Ohio History Journal

HIGH LIGHTS IN OHIO LITERATURE.

 

BY EMILIUS O. RANDALL,

Ph.B. (Cornell); LL.B., LL.M. (O. S. U.); LL.D. (Ohio).

 

[An address delivered before the OHIO SOCIETY OF NEW YORK at

the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, on the evening of November 12, 1917.]

Matthew Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, in one

of his delightful after-dinner speeches before the Royal

Academy, reminded his hearers that Fauriel, the French literary

historian, tells of a company of Greeks, settled "somewhere" in

Southern Italy, in the ancient days, who retained for an unusual

number of years their Greek language and customs. But time

and environment were at last too strong for them; they began

to lose, or felt themselves losing, their distinctive Greek charac-

ter; they grew like unto the people about them. But, once

every year, they assembled at a public festival of their com-

munity and there in language which the inroads of "barbarism"

were every year more and more debasing, they reminded one

another that they were once uncorrupted Greeks.

So I take it, gentlemen, you as members of the Ohio Society,

a colony in a foreign state, amid the crowding distractions of

a busy life, assemble on occasions like this to remind one another

that you were once Ohioans, and though contented in the land

of your adoption are still bound by the ties of fond memory to

the grand old Buckeye State. It is a fitting and loyal thing to

thus occasionally assemble.

The Marquis de Lafayette, on his visit to this country in

1825, was received by Governor Morrow and staff, at Cincin-

nati, in the presence of thousands of people. The welcome

songs of hundreds of school children and the evidences of cul-

tured society, on a site which at the time of his services in the

American Revolution was a wilderness of waste, inhabited solely

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by savages and wild beasts, so impressed Lafayette that he

exclaimed "Ohio is the eighth wonder of the world".

It was indeed a marvel of history that within a generation

there had sprung from the primeval forest a perfected and re-

fined community, full fledged, as Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom,

sprang full armored from the brow of Jove.

Ohio is unequivocally unique. Her story, geologic, geo-

graphic and historic, covers a varied and novel career. Her

first recorded residents were the ice-men; then came that mys-

terious race called the Mound Builders, more populous in Ohio

than in any other part of the West; then it became the favorite

center of the American Indian, whose greatest heroes, Pontiac,

Cornstalk, Logan, Little Turtle, Tecumseh and Tarhe, fought

on the banks of Ohio streams, for the retention of their hunt-

ing grounds and the repression of the white race. Ohio by the

terms of the Papal bull of Alexander VI was ceded to Spain;

then it passed by right of discovery and exploration to France;

thence by conquest to England, from whom it was wrested by

the young giant of the new world, the United States; and now

I might add with Republican sorrow it seems to belong to the

Democratic party.

There is scientific and logical explanation for the brilliant

beginning and progressive advance of the Ohioan.

The story goes that when the Creator was, according to

divine plans and specifications, molding into shape this mundane

sphere, he sent a bevy of angels to carry the Garden of Eden

to its proper location, so that the bride and groom, the first

pair, could have fitting quarters in which to spend their honey-

moon, but, so the legend goes, the angels in flying on their errand

through the air, accidently dropped a piece of the precious

real estate and the spot upon which it fell subsequently became

the State of Ohio!

But unquestionably the character and development of

man is the combined result of his heredity and habitat, his native

endowments and his environment.

Plutarch in his life of Solon states that after the rebellion

of Kylon (B. C. 612) the Athenian people were divided into

as many political factions as there were physical types of

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country in Attica. The mountaineers who were the poorest

party, wanted something like a democracy; the people of the

plain, comprising the greatest number of rich families, were

clamorous for an oligarchy; the seacoast population of the South,

intermediate both in social position and wealth, wanted some-

thing between the two. Geography gives color to the character

of society; geography lies at the basis of history; indeed it is

truly said "history is geography set in motion".

It was the salubrious, temperate climate of the Ohio zone,

plus the fertility of soil and beauty of scenery-the gentle

hills, picturesque plains and rippling rivers-that gave joy and

peace and prosperity to the frontiersman; a habitat that stimu-

lated the springs of thought and imagination, that quickened

the energy, the initiative; encouraged the adaptability and recep-

tivity of the transplanted New Englander and Virginian. Ohio

was thus admirably located for a benign influence upon the

economic, social and intellectual life of its occupants. Midway

between the waters of the Erie and "the beautiful river", Ohio

was the first transallegheny arena for the westward moving

settler. The war for independence ended and won, the sur-

viving heroes of the battle-fields from Lexington to Yorktown,

heroes who had lost all save honor and hope, cheer and courage,

wended their way across the mountains to the El Dorado of the

West, to re-start life and repair their broken fortunes.

The Continental Congress then in session in New York,

on July 13, passed the Ordinance of 1787, creating the North-

west Territory, and fourteen days thereafter authorized the sale

of the apportioned land to the Ohio Company. Incidentally it

might be noted that the lobby of the Ohio Company met serious

opposition in the shape of competitive New York aggregation

seeking similar western grants; the Knickerbocker real estate

speculators were outwitted by the Yankee bunch who scooped

New York by arranging, "on the side", that if the Ohio bill

went through General Arthur St. Clair, the president of Con-

gress, would be "taken in camp" by being appointed Gover-

nor of the new Northwest Territory, evidencing the political

astuteness of the original Ohioan, who early began to logroll.

Tammany had nothing on the Ohio company.

Vol. XXVIII- 17.

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The Ohio Company-headed by Rufus Putman, Manas-

sah Cuttler, Samuel Parsons, and others in the list of illustrious

immortals-was organized at the "Bunch of Grapes" Tavern,

so-called, doubtless, from the incident of the "Grapes of Eschol",

secured by the spies of Moses from the environs of Hebron,

as "exhibits" of the fruitful fertility of the "Land of Promise",

-yes, it was the juice of the productive grape, mostly fer-

mented, that lubricated the proceedings of the Charter-Ohioans

in their migratory designs - but that "Bunch of Grapes" Tavern,

be it remembered was located in the "Hub" of New England

culture, the "blown-in-the-bottle brand", made and canned in

the intellectual Athens of the new world, commonly called

Boston.

