John Bailhache:
A British Editor in Early Ohio
By WILLIAM L. FISK*
THE WESTERN PRESS was one of the chief formative influences
upon public opinion in early
ninteenth-century Ohio. Cut off by
time and distance from eastern
standards and eastern inhibitions, it
might apprise its readers of the
imminent threat of British in-
terests in the Old Northwest, and at
the same time vigorously
promote regional or sectional interests
or gleefully involve itself
in internecine warfare with other
newspapers in the state. The
hand of a temperate editor was usually
the only force to see to it
that freedom of the press was
accompanied by a degree of sober
responsibility.
Some editors were flamboyant in their
exercise of editorial pre-
rogatives and have been entertaining as
well as useful sources for
the study of public issues of their
day. Charles Hammond of the
Cincinnati Gazette and James Wilson of the Steubenville Gazette,
the grandfather of President Wilson,
indulged their partisan feel-
ings to the limit and hurled great
columns of invective at their
political enemies.1 Other editors
eschewed controversy and im-
mersed themselves in the anonymity of
patient reproduction of
correspondents' dispatches with a
minimum of commentary.
John Bailhache, a contemporary of
Charles Hammond and
James Wilson, was seldom moved to their
extravagance of edi-
torial utterance, but his career in the
Chillicothe and Columbus
press was marked by a clear and
elevated conception of the role
of the press and its responsibility.
His activities also provide some
glimpses of the intellectual life of
the first generation in Ohio.
* William L. Fisk is chairman of the
department of history at Muskingum College.
1 See F. P. Weisenburger, "A Life
of Charles Hammond," Ohio Archaeological
and Historical Quarterly, XLIII (1934), 337-427.
142
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
John Bailhache was born in the Isle of
Jersey in 1787, the heir
of a family of ancient Norman origins
with an estate large enough
to yield a comfortable income. He was
of that class in British
society partaking of the status both of
yeomen and small gentry
which had almost vanished before the
advance of modern economic
conditions.
Choosing not to farm the ancestral
lands himself, John Bail-
hache became a printer's apprentice
after completing the course
of study at a local academy. He was
attracted to this position by
the lure of the adjoining bookstore
operated by the firm.2
His enthusiasm for the printing trade
was short-lived, and in
1810 he decided to accompany his uncle,
the Rev. Peter Sarchet,
who was emigrating from the Isle of
Guernsey to join his grown
children in Guernsey County, Ohio. Here
the Sarchets had acquired
seventeen hundred and twenty acres of
land adjacent to Cambridge
and had invested in a salt-making
enterprise on the banks of the
Muskingum north of Zanesville.
Bailhache became associated
with the business, which soon failed at
considerable financial loss
to all participants.
His lack of success in this industrial
venture in eastern Ohio
impelled him to return to his
professional training both to recoup
his own losses and to assist his
kinsmen in retaining their now
encumbered lands in Guernsey County.
The position he obtained
was on the staff of the Fredonian, a
newspaper published in Chilli-
cothe and also briefly in Circleville.
For the next fourteen years
Bailhache was active in the publishing
business in Chillicothe,
except for a brief sojourn in
Cincinnati in 1812.
His memory of Cincinnati in 1812 is an
interesting one:
We arrived in Cincinnati on or about
the first of July and found that
place which then contained about 2500
inhabitants and presented a rough
and unsightly appearance in a state of
great excitement, owing to the
critical situation of General Hull's
army and the exertions then being made
2 John Bailhache, Brief Sketch of the
Life and Editorial Career of John Bailhache
of Alton, Illinois (1855), an
unpublished manuscript in the possession of the
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Mass., and used by its permission. There
is a typewritten copy in the library of
the Ohio Historical Society. It will be referred
to hereafter as Autobiography.
u
JOHN BAILHACHE 143
by government to supply him with
provisions and reinforcements most of
which were forwarded from that point.
Here I first witnessed a general
celebration of our national anniversary
by the delivery of an oration in
the court house by William Hendricks.
