200 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Alphonso Taft. Another distinguished Cincinnatian, whose name will forever be associated with Judge Stallo on account of his relation to the great Bible case, is Alphonso Taft. Born in Vermont in 1810 and graduated at Yale, he early became a Cincinnatian and participated in many of our greatest municipal activities. It was he who wrote the dissenting opinion, when his two associates Storer and Hagans decided that the school board were at fault in excluding the Bible, and (right or wrong in his position) he achieved thereby a national fame as a thinker and lawyer. For another reason (quite different indeed) the glory of his name has since been heightened. To him, in the capacity of a father, we owe the distinguished honor of claiming a second president of the United States, William Howard Taft. Rufus King. From a list like this it would be impossible to omit the name of Rufus King. Born in Chillicothe in 1817, a grandson of Rufus King and, son of Edward and the daughter of Thomas Worthington (afterwards Mrs. Sarah Peter), he came to Cincinnati in 1841 after completing his law studies in Harvard College. From the first moment of his arrival, one might say, he sprang into prominence, so remarkable were his gifts. But it was not alone in his profession that he shone. His love of learning made him an enthusiast in education. Being elected school visitor in 1851 he served for fourteen years. Upon the consolidation of Woodward and Hughes, he became president of the board of managers and continued so until 1891. In 1859 he became a director of the university and held the office until 1887 when he declined renomination. He was a member of the library board, dean and president of the law school, vice president and president of the law library ; active in organization of College of Music and Art Museum ; trustee of Kenyon College ; member of board of tax commissioners from 1883 to 1891 ; organizer of committee of One Hundred ; director of Cincinnati Southern and C. H. & D. railroads and innumerable other organizations. About this man a fact of so unusual nature is recorded as to deserve a more than passing notice. He positively refused to accept any office to which emoluments were attached ! He was a philopolist born out of due time ! "The distinguishing character of a gentleman," it has been said, "is his cheerful assumption of selfteimposed obligations." It is the cheerful assumption of the self-imposed obligation of municipal life toward which history points as the goal of citizenship. To his other achievements Mr. King finally added the supreme one of writing an almost perfect history of the Buckeye state. Physicians. Dr. Reuben Diamond Mussey was an heroic figure in the medical profession. Born in New Hampshire in 1780, graduated from Dartmouth in 1803 and from the medical school in the University of Pennsylvania, he came to Cincinnati in 1838 as a member of the staff of the Medical College of Ohio and was professor for fourteen years. Later on he held a similar position in the Miami CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 201 Medical College, and still later practiced medicine with brilliant success. He possessed just enough eccentricities to make him an object of attention and interest and talents of so high an order as to compel confidence and admiration. His convictions were unchangeable and he sometimes elevated mere opinions to the dignity of beliefs. His views he never hesitated to express and to maintain with eloquence and determination. At the age of eighty he retired from practice and, to the regret of all good people, returned to his home in the East where he died at the age of eighty-six. Other illustrious physicians belonging to this period were Dr. George C. Blackman who came to Cincinnati in 1854 and Dr. George Mendenhall. Cary Sisters. It is in this period that two young women, reared on a farm not far from the city (Mt. Healthy), began to shed a peculiar glory upon Cincinnati. Their names were Alice and Phoebe Cary and their achievements are so much a matteter of local pride that it is hard to speak of them with moderation. They were the daughters of Robert Cary and Eliza Jessup ; Alice having been born in 1820 and Phoebe in 1824. Their early lives were full of sorrow, the effects of which can be traced in all their writings. Left, while still young, to the care of an exacting and unsympathetic step-mother, their budding literary genius was developed in secret and in spite of opposition. Compelled to drudge all day, they wrote at night by the light of a rag in a saucer of lard. Before Alice was eightteeen years old she had sent a poem to a Cincinnati paper and Phoebe began to contribute not long afterwards. The father secretly abetted his gifted daughters and, having built a new home on the farm, permitted them to occupy the old one and to pursue their vocation seriously. Their literary output increased and brought them so wide a recognition that, to the irreparable loss of our city of which they had become so great an ornament, they removed to New York in 1850 and there became conspicuous figures, even in the crowded life of the vast metropolis. They finally settled down in a house on East loth street and their home became a sort of literary shrine. Their Sunday evening "at homes" and their weekly receptions were for fifteen years features in the literary life of the nation. Among their visitors and friends were such distinguished persons as Horace Greeley ; Bayard Taylor and his wife ; Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard ; Robert Dale Owen ; John G. Whittier ; Thomas B. Aldrich ; Mrs. Cooly ; Julia Dean ; Ole Bull ; Justin McCarthy ; Oliver Johnson ; Mrs. Mary E. Dodge ; Anna E. Dickinson; George Ripley ; Henry Wilson ; Robert Bonner ; Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Rev. Charles F. Deems and Rev. Henry M. Field. These years were crowded with all sorts of activities and the production of poems, essays and stories was incessant. Never robust and always tinged with sadness, Alice after a long sickness, died in February, 1871, and Phoebe followed her in July of the same year, incapable of enduring her sister's loss. At this point we yield to a temptation that has assailed us, again and again, and turn aside to comment upon the terrible loss of richness out of a city's life by removals, like that of the Cary sisters. A hundred similar cases recur to our memory and awaken an impotent remonstrance. 202 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Loss by Removals. When the great figures of our city die, we feel the loss, of course, but realize that it is in the course of nature and inevitable. When, however, they are drawn away from us by the seductions of other places of residence or driven out by lack of appreciation or opportunity, our hearts protest. Consider for a moment the loss we have suffered through the departure of people of wealth, some of whom have left on account of the evils of our double taxation system and some because other cities afforded greater facilities for culture or luxury. It does not follow that people are of real value to the community, personally, because they are rich, of course, and New York city may be all the better off for its desertion by an Astor. But after all, a certain degree of wealth is necessary to the development of the higher life and when families which have accumulated or inherited fortunes deliberately withdraw and spend them somewhere else, we suffer loss. The loss, however, is not irreparable, for there is no municipal asset so easy to acquire as wealth. Any city can breed mere moneytegetters and easily fill the places of those who withdraw from the struggle for gold. But the removal of real children of genius is a matter of infinitely deeper concern for they cannot be made to order, like the mere muckteraker. They are born—not made—and when one of them (bestowed upon a city by heaven, in a moment of divine benevolence), suddenly packs up and goes away, an incurable wound has been inflicted. When those gifted Cary sisters left us, for example, we suffered a loss that never has and never can be, possibly, made good. We have been and shall forever be the poorer. And so we have but to recall that long list of gifted souls that have been constrained to leave us thus, to wonder if there is no way of stopping this terrible leakage. Run over that ghastly list of losses and then think how much richer • our life would have been could we have kept these run-a-ways. To begin with, two people who are actually in the "Hall of Fame," Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, at one time or another, have lived in Cincinnati, and so have Lyman Beecher, William Holmes McGuffy ; Hiram Powers ; the Cary sisters and George B. McClellan, all of whom have almost attained to that distinguished honor. Besides these, such names as Rutherford B. Hayes, William D. Gallagher, Horace Mann, Moncure D. Conway, Moses Ezekiel, Elizabeth Nourse, at once recur to memory as evidences of the tragic depletion of our civic resources. These are only the names of those who are known the best ; but how many others there must be, who have drawn their first inspirations here and been compelled to go away ! It would not be possible, of course, to keep every genius at home, for the greater cities possess an irresistible attraction by offering enormous rewards for such gifted souls. But we could, at least, create an environment that would offer far greater inducements to remain, than this present one. What we lack is—quicker recognition, ampler rewards and more generous applause for talent! There is too little civic pride in the work of our authors, our musicians, our artists and our scholars. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 203 Trader Sisters. The names of the Cary Sisters have led us far afield ; but we cannot return from our wanderings without dwelling for a moment upon another fact which the story of their lives suggests. It is the fact that "Clovernook," their former home, is now a refuge for the blind and is maintained by two other sisters, not less charming nor less useful to the great social organism. Miss Georgia Trader has suffered a total loss of sight and Miss Florence Trader is totally consecrated to the task of solacing this misfortune. A few years ago, while seeking for some sort of mission, these two young women were divinely led to establish a library for the blind, which has since become the finest in America. An ever deepening sense of the misery of those who suffer this ultimate affliction afterwards induced them to try to enlarge the sphere of their helpfulness and, happening to read one day that Clovernook was for sale, they hastened to the office of William A. Procter and laid before his ever open mind a plan to turn it into a permanent home for the sightless. "Go and buy it," said Mr. Procter, to his confidential man. The purchase was soon completed and for several years the little house made sacred by the literary genius of one pair of sisters and the divine charity of another has been in the truest sense of the word, a Home for the blind. But it is time for us to get back into the channel where runs the stream of our narrative and to take up the period of the Civil war. Vol. I-14 CHAPTER XI. THE CIVIL WAR. CINCINNATI'S RELATION TO THE SOUTH-RESOLUTIONS DRAWN UP BY RUTHERFORD B. HAYES INDORSING THE WAR ENTHUSIASTICALLY PASSED AT THE FIRST GREAT MEETING-MEN OF CINCINNATI ATTAIN HIGH RANK IN MILITARY CIRCLES-GEORGE B. M'CLELLAN, RUTH ERFORD B. HAYES, JOHN POPE, THOMAS EWING AND A WHOLE GALAXY OF OTHERS-ATTITUDE OF KENTUCKY- JOHN MORGAN-KIRBY SMITH-CLEMENT L. VALLANDINGHAM-MAJOR ANDERSON OF FT. SUMTER FAME-THE FIGHTING M'COOKS-GENERAL WILLIAM H. LYTLET. BUCHANAN READ-JAMES E. MURDOCH . We cannot blink the fact that the history of our city must be plain, even to dulness, save to those minds which are sensitive to the sacredness of the comtemonplace. That sort of charm which cities like Troy, Jerusalem and Rome possess, whose gates have been battered with rams ; whose walls have been scaled by besiegers and whose streets have run red with the blood of patriots, we must be content to do without. The fate of empires has not been settled in our midst. The daring deeds of our ancestors have not been told in songs or woven into romance. We have acknowledged this again and yet again. But we ought not to forget that a great military organization which conquered the northwest for civilization was organized here ; that a considerable part of the army which won a great victory in the War of 1812 was mobilized amongst us and commanded by one of our citizens while it was at the time largely financed by another ; that Cincinnati was a strategic center in the War of the Rebellion; nor, that if it was not actually the scene of a battle, it at least suffered the terrible apprehension of an assault at arms. But the emotions with which the historian attempts to record the shining events of the years from 1861 to 1865 have always been a mixture of gravity and amusement. No other Union city except Washington and St. Louis was so close to the danger zone; no other was so torn asunder by opposing interests ; no other came so near the tragedy of capture and no other suffered deeper emotional experience. And yet the story of the defense of the city when threatened by the legions of Morgan and Smith is so full of comedy that it is hard, at this distance of time, to take it with a proper sense of seriousness. Let us do our best to set forth these serio-comic elements in a just proportion. Cincinnati's Relation to the South. The first great fact that seems to put in its own true light the real signifitecance of this era is that of the close relationship of Cincinnati with the South, Being the natural gateway into the slave states, her commercial interests in that region were vast and vital. Drawing so much of her wealth from the territory which eventually seceded, it was inevitable that the sundering of the ties of - 205 - 206 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY business should appear to be an intolerable calamity. As a rule, our human sympathies follow the leadings of our purse strings, and there was reason to apprehend that when the tocsin of war should sound, the city might go with the South or at least be hppelessly divided. That the event proved otherwise must ever remain the strongest reason for our confidence in the ultimate soundness of the brain and heart of our home city. The true measure of virtue is, in the last analysis, the willingness to make sacrifice for principle and the citizens of Cincinnati in remaining loyal to the Union laid wealth and comfort on the altar. Deep as the excitement over the campaign of 1860 was, the actual apprehension of war had been but slight. When Mr. Lincoln passed through the city on his way to Washington, February 12, 1861, he was welcomed enthusiastically by all classes. The crowd about the depot and in the streets was enormous. The procession was long, the reception brilliant, the address eloquent, the sentiment of loyalty widely diffused, if not universal. In the municipal election held on April 1, 1861, there came, however, an intimation of a divided opinion for a democratic mayor, George Hatch, representing the extreme sentiment of deference and concession to the South was elected. On April 5th another ominous event occurred, when the authorities permitted some cannon (consigned from Baltimore, Md., to Jackson, Miss., for the use of the Southern Confederacy) to pass through the city. And only the day before, a slave had been remanded to his master by the United States Commissioner. These events produced uneasiness but could not open the eyes of people unfamiliar with the ominous symptoms of war. But the sentiments of the people were suddenly clarified and crystallized by the attack upon Fort Sumter. The shiver which the first cannon shot sent over the land brought millions to their first clear realization of the frightful responsibilities of citizenship and their first clear consciousness of the significance of love of native land. The news of the assault on the fort reached Cincinnati in the evening of the 17th of April, 1861, and the line of cleavage almost instantaneously shot through the population, leaving a poor minority of timid souls on the side of the South. The great bulk of our citizens, when the line was drawn, stepped resolutely over to the right side and stood there loyally until the last gun was fired. Few of them, except the German refugees from the Revolution of 1848, had actually foreseen the disaster. These Petrels of that great storm knew all the symptoms of war and recognized the meaning of the rising cloud, although no bigger than a human hand. There was also one other man whose spirits, like the sensitive plant, vibrated to agitations imperceptible to duller souls. In the previous fall Captain John Pope had read before the Literary Club a paper on our national fortifications, in which his prognostications of the coming disasters were so clear as to subject him to a court martial, whose adverse findings were only side tracked by the utmost efforts of Pcstmaster General Holt. But the masses of the people were incapable of comprehending a situation so complex and treated it lightly, until the crisis fell. If the great shock produced mental clarification and crystallization, it also liberated gigantic energies and set in operation stupendous mechanisms for the preservation of the Union. Events of the greatest importance occurred with CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 207 such rapidity and crowded upon each other in such confusion as to make it difficult, if not impossible, to set them forth in chronological order. Endorsement of War. On the 15th of April the first great meeting for endorsing the Union and prosecuting the war was held at the Catholic Institute and patriotic addresses were made by T. J. Galligher, Judge Storer, Judge Stallo, E. F. Noyes, Judge Dickerson, Dr. M. B. Wright and Judge Pruden and the resolutions drawn up by Rutherford B. Hayes were passed with a stern enthusiasm. It was on that day that Lincoln issued his call for 75,000 volunteers and the response of our city was instantaneous. On the 7th, a meeting was held at the office of John D. Caldwell, 141 Main street, for the purpose of organizing a home guard and to arrange to prevent articles of war from passing through the city. Upon the heels of this event came an almost wild scramble of the ardent youth and even the elderly men to be numbered in the ranks of that army which the proclamation of Mr. Lincoln had started into existence. As a mere phenomenon, few events in history can equal that of the sudden creation of these regiments and their transformation into an invincible soldiery. Besides these organizations there were the Montgomery guards and the Sartefields guards (who subsequently combined) and others ; but notably the Turner regiment, composed of Germans and gathered under the leadership of Colonel Robert