These pioneer seekers were not only smart, they were book

and school "larned". The organic document, that made possible

their new social and political venture, the Ordinance of 1787,

was intentionally and at their request provided with "Article 3"

to the effect that: "Religion, morality and knowledge, being

necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,

schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged",

and further, to make that proposition effective, there was in-

serted "there shall be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township

for the maintenance of public schools within said township".

Ten days after the passage of the Ordinance just named,

an act supplementary to the act of May 20th, 1785, relating to

the survey of public lands was passed providing that two whole

townships were "to be given perpetually for the purposes of a

seminary of learning, to be applied to the intended object by the

legislature of the state."

Even higher education was thus made certain by the pro-

visions for lands set apart, and the Universities of Athens (Ohio

University, 1804) and Oxford (Miami University, 1809) were

the outgrowths; the first named being the pioneer college in the

United States founded upon a land-grant; the fore-runners of

the present forty-two, or more, Ohio colleges.

So ab initio the very atmosphere and soil of the Ohio

country was aromatic with educational and literary aspirations.

As an unique illustration of the infusion of the field of

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literature in the fastnesses of the primeval forests, it might be

related that in 1764 General Bradstreet headed an expedition

from New England, to take possession of the French forts on

the Lake Erie front and at the Detroit river. As a precautionary

measure he sent ahead a squad of scouts, under one Thomas

Morris, a "soldier of fortune", to reconnoiter the Ottawa

country. Morris' party was surrounded and summarily taken

into the Indian camp. Morris himself managed to escape, and

after sundry adventures secreted himself beneath the bushes

overhanging the banks of the Maumee. After some days of

anxious search by a rescuing squad from Bradstreet's head-

quarters Morris was discovered in his safe retreat, lying out-

stretched in a birch canoe, concealed by the protecting bull-rushes,

a la Moses, complacently perusing the tragedy of Anthony and

Cleopatra, in a copy of Shakespeare given him by an Indian

chief who found it among the plunder he had taken from some

literary "pale face". We may regard this as the debut of the

Bard of Avon in the sylvan and savage scenery of Ohio.

The little group of men who, on the 7th of April, 1788,

disembarked from the "Mayflower",- first known as the galley

"Adventure"-at their destination, under the protection of the

guns of Fort Harmar, were not adventurous Argonauts seeking

the golden fleece, but had for their goal the founding of a

western empire. Those 48 heroes, almost identical in number

with those sailing in the original Argo of Old, were workmen,

artisans, carpenters, boat-builders, farmers, millers, surveyors,

men skilled in the various forms of toil; they could drive the

plow and wield the ax, but they were men of sterling worth,

of sound practical sense and refined manners; they were not

illiterate and among them and their immediate followers were

many from the halls of learning, preachers, teachers, even col-

lege graduates from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth.

They not only cleared the ground and tilled the soil, but they

simultaneously sowed the seed of education and fostered the

attainments of culture. The scholastic flavor of their minds

was reflected by the classic character of their nomenclature.

At Marietta they found undisturbed the mysterious ruins of an

ancient race, the Mound Builders, archaeological structures

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260      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

which they carefully protected and preserved. One earthen en-

closed square was named the "Capitolium," and a larger one,

adjacent, they dubbed the "Quadranaou", and a broad, graded

road, flanked by high artificial embankments, leading from the

above to the river, was called the "Via Sacra"; the newly

erected garrison with a block house at each corner was named

"Campus Martius", an appropriate name for indeed it became

a field of Mars. Perhaps the extreme of this irrepressible trait

for classic terms was exemplified in the title given (1788) by the

surveying founder, one John Filson, a New Jersey academically

educated schoolmaster, to the original site of his prospective

town, which he platted, "Losantiville"; a singular appellation

he constructed from the initial English "L", for Licking, the

Latin os, meaning mouth, the Greek anti, meaning opposite to,

and the French vile meaning city-the tout ensemble, so to

speak, making the complete culmination of "the mouth op-

posite the city", but intended by the law of reservation or some

sort of acrobatic psychology to signify the "city opposite the

mouth of the Licking", for such was the location of the village.

Much humor has been provoked by this specimen of polygot

nomenclature; for instance the historian McMasters cold-

bloodedly remarks that a few weeks after Filson had coined this

name of Losantiville, the Indians scalped him. Shortly after

its occupation by General Harmar, who built therein Fort Wash-

ington, the little town of Losantiville was chosen by Governor

St. Clair to be the seat of government for the Northwest Terri-

tory. But, so the record runs, the Governor in his trip of in-

spection down the river (1790), arrived near the incipent village:

standing on the roof of his flat-boat and looking at the collec-

tion on shore of two small hewed log houses and several cabins,

he asked "What in Hell is the name of this town anyhow?"

On being given the linguistic potpourri he threw up his hands

in astonishment and at once rechristened the place "Cincinnati",

in honor of the society of that name which had just been formed

by the ex-officers of the Revolutionary Army.

The choice of the name "Cincinnati", originally from the

plow-deserting Roman hero, Cincinnatus, reveals St. Clair as

something of a "classicus" himself. As confirmation of this he

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was responsible for the territorial seal on which was portrayed

a domestic tree, laden with fruit, presumably apples, in front of

which lay a primeval tree felled by the ax and cut into logs;

and underneath on the seal was inscribed the Latin motto

"Meliorem lapsa locavit"; literally "he planted one better than

the fallen". This Latin motto on our State Seal has had a

precarious existence. It has undergone many changes. In 1866,

a Republican Legislature recast the design, threw out the canal

boat and among other alterations inserted the words "Imperium

in imperio"-  referring to Ohio as an empire state within an

empire republic. The succeeding legislature, two years later,

repudiated this motto.  This last was a Democratic general

assembly and the supposition is that the party then in power

wanted to make Ohio "safe for Democracy", and destroy every

suggestion of imperialism.

