Ohio History Journal

WILLIAM D. ANDREWS

William T Coggeshall:

"Booster"of Western Literature

Students of nineteenth-century America have long been familiar with a type of person

that intellectual historian Daniel Boorstin precisely labeled the "booster."¹ Typically

he was a small-town, midwestern newspaper editor or dry-goods entrepreneur,

anxious to make a killing for himself and a reputation for his town--the order of

his desires was never clear. Promotion was his method; the most insignificant occur-

rence in his town could assume, as the object of his promotion, earthshaking impor-

tance. The arrival in his shop of last year's best eastern finery or the erection of yet

another Gothic aberration on his town's main street could be the occasion for inflated

praise intended to prove that civilization had reached its zenith. Even though the

booster may be something of a bore, he has not been without his defenders. It has

been argued, for example, that the development of education, literature, and the

arts--what is commonly called culture--came largely to America's heartland

through the efforts of promoters of this type.

The achievements of Dr. Daniel Drake of Cincinnati, the so-called "Franklin of

the West," have become legendary, and his encouragement of the arts in early Ohio

is a matter of record. Less well known than Drake's works are the efforts of a later

but equally dedicated literary booster of the West, William Turner Coggeshall.² Like

1. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), 113-168.

On American literary boosterism see particularly Robert E. Spiller, ed., The American Literary

Revolution, 1783-1837 (Garden City, N.Y., 1967) and Benjamin Spencer, The Quest for Na-

tionality: An American Literary Campaign (Syracuse, 1957). Two informative essays on western

literary boosterism are Theodore Hornberger, "Three Self-Conscious Wests," Southwest Review,

XXVI (1941), 428-448; and David Donald, "Toward a Western Literature, 1820-60" in his

Lincoln Reconsidered (New York, 1956), 167-186.

2. Published sources of information on Coggeshall include sketches in William Coyle, ed.,

Ohio Authors and their Books (Cleveland, 1962), 125; and Dictionary of American Biography,

(New York, 1930), IV, 272-273. Both of these rely on the information, provided by Coggeshall's

widow, in W. H. Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley (Cincinnati, 1891),

109-110, 116-118, a less than reliable source.

An important biographical source is the Coggeshall Papers in the Ohio Historical Society.

The eight boxes of Coggeshall manuscripts in this collection include important letters, drafts of

essays, and diaries for 1861, 1863, 1865, 1866, and 1867. Also, Ralph C. Busbey, son of

Coggeshall's daughter Emancipation Proclamation Coggeshall Busbey, excerpted material from

his grandfather's diaries for a series of pieces published in the Columbus Dispatch Magazine,

October 26, 1958, November 9, 1958, November 23, 1958, November 30, 1958. The first provides

biographical information on Coggeshall, his wife and their daughter Emmancipation Proclama-

tion, nicknamed "Prockie." The last three deal with Coggeshall's observation on Abraham

Lincoln's journeys through Columbus, first on his way to his inaugural and later on the passage

of his body back to Springfield, Illinois, for burial.

Mr. Andrews is Assistant Professor of English, The Ohio State University.

William T. Coggeshall                                                       211

Dr. Drake and many other westerners of his day, Coggeshall engaged in a staggering

variety of activities. He was a newspaper and magazine editor, writer of novels and

historical sketches, public lecturer of wide acclaim, politician and political confidant,

secret agent in the Civil War, and, at the end of his career, a diplomat. But only his

efforts to promote literature in the new American West (which he identified in 1860

as Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin,

Iowa, and Kansas) are the subject of this essay. Coggeshall was born in Lewistown,

Pennsylvania, on the 6th of September 1824. At age eighteen he moved to north-

eastern Ohio, settling in Akron in 1842. There he published for two years (1844-45)

a temperance paper called the Cascade Roarer.³ In 1845 he married Mary Maria

Carpenter, and two years later the couple moved to Cincinnati, where Coggeshall

later became editor of The Western Fountain, a newspaper established in 1846.⁴

Coggeshall's journalism career in Cincinnati was interrupted in 1851 when he

joined the Hungarian patriot Louis Kossuth on his tour of America. Serving as guide,

secretary, and reporter, the enterprising journalist also attempted to write a biography

of Kossuth.⁵ Later, in the autumn of 1852, after the manuscript of the biography

was rejected by a New York publisher, Coggeshall reentered the Cincinnati news-

paper world, becoming the assistant editor of the year-old Daily Columbian, a news

and business paper with circulation of 5,000 in 1854.⁶

By August of 1854 Coggeshall became involved in a more literary enterprise, the

publishing of the Genius of the West, a Cincinnati magazine that consciously pro-

moted local literature. This publication had been started in October of 1853 by

Howard Durham, a native of New Jersey who had settled near Cincinnati in 1847

to conduct business as a shoemaker. Durham was shortly joined on the Genius by

Coates Kinney, a local poet who had just left his position as a professor at Judson

