OHIO. LIFE IN A LOG CABIN.
The little baby boy John's first American home was a log cabin and
his cradle was made of part of a hollowed-out tree trunk. When he
began noticing things from the doorway, his eyes took in a great space
filled with a multitude of stumps, the dark and lonely forest, the new
and strange fields of Indian corn, the tender green of spring, the
gold of autumn, and the great white landscape of winter. When he was
but three years old, Ohio became a state.
Remembering the witticism, so common a generation ago, that "some men
are born great, and some are born in Ohio", we may believe that John
Chambers came very near a double inheritance, though failing in but
one share; for, to the end of his days, he boasted that he was by
birth an Irishman.
Among his earliest playthings were the "buckeyes", or horse-chestnuts,
from the particular tree, so plentiful in the new land. As the Bible
was then, besides being in supreme honor as the Word of God, the one
familiar volume, library, reference, and text-book, source of literary
and intellectual recreation, John, as he learned to read, was as
much delighted to find the _popular_ name of "Ohio" in the Bible, as
American tourists in Japan are, to hear the sound of this good State's
name, in the Japanese for "good morning".[4]
[Footnote 4: See I. Chronicles VI:5, about Bukki, the father of Uzzi.]
In after years, in the freshness of his metropolitan fame, John
Chambers visited several times his old home, the log cabin in which he
grew up. The house is now a weather-boarded dwelling place, but in the
wooden walls is still to be seen the little hollow place or alcove,
where were kept the decanters or glasses, containing cherry brandy
and whiskey, which were so popular and in such general use in those
early days before teetotalism, or prohibition or no license was known.
During the war of 1812, this house was used as a recruiting station
for volunteers, and here the young soldiers pledged their glass in
token of their patriotism and comradeship. Against this phase of
social life, the boy John set his face from the first.
William Chambers lived the life of a pioneer in the American forest.
He gained his bread by tilling the soil, and a little ready money by
burning the timber and leaching the potash out of the ashes, and by
other industries common to the forest. Indian cooking was soon learned
and the food of the red man became popular. In fact there are very
few purely American dishes, which are not evolutions from the Indian
originals. Sugar was plentiful from the maple trees, but salt was very
costly and hard to get. By boring wells, brine was found from which
good salt could be made.
Life on the frontier was necessarily rude in some points, especially
in moral relations with the Indians. As pretty much all Irishmen
are very fond of religion and whiskey and a bit of a fight, there
were often rough scenes. William Chambers was a strong character and
his hot temper was easily roused, but his wife, an equally strong
character, but with finer strength, was cool-headed and made a good
balance for her husband. She was a noted nurse and especially skillful
in the sickroom. Hence she was often called upon for help by both
friends and strangers in time of pain and misfortune. Malaria and
homesickness were common woes. Devoutly pious, she trained up her
children in the fear and love of God, and by them and even by later
generations her memory is treasured.
The religion of these pioneers may have been narrow, but it was strong
and deep. It was based on a first-hand knowledge of the English
Bible. Even in his early life, as I remember Mr. Chambers saying, he
revolted against bigotry and the kind of religion that was not rich in
love to one's neighbor. These were psalm-singers and not hymn-using
Christians, but the Methodist preachers and Christians of other sorts
than Scotch-Irish Presbyterians were in the land. The boy John once
heard an old gentleman say that he would as soon sit down to the
Lord's Supper with a horse-thief, as with a man who sang Dr. Watts'
version of the Psalms.
Little John also refused to touch liquor, for he saw the awful effects
of its use, and grew to have a hatred of it. On one occasion, the
little fellow rebuked a crowd of men, including his own father, for
their drinking habits whereby the parent, William Chambers was greatly
affected. "The heart of the child three years old is in the heart of
the sage of sixty," as says the Japanese proverb, was true of John
Chambers, the metropolitan preacher, but it was in childhood that
God began to shape this bonnie bairn for a long life of usefulness.
The boy in the Ohio forests was a hearty hater of all bickering and
squabbling. He was often called upon to settle differences. He came to
be known among neighbors and friends as "the little peacemaker." "The
child is father to the man," and all his life John Chambers was mighty
as a reconciler.
John Chambers's boyhood was thus spent in the wilderness in continuous
hard work, by which he toughened his thews and kept his cheeks rosy,
rising into brave, pure, and clean manhood. He took his part in the
hard work of the farm, even to clearing the forest. He knew what it
was to "lift up axes against thick trees." With his other brothers
and sisters, he enjoyed life to the full. Politically, in this
Jeffersonian era, his parents took the Democratic view of things,
so that their offspring had the spirit of democracy in their veins.
All his life the intensely patriotic John followed the faith of his
father, and was, as he called himself, a Constitutional State-Rights
Democrat.
He was taught to read and write at home, but with that true
instinct for education, which is inborn with Calvinists and the
Scotch-Irishmen, his parents wished to have him better educated.
They sent him, therefore, when he was but fifteen years of age, to
Baltimore, where lived some of their relatives. A journey over the
mountains in the early nineteenth century was like a trip to the
Philippines in our days, but John gladly set out on horseback, with a
party, in the spring of 1813, to the city on the Patapsco.
It seems that he had no special purpose of remaining permanently
there, but Providence made his a stay of twelve years. After some
experience at school, he decided to learn the jeweler's trade. Thus
with business, and later with love, and then a call to the ministry,
Baltimore was to be the city in which his mind was shaped, and which
all his life was to him, socially, as magnet and star.
Patriotism, too, had something to do with making the Monumental City
his home. It was war time, and the second struggle with Great Britain
was on. As a municipality, the young city, but sixteen years old, had
already become a famous place for the building of ships, the timber
being floated down from the heart of New York state and from northern
Pennsylvania, along the old line of Sullivan's march of 1779, by
way of the Susquehanna River. Immediately on the declaration of war
by Congress, a swarm of privateers sailed out of the Patapsco and
Chesapeake to prey on Great Britain's commerce, especially in the West
Indies. Hence the British government early decided that one of the
first places to be occupied was Baltimore. The stalwart youth from
Ohio arrived in good time to hold a shovel and dig earth to throw up
entrenchments, over which waved "The Star-Spangled Banner". He worked
several days in the trenches. In September, 1814, the British forces
made their attack under Col. Ross, a veteran under Sir John Moore
and Wellington. Their commander was killed and the assault given
up. The next day Admiral Cockburn's fleet bombarded Fort McHenry in
vain. The attack from ship by water was as ignominious a failure as
was the attempt by land. The happy result was the deliverance of the
city and the birth of America's national song, "The Star-Spangled
Banner". Francis Scott Key, detained against his will on the deck
of the British man-of-war Minden, was an indignant spectator of the
bombardment, but in the morning of September 14th, saw his country's
flag "in full glory reflected ... on the stream". In 1876 a bronze
statue to his memory was erected and Old Defenders' Day keeps alive
the stirring memories of September 11th, 1813.