Marietta so romantically and picturesquely established was

at once, not only the political capital and military citadel of the

Northwest Territory, but also the center spring of culture for

the new empire. A board of police was appointed for drafting

a set of rules for the government of the settlement, which regu-

lations were written out and posted on the smooth trunk of a

large beech tree. The Citadel, the Campus Martius, was no

sooner erected than Minerva found her abode therein. Quar-

ters in the northwest block house were at once (winter 1788-9)

provided for the schooling of the children and a New England

pedagogue, one Major Anselm Tupper, delegated as the in-

structor in the old-fashioned and now almost obsolete three

"r's"-"readin', 'riting and 'rithmetic".  This school under

such unique circumstances was continued uninterruptedly

through the crucial years (1789-1794) of the Ohio-Indian wars.

It was in Columbia, afterwards included as part of Cin-

cinnati, that the first individual school house was erected and

occupied (1790) by one John Reilly, aided by one Francis Dun-

levy, both previously school teachers and both ex-soldiers of

the American Revolution. Their curriculum included Latin,

Greek, and French. One private teacher advertised in the Cin-

cinnati paper to the effect, "Readers are respectfully informed

that I propose to open school again on January 1st (1805). I

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shall teach reading, writing, arithmetic and English grammar

indiscriminately for two dollars per quarter". I believe that

was the first adoption of an optional course.

Then came the period of the Marietta offshoots in settle-

ment-here and there, up and down the Ohio, and into the

interior of the country-of which Belpre (winter 1788-9) was

a striking, if not the first illustration, Belpre, a euphonious con-

traction of "belle-prairie" or beautiful meadow.

Their log citadel was called "Farmers' Castle", in which

a school was immediately opened and taught by two young

women and a young man, the latter a graduate of Harvard.

It was in Belpre (1798) that the first public library, west of

the Alleghenies was installed -- a community circulating library.

Four years later (1802) the second one was inaugurated in

Cincinnati, and the following year (1803), the memorable date

when Ohio entered the sisterhood of states, the far-famed

"coonskin" library began to circulate its precious volumes

throughout the forest homes of Southern Ohio. This source

of literary culture in such primitive environment was instituted

in a little cluster of cabins, called Ames, on Federal creek, in

now Athens county. It was suggested by Mr. Joseph True.

There was no money to be contributed to such a laudable purpose

and he proposed that the would-be stockholders make payment

in coon skins, bear skins, and the covering of other fur

animals. These skins to be carried, when collected, by one of

the colony to distant Boston, and there exchanged for cash

and the latter for books. This organization styled itself the

"Western Library Association", but it is better and almost solely

known as the "Coon-skin" library with a historic distinction

second only to that of the great Alexandrian Library of ancient

Egypt. Fur hunts were now the favorite and frequent pastime

of the frontier settlers. Thomas Ewing, then a lad of fifteen,

was a member of this backwoods community and told in after

years that he contributed all his available wealth-"¹⁰ coon

skins", to the library fund - it was the price of his matricula-

tion to a life of intellectual distinction - he was the first graduate

of the first Ohio college -Ohio University at Athens,-

and became one of Ohio's most distinguished scholars,

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High Lights in Ohio Literature.         263

 

orators and statesmen.  With a wagon load of fur skins

one Samuel Brown took up his long journey across the

country to Boston,-the sale of the skins amounted to

$73.50, and the volumes purchased and delivered were fifty-

one. The arrival of the wagon express in its forest destination

was the occasion of great jubilation; the unpacked contents were

handled as jewels of great price; "Minor's Encyclopedia", Mar-

shall's "Life of Washington", Addison's "Spectator", Thomp-

sons "Seasons", Bacon's "Essays", Pope's "Poems", "Plutarch's

Lives", the works of Johnson, Hume, Robertson and tomes of

a similar nature bespoke the intellectual demand of these back-

woods pioneers. Certainly the cabin-fringed banks of Federal

creek and the lonesome forest homes blossomed into a veritable

Arcadia,-In which therewere "tongues in trees, books in the

running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything".

The more pretentious centers of immigration were rapidly

dotting the Ohio map. North Bend, the home of William

Henry Harrison; Manchester, Dayton, Chillicothe, Franklinton,

Cleveland, the latter the metropolis of the lake and of the

Western Reserve-the new Connecticut. Ah, there is the gar-

den spot of Ohio - for on the Western Reserve, of Connecticut

parents, was I born-with pride unabashed I boast of being an

Ohio Buckeye descended from Connecticut Nutmegs; if any

birth can be more "spicy" than that you got one on me. And

so the streams of immigration flowed to the new State.

In the Ohio country the racial strains of the original colonies

met and mingled, and from the melting pot came the composite

cosmopolitan of the new world. The first settlers of Ohio rep-

resented all the original thirteen states and largely the Revolu-

tionary soldier. Ex-Governor Swanson, now Senator from Vir-

ginia, in his eloquent speech of welcome to the Ohioans at the

Jamestown Exposition (1909) declared it was on the soil of

Ohio that the first genuine, typical American was created. The

early Ohioan owed his origin to the cross-breed of a variety of

nationalities and religions; the Swede from New Jersey; the

Knickerbocker from New York; the Dutch and Scotch-Irish, the

Moravian German and Quaker-English from Pennsylvania; the

Pilgrim from Massachusetts; the Puritan from Connecticut;

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the Catholic Cavaliers from Maryland; the valorous and blue-

blooded and thoroughbred Anglo-Saxon gentleman from Vir-

ginia, and the fearless "rough-and-tumble" pioneer of Ken-

tucky. That was a mixture of character, culture and creed that

no other pioneer state could have produced. The initial founders

of Ohio were, moreover, conspicuously self-chosen from the

intellectual class of the Colonies.

With a "touch and go" style let us glance at the different

phases of literary culture that the early and later years of the

Buckeye State produced.

 

JOURNALISTS.

The journalist was logically the pioneer and the pathfinder

in the beginning of Ohio literature.

