his chopping blocks to strike the tuning-fork, for Cincinnati, even after
the location there of Fort Washington, was many times on the verge of
starvation, and would have starved but for the timely help of frontier
hunters under the noted Colonel Wallace, who brought the meat of buffalo,
bear and deer to the stricken settlement. To-day the city dines well. In
truth, it is famed for its good cheer and its bohemian independence.
Cincinnati is a city of homes and churches, and singularly free from the
crime that prowls in the slums of other cities. Therefore some of its
citizens take pride that the city is credited with being one of the
greatest whiskey markets in America, that forty-three breweries and storage
vaults are in demand, and that the city annually turns out 49,000,000 packs
of playing-cards, making it the largest center of this industry in the
world.
In many industries Cincinnati leads. The wealth of cities throughout the
continent is locked in banks and vaults manufactured in Cincinnati. The
cowboys on the plains and the horsemen on city paddocks sit in saddles
fashioned in Cincinnati. Cigars by the millions in this country are packed
in boxes manufactured in Cincinnati. It produces more schoolbooks than any
other city, and is near the head of the list in turning out religious
publications.
On the 22d of February, 1794, a canoe left Cincinnati with a federal
mailbag consigned to Pittsburg. This marked the beginning of regular
service with the East. In early days, a Cincinnati merchant seeking to buy
goods in New York consumed sixty days in making the journey to the
metropolis. To-day he may lunch in the Queen City, take a train and lunch
the following noon in Manhattan. Long before the advent of railways,
Cincinnati became a center of travel and distribution. As early as 1801, a
full-rigged brig took on a cargo at Cincinnati and set sail for the West
Indies. Not long after, and many years before Fulton turned his attention
to Western waters, citizens of Cincinnati met at Yeatman's Tavern to
consider a "contrivance for transporting boats against the current by the
power of steam or elastic vapor," but without tangible results; and, in
fact, when the first steamboat did paddle noisily past the city the
circumstance was dignified with only a four-line notice in the Cincinnati
press.
Before long, however, the steamboat revolutionized river travel, and
thenceforth Cincinnati leaped by bounds from a village to a great city, and
every recurrent trip of these harbingers of vast commerce seemed to find a
new suburb springing into bustling life on the Cincinnati uplands.
[Illustration CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CINCINNATI.]
The fact that this city was originally included and still remains in the
New Orleans customs district shows its accessibility to ocean traffic. Its
superiority in water communication is shown by a computation made by the
Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce regarding the relative cost of transporting
freight from points of origin to all parts of the United States. The
comparisons per 100 pounds are as follows: From Cincinnati, 81 cents;
Chicago, 84 cents; St. Louis, 88 cents; Minneapolis, $1.22. A similar
computation applicable to a radius of 600 miles from the point of origin
gives the following averages per 100 pounds: From Cincinnati, 66 cents;
Chicago, 73 cents; St. Louis, 75 cents; Minneapolis, $1.11.
While growing into greatness, Cincinnati did not forget, in the critical
times of the Civil War, its honorable history as the former outpost of the
Republic. Its trade was largely with the South, but sternly its citizens
decided that arguments in favor of trade interests smacked of treason, and
with stoic heroism closed the city to rebellion. And when Lew Wallace,
fortifying Cincinnati to anticipate attack, called for volunteers, the
whole community responded, and from the Ohio valleys came the
sharp-shooting "squirrel hunters" in procession seemingly endless to defend
the city.
[Illustration SUSPENSION BRIDGE.]
Since then the growth of Cincinnati has been in keeping with the
development of the nation. It does not hope, as Harriet Martineau
suggested during her visit here, ever to become the home of the country's
capital, but it rejoices in being the great city nearest the American
centre of population. Its library of a quarter of a million volumes and its
Historical Society cherish the splendid stories of its past and the
accumulating data of its current achievements. Its artists and citizens
delight in dignifying that record in bronze and marble in the environing
parks and city squares.