L. McCook, soon to become famous for making the first bayonet charge of the Civil war, at Mill Springs. On the 17th, also, the Burnet rifles was organized out of the members of the Literary club, which assembled for the purpose at the suggestion of Rutherford B. Hayes. Upon the passage of a resolution to form a military company, the roll was called and thirty-three of those present enlisted, out of a limited membership of fifty. As the members enrolled and started for the front, their places were filled by others, so that by the time the war was ended fiftyteone members had served in the army, only one of whom succeeded in remaining a private ! Unfitted by their talents for obscure position, they stepped almost instantly into places of power. Simply to read their names and official positions a half century after the clouds of war have lifted, makes one's pulses bound. It seemed the result of some divine power, unknown before. Our souls can never tire of the picture of these intrepid ancestors of ours, leaving the plow in the furrow, the yard stick on the counter, the law books on their shelves, and springing to arms. In no city was the response more immediate or enthusiastic than in our own and nowhere were nobler soldiers organized into more efficient regiments. Organization of Companies. There were a number of military companies in Cincinnati at the time, most of them mere skeleton organizations for social rather than warlike purposes, but the transmutation into fighting machines of irresistible power was instantaneous and miraculous. Six of them at least made memorable records in the 208 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY war—the Rover guards, the Zouave guards, the Highland guards, the Continentals, the Lafayette guards and the Lytle Grays. The call for volunteers was issued on the 15th of April and before daybreak on the 17th the Rover, Zouave and Lafayette guards were on their way to the war ! At Columbus they were incorporated into the 2nd regiment commanded by Colonel Louis Wilson and in a few short weeks were helping to cover the retreat at the Battle of Bull Run. It so happened that William Haines Lytle, major general of militia, was in Columbus when the call for troops was issued and, hastening to the train, he came back to Cincinnati, met his staff (that same evening at the Burnet house) and then and there recruited the Guthrie guards to their full strength. Another company, called the Storer rifles, appeals in an unusual way to our admiration. It was named after Judge Bellamy Storer who at a great mass meeting, during a speech of irresistible eloquence, had lifted his tall body to its utmost height and with flashing eyes exclaimed, "I am an old man rising of sixty years ; and I now volunteer !" The members of this company were among the leading citizens of Cincinnati ; many of them too old and corpulent to fight ; but they organized as Home guards with the invincible old judge at their head and equipped themselves with splendid uniforms at their own expense. The organization and discipline of these military companies required the facilities of camp life and several locations were selected for the purpose. There was Camp Clay, at Pendleton ; Camp Colerain, ten miles north of Cincinnati; and Camp Corwine ; Camp McLean and Camp Harrison at the Trotting Park on the outskirts of Cummingsville, where William H. Lytle assembled the Guthrie Grays, on the loth of April. But the principal encampment was at Madisonville, seventeen miles away, and was named after Governor Dennison on a spot selected by W. S. Rosecrans, afterwards a distinguished general, but at that time a quiet business man in Cincinnati. These camps were crude affairs and scenes of no little disorder, disaffection and strife. It takes time and patience to whip libertyteloving Americans into the traces of military discipline and the high-spirited youth assembled thus suddenly found discipline intolerable until they discovered that it was necessary. Two of the regiments in Camp Dennison were particularly hard to control. One of them, the Germans under Col. "Bob" McCook and the other "The Bloody Tenth," an organization (at first a mob) of Irishmen under General Lytle. That they should have to scrap a little in order to get into training for the actual realities of war, will be easily taken for granted. These camps became objects of great interest to the citizens and helped to keep the martial spirit alive in the bosoms of the streams of visitors, as did also the frequent arrival of regiments from other parts of the state and the country, so many of which naturally passed through the city on their way to the seat of war. On the loth of June, for example, there arrived the soldiers from Indiana, and their zeal awakened a boundless enthusiasm. Remembering the sneer of Jefferson Davis, who had charged the Indiana troops with cowardice in the Mexican war, the entire little army had knelt with bared heads in the grounds CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 209 of the state capitol and swore to "remember Buena Vista'!" A little later, the Seventh Indiana was reviewed by Major Anderson from the residence of his brother Larz on Pike street, where he was recuperating after the strain of his terrible experience at the assault of Fort Sumter. Before long there came a refluent wave of these same youthful, hopeful and determined warriors, wounded upon the field of battle ; or carried home in coffins; or paroled from capture and this too, touching a far different chord in the heart, only intensified the patriotism of the people—a patriotism destined soon to be put to a crucial test. Attitude of Kentucky. Situated so near to the border of the slave states, Cincinnati had from the first appreciated her danger of being flooded by the rolling tide of battle. One of the most perilous elements of the situation lay in the uncertainty of the attitude of Kentucky toward the Confederacy. The fear that if she rebelled the city would be at once attacked, led the citizens to fortify the surrounding hills and to prevent the shipments across the river of any articles which might be used for military purposes. So drastic a measure alarmed the Louisvillians who immediately sent a committee of remonstrance. To this committee Governor Dennison had forwarded a letter of reassurance in which he declared himself against such measures ; but this amiable mood was most unwelcome to the fiery patriots of the "Queen City." "This is no time for soft words," cried Bellamy Storer and a resolution was passed to the effect that "any citizen who shipped articles that were contraband of war was a traitor and deserved a traitor's doom." These heroic sentiments stiffened the back bone of Governor Dennison who immediately issued orders in harmony with them and with his own previous attitude so clearly and dramatically shown in his famous telegram "If Kentucky will not fill her quota Ohio will fill it for her." This period of uncertainty was painfully protracted ; but reached a dramatic termination in the summer of 1862. After the first upheaval of the ocean of our national life following the declaration of war, there came a natural and inevitable subsidence of those waters which always return to repose after a tempest. It takes but little time to accustom human beings to the most unknown, extraordinary and even terrible situations. As their ancestors had pursued their accustomed vocations even when surrounded by cruel and hostile savages, these children of a later time and different dangers, settled down to a regular routine of life, even when armies were tramping through their streets and faint echoes of far away battles reverberated over the hills. Johm, Morgan. But events were preparing a rude shock to this- peace, which, after all, was but the repose of soldiers sleeping on their arms. Among the daring officers of the Confederacy, there was a certain John Morgan, whose courage and ambition were the admiration of his followers. There seemed to be no limits to this man's power of achievement and when, at last, it was rumored that he had planned a raid into the North through Cincinnati and had actually entered Kentucky, a wave of excitement rolled over the city. On Friday, the 11th of July, 1862, Tompkinsville fell into his hands and then Glasgow. From Glasgow he turned 210 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY toward Lexington and General Boyle, then commanding the forces in Kentucky, telegraphed to Cincinnati for aid. Situations like that are calculated to appall the fainthearted; but to arouse the brave. A public meeting was summoned ; speeches were made and a committee consisting of Major Hatch, George E. Pugh, Joshua H. Bates, Miles Greenwood, J. B. Stallo, J. W. Hartwell, Peter Gibson and Thomas J. Galligher were appointed to devise some means to secure the preservation of the city. They undertook their task with zeal and enthusiasm. In response to their appeal Governor Tod ordered down a thousand stand of arms and sent convalescents from the hospital to bear them. The city council appropriated $5,00o for contingent expenses. Permission to use some cannon being cast in the foundry of 'Miles Greenwood was obtained from the secretary of war. The excitement grew apace and all sorts of troubles developed. Absorbed with the duties of the new situation, the police were unable to attend to all their customary duties and the riff-raff of the under world took advantage of an opportunity to mob the negroes and, in the meantime, John Morgan was approaching like a thunder storm! He changed his plans in an instant when occasion required. He made dashes towards one town and another, only to inspire terror and to mislead pursuit, and finally upon hearing that a real army was coming after him under the command of General Green Clay Smith, he marched leisurely through Winchester, Richmond, Crab Orchard and Somerset, where he terminated his brilliant campaign with three hundred more men than he had at the beginning. Kirby Smith. The spasm of fear inspired by this threatened danger, now happily ended, had scarcely passed from the heart of the agitated city, before another shook it still more violently. The cause of this second alarm was a report that Kirby Smith (another of those daring raiders who abounded in the armies of the Confederacy) had left Knoxville with 1,200 soldiers and thirty or forty pieces of artillery for a dash through Kentucky, with Cincinnati (probably) as his objective point. The full significance of the movement .vas not, at first, perceived by the citizens, but as reports of his triumphant progress (in which he shattered the Federal armies, one after another) came in, and it was learned that he had entered Lexington victoriously, (after its abandonment by General Wright) and that there were no dependable troops between his advancing army and the Ohio river—the city was literally panic stricken. It is at this point that comedy, suddenly appearing on the stage. disputes the pre-eminence of tragedy. The sublime and the ridiculous appear so close together now that it is all but impossible to distinguish the scenes in which we owe the play our tears or our laughter. The efforts of the city were serious enough to be worthy of a place in a great epic ; but funny enough to afford material for a comic opera. By Monday morning, September 1, 1862, the situation was clearly understood and the scenes which followed have baffled the descriptive powers of even the most eloquent narrators. Meetings were held ; committees were appointed; plans were made and a frantic struggle for selftepreservation began. The mayor summoned every person in the city to act as its individual defender. All prom- CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 211 ised and tried; but no one knew what to do until nine o'clock when General Lew Wallace arrived upon the scene. Already this brave officer had acquired (young as he was) a reputation for pluck and efficiency of the highest order and the people drew a deep breath of relief when he actually took command. By two o'clock in the morning, after a thorough investigation of the situation, Genteeral Wallace issued a proclamation. of martial law and ordered the citizens to arms. Imagination cannot adequately picture the result of this extreme measure. T. Buchanan Reed, the poet, and Mr. Howe, the historian, have both left glowing descriptions of it, as have many other brilliant writers ; but events crowded upon each other too closely and were too incoherent and contradictory to be made wholly clear. It is a, jumbled scene of disconnected happenings ; a mere pell-mell of incidents. In the city itself the police and the military organizations were instructed to force all citizens into service—high and low ; young and old ; rich and poor. One has only to remember how timid some people always are and how fat and incompetent others, to understand what grotesque experiences followed. Cowards were found disguised in women's clothes or hidden under beds ; men with large abdominal developments quick-stepped (or sidetestepped) through the streets with muskets on their shoulders, while competent but recalcitrant citizens of every size and complexion were prodded into line by the sharp bayonets of a veteran soldiery. But it was not from the city alone that its defenders were gathered. The state was in danger as well, and, from the contiguous towns and farms for many miles around, the civilian patriots poured in by scores and hundreds, dressed in every kind of regalia and armed with indescribable weapons. About 15,000 of them, in all, arrived and (because so many of them carried the rifles with which they shot the game in the woods upon their farms), were soon dubbed with the immortal nickname, the Squirrel Hunters. To handle this patriotic and determined but inefficient and ridiculous mob, was anything but easy and it taxed the highest resources of all the commanders. The first thing to be done was. to transport them to the scene of war and a pontoon bridge having been built across the Ohio, the march of the perspiring, short-breathed and soretefooted legions began. It was a motley crowd. Mingled totegether in inextricable confusion were the leading business and professional men of the city ; the hoodlums from the slums ; the colored contingent from the negro quarters and the "Hayseeds" from the rural regions—ignorant, to the last man, of military tactics and intolerant of discipline. At this distance, we can certainly afford to laugh ; but it was not even a smiling matter, then. Their houses, their business and their lives were at stake. Solemn as dead men they tramped across the bridge and ascended the Kentucky hills. There upon the summit they threw down their guns and seized the nick and shovel. To cast up defenses was their first duty and in three days there were ten miles of breastworks between them and the enemy—a notable achievement, we solemnly affirm. But it was an achievement accomplished with great effort and no little pain. Many of the men who wounded the earth with picks and shovels were absolutely unused to manual labor. That backs should ache and hands blister ; that hearts should fail and wills relax will be believed without much proof and so will it that 212 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY some were discovered who were as determined to shun the fighting as to shirk the labor. That there was not, at any time, real danger of attack, we know today ; but they did not ! To those poor toilers in the hot sun, the peril seemed as imminent as, it did terrible. As a matter of fact, the enemy was so very near as to be able now and then to fire at the raw recruits with a rifle shot or startle them with signs of a bayonet charge. Such tests revealed a piteous state of affairs. Some had sudden attacks of sickness and crawled back to the rear. Others seemed as ready to shoot into their own ranks as those of the enemy.. One of the commanding officers told his men to load their guns by putting the balls in first and the powder in, afterward ! What this mass of undisciplined militia would have done in an actual battle cannot be stated with assurance, for Kirby Smith (who afterwards said that he could easily enough have gotten into Cincinnati "but that all hell could not have gotten him out again") was too shrewd to precipitate a bloody and useless struggle. They might have disgraced themselves ; but We do not believe it. They were ignorant and timid ; but they were Americans and would have died with their faces to the foe ! Nevertheless their actual conduct must forever remain a subject of conjecture, for General Wallace gradually pushed the lines of the enemy back and demonstrated the hopelessness of an attack upon the city. By the uth it was known to the leaders of the defensive army that the danger was over. On the 12th the army itself felt sure and on the 13th the homeward march began. There was much to laugh at but there was more to admire in that spontaneous outpouring of rich and poor, learned and ignorant, white and black folk—especially the black, for the negroes were there in numbers and rendered yeoman service. Indeed, no other chapter in the history of the city is more to its credit than that which records the loyalty, the valor and the devotion of those black heroes who did the most of the work upon the. fortifications. They were insulted and abused when herded together and driven to the front ; but it was the Universal testimony of all who watched them that their conduct and their labors were such as to excite a new regard for their race. About seven hundred of them reported to Judge Dickson (to whose supervision they had been consigned) and five hundred more were taken across the river, where in the most exposed places they worked with an energy and a fearlessness that led their commander to say of them in his report : "There was no occasion for compulsion and for discipline, but in a single instance. . . . Some displayed a high order of intelligence and a ready insight into the work they were doing, often making valuable suggestions. Upon an occasion, one of them suggested a change in the engineering of a military road ascending a steep hill. The value of the change was obvious when named and admitted by the engineer, yet he ordered the road made as originally planned and deprecated further suggestion. "They committed no trespass on private property. In one instance upon changing camp, a German asked if they could not remain as 'they protected his grapes.' They were not intimidated by any danger though compelled to labor without arms for their protection." When they were finally released, so great had the interest which they had inspired become, that Marshall P. H. Jones stepped out of the ranks and thanked CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 213 them publicly, and when at the corner of Fifth and Broadway Colonel Dickson permitted them to disband he made - them a speech which was a beautiful and well deserved tribute of praise. "Go to your homes with a consciousness of having performed your duty," he said, "and