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Home , David Herbert Donald, Gustav Koerner, Kate Chase, Leon Litwack, Morris Birkbeck, Thomas Lincoln

"As My Father's Child Has": The Political Culture of the Valley in the Nineteenth Century

Nicole Etcheson

In 1816, Thomas moved his wife and argued, the Ohio Valley was the "Valley of two children across the from Democracy," the Turnerian frontier where settlers into . Lincoln followed the path of many forged an individualistic society that rejected elitist other settlers. Born in during the politics of the East.^ Thomas's son would later epito- Revolution, his family had moved to Kentucky when mize that dream of upward political mobility and the he was five. There Indians killed his father. With ideals of a democratic society when he told Ohio sol- only a minimum of education, but able to sign his diers at the end of the Civil War, "I happen, tem- own name, Thomas worked as a hired laborer, a porarily, to occupy this big White House. I am a liv- skilled carpenter, and eventually bought his own ing witness that any one of your children may look to farm. That purchase garnered him political rights as come here as my father's child has."4 well as property and he served as a juryman and Scholars now dispute Barnhart's conclusion that patroller against the Indians. Thomas was a "respect- political culture paid as much attention to democra- ed citizen of a growing community" in Kentucky cy as contemporaries claimed. This may have been when he moved his family.1 true during the frontier period, as Elizabeth A. In Indiana, Lincoln sought secure title to his Perkins suggests for settlers in Kentucky, but as the land. Like many in Kentucky, he had found himself frontier receded, the elite came to dominate politics. involved in constant litigation over land titles. He Perkins's important book looks at the backcountry may also have been uncomfortable in a slave owning from the settlers' point of view. She finds an informal society. North of the Ohio River, Lincoln made his backwoods political culture of "shared civic responsi- land payments and took astute advantage of the laws bility," created by distance from governmental cen- to get the best deal possible on public lands. In ters and on-going conflict with local indigenous peo- Indiana, he succeeded in getting one hundred acres, ples. Early experiments in democracy could not be legally his and free of debt. He was a solid citizen, a totally erased even as Kentucky became more settled church member and Clay Whig, remembered by a rel- and drew its leaders from the elite. The new political ative as strong, at six feet and 200 pounds, good- culture praised the frontier virtues of bravery and natured, God-fearing, temperate, with a taste for story endurance and enjoined men of property and birth to telling.2 demonstrate those qualities to legitimize elite leader- 5 The political culture that men like Thomas ship. Lincoln created in the Jacksonian period emphasized Andrew R. L. Cayton and Donald J. Ratcliffe the primacy of the common man. As John Barnhart have debated the nature of the "Frontier Republic" in the case of early Ohio. Both recognize the importance of "democracy" to the development of political cul- Nicole Etcheson, Associate Professor of History at the ture. While Cayton sees a compromise emerging University of Texas at El Paso, received her doctorate between settlers' desire for local sovereignty and the from Indiana University. Her book, The Emerging territorial government's desire for stability and order, Republic: Upland Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest 1787-1861, was published by Indiana Ratcliffe argues for the early ascendancy of organized University in 1996. political parties. For almost a generation, Cayton's

Winter 2001 "As My Father's Child Has" work has been the standard treatment of early Ohio. My recent book looks at political culture created in According to Cayton, Federalist officials sought to Ohio, Indiana, and when migrants from the keep territorial settlers as wards of the federal gov- Upland South met migrants from other . ernment until they achieved the discipline and order- Despite a firm consciousness of themselves as differ- liness the backcountry seemed to lack. Jeffersonian ent from New Englanders, these southerners, like the settlers fought a protracted battle for local control Lincolns, shared common ground with other against this Federalist "aristocracy/' only to find the migrants. All adhered to a political system of repub- charge of aristocracy hurled at them when they licanism, although southerners sometimes defined achieved statehood. Although Cayton's settlers and republicanism differently, placing greater emphasis territorial officials thought in terms of "democracy" on the necessity of manly political leaders than did New Englanders, for example. Political parties called on migrants to forget their regional origins and remember their commonly held beliefs as Democrats or Whigs. And all migrants increasingly came to see each other as westerners until the sectional crisis of Civil War reminded some, but not all, of earlier regional ties.7 and his son could only have achieved the level of political influence they did in a society that offered expanded political power to non- elite white men as Perkins and Barnhart argue. The younger Lincoln remained sensitive to the sectional identities