(RETURN TO THE TITLE PAGE)


250 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


the manual. The city was divided into four precincts : first, all the territory between the river and Erie street and the "Scranton flats ;" second and third, a line was drawn from Erie street eastward parallel to Euclid, three hundred feet to the north of Euclid, all north of this line was precinct two, all south of it precinct three ; the fourth precinct was all of the west side. Two old station houses were retained, the central station and prison on Champlain street, built in 1864, and the brick house on Vermont street, west side.


A new sociological problem was thrust upon the board by the scores of "indigent, inoffensive persons" who sought lodging in jail over night. Beds were fitted up for them in the central station.


The board was short lived. After two years the governor failed to appoint members and the mayor alone reports as "acting board." In 1867 Dr. John Dickinson was appointed the first police surgeon at a salary of one hundred dollars a year. This salary was subsequently raised. He served faithfully for many years. In 1869 James McMahon was made the first captain. In 1866 J. W. Frazee was appointed the first superintendent of police, later called chief of police.

The third period of development begins with the act of March 7, 1872, establishing a board of police commissioners, consisting of the mayor and four members elected by the people. The first commission consisted of Charles Otis, mayor, Dr. J. C. Schenck, John M. Sterling, Dr. J. E. Robinson and George Saal. The new board established seven precincts as follows :

First. The down town section between Erie street and the river; twenty- nine miles of street, eleven day and twenty-two night beats. Station, the three- story brick building erected in 1864 on Champlain street, two story stone jail in the rear, sixty cells, valued at one hundred and five thousand dollars.


Second. East of Erie and north of Euclid, thirty-five miles of street, five day and ten night beats. Station, two story brick house, corner Nevada and Oregon, cost twelve thousand dollars.


Third. East of Erie, south of Euclid to Atlantic & Great Western (Erie) railway tracks ; thirty-five miles of street, five day and ten night beats. Station on First street near Brownell, same as No. 2.


Fourth. The business section of the west side; fifty-eight miles of street, eight day and six night beats. Station, three story brick building on Detroit street near Pearl, jail sixteen cells, cost twenty-five thousand dollars.


Fifth. West side south of Big Four tracks ; forty-three miles of streets, three day and six night beats ; one story brick station on Barber avenue, cost twenty-five thousand dollars.


Sixth, Fourteenth and fifteenth wards ; sixty miles of street, two day and four night beats, no station.


Seventh. East of Willson avenue ; fifty-eight miles of street, three day and four night beats, station a room in Hovey block, Euclid avenue, rented for seventy-five dollars per year.


Since the establishment of this second police board, the growth of the department has been quite commensurate with that of the city, although the force is not as large per capita as that in other large cities. It appears that in 1874


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 251


there was a good deal of public criticism of the force and the board in its annual report takes notice of this and replies "an officer cannot be omnipresent." The down town merchants established "merchant police" in the '7os, In 1877 there were eighty-seven of them, mostly night patrolmen.


In 1872 the emigrant police service was detailed. In 1887 the patrol and exchange system was introduced by Chief Murphy, with fifty patrol boxes, two patrol wagons, twenty-one signal instruments and twenty-one miles of wire. In 1897 Chief Coroner detailed Patrolman George Koertle, who was an expert photographer, to go to Cincinnati and study the Bertillion system. It was then introduced here. In 1893 the first police matrons were appointed.


Under the federal plan the police administration was in charge of the director of police, who appointed the superintendent and the patrolmen. Later the board of public safety, three members appointed by the mayor, had control. At present the mayor appoints the director of public safety.

February 23, 1886, Mayor George W. Gardner offered a resolution to the board of police commissioners, providing for competitive examinations of all applicants for positions on the force. The passage of this resolution established civil service. The examinations were held by the board. In 1899 the legislature passed a law providing for the regulation of civil service in the department. This law is still the basis of the present system of competitive examinations and promotions of the police.


The metropolitan police act established a police insurance and health fund, controlled by the board. April 19, 1881, the legislature merged this fund into the newly created police pension fund, and three thousand, nine hundred and eighty dollars and thirty cents was thereby turned into the new fund. It was controlled by the police commissioners and a committee, chosen from the force, under the new federal plan by the mayor and director of police, director of law and three policemen, an arrangement that virtually exists today. September 1, 1909, the fund contained two hundred and twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty dollars and twenty-seven cents, with ninety-one officers, twenty-six widows and sixteen children on the pension roll.


There have been, fortunately, very few instances in the history of the city when the entire force was necessary to quell lawlessness, and when extraordinary precautions were necessary. In 1835 an anonymous writer in the "Cleveland Whig" says : "The general character of the inhabitants is good." There was a floating population of "some hundred landing almost daily at the wharves. The village is peaceful."' In the '4os there was a great deal of horse stealing in the county and on August 29, 1846, a meeting of citizens was held in the courthouse for "establishing a society for the purpose of detecting and bringing to justice horse thieves." The Cuyahoga County Anti-Horse Stealing club was organized. It is not recorded how effective the organization was.


On February 16, 1852, the first mob of the city gathered around the Homeopathic Medical college. It had been reported that the students had disinterred the body of a girl in Ohio City and had placed the body in a vault near the college. The police were unable to cope with the mob, which demanded the right


(1) "Cleveland Whig," July 14, 1835.


252 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


to search the premises, and a member of the city council who tried to quell its fury was roughly handled. About one thousand dollars damage was done to the building. Two of the rioters were bound over on the charge of arson, twelve on the charge of riot, seven were arrested and discharged.


In 1860 a vigilance committee undertook to run out of town the keepers of disorderly houses, who had become unusually bold. They raided the places during the night using no discrimination, so that many innocent persons were injured.


Subsequent disturbances of an unusual nature have been due to strikes. There have been several minor disturbances and two general strikes on the railroads entering Cleveland. The great unrest of 1877 reached Cleveland from Pittsburg with feverish haste on July 22, when five hundred men employed by the Lake Shore railroad walked out and paralyzed the business of that system. Thousands, of men were thrown out of work by this action and traffic was virtually at a standstill. With the strikers, the unemployed, and the lawless elements on the streets, the air surcharged with tremors of expectation and the public in a state of feverish excitement over the terrible news from other cities, it required the greatest courage and calm self-control on the part of both the strikers and the city authorities to avoid open outbreaks and mob violence. This fortunately was accomplished. The strike leaders counseled moderation, Mayor Rose and his associates warned the citizens to abide by the law, at the same time without show of preparation, they promptly prepared for the suppression of any violence. In every police station and armory of the city the militia and police reserve were gathered ready for immediate action. At the end of two weeks the men and the railroads agreed on terms and the strike was over without the loss of property or the good name of the city.


On June 16, 1890, a general strike of switchmen was declared on all the lines that entered the city and traffic was at a standstill. The demand for a new wage scale was acceded to by the company. On the 19th the switchmen of the Big Four, the Lake Shore and the Erie returned to work ; on the 21st the Pennsylvania ; and on the 22d the strike was ended without acts of violence.


On June 10, 1899, a strike was declared on the Cleveland Electric Street railway line on what was virtually a demand that only union men should be employed. The strike lasted all summer. It was a bitter and long continued struggle accompanied by acts of violence and boycotts.


There have been a number of strikes in the industrial plants of the city. Among the severest of these unfortunate struggles are the following: In May and June, 1882, the workers in the great iron mills at Newburg went out on a strike ; July, 1883, the telegraph employes employed by the Western Union, struck for higher wages. In July, 1885, a second great strike in the Newburg mills made precautions for the safety of the mills necessary. In May, 1891, the lumber handlers struck, there was some violence before an adjustment was reached and a new scale adopted. In the summer of 1896 occurred the historic strike of the Brown Hoisting Company. There were many acts of violence and the strike lasted several months. From August 1st to October 21, 1898, the employes of the American Steel and Wire Company struck for higher wages. The differences were finally adjusted by a compromise.


CHAPTER XXIV.


AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE FINANCES OF CLEVELAND. (1)


By Charles C. Williamson, Ph. D., Department of Economics and Politics, Byrn Mawr College.


In the financial history of Cleveland no peculiarly striking events are to be recorded. The changes that have taken place from decade to decade are those which any normal community experiences in passing from the small village of a few hundred inhabitants to a great commercial and manufacturing center with a population of half a million. The development of Cleveland's public finances is chiefly characterized by a budget keeping pace with, or outstripping, its growth in population and wealth ; while the administrative machinery has been developing, for the most part, in the direction of greater efficiency and economy.


Revenues from all sources did not reach the million mark until 1868. Since that date the total receipts have increased steadily at a rate of about two hundred and twenty thousand dollars each year. In Cleveland, as in every American city, the most important source of revenue is the general property tax. The taxing system, however, is not under the control of the city so fully as are certain other sources of revenue. Such taxing power as cities possess is merely delegated by the state, definite and rather narrow limits being imposed upon its exercise by state laws. A comparison of the maximum tax rate allowed by the statutes and the actual municipal levies shows that on the whole Cleveland has pressed close to the limit imposed, which probably means that state, rather than local authorities, have been relied on to keep the tax rate down to a proper level. The Board of Education in 1868 first acquired the power of levying taxes independently of the city council and a decade later the Library Board also became an independent taxing body. Both of these boards, as well as the city council itself, in order to secure what they regarded as adequate revenue, have been obliged to make constant appeals to the state legislature for higher maximum levies. The property tax for state purposes in Ohio is gradually being abandoned. In 1905 the state levy stood at one dollar and thirty-five cents per thousand dollars, having been reduced from two dollars and ninety cents in 1900, a rate that had not been exceeded in twenty-five years. Instead of taking advantage of this reduction in the state levy to relieve local rates, the various city taxing authorities have made additions which have more than counterbalanced its effect on the total tax rate in the city of Cleveland. The following table shows the total tax rate for a series of years in Cleveland as compared with that of other Ohio cities :


1 - This sketch is a brief summary of an elaborate study published by the author in 19o7, (The Finances of Cleveland, New York, 1907, pp. 266.) The original work was based on all statistical data in print at the time. In this summary it has not been practicable to incorporate the financial results of 1906 and later years.—C. C. W.


254 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND



 

1902

1903

1904

1905

Cleveland

Cincinnati

Columbus

Toledo

Dayton

30.5

23.18

27.5

29.6

25.4

30.1

22.7

30.

29.8

28.6

29.8

22.54

30.

29.8

28.2

31.7

22.38

29.

29.

28.2



Next in importance as a source of revenue is the special assessment. The annual receipts from special assessments have increased at practically the same rate as those from the general property tax. From 1890 to 1905 the amount grew from an average of about five hundred thousand dollars to nearly eight hundred thousand dollars. Prior to 1850 small amounts were raised by special assessments under. the charter of 1836 which gave the city power to levy "discriminating assessments" for local improvements in proportion to benefits accruing. The constitutionality of this form of taxation was early established* and after 1850 considerable revenue was raised in this way, the motive apparently being a desire to find' adequate revenue in the face of a very low limit on the tax levy (five mills). This pressure of state limits on local tax levies caused special assessments to increase enormously, so that by 1870 they were looked upon as a great evil. The decade from 1870 to 1880 was characterized by a tremendous amount of litigation. "The subject of distributing special assessments" declared the mayor in 1876, "has raised the most difficult questions to solve met with in municipal management." The general features of the present highly satisfactory methods of levying special assessments were evolved from the experience of those troubled years. Revenue from this source is relatively greater in Cleveland than in most cities of a population of over two hundred thousand in the United States.


Of the remaining sources of municipal income the "liquor tax" has, since 1887, been the most productive, excluding receipts from loans, and excluding also the water works revenue which is of course not net income. In addition to receipts from the liquor license a certain irregular income has always been realized from miscellaneous licenses, but a general licensing of trades and occupations has never been popular in Cleveland. From 1880 to 1900 there was a good deal of agitation for a system of licenses such as was to be found in many other cities. Cincinnati, for instance, had, as late as 1904, more than thirty kinds of municipal licenses, yielding an annual revenue of over seventy-nine thousand dollars. Since 1900 the only use made of licensing in Cleveland has been for purposes of regulation, rather than for revenue.


The most noticeable feature of Cleveland's public expenditure is constant and rapid growth. Not only have expenditures increased absolutely, as they necessarily must with the growth of population, but in almost every department of government they have grown far more rapidly than population. Per capita expenditures have doubled, trebled and quadrupled. The same thing, of course, has occurred in most American cities.


The city's expenditure may be discussed, in the brief space allotted to this chapter, under the following seven heads : (I) General Government ; (2) Pro-


* - Scoville v. Cleveland, I 0. S., 126.


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 255


tection to Life and Property ; (3) Health Conservation and Sanitation; (4) Highways; (5) Charities and Correction; (6) Education; and (7) Recreation.


Expenses for general government cover the cost of mayor's office, the council, finance and law offices, elections, public buildings and lands, courts, and public printing. Although statistical data are not wholly reliable prior to 1870, the course of expenditure for general government can be traced. The average per capita expense for the five years, 1846 to 1850, inclusive, was eleven cents; from this it steadily rose to one dollar and forty-nine cents in 1871-1875. In the period 1886-1890 the figures stood at ninety-one cents. No appreciable change occurred under the so-called federal plan of government, the per capita cost being ninety-two cents in 1901. Mayor McKisson was apparently mistaken when insisting that the cost of government as compared with population had been greatly reduced by the federal plan. A part of his error was doubtless due to the use of an exaggerated estimate of population. Since 1902 a tendency toward a rapid per capita increase is evident.


The two principal functions calling for large expenditure under the caption "Protection to Life and Property" are the police and fire departments. In 1854, when the police fund was first established, the total expense for police was but seven thousand, five hundred and fifty-four dollars ; in 1905 it was about six hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars. A very large part of the total expenditure of the village and of the city under the charter of 1836 was for fire protection. It may be said in general that the total expense for protection of life and property varies directly with the size of a city. The Bureau of the United States Census has divided into four groups the one hundred and fifty- one cities having a population of over thirty thousand, placing in group I the fourteen cities with over three hundred thousand ; in group II, the twenty-five cities of one hundred thousand to three hundred thousand; in group III, the forty-five cities of between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand ; and in group IV, the sixty-seven with a population between thirty thousand and fifty thousand. The per capita expense of protection to life and property in group I was, in 1904, four dollars and forty-one cents; in group II, three dollars and six cents; in group III, two dollars and fifty-eight cents; and two dollars and thirty-one cents in group IV. Although Cleveland in population falls in group I, her expenditures under this head averaged in the period 1901-1905 only two dollars and ninety-one cents, or fifteen cents lower than the average for group II. The largest per capita growth of expenditure for protection to life and property occurred before 1875. Beginning in 1846-5o at twenty cents for each person in the city, two dollars and fifty-nine cents was reached in the period 1871-75. Severe economy effected a noticeable reduction in the following decade. In the five years from 1896 to 1900, inclusive, almost exactly the level of 1871-75 reappeared, and this, it is noteworthy, is exactly the figure for the census group III in 1904.


Expenditures for the health department, sewers, street cleaning and garbage removal, are the important items in the general division of health conservation and sanitation. Public expenditures for health protection began in 1832 when an epidemic of "Indian cholera" visited Cleveland and other lake towns. The sewer system dates from 186o, having been made necessary by the installation


256 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


of the water system just before that date. Expenditures for street cleaning began to be a regular item in the budget in 1878; problems of administration, centering chiefly in the relative merits of the contract system and direct municipal. management, have characterized the work of this department. The collection and disposal of garbage is also included in the general cost of health conservation and sanitation. In 1905 the contract system was supplanted by a municipal system which promises to make this service largely self-supporting through the sale of by-products. Total health and sanitary expenditures in Cleveland are now much greater in proportion to population than ever before in the history of the city. In the years 1861 to 1865 the per capita expense was but twenty-one cents, while in the five years ending with 1905 an average of three dollars and fifty-four cents was reached. Compared with similar expenditures in other cities this is extremely high. But it should be remembered that during this latter period Cleveland expended large sums on her intercepting sewers. With the completion of these undertakings, health and sanitary expenses should be reduced to approximately two dollars and fifty cents.