The visitor to Cincinnati, on a clear afternoon, should take passage on an
incline road, rise to the heights of Eden Park, and traversing that high
plateau, whose natural beauty and landscape gardening earn for it its name,
find his way to the water tower. An elevator lifts him five hundred feet to
the observatory platform, where with field-glasses he may behold the
splendid panorama of Cincinnati. Far below, spanning the river over which
"a crazy craft with sails and paddles" once ferried the people, he sees
five massive structures of steel and stone, including the famous suspension
bridge, begun in the early part of the Civil War, and by its completion
during the stress of that conflict testifying eloquently to the faith of
its citizens that strife was not to sever the nation, and that these
mammoth girders of steel would constitute an important tie in the
inevitable reunion of North and South. It was of this structure that James
Parton wrote in 1867, that the whole population of Cincinnati might get
upon it without danger of being let down into the water. The five superb
bridges in their capacity and security afford marked contrast to the
earlier attempts to span the river which floods swept away, including the
arched structure which went down in the torrent of 1832, accompanied on its
seaward flight by a tumbling Methodist church which the roaring Muskingum
had added to the universal baptism.
Not all of the life that now courses through Cincinnati's streets could
crowd upon its bridges, for the people of the cities and villages across on
the Kentucky shore belong in every commercial and social sense to
Cincinnati, and swell its population to the half-million mark. In fact,
within a radius which the vision from this tower almost sweeps, there are a
dozen ambitious and wealthy Ohio cities, founded by the sturdy men of the
Revolution who went forth from Cincinnati and still tributary to the parent
town.
The traveler is surveying sacred ground. Mount Auburn beside him marks the
site where fell a captain serving under George Rogers Clark, one of the
first of the many brave soldiers of the American Revolution to mingle their
dust with Ohio soil, which thus enriched has produced many Presidents and
renowned statesmen almost without number.
Leading away from the city the observer on the tower sees the Miami and
Erie Canal, which, connecting Cincinnati with Toledo and furnishing a
highway by which boats could pass from New Orleans via the Queen City
through various inland waters, finally reaching the harbor of New York,
made Cincinnati as early as 1830 a half-way house for continental traffic.
The canal recalls that on the tow-path the barefooted Garfield began his
career.
While glancing at the surrounding reservoirs from which water is forced to
this tower for the supply of the terrace-built city, the traveler may
recall the story of the eccentric wanderer, the celebrated Cincinnati
"water witch" who with hazel or willow crook went about from hamlet to
hamlet indicating hidden springs and at whose direction, in truth, the
Queen City dug its first well.
[Illustration RESERVOIR, EDEN PARK.]
Descending now, the traveler may view the observatory which John Quincy
Adams dedicated to science, or move with the crowds flocking to the Zoo or
to the groves where free concerts are given, or he may find his inspiration
in roaming through the haunts that still treasure the memory of U.S. Grant,
or visit the site of taverns that entertained Webster and Andrew Jackson,
who paused here on his way to Washington, and that extended frequent
hospitality to Henry Clay, stopping here while journeying to or from the
national capital.
Passing over the suspension bridge, the traveler may let the sun go down
upon his itinerary as he stands upon the bank of the Licking, made
memorable by the vigilant canoe cruises of Daniel Boone. Near by is the
cottage home of the Grants. Passing a Shawnee effigy in front of a
tobacconist's stand, the visitor sees the illumination of the city
beginning to twinkle against the shadowy background. The multi-colored
lights of myriad street-cars flash over bridges and up the steep streets of
the hill-built metropolis. The headlights of locomotives on nineteen
railroads, representing over twenty thousand miles of track, gleam in and
out of the city. It is a moving picture, a perpetual memorial and
celebration of the valiant labors of those paladins of pioneer conquest who
on that Christmas week, 113 years ago, struck their flint and started
their fires in the primeval woods, kindling thereby a light which though
flaring at times before the whirlwinds of savage war, and all but quenched
with baptisms of fraternal bloodshed, now burns with a steadiness and
brilliancy that shall last as long as time.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
DETROIT
THE QUEEN CITY
"Here, beside the broad, blue river builded,
I am Queen City of the Lakes."