College in Mt. Palatine, Illinois. Apparently Durham and Kinney quarreled over

money, and in the late summer of 1854 Kinney bought out the magazine's founder

and took into partnership William Coggeshall. Durham then established in January

of 1855 a rival publication, The New Western, the Original Genius of the West,

but after a few issues he abandoned it. Coates Kinney also soon sold out his share

in the Genius, leaving Coggeshall the editor and chief proprietor by June 1855.⁷

Under his direction the Genius promoted regional literature, publishing the work

of young western poets like the Cary sisters, Alice and Phoebe, W. D. Gallagher,

Sarah Bolton, and the Fuller sisters, Metta and Frances. Orville James Victor, who

later became the publisher of Beadle's Dime Novels, contributed historical sketches

and book reviews.⁸ Even though the magazine achieved genuine literary merit, it was

3. Samuel A. Lane, Fifty Years and Over of Akron and Summit County (Akron, 1892), 225.

4. Venable's report (pp. 109-110) that Coggeshall also worked for the Times and the Cincinnati

Gazette cannot be verified from the newspapers themselves. The details of his journalism career

in Cincinnati are as confused as the newspaper situation itself there, where papers came into

existence for brief periods and then disappeared or merged with others. It is at least clear that

Venable's account is not trustworthy.

5. The unpublished manuscript is in Box 6 of the Coggeshall Papers. The title page says,

hopefully, "New York. 1853." The publisher's letter turning down the piece is dated December 4,

1852.

6. Coggeshall was also probably associated with a Cincinnati paper called the Commercial

Advertiser, no copies of which still exist. The Daily Columbian was printed by the firmly

established weekly Columbian and the Great West, which had a circulation of 75,000 in 1854.

See Columbian and the Great West, November 11, 1854.

7. Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, 109-110.

8. Editor of the Sandusky Daily Register, Victor was a good friend and frequent correspondent

of Coggeshall. Twenty-eight of Coggeshall's letters to Victor are in Box 1 of the Coggeshall

Papers.

214                                                                OHIO HISTORY

reward pioneer writers, and "encourage thereby strivings of Genius, which shall

accomplish what is worthy of the example of the past, the inspiration of the present,

and the promise of the future."¹³

As has been mentioned, Coggeshall's early contact with boosterism came largely

through his experience in Cincinnati journalism, and particularly through his friend-

ship with William D. Gallagher, an important booster himself. In fact, Gallagher's

anthology, Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West (1841), was the first

collection of western poetry and is also an important source for western cultural

history.¹⁴ By way of introduction, the anthology began with self-conscious apologies

from the editor, who confessed;

Of the productions generally, which make up the volume, this remark may be made: they

look not, for their paternity, to men of either leisure, wealth, or devotion to letters,--but

find it, some amid the din of the workshop, others at the handle of the plough, a third

class in the ledger-marked counting-room, and a fourth among the John Doism and Richard

Roism of an attorney's office. For the most part, they have been mere momentary

outgushings of irrepressible feeling, proceeding from the hearts of those who were daily

and hourly subjected to the perplexities and toils of business, and the cares and anxieties

inseparable from the procuring of one's daily bread by active occupation.--As such, let

them be judged.¹⁵

This statement serves two purposes, both consistent with the western booster spirit.

It acts as defense against possible attacks on the quality of the verse, since the

writers are shown to be amateurs in literature who steal time from their professional

pursuits to court the muse. It also is a kind of a boast, picturing the westerner as

hard working and productive, both on practical and artistic levels, unlike--the

suggestion seems to be--effete eastern writers who do not participate in the hustle

and bustle of daily life.

