This dissertation has been 65-1172 microfilmed exactly as received CURL, Donald Walter, 1935- MURAT HALSTEAD, EDITOR AND POLITICIAN. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1964 History, modem University Microfilms, Inc.. Ann Arbor, Michigan MURÂT HAISTBÂD, EDITOR AND POLITICIAN DISSERTATION Presented in Partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By - Donald Walter Curl, B.Sc., M.A. The Ohio State University 1964 Approved ty AdAdvisery Department of History AUTOBIOCffiàPHI October 7, 1935 Born - Logan County, Ohio 1957 . 8. Sc., Ohio State University 1957-1959 Student Assistant, Department of History, The Ohio State University 1958 . M. A., The Ohio State University 1959-60 . Graduate Assistant, Department of History, The Ohio State University 1960-1961 Teaching Assistant, Department of History, The Ohio State University 1961-1962 Instructor, Department of History, The Ohio State University 1962-1964 Instructor, Department of History, Kent State University^ Kent, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Late Nineteenth Century American History Medieval History. Frank J. Pegues Modern European History, 1870 to present. Charles Moeley The Slavery Controversy and the New South. Henry H. Simms United States History to 1850. Eugene H. Roseboom ii CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. CHILDHOOD AND THE YOUNG M A N ......................... 1 II. THE APPRENTICE JOURNALIST............................. 30 m . THE EDITOR a ND THE CIVIL W A R ................ 70 IV. HALSTEAD AND PRESIDENT JOHNSON ...... ............ 115 V. HALSTEAD THE JOURNALIST.......... 143 VI. HAISTEAD THE TOURIST AND WAR CORRESPONDENT . .177 VII. THE LIBERAL RE P U B L I C A N ............................. 208 VIII. THE ELECTION OF 1876 .................. 255 IX. HAISTEAD THE POLITICIAN............................. 289 X. THE ELECTION OF 1884 ..................... 309 XI. THE PAYNE AFFAIR ............................ 329 XII. THE BALLOT-BOX F R A U D .................... 36l XIII. THE TWILIGHT OF A JOURNALIST ........ 384 XIV. E P I L O G U E .......... 408 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................... 410 H i CHAPTEti I CHILDHOOD AND THE YOUNG M&N As the hour approached midnight on December 31, 1901, a lonely and dejected old man sat in room 1756 of the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago, far from his family and friends in Cincinnati, writing a memoir of the preceding year. His loneliness, his recurring financial difficulties, his legal problems, and a host of other worries convinced Murat Halstead on this New Year's Eve that his life was at an end. He seemed to realize that, taken from any point of view, his life was basically one of the nineteenth century, not of the twentieth. Through his forceful personal style of journalism, Halstead had made the Cincinnati Commercial into one of the leading newspapers of the United States. Now it and his fortune were gone, the result of a struggle with the McLean family and their Enquirer— a struggle between the personal journalism of the editorial room and the business journalism of the count­ ing room. A power in Ohio political circles, a friend of Republican gov­ ernors, senators, and presidents, he had ventured into officeholding only once, and this had also brought the centuries into conflict and Halstead defeat. He was nominated as minister to Germany by Benjamin Harrison, but his editorial denouncements of corruption in senatorial elections re­ sulted in the Senate's failure to confirm him. Turning from newspaper and political life to the authorship of books on current affairs and 1 2 biography he seemed to meet success. His The Illustrious Life of William McKinley sold three-quarters of a million copies and established the rec­ ord for the greatest number of books ever sold by one author in the same length of time. Yet instead of recouping the lost Halstead fortune, the book only brought legal difficulties, and as a result, little financial return. Again the centuries had come into conflict, and the nineteenth- century author lost to twentieth-century business ethics. The world of the past century with its Ohio Republican presidents, many of whom had been friends of Halstead, ended with McKinley's assassina­ tion. While he was yet to see another Ohio Republican, and former Commer­ cial legal reporter, nominated for president, Halstead's period of great influence and political power was over. To his friends he might talk of starting a new "penny" newspaper in Cincinnati, one selling for a cent or two, and appealing to the masses. Yet he knew that the age when a paper could be successfully inaugurated through its forceful editorship was forever over, and