BY SILAS FARMER
A stream of crystal clearness, wide and swiftly flowing, the waters of
silver and blue alive with fins and scales, a course dotted with islands
large and small, wild ducks in myriads diving and dining along shores
bordered with pond lilies and flags, stretches of yellow sand and bluffs
of yellow clay peopled with buffalo, bear and deer, with wide leagues of
grassy pastures and pleasing vistas beyond, walnuts, oaks and maples
sentinelling the scene, and skies and sunsets of unrivalled azure and gold
adding the final touch of beauty--such was Nature's invitation to the first
visitors to the Detroit.
The earliest of the French travellers to this region was the Sieur Joliet,
who came in 1670, and was followed the same year by the Sulpician priests,
Galinee and Dollier. Eight years later La Salle in _Le Griffon_, the first
sail-vessel on the Great Lakes, passed through the "strait of Lake Erie,"
and July 24, 1701, Cadillac and his company landed at the present site of
Detroit to establish a fort and permanent settlement.
The desire to escape from Roman or Protestant oppression which led to the
founding of Baltimore and Plymouth had no place in the thought of those who
colonized Acadia and the West. True, there had been one or two feeble
efforts to found French Protestant colonies in America. The great Coligny
sent a Huguenot colony to Florida more than fifty years before the
_Mayflower_ arrived at Plymouth Rock. The Spaniards, however, fell upon and
hanged these colonists, their placards stating that it was done, "not
because they were Frenchmen, but because they were heretics." Under
Cardinal Richelieu, all Protestant emigration to America was discouraged
for fear the emigrants would unite with the English or make converts of the
Indians. The conversion of the Indians to the Romish faith was always
specially designated among the objects of French enterprise in America. The
charter of the "Hundred Associates" of April 29, 1627, expressly stated
that it was granted for the primary purpose of converting to the Catholic
faith the Indians, usually designated as "worshippers of Baal." All these
motives played their part in the founding of Detroit, but not quite so
important a part as the commercial motive.
[Illustration CADILLAC SQUARE, SHOWING CITY HALL AND MAJESTIC BUILDING.]
Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac, the founder and commandant, was no
mere adventurer. In courage, in scholarship, in mental grasp and in general
acumen he deserves a place with the founders of Baltimore and Philadelphia.
The confessedly fictitious description of his personal appearance and the
one-sided analysis of his character by Gayarré were founded on incomplete
knowledge. As an officer of the French marine, Cadillac fearlessly crossed
the Atlantic again and again as though it were but an inland ferry. On the
coast of America he explored the harbors and islands of New England and
noted at length their peculiarities and advantages. As a soldier and knight
of the Order of St. Louis, he penetrated into the wildest of western wilds,
served as commandant at Mackinaw, Detroit and Mobile, repeatedly defeated
the Indians at these posts, and compelled them to sue for peace. He had the
scholar's habit of writing detailed memoirs of the places he established or
was commanded to inspect. He wielded a pen as sharp as his sharp sword. The
opponents of his plans had need to fear its point. He spared no words. "A
traveller cannot afford to stop," he said, "for every dog that barks." And
illustrating the fact that many of the French lived so much among the
Indians that they became like Indians themselves, he sententiously said,
"With wolves one learns to howl."
He denounced frauds boldly. Count Frontenac spoke highly of his "valor,
wisdom, experience and good conduct." It was no ordinary man to whom a wife
could by word and deed alike bear witness as Cadillac's wife bore witness
to her husband. After they had been married for fourteen years, and when
the colony was less than two years old, in company with Madame Touty, in an
open canoe with Indians and woodsmen for an escort, she made the journey
of a thousand miles from Quebec to Detroit in the fall of the year when
fierce winds and rough waves and heavy rains might be expected. When one of
the Quebec ladies reminded her in advance, "At Detroit you will die of
_ennui_," she replied, "A woman who loves her husband as she should has no
stronger attraction than his company wherever he may be; everything else
should be indifferent to her."