Of expenditures for highways the cost of paving forms by far the most important item. Street lighting has also from the earliest years been a large item of expense to the city. The per capita cost of this function, however, has shown little tendency to increase. A study of the statistics for other cities shows that there is no necessary relation between the population of a city and the cost of street lighting. Using the area of the city, therefore, as a basis for comparison, we find that Cleveland's eleven dollars and eighty-two cents per acre in 1904 was forty-seven per cent greater than the average for the fourteen largest cities of the country. Highway expenditures include also the city's portion of the cost of eliminating grade crossings of steam railroads. This expense forms one of the most recent additions to the city budget. River and harbor improvement, as well as the cost of erecting and maintaining bridges and viaducts, has always called for considerable outlay, though as early as 1825 Federal aid was received for the former. From 1825 to 1902 the total expenditure of the Federal government on the harbor at Cleveland amounted to bout two million, seven hundred and fifty. thousand dollars. The average, per capita expenditure for highways from 1901 to 1905 was three dollars and ninety-one cents, which is exactly ten times the annual amount in the five years from 1846 to 185o.


Unlike the expenditures for every other group of municipal functions those for charities and corrections, including the infirmary department, the workhouse and house of correction, have not shown a tendency to increase more rapidly than population. In 1851-55 the per capita expense was sixty-one cents, while for 1901-05 the average was seventy-one cents. This figure is low as compared with that found in other cities of Cleveland's class.


Twenty-two and nine-tenths per cent of the total expenditures of the city in the five years 1901-1905, exclusive of debt payments, was used for school purposes. In sixty years the per capita school expenditure for the entire population increased from fifty cents to five dollars and fifty-two cents, while per capita expenditure based on the average daily school attendance increased in the same time from six dollars and four cents to forty-three dollars and one cent.




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 257


The expansion of the high school curriculum in the last twenty-five or thirty years is undoubtedly an important cause of this increase ; but additions have also been made in the lOWer stages of the educational process. Expenditure for education also includes the maintenance of the public library system. The per capita expense of the library was nine cents in 1866-70. In the five years 1901-1905, owing largely to the erection of buildings, a total of forty-five cents was reacned ; in the single year 1905 the per capita amount was sixty-three cents.


Public parks were not regarded as a regular object of expenditure until after 1870. In the half decade ending 1905 the annual cost of maintaining and extending the park system, was nearly half a million. In the creation of Cleveland's vast park system real estate in private hands has been enhanced in value many fold, so that the taxes collected from increased valuations should in time probably more than equal the total cost of the parks. This effect of parks on the value of private property suggests a fundamental error in the methods of park development in American cities. Instead of acceptmg tracts of land from private individuals as gifts made on condition that the city spend large sums in improvement, it might be wiser for the city to purchase the land and assess the cost of improvement on property owners benefited thereby to the extent of millions of dollars.


The only industry of prime importance carried on by the city of Cleveland has been the furnishing of a water supply ; but not until private enterprise had declined the task did the city undertake the construction of a water works plant in 1854. One of the important administrative problems of the water works has been the question of the rates charged to consumers. A conflict of ideas as to what principles should guide in the fixing of rates has always existed and may still be said to be a live issue. Though vaguely conceived, the principle upheld most of the time has been the cost of service ; but as to what items cost of service should include, there has been little tendency to agreement. One theory has been that the revenue should be made to cover the cost of operating the plant. The other theory, and the one which on the whole has prevailed, is that construction also should be paid out of earnings ; the few who can afford to use the privilege should aid in extending it to all, said Mayor Otis, in recommending an increase of one-third in the rates in 1874. Earnings of the plant, plus income from loans, have paid expenses of operation and the cost of construction from the beginning; in other words, consumers have borne the cost both of the water supply and the extension of the plant.


The policy of introducing meters at the expense of the city is also an interesting feature of the administration of the Cleveland water works. Though meters were first installed about 1875, their general introduction was not begun until 1901. It has been calculated that for every dollar spent on meters two dollars have been saved in machinery, buildings, and other construction which would have been required by the rapid increase in pumpage accompanying an unmetered service in a rapidly growing city. Consumers have benefited by lower rates, while a beneficial influence on the health of the city is also claimed for the present meter policy.


258 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


One more important financial matter remains to be mentioned the city debt and sinking funds. With the exception of half a million dollars incurred for the erection of the water works, Cleveland's debt before the Civil war was small and unimportant. From 1866 to 1875, while the population of fifteen of the principal cities of the United States increased a little less than seventy-one per cent, their indebtedness increased two hundred and seventy-one per cent. In the same period Cleveland's population increased seventy-two per cent and her debt three hundred and fifty-five per cent. To check this alarming increase of local indebtedness, statutory limitations were placed on the borrowing power of cities in many states. The Ohio General Assembly in 1874 passed a law limiting the debt that cities could incur to five per cent of the assessed valuation of property. Although this limit has been raised from time to time, the city has on several occasions felt greatly hampered by a lack of power to issue bonds for needed public improvements.


Interest on the public debt has regularly constituted one of the largest items of municipal expenditure. In 1873 more than one-third of the entire tax levy was required for this purpose. A per capita expenditure of two dollars and seventy-three cents in 1876-1886 is the largest in the city's history, although for the decade preceding 1875 the amount was but slightly less. After 1880 it gradually declined in importance. The net per capita interest payment in 1004 was one dollar and ninety-five cents, which was larger than that for Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit or Milwaukee. No important city in Ohio bears as large a per _capita burden of interest as Cleveland, with the exception of Cincinnati, whose heavy interest payment is due largely to the debt of the Cincinnati and Southern railway.


In spite of full powers to establish and maintain sinking funds, the record of many years of Cleveland's history is one of indifference and neglect. The lack of adequate sinking funds has called for much refunding of debts which should have been canceled at maturity. The most important sinking fund of the city is the so-called Sinking Fund of 1860, the primary purpose of which was to pay the debt incurred in building the water works. Its foundation was laid in certain railroad stocks owned by the city, and its accumulations resulted solely from the income on investments and not at all from taxation. Yet its growth was altogether remarkable and did much to stimulate later foundations. The half dozen other sinking funds maintained at one time or another have played a distinctly minor role in the city's financial history.


CHAPTER XXV.


THE COURTS.


The courts may be divided into county, townships, municipal and federal courts.


COUNTY COURTS.


COMMON PLEAS COURT.


The constitution of 18o2 provided : "The several courts of common pleas shall consist of a president and associate judges. The state shall be




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 259


divided by law into three circuits. There shall be appointed in each circuit a president of the courts, who, during his continuation in office, shall reside therein. There shall also be appointed in each county not more than three nor less than two associate judges, who during their continuance in office shall reside therein, the president and associate judges in their respective counties, any three of whom shall be a quorum, shall compose the court of Common Pleas, which court shall have common law and chancery jurisdiction in all such cases as shall be directed by law." Under this authority the legislature elected all the judges and in its first session John Walworth, Calvin Austin and Aaron Wheeler were appointed for Trumbull county, and in January, 1806, Aaron Wheeler, Jesse Phelps and John Walworth for Geauga county. John Walworth was the first man from Cleveland to sit on the Common Pleas bench. On February 15, 1810, the legislature appointed August Gilbert, Nathan Perry, Sr., and Timothy Doan as the first court of Common Pleas in the newly erected county of Cuyahoga. The law was liberal in the range of jurisdiction given to this court and from the first it has been the people's tribunal. On June 5, 1810, the first session of the Common Pleas court in Cuyahoga county was opened in the newly completed store rooms of Elisha and Harvey Murray on Superior street, near the old Forest City block. The building was torn down in 1855. The following were the officers of this court : presiding judge, Benjamin Ruggles ; associate judges, Nathan Perry, Sr., Augustus Gilbert and Timothy Doan ; clerk, John Walworth; sheriff, Smith S. Baldwin. Only the presiding judge was "learned in the law." His associates merely sat with him to uphold the English traditions. The first docket contained five civil cases and three criminal prosecutions. The first indictment was found in the November term 1810, and the first divorce was sued in 1816. The early litigation seems petty now. It dealt with the infringements of the numerous license acts, with land boundaries, assault and battery and small business transactions. It was still the day of personal feeling in litigation, when neighbors would go to court to soothe their desires for revenge. Therefore it was the day of legal oratory, when the favorite pleader would draw an audience of the town's indolent and indigent, who usually hung around the stores and the Square.


The first execution in the county was the hanging of the Indian, O'Mic, in June, 1812, for the murder of two trappers, Bull and Gibbs, near Sandusky. Of his two accomplices, one, a mere boy, was allowed to go and the other shot himself as he was being arrested. The hanging of O'Mic caused a great deal of excitement at the time and the public square was filled with spectators. The details are given in Whittlesey's "Early History of Cleveland," page 347.*


The constitution of 1851 provided that the state should be divided into nine Common Pleas districts, each district, excepting Hamilton county, which was made one district, to be subdivided into three "parts," each "part" to elect one judge, and court should be held in every county as the laws might provide. The legislature was empowered to fix the jurisdiction of the court. For the first time the people elected their judges. Cuyahoga county was made the third subdivision of the fourth district and on the second Tuesday of October,


* The date given in Whittlesey's account is June 26. The court record gives June 24. See appendix "Annals Early Settlers Association," Volume 5, No. 5.


260 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


1851, elected Samuel Starkweather and Harvey Foote, who began their court on the second Monday in February following. From time to time a congested docket has compelled the legislature to authorize an increasing number of judges, but the docket has not been cleared for many years.


SUPERIOR COURTS.


The first constitution provided for the Common Pleas and a Supreme court and gave authority to the legislature to create such other courts as they deemed wise. On November 5, 1838, the first additional court was established as the Superior court of Cincinnati, followed in 1847 by the Superior court of Cleveland. It consisted of one judge elected by the people. His salary was one thousand dollars per year paid by the state. Its jurisdiction was concurrent with the Common Pleas court in all cases at common law and in chancery when the Common Pleas had original jurisdiction. Its proceedings were reviewable on appeal by the Supreme court. The court was abolished by the constitution of 1851. Only one judge sat upon its bench, Sherlock J. Andrews, who was so distinguished as a lawyer, so learned and equitable as a judge and so brilliant as an advocate, that the four years of his judiciate and his subsequent professional career, are among the most cherished of the traditions of our bar.


During the decade from 1860 to 1870, two common pleas judges were assigned to Cuyahoga county. With the tremendous revival of business following in the wake of the war, the court was swamped with business and to relieve the docket, the legislature, February 24, 1869, provided for an additional judge. and R. F. Paine was elected to the position.


In consonance with the wish of the members of the bar, the legislature on May 5, 1873, enacted a law, giving Cuyahoga county its second Superior court, known as the Superior Court of Cleveland. The additional Common Pleas judgeship authorized four years before was abolished. The new court consisted of three judges elected for five years at four thousand, five hundred dollars per year. It had civil jurisdiction in the city of Cleveland only. The jurisdiction did not extend to any criminal cases, nor to divorce or alimony, nor to insolvency and appropriation matters, nor to appeals from the justices of the peace, police or probate courts.


At a special election in June, 1873, Seneca 0. Griswold, James M. Jones and G. M. Barber, were elected judges. Their term of office was brief. In 1875, the court was abolished, its business transferred to the Common Pleas arid four judges added to that court. During the twenty-four months that the Superior court was m session, July 2, 1873-July 1, 1875, two thousand, five hundred and five actions were brought, including as was to be expected, the most important litigation in the city, a record of efficiency that needs no commentary. -


THE CIRCUIT COURT.


The state constitution creates the Circuit courts and defines their jurisdiction. It was not until April 14, 1884, however, that the necessary legislation was enacted to set the courts in motion, and in October of that year, the first




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 261


circuit judges were elected, and on February 9, 1885, the first sitting began. Cuyahoga county, with Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky, Erie, Huron, Lorain, Medina and Summit, constituted the sixth circuit under the first districting. March 21, 1887, the state was redistricted and this large district was subdivided, Cuyahoga, Summit, Lorain and Medina, were made the eighth circuit. There are three judges in each district, elected for six years, and while the constitution gives them "like original jurisdiction with the Supreme court and such appellate jurisdiction as may be provided by law," the time of the court is occupied almost entirely in hearing appeals. The first circuit judges in the old sixth district were C. C. Baldwin of Cleveland, William H. Upson of Akron, and George R. Haynes of Toledo. When the redistricting occurred, Hugh J. Caldwell of Cleveland, was elected in place of Judge Haynes. Since that time the following have been elected to the Circuit bench : John C. Hale, of Cleveland, 1893-1905 ; U. L. Marvin of Akron, 1895, to present ; L. H. Winch of Cleveland, 1893, to present ; Frederick A. Henry of Cleveland, 1905, to present.


THE PROBATE COURT.


The present Probate court was established by the constitution of 1851, and consists of one judge, elected for three years. The constitutional amendment of 1905 extended his term to four years. Under the first constitution the Common Pleas court had "jurisdiction of all probate and testamentary matters." In 1852, F. W. Bingham was elected the first probate judge. Since 1855, only three judges have occupied this bench, a record unique in the history of Ohio courts and equaled in few places in the country. In 1855, Daniel R. Tilden was first elected and he served continuously until 1887, when, at the age of eighty-one, he retired and Henry C. White was named as his successor. Judge White served until his death January 15, 1905, when Governor Herrick appointed Alexander Hadden, the present judge.


Judge Tilden occupied a conspicuous place in the life of our city, not only as a jurist of learning and an upright judge, but also as a citizen interested actively in everything that pertained to the public welfare. His quiet, forceful manner, his genial temperament, his equitable judgments form the basis of the splendid work of the Probate court, which his successor, Judge White, with a similar benevolence of heart and purity of purpose, carried forward with great success. Judge White was an authority on polar explorations. His valuable collection of Arcticana he bequeathed to the Western Reserve Historical Society.


MUNICIPAL AND TOWNSHIP COURTS.


Following the English precedent, the earliest justices of the peace were chosen from among the most substantial men of the community. On April 5, 1802, the township of Cleveland was organized at a meeting held in James Kingsbury's cabin and the electors chose their host as the first justice of the township., In 1803 Amos Spafford and Timothy Doan were elected and from that day until about 1870. the list of justices contains the names of many able men. With the influx of the foreign population, came the usual municipal neglect for offrces and the


262 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


position of justice of the peace often fell into less worthy hands. Several attempts have been made to secure municipal civil courts but without success. The justices have always been elected, and until a few years ago received the fees collected. The city now pays them one thousand, five hundred dollars a year. *


POLICE COURT.


The only municipal court in Cleveland is the police court, established by the legislature in 1853. Prior to that date, the mayor of the city was the police judge.. On the first Monday in April, 1853, after a spirited canvas, with three tickets in the field, whig, democrat and "union," John Barr, the whig candidate, was elected the first police judge and Bushnell White, also whig, police prosecutor and 0. J. Hodge, on the democratic ticket, police clerk. The terms of the judge and prosecutor were two years, of the clerk three years.


Judge Barr was an outspoken man, with a well equipped mind and a fearless heart. He was the terror of the petty offenders who were brought before his stern gaze. He was much interested in the early history of Cleveland and prepared a valuable manuscript on the personal history of the earliest settlers. Colonel Whittlesey quotes freely from this "Barr Manuscript" in his "Early History of Cleveland."


Colonel O. J. Hodge, the first police court clerk, is still active in all good causes in our city. (1)


On April 17, 1853, the court was organized in a small room on the second floor of the Gaylord block on Superior street between Seneca and the Square. (t) A new brick police station and jail was then building on Johnson street near Water, and when the Police court was established it was decided to add a second story for a court room. To this the court moved late in 1853 and remained there eleven years until the completion of the Central station. With the development of business an additional judge was elected.


THE INSOLVENCY COURT AND THE JUVENILE COURT.


The insolvency court was established some years before the juvenile court. The juvenile court is the latest development in our judicial system, and the Cleveland court was the second to be established in the United States. It owes its existence, like so many other of our fine civic enterprises, to the foresight and interest of Glen K. Shurtleff, for many years the general secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association. In 1901 he studied the conditions of the children in the jails of the county and began a movement through the Social Service club and the Bar association for the establishment of a separate court for children.