If I remember correctly, the first use of the term "Fourth

Estate" was attributed by Carlyle to Edmund Burke, who on

one occasion pointed to the reporters' gallery in the House of

Commons as containing a "Fourth Estate", more powerful than

the other three, namely, the nobility, the clergy and the bour-

geoise-the middle-class people.  Now  that the nobility is

merely a tradition or purely an ornament in social and govern-

mental schemes we may promote the journalistic profession to

at least the Third Estate, and I am not sure that it may not be

even second in energy and power. Certain it is that the news-

paper was the first form of literature to appear indigenously in

the northwest and the confines of Ohio.

It was in the village of Cincinnati (1793) a century and a

quarter ago that the initial newspaper--a weekly--made its

appearance under the title "Centinel of the Northwest Territory".

Its motto on the editorial page had a commendable catholicity

for it read: "Open to all parties but influenced by none". It

was the property of and under the editorial management of

William Maxwell, an immigrant from New Jersey, aided by

his good wife Nancy. When a removal of the office was neces-

sitated a wheelbarrow moved all the types, cases and stands

which the pioneer establishment contained. The press was con-

structed entirely of wood, and in order that the paper might be

impressed it was operated very much after the fashion that

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country boys worked the cider press. In 1800 the Centinel was

moved to Chillicothe, later the capital of the state, where the

Scioto Gazette had already been founded (1796) by Nathaniel

Willis, grandfather of N. P. Willis, the poet. The owner and

editor of the Scioto Gazette was born (1755) in Boston, where he

was an apprentice in the printing office of Benjamin Franklin. He

was a conspicuous patriot, as might have been expected, and one

of the participants in the Boston Tea Party, and in that city

published and edited, during the American Revolution, the In-

dependent Chronicle. At the close of the Revolution Willis

moved from Boston to Virginia and established, at Martinsburg,

the Potomac Guardian. He transferred his journalistic enter-

prise thence to Chillicothe, before the admission of Ohio as

a state, and the paper he established, just mentioned, the Scioto

Gazette, is still being issued, its publication never having been

interrupted and it is therefore the oldest newspaper of con-

tinuous publications under the same name, west of the Al-

legheny mountains.

By 1810, when the state was but seven years of age, no less

than sixteen newspapers were sending forth their hand-printed

sheets. In those primitive days it was not at all unusual for the

editor himself to set up his articles direct from the cases, with-

out the intervention of pencil or pen copy, a sort of extem-

poraneous, brain to hand composition.

Time forbids our speaking adequately on the interesting theme

of pioneer journalism in Ohio. One paper we must not fail

to mention -the Western Intelligencer, founded by one James

Kilbourn (1770-1850) in Worthington, a little time honored vil-

lage, still abiding in undisturbed quietude, just north of Colum-

bus.  The first issue of this paper was in 1811 and a

few years later it was transplanted to the present capital

city and has there been continued as the Ohio State Jour-

nal. This centenary-aged sheet deserves mention, if for no other

reason than that in its sanctum there labored at times many

whose names subsequently became nationally distinguished; fore-

most among whom is the nestor of American journalism and the

master of modern Anglo-Saxon literature - the most potent in-

fluence in the field of English letters--Mr. William  Dean

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Howells. The chairman of your entertainment committee, Mr.

Merrill Watson, responsible for this evening's literary escapade,

was once a writer on the Ohio State Journal.

To mention Ohio noted journalists individually would re-

quire the recalling of a host of names whose brilliant pens

adorned their adopted calling-men whose daring thoughts,

whose burning words molded public opinion, guided policies and

even influenced foreign nations. We can only designate some

of the more prominent Knights of the Quill, at the head of

whom, in time if not in importance, was Charles Hammond

(1772-1840) declared by Daniel Webster as "the greatest genius

who ever wielded the political pen". But it was a federal pen,

in the Ohio Federalist,--(1816-1821). Hammond was edu-

cated in the University of Virginia and he was the first official

reporter of the Ohio Supreme Court, and he wrote, profusely,

scholarly and always accurately, on law, politics and govern-

ment. He was the first literary high-light of Ohio and lo!

Hammond's name leads all the rest. And their name becomes

legion:-E. D. Mansfield, Murat Halstead, Henry V. Boyn-

ton, Whitelaw Reid, James M. Comly, Donn Piatt, Samuel

Medary, Samuel S. Cox, John A. Cockerill, and others of equal

fame. Of those still in active service in the state of your adop-

tion are William E. Curtis, William E. Lewis (brother of the late

brilliant Alfred Henry), Albert Shaw, Julius J. Chambers and

others. Many of these were more than journalists; they were

authors, party leaders, diplomats; two by their heroic devotion

to humanity have made themselves known wherever the op-

pressed have sought liberty. One is George Kennan, now resi-

dent of this city, whose graphic accounts of world travel are

unequalled in similar descriptions and whose fearless expose of

the prison and exile system of despotic Russia roused the in-

dignation and the sympathy of the civilized world. The other

was the late Januarius A. MacGahan, who reported the Franco-

Prussian war for the New York Herald and the London News.

His experience, in variety, during a few years of foreign life,

paralleled the thrilling exploits in Africa of Henry M. Stanley.

In 1876 MacGahan accompanied the Turkish army in its devas-

tating assault upon Bulgaria, and his bold description of the

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Mohammedan atrocities brought about world-wide results. His

reports moved England to a burning revolt.     Even Lord

Beaconsfield, then the friend of Turkey, could not stem the

tide. The following year MacGahan accompanied the Russian

army in its campaign for the relief of Bulgaria and throughout

that retrieved country the intrepid journalist was hailed as a

national liberator and deliverer. The Bulgarians fairly wor-

shiped this Ohio reporter as a demi-god. These two Ohio

boys, Kennan and MacGahan, lighted the fires of justice and

liberty in the autocratic countries of Europe; those fires since

rekindled, in the present World War, set ablaze the cause of

democracy throughout christendom.

Book making in its specified sense was preceded by the

circulation of pamphlets, mainly, at first, in the eagerly sought

and highly prized Almanac, which form of publication, in pioneer

days, constituted not only the most popular but the most

ubiquitous medium  of information and entertainment.  The

Almanac was always the companion piece to the family Bible.

Then followed the literary magazine, with its stories and re-

views.

POETRY.