of deserving (if you do not receive) protection of the law and bearing with you the gratitude and respect of all honorable men." It is inevitable that at the safe distance of fifty years and in the security of these "piping times of peace" we should smile at the timid march of these raw recruits across the pontoon and up the steep hills, at their sweaty labors upon the fortifications and their ignorant responses to orders to load, take aim and fire; but it is a smile of profound respect and admiration, for without them, Cincinnati might have been a blackened ruin. Morgan 1863. Nor was this the only time when the citizens of our great city were agitated by the presence of danger and compelled to act in self defense. In the summer of 1863 the same terrible John Morgan conceived the idea of crossing the Ohio river and delaying or destroying the troops which were being assembled to reinforce General Rosecrans. Presuming that his commanding officer, General Bragg, would not consent to an enterprise so hazardous, he acted upon his own responsibility and on the 8th of July, 1863, accomplished the passage of the der at Brandenberg, some sixty miles below Louisville and created the imtepression that he meant to attack and destroy the city of Cincinnati as directly as possible—marching his veteran legions at the terrific speed of fifty or sixty miles a day. It took some time for the bewildered Cincinnatians to comprehend the scheme which Morgan had so cleverly concealed ; but when at last it dawned upon them, another spasm of terror shook the entire community. General Burnside proclaimed martial law ; the mayor suspended business and called upon the citizens to assemhle and be equipped with arms, while Governor Tod summoned the state militia to service and commanded them to report to General Burnside. A curious misunderstanding of the rebel raider's plans enabled him to carry them out, in part at least, with an ease which he did not in any way expect. His one purpose with regard to the city was to get past it without attacking or being attacked, while its defenders presumed his sole errand was to conquer and perhaps to sack it. He expected to be attacked when he crossed the C. H. & D. railroad, but to his astonishment and delight was permitted to pass that line and to pursue his way without opposition, while his dreaded enemies awaited his assault within the city itself which he never intended to touch. The city was divided into military districts and such commanders and forces as could be hastily collected were located at strategic points for defense, while the anticipated and dreaded army, trembling for fear of an attack, swung, like a fragment of the circumference of a great wheel, around its outside edges. Error and terror created a situation which did not exist at all, and despatches kept coming in which defined a route over which the army did not even dream of passing. The dreaded army was constantly being discovered and reported at this place and that, far away from their actual line of march, which took them -through Glendale, across the principal approaches to the city, and finally to the 214 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Little Miami railroad which they crossed and halted in sight of Camp Dennison to feed their tired horses. By four o'clock the next morning they had arrived at Williamsburg, twenty-eight miles from Cincinnati, having marched ninety miles in thirtytefive hours. A disappearance of the threatened calamity so unexpected, so sudden and so complete brought an enormous relief to the city ; but anxiety for the capture of the arch raider and his troops kept the people in a state of excitement bordering upon frenzy. It is estimated that no less than 50,00o pursuers at one time or other joined in the chase of the fugitive battalion, now moving across the state with the swiftness of a cloud shadow. It was the old game of "hare and hounds," with the odds in favor of the yelping pack. It was a miracle indeed that the quarry should have fled so far, but at Buffington Island, in the Ohio river (which they tried in vain to cross after their long detour) a large part of the force was captured, although Morgan himself escaped in company with twelve hundred of his men, and at a place about twenty miles above Buffington three hundred of these actually crossed the river and got away. On the 26th the master spirit of the dazzling but futile enterprise was captured and imprisoned in the Ohio penitentiary from which he succeeded in escaping on the 27th of November. On that day he and his companions, having safely evaded the guards, took a train for Cincinnati and about a half mile from th.e station jumped from the platform of their car. On the bank of the river they found a boy with a skiff, by means of which they reached the other shore and freedom. About seven hundred of the captives taken at Buffington were brought to Cincinnati by boat and there experienced a rough and most discreditable reception from an angry citizenship, who, it may be said in apology, had regarded them as little better than pirates or horse thieves. This was the last of the scares which the city suffered for its own safety during the war ; but it did not for a moment cease to take its part in the great work of suppressing the rebellion. Most of its normal industries had been paralyzed by interruption_ of its trade with the south ; but its energies and resources were turned to the production of supplies for the army by means of which, as an unforeseen result, not a few great fortunes were made and business was stimulated to a feverish intensity. Lieutenant S. B. Davis. Although, as has been said, these three threatened attacks were the only events of such general importance during the whole war, there was scarcely a day in all those tragic years when incidents of the most dramatic interest did not occur. At one time, for example, the civil courts and military authorities came dangerously near a clash, when the former attempted to procure by violence a prisoner held 1)y the former, but were compelled to cease their efforts when confronted by the full force of the United States Army. At another, the judgment and sympathies of the citizens were divided by the trial of a brilliant young Confederate, Lieutenant Samuel B. Davis, who in 1864 was arrested during the performance of a secret mission with which he had been entrusted by the president of the confederacy. He was searched and some papers in the lining of his coat were overlooked. These, with a quick movement, he extracted and threw CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 215 into a grate fire, thus destroying the only evidence of his innocence or guilt. Having been brought to Cincinnati he was put on trial and during that ordeal delivered himself of a speech of self defense which was favorably compared with that of Robert Emmett. He was condemned in spite of his eloquence, howteever, and sentenced to be hanged as a spy ; but almost at the last moment an order from President Lincoln changed his sentence to confinement in Fort Warren, where he remained until the end of the war. Clement L. Vallandingham. An event which excited the most passionate interest was the trial of Clement L. Vallandingham, a man of extraordinary gifts and lofty ideals. That he was an ardent patriot, cannot, now, be doubted; but he had formed a theory of the nation's duty which involved him in a tragical career. He believed in the peaceful solution of that great question of slavery which his fellow countrymen had come to believe could only be settled by the arbitrament of the sword, and he advocated his views with such courage and eloquence that he came to be regarded as the "Arch Copperhead of all the Ages." In one of those brilliant speeches which he delivered while democratic candidate for governor (at Mount Vernon, Ohio, on May the 1st) he gave such a rabid expression of his sentiments of disrespect for the war and its leaders that two secret service men rendered a report which procured his arrest and his transfer to Cincinnati for trial. With a proud scorn, the accused orator refused to plead or be pleaded for, and he was finally convicted of disloyalty and sentenced to imprisonment, General Burnside designating Fort Warren in Boston Harbor as the place of confinement. Once more, the gentle hearted president softened a punishment and Vallandingham was ordered to be sent inside the lines of the Southern Confederacy, from whence not long afterwards he found his way into Canada. It was these dramatic incidents ; these swift mutations of fortune, these sudden alternations of hope and fear that lent such tragic grandeur to the times. One day the news of a defeat plunged the city into a profound gloom and on the next the story of some glorious victory roused it into uncontrolled enthusiasm. What an experience was that, for example, when the news of the conquest of Vicksburg was proclaimed in Pike's Opera House during a production of the opera "Ii Puritani" on the 7th of July in 1863 ! The despatch was read by General Burnside from his box and the audience experienced a frenzy of detelight which reached its most acute stage when Susini, the idol of the opera, appeared from behind the curtain with an American flag in each hand and repeated "The Trumpet Song." To have witnessed this scene or to have heard James Edward Murdoch recite Sheridan's Ride, on the day of its composition by T. Buchanan Read, would have almost compensated for the strain which the tragedy of war had put upon the spirit. From dramatic events, thrilling incidents and spontaneous movements of s patriotic fervor, we turn to individual lives and a procession of sublime figures crosses the stage for McClellan, Hayes, Burnside and Wallace all lent dignity and glory to the life of our city in the war. But it is of some of those individuals who belong to us more peculiarly, and whose lives and deaths have left an indelible impression upon our city's 216 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY memory and character that we ought to speak more fully, and to whom we ought to pay an ever increasing debt of homage. Major Anderson. The first great hero of the Civil war belongs to Cincinnati by every right of birth and family association. On the 16th of May, 1861, Major Anderson, returning to his home town after his tragic experience in Fort Sumter was received by his fellow citizens with unbounded enthusiasm. An immense assemblage greeted him at the Little Miami depot and a great procession conducted him to the home of his brother Larz. The terrible strain of the siege had told upon his health and the loss of the fort, upon his spirits. Needing rest imperatively he remained among us for a long time exciting in all patriotic breasts feelings of sympathy, admiration and affection. Robert L. McCook. No other name is worthier to follow Anderson's than that of Robert L. McCook. There were fifteen members of this remarkable family in the Civil war and all commissioned officers, save one, a boy of eighteen, who preferred on account of his youth to remain a private soldier. Robert L., a partner of Judge Stallo, had already won fame as a lawyer when the war broke out and gave him his iipportunity to achieve glory upon the field of battle. He sprang at once to arms and organized the Ninth Ohio from the German citizens of Cincinnati. He commanded a brigade in West Virginia under McClellan, was wounded at Mill Springs and continued fighting even when unable to mount his horse. He rose rapidly to the rank of Major General and was on his way to greater honors when he was brutally shot to death in an ambulance where he was lying helpless from a wound. A death so terrible of a young man so full of promise shocked the whole country ; but sent a thrill of anguish through his native city, where his body was received with reverence and buried in Spring Grove cemetery with military honors. Nor did this reverence cease with his death or the war ; but animated his admirers later on to erect a monument to his memory in one of our city parks. William Haynes Lytle. William Haynes Lytle was also a member of a family which from the very beginning held a high position in our city. General William Lytle (the grandfather of William Haynes) was one of the earliest and one of the most remarkable of our pioneer forefathers. Robert T. (his son) possessed of great natural talent, acquired also a broad and deep culture. William Haynes, the next in succession, was born in the splendid old mansion on Lawrence street on the 2d of November, 1826. He received a classical education and became a lawyer, but when the Mexican war broke out, enlisted and returned after it was over with the rank of captain. Resuming his profession lie soon acquired distinction in it, as he did also in the realm of literature. When the Civil war broke out, he organized the first camp in Cincinnati and in 1861 was appointed colonel of the Tenth Regiment of Ohio Volunteers. He fought at Carnifax Ferry, where he and his horse were both wounded. After a leave of absence he returned to the front and was given a brigade. At Perryville he was again CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 217 wounded and left on the field for dead. Being captured, he later on was paroled and, having been exchanged, was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. On the second day at Chickamauga he was shot to his death and buried in Spring Grove with ceremonies which lacked little of being sublime. That the funeral of so noble a citizen and soldier should have been a great event and that so beautiful a life and so tragic a death should have left an indelible impress upon the city, is not strange. To this day, even, it is impossible to restrain our grief and regret at the premature removal of a mind that produced that great poem "I am dying, Egypt, dying." Nor were the heroes of this glorious epoch soldiers, only. There were men and women who served their country as efficiently without ever drawing a sword. T. Buchanan Read. Such a man was T. Buchanan Read, who by his poems aroused the enthusiteasm and valor of millions. Apprenticed as a boy to a tailor, he ran away and learned the trade of cigar making in Phadelphia. Afterwards he became a sign painter and then an artist and finally achieved his greatest fame as a poet. It was in Cincinnati (in the house now occupied by the Literary Club) that under the influence of a sudden inspiration, he produced at a single sitting "Sheritedan's Ride," the repetition of which in schoolhouses, theaters and churches did more than can ever be known to arouse the enthusiasm necessary to a suctecessful prosecution of the war. James E. Murdoch. Powerful as the poem was in itself, it became irresistible when recited by another of our distinguished citizens, James E. Murdoch. About this man there was a wholly indescribable charm. He possessed great talents and lived a most romantic life, a large part of which was passed in our midst. The son of a book binder in Philadelphia ; an escort of LaFayette at thirteen ; a hero in a volunteer fire company while almost a child ; an actor at eighteen ; he became at last after innumerable vicissitudes, one of the greatest elocutionists and tragedians in the world. At the beginning of the war he was at the zenith of his fame; but closed a brilliant engagement with the vow that he would not appear again as an actor until the struggle had ended. In pursuance of his solemn resolution he consecrated four of the best years of his life to giving readings for the pleasure of sick soldiers and to raising funds for their well being. Wherever he read the enthusiasm was boundless and one time he roused the United States senate to a pitch of almost frenzied patriotism with Drake's "The American Flag." Upon the very day of its production he saw the value of "Sheridan's Ride" and gave it instantaneous fame by rendering it in such a way before a great audience as to overpower his hearers with emotion. CHAPTER XII. THE CITY FROM 1860. ACTIVITIES OF THE PEOPLE IN SHOPS ANA MILLS, HOMES AND CHURCHES—THE BIBLE AND THE SCHOOLS—THE SOUTHERN RAILROAD—THE UNIVERSITY—A CRITICAL DECADE. If the foregoing narrative has created an impression that during the war there were no other activities in the city than those of the camp, the misunderstanding must be corrected. It is a characteristic of human life that no single phase of it can completely exclude or absorb all others for any considerable length of time. The Romans danced while the Barbarians were pounding at their gates. The Parisians attended their theaters and wildly applauded their idols of the stage while, at one 'time, the Revolutionists were fighting in the streets, and, at another, the German army was tightening its coils around their barricades. Within a few days after the earthquake, San Francisco had resumed her gayeties as well as her industries. The vine dressers and sheep herders on the slopes of Vesuvius pursue their peaceful occupations even when streams of lava pour threateningly down the mountain side. In a great city, the needs, the desires, the volitions of the people are too numerous, too varied and too insistent to be permanently repressed. However rude the shock may be which bewilders and distracts them for a single instant, no sooner has it passed than they plunge back into the old accustomed round. They laugh and dance ; they work and play ; they marry and are given in marriage ; they die and are buried, just the same. It is as necessary, therefore, to kaow and comprehend the activities of the people in their shops and mills ; their homes and churches, as on the tented field. It is as necessary, but it is not so diverting and it is not so easy. Indeed we have arrived at the period when it begins to seem a hopeless task to try and comprehend the complete organism whose evolution we are studying. To keep an eye on all the bewildering details ; to let no important event escape us ; to be actequainted with all the leading men and women ; to follow all the significant movements in the life of a city of almost 200,000 people, is something difficult indeed. To an even greater degree than ever we are now forced by the superabundance of our material (as well as by our resolute purpose) to a process of selection. From now on, more carefully even than before, we must exclude all minor matters and deal only with those which have helped to mould the character and shape the destiny of Cincinnati. It was in "war times" or thereabouts that some of our greatest eleemosynary institutions were founded, possibly as an outcome of the deepened sense of human suffering engendered by the mighty tragedy. Vol. I-15 - 219 - 220 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY The Workhouse. The workhouse, located on Colerain avenue (upon the grounds of old Camp Washington) was built between 1866 and 1869 at a cost of about a half a million dollars. The Hospital—Long View. The Cincinnati hospital had its feeble birth in 1821 as "The Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum ;" but later on was known as the Commercial