of Illinoisans, as demonstrated when his opponent in the 1858 senatorial race, Stephen A. Douglas, taunted him for tempering his views on race to suit the audiences in different parts of the state.8 Both Lincoln and his father took democracy as seri- ously as Cayton and Ratcliffe. Through a combina- tion of sectional politics, organized partisanship, and enhanced status of the common man, Thomas's son became president. Gustav Philipp Koerner was far from a common man. Born in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1809, the son of a bookseller, publisher, and art dealer, Gustav studied law at three German universities, eventually receiv- (From CHS Photograph Collection) ing his doctorate and pursuing a legal career in Frankfurt. His family was immersed in liberal poli- tics. His father named Gustav for a Swedish King and "aristocracy," they did not engage in organized who opposed Napoleon. While at university, he party activity in the modern sense of "mass partici- joined the Burschenschaft, the liberal student move- pation in choosing a government." In two recent ment, and became involved with revolutionary poli- books, Ratcliffe argues that organized partisanship tics. He helped to guard Leipzig when the July 1830 existed long before the second party system. Ratcliffe revolution in France promised to spread to Germany. finds in the first party system, even in the political Later that year, Koerner spent four months in a limbo following the War of 1812, the kind of party jail when authorities overreacted to students organization and partisan loyalty earlier historians drinking, carousing and singing revolutionary songs have argued did not emerge until the 1830s.6 on Christmas eve and imprisoned thirty people on This author has argued that regional identity suspicion of an attempt to overthrow the monarchy. powerfully shaped political loyalties and ideologies. Koerner was involved in such a plot two years later in

28 Ohio Valley History i833/ the April 3 Franfurter Attentat. Koerner and Frederick C. Luebke points out that the thirty-two other men attacked the guard house but Germans were not considered as politically active as found the authorities prepared to quickly suppress the Irish, with their long history of anti-English the uprising. Wounded in the scuffle at the guard- activism and their concentrated settlement in cities. house, Koerner went home. His sister smuggled him Ethnic groups did not necessarily vote as a bloc, espe- out of town in women's clothes and he fled the coun- cially on economic issues where class might have try for France. trumped ethnicity. Certain issues, such as drink, Although reluctant to leave his family perma- tended to solidify the immigrant vote when econom- nently, Koerner realized that he could never cam- ic issues were in abeyance. Luebke sees a self-con- paign for change effectively in Germany now that his scious ethnic identity emerging in response to the identity as a revolutionary was well known to the Know-Nothing anti-immigrant reaction in the government. In May, he sailed for the , 1850s.12 Scholars of the late nineteenth-century landing at City in the summer of 1833. Midwest have emphasized such ethnocultural divi- Gustav traveled with other German exiles, eventual- sions as central to the politics of that period. Richard ly marrying the daughter of another refugee family. Jensen, using then-innovative quantitative methods, They intended to settle in , among the sub- argues religion as the basis of party loyalty and polit- stantial German population of St. Louis, but the sight ical behavior. Morality, such as the century-long cru- of slaves being sold and lashed in the city persuaded sade against alcohol, potentially disrupted partisan them to settle on a farm in St. Clair County, Illinois, division over economic issues. Paul Kleppner agrees where another German colony, known as the "Latin with Jensen in de-emphasizing economic factors and settlement," existed. To learn English and the nature stressing religion. Kleppner's "pietists" sought to of American jurisprudence, he studied law for a year impose moral values on "sinners" through govern- in the United States before taking up practice in ment action. According to Kleppner, Republican Belleville, Illinois.9 Although Koerner's route to the politicians of the 1850s hoped to widen their appeal United States was unique, he was only a small part of to immigrant Germans such as Koerner by submerg- an enormous trans-Atlantic migration taking place in ing the pietistic values of the party, which repelled the early 1800s.10 German American voters. Luebke, Jensen, and By the early 1840s, Koerner had become Kleppner debate whether moral or economic issues involved in politics. He became a Democrat, per- mattered most to the nineteenth-century Midwest's suaded of their "far more liberal views" than the political culture. They assume, of course, that polit- "money-power" Whigs. He was elected to the Illinois ical culture was open to both the native-born such as legislature, the first German to serve in the state leg- Thomas Lincoln and the immigrant such as Gustav 13 islature of either Illinois or Missouri. He served as a Koerner. But it was not open to everyone. justice of the Illinois supreme court and lieutenant Opportunity for white men such as Thomas . In the 1850s, he switched from Lincoln and Gustav Koerner came at a price. Native the