He returned to Chillicothe at the urging
of the publisher of
the Fredonian, who pointed out
that his position as a British sub-
ject in the Old Northwest would be
considerably more secure if
he identified himself with an undeniably
Republican paper.3
During his years in Chillicothe
Bailhache eventually bought a
half interest in the Fredonian, later
merging it with the Scioto
Gazette, another Republican paper, and finally in 1821 with the
Supporter, the Federalist newspaper in the town, for there were
no conflicting political views between
the two party organs.
In 1825 his firm bought the Columbus
Gazette, reorganized and
renamed it, and the Ohio State
Journal was born. Bailhache edited
the Journal until 1835, when he
found himself unable to share
any of the enthusiasm the other
anti-Jackson men in Ohio felt for
the candidacy of Judge John McLean in
the oncoming presidential
campaign of 1836. Therefore, he sold the
Journal and after serving
a brief term as mayor of Columbus, moved
to Illinois, where the
last twenty years of his life were
spent, eighteen of them as editor
of the Alton Telegraph.4
John Bailhache said that his interest in
accompanying Peter
Sarchet to America was partly because of
his republican sentiment.
During the course of the War of 1812
General Harrison passed
through Chillicothe on his way to the
Michigan frontier, and Bail-
hache acquired one of his two political
heroes. The other, Henry
Clay, he met in 1821, when Clay came to
Columbus, where Bail-
hache was representing Ross County in
the state legislature. In
1835, after his party in Ohio had united
on McLean's candidacy,
Bailhache insisted that Clay was the
only candidate who could
defeat Van Buren in the election of 1836.
"All admit his superior
3 Autobiography. This casual comment is
the only indication the writer has
been able to discern, either in the
Autobiography or in Bailhache's editorial columns,
that his British origins caused him any
embarrassment during the War of 1812.
4 Autobiography. Although Bailhache's
removal to Alton was almost coincidental
in time with the Lovejoy tragedy, no
mention of that issue nor any comment on
the slavery controversy appears in the
Autobiography.
144
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
tact in reconciling differences and
healing dissensions whether
national, political, or personal,"
the editorial column of the Journal
reminded its readers.5
That this praise of Clay, the author of
compromise, was genuine
is indicated by an earlier encomium
delivered under the masthead
of the Chillicothe Supporter and
Scioto Gazette in 1823. This was
one of the few occasions when John
Bailhache entered into the
editorial warfare with other newspapers
in which his contempor-
aries loved to indulge. When James
Wilson of the Steubenville
Gazette called Clay a friend of slavery, Bailhache replied:
"The
course pursued by Mr. Clay on the
famous Missouri question was
in our opinion correct, liberal, and
judicious. His commanding
eloquence and his enlightening
patriotism calmed the wild fury of
debate and allayed a storm which might
have shaken the union
to its center."6
Obviously Bailhache was moving into the
newly forming Whig
party at the end of his journalistic
career in Ohio. In the last years
of his life he noted that he had
supported the administrations of
Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams
and then placed his
loyalty with the Whigs. In 1855 he
professed himself incapable
of deciding what party he belonged to
in the changed political
arena of that day.7
Ohio editors in the nineteenth century
were primarily concerned
with politics. Hence it is only by
extracting scattered non-political
jottings from John Bailhache's
editorial columns and the Autobi-
ography that other interesting aspects
of his life and times can
be observed.
The literary standards of the Ohio
State Journal were high. In
his first year on the staff Bailhache
acknowledged the receipt of a
story entitled "The Two
Flowers" by Quo Quintus. A few days
later the editor's column informed Quo
Quintus "that his story,
'The Two Flowers,' wants the necessary
stamina to render it inter-
esting and that he is too verbose in
conveying the moral point."8
5 Ohio State Journal, March 28, 1835.
6 The Supporter and Scioto Gazette, March
8, 1823.
7 Autobiography.
8 Ohio State Journal and Columbus
Gazette, October 6, 1825.
JOHN BAILHACHE 145
Nineteenth-century literary circles
were blessed with too few John
Bailhaches.