hospital ; then in 1861 as the Cincinnati hospital. The old buildings were in use for forty years or more ; but in 1867 gave way to those it at present occupies on the block between Central avenue and Plum an(Wwelfth and Ann. At the present moment its new quarters are being erected on Burnet avenue, Avondale, and it is confidently believed that they will be the equal of any of the world. Longview Asylum for the Insane (at Carthage) was first occupied in 1860. The Y. W. C. A. The Young Women's Christian Association was incorporated in 1868. Suspension Bridge. It was also in the '60s that the great achievement of bridging the Ohio river was accomplished. While this river had always been the one most important factor in the city's growth, it had also been an obstacle to its .progress because it made trade with the South so difficult. The banks were steep and the channel wide and the transportation across it of freight and passengers by ferry boats, a difficulty and a nuisance. Dr. Daniel Drake had clearly foreseen the necessity and the feasibility of a bridge to connect Kentucky with Ohio, early in the century ; but, as usual, he was so far in advance of his fellows that this idea (like so many others which he cherished) seemed to them. utterly chimerical. In 1845, however, a determined and hopeful agitation in favor of an attempt to bridge the river was begun and John Robling, who had just accomplished a similar feat in engineering at Monongahela, proposed a plan which, after a lapse of about a decade, the citizens of Covington attempted to carry out. The financial depression which came on soon after put a stop to the project, however, and it As not until the exigencies of the war disclosed the absolute necessity of closer communication, that Cincinnati capital was offered to complete the scheme. In 1863 the abandoned work was resumed and the bridge was opened for traffic on the first day of January, 1867. At the time of its completion it had the, largest span in the world and seemed capable of carrying all the merchandise and all the people who could ever need to go across, and yet it was not long before it was absolutely outgrown and the four others which followed it are now crowded with traffic. Easy'communication and rapid transit was already beginning to be numbered among the supreme necessities for municipal expansion and the new bridge w generally regarded as one of the principal promoters of the wonderful grow which took place after the war closed. That the life of a city is marvelously manifold and needs a thousand stimul to develop it, and a thousand influences to maintain it, received a wonderful illustration at about this time. If anybody had told the builders of the bridge CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 221 that a new game which was being slowly whipped into perfection on the play grounds on the outskirts of the city, would in the long run rival its influence, they would have greeted the assertion with derision and laughter. Such, howteever, was the case and a knowledge of the influence of "baseball" upon the city's growth and progress is almost as necessary as that of bridge building or railroad construction. As early as 1866 this new game had excited the interest of athletic Cincinnatians and in 1867 Dr. John Draper organized a nine which went by the name of the Cincinnati Juniors. Many a good man has put a far more serious value into life than the members of that organization, only to see it dissipated, like a mist; but theirs, apparently, can never die. That the world stands ever ready to lavish its millions upon any one who will give it a new sensation has become a proverb. These young men gave it a new one and a great one and their successors, at least, are reaping a fortune. They reaped fame, at least, and George Chenowith, William H. Stewart, John V. Ellard, Charles Dean, Oscar Ramtemelsberg, E. W. Walker, Samuel Kemper, George Draper, Julius Hargreave, John Griffith, Charles A. Marsh, Edward Bradford, and Smiley Walker, are A bound to be remembered whether our philanthropists are forgotten or not. And so are the players in that next and great "nine," in which Harry Wright was pitcher ; Douglas Allison, catcher ; Charles H. Gould, first base ; Asa Brainard, second base ; Fred Waterman, third base ; John C. Have, short-stop ; J. V. B. Hatfield, left field ; Rufus King, center field ; J. William Johnson, right field. The uniform of this immortal organization was designed by Aaron G. Champion, its presiding genius, and the "Red Stockings" have been its leading feature ever since. During the summer of 1868, out of twentytefour games these miracle workers lost but three. In 1869 a still more remarkable aggregation, known as the "Red Stocking Baseball Team," toured the country and in a series of games of the most brilliant character, won undying fame. Upork their return an ovation rivalling those of the Olympian games was arranged for their reception and at a banquet in the Gibson House, Mr. Champion declared, to the delight of everybody, that he would rather be president of the Cincinnati baseball club than president of the United States, while such men as IVIurat Halstead, A. T. Gorham, L. S. Drury and Drausin Wilson helped by their eloquence to cover with glory the men who had done so much for the town they lived in. For they did "do so much for the town they lived in." In the first place they awakened an interest in the best all round game that was ever played on earth and in the second place they gave our city an advertisement such as money could not have bought. Without intending to do so, possibly, they actually made the name of Cincinnati a household word wherever the Anglo-Saxon love of "fair-play and no favors" put men upon the lookout for manly garnes and honorable sport. Strange, is it not, what different winds those are which bear the names of places to the different corners of the globe! In the same year when baseball players were advertising our city so widely, the threshing out of a great legal and moral question by some of our distinguished lawyers made it the object of an interest no less acute and scarcely less wide-spread. 222 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY The Bible and the Schools. Whatever may be the inherent right or wrong of the action which excluded the Bible from our public schools, the trial and decisions of the question not only gave our city a world wide notoriety, but exercised an incalculable influence over the shaping of our character and destiny, for it gave the city a reputation for liberality, for independence and progressiveness which attracted to it many citizens who have since bulked large in its life. Perhaps it did something to emancipate all classes from parochialism and provincialism; but, on the other hand, it is not impossible that the verdict of history may finally declare this exclusion of the world's greatest classic, "the Holy Bible," from our public schools to be our most inglorious deed of sectarianism and bigotry. Two other occurrences in this decade also affected the welfare of the city enormously. Industrial Exposition. The first was an "Industrial Exposition," which had been inspired by the success of a modest exhibition of wool and woolen fabrics held in Chicago the year before. At the suggestion of James H. Laws, a committee of Cincinnatians consisting of George W. Jones, James M. Clark, George W. McAlpin and Mr, Laws himself, induced the inaugurators of the enterprise to repeat it in Cincinnati. In the early part of August, of the following year, the exposition, on a vastly larger scale, was formally opened with addresses by Governor Hayes, Major Torrence and Judges Storer, Stevenson and Eggleston, and the interest excited was of the widest and deepest kind. Compared with those which followed it was a small affair! but its significance lay in the fact that it was an initial movement and out of it developed the, idea of those great state and national expositions which have been such striking and efficient features in the development of our country.. The Southern Railroad. The second of these occurrences was the inauguration of a movement to build a municipal railroad—an original experiment in civic life. It is true that the first train was not run over it, until the 23d of July, in 1879; but the inauguration rather than the completion of such enterprises is, from our present point of view, the matter of significance ; for, what we are constantly seeking is the fountain springs-of growth and attainment. We are to discover the motives, the men and the compulsions out of which the life of the city issued, and it was to a few far-sighted citizens of this period that the clear conception of the great possibility actually came. Not the first divine vision, for that was caught by Dr. Drake and his contemporaries back in 1836. They realized even at that early date what the lapse of time has only revealed more clearly, that the tap.root of Our commercial prosperity must be buried in the South. But how long it takes for such visions to materialize ! Let the men of today and of all future times take heart, in their discouragement over the slow accomplishment of their plans, from the fact that it has always taken decades and sometimes CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 223 quarters or even halves of centuries to get any great municipal improvement consummated! Consider the retarded growth of this great railroad enterprise through fortytethree years, and remember that your forefathers, who planned your schools and hospitals ; your churches and museums ; your parks and boulevards, died with no other sight of them than such as was vouchsafed to Moses of the Promised Land. The story of the evolution of this particular project reads like a romance, and the men who conceived it, gave it birth and fostered it, are among our truest heroes. They were met by ridicule and opposition. Financial panics stopped their progress. Misunderstandings and jealousies piled obstacles in their paths. But they triumphed over all. James Dalton. The original conception of the necessity of a road into the South received two powerful reinforcements. One came during the war, when military operations of the most successful kind were seen to be impossible without it ; and the other, when rival cities springing up to the north and west, began to steal the city's trade. The longest headed of the business men realized that the arteries through which the life blood of the city was drawn were one after another being dammed Competition with these rival towns was hard and growing harder, and it was James Dalton, a sagacious merchant, who made the first serious move toward meeting these discouraging conditions by introducing into. the legislature a bill for the construction of a railroad into the South (in the session of 1865), but the people were not ready even then. Among them, however, there was at least one man, an attorney at law, whose clear mind not only saw the necessity, but beheld the path. E. A. Ferguson. The name of this man was E. A. Ferguson and it is not too much to say that it disputes preeminence with any other on the long list of our benefactors, for it is to his genius that we must trace the original and unique conception of a railroad built and owned by a municipality. A bill to materialize it was passed by the senate on the 28th of April, 1869, and a Week later, by the house. This bill provided for the issue by the city of ten million dollars worth of bonds. The city voted enthusiastically to make the experiment-15,423 ballots being cast for, and only 1,500 against, the measure. Chattanooga was chosen as the southern terminus. The Superior court selected a board of trustees, consisting of Peter Heidelbach, Miles Greenwood, E. A. Ferguson, R. M. Bishop and William Harper, to carry out the daring project. Attempts were made to get the Tennessee and Kentucky legislatures to pass acts, favoring the project. The former state accepted, the latter declined. This difficulty created others. Regrets and apprehensions developed. There were clamors for the bill's repeal. The bonds were taken but slowly. The timid ones became discouraged ; but the hearts of the great promoters did not quail.. Mr. Hooper went over to Europe for financial aid but failed to get it. One door after another closed, but one door after another also opened. At last, in 1874, the bonds began to float ! And then the estimates were found to be too small and another issue was neces- 224 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY sary. Another election was held and the people stood by the scheme with a vote of 21,701-9,013. The work went forward. then by leaps and bounds and was completed to Somerset, Kentucky, in 1877. Then came another call for money. s The report of December 1, 1877, showed that $16000,000 had been expended and that three-quarters more would be needed. Distrust was engendered and at the call for a new appropriation in 1878, the people bolted, fearing that they were putting their money in a rat hole. But bids for the completion of the work were, taken and the results were so encouraging that the citizens reversed their judgments in August, and soon the road was finished and leased. It paid from the Start ! On February 21, 1880, the first two south bound freight trains and on March 8th, the first passenger train started for Chattanooga. The achievement was sublime and its celebration glorious, at a gorgeous banquet in Music Hall, where three thousand people cheered the completed project to the echo. University. It is not an easy thing to know at what point in a narrative like this to introduce the story of any of the great institutions which. have rooted themselves so slowly and required so many years to complete their growth, for their life belongs to the whole period of their existence and not to a fraction of it alone. There came, however, to most of them, months or years of such remarkable expansion as to make it seem as if an actually new life had been begun ; and one such, occurring in the history of the Cincinnati university in 1869, seems to warrant our telling here a story that covers almost a century. On the first Monday of January in that year, the work of instruction in the university had actually begun. On that auspicious date Thomas L. Noble, an artist from New York city, assisted by seven teachers, inaugurated the activities of what has now grown to be an educational institution of great and ever increasing proportions. But it must be remembered that this apparently first step was but one of a long series, many of which had been taken with pain and sorrow. The really first was taken way back in 1806, when the pioneers incorporated a company to found a college and planned to secure the necessary funds by holding a lottery ! Some good fortune or other prevented the carrying out of this wholly immoral project and the building was erected by funds procured in other and more honest ways. It blew down in 1809 and in the effort to 11 reconstruct it, so many misfortunes occurred that the original promoters became discouraged and handed the project over to the next generation, which, in its turn, passed it on to another. If the doctrine of evolution needed any additional proof it might be discovered by watching the passage of this ill-fated school through its various stages of the Lancastrian seminary ; the Cincinnati college ; the Medical college and the Law school, up to its present self. There came a day, however, when a new impulse was communicated to the slowly developing germ. On the 2d of September, 1855, a Cincinnatian by the name of Charles McMicken, executed a will which made possible the realization of the dreams of the long line of good men and women who had labored CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 225 so hard and to all appearances, so vainly. The gift was generous and would have been adequate for its purpose but for unforeseen shrinkages in values and unexpected diminutions through the claims of grasping relatives. It was probated in 1858 and steps were taken to execute its provisions as soon as possible. The city council passed an ordinance establishing the "McMicken university" and named George B. Hollister, Henry F. Handy, Rufus King, Miles 'Greenwood, Cornelius G. Comegys and James Wilson, trustees. Litigation made the progress slow and the war came on soon after, paralyzing almost all such undertakings. In 1869, however, operations were actually begun and since that time have gone forward, though not by any means rapidly or successfully, until within very recent years, for numerous and revolutionary changes were constantly taking place. The name, for example, was altered from the McMicken to the Cincinnati university, The endowment proved inadequate and had to be supplemented by city funds, which threw it into the hands of the politicians. It was founded by a devoted Christian, who stipulated that the Bible should be systematically taught, but this provision has been so much ignored that the religious characteristics have faded out of sight. It outgrew its quarters in the old McMicken homestead and was moved to a magnificent site in Burnet Woods. It was a few years ago a little provincial school ; but today it is a cosmopolitan university. For a time it was run without a head ; but afterwards a president was elected, the first incumbent being Howard Ayres and the second Charles H. Dabney, under whose administration extraordinary progress has been made. Two features of the university demand especial notice. In the first place, it is the only institution fOr higher education owned and controlled by a municipality, and in the second place, a wholly original and unique idea suggested by a member of its faculty, Professor Schneider, has given it a world wide reputation. The idea involves thalternation of a week of academical training in the class room with a week of practical experience in the shops of the city—an idea which bids fair to work a revolution in technical education. The growth of such institutions is generally accomplished by the absorption of weaker ones' of the san4 general character, as well as by the natural evolution of its own indfridual self, and the university has been no exception to this law. At one time or angther the Medical college; the Ohio College of Dental Surgery and the Law school have been incorporated into its life, while it has affiliated with itself in looser relationship, others still. The citizens of Cincinnati are slowly growing proud of this university, and its men of wealth have already bestowed upon it generous gifts which augur others, larger still. Henry, Hanna, Briggs S. Cunningham, Melville E. Ingalls, John Kilgour, Joseph Longworth, Samuel J. Brown, David Sinton, Rufus King, W. A. Procter, Asa Van Wormer, have honored themselves and the city with bountiful benefactions. The man to whom wg are principally indebted for this great possession (Charles McMieken), was born in Buck's county, Pennsylvania, in 1782, and moved to Cincinnati in 1803, bringing with him no other fortune than his horse, his saddle and his bridle: He was endowed, however, with exceptional powers of body, mind and will, so that his business (which was merchandising, carried 226 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY on by boat up and down the Ohio), grew to immense proportions. He was a bachelor, but provided for a large number of relatives. He was uneducated, but determined that others should receive those benefits of which he had been deprived. He died in the seventy-sixth year of his age on the 30th of March, 1858, and is buried in Spring Grove cemetery. When one stops to think of the myriad events and achievements of this so crowded decade of our city's life, it seems absurd to let it pass with these few and meager illustrations of its great activities.. But they may serve as well as more numerous and extended ones to create the impression of immense power; of ceaseless activity and, above all, of a fermentation of thought and feeling that are omens of greater things to come. It was a critical decade. Old methods of business; old relationships in trade; old conceptions of life were rudely demolished. The whole country was suffering a reaction from the violent passions of the Civil war and Cincinnati suffered with it. But everywhere 'there was a spirit of unrest, a consciousness of unlimited power, and the certainty of greater things to come. The large fortunes accumulated through the exigencies of war excited a desire for boundless wealth. Schemes for the exploitation of the unsuspicious and unwary were being hatched. The population was restless' and people were changing their houses and their businesses. Railroad enterprises' on a vast scale were opening up new regions for settlement. The centers of population and trade were being rapidly shifted. It was a time of unsettlement, of readjustment, of uncertainty; but of great and ever increasing momentum. Everything was moving at 'a terrific pace. For an individual or a city to "know where it was at" required no inconsiderable judgment, and Cincinnati had, we cannot help believing, lost her reckoning, not a little. She had been traveling a smooth road to prosperity and commercial supremacy. 