* - For a pleasing account of early Cleveland justices, see "Bench and Bar of Cleveland," page 59.


1 - This venerable gentleman, who has occupied so many places of trust in our community writes the author under date of April 2, 1909, "I am now nearing eighty-one years of life and feel it is time to take a rest. Here I am president of the Early Settlers Association, as I have been for the past six years, president of the Sons of the American Revolution for the third time and the past week was made president of the Cleveland Humane Society. Truly I am still in the harness—not rusting out!"


t - See account of Police court "Bench and Bar of Cleveland," Page 53.




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 263


When in the fall of 1901 Thomas E. Callaghan was elected judge of the court of insolvency he became interested in the juvenile movement. With the added interest of the Chamber of Commerce a bill was drawn, Colonel J. F. Herrick, then representing the city in the senate, mtroduced the measure and guided it, through the legislature. Under the provisions of this act the judge of the insolvency court acquired jurisdiction over juvenile offenders. The first court was held on the Friday following the day on which the law went into effect. With the cooperation of numerous civic organizations and the enthusiasm of Judge Callaghan, the court immediately more than justified its establishment. Finding employment for the boys, the appointing of special guardians, the opening of a boarding home in 19o3, the establishing of the boys' farm at Hudson, 1903, the opening of a special detention home in 1906, have all been steps toward the perfection of the work of this useful court, A comprehensive law was passed April 24, 1908, incorporating a number of provisions from the Colorado law. Judge Callaghan, whose wise and enthusiastic interest did so much to properly establish the court, died November 29, 1904. Judge Thomas H. Bushnell was appointed by the governor as his successor and he served until November, 1905, when George S. Addams, the present incumbent, was elected.


FEDERAL COURT.


Before 1855 there was one federal district in Ohio and the district and circuit courts of the United States were held in Columbus. When the trade of the lakes began to increase the volume of business so that it caused great inconvenience and expense to go to Columbus, congress created the northern and southern districts with Cleveland the appointed seat of justice for the northern district. The new postoffice, completed about this time, afforded quarters for the court. President Pierce appointed Hiram V. Willson the first judge of this district, Daniel 0. Morton, of Toledo, the first district attorney and Jabez W. Fitch, of Cleveland, the first United States marshal. The court appointed Frederick W. Green, of Seneca county, clerk, and General Henry H. Dodge and Bushnell White as the first United States commissioners. Lewis Dibble served as bailiff over thirty years.


The court's docket immediately began to fill with multitudes of admiralty cases, while the counterfeiters who flourished along the canal, furnished business for the grand jury. Cases arising out of the fugitive slave law caused popular excitement, particularly the "Oberlin-Wellington rescue" and the rendition of the slave girl Lucy.


Judge Willson died in 1866 and was succeeded by Judge Charles Sherman, of Mansfield, a brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman and Senator John Sherman. In 1873 Judge Sherman resigned and was succeeded by Martin Welker, of Wooster, who served until 1889, when retired, having reached the age of seventy years. Judge William R. Day, of Canton, was appointed to the place but on account of ill health he never held court and resigned soon after his appointment. He now sits on the United States Supreme bench. In July, 1889, Captain A. J. Ricks, of Massillon, was appointed and he served until 1900, when ill health compelled his retirement. Francis J. Wing, of Cleveland, was appointed


264 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


by President McKinley, and on his resignation in 1905, Robert W. Tayler, of Youngstown, was appointed.


The United States Circuit Court was created by congress in 1869, when nine circuits were established and one judge appointed for each circuit. Ohio was included with Tennessee, Kentucky and Michigan in one circuit and Judge Baxter was made the first judge of the circuit, serving until his death in 1885. Judge Howell E. Jackson, of Tennessee, succeeded him. *


THE BANKRUPTCY COURTS.


The first national bankruptcy act was passed in 1899 and promptly repealed three years later. The second act was passed in 1840 and also survived only three years. In 1867 a third act was passed and it remained in operation until its repeal in 1878. Myron R. Keith was appointed register for the district of northern Ohio. When the act was repealed he sent his resignation to the judge of the District court, who forwarded it to the chief justice of the Supreme court, who in turn returned it to the District court. The law did not make it clear who was empowered to receive the resignation of an officer whose office did not exist.


Under the present national bankruptcy act Harold Remington was appointed by the federal district judge in 1898. He resigned in 19o9 and Judge Taylor appointed A. F. Ingersoll.


THE CLEVELAND BAR ASSOCIATION.


March 22, 1873, a meeting of attorneys was held in the law library room. John W. Heisley was chosen chairman and a resolution to form the "Cleveland Bar Association" was endorsed. A constitution and by-laws were adopted, which defined the objects of the association "to maintain the honor and dignity of the profession of the law, to cultivate a social intercourse and acquaintance among the members of the bar, to increase our usefulness in aiding the administration of justice, and in promoting legal and judicial reform." During its earlier years the association was quite active in carrying out these objects. On August 8 and 9, 1887, the National Bar association held its first annual meeting in, Cleveland, one hundred and four delegates were present. The meetings were held in Case hall.


LAW LIBRARY.


December 18, 1869, a meeting of attorneys was held in the "old courthouse," W. J. Boardman acting as chairman, for the purpose of organizing a law library association. The necessary committees were appointed and on January 8, 187o, the organization was perfected. The capital stock was fixed at twenty thousand dollars divided into eight hundred shares of twenty-five dollars each. Judge S. 0. Griswold was elected president. Gifts of about eight hundred volumes made by a number of the members formed the nucleus of the collection that now contains twenty-seven thousand volumes. A room on the third floor of the "old


* - See appendix for list of other court officers.




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 265


courthouse" was prepared for the library. A number of substantial gifts have been made from time to time.


THE CROWELL LAW SCHOOL.


In 1855 the Ohio State and Union Law college was organized in Poland, Ohio, under the leadership of Judge Chester Hayden. In 1857 the college was removed to Cleveland and J. J. Ellwell and W. P. Edgerton were associated with Judge Hayden in conducting the school which was opened in the Rouse block. After several years Judge Hayden resigned and General Crowell was chosen president, and from that time it was popularly known as the Crowell Law School. When General Crowell was compelled to relinquish his work because of old age and infirmity, the school was closed.


THE CLEVELAND LAW COLLEGE.


On January 5, 1882, Rufus P. Ranney and a company of notable lawyers organized the Cleveland Law School. Judge E. J. Blandin was elected dean and Amos Dennison, secretary and treasurer. Instruction was begun in the old courthouse. It thrived for a number of years.


THE CLEVELAND LAW SCHOOL.


The Cleveland Law School is the outgrowth of two schools. In the summer of 1897 Judge Bentley, Mr. Rowley (now Judge Rowley, of Norwalk), and Judge Willis Vickery, with the cooperation of Baldwin university at Berea, established the Baldwin university law school. About the same time William G. Webster, of Chicago, with Sherman Arter, Judge F. J. Wing, Judge Neff and others, started the Cleveland Law School, incorporated under the laws of Ohio. The Baldwin university school began with fifty students and the Cleveland law school with about half that number: In the summer of 1899 the two were consolidated under the name of the Cleveland Law School of Baldwin University, organized under the laws of the state and incorporated as the "Cleveland Law School Company," an entirely new corporation, taking under its care the two amalgamated schools. The attendance has steadily increased and this year over two hundred students are enrolled. The first graduating class numbered eight students, thirty-five graduated last year. The recitation rooms are on the upper floor of the American Trust building. Judge Willis Vickery, Alice the inception of the school, has been its dean.


In the chapter on the Western Reserve University will be found the history of the Franklin T. Backus Law School.


CHAPTER XXVI.


PUBLIC BUILDINGS.


When the county was created by act of February to, 1807, there was some contention whether the county seat should be Newburgh or Cleveland. When the


266 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


contest was decided in favor of Cleveland, the most available quarters for the new county court was a new store on Superior street, and from May, 181o, until 1812 this remained the temporary courthouse. The county commissioners, Messrs. Wright, Ruggles and Miles, engaged Levi Johnson, a young carpenter, who later became one of the town's prominent business men, to build a courthouse and jail on the northwest corner of the Public Square. The nails and glass for this building were brought by Levi Johnson over frightful roads from Pittsburg in his own one horse wagon. (1)


Among the stumps and underbrush soon rose the new courthouse. It was twenty-five by fifty feet, two stories high, built of logs, and cost seven hundred dollars. As the lower story was used for a jail its walls were nearly three feet thick, of timber cut in lengths corresponding to the thickness of the walls and laid with the ends turned outside, and firmly bolted together. This floor was divided into three rooms. There were two large cells about ten by twenty feet, one called the "criminal cell" and the other the "debtor cell•" the third room was the jailer's home. An outside stairway led up to the courtroom in the second floor. The building was covered with clapboards laid on the "longside." (2) The upper room served many purposes, religious services, political caucuses, lectures, dances and other public occasions were held there. The rude jail was not well guarded, but we read of no jail deliveries. Dr. Reeve told the. writer he remembered when a boy, going to the small windows and throwing sticks and stones at the prisoners. In 183o it was torn down.


In 1826 the county commissioners voted to build a new courthouse. This revived the old suggestion that Newburgh was the proper place for the county seat. Before the commissioners had decided the question, one of their number died, and the election of his successor was virtually a referendum on "Newburgh or Cleveland." The latter won by a small margin. On October 28, 1826, the first court was held in the new courthouse. It stood on the southwest section of the Square, where the fancy stone work and artificial streamlet still survives the rococo age. The building faced Superior street, was built of brick, two stories high. "The front is ornamented with stone antaes or pilasters of the Doric order, supporting a Doric entablature; the whole is crowned with an Ionic belfry and dome." (3) It cost eight thousand dollars. The upper floor contained the courtroom and jury room, the lower floor the county offices. The plans were drawn by Henry L. Noble, who with George C. Hills had received the contract for building. In 1832 a new stone jail was built in the rear of the courthouse, on the opposite side of the street, where the row of dilapidated old buildings now stands. It faced Champlain street. It contained the sheriff's residence and several stone cells.


In February, 1841, bids were asked for a new jail, built on the lot now occupied by the jail. The building was of stone and "fireproof," which in that day meant that no wood was used in the construction excepting the floors and doors. The sheriff's residence was three stories high and the jail proper four stories, the first three stories having twelve cells each and the fourth had seven small


1 - "Annals Early Settlers Association," No. 7, P. 4o.

2 - "Leader," February 3, 1869.

3 - "City Directory," 1837, P. 45.




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 267


and four large rooms. Heard and Porter were the architects and the building was in the "castellated style." (4) It forms the shell of the present jail; the interior has been several times remodeled.


This courthouse had a bell in its dome, which, in discordant tones announced the opening of court, summoning jurors, litigants and attorneys to the dingy courtroom. The county commissioners paid for the ringing of the bell, as their journals show, as late as 1853. This old courthouse was a favorite place for holding all maner of public meetings, including political caucuses and conventions, religious services, and lectures. For want of better lighting, tallow dips were used, and for, heating large bellied stoves with rickety strings of pipes that often smoked viciously. Here were held famous debates on slavery and religion, topics that were uppermost in men's minds in those years. Samuel Underhill, Alexander Campbell and Bishop Purcell were heard there. During the Tyler administration the patriotic whigs, who had in fervid eagerness elected "Old Tippecanoe" to the presidency, expecting the spoils of their victory, held a roisterous meeting when the recreant Tyler appointed non-whigs to the two most important offices in the town, the postmastership and the collectorship. Here also the Cuyahoga County Agricultural society was organized and held its first exhibits of fruits and vegetables, The prize oxen and horses were exhibited in the yard, which was enclosed by a fence. (5)


On November 10, 1857, the county commissioners signed a contract with George P. Smith and James Pannell to build a new courthouse designed by Architect Husband, for one hundred and fifty-two thousand, five hundred dollars. This building of dressed stone, three stories high, eighty by one hundred and fifty- two feet, was built on the north side of the Square between the Old Stone church and the new jail. It is still doing service as "the old courthouse," but it was altered in 1884 by the addition of two stories, making it one hundred and ten feet high. The additions cost one hundred thousand dollars. Originally, on the ground floor to the right, were the offices of the auditor and probate judge, to the left of the recorder and treasurer.; on the second floor front, offices of the sheriff and clerk, with two courtrooms in the real.; on the third floor front, two jury rooms and room for the county school examinations, and in the rear, the criminal courtroom.


In 1875 the "new courthouse" was begun on land facing Seneca street and partly occupied by the jail. Walter Blythe was employed as architect and John McMahon and Alexander Scott were the principal contractors. This building was by far the most pretentious yet undertaken by the county, and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It is built in the renaissance style then in vogue, is four stories high and faced with cut stone. It is one of the first buildings erected in Cleveland with floors of iron and brick, partitions and walls of brick, the roof of iron and slate and all stairs and landings of iron. The elaborate tower with the clock shown on the drawings, was never built, but the blindfolded goddess was placed on her pedestal on the out of the way Seneca street entrance, where few litigants ever enter. In this building the probate and criminal courts are located and latterly the juvenile and insolvency court.


4 - "Herald," Vol. 34, No. 8.

5 - See "Annals Early Settlers Association," Vol. III, p. 349.

 

268 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


CITY BUILDINGS.


Cleveland had no municipal hall of her own until the city purchased the Case property in 1906. This is no doubt a unique record, for no other American city of Cleveland's importance and size has passed through seventy years of corporate Prosperity without owning a city hall. Worse than this, for nearly forty years the city's offices had no fixed abode ; they were moved about in commercial blocks, they were not all housed in the same building, often not even in the same neighborhood. The offices of the city when first incorporated, were in the "Commercial building," 61-65 Superior street.


In 1855 John Jones completed a brick block on the south side of the Square. It is still standing. The two upper stories were leased by the city for ten years. The city council met on the top floor and on the second floor were various city offices. The first meeting of the council in their new quarters, November 14, 1855, was followed by a banquet in one of the lower rooms, attended by a number of ex-mayors, and music was furnished by the Cleveland Grays' band.


In February, 1875, the city leased the Case block, corner Superior and Wood streets, for twenty-five years, at a rental of thirty-six thousand dollars a year. This block, now called the "City Hall," was leased from year to year at the expiration of the lease until its purchase by the city in 1906. The building is now shabby on the outside and filthy on the inside, wholly unsuited to the business of our city.


The tardiness of the city in housing its business departments has proven fortunate, for it has brought with it the unusual opportunity of providing all the city's public buildings at virtually the same time, making possible a "group plan" that has already become famous as the first grouping of municipal buildings in America. Naturally the architects were the first to see this opportunity. In 1895 the "Cleveland Architectural Club" instituted a competition for "the grouping of Cleveland's public buildings." Professor Charles F. Olney,, the owner of the Olney -Art gallery, and an enthusiastic patron of all art and refinement, was one of the judges in this competition, and he introduced in January, 1899, a resolution in the Chamber of Commerce creating "a committee on grouping plans for public buildings." This became the steering committee whose wise guidance brought the plan to a successful beginning. It was necessary to enlist the county, the city and the federal authorities for the plan and to create a public sentiment in its behalf. The Cleveland Architectural club arranged a second competition. The drawings were publicly exhibited in Case library. The Architectural League of America met here in June, 1899, and much publicity was given to the subject. The Chamber of Commerce invited Mr. John M. Carrere of New York to deliver an address in Cleveland on what European cities have accomplished. The newspapers gave vigorous aid, and the public became enthusiastically interested. Meanwhile the various governing boards and authorities were discussing methods, and they all met on March 3, 1902, with the Chamber of Commerce committee in the mayor's office, and two bills, one proposed by the Chamber committee, the other by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, were discussed. The Chamber of Commerce bill was recommended to the legislature for passage. It provided for a supervising board of experts ; at least two of them to be archi-




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 269


tects, appointed by the governor of the state. The bill was promptly enacted and Governor Nash on the suggestion of the Chamber of Commerce appointed the following: Daniel H. Burnham of Chicago, architect of the World's Columbian exposition; John M. Carrere of New York, architect of the Pan-American exposition; and Arnold W. Brunner, architect of the new Cleveland postoffice.