Democratic party to the Republican. His friend inhabitants of the Ohio Valley were first conquered in on the Illinois bar, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas's son, warfare and then removed from the en masse made Koerner minister to Spain, succeeding another in order to make room for new settlers. After the German immigrant, . Although Koerner defeat of the western tribes in the Battle of Fallen retired from public life in the 1870s, his career illus- Timbers in 1794, indigenous people of the Ohio trates the political power available to white immi- Valley came under increased political pressure to grants in the age of the common man. Koerner cer- make land cessions, suffered the erosion of their cul- tainly saw it thus, for he responded in 1884 to the tures from alcohol abuse and trade dependency, and toast "Our Country" by saying, "our Republican endured frequent harassment from white settlers. institutions, securing us political and religious liber- Territorial governors in Ohio and Indiana noted that ty, giving every man an equal chance to get along in whites who murdered Indians could not be prosecut- the world, weld us together in an incredibly short ed; such crimes occurred with impunity and fre- time, while still allowing for individual and even quently with little cause.14 11 national differences in non-essentials." A year before Gustav Koerner's birth, a Shawnee

Winter 2001 "As My Father's Child Has" 29 named Tenskwatawa founded a settlement in north- east Indiana called Prophetstown. Tenskwatawa, himself a reformed alcoholic, preached a message of religious revitalization which called upon the Ohio Valley tribes to reject as "children of the Evil Spirit." Although white leaders failed to recog- nize the Prophet's movement as an indigenous reac- tion to the pressure of white settlement, preferring to blame the British, Tenskwatawa and his brother, the war leader Tecumseh, intended their alliance with the British to serve native political ends—a halt to further land cessions to the United States. Ultimately, Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh failed to unite the tribes. They failed also to suppress the government chiefs who willingly bargained away land to whites. In November 1811, Indiana territori- al governor William Henry Harrison led a militia force against Prophetstown. In Tecumseh's absence, Tenskwatawa gambled that his military leadership would suffice. Defeated in the Battle of Tippecanoe, Tenskwatawa lost both religious and political power among his people. The Shawnee became dependent on their alliance with Britain. During the War of 1812, Tenskwatawa followed the British army, fleeing from the defeat at the Battle of the Thames in 1814, in which Tecumseh died. After the war, Tecumseh (From CHS Photograph Collection) Tenskwatawa remained in exile in Canada. When he returned to the Ohio Valley a decade later, it was at the request of white territorial officials who wanted instead focused on southern tribes such as the to use him to persuade the native peoples to be .'7 removed. Perhaps cherishing some return to political Although defeat cannot help but be a part of the power, Tenskwatawa allowed himself to be a white story of Indian resistance, Edmunds and other authors tool. He headed the removal of the Shawnee to make clear the skill and resourcefulness with which Kansas and died there in 1836, still an exile from his the Shawnee fought. Gregory Evans Dowd places the home and never having regained the political influ- Shawnee in the context of revitalization and resist- IS ence of the pre-war period. ance movements from Pontiac's rebellion to the In R. David Edmunds's biography of Cherokee struggle against removal.'8 In both his Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee confronted white politi- work on Tenskwatawa and a short biography of cal and military power head-on and suffered near total Tecumseh, Edmunds seeks to emphasize the central- defeat. As Robert F. Berkhofer points out, "Probably ity of the Prophet's religious revitalization movement the most significant turning point in the accultura- to Indian resistance and to remove Tenskwatawa tive history of an Indian tribe was the loss of political from the shadow of his brother, who is more admired autonomy." After that, the tribe was no longer free to among whites because of the familiarity of his politi- choose those portions of white culture it would cal and military form of resistance.'9 John Sugden accept or reject."1 That historians of the Jacksonian acknowledges both continuity and defeat but points period have paid little attention to the Ohio Valley out that Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa used the British tribes after the War of 1812 testifies to the Indian loss and Americans as much as whites used Indians. He of political and military power. Historians of the credits Tenskwatawa with having fundamentally removal era and government Indian policy have influenced Shawnee religious tradition and argues