It is a sudden spring from journalism to poetry. The first

one to appear in the role of poet, in the Northwest Territory,

was Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr. He came to Ohio with the

original settlers. He was a graduate of Yale College, studied

law, became Supreme Judge, United States Senator, Governor

of Ohio, and postmaster General. He delivered the July 4th

(1789) address at Marietta, which placed him at once among

the first orators of the Ohio country. He closed with an original

poem, probably the first composed in the new country. Like

much of the pioneer poetry his rounded rhymes "went on stilts

and borrowed stilts at that". The style of early Ohio poets

was either painfully labored and pedantic or ludicrously ex-

clamatory and rhapsodical. But in primitive Ohio permanent

letters took its first form in poesy. And in that field Ohio has

produced much that is not only praiseworthy but lasting.

William D. Gallagher, himself a poet, published (1841) a

volume of "Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West,"

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268       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

containing two hundred and ten pieces, representing thirty-eight

writers, most of whom resided in Ohio and won unfading recog-

nition. William T. Coggswell's "Poets and Poetry of the Ohio

Valley," issued twenty years later (1860) gives sketches of one

hundred and fifty-two writers, twenty-nine of whom, be-

longing to Ohio, rank foremost among the early songsters of

the west. Thirty years later (1890) the scholarly bibliographer

of Ohio literature, William H. Venable, in his "Beginnings of

Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley," tells, with a critical but

glowing pen, the story of Ohio men and women of letters. It is

a narrative unequaled by that of any other western state. Only

recently Emerson Venable, son of the honored father, William

H. Venable, has, in a delightful little volume, "Poets of Ohio,"

paid tribute to the Buckeye bards foremost in the field of letters.

Poets are born, not made, says the phrenologist or some other

variety of mental diagnostician. Scores have been artificially

manufactured in Ohio, but not a few were born, and of these

Mr. Emerson Venable makes note. We mention merely a few

conspicuous representatives.

William D. Gallagher and Otway Curry, delineators of the

early days; the Cary sisters, Alice and Phoebe, of Cincinnati,

the former "pensive and tender," the latter "witty and gay,"

both wooed the muse as few have done and their ballads, lyrics

and hymns will live with American letters. In middle life these

noted sisters moved to New York, where their songs did not cease

till both passed away within a few months of each other. Equal-

ly gifted were the Piatts, husband and wife; the former rising to

the rank of the first order. At the age of ten, he was residing in

Columbus, and at fourteen was a typesetter on the Ohio State

Journal, and there formed a life friendship with William Dean

Howells, and together they published (1860) a volume entitled

"Poems of Two Friends." John James Piatt passed to the

great beyond only a few months since and in the July (1917)

Harper's Magazine, his life-long appreciating and sympathetic

friend, Mr. W. D. Howells, paid the departed a fitting tribute,

saying: "His rare quality was not recognized at first in the west

of his day; the spirit of his poetry was the first voluntary ex-

pression of the western life in the tone of the western earth and

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High Lights in Ohio Literature.         269

 

sky and when most young American poets were trying to write

Tennyson, Piatt was trying to write himself and in spite of the

ruling ideal, doing it." Yet Mr. Howells compares him favor-

ably, in special instances, with Tennyson and Wordsworth. In

awarding meed to Mr. Piatt recognition of his wife must not be

omitted, Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt; her verses are scarcely less

meritorious than those of her husband-indeed, the choice

spirit and delicate form of her poems are, at times, unsurpassed.

This unique couple were the Brownings-Robert and Eliza-

beth-of Ohio. It has been said that Robert Browning wrote

and published poems for thirty years before they were read; the

public patronage had to be "educated up" to the aesthetic and

exalted sentiment which his poetry embodied. But the poetry

of the early Ohioans was inspired by and appealed to the senti-

ments and experiences of their everyday life-they were in

very fact "songs from the heart of things." Other such Ohio

poets were: William Haines Lytle, a general who fell at Chicka-

mauga, author of the classic and passionate "Anthony and

Cleopatra"; Thomas Buchanan Reid, a genius in intellect, sculp-

tor, painter, artist, poet, writer of the stirring "Sheridan's Ride,"

which ranks with Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade,"

and which William Cullen Bryant said would live with the im-

mortal "Lochinvar."

Others whose sweet and pathetic lines appealed to the popu-

lar heart were: Coates Kinney, with the "Rain on the Roof,"

and the more pretentious effort "Ohio Centennial Ode," an elo-

quent and forceful recital of what is best and noblest in Ohio

history, tradition and ideals, a poem worthy to be a companion-

piece to Lowell's "Commemoration Ode." It was an Ohio poet,

Benjamin Russell Hanby, who penned the pathetic lines, de-

scriptive of the tragedy of slavery, beginning with "My Darling

Nellie Gray," and another Ohioan, Daniel Decatur Emmett, was

author of more than a hundred rhymes, mostly in the dialect of

the colored race, including "Old Dan Tucker," "Jordan is a

Hard Road to Travel," and the now national "Dixie"; it was

inevitable that aside from the lyrics of pathos, patriotism and

heroism of the pioneers, many literary songsters should find

their theme in the anti-slavery sentiment of the two or three

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270      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

decades preceding the civil war. Ohio's proximity to the land

of the black bondsmen gave opportunity for the keen awaken-

ing of the sense of justice and freedom in the Ohio country,

through which ran the main and most traveled routes of the

"Underground Railroad." The first presidential candidate of

the Liberty Party (1840) was from Ohio-James Birney. It

was this state, too, that influenced though it did not originate

the Beecher family. As early as 1826, Lyman Beecher became

president of Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, and there

abided for some twenty years with his remarkably intellectual

family. It was in the Queen City on the Ohio that Harriet

Beecher Stowe wrote and produced her first book, "The May-

flower," and it was there also she received her inspiration and

material for the masterly "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Thus it was

that in ante-bellum days Ohio was surcharged with the hatred

of slavery, and the inextinguishable spirit of liberty. In this con-

nection too, it is interesting to note that Emmett, born and de-

ceased in Ohio, composed and made public his "Dixie," during

the very days that John Brown, long time resident of Ohio, was

marshalling his fanatic and Quixotic squad for the attack on

Harper's Ferry. Ohio moreover was the first state to open

the doors of a white college to the colored man and the first state

to establish a college exclusively for his education. It was

therefore logical and in a measure compensatory that Ohio

should give to American and Anglo-Saxon literature the greatest

poet of the colored race, Paul Laurence Dunbar, recently de-

ceased. His parents were born in slavery and escaped to Ohio;

he was born and educated in Dayton. Of him Mr. Howells

said: "He was the only man of pure African blood and of

American civilization to feel the negro life aesthetically and

express it lyrically." He literally played upon the harp of a

thousand strings, to the sentiments and emotions of his song and

music-loving race. His books are several "Lyrics of Love and

Laughter," "Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow," "Lyrics of Lowly

Life," etc. Children are his delighted readers.