'Trade had come to her by natural gravitation. But now she was beginning to feel the push and the pull of counter currents. The close of the period of her natural supremacy had arrived. CHAPTER XIII. DURING THE SEVENTIES. INFLUENCES VAST AND VAGUE AFFECTING THE CITY'S DESTINIES-ADVENT OF RAILROAD DIVERTS IMMIGRATION FROM THE QUEEN CITY TO MICHIGAN, ILLINOIS, IOWA AND MINNESOTA-LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS-THE CINCINNATI "200"-BIOGRAPHY. 1870- 1880. There are experiences embraced between definite dates in the lives of individuals, of nations and cities, while others must be assigned to vague periods and their location in time, at best, be guessed at. Some also can be traced to their causes as easily. as a brook to a spring in a mountain, while others are as obscure as the origin of storms or earthquakes. We have come to a period in our study where influences of a character so vast and vague affected the destiny of Cincinnati, that they may be only hinted at or conjectured about until a more careful investigation has laid their operations bare. Up to the time of the Civil war, or thereabouts, Cincinnati had maintained her pre-eminence in the west. She was still its Queen City and the supremacy she had won seemed so likely to be maintained with ease that her citizens had little fear of being outstripped by rivals. But the unexpected happened and she sank from her place in the list of great cities from one point to another until at last her prestige was lost and, for a long time, she sorrowfully hid her diminished head. The study of this phenomenon has never received an adequate attention and patiently awaits the investigation of competent people. It is too late for Cincinnati now to regain all she has lost; but a knowledge of the influences which brought the changes about is of deep importance for the comprehension of her past and for the shaping of her future. No other phenomenon, in fact, of our municipal life is either so interesting or of such moment. Some of the forces which operated against her may be still wrapped in obscurity, but some are certainly so plain as to be no longer difficult of discovery or analysis, and of these we now propose to speak. Railroads. The first and most revolutionary of all the new forces which upset the old conditions of our city's prosperity was, of course, the railroads. Cincinnati had been builded on the river traffic. The Ohio was a great natural highway over which business poured, as if by gravity. - 227 - 228 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Of all that enormous development taking place in the great northwest, there must needs be a center somewhere and it was, practically, simply a question of a good, natural location and precedence in the order of time. Cincinnati had the start and to maintain it was easy if not inevitable. But, suddenly, a new method of transportation was devised which laughed at old barriers to the free movement of people and merchandise. Even mountains were no longer obstacles and the revolution which followed was almost as great as if water should begin to flow up hill. It took time to develop this new method of transportation and still more to discover its effects and the citizens of Cincinnati did not properly comprehend the mighty and far-reaching changes until they had actually taken place or were too far advanced to be prevented. What really happened was that the routes of travel were enormously altered and the tide of population that had drifted irresistibly to or past our doors began to be turned in a dozen different directions, but particularly on a parallel line far to the north, along the shore of the great lakes. Immigration. In the second place, these new lines of travel opened up another region for settlement, boundless in extent and resources—the newer northwest. Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Missouri were no longer terra incognita. Their charms were known and their resources partially developed. Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa were now the lands of dreams and the tide of adventurers, thrilling with boundless hopes, rolled towards them in floods, thus diverting countless thousands who otherwise would have still continued to seek their fortunes in the regions of which Cincinnati was the metropolis. As a consequence of this immigration cities sprang up wherever population increased and great, competing centers were rapidly established and developed. That marvelous growth which had made Cincinnati famous in the whole world repeated itself again and again in a score of other places. Cleveland and Chicago sprang up to the north and Louisville, Kansas City and St. Louis to the south, to say nothing of a hundred ambitious smaller towns, all of which began to fight for the business which had gravitated into Cincinnati of its own accord. It was a fierce and remorseless struggle for personal profit and municipal pre-eminence in which these youthful, vigorous and hungry cities divided the prey, like lions. Bright Men. In the third place, when Cincinnati was the Queen City of the west she attracted and attached to herself the brightest minds of the vast hordes of home-seekers. But now these other cities began to exert their fascinations also, and what happened is easy enough to understand. The geniuses of that advancing army of adventure and of enterprise became enamored of other mistresses ; but mostly of Chicago. Had Cincinnati succeeded in alluring to herself those remarkable men who drifted to Chicago they would, possibly, have builded as great a city on the banks of the Ohio river as they actually did on the shores of Lake Michigan. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 229 Railroad Discrimination. In the fourth place the railroads, which worked against us by opening up new lines of travel and building numberless other cities, did so, likewise, in making discriminative rates from which we suffered terribly. Incompetency. In the fifth place, there is the greatest reason to suspect that the leading men of Cincinnati in this critical period were caught sleeping at their posts. It seems incredible that with the start she had Cincinnati could ever have lost her pre-eminence if her master minds had been awake. In such struggles for supremacy a good start counts for much and she was a great city when Chicago was a straggling village of log houses. The tides of travel were flowing toward her ;—why were they permitted to be diverted ? She occupied a strategic position in the center of the richest agricultural region on the continent—why should a hamlet on the rim of the world be permitted to outstrip her ? Chicago had the great lakes ; but Cincinnati had the Ohio river ! Take into consideration every conceivable disadvantage, many of which were very real, and it is yet impossible to understand how anything but a lack of comprehension and of determination in our people can explain our loss of supremacy. If we had shown the same acumen and the same determination in opening up other lines of trade that we did in developing the Southern railroad we might still be the metropolis of the middle west. This is a humiliating suspicion and, at best, it is only a conjecture. But there is quite enough foundation for it to warrant us in sitting up and taking notice. If the leading men of those days had grown rich and inactive ; if those who held the money bags had become over conservative and would not open them up to the more daring and effective, they did the city a great and irreparable injury. That such a situation is possible we know only too well by these last two decades of our city's life, so lamentably lacking in initiative ; in aggressiveness ; in large accomplishment. There has been enough money in Cincinnati and the opportunities have been numerous enough to have enabled us to have forged ahead as rapidly as our sister cities ; but our progress has been so slow and our growth so inadequate that we begin to suspect our own inefficiency. We are realizing more and more that, after all, the greatest factor in town building is the genius of the people. There must be men of vision and men of purpose. To such men obstacles are nothing. They can build a city in a desert or on a marsh. That there were strong men in Cincinnati in those days when our primacy was lost is indisputable. The Longworths, Davidsons, Probascos, Springers, Andersons, Greenwoods, Bullocks, Egglestons, McLeans, Fergusons, Pughs, Stallos, Hoadleys, Broadwells, Pendletons, Comegys, Wilstachs, Judkins, Murrys, Halsteads, Murdochs, Reads and a thousand others prove it. Why, then, was the trade stolen and the immigration diverted, unless they were asleep or were resting on their honors ? Peace be to their ashes ! It is not to disturb their long sleep with self-reproaches and with vain regrets that we raise this disquieting conjecture ! It is to rouse us men of the present critical period to the stinging consciousness that the losses we have suffered in trade and prestige in our own time may have hap- 230 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY pened through our apathy and not from the "irresistible laws of trade" or "the insuperable obstacles to progress" to which we love to lay our misfortune. Well, whatever the causes were, the effect is plain. In the period following the Civil war our city fell behind her rivals in the race for place and wealth and power. It was a great misfortune ; but there are compensations for all losses. If it is true that the genius of our great men was not as active as it might have been in forwarding the material development of the city, it may be that it was only that it might be liberated for activities in a realm not less important, the realm of the immaterial ; the domain of culture. That such development takes place only when the mental powers of the people are, for some reason or other, emancipated to some degree from the thraldom of breadtewinning, is well enough known. Well, then, it may be that it was the ordering of a Divine Providence that the glittering prize of commercial supremacy was withdrawn from our city's reach. For as the possibility of growing great and getting rich was lessened, the talents of the people, we believe, were turned to the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of art. As this sudden efflorescence of art and culture was the most striking phenomenon of this period, "the seventies," it deserves our careful notice and we will begin with a consideration of the institutions for education, philanthropy, etc., which were developed in it. It was in 1869 that the university took its new lease of life ; but its actual reorganization belongs, as a matter of fact, to this greatest of our decades, "the seventies." Cuvier Club. It was to 1871 that the inception of the Cuvier Club is to be traced, although 1 it was not until 1875 that this name was chosen to replace its first one, "The Ohio State Society for the Protection of Game and Fish." Cincinnati Society of Natural History. The Cincinnati Society of Natural History was organized in 1870, January 19, and incorporated in June, but it is to be traced directly back to the proposal of William Steele in 1818 of "a western museum for the purpose of exciting an interest in nature's wonders." In 1820 this plan materialized on a small scale, and in 1835 it passed into another phase of existence as the "Western Academy of Natural Sciences." Periods of interest and indifference followed each other in slow and discouraging alternations ; but there came a better day when such men as Jahn A. Warder, Robert Clarke, Julius Dexter, Charles Dury and many others whose interest in the wonders of nature was both genuine and profound, put the society upon a secure basis by their united effort. In 1875 Charles Bodman left it a bequest of $50,000 and made its present efficient work a possibility. Historical and Philosophical Society. It was in this same period also that the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio received a new lease of life, for in 1871 its library was removed from the Literary club to five ample rooms in the College building on Walnut, between Fourth and Fifth, where it remained renttefree for fourteen years. Its inception CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 231 is to be traced to an act of the legislature of 1822 "to incorporate the Ohio Historical Society ;" but it was not until 1831 that the act was taken advantage of and the institution actually put upon a legal basis. This was done with the expectation that the capital of the state would be the permanent home of the society ; but it was subsequently combined with the Cincinnati Historical society, organized in 1844 through the efforts of James H. Pertekins, John P. Foote, William D. Gallagher and others. The combination and transfer to Cincinnati took place in 1849. The usual ups and downs of such infant organizations followed ; but from the removal to the College building its progress has been uninterrupted, and now, housed in the Van Wormer library at the university, the collection is one of the city's most valued treasures. Public Library. It was in 1870, December yth, that the public library was housed in its commodious new home. A committee, appointed by the board of education in 1868 to consider the location and erection of a building, recommended the purchase of the half-finished Handy opera house, which was about to be sold at public auction. The resolution was adopted and plans prepared by James W. Laughlin. In 1869 W. F. Poole was elected librarian and on December 9, 1870, the building was opened for use. Like so many, if not all, the other institutions of culture, this development of the library had required a long lapse of time. Way back in 1802 a few serious-minded pioneers had met in Yeatman's tavern to devise a plan for a collection of books for the public use, and Jacob Burnet, Martin Baum and Lewis Kew were appointed a committee. Single volumes and libraries (offered cheap at public sale) were purchased from time to time and by 1816 had increased to a respectable collection. In that year Dr. Daniel Drake was elected president and injected new life into the enterprise. The collection was transferred to Lancaster seminary and thence to Williams' book store, when interest in it began to decline. In 1837 the tattered remnants were turned over to the "Apprentices Library," an association formed in 1821. The two collections apparently had as hard a struggle to survive together as singly and in 1852 the minutes record that the library was in a most dilapidated state. There were two other collections of books during these years,—that of the Lyceum and the Ohio Mechanics' Institute, the latter having grown to the dimensions of six thousand in 1852. In 1853 the prospects for success in the protracted endeavor to gather a worthy collection was brightened by a law empowering the city to levy a tax to buy books for the public schools, and the board of education had the good sense to see that a single large collection for all would be better than a little one for each, and in 1855, $5,000 were available for expenditure, and after about a year the collection was consolidated with that in the Ohio Mechanics' Institute. From this time on, owing to an ever-increasing sense of need on the part of the people and the unselfish efforts of men like Mr. Poole, Rufus King and Reverend J. M. Walden, the condition of affairs was improved until the housing in its new and ample home insured its development into that eat collection of which we all are now so justly proud. 