The American cities that equal us in age and population are few indeed. Two
hundred years are behind us, and three hundred thousand people fill our
homes. Our people are and ever have been of many types. In the early days
_coureurs des bois_, bluff, hearty, reckless, and Indians, the squaw
trudging along bent double under her basket of bead-work, the unburdened
brave stalking proudly, noiselessly along, frequented the place. Dutch
traders from the Mohawk coasting along the Lakes early brought negro slaves
from Albany.[3] In our social life the Gallic spirit remains to soften and
harmonize. The dash of gorgeous coloring which the almost continuous
existence here of a military post has given, the distinction and grace
which the early arrival of some of old Virginia's noblest children has
lent, the intellectual vigor which Puritan New England has contributed, and
the solidity and conservatism furnished by the presence of the many wealthy
landed proprietors have all shared in the making of a social life as rich
as it is attractive.
[Illustration THE DETROIT RIVER FROM "WINDMILL POINT," 1838. FROM A PENCIL
DRAWING.]
After the first settlers came strange sights. Round-towered and red-painted
windmills began to dot the banks of the Detroit, and all "along shore"
narrow farms, a city block in width and fifty times as long, stretched from
the river rearward to meadows and woods. The canoe and the pirogue were
always in the stream, and in them the French girls were as much at home as
mermaids in the sea. The fort was the centre of every interest. It was a
log stockade enclosing a plot of ground three or four hundred feet square,
and lay south of what is now Jefferson Avenue, occupying at least the
western half of the block between Griswold and Shelby streets. Within it
commandant and soldiers were gathered, the church was located, justice
administered and goods were kept on sale.
A large influx of immigrants, especially in 1749 and 1754, caused the
extension of the stockade, but at no time were grants of farms made within
several hundred feet of the fort. The intervening space was in large part
used as a "common field," and year after year oats and onions were produced
where only paving-stones could now be raised. Eventually of course the
houses overflowed the stockade, stretching towards the farms, but for a
long time the owners of farms on either side resisted any encroachment of
streets or people, and for many years the city could grow only northwards.
The French farms that hemmed in the city possessed many advantages. Even
when included within the city they, for many years, practically escaped
taxation because undivided into lots. Indeed, until a comparatively recent
period there was no taxation of real estate and really no need for any; for
whenever the city needed money it sold a lot. This reckless style of
living continued till 1834, the extraordinary expenses connected with the
cholera season of that year making larger taxation needful.
In this connection it is well to recall an unusual state of affairs that
placed many lots at the disposal of the city. In the year 1778, during the
Revolutionary War, the English, to protect them against the Americans,
erected a large fort where the new Post-office is located, in the block
bounded by Shelby, Wayne, Lafayette and Fort streets. At the close of the
war this fort, with its grounds, passed into the possession of the United
States. In 1826 Congress gave this property, worth to-day more than a score
of millions, to the city whose expenses had before been paid by fees
derived from various licensed persons and pursuits. Upon the reception of
this property the city fathers deemed it necessary to level and grade the
old fort and its appurtenances and to lay out streets thereon. The cost of
the work was paid by the issuing of city "shinplasters" which could soon be
bought for sixty cents on the dollar. The lots laid out within the limits
of the old cantonment were sold at nominal prices, the purchasers paying
for them in the depreciated city bills. The result was that the net
proceeds to the city from the sale of this extensive domain amounted to
only $15,000, and even this was not permanently invested, and no vestige of
the funds remains. In contrast to the dissipation by the city of valuable
property is the wisdom displayed by individual holders whose property later
became worth millions. If the city officers of that day had possessed
foresight as well as power, they might have so conserved the city's
possessions as to have made Detroit an Utopia. All the public schools and
other civic buildings and appurtenances could have been built and paid for,
and the city government could to-day be carried on without taxation, or at
least with only a tithe of the amount that is now required to be paid.
[Illustration WEST GRAND CIRCUS PARK.]