In your Metropolitan city there resides one born in a little

Ohio hamlet, more than three score years ago, yet the fire of

ber poetic genius burns undimmed; she is Edith Matilda

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High Lights in Ohio Literature.          271

 

Thomas, and the lines of her lyric art are eagerly sought by the

leading magazines, perused and praised by countless readers

throughout our land.

We reluctantly leave the attractive realm of poetry in which

there are so many we have not time to mention. One more,

however, merits a word; Edmund Vance Cooke, Canadian born

but Ohio reared, now of Cleveland; several modest, readable

volumes comprise his tribute to the muses; now his pen is tuned

to the highest pitch of the patriotism of the day, and he stirringly

pleads for democracy and humanity.

 

 

PROSE AUTHORS.

Book-making of course quickly followed the pioneer news-

paper. It was inevitable that in a primitive society of such in-

tellectual ancestry and educational predictions, in a new and

novel field of environment, the fertile minds and facile pens

should find stimulus.

Literary academies and societies and private schools ante-

dated and supplemented the community and later public in-

stitutions of instruction. Authors appeared in various quarters

of the new state and in all fields of prose production; fiction,

biography, science, history, in fact no department was wanting.

Of the making of many books there is no end applies readily

to the early, later and present resident of Ohio. We confine

our notice to a few conspicuously typical representatives. Wil-

liam H. Venable, previously mentioned, litterateur, bibliophile,

poet, romancer and bibliographer; his most characteristic works

being "The Dream of Empire," and the "Buckeye Boyhood."

His son, Emerson Venable, we have already noted.        In

the same all-around class was Mr. A. P. Russell, essayist, poet,

man of letters of the most delicate and delightful nature, the

Ralph Waldo Emerson of Ohio. Among the writers of the

present generation, is one whose memory should not go unmen-

tioned in this circle, the late Alfred Henry Lewis, equally bril-

liant as a journalist and an author. Here too belongs James

Ball Naylor, poet and novelist; his romances, semi-historical,

are, in subject, native and to the manor born; in their pages

we live anew our early and epic days. Dr. Naylor covers the

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272       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

two professions of Aesculapius and the Muses, we may regard

him as the Oliver Wendell Holmes of Ohio. I have never

tested the quality of his pills, but of the flavor of his poetry we

shall have a taste in this evening's symposium--my prophecy

is your verdict will be that the mantle of James Whitcomb Riley

has fallen upon the inimitable bard of the Buckeye state.

It goes without saying that Mr. W. D. Howells is the dean

of American letters; author of more than eighty volumes in

poetry, drama, fiction, romance, history, travel, biography, criti-

cism; all topics indeed are his own; with a graphic and gracious

pen he has portrayed our national life, in a clear, clean, simple,

elegant style unsurpassed in English literature.

From necessity we pass over innumerable novelists to men-

tion a few in special fields of thought and study; literary dis-

cussion and criticism; what might be styled the high lights of

intellectual culture. In this none excel--though many have

forgotten-Denton Jacques Snider, one of the lecturers at the

famous Concord School of Philosophy, (1880) and whose ex-

pository and critical works on Shakespeare, Dante and Goethe

rank second to none; with him might be classed James E. Mur-

doch, actor, orator, elocutionist, author and authority on the

stage and its literature, especially upon the plays of Shakespeare

and notably Hamlet and Macbeth.

The historian in Ohio is on his native heath; the very at-

mosphere is historical; for here we have had history in the

making: James Ford Rhodes, William M. Sloane, Rufus King,

Henry Howe, Henry W. Elson, Elroy M. Avery, Isaac J. Cox,

Daniel J. Ryan, Arthur M. Schlessinger, William H. Siebert,

Clement R. Martzolf, and scores of others of former and

recent years; Mr. Archer B. Hulbert has traveled an

hitherto unexplored filed and in many scholarly volumes

has trailed "Historic Highways," narrating the evolu-

tion of our thoroughfares from the buffalo path in the

primitive forest to the Indian trail, to the frontiersman's.

bridle and foothpaths, to the corduroy road, to the government

highway, and the railroad routes; his works are invaluable.

In military memoirs no state is quite our equal, as is evi-

denced by the memoirs of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Keifer,

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High Lights in Ohio Literature.         273

 

Brinkerhoff, and many another general in the Civil War; nor is

it our privilege to even mention the biographies of or by notable

Ohioans, or numerous autobiographies by distinguished citizens

of our state.

But beyond the ordinary and the unusual in subject-matter,

Ohio is to be credited with many oddities and originalities in

the field of letters.

It was one of your New York scholars, Ohio born and bred,

Isaac Kaufman Funk, founder of the Literary Digest, who put

forth the profoundest studies and investigations in the occult

and psychic speculations, in "The Widow's Mite," "The Psychic

Riddle," and others.

A purely Ohio growth was the most original work

"Etidorpha," or the "End of the World," equal in daring and

fascinating imagination to the dreams of a Dumas, by John

Uri Lloyd, of Cincinnati, also author of "Stringtown on the

Pike." "Nathan Burke," by Mary Stanberry Watts, has been

decreed "the greatest Ohio novel" yet written. Taking the

"roaring forties," as one reviewer puts it, she has given a won-

derful picture of the Ohio events and life of that time and her

production has been pronounced not unequal to the masterly por-

trayals of Thackeray. Burton Egbert Stevenson, now resident

of Chillicothe, is responsible for many delightful volumes of

fictional life, of travel and mysterious plot, two or three of the

latter quite as fascinating and thrilling as the weird stories of

Conan Doyle.