The commission studied the problem over a year. They then published a comprehensive plan. It provides for a mall extending from the Square to the lake. On the lake front the courthouse and the city hall are located, the courthouse fronting Ontario street, the city hall fronting Bond street. On the Superior avenue end the federal building and the public library are placed. A new union passenger station located at the foot of the mall forms a part of the plan, and the new passenger wharves at the foot of Erie street will form part of the plan. So that when this splendid conception becomes a reality, Cleveland will welcome its visitors through magnificent portals, whether by "water gate" or "land gate."



The first of these buildings to be begun was the federal building. The corner stone was laid in May, 1905, by Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw. The building will cost three millions, five hundred thousand dollars. Arnold Brunner is the architect. The second building to be begun, and probably the first to be completed, is the county courthouse. It will cost approximately four million dollars. Lehman & Schmidt of Cleveland are the architects. The courthouse commissioners having in change its construction, are the county commissioners and several members appointed by the judges of the common pleas court. The county commissioner members have been R. J. McKenzie, superseded by Harry Vail, William F. Eirick and John G. Fisher. The appointed members General Jared A. Smith, E. A. Cass, Charles Higley, M. F. Bramley, succeeded by Judge Carlos M. Stone. At the death of Judge Stone, Frank C. Osborn was appointed.


Plans for a new city hall have been prepared by J. Milton Dyer of Cleveland. Its estimated cost is three million dollars. The mayor of the city appointed the following city hall commission : T. W. Hill, F. W. Gehring, N. I. Dryfoos, S. C. Gladwin and N. F. Bramley. Mr. Bramley was succeeded by Richard Lee.


The county has acquired for the courthouse site the square bounded by Lakeside avenue, Summit avenue, East Third street and West Third street ; about two hundred and forty-six thousand square feet, or five and sixty-five hundreths acres, at a cost of one million and ninety-five thousand, six hundred and .seventy- five dollars.


The two most expensive purchases in this tract were, first a parcel having a frontage of one hundred and thirty-two feet on Summit avenue, acquired from Mary Francis and David McKibben, and K. E. and John M. Laing, on May 8, 1902, for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, containing twenty thousand, eight hundred square feet. The second parcel, purchased from W. R. and Katie J. Ryan and Marie Weil, on May 7, 1902, for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. This parcel had sixty feet front on both Lakeside avenue and Summit avenue, extending between the two streets and contained fifteen thousard, six hundred and thirty square feet.


The city has acquired as a site for the city hall, the property included between East Ninth street, Lakeside avenue, East Third street and Summit avenue. This tract, exclusive of the land embraced in so much of East Sixth Street as lies be-


270 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


tween Lakeside avenue and Summit avenue, contains about one hundred and ninety-eight thousand square feet, or a little more than four and a half acres. It cost four hundred and four thousand, eight hundred and ninety-nine dollars.


The three most important transfers were: The purchase from James M. and Ermina W. Jones of eighty-eight feet, ten inches of land extending between Lakeside avenue and Summit avenue, under date of December 16, 1902, for a consideration of fortytwo thousand dollars. The purchase from Elizabeth M. and N. S. Keller of eighty-eight feet, ten inches of land extending between Lakeside avenue and Summit avenue Northeast, under date of June 6, 1902, for a consideration of forty-seven thousand, five hundred dollars. The purchase of property along East Sixth street between Lakeside avenue and Summit ayenue under date of May 31, 1902, for a consideration of forty-two thousand, two hundred and fourteen dollars and twenty cents.


The most important of all the group plan purchase, however, is the Case purchase by which one hundred and sixty-five thousand, five hundred square feet of land was acquired by deed dated March 21, 1906, from the Case estate, for one million, nine hundred thousand dollars. This purchase included the block upon which is located the city hall, the property at both the northeast and northwest corner of Rockwell avenue and East Third street, and also the property at both the southeast and southwest corner of St. Clair avenue and East Third street.


A summary of the purchases is as follows :



Courthouse site

City hall site

Mall


Total

5.65 acres

4.50 acres

5.06 acres


15.21 acres

$1,095,675

404,899

2,55,180


$3,655,754




CHAPTER XXVII.

GENERAL POLITICAL HISTORY, THE BALLOT, ELECTIONS,
QUALIFICATION OF ELECTORS, NOMINATIONS AND
PARTY ORGANIZATION.


THE BALLOT.


Under the territorial government, the elections were "by the living voice," all the voters gathering in one place and voting "aye" or "nay," when the sheriff as presiding officer put the question. The first constitution put a stop to this method and ordered that "all elections shall be by ballot." And this right of secret ballot prevails today. The ballot at first was a slip of paper, with the name of the candidate written on, or more frequently printed. There was usually a great deal of confusion on election days, and the judges often had their difficulty in counting the vote because of the individualistic way of spelling names.


Later when party or primary tickets were nominated, they were printed on slips of paper with the party insignia on the top, so that it could be readily identified by the ignorant voters. Many of the newly made citizens voted for "the




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 271


bird" or "the chick," ignorant and careless of the anxious office seekers who were trying to nest themselves under the outspread pinions of the bird. This simple ballot was "scratched," by the use of "stickers," a little strip of paper with the name of the candidate on it and gummed like a postage stamp, so that the voter when he did not want to vote a straight ticket could merely moisten this strip and paste it over the name of the man he wanted to "scratch." This mode of changing a ticket lent itself to the versatility of the politician. He could paste the name of a favorite on the ballot of either party and the ignorant would think they were voting a "straight ticket," or he could peddle doctored ballots abroad, or could easily trade with the opposite faction, and so forth, ad infinitum. The drinking places were wide open on election day. There were few polling rules and the marshal usually failed to interfere if the polling place was invaded by a candidate's friends. Electioneering was often furious and fast and not unaccompanied by fist fights and general "mixups." The workers gathered at the voting place, sometimes filling it. The voter was compelled to run a noisy gauntlet accosted by workers for all sides and all candidates. There was no law against "peddling" tickets. If the voter was of the professionally doubtful variety, he was led aside and when he came forth to vote he usually had a ballot in his vest pocket, folded so that it would show above the pocket. This was the badge of his allegiance, the sign that he had "made up his mind how he should vote." Sometimes the ballots of the different parties were printed on different colored paper, or when the law later forbade this, on paper of varying quality. This enabled the sense of sight and the sense of touch to ally themselves with the partisanship of the ballot counter, if necessary.


During the infancy of the town, when every voter was personally known to every other, these abuses were limited. When the city grew beyond the personal point and strangers began to vote, then the law was compelled to step in. The rigor of the law increased as the population multiplied. In 1838 the legislature put its ban on election betting, penalizing the bettors according to the sum they risked. This ancient statute is still openly violated. March 20, 1841, an act "to preserve the purity of elections" required electors to be twenty-one years of age, to have a residence in the state one year, in the county thirty days and an actual residence in the township where they voted. Fraudulent voting and bribery were made punishable by imprisonment. In 1878, bribery was extended to include promises of things of value. The law was not very rigorously enforced. March 13, 1845, the first registration law was passed. It was made to embrace several counties, including Cuyahoga, but was really meant for Cincinnati, where alone it was enforced. It laid upon the township assessors the duty of making lists of all voters and handing them to the election judges. May 4, 1885, a new registration law on the present plan, was enacted. The council divided the city into wards and the wards into precincts, and appointed two "registers" in each precinct, one of each political party. They were stationed at the voting places on specified days to record the names of the voters who presented themselves. With numerous minor changes, this remains the method of registration.


In 1871 it was required that ballot boxes should be opened in the presence of witnesses before any votes were cast and that the ballots should be counted in


272 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


the presence of witnesses only. This was followed in the next session by a law making it unlawful to remove ballot boxes from the voting place until the votes had been counted. In 1874 the law demanded that all ballots be printed on plain white paper with party designations at the head and it was fraud to write the name of any one under a party insignia, who was not regularly nominated by his party.


In 1891 a comprehensive election law was passed. It established the Australian ballot for Ohio, providing for booths in which every voter could prepare his ballot unmolested and in secret. Loitering within one hundred feet of the polling places was forbidden, county and city boards of election were created and the secretary of state made general supervisor of elections. Later the secretary of state was empowered to name the local boards of election, who are now designated as deputy supervisors of election.


The "Garfield corrupt practices act" of 1896 dealt a severe blow to the evil of spending large sums of money by candidates for election. And the act of 1898 and its subsequent revisions permitting the making of nominations by petition and extending nominations by primaries encouraged independent citizens to believe that of the hey-dey of party machinations had passed away.


ELECTIONS.


The first charter of the village provided that the first village election be held in the courthouse, the others where the president of the village might appoint. The polls were to be "opened between the hours of 12 and i o'clock p. m. and closed at 4 p. m." "Two judges and a clerk shall be appointed viva voce by the electors present" but at subsequent elections the president and trustees or any two of them were to serve as judges and clerk. "At the close of the poll the ballots shall be counted by the judges of the election and a statement of the votes publicly declared. A fair record thereof shall be made by the clerk who shall notify each of the persons of his election." The President must give five days notice before each annual election.


The town elections were usually held in the courthouse or the schoolhouse, until the incorporation of the city, when one voting place was provided for each ward. In 1852 the four wards voted as follows: First ward in the courthouse; second ward in Rockwell school; third in St. Clair school; fourth in Clinton school. Later elections were held in engine houses and police stations. The police superintendent complained that "the holding of elections and caucuses in the station house is a great inconvenience to the men on duty there." *


When later the wards were divided into precincts there were not enough public buildings for the elections and private places had to be rented. This led finally to the building of the election booths now in vogue. They are portable and can be shifted with the boundaries of the precinct. In 1907 the board of election experimented with the building of permanent brick or concrete structures on land owned by the city.


*"Annual Report," 1870-71.




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 273


QUALIFICATIONS OF ELECTORS.


When the ordinance of 1787 was framed, universal manhood suffrage was contemplated with fear. The first election in Ohio was that of delegates to the territorial legislature of 1798. It was "provided that no person shall be eligible or qualified to act as a representative unless he shall have been a citizen of one of the United States three years and be a resident in the district, or unless he shall have resided in the district three years, and in either case shall likewise hold in his own right, m fee simple, two hundred acres of land within the same: Provided also that a freehold in fifty acres of land in the district, having been a citizen of one of the states, and being resident in the district, or the like freehold and two years residence in the district, shall be necessary to qualify a man as an elector of a representative." Of course this property qualification was obnoxious to the frontiersman, but the theory of the unity of ballot and property interest was so fixed that in the new state constitution it was provided that "in all elections, all white male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the state one year preceding the, election and who have paid or are charged with a state or a county tax shall enjoy the right of an elector." But this indirect property qualification was immediately neutralized in the same article, which provides that all "who are compelled to labor on the roads of their respective townships or counties" are "charged with a tax." This virtually let down the bars. The constitution of 1851 brushed aside even this barrier and granted full manhood suffrage to free whites, excepting idiots and insane persons and those whom the legislature may exclude because of "conviction of an infamous crime." The issue of the Civil war opened the polls to negroes. The state legislature prescribes the length of residence necessary in county, town or precinct,


TIME OF ELECTIONS.


The village elections were held the first Monday in June, the city elections the first Tuesday in April. In 1902 spring elections were abolished and municipal and county elections were fixed on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The state elections were first held in October. Under the new constitution they were shifted to November. Nor were presidential elections held upon a uniform day throughout the country. In 1844 Ohio and Pennsylvania voted on Friday, November 1-forty-nine electors : November 4 (first Monday) fifteen states held elections, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Arkansas—one hundred and twenty-five electors: first Tuesday in November (5th) New York and New Jersey, Louisiana and Tennessee—sixty-two electors : Vermont and Delaware the second Tuesday in November (12th)-nine votes : the legislature of South Carolina met December 1 and chose nine electors. (t) This lack of uniformity led to much suspense at election time.


t - "Herald," October 30, 1844.


274 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


NOMINATIONS AND PARTY ELECTIONS.


In the primitive days the elaborate party machinery now perfected was unknown. Spontaneity and impulse instead of deliberation and scheming were the promoters of the political drama. There were indeed village caucuses and, as has always been the case, small groups of men would at times take matters into their own hands, and the newspapers were violently partisan and potent factors in elections. But when every one was so earnestly engaged in transforming the forest into a village and the village into a city, when neighbors were far apart and neighborhoods were few, there was neither opportunity nor encouragement for the machine politician. The early party was not compact, with platforms and committees and the machinery of power. It was merely a voluntary, spontaneous grouping of men around a leader. Its first nominations were mere suggestions of suitable men whose names were voted upon at the elections without the forming of a party ticket. Gradually this association of men became more fixed. Conventions, committees and all the modern paraphernalia of the party were made necessary. This development will be hurriedly traced.


Our record begins in 1818 with the publishing of the first newspaper. There was a gubernatorial election that year. It seems to have been especially difficult to find a candidate. General Harrison declined and the "Gazette" complains that the people were "so perfectly indifferent about the election that not one half of the citizens of this county have heard who are the candidates." On the 25th of August, this "election notice" appeared in the "Gazette." "In order to prepare for the ensuing election it is requested that each town in the county will meet and elect a suitable number of delegates to represent each town. It is recommended that each town m the county elect two to meet in the county convention, which will be holden at the Commercial Coffee house on the 18th day of September next at 5 o'clock p. m."


A "town meeting" was called in the Commercial Coffee House to appoint the town's two delegates to this county convention, which was "to select suitable characters to be supported as candidates for the senate and house of representatives." The senatorial district included Medina and Portage counties and the Cleveland caucus reported that "the nomination of the members of the senate is understood by rotation properly to belong to said counties." This custom survives the century.


The county convention met in the Coffee House and named its ticket. This was, however, not done in a fixed and formal way, it merely recommended to the electorate. For instance it "Resolved that John Campbell, Esq., be recommended as a suitable person to represent this district in the senate of the state of Ohio." But their "recommendations" did not suit a number of citizens, who, instead of organizing a party of their own, published their views of the newfangled way of making nominations. "We, whose names are underwritten, inhabitants and electors of the county of Cuyahoga, do hereby publicly make known that we do view with utter detestation the strategems, artifices and deceit-


* - August 1, 1818.


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 275


ful wiles which have been used by certain persons in said county in order to bring into nomination characters to represent you whom we will not support." Alfred Kelley, Cleveland's first lawyer, and later one of the influential men of the city, was one of the signers of this outspoken letter, which after all produced no lasting impression.


On November 30, 1827, a meeting of the citizens was held in the old Academy "in pursuance of a public notice for the purpose of appointing delegates to attend the general convention at Columbus to form an electoral ticket favorable to the present administration." Leonard Case was the chairman, John W. Willson, Alfred Kelley, Samuel Cowles and Reuben Wood, the delegates. It was ordered that "the proceedings be published in a newspaper." Thus the most eminent men in the town were enlisted in the convention plan.


The nominating of candidates for president was still by haphazard and the aristocratic congressional caucus. In January, 1824, we read that a meeting was held at Wooster for nominating a president but it ended in chaos. One was held in Columbus the same month (January) called by Chnton's friends and one in Chardon, which "nominated" Clinton and Jackson. These informal conventions were not composed of regularly chosen delegates. They were really mass meetings and were called by the friends of the prominent candidates in multitudes of towns for crystallizing public sentiment.


But the convention system was not without its enemies. Its weaknesses were early apparent. In 183o the "Herald" calls it the "sickly system from New York of conventional nominations" and complains that it lends itself to boss rule. There was quite a tempest when in 184o a general committee tried to fix the number of delegates from each township. Every one believed he had a right to participate in conventions.


As the issues of the bank, of internal improvements, and most of all, of slavery, became tense and vital, the parties began to close ranks and informality ceased. Then the convention named committees who were in power the entire year as the directors or trustees of the partisans. At first there was only a county committee, but later a city organization, and in 1853 ward meetings and ward committees were organized and ward caucuses held to name delegates to the county conventions. When the wards grew unwieldly, ward captains and precinct committees were named and these today form the powerful machinery that, after all, governs us.


