be to-
17. St. Clair, Chillicothe, to Fearing, The
St. Clair Papers, ed., William H. Smith (2
vols., Cincinnati, 1882), II: 558. See
also, Sears, Thomas Worthington, 69-71.
18. Baldwin, Chillicothe, to
Worthington, April 2, 1802, Worthington Papers (OHS),
Box 2, Folder 1.
19. Edward Tiffin, Chillicothe, to
Worthington, December 24, 1802, January 9,
1803, Worthington Papers (OHS), Box 2,
Folders 2 and 3.
20. John J. Wells, Chillicothe, to
Worthington, December 29, 1802, Worthington Pa-
pers (OHS), Box 2, Folder 2.
44 OHIO HISTORY
tally trusted. Too many of them did not
like their new constitution,
he joked, "because it had no
pictures in it."21
But in 1803 Baldwin's popularity was at
a peak. Despite the overt
opposition of Worthington, he finished
second in the Ross County
race for the legislature behind
Worthington. Taking one of the four
seats allocated to the Chillicothe
district, Baldwin's prominence was
certified by his election as speaker of
the Ohio House of Representa-
tives. The legislators also chose
Worthington as one of Ohio's Sena-
tors, although Baldwin voted for Samuel
Huntington.22
Whatever the extent of Michael's
popularity in Chillicothe, Thom-
as Worthington was fed up with him. In
April, 1803, the new Senator
described his former ally as
a quack Lawyer who was elected Speaker
in consequence of his real charac-
ter not being known. may he be
considered the most finished villain. This
man possesses a great [share?] of low
cunning and a considerable fund of in-
formation. added to a strong mind but
not a single moral virtue. He is quarrel-
some, yet a coward. Arbitrary and
tyrannical yet a syncophant and posses
not the smallest spark of sensibility.
on the whole if he had a little more cour-
age we might say with Shakespeare that
he would be fitted for treasons
Stratagems and [Usurpations?] and would
cut a respectable figure in an Ban-
ditti of thieves and robbers. If I could
attribute to him one virtue it would
give me pleasure.23
The ostensible reason for this outburst
was Baldwin's vote for Hunt-
ington for Senator. But Worthington's
hatred of Baldwin involved
much more than a political disagreement.
While the Senator was as
confused by the cultural chaos of the
frontier as his former protege,
his vision of Ohio's future was very
different from Baldwin's. At bot-
tom, they were two men interpreting and
imagining the world in dif-
ferent ways in a society that had yet to
determine the nature of its
permanent structures.
Worthington, like his friends in the
Republican gentry, wanted a
glorious future for Ohio. They were
deeply religious men with strong
senses of personal dignity. They wanted
a free society but an orderly
one-a democratic government run by a
natural aristocracy. They
wanted a civilized society, a world of
stability, gentility, and man-
ners. Ohio was to be the home of
rational, educated, solid, depend-
able men. The key to maintaining this
new society was, in their view,
21. Tiffin, Chillicothe, to Worthington,
December 8, 1803, and William Creighton,
Chillicothe, to Worthington, December
31, 1802, Worthington Papers (OHS), Box 2,
Folders 5 and 2.
22. See the Scioto Gazette, January
15, 1803, III, 137, p. 3, c. 2.
23. Worthington, Diary, April 16, 1803,
Worthington Papers (LC).
The Failure of Michael Baldwin 45
self-discipline; social order would
follow from individual order,
would come from within rather than
without. The citizens of Ohio
would not be coerced into order, but
would learn to restrain and re-
fine their energies and desires in order
to live in prosperous and or-
derly harmony. Worthington, Tiffin, and
others like them tried to
make their lives models of exemplary
self-restraint and gentility. They
dressed well, they lived in nice homes,
they dealt with each other
and the world in a calm, rational,
respectful fashion.
Michael Baldwin symbolized everything
Worthington wanted to
avoid in Ohio. He lacked sensibility,
meaning he acted without re-
gard for the consequences of his actions
on others. He was wild, out
of control, impulsive, impatient,
self-indulgent, careless about time
and money, and too eager to follow
rather than guide popular wishes.
Where Worthington sought to deal with
St. Clair in a legal, institu-
tional fashion, insisting on the proper
procedures, Baldwin was di-
rect and violent. Where Worthington
concerned himself with build-
ing an impressive estate and
establishing a solid economic foundation
for his family and his community,
Baldwin entertained himself and
his friends by wasting his money on
drinking and gambling. Where
Worthington occupied himself with
planning the material and social
progress of Ohio, Baldwin practiced
immediate gratification. More
specifically, by continuing to behave in
a traditional, public manner
-by acting to please the Bloodhounds
rather than his conscience,
by advocating his own candidacy, by
calling for "frequent elections,
freedom of speech, universal
suffrage"24 rather than government by
men of proven talents, by participating
in mob activities, Baldwin
was violating the basic rules of
behavior which Worthington wished
to establish in Ohio. Worthington's
cultural context was proto-
bourgeois; Baldwin's was more
traditional.