232 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Industrial Expositions. Another instance of the efflorescence of the higher life of the city may be found in the development of the industrial exposition idea. It is true that the dominant motive was that of business rather than culture ; but so great was the effect of the commercial enterprise in enlarging, deepening and enriching the mental life of the citizens that it must have been in some way the outgrowth of the municipal evolution along the lines of self-improvement. So successful were these initial experiments that the promoters conceived the idea of expanding their operations and associating the Ohio Mechanics' Institute, the chamber of commerce and the board of trade in an effort to make a comprehensive exhibition of the progress of commerce and the arts and sciences. By a fortunate coincidence an adequate place was easily secured, for the American Saengerbund (in order to hold its annual meeting in Cincinnati in 1870) was just completing its arrangement to erect a monster auditorium. In this room (and these additional structures) was held an exhibition (opened on September 21, 1870), which may be said to have been an epoch-making event. For, so brilliant was its success that it inaugurated in America a series of such movements out of which immeasurable influences for good have grown. In the following year, a second one was held ; a third in '72 ; a fourth in '73; a fifth in '74, and a sixth in '75. The series was interrupted in 1876 because of the centennial in Philadelphia, which was, in fact, a logical continuation of those in Cincinnati and was superintended by A. T. Goshorn, one of our own citizens whose talent for such undertakings was an actual genius, and received a fitting recognition, when he was knighted by the queen of England. The series was resumed in '77 and continued unbroken for years, until the movement (as all such movements do) expended its original force. To these expositions are to be traced many influences which have been permanent and powerful, both in commerce and in art ; but it is in the latter domain that the benefit seems to have been greatest. While it is not easy to follow such subtle influences back to a single source, no one can question that the sight of the wonders displayed to unaccustomed eyes awakened and fostered inspirations and ambitions that ripened into many of the other achievements of that period and those which followed. The Probasco Fountain. It is true that the purpose to erect the Tyler Davidson fountain was conceived before the exposition, for Henry Probasco, its noble donor, had proposed the splendid gift in honor of his brother-in-law as early as 1867, and a rough model was furnished in 1869. But it is the general rather than the particular coincidence of these events which we must mark, and to observe how they indicate, in their entirety, some sort of association and common origin. It was a wonderful period and the beautiful fountain is in some ways its consummation and crown. "May Festival." Another remarkable manifestation of this new spirit of culture belongs to 1872, for it was in the summer of that year that the idea of a "May Festival" was CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 233 born in the minds of some of our leading citizens. In the fall a committee was appointed, with George Ward Nichols as its president ; a guarantee fund was raised and the opening event set for May of the following year. That this festival, held in the Saengerbund building (participated in by thirtytesix societies, twelve hundred and fifty singers, and presided over by Theodore Thomas) was, in some respects, a turning point in our history, few will attempt to deny. It was a brilliant success in every way and sent a thrill of new emotion through Cincinnati, and the waves of music, in ever enlarging circles, swept over the entire country. So far as we can judge, the original impulse which produced these great festivals instead of being exhausted, has increased with every celebration. As a stimulus to the aesthetical nature of our people and as a revelation to the world of our appreciation of the diviner elements of life, they have been of supreme value. How deeply they have gone into life and what far-reaching results they have produced we may not ever know ; but it is certain that they aroused the heart of Reuben Springef to one of the greatest benefactions we shall ever have the honor to record. Music Hall. After the music festival of 1875, this great philopolist proposed to give $125,000 to build a permanent structure ( for these convocations and others calculated to stimulate the higher life of the people) upon condition that a similar amount should be raised by the citizens. In order to meet this condition a stock company was soon formed with a board of trustees composed of Reuben Springer, Robert Mitchell, William H. Harrison, Julius Dexter, Timothy D. Lincoln and John Shillito. The subscriptions rolled in ; but the original estimate was found to be too small, and thereupon Mr. Springer increased his subscriptions until in all he had contributed $250,000. Contracts were let in '77 and the building was formally opened in 1878. Free Concerts. In that same year William S. Groesbeck gave $50,000 to endow a series of free concerts in Burnet woods. King's Library. In 1879 the newsboy, John King, surprised and excited the public admiration by donating his library of twenty-five hundred well chosen volumes to the public. The Women. In 1877 there occurred a meeting of the Women's Centennial Executive Committee of Cincinnati that may serve as well as any other event to mark the origin and development of one of the greatest movements in our history. At that time a resolution was passed looking to the more rapid advancement of woman's work, particularly in the field of industrial art and Mrs. Aaron F. Perry was requested to prepare a paper on the subject and to lay before the society a definite plan of work. This apparently so simple act was unques- 234 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY tionably the beginning of a new era, for as has been no doubt regretfully observed, up to this time woman had played a very inconsiderable part in the drama of our municipal life. There had been a few remarkable women, like Mrs. Ludlow, Mrs. Dr. Drake, Mrs. Sarah Peters, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had adorned our city by their individual characters and talents ; but there had never been any organized efforts on their part to improve the conditions of public life, except in connection with the churches. Cincinnati was not exceptional in this, for the era of woman's advancement had not arrived. Slowly, but surely, however, the forces of the modern world had been preparing new conditions too well understood to justify a long analysis here. It is sufficient for our purpose to observe that women were not only being compelled to enter the arena of business in order to gain a living ; but also impelled to enter the spheres of the world's higher activities in order to make a new and invaluable contribution to its welfare. This great movement, sweeping over the country like a tidal wave, began to be powerfully felt in Cincinnati about the time which we are now considering. Womanhood was awakened from a long slumber. With what now seems a startling suddenness we find our sisters setting their hands courageously to a thousand unaccustomed tasks. For a little time they confined their efforts almost exclusively to the realm of art and it is in this domain that we find, to our astonishment and delight, a sudden disclosure of almost indescribable activity. They began to cultivate the arts themselves and to demand a far more general cultivation of them by their children. Pottery and Wood Carving. As a mere phenomenon few can be more interesting and instructive than this sudden outburst of feminine enthusiasm for all kinds of art, but particularly for decorating pottery and carving wood. With an astonishing suddenness the women of our city, seizing their brushes and their chisels, began to paint and grave. About their infatuation for wood carving, particularly, there was something quite incomprehensible. It was a fad, apparently, and passed away ; but, for a time, there was scarcely a mantel or a door jamb which was safe from the attack of a chisel in the hands of some wife or mother, intoxicated by art. With an eagerness that brooked no opposition they organized themselves, under the guidance of genuine artists like Ben Pitman and were enabled to accomplish many creditable achievements, the chief of which was the decoration of the great pipe organ in Music Hall. It was not, however, what the women did with their hands so much as what they did with their heads and their hearts, that made this period memorable, for they set in operation forces and laid the foundation of institutions which have exerted an incalculable influence ever since. Art Museum. Pre-eminent among them is that one which grew out of the gathering above described. Mrs. Perry read her paper and its hearers at once and with an unquenchable enthusiasm adopted her suggestion of an art museum. At a sub- CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 235 sequent meeting held at the home of Mrs. A. S. Winslow, a committee of gentlemen was named whose influence was needed to foster their plans, and on April 28, 1877, their own committee, consisting of Mrs. Perry, president, and Mrs. John Davis, Mrs. A. D. Bullock, Mrs. John Shillito, Mrs. A. S. Winslow, Mrs. George Carlisle and Mrs. William Dodd, vice-presidents ; Mrs. H. C. Whitman, treasurer ; and Mrs. Elizabeth Appleton and Miss Laura Velette, secretary, went resolutely to work. It was a group of capable women tremendously in earnest and they began at once to hold expositions and to forward their cause in every conceivable way. So great an impression did they make upon the city that in about three years' time Charles W. West offered to give $150,000 toward their enterprise if as much more could be raised in addition. The response was quick and generous and on February 3, 1882, the council passed an ordinance permitting the erection of a building for this purpose in Eden Park. A temporary shelter was secured in order that there might be no delay in the gathering of material which began to come in so promptly and generously that Mr. West was moved to offer another $150,000 for a permanent endowment. The subsequent history of the Art Museum has been one of uninterrupted growth, prosperity and usefulness, and its most recent benefactor, J. G. Schmidlap, has enlarged it by the munificent gift of a beautiful building for the purposes of housing its fine library and affording facilities for exhibition purposes. Art Academy. Adjoining the Art Museum and under the same control is the Art Academy, the home of which was not erected until 1886te87 ; but the principal impulse to its development was communicated in 1876 by Joseph Longworth who, at that time, presented the art department of the university with $59,500 upon condition that it would add $10,000, which it promptly did. He had intended ultimately to place this school of design under the care of the Art Museum, but his death prevented the consummation of his plans and threw the burden of carrying them out upon his son, the Honorable Nicholas Longworth, who did so by a munificent benefaction amounting to $371,631, after which the name was changed to the 'Art School of Cincinnati. A little later, the housing of this school was made possible by a bequest of $20,000 in Reuben Springer's will an allowance from the Springer endowment and a gift of $75,944 from David Sinton. This great school may not be traced directly, perhaps, to the new activity among the women ; but it was intimately associated with it and the credit of another enterprise of this same period certainly belongs to them almost exclusively. It is the Rookwood Pottery to which we refer, of course. Rookwood Pottery. In 1874-75 the interest in the decoration of pottery had led some of the more adventurous women to experiment with its manufacture and among them was one who, in 1880, opened an establishment for this purpose which she called "Rookwood" in honor of her father's estate. This woman was Mrs. Maria Longworth Storer and she has made our city famous wherever in the Vol I -16 236 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY whole world the beauty of exquisite form and coloring in the manufacture of pottery is adequately appreciated. If it is true (and these evidences appear to have the elements of demonstration in them) that there was a remarkable efflorescence of the artistic spirit in this period and a decided tendency toward a finer culture it is certainly a matter of the deepest interest to the student of our history. About all such efflorescences there seems to be, as we have said, an element of mystery. Originating in the deeps of the human spirit, sometimes, without discernible provocation, they fill our souls with wonder. At one time they burst forth into a great blossom from a bud so quickly formed as to have attracted no attention. At another, premonitory symptoms appear and excite a vague feeling of expectation. But however suddenly or slowly they reveal themselves, they seem generally to follow a period of the accumulation of wealth, when the energies of people have been released from the absorbing and exhausting struggle to solve the more pressing problems of life. This period of the "seventies" was certainly such an one. Great fortunes had been made during the war and in the decade following. Leisure had been acquired and people began to ask themselves what money was for and to realize that unless it was used for something beside its mere multiplication, it was miserable stuff. In consequence, they turned their minds to the discovery of truth and beauty. But such movements are not sporadic. They belong to a series of connected events and may be traced back, sometimes, for centuries and always through decades. With regard to this one, two of our citizens have so accurately and so eloquently described the various steps of this development as to put us under everlasting obligation and to make it almost useless for any one to supplement their labors. Painting and Sculpture. According to Henry A. Ratterman and Edwin Glover the cultivation of the fine arts in our city began with George Jacob Beck, who came here in 1792, a scout in the army of Wayne. For a time he painted landscapes here, then moved to Lexington in 18w ; but his wife returned to Cincinnati and became a teacher of the principles he practiced. In 1817 there came to the city a gentleman by the name of A. H. Corwine, whose talents as an artist led many of the principal citizens (notably Peyton Symmes, Nathan Guilford, Timothy Walker and Captain Joseph Pierce) to permit him to paint their portraits. At the suggestion of Dr. Drake (who thus became ,the first patron of art) Corwine was paid in advance, in order that he might go to Philadelphia and take a course of instruction to improve his style. Besides Corwine there was, in those earliest days, at least another portrait painter, Edwin B. Smith. In 1826 F. Eckstein did so much to awaken the citizens of the rapidly growing community to interest in the beautiful, as to win for himself the distinguished title of the "Father of Cincinnati Art." He made an ambitious attempt to found an academy of fine arts ; but at that early period it lacked sufficient 'patronage to insure success. Eckstein, however, 'made portrait busts of many citizens and instructed eager pupils in the essentials of his art. One of CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 237 these was Hiram Powers, who subsequently achieved so great a fame that we cannot restrain a feeling of pride in the fact that he grew up in our city and received even in that primitive state of society sufficient appreciation to lead him to devote his whole life to the fine arts. Nor was it in an academy only that the spirit of art awoke: In every age the stone cutter's yard has been the nursery of sculpture. While chiseling out the generally rude memorials of the dead, a vision of beauty has come to multitudes of souls. In this way, John Airy, who executed a monument of old General Gano, became a sculptor, and so did Shubael V. Cleavinger. This Butler county boy attracted the attention of E. S. Thomas, editor of the Evening Post, yvho sat for a bust, so lifelike as to give the youth an instantaneous recognition. This bust, the first one ever executed in the West, stands now on the grave of its original, in Spring Grove cemetery. Its carver continued his career in the East and consummated it in Rome, where he produced a genuine work of art, caned "A North American Indian." Had it not been for a feeble constitution and a premature death, this backwoods boy might have written his name among the immortals, for he certainly possessed genius of 'a high order. Joseph Mason and Samuel M. Lee, the one a painter of portraits and the other of landscapes, both achieved, at least, a local fame. Hervieu, a French artist of not inconsiderable merit, came to Cincinnati with Mrs. Trollope and helped to train the aesthetical perceptions of our citizens by his decorations of her bazaar ; but more particularly by his famous painting of "The Landing of LaFayette." It is a matter of astonishment to every Cincinnatian when he begins to investigate the records of the past, to read the long list of those who, at one time or another, wholly or partially supported themselves by art ; but who are too obscure to be mentioned in a paragraph written exclusively for the purpose of calling attention to those who exerted a formative influence upon the development of the artistic sensibilities of our citizens. "How much pollen it takes to fertilize the flowers ! How many seeds to produce this harvest of art !" he reflects and heaves a sigh over the disappointed hopes of all these eager souls who have seen visions and dreamed dreams which they strove in vain to make as beautiful to others as they seemed to themselves. "Surely, the love of the beautiful is deeply implanted in the soul," he says to himself, in reading how way beck in "the twenties" the people with artistic temperaments used to meet to stimulate their aesthetical emotions in the home of Philabertus Rater; or 'in the Museum of Fine Arts, presided over by a certain Mr. Franks, whose title to glory lay in a series of pictures illustrating the horrors of the infernal regions. In "the thirties and forties" we come upon a group of really talented men—James H. Beard, Miner B. Kellogg, W. H. Powell, T. Buchanan Read, William L. Sontag, the Frankenstein brothers and Nathan F. Baker, who made himself a great name by his statues "Egeria" and "Cincinnatus." It was in 1838 that the Academy of Fine Arts was established and in the following year the first art exhibition in the West was opened to the public. 