In 1909 the state primary law went into effect. It is the latest attempt made by the state to free elections of the thraldom of the party boss and to compel civic interest in the laggard, whose indifference is the source of most of our public woes.


In 1894 a civic federation was organized to scrutinize candidates f or, office and aid voters in selecting candidates. In 1896 this organization became the "Municipal Association" that has since exercised continuous vigilance over civic affairs. It comprised from the first many of the ablest public spirited citizens in the community.


276 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


CHAPTER XXVIII.


PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS AND IMPORTANT POLITICAL


MOVEMENTS.


When Cleveland was founded, New England was the Federalists' stronghold. The Reserve and Marietta, for many years were the only parts of the state with federalist tendencies. The war of 1812 killed federalism and created the dual republicanism of Jackson and Clay. The war was the result of the leadership of the new west under Clay. It supplanted the old anti-federalist leaders with new men from the new country and transformed Jeffersonianism into republicanism or democracy, as it was alternately called. The Reserve followed in the wake of these changes. Its earliest politicians of note had been lukewarm in their conservatism and the federahsts soon ceased to be a party. The "Herald" was first published in 1819 and was charged with being a federalist paper. The third issue of the paper impales this odious implication. "A rumor has been widely circulated that the "Herald" is a federal paper. We should pass it unnoticed were it not calculated to make an erroneous impression upon such as have had no opportunity to inform themselves. The injury intended will recoil upon its authors." It was evidently unpopular to be branded a federalist. Four years later the following appeared in the "Herald :" "Obituary. Died, in this state, on Monday, the 7th inst. at a prime age, but full of infirmities, Mrs. Federalism, relict of the Hon. Essex Junto, deceased. The probable cause of her death was a severe cold, taken at Hartford, in the year 1814. She has been paralytic and occasionally insane for many years, but her life was prolonged by bathing in the pure brooks of this climate. Her last moments were embittered by severe convulsions. Requiescat in Pace."


When the "era of good feeling" came to a violent close in 1824 by the bitter contest for the succession to Monroe, the whigs and democrats became definitely aligned, with Clay and Jackson as the heroes of the new partisans.


The anti-masonic movement reached Cleveland in P829. In Geauga county the anti-masons elected their ticket in 1833.


In the Van Buren campaign of 1836 there was no national organized opposition to Van Buren, but the whigs in Cleveland voted for William Henry Harrison. The vote in the county gave Harrison 2,529 and Van Buren 1,694. The following year the fatal panic of 1837 added wormwood to the gall and in the local elections the Van Buren or "Anti Bank" men resorted to the "split ticket" strategem. The "Gazette," the whig paper, refused to exchange with "The Advertiser," the Van Buren organ, because it claimed the latter had violated the newspaper code of honor by calling the whigs "silk stockings" and other names, and had violently insisted on partisanship in local matters. "The Gazette" made a strong plea for nonpartisanship in village elections, perhaps the first one in the newspaper annals of the town. There should be "only one principle, improvements ; only one issue, good men for the place." There were 914 votes cast and the whig majority was 196. The following year the Van Buren men were called "Loco Focos," a term applied to them first in New York, where in a


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 277


turbulent meeting the lamps were put out and locofoco matches used to light the room.


In 1838 a movement was begun to name Clay again for president and on December 12, the "Herald" opened its campaign for him. Clay was the idol of the Cleveland whigs. When in 1830 he had visited Columbus a committee of distinguished Clevelanders went down to invite him to come here but he declined. Again in 1838 he came west as far as Buffalo and was asked to come here but his engagements forbade. The movements of Clay and Webster were eagerly followed by the papers for over twenty years, and the smallest details of their journeys were eagerly read by their enthusiastic partisans.


At the whig national convention, December, 1839, William Henry Harrison was named. The "Herald" and "Gazette" at once published Harrison and Tyler head lines, with the usual woodcut of the flag as the ensignia. The strange, impulsive, wild, perfervid saturnalia of political enthusiasm called the "hard cider campaign" was on. The first rally in Cleveland was held in December, 1839, nearly a year before election day. F. Whittlesey was chairman, there were some six or eight speakers and ostentatious resolutions of endorsement were passed. On the 9th of March, 1840, the west side whigs organized the Tippecanoe club of Ohio City in the old. Pearl street house. They soon had a log cabin on a vacant lot on Pearl street. The Cleveland whigs on April 4, 1840, organized the "Tippecanoe club of Cuyahoga county." Frederick Whittlesey was its president, J. M. Hoyt, secretary, and A. W. Walworth, treasurer. On a vacant lot next to the American House a log cabin was built. It was thirty-five by fifty feet, a rival of the first courthouse in size, could hold seven hundred people, the newspapers say, had coon skins on the wall, a latch string on the door and plenty of hard cider in the barrel. (1)


"Harrison medallions" and "Harrison letter paper" were advertised for sale by merchants. "Harrison songs," decidedly original, were published by the score, and "log cabin poetry" was printed in almost every issue of the whig papers; making earnest of Van Buren's "palace furniture," giving grotesque descriptions of his luxurious life in the White house and exploiting his "standing army of two hundred thousand office holders."


On June 13, General Harrison stopped in Cleveland on his way home from the great celebration at Fort Meigs. It was not known that he intended to come here until the day before, so word could be sent only to the townsfolk and the nearby farmers. The Cleveland Greys met him at the wharf and escorted him to the American House, whither he "repaired on foot." He spoke for an hour from the balcony of the hotel to several thousand people, whom he seems to have impressed with his plainness and earnestness. The windows of the hotel were filled with ladies and many sat in the wagons that formed a gallery on the outer verge of the crowd. The General remained here over Sunday and on Monday morning went to Ohio City and then to Akron by canal, a number of Cleveland gentlemen accompanying him.


On August 25, 1840, the whigs had their great meeting. Tom Corwin the "wagon boy" and Thomas Ewing, the "salt boiler" and Francis Granger of New York, were the orators. Corwin was a great favorite. He was met four miles


1 - See "Herald," April 8, 184o, for description.



278 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


west of the city by an escort on horseback and in wagons, the Tippecanoe club and the Cleveland Grey's band. Cannons announced his approach and the windows of Superior street residences and stores were filled with ladies waving flags of welcome. It seems as if the whole county had poured into town. At 2 o'clock the speaking began. The crowd was massed in the vacant lots adjoining the American house and from the iron balcony Corwin spoke two hours and twenty minutes. The "Herald" says it was a great meeting, "not one intoxicated person seen" during the whole day.


The local forecast gave Harrison only a small majority of about fourteen electoral votes. The surprise was genuine when Corwin, the whig candidate for governor, carried the county by 1,o65 in the October election, and the whig landslide gave Harrison 234 electoral votes. Van Buren only received sixty. Harrison's majority in Cleveland was 3o8 and in the county 1,289. This was the occasion for a mammoth celebration November 19, which "in a very fitting manner" brought this campaign of songs, barbecues and parades to a close.


In 1844 Clay was a candidate against Polk. The whigs opened the "Clay club house" on Water street near Superior, as campaign headquarters. It was a one story building whitewashed on the outside. The whigs opened the campaign with a great mass meeting on March 5th. Delegations were present from all over the Reserve, joining in a big parade with banners and bands from every county. The afternoon meeting was held on an open lot on Euclid street near Erie. Elisha Whittlesey presided and read letters from Webster, Clay, Fill- more and Seward. A democratic meeting was held the 25th of June, with David Tod candidate for governor as, the principal attraction. On August 31, the largest meeting of the year was held in the open field, corner of Erie and St. Clair streets. Cassius M. Clay spoke two hours, followed by Tom Corwin for two hours, while at the club house Joshua R. Giddings held the crowd. A torchlight parade ended the celebration. The democrats followed this with their great rally on October 3, General Cass, Thomas L. Lamar and Gansevort Melville were the orators. General Cass arrived from Elyria, escorted by the Cleveland brass band and the Light Artillery. "Citizens generally are requested to assemble on the Lake road beyond Ohio City at 9 o'clock and help form an escort. Speaking will commence at half past ten on the Public Square. A salute will be fired as a signal for speaking to commence." (2)


Here is a favorite verse of the democrats in this campaign


"0, who would not be

Of the fearless and free

Who follow the star of the tide of democracy.

With Tod, Schenk and Wright

We will march to the fight

And overwhelm coons in their hard-cider-ocracy."


The turbulent fervor of the whigs gradually subsided into a mere hope and finally into deep despair as the returns slowly came in. On November 13th they still had hope but the news from western New York, showing the unexpected gain of the liberty party, cast the gloom of defeat over them. The city gave Clay only 187 majority and the county 974.


2 - "Plain Dealer," October 2, I844


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 279


This was the first campaign in which any special effort was made to get the naturalized vote.


In 1848 the Mexican war gave the whigs their second successful candidate, old "Rough and Ready" Taylor. He was opposed by General Cass on the democratic ticket and Martin Van Buren on the new freesoil ticket. The whigs issued a cheap campaign paper the "Reserve Battery," from July until election. J. A. Harris of the "Herald" was editor. The threefold campaign brought out the strength of the slavery opponents. August 12th the liberty party held their big meeting on the Square. Corwin came for the whigs September 5th and on October 26th, William H. Seward made his first speech in Cleveland in Empire hall. General Cass stopped in Cleveland on his way home to Detroit on June 5th. He came by boat from Buffalo, was received with the usual firing of guns and escorted to the New England hotel. He refused the carriage that was waiting for him and rode to the hotel in an omnibus. Governor Wood in introducing the general, unfortunately stated that the candidate would explain his views on slavery, public improvements and other issues of the time. The political condition of the north was such that it was wise not to speak upon these subjects and General Cass adroitly avoided the blunders of his introduction, and evaded the questions. The whigs were too watchful to let his omissions pass unnoticed.*


The election was close but the results justified a whig jubilee banquet at the Weddell house, November 21st and a general illumination of the Public Square.


In 1851 Reuben Wood of Cleveland was the democratic candidate for governor, opposed by Samuel F. Vinton of Gallia, whig, and Samuel Lewis of Cincinnati, free democrat. Wood received 1,217 votes in the city, Lewis 747 and Vinton, 740.


The campaign of 1852, when Franklin Pierce, democrat, opposed General Scott, whig, was unusually bitter. The whigs again issued a little campaign paper, the "Scott Flag." Particular efforts were made to get the German vote and the Irish vote. Partisan and even violent sectarian meetings were held in the interests of various groups. Horace Greeley spoke here in September and on September 20th General Scott himself came to Cleveland. He was escorted to the American house by the Light Artillery, the Hibernians, the German City Guard and the Yagers, a significant ethnic combination. Later the General spoke from the balcony of the hotel. Referring to the Great Lakes he said : "It is nearly eight years since I have been among you. Since that time your city has nearly doubled and is justly celebrated as one of the most beautiful in all the west." An Irishman spoke up "You are welcome here," and the electioneering general responded "I hear that rich Irish brogue. I love to hear it. It makes me remember the noble deeds of the Irishmen, many of whom I have often led to battle and to victory." The Teutons took some visible offense at this. A reception followed the speech and after the general had retired for the night he was serenaded by Leland's band. When the bugle call was given the general appeared at the window and bowed. He left the next morning for Columbus. A large crowd had gathered at the station to bid him farewell.


The issue of internal improvements was locally prominent in this campaign. Pierce had voted against the river and harbor bill, because New Hampshire,


* - See Hodge "Memoriae," page 67.


280 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


which he represented, had no need for it. But he carried the city, receiving 1,610 votes, Scott, 1,314 and Hale of the liberty party, 450.


As the slavery issue began to make inroads on the old parties, there developed a tendency toward "people's tickets" for local offices. In 1854, 1855 and 1856 such union tickets were chosen.


The campaign of 1855 is historic because it is the first state campaign of the newly formed republican party. The old freesoil or liberty, union democratic and northern whig elements amalgamated in this new national party and Salmon P. Chase was its first candidate for governor. He spoke in Cleveland on September loth. A mammoth jollification was held in token of his carrying city, county and state, the night of October 13th. One hundred and one guns were fired, a great, flaring bonfire was built in the middle of the Square, accompanied by rockets, Roman candles, and the illumination of the buildings around the Square ; there were bands of marching men carrying transparencies, and there were an unusual number of speeches.


The campaign of 1856 drew the new party into the national arena, with John C. Fremont as its candidate against James Buchanan. The democrats held a ratification meeting in the Public Square on June 9th. After the parades and music, Governor Seymour of New York and David Tod spoke to a great assemblage. Beginning in July, meetings were held weekly by both sides. The issues were shaping for the final struggle. The mottoes "Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, Fremont" and "Free Soil, Free Men, Free Schools, Fremont" are significant. Young men's Fremont clubs were organized and a "Democratic Fremont club" opposed to slavery extension was formed August 6th at a meeting in the courthouse. The Germans of the city held a mass meeting on the Square August 28th, August Thieme of the "Waechter" presiding. Anti_slavery was the burden of the speeches.


When the October elections showed democratic victories in Pennsylvania and Indiana the democrats celebrated with the usual parades and speeches of felicitation by Judge Starkweather and H. B. Payne. Fremont's majority in the city was 196 and in the county 1,225: The newly invented magnetic telegraph made quick election returns possible and they were received for the first time in Cleveland at Melodeon hall, where the crowds were the guests of the republican committee. The democrats took courage at the following municipal election, choosing nearly the entire ticket, and in the summer Henry B. Payne of Cleveland was named for governor against Governor Chase. The campaign was very bitter and the results in the city were close. The county gave Chase 926 majority, enough to justify an elaborate festival in the Grays armory on the evening of November 11th. Governor Chase and Lieutenant Governor Welker were the guests of honor, and the presence of many ladies made the affair a brilliant one.


In 1859 the municipal elections were very stubbornly contested. Party feeling was approaching a tension that foretokened the final struggle. An unusually large vote was cast. There were many violent encounters. George B. Senter was elected mayor by 620 majority.


In the autumn Cleveland had another candidate for governor, Rufus P. Ranney, who contested the election with William Dennison, republican. On the afternoon of September 5th these two eminent lawyers met in debate on the


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 281


Public Square. Slavery extension was the theme. It could no longer be repressed. The debate was a brilliant encounter, Dennison, blunt and straightforward, Ranney, logical and adroit, both courteous and able.


Dennison was elected by over 17,000 in the state and 1,719 in the county, thereby becoming our first war governor.


This brings us to the historic year of 186o. On May 18, 186o, Lincoln and Hamlin were named. "Excitement and impatience" were shown before the news was received here. "The customary salutation of 'how do you do' was exchanged for 'any news from Chicago.' * * * Knots of men gathered upon the sidewalks and in the streets * * * The chances of Seward, Lincoln and Wade were canvassed and bet upon * * * Then the special dispatch to the Morning 'Leader' came and as the messenger rushed into the office to have it put in type, he was expected to answer a hundred questions at once. He merely shouted 'Lincoln on the third ballot.' The word flew from mouth to mouth with hearty enthusiasm being accompanied by a running' fire of compliments for 'Honest Old Abe' with a few regrets for those who had been set upon Seward. Many were taken by surprise but we were glad to see every man announce his determination to pitch in and do battle * * * Our extras were circulated to gathering crowds rushing for them rapidly. A photograph of Lincoln for our office was hung at the door and attracted attention from all passers by. It must be confessed that our standard bearer is not remarkable for beauty, as the word goes, but has an air of sturdy independence and manliness which attracts by its very singularity.


"Captain Summers' company of artillery speedily got out their guns and spoke heartily thirty-three times in honor of the nomination of Lincoln for president. This evening Company D will fire one hundred guns in, honor of the same event. Everybody was in good humor and hopeful, except the democracy, who were disturbed enough at the prospects of fighting the Chicago nominees." (3)


The republicans formally ratified the nomination and in June the Douglas ticket was similarly endorsed by the democrats at a large meeting in the Public Square. October 14th the Lincoln men held their principal meeting. The people began coming in the day before and all the night they were arriving from country precincts. At 10 a. m. there was a mammoth parade and in the evening a torchlight procession. An unusual number of talented men spoke from the stand in the Square, among them William H. Seward, Tom Corwin, Governor Dennison, Ben F. Wade and John Sherman.