In the first decade of the nineteenth
century, men like Thomas
Worthington were bringing order out of
the cultural confusion of the
1790s and early 1800s. But they did so
less by advocating what they
wanted Ohioans to be and do than by
clearly demonstrating what
was and would be unacceptable behavior.
The labeling of Baldwin,
the symbol of unrestrained freedom, as a
deviant, like the denuncia-
tion of the "aristocratic" St.
Clair before him, was a part of a process
of cultural consolidation for Ohioans.
Through the excoriation of the
actions of men like Baldwin, men like
Worthington brought society
24. Baldwin to the Citizens of Ohio, Scioto
Gazette, May 21, 1803, III, 156, p. 1, c. 3.
46 OHIO HISTORY
closer to their ideal. Michael's
behavior was so clearly unacceptable
that it helped to narrow the boundaries
of what was proper.
Increasingly, the leaders of Ohio held
Baldwin up as a public ex-
ample of perversity. Michael continued
his defiance of Worthington
by running for Congress in the summer
of 1803. But he did badly,
getting few votes outside of
Chillicothe. He served one more term in
the Ohio House but achieved little
except an expansion of his notori-
ous reputation. Governor Tiffin
complained of the "very noisey and
very ignorant" men in the
legislature led by "a few restless, ambi-
tious Spirits." Even Nathaniel
Massie wondered at the behavior of
"some of our Republicans in
Chillicothe" who would do anything to
"aggrandize themselves . . . for
future offices." Newspaper articles
regularly denounced "the wretched
practice of self-trumpetting can-
didates for popular suffrage" and
all "self-styled friends to the peo-
ple" as destructive of the fragile
frontier social order. A disgusted
Tiffin warned Worthington against the
"very many who think them-
selves equal and perhaps superior to
either of us." Baldwin was dan-
gerous simply because
"Disappointed ambition" and lack of restraint
were dangerous.25
Under this public and private barrage,
Baldwin withered. He ob-
tained the position of United States
Marshall for Ohio. He persisted
in supporting candidates opposed to the
Worthington faction, he
continued to practice law successfully
until about 1806, and he re-
mained popular with the Bloodhounds.
But Baldwin began to drink
more heavily than ever before; he
behaved even more contemptu-
ously in court. In 1807, his supposed
neglect of his duties during the
Burr Conspiracy got him dismissed from
the post of marshall. From
that point, the decline of Baldwin was
pronounced. Suffering from al-
coholism and ill health, he faded from
public view.26
Finally, on March 9, 1810, Baldwin
died. The day before, Thomas
Worthington had paid a brief call on
the dying man. Somewhat sad-
ly but smugly, the Senator found
himself afterwards reflecting "on
the miseries this young man has brought
on himself and feel[ing] sor-
row and regret that the talents he
possessed had not been applied to
the benefit of his fellow mortals and
his own good."27
25. "Official Votes," Scioto
Gazette, July 16, 1803, III, 164, p. 3, c. 2; Tiffin, Chilli-
cothe, to Worthington, January 13, 1804,
and Massie, Chillicothe, to Worthington, Jan-
uary 23, 1804, Worthington Papers (OHS),
Box 2, Folder 6; Tiffin, Chillicothe, to Wor-
thington, December 18, 1806, Worthington
Papers (OHS), Box 3, Folder 5; J. S.
Collins, ed., Scioto Gazette, February
13, 1806, VI, 291, p. 3, c. 2.
26. Sears, Thomas Worthington, 140;
Ross and Highland Counties, 74.
27. Worthington, Diary, March 8, 1810,
Worthington Papers (LC).
The Failure of Michael Baldwin 47
Alexis de Tocqueville cogently described
the ethos of men like
Baldwin. "It is usually at the time
when democratic societies are tak-
ing root that men are most disposed to
isolate themselves,"
Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in
America. As the numbers of inde-
pendent people grow in the aftermath of
a democratic revolution,
they "have a presumptuous
confidence in their strength, and never
imagining that they could ever need
another's help again, they have
no inhibition about showing that they
care for nobody but them-
selves." Still, there was a darker
side to this sudden intoxication
with freedom. Those people who had
belonged to the highest ranks
feel lost, like "strangers in the
new society"; while those who rise as
the result of revolution "cannot
enjoy their newfound independence
without some secret uneasiness: there is
a look of fear mixed with tri-
umph in their eyes if they do meet one
of their former superiors, and
they avoid them."28
Tocqueville thus succinctly expressed
the ambivalance and confu-
sion that dogged the lives of men like
Baldwin. Torn loose from the
moorings of traditional society with no
clue as to how to behave,
thousands of people were literally
thrashing about in the early repub-
lic. The mixture of high ambitions,
limited resources, and cultural
confusion made frustration and
disappointment common experiences.