But Ohio has a museum of curiosities well worth the price

of admission; works in new fields of adventure and discovery.

One was by John S. Rarey, entitled the "Modern Art of Taming

Wild Horses,"-the world is anxiously awaiting some one to

write a treatise on the "Art of Taming Wild Automobiles."

Mr. Rarey was world traveled and world famed; he performed

before the leading crowned heads of Europe. Rarey ante-

dated and presaged and prepared the way for Henry Bergh

and the Humane Society. He was a genius and his career reads

like a veritable fairy tale. His book was translated into many

foreign languages and 15,000 French copies were sold in Paris.

In very recent years we had some trouble with the Poles-

Vol. XXVIII -18.

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274      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

Arctic and Antarctic - especially the former. You may recall it.

But it was an Ohio author who first tackled this cold subject -

John Cleves Symmes (1780-1829); he saw service in the war

of 1812 and then made the scientific world "sit up and take

notice" by publishing (1820) a book with the uninviting and

perplexing title, "Concentric Spheres," proving that the earth

is hollow and habitable within as well as without. This was

emphatically giving "inside information," that upset the theory

of numerous anti-optimists that "the world is stuffed with saw-

dust."  The aqueduct facilities -according to Symmes-per-

mitted ships to pass through. Symmes and his hollow-earth

followers actually petitioned Congress (1822) for an appro-

priation to prove his theory and sail ships through, and why not ?

All seeming impossibilities come to pass in time. When it was

first proposed to build a steamship to cross the Atlantic a pro-

fessor of mathematics at Cambridge University, London, wrote

a pamphlet proving that it was impossible, because a boat could

not be built large enough to carry the coal required to generate

the steam to propel the engine. The first steamboat from Eng-

land to America carried the first edition of the professor's

pamphlets to this country! And when later an appropriation

was asked of Congress for $25,000 to construct the first tele-

graph line from Washington to Baltimore one undeluded mem-

ber arose and ridiculing the utter nonsense of the whole tele-

graphic idea said he presumed it would be next in order for

some "fool theorist" to ask for money to build a flying machine;

and of course everybody laughed; which all goes to prove that

the dream of one age is the realization of the next. Symmes

may be right, the poles may be temporarily frozen over, and

if thawed out give us another open sea for submarine pastimes.

The years 1840-60 were the prolific period of the dime novel

and the yellow-back literature. Ohio opened the flood gates.

Edward Z. C. Judson, known as Ned Buntline (Cincinnati, 1844)

started the "Western Literary Magazine," dedicated and de-

voted to this lurid, youthful literature; certainly he was no dim

light in Ohio letters; his income was $100,000 a year, some

money for those days, almost enough to permit him to leave

Ohio and reside in New York. Another Ohio writer in melo-

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High Lights in Ohio Literature.          275

 

dramatic lines was Emerson Bennett, second only in success to

Ned Buntline. Oh, that was indeed the golden age of "blood

and thunder" in Ohio, nor could any other state equal it in color

and sound.

But Ohio started things in other and more serious direc-

tions. Yes, it was Delia Salter Bacon (1811-89) native of Ohio,

-Talmadge, Summit county-that instigated the Baconian

theory that Shakespeare was Lord Francis Bacon incognito.

Her book was entitled "Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare

Unfolded," published in London (1857) with a preface by

Nathaniel Hawthorne. She argued that the great plays could

not have been written by that "Booby Shakespeare," as she ir-

reverently styled the immortal bard. On her trip to England in

this crusade for the impaling of Shakespeare's glory and the

enthronement of the learned Bacon, whom the poet Pope de-

clared was "The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," Miss

Bacon carried a letter of introduction from Emerson to Carlyle.

The dyspeptic sage of Chelsea, in his grim irony laughed at the

"new idea," which was destined to create the most curious

literary controversy and the greatest "battle of the books" that

has ever been witnessed. En passant I bring you the latest item

in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy. After my arrival in

your good city this noon, I spent an hour or two in the vast and

magnificent, two million volume, New York City library, and

as a test of its amplitude called for Delia Bacon's book, a copy

of which I heretofore had never been able to find. To my de-

light it was promptly forthcoming. Pasted on the initial fly-leaf

was the written statement by the librarian that when the com-

bined public library was first opened for use, the first book

called for was this volume. On the opposite blank page was

written, in the handwriting of some Bacon devotee, this poetical

tribute;

"Ohio! Greetings! Gifted daughter, thine;

Has e'en thy brilliant sons surpassed; Enshrine.

In rev'rent tribute, Delia Bacon's name.

Out-live, 'twill, e'en our marked 'Hall of Fame'."

 

But less us pass from the "grave" to the "gay".  Some

people do not class Delia Bacon with the humorists, but Ohio

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276      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

had them and has them now; those funny fellows. The Buckeye

has ever possessed in large measure that saving grace, the sense

of humor. No other state has done more to make the world

laugh at any mortal thing or to offer the "fellow of infinite

jest." The Ohioan knows a joke when he sees it. You do

not have to chisel it into his cranium. These merry chaps de-

serve a brief hearing. Wit and humor is native and to the

manor born in Ohio. Perhaps Samuel Sullivan Cox was second

to none as the all-round literary Buckeye humorist-nick-

named "Sunset Cox" for his glowing description - in the Colum-

bus Statesman -of the globe of day as it sank one evening

beyond the Scioto to its couch of night. This effulgent editorial

(May 19, 1853), which instantly dowered Mr. Cox with na-

tional fame, was a pen picture equal in gorgeous glow to the

pigment colored canvas of a Turner.   Cox appreciated the

wisdom of humor and the humor of wisdom. He was endowed

with the wit of Sidney Smith and the rare descriptive powers

of Twain. His "Why We Laugh," if not the first, is perhaps the

best word on the philosophy of man's happy side. His "Buck-

eye Abroad," is a companion piece to Bayard Taylor's "Views

Afoot," and his volumes respectively entitled "Winter Sunbeams,"

and "Orient Sunbeams," remind us that in this world of woe

and vale of tears the sunny side of life is our relief and re-

demption. He would not erase the self-written epitaph of the

poet Gay:

"Life is a jest and all things show it;

I thought so once and now I know it."