The best work in the collection is Gallagher's own rather interesting blank-verse

poem "Miami Woods." Most of the others are occasional pieces, effusions on aspects

of nature or domestic bliss, topographical poems on landmarks like Indian mounds,

or derivative romantic set pieces. Thirty-eight poets are included in the anthology,

with a total of 109 poems. Aside from Gallagher, the only poets whose names carry

literary weight in our day are Otway Curry and Amelia Welby, who are represented

by eight and seven poems, respectively. As the major commentator on the volume

has remarked, it is of more historical than aesthetic interest, and the modern reader

is attracted to it mostly out of curiosity.¹⁶ In its day, though, Gallagher's anthology

was of considerable significance. The Duyckinck brothers, arbiters of eastern literary

taste, mentioned it with admiration.¹⁷ Certainly young poets of the West looked to

it as a standard to guide their own work. As a literary booster, William T. Coggeshall

must also have been attracted to the collection for its literary merits as well as for

its potential for further exploitation.

13. William T. Coggeshall, The Protective Policy in Literature: A Discourse on the Social and

Moral Advantages of the Cultivation of Local Literature (Columbus, 1859), 16.

14. For comments on Gallagher, see John T. Flanagan's introduction to the facsimile edition

of Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West (Gainesville, Fla., 1968).

15. William D. Gallagher, ed., Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West (Cincinnati,

1841), 8.

16. Flanagan, ed., Selections, xvi.

17. See the comment in Evert A. and George L. Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American Litera-

ture (New York, 1855), II, 471.

William T. Coggeshall                                                 215

It is impossible to fix with precision the moment of Coggeshall's decision to follow

Gallagher's lead in producing another anthology of western poetry. We know that

at least as early as 1855, Coggeshall was thinking about such a project. In a letter

to his friend Orville J. Victor in October, Coggeshall wrote: "I am now hard at work

upon 'The West and its Literature.' I shall aim to make some hits which shall seem

as rebukes to a certain class of people whom you know."¹⁸ The last reference is

probably to the New York literary establishment, particularly to Rufus Wilmot

Griswold and Evert and George Duyckinck, who were to Coggeshall the arch

enemies of western literature. "The West and Its Literature" is a major statement

of regionalism in American literature--and is a key document in Coggeshall's

booster campaign for western writing. It was first presented as a lecture on June 22,

1858, to the Beta Theta Pi Society of Ohio University during the school's fifty-fourth

commencement activities, and then in 1859 it was retitled and published by Follett

and Foster of Columbus as The Protective Policy in Literature: A Discourse on the

Social and Moral Advantages of the Cultivation of Local Literature.

Like most boosters, Coggeshall began his speech with the statement that the

character of westerners, formed partly by a distinctive natural environment, is so

unlike that of easterners that only local literature can properly express it. Since similar

arguments about regional peculiarities were already in use in 1858 by southerners

bent on separating themselves from the Union which Coggeshall so firmly supported,

he was forced to defend his "sectionalism." "Literature which lives," Coggeshall

said, "represents the spirit of a people. In that sense it must be 'sectional,' or local;

in a word, native."

But Coggeshall was aware that this "spirit of a people" was not always evident in

the writings of westerners--and that works which did express it were only infre-

quently monetary or critical successes. Remembering the financial troubles with his

Genius of the West, he felt some measure of blame must be shared by westerners

themselves. To account for early failures of the region's literary endeavors, par-

ticularly magazines, Coggeshall pointed to the West's "servile dependence upon the

Atlantic States, and in ungenerous distrust of home energy, home honesty, and home

capacity." He then endeavored to show what would happen if this spirit of indiffer-

ence were allowed to chill the development of "an individual literature." The West

would become as barren of local talent as the land cleared of its virgin forests by

foolish but ambitious pioneers, and quick growing replacements (eastern literary

works) would be poor substitutes for the native monarch oak, beech, or elm.

Even if recognized at home, Coggeshall thought that western writers who en-

deavored to express the true character of their region might still not fare well. The

reason, which is the main target of his wrath in the lecture, was the deliberate

neglect of western writing by eastern critics, particularly by Rufus Griswold and the

Duyckincks. Coggeshall complained that The Prose Writers of America, one of

Griswold's anthologies, recognized with biographical notices only two westerners,

Timothy Flint and James Hall; this was serious enough, but it became even more

serious when one realized both of these "westerners" were born in the East. "The

student of Literature," Coggeshall declared, "could never ascertain, from 'standard

authority,' that there had been prose writers in Ohio, or Indiana, or Kentucky, or

Illinois, or Michigan."