The editor never allowed his clear
vision of the responsibilities
of a free press to be dimmed by the
economic uncertainties under
which he constantly worked. Again and
again, both in Chillicothe
and Columbus, he pleaded with his
patrons to pay their delinquent
subscriptions and always with the same
reminder that the press can
not be free if it is not financially
independent.
In 1821 he wrote:
If the people who are immediately
interested in the independence of the
press, emphatically the only true
guardian of their rights and liberties, are
unwilling to yield it that support,
without which it must become the humble
tool of the corrupt, the ambitious, and
the designing, let it be so.9
When he left the Ohio State Journal,
the same theme recurred
in his valedictory editorial:
Editors and publishers are constituted
like the rest of the human race.
They can neither subsist on air nor
carry on an expensive business without
money. . . . It therefore follows that
after a few unavailing struggles to
preserve their independence some of them
finally submit to become the
tools and instruments of designing
individuals or a political party.
And still more pointedly he commented:
Had the Whigs of Ohio like their
opponents made the support of the
press a leading article in their
political creed and thrown what patronage
they could conveniently command in my
way I should doubtless have
succeeded far better.10
It is impossible to say whether this
lamented status of the press
was as much a factor in Bailhache's
relinquishing of the Journal as
his lack of enthusiasm for McLean
mentioned above. Yet his pre-
dicating principles of freedom upon
financial necessities was con-
sistent with a breadth of viewpoint
that was one of his distinguish-
ing characteristics.
9 The Supporter and Scioto Gazette, February 21, 1821.
10 Ohio State Journal, April 4,
1835.
146 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
This quality plus perhaps a bit of
lingering sentiment for his
native land produced some delightful
observations on European
politics in the period of the Monroe
doctrine.
"The [Iberian] peninsula," he
wrote in an editorial on the
Spanish Revolution against Ferdinand
VII, "is the theatre on which
for many years the British arms have
gathered their brightest
laurels. It is there that their own
Wellington has reached the sum-
mit of his fame and that those exploits
have been performed which
shed so much lustre on the latter part
of the reign of George III."
He hoped that the British army would go
to Spain and that the
British government would "be
hailed as the generous defender of
the liberties of Europe."11 This
from an editor in the Old North-
west within a decade of the battle of
New Orleans. Chillicotheans
at least were not encouraged to demand
a unilateral foreign policy
from their government as a substitute
for George Canning's
grand strategy.
The same broad view of affairs was
reflected in Bailhache's religi-
ous sympathies. Reared in the Church of
England, he attended the
Methodist services in America until an
Episcopal church was or-
ganized in Chillicothe. He noted that
there were no important
differences in the two denominations,
but he joined the Episcopal
Church "in full persuasion that
its doctrines are at least as con-
formable to the Holy Scriptures as
those of any other Christian
denomination; while its incomparable
liturgy affords the best guar-
anty that mere human wisdom can provide
against any material
departure from 'the faith once
delivered unto the Saints.'"12
From his boyhood in the Channel Islands
John Bailhache brought
to the Ohio country a surprisingly
tolerant view of Catholicism
for that age and region.
"I may add," he wrote in the
Autobiography, "that my French
teacher, M. Etienne, had so endeared
himself to me by his exceeding
gentleness, the suavity of his manners,
and the purity of his life
that for his sake and in regard to his
memory, I have never been
able or even desired to look upon the
Roman Catholic Church of
11 The Supporter and Scioto Gazette, March
29, 1823.
12 Autobiography.
JOHN BAILHACHE 147
which he was a devout member as
altogether corrupt and anti-
Christian."13
From these scattered expressions of
opinion and conviction John
Bailhache emerges as a person who
contributed dignity and good
sense to early Ohio journalism. He saw
that freedom and respon-
sibility were inseparable prerequisites
for the development of a
sound tradition in the western press.
He stood above the nation-
alist and sectarian prejudices of his
age but was in hearty accord
with his generation's ardor for
exalting the ideal of liberty on
every occasion.
13 Ibid.