It was during the decades of 1820-1840 that the tide of emigration from
East to West reached its height. It began in 1825, on the completion of the
Erie Canal, and was greatly increased by the larger number of steamboats on
the Lakes that immediately followed. The opening in 1854 of the first
railroad from the East to the West, the Great Western of Canada, made it
possible to go still faster and with greater ease, and during the whole
period Detroit gained largely in population. The introduction of
street-cars in 1863 afforded opportunity for easy access to outlying
regions, and since then the city limits have been several times extended,
until now they embrace an area of not far from thirty square miles, with a
river frontage of seven miles.
Contemporaneously with the rush of settlers to the State and city between
1830 and 1840, came what is known as the "flush times of 1837." Emigration
to the West had become almost a stampede, both steam and sail vessels were
crowded to their utmost, and knowing the dearness of Eastern lands and the
cheapness at which Western lands could be purchased, nearly every person
came prepared to buy and did buy lands for settlement or speculation. So
great was the rush that all careful preliminaries were dispensed with, and
if only a title could be shown, anything that "lay outdoors" could be
disposed of. Town sites were a favorite form of investment, and the supply
kept pace with the demand. Surveyors and draftsmen were soon busy day and
night representing imaginary cities on paper. On these plans, literally
like "Jonah's gourd," there sprang up in a night, stores, dwellings and
court-houses, indeed, all the appurtenances of an old established town. The
era of "wildcat" banks had just begun and the principal security of their
bills was the land covered by these imaginary towns. Theoretically, twenty
per cent. of the bills issued by the too easily organized banks were to be
secured by specie deposits. Actually, not five per cent. was so deposited.
The same coin--in some cases in the same boxes--was exhibited by a score of
different banks, and in some instances "coin boxes" were filled with iron
and other substitutes for specie. These frauds were winked at by bank
commissioners, who should have inspected the contents of the boxes. There
was thus a trinity of imaginings,--imaginary towns, imaginary banks and
imaginary inspection. When the bubbles burst there were left in some places
towns and houses without a single inhabitant, and certain of these houses
contained room after room in which the walls were literally papered with
bank bills in sheets that had never been cut apart or signed.
The most important local event was the fire of June 11, 1805, which
destroyed every house in the city save one. The memory of the fire is
preserved in the present seal of the city, the mottoes, _Resurget
Cineribus_, "She has risen from the ashes," and _Speramus Meliora_, "We
hope for better things," representing both prophecy and fulfilment. Out of
the fire grew an entirely new plan of the town, new lot alignments and
assignments, and a new form of government. The former streets, twelve feet
wide, grew into broad avenues, and the years have added areas and
improvements which in any city would be marks of prosperity and beauty.
The form of government which the fire introduced was, however, its unique
result. The beginnings of the strange methods of government that obtained
are found in the organization of the Ohio Company, and in that notable
document, the Ordinance of 1787. Under the latter, Congress was to appoint
a governor whose term was for three years, unless sooner revoked, who was
required to possess in freehold an estate of one thousand acres in the
territory; a secretary for the term of four years, unless revoked, who was
required to have five hundred acres of land; and three judges, any two of
whom constituted a court to have common-law jurisdiction, and each of whom
was required to own five hundred acres of land.
The governor and judges were appointed January 11, 1805. Judges Woodward
and Bates arrived at Detroit June 12th, and found the town wiped out by the
fire of the previous day. A few stone chimneys and, near the fire line,
several antique pear trees alone remained. Governor Hull arrived on the
evening of July 1st. The date of the arrival of Judge Griffin is unknown.
In many respects the Governor and judges were well fitted to enter upon
and complete the laying out of a new Detroit. Judge Woodward came from
Alexandria, Va., and understood and admired the plan of Washington, then
new. He manifestly desired and determined that Detroit should be modelled
after that "City of Magnificent Distances." Sections of his plan as drawn
by A.F. Hull, the son of the Governor, could be laid upon the plan of
Washington and matched to a line.
[Illustration WAYNE COUNTY BUILDING, FACING CADILLAC SQUARE.]