HST 217 Ohio History

Study Questions

How did Dayton respond to the crisis of the 1913 flood and the threat of future floods? How does this response reflect the concerns and values of the progressive era in Ohio?

Define business progressivism and welfare work as practiced at the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio?

What characteristics made Dayton a good location for the invention of flight?

What was the significance of the tool and die industry in Ohio history after the Civil War?

How did workers and labor organizations respond to the changing economic conditions as Ohio’s cities industrialized in the late 19th Century and early 20th century?

Identify and discuss two issues that divided Ohioans in the late 19th Century and early 20th century?

What arguments were made in Ohio for and against women’s suffrage in the decades leading up to the 19th Amendment?

What role did newspapers and journalists play in public policy debates in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century? Were newspapers “objective” about issues in Ohio? Explain your answer.

NOTE: You should be able to identify and discuss specific individuals, events, and developments in relation to each of these questions.

Cayton, 107-237

Carl M. Becker, “Newspapers in Battle: The Dayton Empire and the Dayton Journal During the Civil War” Ohio History 1989, V. 99, 29-50.
Jon Glasgow, “The Westward Expansion of the Manufacturing Belt: The Ohio Machine Tool Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Ohio History, Vol. 100, 19-34.
Chad Pearson, “A Tale of Two Men: Class Traitors and Strikebreaking on Lake Erie, 1886–1911” Ohio History, Vol. 115, issue 1 (June 07, 2008), p. 28-54.
Jessica R. Pliley, “Voting for the Devil: Unequal Partnerships in the Ohio Women’s Suffrage Campaign of 1914,” Ohio History, Vol. 115, issue 1 (June 07, 2008), p. 4-27.

(for vol. 15 and 16, Go into the WSU Library – Electronic Journals link. Search on Ohio History. Select OhioLINK Electronic Journals Center: EJC 2008 – 2009 (you’ll need to login) and you will find the journal articles.)

Watch: EITHER “Wright Brothers’ Dayton” OR “Goodbye, The Levee Has Broken, the Story of the Great Dayton Flood” Access via ThinkTV On Demand Scroll down until you find the program.

Quiz #3 10/22

The quiz will cover the following reading assignments:

1) Cayton, pages 1-105

2) the following articles (login to WSU libraries, access the article by the volume number):

Ginette Aley, “A Republic of Farm People: Women, Families, and Market- Minded Agrarianism in Ohio, 1820s–1830s.” in Ohio History, 2007, vol. 114, 28-45.

Henry C. Taylor, “On Slavery’s Fringe: City-Building and Black Community Development in Cincinnati, 1800-1850.” Vol. 95, 5-33.

Marian J. Morton, “Homes for Poverty’s Children: Cleveland’s Orphanages,” 1851-1933 Ohio History, 1988, Vol. 98, 5-22

Vernon L. Volpe, “Theodore Dwight Weld’s Antislavery Mission in Ohio.” Ohio History, Vol. 100, 5-18.

3) the following Historical Document posts:

Bird’s Eye View of Dayton, 1870
Slavery and Freedom
Images of Childhood
Memoir of Reverend Joseph Badger, 1801-1803
Ohio Constitution, 1802
Division of Land
Confession of William Clutter, 1810

Review for Quiz

This quiz will have three parts: a short essay question (select 1 of 3 on the quiz), identifications (select 5 of 6 terms on the quiz), and and historical document question. There will not be any objective (multiple choice, etc.) questions on this quiz.

Short essay questions:

1. How did Ohioans define progress in the early 19th Century? What concerns were raised about this idea of progress?

2. Who arrived to populate Ohio in the early 19th Century-where did they come from, what did they have in common, and how did they differ?

3. What were the options or choices for purchasing land in Ohio? What were buyers looking for when they selected lands to purchase? What were the risks or problems that they faced?

4. What did Ohio farmers produce and what was the impact of agriculture on the wider economy?

5. Beyond transportation, banks, government, employment, economic opportunities — identify and discuss two of the social, moral, and/or personal “improvements” that concerned Ohioans in the early 19th century? How did Ohioans address these concerns?

6. How did (any) two of the following regions of Ohio differ–Cincinnati and the Miami Valley, Western Reserve, The Scioto Valley, Eastern Ohio? What was distinctive about these two regions?

7. How did African Americans establish themselves and build communities in the face of exclusion? How did African Americans, who could not vote, participate in wider movements for social and political change?

8. Although often submerged under the identities of fathers and husbands, describe the extent to which women played an active role both in family enterprises and in some of the social and religious movements of the early 19th Century.