The success of the republicans in the October election brought bonfires and illuminations but they were as nothing compared with the impromptu jollification on election night. There had been great suspense, crowds gathered on the streets and marched in front of the campaign headquarters where the returns . were read. When the crowd was certain of the results it built a huge bonfire on Superior street in front of the Lincoln committee rooms, it brought out the artillery and fired one hundred guns, it rang the bells of churches and marched to the homes of .the leaders to serenade them. A more formal jubilee was held November 14th, when the city was illuminated in the customary way by putting a light in each window.


* Editorial "Daily Leader," May 19, 1860.


282 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


Abraham Lincoln visited Cleveland only once. His place in history makes the details of his coming important. A meeting of citizens held in the Gray's armory on February 6, 1861, arranged for his reception. It was entirely nonpartisan. On February 5th, at 4 p. m. the president elect arrived at the Euclid Avenue station from Pittsburg. Booming cannon announced his approach. The crowds lined the avenue from the depot to the Public Square. Lincoln rode in an open barouche, drawn by four white horses. The Cleveland Grays, the Cleveland Light Dragoons, four companies of artillery, and Phoenix engine company No. 4, together with many carriages, formed his escort to the Weddell house, The weather was raw, a drizzling mist filled the air, but the president rode with uncovered head all the way, acknowledging the cheers of the people. On the balcony of the Weddell house he was formally welcomed to the city by I. U. Masters, president of the city council and gracefully introduced to the throng by Judge Sherlock J. Andrews. Lincoln spoke as follows:


"Fellow citizens of Cleveland and Ohio. We have come here upon a very mclement afternoon. We have marched for two miles through the rain and the mud. Your large numbers testify that you are in earnest about something and what is that something? Do I desire that this extreme earnestness is about me? I should be exceedingly sorry to see such devotion if that were the case, but I know it is paid to something worth more than any one man or any thousand, or any ten thousand men. A devotion to the Constitution, to the Union, and to the laws; to the perpetual liberty of the people of this country; it is, fellow citizens, for the whole American people and not for one single man alone, to advance toward the great cause. And in a country like this, where every man bears on his face the marks of intelligence, where every man's clothing, if I may so speak, shows signs of comfort and every dwelling sings of happiness and contentment; where schools and churches abound on every side, the Union can never be in danger. I would if I could instill some degree of patriotism and confidence into the political minds in relation to this matter. I think this present crisis is altogether an artificial one. We differ in opinion somewhat. Some of you didn't vote for him who now addresses you, although quite enough of you did for all practical purposes, to be sure [Cheers and laughter]. What they do who seek to destroy the Union, is altogether artificial. What is happening to hurt them? I am asked the question whether there is any change in the feeling and sentiments of the people? Have they not the same Constitution and laws that they always had, and have they power to change them? Are not fugitive:: returned as readily as they always have been? So, again, I say, the crisis is artificial. It can't be argued up and it can't be argued down, but before long it will die of itself [Cheers]. I have not strength, fellow citizens, to address you at great length, and I pray that you will excuse me; but rest assured that my thanks are as cordial and sincere, for the efficient aid which you gave to the good cause in working for the good of the nation, as for the votes which you gave me last fall. There is one feature that causes me great pleasure and that is to learn that this reception is given not alone by those with whom I chance to agree politically but by all parties. I think I'm not selfish when I say that this is as it should be. If Judge Douglas had been chosen president of the United States and had this evening been passing through your city, the repub-


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 283


licans ought in the same manner to have come out to receive him. If we don't make common cause to save the good old ship, nobody will, and this should be so. It is a matter of interest to all that it should be so.


"To all of you, then, who have done me the honor to participate in this cordial welcome, I return most sincerely my thanks, not for myself but for Liberty, the Constitution and the Union. I bid you an affectionate farewell." *


In the evening a reception was held, General John Crowell and Colonel George, Mygatt presenting the people to the president and the Grays acting as a body guard. The following morning Lincoln left for Columbus, the Grays escorting him down Superior street, Union lane and River street to the depot.


The varying vicissitudes of the war had their effect upon politics. In the spring of 1863, during the municipal election, there was much talk of the futility of the war and I. U. Masters, the Union candidate, received only three hundred and sixty-two majority. But this depression was shaken off in the summer, when robust and fearless John Brough of Cleveland was made the Union candidate for governor against the brilliant southern sympathizer Vallandingham. It is inconceivable that two such rivals could conduct a quiet campaign under the most tranquil conditions, but with the fervor of the people aroused as never before, or since, their canvass for office became picturesque, violent and vindictive.


On September 30th the Vallandingham adherents held a meeting on the Square. Jabez W. Fitch presided. A Chicago orator called Lincoln "The misshapen thing at Washington." The meeting was not placid. The papers alluded to it as a "copperhead" meeting.


The big Brough meeting was held October 13th, also on the Square. It was the eve of the state election and feeling ran unchecked, when Brough, with characteristic vigor and General Franz Sigel, with his unrestrained, fiery denunciation, roused the great throng.


Brough was elected by an unprecedented majority. He received over twice as many votes in the county as did Vallandingham and in the state the Union sentiment rolled up 101,099 against the man Lincoln sent beyond the lines. This being the home of the triumphant candidate, the crowd on election night was wildly demonstrative. On October 17th a formal celebration was held with the customary bonfires, torches illuminations, fireworks, followed by speeches from the balcony of the Angier house by Brough, Governor Tod and General Sigel. These in turn were followed by a banquet at the Angier house. One of the transparencies in the parade read : "Honest John Brough, To the Union true, but to the Rebels, Rough."


In 1864 the opposition to Lincoln materialized in several party movements. On May 31, 1864, a convention met in Cleveland, composed of anti-Lincoln men to formulate a platform and name candidates. The convention met at Chapin's hall and was called the "Fremont convention." There were between two and three hundred delegates present representing ten states, comprising all shades of sentiment from rabid abolitionists to mild McClellanites. John Cochrane of New York was elected president. The speeches were largely of abolition sentiment calling Lincoln "the protector of slavery." A committee was appointed to give the new party a name and it reported "Radical Democracy" as symbolic of


* - As reported verbatim "Cleveland Herald," February 16, 1861.


284 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


the convention that had "resolved not to accept any offices or favors from Lincoln's administration." It is not known how many disappointed office seekers were in the company. General Fremont was nominated for president by acclamation. The movement went very little farther and the press made considerable sport of it.


Lincoln and Johnson were named by the republicans in Baltimore, McClellan and Pendleton by the democrats in Chicago, Fremont withdrew in favor of McClellan. The Lincoln nomination was received here •with genuine enthusiasm. There were many mass meetings, rail splitting contests, torchlight parades. Some of the noted speakers of the campaign were General Robert C. Schenck, Governor Brough, Salmon P. Chase. The principal Lincoln rally was on October 5. People poured into town from all the adjoining counties and it was estimated that there were fifty thousand strangers present. There were scores of bands and much noise and fiery enthusiasm. In the afternoon John Sherman, Benjamin Stanton and Governor Tod spoke on the Square. Among the transparencies borne aloft in the torchlight parade that closed the day's doings was this legend: "Sherman wears a hat, but is after a Hood."


On October 8, the McClellan men held their principal rally with many noted speakers present. The October election gave the Union party 1,241 majority, in the city, a forecast of the November results when Lincoln's majority was 1,45 in the city and 3,200 in the county. Election night, however, was not without its tense anxiety on the part of the Union men. There were many hundreds of Cleveland boys in the Union army and their friends and relatives were down town early to hear the first return. The streets were thronged, the saloons were closed by proclamation of the mayor. The Union club received returns in Brainard hall, which was filled long before dark. The crowd was silent and solemn at first but as telegram after telegram announced the sweeping victories of Lincoln and the friends of the union, cheers and songs and shouts of victory filled the hall. Outside the crowd caught up the cheering and began marching and singing, and making joyous noise until daylight.


After the war there was a realignment of political opinions. On September 17, 1866, a convention of Johnson reconstructionists, mostly soldiers and sailors, was held in a tent on the Square. There were delegates present from nine states and the District of Columbia. The principal delegates were General A. McD. McCook, of Ohio, General G. A. Custer, of Michigan, Governor Bramlette, of Kentucky, General Thomas Ewing, Jr., of Kansas, and General John E. Wood, of Kansas. General Gordon Granger was elected president. The following telegram was read from New York ; it clearly indicates the object and spirit of the meeting:


"Chairman, Soldiers and Sailors Convention:


"One hundred thousand 'merchants and citizens of New York assembled at Union square, send greeting to the soldiers of the Union, now assembled at Cleveland. May your peaceful meeting at Cleveland accomplish that for which your blood has been poured out, the immediate restoration of the Union under the constitution.


DOUGLAS TAYLER,

JOHN A. DIX."


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 285


The state campaign of 1867, when Allen G. Thurman, of Columbus opposed Rutherford B. Hayes of Fremont for governor, was earnest and intense. The alliance between the war-democrats and republicans was happily made unnecessary by the restoration of peace and this was the first political contest between the two old parties for a decade. Hayes had many personal friends in Cleveland and a great deal of local interest attached to his campaign. September 28 the republicans held their big rally with General John A. Logan as the principal orator. His picturesque eloquence attracted a great crowd from nearby towns and the Square was filled with people to hear and see him. The greenback question was the principal issue but the war was still in every one's mind and the speakers did not fail to use its passions for campaign effect. Over Logan's stand were the legends "We vote as we shot" and "Treason defeated by the bullet shall not rule by the ballot."


The meeting was followed by an immense Thurman rally, at which a great throng was present. The sturdy Thurman made a very favorable impression. Hayes' majority in the county was 2,037.

The Grant-Seymour campaign of 1868, the first presidential election after the war, was colored with war fire. Grant's record as a soldier was extolled and the economic issues entirely forgotten. "Grant Boys in Blue" were organized throughout the country. In Cleveland there was a large brigade. On September loth a rally was held by the republicans on the Square. It was followed on the 11th by a democratic rally in the rink, addressed by Pendleton. On October 8th the republicans held their all day meeting, gathering people from northern Ohio by the trainloads. The streets were decorated profusely. There were processions of soldiers and clubs during the day and a torchlight parade when darkness came. Edwin M. Stanton, Governor Hayes, Senator John Sherman, General Garfield, General I. R. Sherwood and Lieutenant Governor Lee furnished the oratory. Eyes and ears made it hard to realize that the war was over. Early in October Schuyler Colfax, candidate for vice president with Grant, stopped in town a few hours between trains on his way east. He quietly went to the home of James Wade on Euclid avenue but it was noised abroad that he was in town and a crowd gathered at the depot to see him off. He arrived about fifteen minutes before train time and at the request of his impromptu audience, he made a short speech, proposing three cheers "For the principle: What loyalty preserved, loyalty shall govern."


October 24th, Governor Seymour, the democratic candidate for president, passed through Cleveland. He was met at Painesville by a committee headed by H. B. Payne and Rufus P. Ranney. At the union depot an immense crowd had gathered, including a company of "White Boys in Blue," the democratic campaign antidote for the Grant Boys in Blue. Governor Seymour did not leave the station but talked for some time to the throng upon the theme of "Constitutional Freedom."


While the republicans carried the city in October by only 857 majority, Grant in November received over 2,100 majority and the county gave him 5,58 majority.


Considerable local interest was taken in the gubernatorial election of 1871 when Jacob Mueller, of Cleveland, was candidate for lieutenant governor, with


286 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


E. F. Noyes, of Cincinnati, for governor. This year was also the first time in the history of the county that an independent legislative and county ticket was placed in nomination. A little campaign paper called "The People's Ticket Advocate" was started. The movement made no perceptible impression. The republicans carried their entire ticket by 5,917 majority in the county. The experiment was tried again in 1873. There were, however, too many other tickets, the democrats, republicans and prohibitionists, all had complete tickets in the field and the independents were smothered. Noyes carried the city by over 1,500 majority but he was defeated in the state by William Allen, democrat, of Ross county. The democrats celebrated their first state victory in many years by a genuinely enthusiastic jollification on the Square on the night of October 25th.


The Grant-Greeley campaign of 1872 was the most tranquil presidential canvas held in many years. Greeley had a considerable following m Cleveland and polled 6,142 votes in the city, Grant receiving 9,962.


In 1873 the republicans named Governor Hayes for the third time, the democrats naming Governor Allen. Carl Schurz spoke from the pavilion in the Square, on October 2d. Hayes received 13,324 in the city, Allen 8,782.


An important convention was held March 11, 1875, when the "greenback" or "independent" party held their convention in Halle's hall on Seneca street, for the purpose of organizing a national party. Delegates were present from many states, E. A. 011eman, of Indiana, was chosen chairman of the executive committee and M. M. Hooten, of Illinois, president of the convention. The delegates were mostly representatives from Granger Lodges, Industrial Brotherhoods and kindred organizations. They had a great variety of political opinions but all of them agreed that national banks were an unmitigated evil. The movement spread throughout the middle west and attained considerable political prominence.


The centennial year, ushered in with the ringing of bells and celebrated by the nation's first national exposition, brought with it one of the gravest crises in our political history. The excitement began with the republican nominating convention in Cincinnati'? where Blaine's ardent partisans were determined to name him. But on the seventh ballot Governor Hayes, a compromise candidate, received 384 votes, Blaine 351. Because of the local interest in Hayes, the proceedings of the convention were eagerly followed by the throngs that gathered in front of the newspaper offices and the result of the seventh ballot was greeted with cheers. The news reached here at six o'clock, p. m. Cannon announced it and flags were immediately run up over business places and displayed on private residences.


Local zest was added to the contest because Senator Payne, of Cleveland, was one of the national leaders of the democratic party. He had received eighty-nines votes for president on the first ballot in the national nominating convention of his party. So Cleveland had a double interest in the campaign. Both sides held immense rallies, the great men of each party spoke here and on the Saturday before election, William McKinley whose subsequent career was so closely identified with the city, spoke for the first time on the Public Square. But the enthusiasm of the campaign paled before the excitement over its outcome. Election returns were received in the old Globe theater and read from the balcony to the crowds in the streets. The first reports had Tilden elected, carrying New York, New


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 287


Jersey and Connecticut. Then came contradictions, and toward Morning both parties through their national committees, confidently claimed a victory. The following day "the city was a seething, boiling cauldron of excitement." * This tense feeling lasted several days, interfering considerably with the business of the city.


It was not until March 2, 1877, that it was definitely known that Hayes was declared elected. The news reached here at noon and at once the streets were crowded. Three guns were cleared for action on the Square and one hundred and eighty-five shots were fired, one for each Hayes electoral vote. Flags appeared everywhere and every one was glad that the suspense was over. The city gave Hayes 2,292 majority.


In 188o the republican nominations again aroused peculiar interest in Cleveland, for John Sherman, the Ohio candidate, was well known here and his brother had been federal judge in this district. The Blaine men, however, had won the endorsement of the Cuyahoga delegation. The balloting at Chicago was followed by crowds gathered around the bulletin board and when unexpectedly Garfield was named, an impromptu parade formed on Superior street, flags were raised over the courthouse and on the big pole in the Square, and on office buildings, a ((powder fund" was collected and several cannon of Captain Smithnight's battery fired salutes in the Square. While the tumult was going on, badges bearing the name "Garfield" appeared on the streets "in less than an hour," and business practically stopped for the rest of the day. Word was received that Garfield would reach Cleveland from Chicago on the morning of June 9. A meeting was called in the mayor's office and a committee appointed to meet him at Elyria. When the train arrived a carriage drawn by four white horses was placed at Garfield's disposal. He was escorted to the Kennard house by way of Superior street and the Square. At the hotel he was formally congratulated by Governor Foster and Mayor Herrick. The following morning he left for Hiram to attend commencement. A formal reception was given him on his return to Cleveland on the 11th. This was virtually a state affair, excursion trains bringing visitors from distant places. The city was lavishly decorated.. In the evening the Public Square was illuminated with Chinese lanterns and there was a display of fireworks. The campaign was virtually conducted from this city. Every day brought its distinguished men on their way to Mentor.