Ohio Valley History that Tecumseh's military leadership in the War of post a $1,000 bond. Leon Litwack's classic study of 1812 saved Canada for Britain even though the move- northern free blacks details the disabilities under ment the brothers constructed could not save the which men such as Free Frank operated. They faced Ohio Valley for the Shawnee.20 segregation in jobs, education, housing, and public Another population could neither be completely accommodations. Although northern racism shared removed, nor completely accepted as political equals: many assumptions with the southern version, free blacks. Free Frank, a Kentucky slave, was born in Litwack notes discrimination was not and the during the Revolution. Throughout North offered certain opportunities to free blacks that his life, Frank exploited the loopholes in white socie- southern slaves could not enjoy. Illinois law might ty to grasp the greatest opportunity possible for him- constrain Free Frank far more than it would Thomas self and his family. Allowed to hire out some of his Lincoln or Gustav Koerner, but it was not as coercive own time, Frank saved money to buy, first his wife, as slavery. Frank proved adept at exploiting any and then his children and even grandchildren from opportunity and he found one in the laws on estab- slavery. Frank and his wife skillfully manipulated the lishing towns.2' legal system. Since slaves could not buy or free other Illinois did not prohibit from slaves, Frank's purchase of his wife was off-the- founding towns. Frank, who "never hesitated to take record, but he did ensure that the white owner regis- advantage of state and federal laws, especially when tered her emancipation. When sued for debt, Frank's the possibility existed that additional money could be defense was that slaves could not make contracts. earned to buy his family from slavery," platted a town When the creditor sued Frank's wife, now a free in Pike County. But town founding did not endow woman, her defense was that, as a married woman, Frank with the lobbying power to secure his town's she could not be held liable for her husband's debts. future. In 1840, Free Frank lost a political battle The creditor found himself in a no-win situation, when the Illinois legislature relocated a road so that it unable legally to recover from either debtor.21 Older histories have argued that slavery in Kentucky, with its small farms, was "in its mildest form compared to the plantation states of the ."22 More recent works, such as Steven Weisenburger's account of the Margaret Garner case, indicate Kentucky bondpeople saw the full share of slavery's horrors. Margaret Garner, the historical fig- ure upon whom Toni Morrison's novel Beloved is based, cut the throat of one of her children and per- haps drowned another rather than see the family return to their Kentucky master.2' Marion B. Lucas's comprehensive treatment of blacks in Kentucky doc- uments both the institutional disadvantage suffered by both free and slave African Americans and their resistance to those disadvantages.24 Free Frank well illustrates Lucas's thesis. In 1830, Frank moved his family to Pike County, Illinois. Such a move did not bring equality. Illinois free blacks, like free blacks in many northern states, could not vote, serve as jurors or as witnesses against a white, serve in the militia, or attend the public schools. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, although free under the , had restrictions on black settlement. Illinois required African Kate Chase Sprague, on the right (From CHS Photograph Americans to register a certificate of and to Collection)

Winter 2001 "As My Father's Child Has" ran on the outskirts of Frank's town, rather than the extent of her political activity and a good modern down its main street, and through the main part of biography is lacking. The sentimental account of another, white-platted, town.26 Mary Merwin Phelps emphasizes Kate's political When Frank died in 1854, he left a substantial ambition, channeled though it was through her legacy, not just of property but of a love of freedom, father's career. Phelps reports that Kate arranged a education, and pride in his family's accomplishments. dinner party for undecided senators during the Like Stephen A. Vincent's study of black settlements impeachment of President , trying to in Hamilton and Rush counties, Indiana, a town itself sway them toward acquittal. She attended the 1868 may decline, but the memory of the black community Democratic convention, following the proceedings enshrines the meaning of the settlement's successes.27 closely in hopes her father would receive the nomi- Unlike Free Frank, Kate Chase was the daughter nation. She allegedly influenced , of privilege and position. Born in 1840 to the lawyer reputed to be her lover, not to support Samuel Tilden and politician Salmon P. Chase and his second wife, in the 1877 election controversy. Even after her sup- Eliza Ann Smith, Kate was known for her willfulness, posed retirement from politics, she campaigned for intelligence, beauty, and devotion to her father. anti-saloon legislation in the Washington suburbs While Salmon Chase became a senator, governor of where she lived. Alice Hunt Sokoloff disputes Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury, Supreme Court Chief Phelps's contention that Kate played as close a role in Justice, and perennial aspirant for the presidency, his these affairs. Many of these political events coincid- daughter was his hostess, loyal supporter, and politi- ed with the breakup of her marriage, which consumed cal confidant. Educated at a school her attention to the exclusion even of politics. for girls, Kate learned the accomplishments pre- Sokoloff contends Kate was actually absent from scribed for young ladies of her social