Terms for the quiz: You should be able to discuss the following names and terms in the context of early Ohio history: Arthur St. Clair, Symmes Purchase, 1802 Ohio Constitution, land companies, General Assembly, progress, equality, democratic government, market economy, canals, banks, Federalist, Republican, Jacksonian Democrats, Catholics, Quakers, Shakers, circuit riders, Methodists, Presbyterians, Separatists, public education, temperance, suffrage, abolition and anti-slavery, orphanages, the Ohio Penitentiary, Theodore Dwight Weld, Lucy Webb Hayes, Rutherford B. Hayes, William Clutter, Robert S. Duncanson, Oberlin College.

Historical Document Question: In addition to these readings, there will be a Document Based Question drawn from one of the Historical Document posts. It will feature the document and the question or questions that are highlighted in bold with the document.

You can find online and in libraries and archives a range of maps and images of Ohio landscapes. This is a lithograph produced by Merchants Lithographing Co. in Chicago offering a bird’s eye perspective on the city of Dayton showing railroads, canals, streets, houses, churches, city buildings, prominent factories, rivers and other features down to the fine detail of horses and carriages, wagons, and pedestrians on the streets. It is a rich source of information about the city when it was an expanding cross-roads of different transportation routes and the home to many small industries.

Search the American Memory Project for “Dayton 1870″ to access the Bird’s Eye View of Dayton, 1870; click on the thumbnail image to see a larger version. You can then use the zoom controls to focus on one part of the image or another. Explore the way different modes of transportation converged in Dayton and how these relate to factories.

The 1876 Noble County Atlas found in the Ohio Memory Project is an example of another great visual resource for Ohio history. The six pages featured in the OMP show farms and public buildings.

How do visual sources like enhance our understanding of farm or urban life in Ohio?

Sermons, school books, Sunday School tracts, and women’s magazines reveal a great deal about ideals of childhood and motherhood. The passage below is from the American Memory Project feature on Sunday School Books published between 1815 and 1865. Documents like this both reflect the culture and channel or influence the culture. What themes, concerns and ideals are reflected in this document? How might we judge the influence and significance of this religious literature?

“His Mother Made Him A Little Coat”

1.
Mother, an unclothed soul
Is given to thy arms,
See that the garment which you make
Is wrought with faithful care.
2.
Make it a little coat,
Without a seam of sin;
The outward part of humility,
And charity within.
3.
Add to it sleeves of love,
Embracing all mankind;
The buttons choose of burnished truth,
The emblem of the mind.
4.
Firmness a collar make,
All evil to resist,
Broad and expansive on the breast.
The needy to assist.
5.
Engirdle it around
With conscientiousness,
That every word may wisdom prove,
And every action bless.
6.
Make it of richest dye,
Fit for the marriage feast;
Then at the supper of the Lamb
He’ll be a welcome guest.
7.
No varying fashion’s change
Its fitness can impair;
No moth its texture can destroy,
Or mar its beauty rare.
8.
‘T will be a fitting garb
To wear ‘mid toils of earth;
‘T will be a bright and glorious robe
At its immortal birth.
9.
Then, mother, ceaseless work,
This garment to prepare,
In hope you may the heavenly bliss
Of a blest servant share.

AMERICAN REFORM TRACT AND BOOK SOCIETY,
CINCINNATI, OHIO.

We will have class on Tuesday, October 6
We will continue to address Ohio History before the Civil War.
Please read
Cayton, 75-105
as well as
Marian J. Morton, “Homes for Poverty’s Children: Cleveland’s Orphanages,” 1851-1933 Ohio History, 1988, Vol. 98, 5-22
and
Vernon L. Volpe, “Theodore Dwight Weld’s Antislavery Mission in Ohio.” Ohio History, Vol. 100, 5-18.

Remember that you will be responsible for the blog posts here regarding historical documents on your next quiz. You are expected to contribute a substantive comment (50 words or more) on one of these documents as well. If you have already commented on William Clutter’s Confession, thank you.

Historians examine the current scholarship and then they dig deeper by studying historical documents that may shed light on the research question. These documents may include maps, census or government records, diaries and journals, old newspaper articles, political cartoons, paintings, tools, houses, furniture, landscapes, etc. The American Memory Project Learning Page (the Library of Congress) also offers activities and lesson plans related to learning about American history with primary sources. As you look at historical documents, consider the questions suggested online in The American Memory Project’s “Port of Entry” activity.

1. Who created the source and why? Was it created through a spur-of-the-moment act, a routine transaction, or a thoughtful, deliberate process?
2. Did the recorder have firsthand knowledge of the event, or did the recorder report what others saw or heard?
3. Was the information recorded during the event, immediately after the event, or after some lapse of time? How large a lapse of time?
4. Was the recorder a neutral party, or did the recorder have a position, opinions or interests that might have influenced what was recorded?
5. Did the recorder wish to inform or persuade others?
6. Was the source meant to be public or private? Was it produced for personal use, for one or more individuals, or for a large audience?