238 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Mr. Ratterman places the golden age of our early strivings after the beautiful in the period from 1840 to 1850 and asserts that Cincinnati was a "birthplace and cradle of art." Many of the most illustrious painters and sculptors of America got their inspiration here, he says, and confidently believes that we were prevented from becoming a great art center by lack of patronage, alone. Because they could not sell their productions in the home market these children of genius were compelled to migrate to other cities where there was either a finer appreciation or, at least, a more generous disposition to buy. Music. The story of the development of music is quite as inspiring as that of painting or sculpture and few finer essays have been written upon any subject by anybody than one by E. S. Glover upon "Music in Cincinnati." Its culture, he informs us, began with a singing school in i800. The flute, accordion and violin (brought in the canvas wagon or on the river barge) were the primitive musical instruments and Thomas Kennedy ( from whom the ferry across the Ohio was named) was the first great virtuoso on the "fiddle." Rude attempts at operatic performances began as early as the days of old Fort Washington, when the military bands stimulated a taste for melody and harmony. When the fort was abandoned these sources of supply were cut off and a dearth set in. In 1814, however, a home band was organized by James H. Hoffman and in 1815 two musical books were published by the Liberty Hall press. In 1819 the real development began with the organization of the Handel and Haydn Society which gave its first concert only four years after the organization of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston. A second rendition was offered in 1822 and the interest awakened resulted in the organization and training of certain church choirs to a high degree of efficiency, and also in Bohemian gatherings of the lovers of music under the inspiration of such men as Frederick Ameling. As early as 18m Adam Hurdus had built an organ and piano makers had established an industry which has grown to great proportions in our day. Curiously enough the necessity of furnishing suitable music for the visit of LaFayette in 1825 communicated the necessary stimulus for a finer development of the art. Players were brought from other places and among them Joseph Tosso, a young Mexican, who had graduated from the Paris Conservatory. From the first, he excited great interest in himself and in his art. He was given a position as teacher in the "Female Academy" and in 1835 became director of the "Musical Fund Society Orchestra" which had the support of all the leading men in town. Even this support, however, was not adequate to maintain the organization and Tosso drifted into the manufacture of instruments, concert giving and orchestra work in theaters. In 1834 the Eclectic Academy of Music was organized and Victor Williams, a Swede, was brought from the East to promote its interests. He was a musical genius and aroused an enthusiasm which became a permanent characteristic in the soul of the city. For fifty years he led a volunteer choir in the Ninth street Baptist church and gave its music national fame. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 239 In 1856 the Germans began to contribute to the musical life of the city and the German American Cecilia Society formed and conducted by F. L. Ritter, became a "potent influence in the formation of taste." In 1863 the Harmonic Society of Cincinnati was born amidst the throes of war and developed into a great choral association. The musical yeast was at work, it is evident, through the entire life of the city and the co-operation of the two influences—German and American—accounts for the cosmopolitan results. "To the Americans belongs the credit of being the first pioneers of music in Cincinnati, but the Germans may boast of having brought about its higher development," Mr. Klauprecht says, and all of us agree. For, during the period from '56 to the present moment the divine art has been cultivated most assiduously by them, the development of male choruses was their most important contribution and the maennerchors under the leadership of such men as William Schragg, George Valentine Schneider, George Labarre, William Runge, Carl Barus and Robert T. Holterhoff exerted immeasurable influence in educating the taste of the city and its environments in the knowledge and love of musical compositions of the highest order. It was the Germans who originated and developed the idea of musical festivals. As far back as 1849 they began to work it out in Cincinnati. In 1850 they held a second meeting, a third in 1851, and in 1867 a great gathering here of two thousand singers (in a building erected for the purpose) suggested and inspired the May festivals. It was in May of 1873 that these long continued, scattered and often futile efforts were gathered up in that truly wonderful consummation, the first great festival. What influences they have exerted during all these years in the development of our higher life, no one can accurately determine ; but no one, it is probable, will ever overstate it. To such men as Colonel George Ward Nichols, Edmond H. Pendleton, William N. Hobart, Robert E. Bowler, Lawrence Maxwell and that long list of directors and the great leaders, Theodore Thomas, Frank Van der Stucken and Leopold Stokovski we owe a debt that can only be paid by gratitude and reverence. Literature. As a realization of the magnitude of this new birth of the higher life of Cincinnati bursts upon the student of our history, he finds himself expecting an efflorescence of literature, as well as of art. To his surprise and disappointment, he turns page after page of the records in a search for a justification of his hopes ; but can only discover that the Piatts published several volumes of poetry : "A Womans Dream," "A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles," "That New World and Other Poems," "Landmarks" and "House and Home" and that Professor W. H. Venable published "June on the Miami," "The Teacher's Dream" and his "History of the United States," and that in the newspapers the name of Mrs. Alice Williams Brotherton (who has since done notable work) began to appear for the first time. Just why it was that in the new awakening, authors did not receive a breath from the divine afflatus, who can tell ? For ourselves, we had deliberately re- 240 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY served a place in this chapter to tell the story of rising poets, novelists, dramatists and so forth ; but we have searched that immortal volume of Professor W. H. Venable's "The Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley" in vain for a record of literary activity in the seventies. If, therefore, we here introduce a brief review of the facts which are so fully and so eloquently recorded in that volume, it will be rather because we think that all this preliminary training for some great achievement ought to have come to fruition at this time, than because it actually did! Certainly the prospects of great ultimate achievements in literature were fully warranted by the early efforts of our citizens in this field. From the very first, a desire to express itself on the printed page was a distinguishing characteristic of the soul of the city, and as early as 1824 the Literary Gazette was founded to give an opportunity for this utterance. "This is the age of magazines, E'en skeptics must confess it ; Where is the town of much renown That has not one to bless it," wrote Thomas Pierce, one of its contributors. Cincinnati has had scores and among them were The Western Magazine published by Timothy Flint in 1834; Hall's Western Monthly Magazine, 1832; The Western Messenger (a Unitarian organ), 1835; W. D. Gallagher's Hesperian, 1837-1838; The Ladies Repository, 1841-1876; The Genius of the West and so on ad finitum, down to the Midland published and edited fo.r a few months in 1908-1939 by E. J. Wohlgemuth, an attempt to voice the aspirations of the middle west. These are only a few out of an interminable list, a pathetic and even tragic illustration of the spiritual longing for self-revelation in literature which has tormented us since ever we began to be a city, as well as the difficulty of publishing a magazine at a distance from the seaboard. But, our forefathers printed books as well as magazines. "The wilderness swarmed with migratory poets ; they came in flocks like birds ; they chirruped from log cabins ; caroled from log barges ; chanted from new garrets in fresh sprung villages," Professor Venable has charmingly affirmed. Among those whose productions have risen to a high standard and found a permanent form were George D. Prentice, S. D. Gallagher, the Cary sisters, Amelia Welby, Coates Kinney, Professor Venable and John J. and Sarah Piatt. Nor have we lacked romancers. Frederick W. Thomas, Benjamin Drake, Emerson Bennett, Z. C. Judson (Ned Buntline), William W. Fosdick, the Cary sisters, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Catherine Warfield, in the early days and Prof. Venable, Nathaniel Stevenson, John Uri Lloyd and Mary F. Watts, in. the later ones, have all produced works of fiction which have made them widely known. Many of their productions possessed but little value as literature and have interest for us only as disclosing that the literary aspirations of our ancestors were after truth and beauty. There have, however, lived and labored among us CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 241 a few gifted writers whose work possesses an intrinsic value and concerning them and their productions a few appreciative words must here be said. First came the writings of Dr. Daniel Drake, of course. His original resources, clothed in picturesque and eloquent language, have been, and must forever continue to be, our most authoritative sources of knowledge about the natural phenomena of the Ohio valley. Next on the list is Jacob Burnet's masterpiece on "The Settlement, the Development and the Organization of the Northwest Territory." The "Recollections of the Last Ten Years in the Valley of the Mississippi" (to say nothing of the many stories and histories he wrote), entitle Rev. Timothy Flint to stand amongst our most remarkable men. He was not a permanent resident of Cincinnati, but was here so many years and did so much of his best work during his sojourn, that we have adopted him forever into our family. Not to admire and love him after what Mrs. Frances Trollope has said, even though we did not have illimitable other evidences of his talent, his goodness and his lovableness would be impossible. "The most agreeable person I met in Cincinnati and indeed one of the most talented men I ever met, was Mr. Flint, the author of several extremely clever volumes and the editor of The Western Review. His conversational powers are of the highest order; he is the only person I remember to have known with first-rate powers of satire and even of sarcasm, whose kindness of nature and of manner remained perfectly uninjured. In some of his critical notices there is a strength and keenness second to nothing of the kind I have ever read. He is a warm patriot and so true hearted an American that we could not always be of the same opinion on all subjects we discussed ; but whether it was the force and brilliancy of his language, his genuine and manly sincerity of feeling, or his bland and gentlemanlike manner that beguiled me, I know not ; but certainly he is the only American I ever listened to whose unqualified praise of his country did not appear to me somewhat overstrained and ridiculous." In Judge James Hall, soldier, jurist, author and editor, we possess another distinguished literary light. He made himself forever famous by publishing "The First Literary Annual of the Ohio Valley" (Venable). It was first issued in Illinois as The Illinois Magazine; but brought to Cincinnati in 1832 and published under the new title, The Western Monthly Magazine, and stimulated the latent literary talents of many people who afterwards became famous. The names of books he wrote would make a long column ; but it was his "History of the Indian Tribes," in three huge and elaborately illustrated volumes (the original price of which was $120), which gave him a permanent place in literature and principally entitled him to the high praise bestowed in Allibone's "Dictionary of Authors," "Few men have done so much for the cause of western civilization and the intellectual improvement of the country." Edward Deering Mansfield is the next name which challenges our attention and admiration. He was the son of General Jared Mansfield, and came to Cincinnati with his father when a little child. Much of his youth and some of his early manhood were spent in educational institutions in the east, but his best writing years were passed in Cincinnati, to which he returned in 1832, and almost immediately formed a law partnership with General Ormsby M. Mitchell. 242 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY "He was my partner in a profession for which I think neither of us was well adapted." As Mitchell drifted into professional work, Mansfield did into literary. He took an active part in the social and club life of the city and was influential in helping to establish many of its most important institutions. In 1857 he was editor of the Cincinnati Gazette, with which he kept up some sort of connection as long as he lived; but wrote constantly for eastern papers and magazines. In addition to this exacting work, he found time to prepare and publish several volumes, some of which are of the utmost value and interest, the two most important for us Cincinnatians being "Daniel Drake" and "Personal Memories." He was endowed with • a brain of unusual capacity and in his moral nature reflected the noblest ideals of the Christian life. "He never, in religion, politics or morals, stood 'on the fence' or hid behind sophistries." Everybody loved him while he lived and lamented when he died. William Davis Gallagher is one of those many gems which an unkind fortune stole from Cincinnati's crown and made to shine in another setting. While he spent the latter part of his life in or near Louisville, it was in our own city that he developed his genius and we shall always claim him as our own. In the same way we lost Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who gathered her material for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" here, and the Cary Sisters, whose genius was nourished on a hillside which overlooked our city. We wish that we could claim that the Piatts did their best work here ; but although they belong to us now, they developed their genius in other places. It seems remarkable indeed that so many such brilliant people should have made our city famous for its literary culture during the early portion of its history and yet not have been able to perpetuate their line. Since their departure we have not seen their equals or, at any rate, their superiors. Many years passed in which, save for such work as Mr. Cist did in the writing of our history ; and the great war editors like Murat Halstead did in writing editorials ; and writers like General Lytle and T. Buchanan Read did in producing a few remarkable poems, the literary life of the city may be said to have languished. It was not until 1891 that a work of a merit equal to the others appeared. At that time Professor Venable's "Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley" was issued from the press of Robert Clarke & Co., and must forever stand amongst the highest of our municipal achievements. At wide intervals of time, another of our educators, Professor P. V. N. Myers, has put out three volumes—the histories of Greece ; of Rome and of Mediaeval Europe, which are so very remarkable for their depth, their insight and their beauty as to have won them a place in educational institutions all over America and made him as famous amongst educators as was one of his great predecessors, William McGuffey. Since the beginning of the new century there has been another slight revival of literary activity, Professor Venable's novels, "A Dream of Empire," and "Tom Tad," and John Uri Lloyd's "Etidorpha," and "Stringtown on the Pike," Nat Stevenson's "They that took the Sword" and Coates Kinney's volumes of poems have all attracted favorable attention ; while Mrs. Mary F. Watts "Nathan CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 243 Burke" is regarded by some of our best judges as having reached the highest mark of all our literary efforts. This record is anything but discreditable, and yet, it is impossible to lay it down without a sense of surprise and disappointment. The bright promise of our early days does not seem to have been fulfilled. The generous seed then sown has not brought forth the harvest which it seemed to guarantee. Our city had a right to hope to be the literary center of the west and why it is not, is a mystery. Perhaps the fact that we had no daring publishers, willing to back local talent for a little more than it is worth, was a partial reason. Possibly it is, to some degree, because our newspapers have never shown any disposition to foster budding literary genius. More likely, the reasons are too obscure for our discovery. At any rate, the fact that the efflorescence of a certain sort of culture in the seventies did not include literature, is what we have to wonder over, as this remarkable decade sinks below the horizon of our present thought. Nothing is so easy and nothing (often) is so perilous as to form a theory. Our view that this decade was preeminently one of the development of culture has led us into a possibly too extended discussion of a single aspect of our city's life. We have almost forgotten that even if it were the case that this efflorescence was the most significant feature of the decade, it was not the only one. Each of the other phases of municipal existence was, of course, experiencing a contemporaneous expansion. No single stream of tendencies. moves forward alone, but all flow onward together. While the aesthetical interests were absorbing more attention than usual, all the other wheels revolved each upon its own axis and were all in full play. Incidents and events of the greatest importance octecurred. Tragedies dark and terrible were enacted. Individuals of wonderful power and charm appeared and disappeared. The expanding life extended itteself in ever widening circles from its now permanently established center, Fountain square. New conveniences for business, for pleasure, for rapid transit, were developed. Great fortunes were made and lost. Innumerable babies were born and uncounted dead were buried. Thousands and thousands of immigrants from all quarters of the globe were incorporated into the body politic and the mighty organism grew apace, developing its vast body visibly and measurably while its soul kept on growing into something whose real nature we do not even yet completely comprehend. Because it is becoming so very difficult to gather up and retepresent these multitudinous aspects in a unified form, suppose we let a few of the more important events pass before our minds like the moving pictures in a nickelodeon. It will prove bewildering, no doubt ; but it may help to deepen our sense of the mystery of a city's life and help to reveal the nature of the experiences through which it passed in those few short, epoch-making years. The census of 1870 disclosed the fact that there were 216,239 inhabitants. In 1871 the city council was reorganized and a board of aldermen created. Steps were taken to develop Eden park and Burnet woods. The Mount Auburn incline was built. Bonds for $100,000 were voted for parks. 