class. She spent Washington during much of the impeachment hear- summers at her father's farm near , but ings because of arguments with her husband. But Kate Chase preferred the world of society. At sixteen, Sokoloff does not deny Kate's active interest in poli- she presided over the governor's residence in tics: she maneuvered to help her father gain the 1868 Columbus and at twenty she became leader of a social nomination, she wrote letters to General William T. circle in Washington, D.C., that rivaled that of Mary Sherman concerning the army's role in Lincoln, earning the first lady's jealousy. Reconstruction, and even while in , United In 1863, she married William Sprague, the States diplomats sought her out for information and wealthy former governor of and Union advice. Unable to vote or stand for office, Kate Chase Sprague's keen intelligence and political skills found army officer. Sprague was not her intellectual equal, 29 causing gossip that Kate valued his money and polit- other outlets. ical position more than his talent. The marriage was Kate Chase Sprague lived when domesticity, the an unhappy one, marred by infidelity, violence, and care of household and children, was supposed to be a scandal. The couple divorced in 1880. Kate retreated woman's primary concern. Nancy Cott, Mary P. for a few years to Europe but returned to Ohio in 1886 Ryan, and Kathryn Kish Sklar have detailed this to oversee the reburial of her father. Her later years "woman's sphere" of home and family.'" Unlike were marked by tragedy: the suicide of her only son, some middle-class women, Kate did not form close the care of a mentally handicapped daughter, and the female bonds at school or at home that might have search for funds to sustain herself and her other two challenged the patriarchal society. Carroll Smith- daughters. Upon her death in 1899, President Rosenberg has noted the importance of "female bonds William McKinley, another Ohio politician, provided of love and ritual," while Keith E. Melder has found a special train to transport her body from her father's the "beginnings of sisterhood" in women's schooling Washington, D.C., home, where she had lived her last and participation in moral reform movements.1' years, to burial next to her father in Cincinnati.2" Kate's mother and stepmother died in her childhood. At the end of her life Kate Chase Sprague Unlike the women studied by Smith-Rosenberg, endorsed the woman movement; she had Melder, or Cott, Kate Chase found no female tic to practiced politics all her life, even though denied the supersede love of her father. Her aptitude for politics male privilege of voting. Her biographers disagree on could express itself through his career and she

Ohio Valley History showed no interest in moral reform efforts, or even tional gender order, in which women deferred to the nursing during the Civil War, that brought other leadership of men" and women's own "passion for women into the public sphere. Cott judiciously politics and a desire to be heard."37 Like Varon's assesses the conflicting arguments over whether Virginians, Kate Chase Sprague lived within the con- domesticity victimized or empowered women.32 Kate straints of this paradox. Chase shone in women's sphere as a society hostess, Thomas Lincoln's son, Abraham, attended Kate impressing her circle with her wit, poise, and intelli- Chase's wedding, one of the most anticipated events gence. She was a devoted mother, concerned with the of Washington society. Abraham Lincoln had come education of her children. But her talents could only far from his father's frontier origins. A successful cor- find outlet through the career of others, her father and porate lawyer, the younger Lincoln had entered the husband, and her political influence declined with highest political and social circles. His native Middle her scandalous divorce. Like many other women of West had become the most solidly middle-class sec- her time, Kate Chase Sprague found herself destitute tion of the country. Lincoln's career bears out without a male breadwinner because there were few Andrew R. L. Cayton's and Peter S. Onuf's argument occupations women, especially women of her class, for "the triumph of bourgeois culture" in the could profitably pursue.33 Midwest. According to Cayton and Onuf, settlement Ellen Carol DuBois has documented why the of the Ohio Valley occurred at the same time as the demand for full political rights was too radical for economic changes of the market revolution. The many nineteenth-century men and women to result was the emergence of a middle-class society accept.14 But there is a growing literature demon- based on capitalist institutions. Like other nine- strating that women found other ways to be political- teenth-century Americans, middle westerners ly active. Mary P. Ryan has challenged the rigid resolved their ambivalence about these economic boundaries between men's public sphere and changes by stressing the benefits of prosperity.38 women's private sphere by finding women present, Charles Sellers, who has described the market revolu- either in symbolic or actual form, in public. Female tion in a comprehensive survey of the early nine- deities represented the Republic in parades, women teenth century, calls Lincoln a "rustic convert to entered public debates over prostitution, and bourgeois orthodoxy."39 His father, a Clay Whig, endorsed or condemned male political