ADDITIONAL useful resources for understanding historical documents:

One page worksheets for the analysis of written documents, artifacts, cartoons, maps, motion pictures, photographs, posters, and sound recordings are available to download from the National Archives.

History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web offers “Making Sense of History” a collection of tutorials and examples for the analysis and interpretation of these and other types of historical documents.

History Matters, a Web resource created by the Center for History and New Media, provides tutorials on using primary sources, searchable selections from primary sources, an annotated directory of American history on the Internet, and other resources for the U.S. History Survey course. Many Pasts, the collection of edited primary sources features three historical documents related to slavery and the Underground Railroad in Ohio: a magazine illustration for the story of fugitive slave Margaret Garner (an inspiration for Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved), an account written by an African American Underground Railroad “conductor”, and an account by a white abolitionist and supporter of the Underground Railroad. Read each of these documents and consider the different perspectives on slavery and the African American experience in antebellum Ohio.

(FOLLOW THE FIRST FOUR LINKS TO STUDY THE DOCUMENTS)

Freedom or Death, Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1867
John P. Parker, Conductor, on the Underground Railroad
“This Mysterious Road”: Levi Coffin Describes his Work on the Underground Railroad in Newport, Indiana, 1820–1850

American painter, Charles T. Webber created a scene of “The Underground Railroad,” in 1893, long after the Civil War and the end of slavery. How is the Underground Railroad remembered in this image?

How do these varied sources and perspectives contribute to our understanding of abolitionists and the debate over slavery in Ohio?

ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INTEREST
Search in the American Memory Project, as well, for the deed of Robert Kearney Moore in which he emancipates Nanny and comments on the institution of slavery. You will need to click on the image link to read the short, handwritten document in the Library of Congress’ American Memory Project collection.

You will find additional first-hand of the experiences of African Americans who were born in slavery and later came to live in Ohio at the Ohio Historical Society. During the 1930s, the Federal Writer’s Project interviewed former slaves in many states. The interviewers working for the Federal Writer’s Project were often white. The interviewers transcribed and edited the life histories from their field notes. How might the race relations in the 1930s impact on the ways that former slaves told their stories? On the ways that white interviews heard and presented the accounts that we have of the former slaves? How would this be different if the interview was conducted by a white interviewer with a sharecropping or tenant farmer living on a white owned plantation in a Southern state in the 1930s?

Reverend Joseph Badger was a Revolutionary war veteran from Massachusetts and a “hell-fire and brimstone” circuit riding Presbyterian missionary in Connecticut’s Western Reserve. Here he describes some of his early travels.

January, 1801. The frequent snows and rains rendered it difficult passing from one settlement to another. This was the last opening toward the lake. Here I tarried two weeks; in which time Mr. Palmer of Vienna, was taken sick. I was requested to go and see him. There was no doctor in the country. I found him very sick, and stayed and nursed him about eight days . . .

The next place I visited was Warren; was received courteously . . . I preached here on the Sabbath. In this place were eleven families, and one in Howland. From this I went to Canfield by the salt springs, where was one family employed in making salt, at three or four dollars a bushel. In Canfield there were eleven families. Preached here on the Sabbath, and on Monday rode to Deerfield, fifteen miles, and preached . . . On my way I saw a large wolf that followed several miles. Crossed the Mahoning on the ice, and returned the next day. One family west of this in Atwater; all beyond was unbroken wilderness.

I now revisted all the settlements in this part of the Reserve ad endeavored to encourage the people with hopes of a brighter day. Their hard beginning would soon pass away. The soil was good, and industry would soon produce plenty. Found here and there professing Chrisitians . . . wondering why they had come to this wilderness . . .

Of his own home, Joseph Badger wrote:

It became necessary that something should be done to our cabin, to prepare for the increasing cold and winter’s frost. Hitherto we had only half a floor of split logs, and no chimney; cracks between the logs open, without plastering or mudding . . . (Foster, 103-107)

For historical documents, it is important to consider the wider context in which the document was created. What larger movement was Reverend Badger a part of? What was the significance of this movement for Connecticut’s Western Reserve and for early Ohio history?

The passage above is from Emily Foster, ed. The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings (University Press of Kentucky, 1996). Foster’s anthology documents the Ohio frontier, 1700-1843 through letters, journals, and official records. It is a great resource if your research project touches on Europeans and Native American relations, frontier life, family, religion, migration and immigration.