Although Coggeshall admitted that Griswold's attitude toward western poets, as

18. Coggeshall to O. J. Victor, October 9, 1855, Coggeshall Papers, Box 1.

216                                                              OHIO HISTORY

manifested by their inclusion in The Poets and Poetry of America, was somewhat

more liberal, he still complained that most who appeared were eastern-born. If one

were not by birth an easterner, only one route to inclusion in Griswold's anthology

existed: "Only those men who, writing prose in the West, published it in the East,

have been considered by Mr. Griswold worthy of notice; consequently, a large

number, whom the people of the West should honor and respect, and who deserve

to be introduced to every student of American literature, are grossly slighted."

Toward the Duyckincks Coggeshall's attitude was equally vituperative: "[with only

a few exceptions] the world is left in ignorance, so far as the Cyclopedia of American

Literature can leave it, of native talent for authorship in any Western State." In

neither the Cyclopaedia nor Griswold's anthologies did Coggeshall see much hope

for the encouragement of western literature:

Without fear of successful contradiction, I affirm that neither Griswold's Survey of Amer-

ican Literature, in three volumes, nor Ducykink's [sic] Cyclopedia, in two volumes, nor

both together, can be given credit for due respect to western authorship, while they exhibit

active diligence in 'making a good show' for all the giants and many of the dwarfs of

eastern authordom:

After this dismal review of the past fortunes of western literature, Coggeshall con-

cluded his discourse on "The West and its Literature" with a paean to western

character and the writing that expressed it. The future, he prophesied, would be

much brighter.¹⁹

This optimistic prediction is in reality an announcement--the West's answer to

Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America. Since western writing fared so miserably

at the hands of eastern critics, the solution to neglect was obvious: what the West

needed was its own anthology, a thorough compendium of the accomplishments of

native writers which would prove to easterners and westerners alike that the muses

of literature were well established in the Ohio Valley. Advance sheets of Coggeshall's

Poets and Poetry of the West--the only one of the three intended volumes that was

published, probably because of the intervention of the Civil War--were apparently

ready by the spring of 1860.

On May 5, 1860, in an unsigned review in the Ohio State Journal, William Dean

Howells commented on the anthology which was originally scheduled for publication

that June. A contributor to the volume himself, Howells welcomed it as a much-

needed work but was hesitant in his praise. He said that Coggeshall's editorial policy

seemed to favor quantity over quality, "so that while every poem of positive merit

which the west has produced, will be included in the book, the work will be made

representative of what is respectable in our poetical literature, and no writer of

reputation will be passed over, because his verse cannot be tried by the highest

[eastern] criticism."²⁰ When The Poets and Poetry of the West was finally published,

probably in the autumn of 1860, by Follet, Foster and Company of Columbus, the

fruits of Coggeshall's labor--and the wisdom of his policy of liberal inclusion--

19. Coggeshall, Protective Policy in Literature, 3, 17-24.

20. Ohio State Journal (Columbus), May 5, 1860. For a fuller review of the published

anthology, see Ohio State Journal, September 1, 1860. Also the work of Howells, this review is

somewhat hesitant but generally more favorable than the first. Of Coggeshall himself Howells

remarks: "Few men in the country could have brought so much patience and ardor to the work-

no other man in the West could have done so. Eager to render justice--perhaps too eager to

encourage--yet keeping the endurance of the reader in view, he has made a book entirely

creditable to himself. - And we think it creditable to the West, too."

William T. Coggeshall                                                     217

were ready to be judged by all. Sold by subscription only, the anthology was a

handsome octavo volume of 688 pages as well printed and bound as its publishers

had earlier advertised.²¹

In his brief and business-like preface, Coggeshall echoed William D. Gallagher's

statement from the 1841 anthology to the effect that few of the authors represented

were professional writers. Only ten devoted themselves full time to the profession

of authorship. The rest snatched time for art from their daily pursuits of law, medi-

cine, politics, teaching, preaching, farming, laboring, editing, printing, and house-

keeping. To counter the eastern influence in Griswold's anthologies, Coggeshall

took pains to point out, statistically, the western origins of the writers he included.

By birth many of the 159 writers (ninety-eight men and sixty-one women)²² were,

of course, easterners, fifteen from New York, twelve from Pennsylvania, thirty-one

from New England; but seventy-five were natives of the Ohio Valley, thirty-nine

from Ohio itself. Over a third resided in Ohio (60 by Coggeshall's count, really 61);

the next best represented states, in order, are Indiana (23, in fact 25); Kentucky (14,

in fact 16); Illinois (13); Michigan (5); Wisconsin (4, in fact 5); Missouri (3, in

fact 5); Iowa (2); Minnesota (2); Kansas (1). By the numbers alone it is clear

that the anthology is a western product, an answer to the East, and a monument to

the literary work of native sons of the Ohio-Mississippi Valley.