Local interest was also aroused in the democratic campaign, for Henry B. Payne was a candidate for the presidential nomination in the Cincinnati convention, receiving eighty-one votes on the first ballot. General Hancock, however, was named.


The largest rally of the campaign was on the evening of November 4th, when President Hayes reviewed the torchlight parade and spoke from the balcony of the Kennard house.


Cleveland again had a candidate for lieutenant governor in 1883, when William G. Rose ran with Governor Foraker. George Hoadley, of Cincinnati, who spent his boyhood in Cleveland, was the successful rival. Hoadley carried the


* - "Leader," November 9, 1876.


288 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


county but Rose ran several thousand ahead of ,his ticket. This democratic victory made Henry B. Payne United States senator, the legislature electing him in January, 1884.


The Blaine-Cleveland contest of 1884 was unusually bitter. It was known as the "plug hat" campaign. There were many notable meetings, the principal one on September 26th, when both Blaine and Logan came to the city. It was an old fashioned political field day, with all the accompaniments. In the evening the Square was packed to hear Blaine, Logan and Hamlin. Foraker addressed an overflow meeting on Superior street and Blaine also spoke in the Tabernacle.


The vote was very close. The election crowds were on the streets until morrouning and the outcome was in doubt five days. During this time there was marching and counter-marching, cheering and counter-cheering, by rival clubs of the rival parties as the news seemed to favor the one or the other. On Friday night the democrats could restrain themselves no longer. They held a jollification in the Square, a hearty celebration, the first of the party since 1856. But it was a little previous, for it was not definitely known until Saturday, November 15th, that Grover Cleveland Was elected. Blaine's majority in the county was 8,825!


In 1888, when Harrison was named to oppose Cleveland there was an attempt to return to Tippecanoe songs and miniature log huts ; the revival of "grandfather's hat" was more successful. The old Tippecanoe club was revived. In a room in the old Case block six men decided on the resurrection. Silk hats and uniforms were adopted and on March 31st a banquet in the Forest City house, with McKinley as guest of honor, formally launched the reorganization which remains one of the leading political clubs of the city. On the Saturday evening preceding the election, an industrial parade was held, the first one in the city. Both parties paraded the same day. Harrison carried the county by 2,050.


In 1889 the democrats of the county named Virgil P. Kline as their choice for the gubernatorial nomination. The state convention, however, chose "Jim" Campbell, and he was elected by about 8o,000 majority over Foraker. It was a hard fought campaign, both candidates spoke here as did McKinley, who was now a national leader.


McKinley's nomination for governor in 1891 was well received here. Joseph Cannon made his first appearance in Cleveland during this campaign.


The second Harrison-Cleveland contest was devoid of interest. The democratic ticket carried the county by 2,796 majority.


In 1895 Cleveland presented James Hoyt as a candidate for the republican nomination for governor. He led on the first ballot, but the state machine nominated Asa Bushnell on the seventh ballot. Governor Hill of New York spoke for the democrats at a meeting in Music hall during this campaign.


The spectacular struggle between McKinley and Bryan in 1896 was of peculiar interest to Cleveland, not only because of McKinley's friendships in our city, but because. M. A. Hanna lived here. Bryan came to Cleveland on August 31st. There was a tremendous crush of people to see the daring orator. He spoke from the balcony of the Hollenden in the afternoon and in the Central


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 289


armory in the evening. Both sides offered their best talent to a public that seemed as eager for speeches as did their grandfathers in the days of Corwin and Clay. It was in this campaign that Cleveland contracted the habit of Public Square oratory. There were some innovations, the carload of Union generals touring the land and visiting this city October 19th, recalled the "bloody shirt" arguments ; Bourke Cochran enlisting his inimitable oratory for the republicans typified the attitude of the gold democrats ; the industrial parades drafting shop men and office men and arousing their interest in the economic issues ; and the pilgrimages to Canton. Friday night before election a score of important meetings were held in as many different parts of the city. When it was known late on election night that McKinley had won, the Tippecanoe club immediately chartered a train and journeyed to Canton to be the first delegation to bring congratulations to the new president elect.


In 1897 interest was centered on the state campaign, for M. A. Hanna was a candidate for United States senator. Bryan came to Cleveland to oppose the general manager of his victor. The republicans won the legislature but by so narrow a margin that an alliance between the democrats and a few "insurgents" almost compassed the defeat of the republican Warwick. The intrigue caused the bitterest of feeling and left a blighting effect upon the republican party in this city.


In 1899 an interesting state campaign was waged. Sam Jones, Toledo's "Golden Rule mayor" ran on an independent ticket for governor. The figures for Cuyahoga county are instructive: Nash, republican, 21,321; McLean, democrat, 7,410; Jones, independent, 36,255.


The second McKinley campaign was devoid of special interest. The campaign tent known to local campaigns, was now first used in a presidential canvass on the corner of Broadway and Ledyard street. Bryan and Theodore Roosevelt were the leading attractions. Roosevelt spoke here for the first time October 17th. He left a very 'favorable impression. The result in the city was very close. McKinley's majority was only 28o; in the county it was 3,014.


In 1903 both candidates for governor, Myron T. Herrick, republican, and Tom L. Johnson, democrat, were citizens of Cleveland, and Senator Hanna, candidate for reelection, was opposed by John H. Clarke, of Cleveland. Thus the two leading candidates of both, parties were residents of this city, a coincidence that is unique in Ohio's political history. Herrick carried the city by 4.591 majority and the state by over 100,000. Senator Hanna was returned to the senate.


In 1904 Roosevelt swept the county with a record breaking majority of 33,365. The campaign was listless.


The presidential campaign of 1908 was devoid of special interest. William H. Taft, of Cincinnati, republican candidate, carried the city and the county.


It must remain for the future historian, who can look calmly through the long vista of years, to record the story of the exciting local campaigns of the last decades, especially of those important municipal struggles whose issues have had so important a bearing upon our community and whose significace has attracted the attention of the entire nation.


290 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


CHAPTER XXIX.


THE SLAVERY ISSUE IN CLEVELAND.


The early settlers from New England were not anti-slavery propagandists. The majority of them thought little about the question. Those that did, were of two opinions. Some wanted slavery abolished, others wanted the slaves sent back to Africa, believing that the state should compensate the owners and that many slaveholders would manumit their slaves if they were assured they would leave the country. Between these two opinions there was often heated controversy. The "colonizationists" as they were called, bitterly opposed the "abolitionists."


The first organization in the county, pertaining to the issue, was made in 1827, when the Cuyahoga County Colonization Society was formed as a branch of the National Colonization Society. The names of some of the most eminent men in the town appear on its official roll and this would indicate the favor that this plan met among the intelligent portion of the community. Samuel Cowles was president, Rev. Randolph Stow, Nehemiah Allen, Datus Kelley, Josiah Barber and Lewis R. Dille, vice presidents ; A. W. Walworth, treasurer; James S. Clarke, secretary ; and Mordecai Bartley, delegate to the national society. The society did not last many years.


The abolitionists were gathering strength and in 1833 organized the Cleveland Anti-Slavery Society. Dr. David Long, president ; J. H. Harding, vice president ; S. L. Severance, secretary ; and John A. Foote, treasurer. On September 10, 1835, those opposed to abolition held a largely attended public meeting at which the Hon. Josiah Barber presided. The speeches hotly denounced the abolitionists.


On July 4, 1837, at a meeting m the Old Stone church the Cuyahoga County Anti-Slavery Society was formed. John A. Foote was chosen chairman of the meeting and J. M. Sterling, J. F. Hawks and S., L. Severance, a committee on constitution. They reported that "the object of this society shall be the entire abolition of slavery throughout the United States and the elevation of our colored, brethren to their proper rank as men." Edward Wade was elected president ; Samuel Freeman of Palmer, Asa Cody of Euclid, J. A. Foote of Cleveland, J. L. Tomlinson, of Rockport, Samuel Williamson of Willoughby, vice presidents ; L. L. Rice, corresponding secretary ; H. F. Brayton, recording secretary ; and S. L. Severance, treasurer.


An impulse was given this movement by the opening of "The record of black and mulatto persons, certificates of freedom, bonds, etc.," in the county clerk's office on September 26, 1839. This record was prescribed by a state law passed in 1804. "No black or mulatto person shall be permitted to settle or reside in this state unless he or she shall first procure a fair certificate from some court within the United States of his or her actual freedom and requiring every such person to have such certificate recorded in the clerk's office in the county in which he or she intended to reside." Any one employing such unregistered person was subject to a fine. Another 'state act of the same year proscribed as an offense the harboring or secreting of "any black or mulatto person" and levied a fine of one thousand dollars upon any one who had aided the removal or es-




HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 291


cape of any such person "the property of another." In 1807 the state required every "such person" to give a bond within twenty days before settling in the state, such bond to be signed by two or more freehold sureties and "conditioned for the good behavior of such negro or mulatto and to pay for the support of such person in case he or she be found within any township unable to support him or herself." In 834 the first entry was made, in 1851 the last. The entries give the names and brief descriptions. While there was very little traffic north and south through the state, these statutes were in oblivion. But when the canal was opened and colored people began to pass through Cleveland, then the rigor of the law, particularly of the national fugitive slave law, aroused the slumbering animosities of the people.


Cleveland, being a port on the lake, was frequented by runaway slaves on their way to Canada, and closely watched by their hunters. At first there was very little public notice taken of the arrest and return of the runaways. But increasingly, acts of brutality accompanied the rendition. Moreover, kidnappers thrived. In 841, for instance, three slaves supposed to have escaped from New Orleans were caught in Buffalo, kidnapped by some men who claimed them, brought to Cleveland and lodged in jail by authority of the federal law. When John A. Foote and Edmund Wade, prominent local abolitionists, made application to see them, they were refused, but Thomas Bolton, not an abolitionist, was granted an interview. He determined that the kidnappers had no claim to them and in the teeth of popular disapproval he defended them in court, attacking the inhuman and vicious conduct of these professional kidnappers who made Cleveland a rendezvous.


While Cleveland was a resort of the slave snatcher, it was also a principal station of the "Underground Railway," that philanthropic, illegal, secret and swift mode of transporting fugitives from Kentucky and 'Virginia to Canada.


With the witnessing of such events grew the radical abolition movement. Its members held public meetings, and circulated papers and pamphlets. In August, 1845, Miss Abbey Kelly, a noted abolitionist orator, held a three days' meeting in the Wesleyan chapel, proclaiming the "disorganization of the churches and the dissolution of the Union," words that read "very like treason" to us, as they did to the contemporary editor. (1) In 845, five clergymen united in a published statement, asking all the clergy to preach from the same text on the following Sunday, Psalm 41 :1, "Blessed is the man that considereth the poor" and take for their theme "The present condition of the colored population of our state." The uniting of so many different denominational clergymen was considered unique and the papers commented upon it.


With the approach of 1850, that conspicuous landmark in our national history, the slavery question assumed definite political form. The moral issue was metamorphosing into a political issue. At first the abolitionists were merely agitators, usually unheeded, often despised. As outward circumstances turned the thoughts of the people toward slavery, there naturally developed a political anti-slavery party. In 1842 the abolitionists named L. King for governor of Ohio, and he polled 183 votes in Cuyahoga county. In 1844 King was again named and received 364 votes in this county. In 1846 S. Louis, the abolitionist candidate, re-


1 - "Herald," Vol. 27, No. 10.


292 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


ceived 673 votes in Cuyahoga county. This may be taken as the voting strength of the radicals. They joined the freesoil or liberty party at its formation and in 1848 the county gave Van Buren, freesoil candidate, 2,563 votes.


Among the first fruits of national importance of this increasing antipathy to slavery was the election of robust Joshua R. Giddings to congress on a freesoil ticket, in 185o. He was opposed by Irad Kelly of Cleveland. In the city Kelly received 282 votes, Giddings 418.


On July 13, 1849, the day of the sixty-second anniversary of the adoption of the ordinance of 1787, a notable meeting, far reaching in its mfluence, was held in a large tent on the Public Square. It was called as a national mass meeting of the new freesoil democrats ; it was the promulgation of a new political allegiance. The meeting was announced at 11 a. m. by the Cleveland artillery cannon that had spoken on so many important occasions, and was called the "baby waker." Judge Tappan was chosen president; Joel Tiffany, of Chicago, George Hadley, of Cincinnati, secretaries. Among the notable persons who addressed the meeting were Henry L. Ellsworth, of Indiana, Joshua R. Giddings, the Western Reserve apostle of free speech, Austin Willey of Maine and "Prince" John Van Buren, the stately son of Martin Van Buren, who the previous year had been the presidential candidate. Freesoil or free democracy tickets were placed in the field annually until the organization of the republican party. In 1855 they gathered their strength largely from the whigs, whom they virtually divided in half, for John P. Hale, their presidential candidate, in 1852 received about as many votes as General Scott. In 1853 they cast twice as many votes as the whigs. In 1855 the first republican state campaign was waged, and the county's republican majority was nearly six hundred.


In 1850 an anti-fugitive slave law meeting was called in Empire hall. "Mr. Rouse, on request, told an anecdote of an escaping slave in spirited style, which showed how we got off fugitives to Canada." * It was "Resolved that whenever any of the laws of the Republic clearly conflict with the laws of God, it is the duty of every 'good citizen' to render obedience to the latter rather than to the former" and that those who accept the position of commissioners or marshal under the fugitive slave law are "tyrants to humanity." Elisha Taylor and Reuben Hitchcock were the leaders of this meeting. September 10, 1850, at Empire hall, a large public meeting to denounce the fugitive slave act, was addressed by Dr. Aiken, of the Stone church and Judge Hitchcock.


These agitations combined with the increasing traffic on the "Underground" and the renewed rigor of the law after the act of 185o aroused more and more the popular sentiment. The Kansas question was as fervent here as in New England. When it became apparent that the Missouri compromise was to be repealed, local opinion found vent in a meeting called by Samuel Williamson, J. S. Newbury, J. Hoyt, and two hundred others, on January 28, 1854. The meeting was held in National hall, on Bank street. George Mygatt was chairman. Speeches were earnest, and resolutions adopted demanding that Nebraska be admitted as a free state and "that in our opposition to the aggression of slavery made necessary by this new manifestation of its ever grasping disposition we


* - "Herald," Vol. 33, P. 45.


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 293


desire to occupy common ground on which all its opponents may stand and to erect a standard around which all may rally."


"That our object is to secure free states, to protect free territory and the rights of free men, to denationalize slavery and prevent its further encroachments. And in aid of such a cause we invoke the cooperation of all who have not 'bowed the knee to the dark spirit of slavery' or yielded their spirit to the tyranny of party."


The resolutions committee was continued with power to add to its members and to call a convention of the people of Ohio in Columbus of all those "people opposed to the introduction of slavery in Nebraska." Such a meeting was later held and a number of distinguished Clevelanders attended.


The abolitionists maintained the Fugitive Aid Society, at first little known, but as public opinion intensified, becoming bolder, until in 1858 to 186o it advertised its meetings in the newspapers and maintained a vigilance committee whose names were published. They held public meetings once a month.


In May, 1856, a Kansas Emigration Society was organized for raising funds. Charles Hickox was the president and W. H. Stanley the treasurer. The attack of Brooks upon Charles Sumner in the federal senate chamber caused great excitement here. An indignation meeting was held in the courthouse, and addresses were made by Judge Tilden, Franklin T. Backus, and other leading citizens. E. F. Gaylord, of the committee on resolutions, read a stirring resolve. A "Republican Association" was formed, a declaration of principles adopted closing with these words, "We invite, therefore, as many as feel that further endurance of the aggressions of the slave power will cease to be a virtue; and that the time has finally come when we must and will resist the open attempt to pervert this free republic to an instrument for the extension and perpetuation of human bondage, to unite with us in our organization.


"Signed by the executive committee;

WM. SLADE,

CHAS. HICKOX,

BOLIVAR BUTTS,

J. F. KEELER,

HENRY BLAIR."