that high-speed presses, scores of reporteu, and almost unlimited financial resources were now needed for such a venture to be profitable. The Creeleys and the Halsteads had been passed over for the Pulitzers and the Hearsts. And on that New Year's Eve in 1901 Halstead felt that an age of integrity and honesty had been passed over for an age of money and power. Now in his seventy-second year, he recog­ nized that he had not been meant to be a millionaire^ He felt that he had had such a chance in the past, but instead had chosen what to him was the path of honor. If he did not have a fortune on which to live out his old age in comfort and security, at least he felt he had the peace of mind that comes to a man of public trust and influence who never betrayed 3 that trust and never sold that influence. As the great clocks of the city struck twelve and tue church bells pealed out their welcome to the new year, the lonely and dejected Halstead was consoled by the typically- nineteenth-century thought that while lacking fortune, he, nonetheless, retained his integrity,^ Murat Halstead was a child of nineteenth-century mid-western America and was typical of his era and place in almost every respect save his first name. This unusual name had been given him by his father, a colonel in the local Paddy's Bun unit of the Ohio State Militia, and a devotee of military history. "Colonel Griff," as young Murat's father was called by the people of Butler County, greatly admired Napoleon's commander of cavalry, Joachim Murat. During the 1820's Murat's two sons Game to the United States and the American newspapers published accounts of them and of their father's career, further arousing the colonel's interest in the Murat family. Thus when the colonel's first son was born his Christian name became that of the illustrious Murats. The birth of a first- son and heir was a great event in the life of any pioneer family, and the colonel celebrated Murat's birth in a manner that his frontier friends and neighbors greatly appreciated. Soon after the event the colonel's militia unit gathered for their an­ nual muster. As the exercises came to a close, a wagon was driven to the front of the lines, and the proud new father invited all present to ^urat Halstead Papers, Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio (Cincinnati). The full citation for each title will be found only in its first use in.each chapter. come forward and do honor to his son by sampling the contents of the 2 barrel of corn whiskey in the back. The Halsteads were an ancient English family, the name Halsteede or Halsteade appearing in the Doomsday Book of the late eleventh century. The Halsteads in later periods were yeomen and tradesmen, with a few mer­ chants, churchmen, and naval officers, and even some members of the landed gentry. The first American Halstead was Henry who' migrated from England in 1651 and became the owner of a large slave plantation on or near the 3 site of what today is the city of Norfolk, Virginia. Murat's immediate family can be traced from John Halstead, his grandfather, who was b o m and reared in Currituck County, North Carolina, near the Virginia state line. John married Ruth Richardson, a young girl of similar southern gentry background. Their first home, in Orange County, North Carolina, was where Griffin, Murat's father (and their second child) was born in 1802. As was often typical of the era, John was unsatisfied with the land in North Carolina, and having heard stories of the blue grass land of Kentucky, decided to move West with his family. In the fashion of those early days, all the earthly possessions of the Halsteads were packed in a wagon and the long journey to the West and a new home began. A life of deprivation, of make-shift housing, or of long years of toil was not the destiny of the Halstead family, for packed in the center of the wagon was a keg of silver coins, the means of purchasing new land and farm equipment, and of building a house in this fertile area. The William L. Halstead Manuscript, Philosophical and Historical Society of Ohio, 17. ^Ibid,, 1 6 . 5 Blue Grass section surpassed all of John's expectations, but the land titles of Kentucky were in such confusion in 1810 that he was afraid to risk his small fortune and decided to cross the river into Ohio at Cin­ cinnati.^ The "Queen City" was then a miserable little village of a thousand people living in about three hundred log cabins sprawling along the hanks of the Ohio River. John was not impressed. He later said he would not have traded the silver in his keg in return for the whole town. Moving on to the area known as Paddy's Run in Butler County, he bought 381 5 acres at two and a half dollars an acre.