For a related (optional) document, see “‘A Religious Flame That Spread All Over Kentucky’: Peter Cartwright Brings Evangelical Christianity to the West, 1801–04″.

We, the people of the eastern division of the territory of the United States, northwest of the river Ohio, having the right of admission into the general government, as a member of the Union, consistent with the constitution of the United States, the ordinance of Congress of one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of the law of Congress, entitled, “An act to enable the people of the eastern division of the territory of the United States, northwest of the river Ohio, to form a constitution and State government, for the admission of such State into the Union, on an equal footing with the original States, and for other purposes,” in order to establish justice, promote the welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish the following constitution or form of government, and do mutually agree with each other to form ourselves into a free and independent State, by the name of the State of Ohio. . .

The 1802 Ohio Constitution arose in a time of political turmoil between the Federalists and the Republicans who enjoyed growing popular support. St. Clair, the territorial governor and a Federalist interested in keeping power in the hands of elites, argued against a rush towards statehood. His arguments included the threat that the Republicans (Republicans tended to come from Virginia, Federalists from New England) would raise new taxes and extend slavery into Ohio. President Jefferson, a Republican, quickly recalled St. Clair from office while the delegates in Ohio continued to work on a constitution, a prerequisite for statehood. Although the most recent census fell short of the required 60,000 population, the suggestion that the population had undoubtedly risen to meet that requirement allowed for speedy recognition of Ohio’s constitution.

Under the 1802 Constitution, the state capitol was temporarily located in Chillicothe, Ohio–leaving room to move it elsewhere:

Chillicothe shall be the seat of government until the year one thousand eight hundred and eight. No money shall be raised, until the year one thousand eight hundred and nine, by the Legislature of this State for the purpose of erecting public buildings for the accommodation of the Legislature.

The powers of the governor, as enumerated in the 1802 Ohio Constitution were quite limited. The governor served as commander in chief and authorized commissions. However, the governor had no veto power and the authority to make appointments, and determine the budget, establish new counties, and approve all executive appointments all rested with the General Assembly. The two houses of the General Assembly appointed Supreme Court justices for 7 year terms and the Assembly was authorized to establish additional courts.

Under Section 22 of Article 1, the assembly or legislature was also obliged to see that “An accurate statement of the receipts and expenditures of the public money shall be attached to, and published with, the laws annually.”

Article IV, Section 1 defined eligible voters:

In all elections, all white male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State one year next preceding the election, and who have paid or are charged with a State or county tax, shall enjoy the right of an elector; but no person shall be entitled to vote, except in the county or district in which he shall actually reside at the time of the election.

Consistent with the Northwest Ordinance, the Bill of Rights adopted with the Ohio Constitution also banned slavery and involuntary servitude:

There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in this State, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; nor shall any male person, arrived at the age of twenty-one years, or female person arrived at the age of eighteen years, be held to serve any person as a servant, under the pretense of indenture or otherwise, unless such person shall enter into such indenture while in a state of perfect freedom, and on a condition of a bona fide consideration, received or to be received, for their service, except as before excepted. Nor shall any indenture of any negro or mulatto, hereafter made and executed out of the State, or if made in the State, where the term of service exceeds one year, be of the least validity, except those given in the case of apprenticeships.

The Bill or Rights also protected freedom of conscience and the press; freedom from unwarrantable searches and seizures of property as well as familiar rights: the right to bear arms (in defense of both self and the state), the right to a trial by jury and to hear the testimony presented. The Bill of Rights also guaranteed access to education although there was little provision of schooling in early Ohio:

That no law shall be passed to prevent the poor in the several counties and townships, within this State, from an equal participation in the schools, academies, colleges and universities within this State, which are endowed, in whole or in part, from the revenue arising from donations made by the United States, for the support of schools, academies and universities, shall be open for the reception of scholars and students and teachers, of every grade, without any distinction or preference whatever, contrary to the intent for which said donations were made.

The Bill of Rights restricted the harsh treatment of prisoners and provided for reasonable bail to be set. The Bill of Rights also provided for the incorporation of businesses and guaranteed that, in Ohio, “Private property ought and shall ever be held inviolate, but always subservient to the public welfare, provided a compensation in money be made to the owner.”

Ohio was the first to achieve statehood following the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance. However, Ohio was still a frontier region subject to ongoing wars with Indians and their British allies. The War of 1812 would free land from Indian claims in much of Ohio while the conflict discredited and destroyed the Federalist party.

What vision of government was reflected in Ohio’s 1802 Constitution? How were citizenship and rights defined in the 1802 Constitution?

Optional: You can read the 1802 Ohio Constitution online.