On the 18th of June, 1856, Fremont was nominated for president at the first national republican convention in Philadelphia. When the news reached here there was an impromptu celebration with artillery, flags and illumination. Two days later, a "Free State Kansas" convention was held in Cleveland, with delegates from many states in attendance, including Governor Reeder and Senator J. H. Lane of Kansas. On the evening of June 21st, the republicans formally ratified Fremont's nomination. The delegates to the free state convention participated and the air was vibrant with anti-slavery oratory. The newspapers of those days were filled with Kansas news, all eyes were upon the struggle, and Kansas agitators were here to incite public opinion.


August 25, 1857, a national emancipation convention was held in Melodeon hall. It discussed the question of freeing the slaves from every point of view, and recommended compensated emancipation. Some of the nation's most noted


294 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


anti-slavery men attended, among them Elisha Burritt, of Massachusetts, Gerrit Smith, of New York, and Mark Hopkins, who was president of the convention.


Sentiment joined with conviction, and every public meeting and every display of the enforcement of the fugitive slave act increased the excitement.


In 1859 an event occurred which lent its outward show to this increasing feeling. In 1856 a number of slaves owned by one John G. Bacon, of Kentucky, escaped. Among them was one named John, who, Bacon was informed, was in hiding in Oberlin with one of the most zealous promoters of the "Underground." In 1858, he sent an agent named Anderson Jennings, to Oberlin to secure the fugitive and take him back. Jennings captured John and started south with him. But when he reached Wellington, on the 15th of September, a mob of about one thousand men surrounded him, relieved him of his charge, sent the negro north and the agent south, and quietly returned to their homes. In the December term of the United States District court, indictments were returned against twenty-seven of the members of the rescuing party, including distinguished professors in Oberlin college, and business and professional men. On April 5, 1859, the indicted men were brought to Cleveland and one of this number, Simeon Bushnell, was placed on trial by District Attorney George W. Belden, before Judge H. V. Willson. Belden was assisted by George Bliss, and the prisoner found volunteer defenders among the leading lawyers at the Cleveland bar, Rufus P. Spalding, Franklin T. Backus, A. G. Riddle and Seneca 0. Griswold. The trial lasted ten days. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, for the evidence was clear that the prisoner was guilty of "rescuing a fugitive from service." The sentence was a fine of six hundred dollars and sixty days' imprisonment in the county jail. The remaining offenders were variously disposed of, some by fine and imprisonment, some by nolle. (2)


The trial naturally attracted national attention ; the distinguished prisoners, the noted lawyers for the defense, the peculiar circumstances surrounding the rescue, aroused public interest. But when the sentence was announced and the people realized that an act of liberation could be punished by imprisonment, their indignation was unbounded. In Cleveland there was almost a suspension of business during the trial. Crowds overflowed the courtroom and knots of - men were seen everywhere discussing the details. In the midst of this excitement, on May 24, 1859, a huge mass meeting of the foes of the fugitive slave act was called. It was by far the largest and most important meeting of its nature yet held in Ohio. People came from many northern Ohio counties by trainload and wagonload. There were multitudes of bands and banners. A vast parade formed and marched by the prison yard, cheering the martyrs. A delegation was sent to the prison to bring the good wishes of the throng, and to these the prisoners admonished moderation. On a large platform erected on the Square near the federal building, speeches were made by Joshua R. Giddings, Governor S. P. Chase, Judge Tilden, Judge Spalding and others. The crowds had gathered to denounce one law and not to break another. The special deputies of the sheriff guarding, the jail were not needed.


2 - See "History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue," by Jacob R. Shepherd, for complete narrative.


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 295


In the fall of the same year occurred another, a vastly more far reaching event, to arouse the sentiment of the people. John Brown was hanged. On November 29, 1859, a meeting was held in the Euclid Avenue Wesleyan chapel, presided over by Judge Tilden, for the purpose of making preparations for a proper observation of December 2, the day of Brown's execution. It was recommended "that the bells of the churches in the city be tolled for half an hour from 2:00 p. m., Tuesday, December 2; that a general meeting be held at Melodeon hall at 7 :00 o'clock p. m. on that day to give expression to public sentiment, on the occasion of the sacrifice to the Moloch of Slavery by the killing of the body of John Brown by the commonwealth of Virginia."


On the day of the execution the "Herald" appeared bordered with black bands, flags were at half mast and from Dr. Kirtland's flagstaff floated an American flag bordered with black. A white banner bordered with black was stretched across Superior street from the Bennett House with the words: "I do not think I can better serve the cause I love so much than to die for it."


The Melodeon, where the meeting was held, was draped in black, and among the mottoes on the wall were these: "If I had interfered in behalf of the great, the wealthy and the wise, „no one would have blamed me." "John Brown, the Hero of 1859." "His noble spirit makes despots quail and Freedom triumph." The hall was crowded. Judge Rufus Spalding suggested that there be no applause. There were many speakers but the solemn and unusual circumstance of the evening was the reading, by Judge Spalding, of a letter received by Judge Tilden from John Brown, the previous Thursday. At the conclusion of the reading the letter was passed around, the people requesting an opportunity "to look at the last words from John Brown." (3)


The body of John Brown was brought to Hudson in Summit county. There was great excitement along the route and many Clevelanders went to Hudson to the interment. The services of an undertaker were not secured until the body reached New York. The excitement in Philadelphia and Baltimore was too great to risk any stop.


These events resulted in amalgamating, politically, the anti-slavery sentiment in the republican party and in the election of Lincoln in 186o.


One other important event occurred in Cleveland before the war. On January 19, 1861, a posse of federal officers, under the guidance of Seth A. Abbey, a deputy United States marshal, forcibly entered the home of L. A. Benton on Prospect street and carried away a young mulatto girl, named *Lucy, purported to be a runaway slave, belonging to William S. Goshorn of Wheeling, Virginia, and placed her in the county jail. The news was soon over the town and an immense crowd gathered around the courthouse threatening to liberate the girl. Judge Rufus P. Spalding, A. G. Riddle and C. W. Palmer at once volunteered to act as her counsel and applied for a writ of habeas corpus. On the morning of January 21, Judge Tilden ordered her release upon the ground that the sheriff, an officer of the county, had no right to hold her. The unfortunate girl was taken into the custody of the United States marshal immediately. upon her release, and guarded by one hundred and fifty special deputies, she was taken from the courthouse to the federal building to be given a hearing before United States Commissioner White. The commissioner required the


3 - See "Herald" of that date for details.


296 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


taking of depositions in Virginia. On January 23, the hearing was had. Judge Spalding admitted that he had no evidence to warrant the release of the girl. He made a fervid plea, surrendering the girl "to that law, whose tender mercies are cruelties." "We are this day offering to the majesty of constitutional law an homage that takes with it the virtual surrender of the finest feelings of our nature; the vanquishing of many of our strictest resolutions; the mortification of a freeman's pride and I almost said the contravention of a Christian's duty to his God."


There was most intense excitement during this episode. Some of the deputies were men "who have often honored the records of the police court." (5) An affray with some free colored men occurred, and as the marshal was leading the girl into the federal building several women tried to throw red pepper into his eyes. The offenders were promptly arrested. An attempt was made to rescue Lucy after she had been taken to the train and was on her way to Virginia, but owing to the alertness of the conductor the attempt failed. (6)


Within a few months the sound of the bugle and the drum was heard on the Public Square, calling many of the men who witnessed these scenes to the final arbitrament of the great issue. To the lasting glory of Cleveland, it is recorded that the city passed through these years of agitation, excitement and passion without guilt of mob violence.


With the firing on Sumter, April 12, 1861, the long repressed feelings of the people were suddenly let loose. Excited crowds filled the streets and gathered in front of the newspaper offices. A great meeting was held in the Melodeon on April 15th. Military organizations were feverishly perfected. April 18th the Grays, the first Cleveland company to leave for the front, were escorted to the Union depot by an immense multitude. From time to time, as special occasion demanded, war meetings were held to urge ready enlistments and to cheer the government in its trying ordeal. The sentiment of the people followed their soldiery.


July 4, 1862, was a notable day. The Union army was before Richmond. The morning of the 4th was ushered in with the ringing of bells and the firing of the guns captured by Cleveland soldiers in the West Virginia campaign. "The old flag borne for six days in fire and blood with varying fortunes, still waves on the James river," said the "Herald."


A historic meeting in behalf of the enlistment was called July 22, 1862, in Bramard hall. But the crowd made the room inadequate and the meeting adjourned to the Square, where Governor Dennison, Hon. H. J. Jewett, Colonel George McCook and Colonel J. C. Vaughan addressed the meeting. It was, "Resolved that the governor be respectfully yet earnestly requested to convene the legislature in extraordinary session at the earliest day practicable, in order to pass such laws as will meet the present crisis and its demands. And it is hereby


5 - "Herald," January 22, 1861.

6 - An unusual circumstance is connected with the subsequent history of Lucy, who was the last person returned from Ohio under the Fugitive Slave Law. After the war she settled in Pittsburg and married one George Johnson. Later she came to Cleveland and at the meeting of the Early Settlers Association, September To, 1904, she was escorted to the platform and introduced to the wondering audience. See "Annals Early Settlers Association," Vol. 5, p. 142.


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 297


recommended that the members of the legislature receive no compensation for their attendance at said session."


The draft proceeded in Cleveland without trouble. The few "skedaddlers" who evaded by going to Canada were promptly arrested when they returned.


September 10, 1862, word was received that Cincinnati was in danger of being captured by the Confederates. Immediately the "Cleveland Squirrel Hunters" were organized and sent down to Kentucky. Their equipment was crude. The "Herald" advertised that headquarters were established at the Athenaeum, "where all men for the defense of Cincinnati will be received and sent forward. They must all be armed with muskets and rifles and have one blanket." W. B. Castle, chairman of the committee, asks m the same issue for "rifles, powder flasks, powder horns, haversacks, canteens, tin cups, cartouch boxes, bayonet scabbards and belts. Patriotic citizens are requested to furnish the above articles."


March 31, 1863, the Union League was organized at a mass meeting in Brainard's hall, amid the greatest enthusiasm. H. M. Chapin was chairman and E. E. Rouse, secretary. It was "Resolved that we will have no dissolution of the Union; that we will have no armistice; that we can and will fight as long as traitors and rebels can; that this war shall go on until the national flag shall float in triumph over every state now in rebellion and the national law is restored therein."


"Resolved that we tender to our brave and heroic soldiers in the field our warmest greetings and we assure them that while they are fighting the rebels in front, we pledge ourselves to protect them from traitors in the rear."


This was the answer given to the street talk and the newspaper items that discussed the possibility of the dissolution of the Union. It was in the heat of the notable Vallandigham campaign, when "copperheads" were a little bolder than usual. A meeting of southern sympathizers was held June 20, 1863, in a small hall in the fifth ward. The meeting seems to have been a disappointment to both its friends and enemies. A few days later, June 22, Judge Thurman spoke three hours in defense of Vallandingham in Brainard hall. Even so distinguished and patriotic a champion could arouse no love in Cleveland for the cause of the friends of compromise.


In July, 1863, when the fever of the "copperhead" discussion was at high heat, and when the news of the bloody riots in New York city caused uneasiness everywhere, the "Cleveland Minute Guards" were organized. The company was composed mostly of business men who were willing to serve as a posse comitatus, subject to the call of the city in case of riot or other need. W. P. Fogg was chosen captain and V. C. Taylor, first lieutenant. Regular drills were held and the mayor was notified of its willingness to serve in emergencies. Fortunately no riots occurred.


In November, 1863, there were rumors of a plot to release the Confederate prisoners from the federal prison on Johnson's island in Sandusky bay. A careful patrol of the shores was maintained and Buffalo, Erie and Cleveland were especially alert.


February 7, 1864, two Confederate officers, a major and a lieutenant, ,stopped at the New England hotel. They were in charge of a lieutenant who had been


298 - HISTORY OF CLEVELAND


imprisoned at Johnson's island and were on their way to Fortress Monroe. Their presence in the city caused some excitement and a watch seems to have been kept over them, and those who called on them at the hotel were marked.


The drain made upon the resources of the country appealed to the patriotism of the citizens. A "Non-importation League" was organized in Brainard hall, May 19, 1864. Judge H. V. Willson presided. Colonel Charles Whittlesey, Judge Tilden and the eloquent McSweeney of Wooster siaddressed the meeting. Many of the most substantial citizens cooperated in the movement as the following committee on resolutions indicates : Colonel Charles Whittlesey, Amasa Stone, Jr., Samuel Williamson, M. B. Scott, J. G. McCurdy, D. R. Tilden, H. B. Payne, Mrs. Governor Brough, Mrs. A. B. Stone, Mrs. George A. Benedict, Mrs. A. G. Colwell, Mrs. William Mittleberger, Mrs. Samuel Williamson and Mrs. M. C. Younglove. This committee reported May 3o as follows : "As loyal men and women of the United States desirous of aiding the country in every possible manner, we hereby pledge ourselves during the present rebellion to practice rigid economy of living, especially in regard to articles not strictly necessary; and oalso, knowingly, not to purchase, for the use of ourselves or families, articles of foreign growth or manufacture mentioned below, usually called luxuries, to wit : Dress goods, which are all silk or all wool or all silk and wool (except merinoes and bombazines), shawls, embroidery and lace (except silk and cotton blonde), all expensive ribbons, feathers and flowers, all velvets, carpets, broadcloth, cassimeres, wines, liquors and cigars, diamonds, watches and all ornaments in the line of jewelry." This patriotic self-denial became popular for a time.


When the news came, September 3, 1864, that Sherman had reached Atlanta, there was a spontaneous outpouring of the people. The Square was illuminated, speeches were made, fireworks and cannon enlivened the night.


The Union Club, that was organized during this period of fervor, advertised "Headquarters Central Union Club, No. 19 Public Square, northeast corner, open every day and evening. A large supply of Union documents, both English and German, always on hand, both for city and county. New York papers on file." (*)


On November 6, 1864, the mayor received a dispatch from the mayor of Buffalo that the propellor "Georgian" was acting suspiciously and that it was reported that the ship would be "armed for piratical or predatory purposes on the lakes or frontier." The city authorities placed some twelve pounders and artillery men on duty, a company of the twenty-ninth regiment, national guards, patrolled the city, several tugs were stationed where quick action would result and several steamers and propellors in the harbor were made ready for giving chase if necessary. There was no need for this vigilance, however, the "Georgian" made us no further trouble.


Through the severe strain of the war, the city passed without mob violence. The death of Lincoln stirred the people's hearts to their profoundest depths. The news was received here in silence. Two southern sympathizers were incautious enough to express pleasure over the assassmation. One of them barely eluded a mob by being locked in the jail. The fury of the people would have made short work of the traitor. The other indiscreet sympathizer was J. J. Husband,


* - "Herald," October 22, 1864.


HISTORY OF CLEVELAND - 299


the architect of the old courthouse. The writer has the story from an eye witness, Julius Swain, who was then employed as a civil engineer on the Atlantic & Great Western railway. Mr. Swain had been out of the city on business and returned early on Saturday morning of April 5th. He had heard rumors on the train that Lincoln had been killed and on arriving at the depot he saw these rumors confirmed in the extra editions of the "Herald" and "Leader." As he walked to the Weddell House, where the officers of the road construction had their headquarters, he was joined by a stranger. Swain said, "Isn't this frightful news?" The stranger replied, "0, I don't know, it served him right to be shot." Too shocked to reply, Swain went into the dining room for his breakfast. There he related the unnatural comment of the stranger. The men at the table listened in silence. After breakfast he was asked to describe the man, and looking out of the hotel window he saw him standing across the street and pointed him out. "Why that is Husband, the architect," one of the men said, and slipped out to the "Herald" office. "Within three or four minutes," Mr. Swain relates, "a mob had gathered. The people seemed to come out of the earth and they were furious. The object of their wrath fled to his office on the top floor of a Superior street building. But he was pursued and made his escape through the skylight. He was compelled finally to ask the sheriff to lock him up in the courthouse, and subsequently sneaked out of town."


His name was chipped out of the corner stone of the courthouse the same day. This was the only mob violence suffered by Cleveland during these exciting years. And who shall say that it was unjustified?