The citizens of Jeffersonian America had
an air of desperation about
them. Not coincidentally, drinking, dueling,
suicide, and litigation
flourished in the period. Men in the
Trans-Appalachian West would
flirt with abandoning the United States
for service with the French
or Spanish, or listen intently if
briefly to the blandishments of an
Aaron Burr promising them fame and
fortune in some ill-defined pur-
suit of glory. Even those who succeeded,
like Worthington or An-
drew Jackson, never felt quite satisfied
with their lives, always felt
uncomfortable about their social status.
Like William Faulkner's fic-
tional Thomas Sutpen, they devoted their
lives to achieving respecta-
bility without really knowing how to do
so in a society that had not
quite made up its mind about what it
considered respectable. The
result could only be what Tocqueville
called "secret uneasiness" and
a vague but omnipresent sense of
illegitimacy.29
By the end of the nineteenth century,
local historians were de-
nouncing Michael Baldwin's intemperance,
his willfulness, his close
28. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, 508.
29. Jackson is a particularly striking
example of this. See James Curtis, Andrew Jack-
son and the Search for Vindication (Boston, 1976). See also, W. J. Rorabaugh, The Al-
coholic Republic (New York, 1979).
48 OHIO HISTORY
association with the
"rabble," his disregard for money, his egotism,
his independence as characteristics to
be avoided by good citizens.
The glory of America, it was clear, was
freedom, but success would
come only through responsible and
acceptable behavior. If one
chose to be wild and incorrigible, like
Baldwin, if one chose to defy
authority and to put selfish ambition
above community service, like
Baldwin, then one could expect
reprobation and obscurity, like
Baldwin. Such was the moral of the life
of "Poor, brilliant, boister-
ous, drunken, rollicking Mike!"30
In short, the cultural context of
nineteenth century America, de-
spite the protests of Southerners,
immigrants, blacks, women, utopi-
ans, and many others, and a frequent
gap between profession and
practice, was that of Thomas
Worthington. Future Ohio Senator
Thomas Ewing described the system
succinctly in an 1829 letter to
his nephew. Ewing was talking about
school, but he had the larger
society in mind. "First of
all," he wrote,
you must conform in all things to the
rules adopted for the government of the
institution, and not only conform but
do so cheerfully and promptly-some
young men fancy that they show a spirit
of independence, by occasional vio-
lations or a total contempt of its
Laws-but in this they greatly err. True inde-
pendence [consists?] in resistance, not
to lawful, but to usurped authority.
As the life of Michael Baldwin clearly
demonstrates, there was "little
chance of anyone being a good member of
a community" who be-
haved otherwise.31
30. Ross and Highland Counties, 73.
31. Thomas Ewing, Lancaster, Ohio, to
Charles Clark, November 15, 1829, The
Thomas Ewing Papers, The Ohio Historical Society, Box
1, Folder 2.
ANDREW R. L. CAYTON
The Failure of Michael Baldwin: A
Case Study in the Origins of Middle-
Class Culture on the Trans-
Appalachian Frontier
In the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, it became
fashionable to publish massive volumes
detailing the histories of in-
dividual Midwestern counties. Very
often, these books were the
products of the cooperative efforts of
several county residents who
employed a topical rather than a
chronological approach to their
subject. With the obvious goal of
boosting local pride, the authors
traced the evolution of noteworthy
economic, social, and political in-
stitutions. Often, they would also
devote a substantial portion of their
histories to short sketches of the
lives of prominent local citizens.
Whatever the reason these
mini-biographies were originally writ-
ten, they now hold our interest as
points of entry into the character
and culture of nineteenth century
America. In generally attributing
the success and prominence of some men
to their industry, piety,
community service and, especially, to
their self-discipline, the
sketches implicitly advocated the idea
that success followed from
adherence to well-known standards of
behavior and belief. As such,
these biographies exemplify the
hegemony exercised by what David
Brion Davis has called the
"'official' middle-class culture" of Victo-
rian America. They affirmed the
importance of "respectable" be-
havior and belief in achieving fame and
fortune in an increasingly
complex world. The implication was that
people who were materially
and professionally unsuccessful would
find the source of their failings
within their private characters.
Indeed, the county histories some-
times explicitly defined people who
defied or deviated from accept-
able norms as, in Davis' words,
"aliens, outsiders, and degener-
ates."1
Andrew R. L. Cayton is Assistant
Professor of History at Ball State University.
1. David Brion Davis, ed., Antebellum
American Culture (Lexington, Mass., 1979),
xxiii.