 

One of the most prolific comic writers of his day was A.

Minor Griswold, known the country over as "The Fat Con-

tributor," who made his jesting fame as reporter on the Cin-

cinnati Enquirer, and left a wake of laughter behind him as he

toured and lectured through the states. Elder New York must

remember his inimitable stories and sketches, for he subse-

quently wrote many for the New York dailies and was a wel-

come guest in the Ohio Society of New York.

David Ross Locke, the Petroleum V. Nasby of the Toledo

Blade; born in your state of New York, but adopted son of

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High Lights in Ohio Literature.         277

 

Ohio, declared by Secretary Chase as exercising a most potent

effect in helping in the trying days of the Civil War to save

the Union by hurling his shafts of ridicule, sarcasm and humor

at the slackers and copperheads of the North. Mr. Boutwell,

holding high official position in Washington, during Lincoln's

administration and later in Grant's cabinet, said in a public

speech shortly after the Civil War, "The rebellion was put down

by three forces; the army and the navy of the United States and

the letters of Petroleum V. Nasby."  Of all the publications

during the war, none, says Charles Sumner, had such a charm

for Lincoln as the droll and inimitable "letters" from the Post-

master of "Confedrit X Roads (which is in the Stait uv Ken-

tucky)." As the letters appeared the president read every one

of them and kept them all within reach for mental relaxation.

Mr. Sumner, in his introduction to Mr. Locke's collected papers,

quotes the saying of President Lincoln -"For the genius to

write these things I would gladly give up my office."

There is still another whose "quips and gibes" likewise gave

comfort and cheer to the heavy-burdened heart of the Great

Emancipator. You have already guessed his name, Artemus

Ward, in reality Charles F. Browne; he was physically born in

Maine, but funnily in Ohio, where he discovered his rich vein

of golden humor while reporter (1860) on the Cleveland Plain

Dealer.  Artemus Ward asked regarding his "principles"-

answered, "Principles, I ain't got no principles, I am in the show

business." It was Ward of all other Ohio jokesmiths that drove

his wit and humor into the understanding and appreciation of a

London audience. They saw "the point" at first sight, although

he precautiously announced that if any one of his auditors did

not see the hit and would call at his hotel the next morning he

would furnish an explanatory diagram.

It was on July 23, 1862, in the dark and discouraging days

of the Civil War when President Lincoln summarily called a

cabinet meeting. Secretary Chase, dignified and stately, was the

first to arrive. The President was leaning back in his awkward,

ungainly, unconventional manner, intently reading a book. Look-

ing up he said, "Chase did you ever read this book?" "What

is it," asked the Secretary.  "Artemus Ward," replied the

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278       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

President: "Let me read you the chapter entitled 'War Wurx

in Albany,' and he began reading and laughing while the other

members of the cabinet, one by one, made their appearance. At

last Stanton, the iron-hearted Secretary of War, bluntly inter-

rupted the President with the statement that he was in a great

hurry and if any business was to be done he would like to have

it attended to at once; whereupon Mr. Lincoln laid the book

down upon his desk, opened a drawer, took out a paper and

said: "Gentlemen, I have called you together to notify you what

I have determined to do. I want no advice." He then read

the first draft of the proclamation of emancipation.   Seward

thought there ought to be something about God at the close of

it, to which Lincoln replied: "Put it in, it won't hurt it." It

was then agreed that the President should wait for a victory

of the Union arms before issuing the proclamation to the world.

Mr. Chase was the last to go, and as he passed through the

door he glanced back and saw Mr. Lincoln had taken up the

book and was again engrossed in the "Wax Wurx at Albany."*

In Ohio you may recall the "divide," that elevation that runs

across the northern-middle section of the state; above it the

rivers debouche into Lake Erie, below the divide the streams

emerge into the Beautiful River. This ridge passes through

Richland County. On this elevation, in Springfield Township,

only a short distance apart, are located the Palmer Springs, the

insignificant but veritable headwaters of the Sandusky, and

a little murky pond from which the Mohican, a branch of

the Muskingum, takes its course. Midway between these head-

* After the delivery of the address one of the auditors introduced

himself to the speaker (Randall) as Mr. David Homer Bates, who was

telegraph operator in the White House, during Mr. Lincoln's presidency

and who assisted the president in preparing the first draft of the emanci-

pation proclamation. Mr. Bates assured the speaker that the incident

related occurred practically as given; though in his volume entitled

"Lincoln in the Telegraph Office" Mr. Bates, the author, states that Mr.

Chase in his diary of that date says "that Lincoln read to the Cabinet

from Artemus Ward's humorous account of the 'High-handed Outrage

at Utica' and enjoyed it very much as did the others, except Stanton, of

course." The only question is as to the title of the chapter which

Mr. Lincoln read. The authorities vary, but the main facts of the anec-

dote are not controverted.

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High Lights in Ohio Literature.              279 waters, on a little crest of ground, is a farmer's spacious barn, so placed that when the down-pouring waters leave its peaked roof, the flow from one side runs off to the Sandusky and that from the other side finds its way to the Mohican. Literally, therefore, as the eloquent Garfield once related in an address, using the fact just stated, "A little bird standing on the ridge of that barn, can by the futter of its tiny wings cast a drop of rain into the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Gulf of Mexico." And so may we not use this curious physical fact as a simile of the source and extending influence of Ohio literature; from its early beginnings and later ample and splendid develop- ment it has spread its potent spirit throughout the field of American letters. In the words of Coates Kinney, in the Ohio Centennial Ode: "Our learning has not soared, but it has spread, Ohio's intellects are sharpened tools To deal with daily fact and daily bread. The starry peaks of knowledge in thin air Her culture has not climbed, but on the plain, In whatsoever is to do or dare With mind or matter, there behold her reign."

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