Each poet in the volume is introduced in a biographical notice supplied by

Coggeshall or by one of his associates, Gallagher, Coates Kinney, O. J. Victor,

Benjamin St. James Fry, and William Dean Howells, among others. Howells wrote

four of the notices, all relatively short and on minor Ohio poets: John H. A. Bone,

an Englishman involved in Cleveland journalism; Gordon A. Stewart, a former

journalist and Kenton lawyer; Helen L. Bostwick, a Ravenna poetess and writer of

children's stories; and Mary R. Whittlesey, a Cleveland poetess. All of the notes,

although not always accurate, are a valuable source of information about the writers

and constituted a sort of biographical cyclopaedia along the same lines as the

Duyckincks' work.

The verse in The Poets and Poetry of the West was as western as its contributors,

at least in the way Coggeshall understood that adjective. Much of it had western

themes: Indians, the difficulties of settlement, the beauty of the Ohio Valley, local

legends and myths. But a considerable number of the poems could just as well have

been written in the East, or in any other part of America. Many poems deal with

domesticity, love, issues of philosophy and religion. Such were not excluded since

Coggeshall intended to produce an anthology that would also demonstrate that the

West could write poetry quite as copiously as did the East. Certainly the anthology

achieved this goal, since it included a great quantity of verse. Much of it, however,

is mediocre--not really dull but not distinguished either, and again is of more

interest to the historian than to the connoisseur of literary art. The same can be said

for the poetry in Griswold's anthology and for much of mid-nineteenth-century

American verse, for that matter.²³

21. In a lettter to O. J. Victor, August 1, 1860, Coggeshall noted: "We are not going to finish

the Poetry till late in the fall. The prospect is good." Coggeshall Papers, Box 1.

22. In his preface Coggeshall says there are 152 writers, 97 men and 55 women. This minor

error, explicable only by poor editing, has been repeated by all commentators on the volume.

23. Poets of historical interest in the anthology include Salmon P. Chase, Sarah T. Bolton,

Alice and Phoebe Cary, Otway Curry, Anna P. Dinnies, Julia Dumont, William D. Gallagher,

Coates Kinney, John J. Piatt, George D. Prentice, Sarah L. P. Smith, Laura M. Thurston,

William R. Ross, Amelia B. Welby, and the Fuller sisters, Frances (Barritt) and Metta (Victor).

The only poet who later became famous is William Dean Howells, an Ohioan, who is represented

by six poems from his very early literary career.

220                                                                    OHIO HISTORY

when he conducted the "Easy Chair" column of Harper's Monthly in New York, the

Ohioan promoted such western writers as Hamlin Garland and Frank Norris. In

some respects, then, Howell's literary career may be seen as a direct product of

western boosterism and a triumph of Coggeshall's aspirations.²⁵

25. Coggeshall's boosterism was continued also by William Henry Venable (1836-1920), an

Ohioan whose energies were directed toward promoting the work of writers of his native state.

Venable, educator, historian, poet, and novelist, was a devoted student of the early literature of

Ohio. He contributed important notes on Ohio authors and their work to the first volumes of

Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly: "Literary Periodicals of the Ohio Valley," I

(1888), 201-205; "Some Early Travelers and Annalists of the Ohio Valley," ibid., 230-242;

"William Davis Gallagher," ibid., 358-375; and ibid., II (1889), 309-326.

Venable's most important booster project is his Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio

Valley (1891), still the standard source for much information about the early literature of the

Ohio Valley West. In 1931 W. H. Venable's son, Emerson, and Emerson's daughter, Mrs.

Evelyn Venable Mohr (Mrs. Hall Mohr), presented to the Ohio Historical Society the Dolores

Cameron Venable Memorial Collection in honor of Emerson's deceased wife (Dolores Cameron

Venable, Evelyn's mother). This collection of books, letters, manuscripts, and photographs deal-

ing with nineteenth-century Ohio authors (most notably W. H. Venable and Coates Kinney)

includes many important letters and other documents assembled by William Henry Venable in

his "booster" campaign to promote the literature of Ohio. The Venables obviously followed the

same honorable tradition as did William T. Coggeshall.