Ohio History Journal

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Caleb Atwater:

Caleb Atwater:

Pioneer Politician and Historian

 

By FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER*

 

 

 

THE FIRST SIGNIFICANT SUMMARY of Ohio's past was an

historical introduction by Salmon P. Chase to his compilation

of the Statutes of Ohio.1 At that time, Chase, a graduate of

Dartmouth College who had studied law in a somewhat in-

formal way under William Wirt, attorney general of the

United States (1817-29), was waiting for clients as a fledg-

ling lawyer in Cincinnati.2 James Kent, the distinguished

New York jurist, deemed this historical sketch of the history

of Ohio to be "admirable, and written with impartiality,

truth, and eloquence."3 Both Kent and Associate Justice

Joseph Story of the United States Supreme Court praised

the edition of the laws of Ohio.4 Yet the undertaking was not

a financial success. The first edition of one thousand copies

was printed at great expense. Several hundred copies of

the second volume were destroyed by fire. The state pur-

chased only one hundred and fifty copies of the work, and

Chase received about one thousand dollars for all of his

labor on the undertaking. The publishers, Corey and Fair-

 

* Francis P. Weisenburger is professor of history at Ohio State University

He is the author of The Passing of the Frontier, 1825-1850, which is Volume II

in the six-volume History of the State of Ohio published by the Society in the

early 1940's.

1 Published in three volumes at Cincinnati, 1833-35. The forty-eight pag

Preliminary Sketch of the History of Ohio was also separately issued.

2 Dictionary of American Biography.

3 Kent to Chase, July 1, 1835, in J. W. Schuckers, The Life and Public Service

of Salmon Portland Chase (New York, 1874), 35-36.

4 Ibid., 36-37.