244 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Several of the villages adjacent were annexed and the city enlarged from seven square miles in '68, to twenty-four in '73. The great panic of 1873 shook business almost to its foundation. There was a visitation of cholera. The street railroads were consolidated. A contract was let for the Southern railway. The organization of the Zoological Gardens was perfected. The Grand Opera House and the Grand Hotel were built. The "Crusaders" attacked the town and waged war on the liquor interests. D. J. Kinney published his "Illustrated Cincinnati." David Sinton, gave $100,000 to the Bethel and $33,000 to the Y. M. C. A. The Freie Press was established. Robert Clarke vindicated the authenticity of the "Cincinnati tablet." In 1876 the national republican convention met and Rutherford B. Hayes (an old time citizen), was nominated. The yellow fever destroyed at least three hundred lives. A monument was unveiled to William Woodward. The Chamber of Commerce building was erected. The Eden park reservoir was constructed. The Government building was built. Perhaps the two achievements which appeal most powerfully to "the masses" are the Tyler Davidson Fountain and the Zoological Garden, both of which are products of the genius of the seventies. The Zoological Garden. Cincinnati owes the Zoo to the untiring and absorbed devotion of one man, Andrew Erkenbrecher. Mr. Erkenbrecher, born in Germany, but a lifelong citizen of Cincinnati, was a member of the old Acclimitization society, which imported song-birds from Europe, fostered them, and set them free. In his large property in Avondale and on Madison road he kept many ipets, especially birds. And the little cage in the garden now, marked as the nucleus of the Zoo, was one he used for his "little clan of the bushes," as birds are called in the Gaelic. In 1873 he succeeded in organizing a stock company and on September 18, 1875, the Zoo was formally opened. The managers first tried to secure Burnet woods for it, but, the city refusing that, sixty-seven acres on the present site were bought, a part of which had to be relinquished because of expense. The Zoo has never been financially successful. Its dividends have been put right back into it, and Mr. Erkenbrecher, Mr. Marmet, and Mr. Julius Dexter gave much money to it. It has even been in the hands of a receiver but is now fairly prosperous. Hagenbeck, the great authority, considers our Zoo equal if not superior to any in the world. The Fountain. The fountain is located on the Fifth street esplanade, between Vine and Walnut streets. It was presented to the city by Henry Probasco as a memorial of his brother-intelaw, Mr. Tyler Davidson, and unveiled October 6, 1871. It is the grandest fountain in the United States, and the noblest work of art in CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 245 the city. The massive base and the circular basin are made of porphyry, quarried and polished in Europe. The fountain itself is cast in bronze, of condemned cannon procured from the Danish government. The castings weigh twenty-four tons. The diameter of the basin is forty-three feet, and the weight of the porphyry, eighty-five tons. The height of the fountain above the esplanade is thirty-eight feet. The bronze pedestal on the base of porphyry is square, the four sides bearing representations in relief of the four principal uses of water-water-power, navigation, the fisheries and steam. The pedestal is surmounted by four semicircular bronze basins, each pierced in the center by a single jet an inch in diameter. From the center of the four semicircular basins rises a second bronze pedestal, surmounted by a square column, on which stands the Genius of Water, a draped female figure, with outstretched arms, from the palms and fingers of whose hands .the water falls in spray into the four semicircular basins. On either side of the square column is a group of figures of heroic size. The eastern group represents a mother leading a nude child to the bath; the western group, a daughter giving her aged father a draught of water ; the northern group, a man standing on the burning roof of his homestead, with uplifted hand and praying for . rain ; the southern group, a husbandman with an idle plow, and at his side a dog panting from heat, supplicates Heaven for rain. There are life-size figures in niches at each corner of the bronze pedestal beneath the semicircular basins. One represents a nude boy with a lobster, which he has just taken from a net and is holding aloft in triumph with one hand; another, a laughing girl, playing with a necklace of pearls ; the third, a semi-nude girl, listening to the sound of the waves in a sea shell, which she holds to her ear ; the fourth, a boy, well muffled, strapping on his skates. There are four drinking fountains, equidistant on the rim of the porphyry basin. Each is a bronze pedestal, surmounted by a life-size bronze figure. One represents a youth astride a dolphin ; the second, a youth kneeling, holding one duck under his left arm and grasping by the neck another ; the third is that of a youth, around whose right leg a snake has coiled, which the youth has grasped with his left hand and is about to strike with a stone that he holds in his right. The fourth figure is that of a youth kneeling on the back of a huge turtle and grasping it by the neck. Water was from the mouths of the dolphin, cluck, snake and turtle. The fountain was designed by August von Kreling, of Nuremberg, and cast by Ferdinand von Muller, director of the Royal Bronze Foundry of Bavaria. The cost of the 'fountain itself was $105,000 in gold. Together with the esplanade, the total cost was over $2oo,000. All cars pass by or quite close to the fountain. And now, from events and achievements, we turn in accordance with our method to people. So rich in "outstanding people were 'the seventies' " that it seems inviduous to select any of them for especial mention ; but a few may be named as types and must represent the scores of others who would have served the purpose not less well. GEORGE WARD NICHOLS.—The man whose name was a synonym for art activity about the seventies was George Ward Nichols. He came of old New England families on both sides and inherited the capacity for education, refinement, and culture. A Boston boy, he spent his school days in that Puritan 246 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY city. Later he studied the arts, especially painting, in New York and was art critic on the Evening Post, that most excellent of papers. He studied art, too, in Paris, being in the studio of Couture, but when the war broke out he entered the army, and was aide-de-camp to Fremont and Sherman. Afterward he wrote a book about the great march to the sea. Later still he wrote a book on art education and articles on general topics. Coming to Cincinnati in 1868 he married the daughter of Mr. Joseph Longworth (Miss Maria Longworth), who is now Mrs. Bellamy Storer. Interested in all the arts, a gifted student, critic and patron of them all, he gave his attention and strength here particularly to music. He was president of the Festival association and of the College of Music, which grew from the festivals, and it is to him, chief of all, that Cincinnati owes her splendid May festivals and the rare music life for which she is so famous. REUBEN R. SPRINGER was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1800. His father, a soldier under Mad Anthony Wayne, was of Virginia stock while his mother was a New Jerseyan. Reuben had little education. He helped in the post-office of which his father was master, and then became a clerk on a steamboat running between Cincinnati and New Orleans. When he came to Cincinnati he married into the Kilgour family and at once became a member of the great firm of wholesale grocers. He was of a very economical turn of mind and worked so hard that when only forty he found himself completely broken down in health. Almost the rest of his life he gave to the extreme care of himself and so far recovered his health that he cheated time and disease and lived to be eighty-four years old. A wealthy man, he gave most of the money for Music hall and the great organ, and the beautiful far-singing chimes of St. Peter's cathedral are his gift. He was a Catholic and a Henry Clay Whig, a man of travel and artistic appreciation, modest, careful, methodical, keeping his skirts clear of politics and shunning notoriety. The statue of him in Music hall is by Cincinnati's great early sculptor, Hiram Powers. DAVID SINTON.—Perhaps no one could deserve the epithet, "canny Scotsman" more than David Sinton. Born in Ireland of Quaker parentage, he was nevertheless of Scotch blood, and as always, blood told. His father, who had been a linen manufacturer in Ireland, brought him, a little tot of three, to this country, and at thirteen David started out to make his own living. He early met some business disappointments which caused him to hate cordially the world's crew of the shiftless and lazy. At twenty-two, with a friend, he leased a furnace and thereafter spent from eighteen to twenty years in the iron region. In 1849 he came to Cincinnati permanently and at once became interested in real estate, and as years went on built many big business blocks. He was the builder and owner of the Grand Opera House. David Sinton became the richest man in Cincinnati and gave much to the city ; he built the Art academy, gave $100,000 to the university, built the Y. M. C. A. He was accounted fortunate in business, but was in reality a man of quick intelligence, a student ever, of strong, determined vitality, bound to succeed simply because he had it in him to succeed. GEORGE H. PENDLETON.—Everything one learns of Senator Pendleton is good and delightful. He came of fine old blood on the Pendleton side, dis- CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 247 imguished back in England and in the American revolution ; his mother was a daughter of Jesse Hunt, an early pioneer. He was born and bred a Cincinnatian, coming into existence here on July 19, 1825, studying at Woodward and under rmsby Mitchel, the celebrated young teacher and astronomer. Then he had the years of travel and learning that used to be thought proper for the finishing education of young gentlemen. He studied at Heidelberg and wandered in Europe, Asia and Africa. Coming back to Cincinnati, he was elected senator from Hamilton county to the state, and when only thirty-two was sent to congress. He was once a candidate for governor and for the vice presidency, and he became United States senator. Though of whig ancestry he was a democrat, immensely interested in civil service reform, and in 1885 was appointed by Cleveland, minister to Germany, dying in Brussels four years later. Perhaps his sobriquet, "Gentleman George," was the best index to his character, a man of genial countenance, welltebred manners, cultured intelligence, a capable leader and adjuster of human affairs. MOSES DAWSON.—Away back before the "log cabin campaign" even, there lived in Cincinnati an aggressively belligerent journalist and politician, one Moses Dawson. He was an Irishman and possessed all the Irishman's wit and bellicose capacity. In 1824 he published a life of William Henry Harrison, a hearty vindication of that statesman and soldier, which, it is said, can hardly be called history or biography, but is the most interesting and valuable compilation ever printed of the facts of those times in the west. Dawson was the editor and publisher of the Commercial Advertiser, a democratic paper appealing to the masses, while Hammond, a Henry Clay whig, edited another paper, and merry was the war of words between them, which, says Edward Mansfield, was a political pugilism worthy of Donnybrook. Neither were the words tender nor the statements polite. Hammond was keen and a mental marksman, but Dawson rained blows fast and furiously and never gave up the fight. He was the head of the Advertiser for many years, and of an old-time paper called the Phoenix, and it was he who started the great democratic organ of the middle west, the Enquirer. Moses Dawson was a great leader of the people, a great democrat, a great journalist and politician. EDWARD ALEXANDER FERGUSON was born in New York city November 6, 1826. He was brought to Cincinnati when a little chap and was educated in the common schools, Talbot's academy, and what was then called Woodward college, graduating from this last named institution in 1843. Young Ferguson studied law and became city solicitor in 1862 when he was only twenty-six years old. Seven years later he was elected to the Ohio state senate. Some of his associates there were young men who were later to become very famous; among them President James A. Garfield, Justice Woods, and General J. D. Cox. Mr. Ferguson's specialty was always corporation law, and while in the senate he succeeded in getting through a bill known as the "Ferguson act," by which any city of a certain class or size in the state may have the privilege of raising bonds for a railroad which is to enter it. He is to be considered one of the very important citizens of Cincinnati as the author of this bill and as the chief projector of the Cincinnati Southern railroad, which is the gateway opening the broad south directly into the very streets of Cincinnati. 248 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY MURAT HALSTEAD.—Out on a farm at Paddy's Run, in Butler county, was born September 2, 1829, Murat Halstead. There was not much of the French tongue in Paddy's Run and he was named and called Mu-rat. His father was a North Carolinian, but was brought to Ohio by his parents when a very little child, and the mother was a native of Ohio, so that Murat was a Buckeye born and bred. The boy worked on the farm and received his education at the old Farmers' college at College Hill. When only eighteen he began to contribute to the papers and soon, abandoning his intention of studying law, entered journalism as a profession. He was first on the Gazette, then on the Enquirer, after that as news editor of the Atlas, and associate editor of the Columbian. In 1853 he became city editor of the Commercial, soon bought a small, share in it, and in 1866 assumed entire control of the paper. When the two morning papers, the Commercial and the Gazette, were combined he was elected president of the company and was the recognized chief of the big republican paper. Mr. Halstead composed constantly editorials and other work, and as he is said to have produced usually about three thousand words a day, in his long life of newspaper activity he probably wrote more than any journalist who ever lived. In this long life—he died only in 1908—spent in journalism, while he wrote for nearly every important paper in the United States and was at the head of one of the great ones in Brooklyn, it is as a Cincinnati man and as an immense force in republican politics, the head of the great republican organ of this section of the country, that he is to be considered, one of the greatly eminent journalists of the day. JACOB DETSON Cox was born in Montreal, Canada, on the twenty-seventh day of October, 1828. He studied at and was graduated from Oberlin college, Ohio, taught school, and studied law—exactly the process so many fine young men have gone through. He practiced law in Cincinnati, was an Ohio state senator, a general in the Civil war, and after that was made governor of the state. He declined renomination and practiced law till he became President Grant's secretary of the interior. He was president and then receiver for the Toledo and Wabash railroad, and was elected to Congress from the Toledo district. After that General Cox returned to Cincinnati, where he practiced his profession and became dean of the law school and later president of the university. At one time in the state senate were Cox, E. A. Ferguson, Justice Woods and Garfield, an unusual combination. And it was General Cox who was the guest of General Burnside in the old Pike Opera House on the night of the thrilling jubilation over the battle of Vicksburg. He died in August, 1900. His memory is fresh in the minds of many Cincinnatians, a man of infinite capacity, though perhaps most vividly remembered here for his connection with the law school and university, CHARLES PETTIT MCILVAINE, the son of a United States senator, was born in New Jersey, January 18, 1799, graduated from Princeton when seventeen years, old, and was made a priest of the Protestant Episcopal church at twenty-two. His first parish was in Georgetown, D. C. A few years later he became chaplain and professor at West Point, and after other parish work he took a professorship in the University of New York. In 1832, when he was only thirty-three years of age, he was made bishop of Ohio. Before coming out he raised $30,000 among his friends in the east for Kenyon college and the theological seminary at Gambier, of which he became president. When the Civil war came on Bishop CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 249 Mcllvaine worked devotedly in the sanitary commission. He was given honorary degrees by Princeton, Brown, and Oxford and Cambridge of the English universities. He died in Florence, Italy, March 13, 1873. Born the year Washington died, he was said to bear a strange resemblance to the president. These are the few facts in the life of a noble and sweet-souled man who was so well remembered, so deeply beloved by thousands. SISTER ANTHONY O'CONNELL was. born in Limerick, Ireland, and was brought to this country when a wee little child by her parents. She lived in Maine and Boston and entered the community at Emmetsburg when twenty years old. Two years later she came to Cincinnati, beginning here her life of entire devotion to humanity as a sister of charity. She worked successively in St. Peter's Orphan Asylum, the St. Aloysius, the St. Joseph, and the St. John's hospitals, most of the time as head of these institutions. When the Civil war broke out she was the first to answer a hurry call for nurses after the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, and from that time on to the close of the struggle she gave her services to the sick and wounded soldiers. When it was over she returned to Cincinnati and started a foundling home, where she lived in her work till her death in 1898. She lies in the little Mt. St. Joseph cemetery and her grave is always decorated on Memorial Day by the old soldiers who have christened her "The Angel of the Battlefield." Her picture shows a pure, wistful, Irish face, and the record she has left is that of the utter beauty of human kindness. Perhaps it is impossible to so compare the decades of our history as to be able to select the most important. While some seem less significant than others in respect of this or that, each one excels in something else. But taking as much into consideration as our minds can possibly hold, we think that the "the seventies" were the most fascinating ten years of our history. This may be, however, because our own interests are so much concerned with the development of Cincinnati's higher life. We see in them that sort of activity which is, by far, the noblest in a city's soul. The struggle for wealth or size has little of real grandeur or dignity. Mere bigness counts for much less in a city than a mountain. There are cities containing millions of people in China (and perhaps in America) that cannot hold a candle to little Athens in the days when her population numbered but a few thousand ; because among them there was a Phidias, a Pericles, a Socrates, a Plato or a Demosthenes, and also because in them the love of truth, beauty and goodness became a consuming passion.