behavior.35 shared some of the same assumptions about the Glenna Matthews finds "public" a much more necessity for economic growth and the availability of ambiguous term for women because of its connota- opportunity. tions. A "public woman" was a prostitute and The son, born in the proverbial log cabin, came women who sought to enter the male sphere were to symbolize the unlimited political opportunities 36 charged with immorality. Kate Chase's experience the republic offered its citizens. But expanded eco- bears out Matthews's cautionary tale. Her interest in nomic and political opportunity could not disguise public affairs and in public men, such as Conkling, the fissures that still divided United States society. It was deemed unseemly and became the subject of was a society that offered greater political opportuni- nasty speculation. Kate chose to use her influence ty to the sons of Thomas Lincoln, or even Gustav indirectly, passing notes to speakers on the floor of Koerner, than it did to the sons of Free Frank or Congress, holding dinner parties, prodding her Tenskwatawa or even the daughter of an elite man father's male campaign managers, rather than speak such as Salmon P. Chase. Unlike Kate Chase Sprague, in public herself Kate Chase Sprague more nearly fol- or Free Frank or Tenskwatawa, Abraham Lincoln and lowed the pattern of elite Virginia women described Gustav Koerner did not have to exercise political by Elizabeth Varon who wielded political power power indirectly. John D. Barnhart's "Valley of despite their political disabilities. These women peti- Democracy" was one in which white men forged the tioned, participated in reform associations, published political culture that those who were neither white their political views, and campaigned. Southern soci- nor male confronted. ety accepted an "ideal of female civic duty" and southern women conducted politics despite the seeming "paradox" of "a commitment to the tradi-

Winter 2001 "As My Father's Child Has" 33 1 Louis A. Warren, Lincoln's Youth: Indiana Years Seven to New History of Kentucky (Lexington, 1997); Eugene H. Twenty-One, 1816-1830 (Indianapolis, 1991), 12-14, 4-6, 10, Roseboom and Francis P. Weisenburger, A History of Ohio 139-40, xvi. Biographers now dismiss the old description (Columbus, 1953). of Thomas Lincoln as a slothful layabout. Stephen B. Oates, 4 Warren, Lincoln's Youth, xxii. With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New 5 Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in York, 1977) and , Lincoln (New York, the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill, 1998), 117-50. For 1995)- older studies of the frontier period, see Thomas D. Clark, The On the expansion out of the southern backcountry, see Rampaging Frontier: Manners and Humors of Pioneer Days in David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, Away I, 'm Bound the South and Middle West (Indianapolis, 1939); Everett Dick, Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement (Richmond, The Frontier: A Social History of the Southern Frontier X993)/ 65-124. For migration and settlement of New from the First Transmontane Beginnings to the Civil War (New Englanders, see Virginia E. McCormick and Robert W. York, 1948); Arthur K. Moore, The Frontier Mind: A Cultural McCormick, New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier: Migration Analysis of the Kentucky Frontiersman (Lexington, 1957); and Settlement of Worthington, Ohio (Kent, 1998). On migra- Thomas Perkins Abernethy, Three Virginia Frontiers (Baton tion and politics, see Kenneth J. Winkle, The Politics of Rouge, 1940). Malcolm J. Rohrbaugh, The Trans-Appalachian Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (New (Cambridge, Eng., 1988). York, 1978) and Reginald Horsman, The Frontier in the 2 Warren, Lincoln's Youth, 12-14, !58-59/ 189-90, 206, 84-86. Formative Years, 1783-1815 (New York, 1970) are good surveys 3 John D. Barnhart, Valley of Democracy: The Frontier versus of western settlement. the Plantation in the Ohio Valley, 1775-1818 (Bloomington, 6 Andrew R. L. Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and 1953). Nineteenth-century politicians argued that, even if they Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825 (Kent, 1986), ix-xi; were now wealthy, they had once been poor. Like his father, Donald J. Ratcliffe, Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Abraham Lincoln flatboated down the as a com- Democratic Politics in Ohio, 1793-1821 (Columbus, 1998) and mon riverman, an experience shared and boasted of by other The Politics of Long Division: The Birth of the Second Party politicians such as Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. Warren, System in Ohio, 1818-1828 (Columbus, 2000). Lincoln's Youth, 4-6. On the riverboat experience, see Michael 7 Nicole Etcheson, The Emerging Midwest: Upland Allen, Western Rivermen 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse (Baton Rouge, 1787-1861 (Bloomington, 1996). Richard Lyle Power argued for 1990), esp. 170-71. the importance of regional identity as well in Planting Corn There are numerous histories of the Ohio Valley states in Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and the nineteenth century which emphasize political develop- Yankee in the Old Northwest (Indianapolis, 1953). For a com- ment. The best include, on Ilinois: Clarence Walworth Alvord, prehensive discussion of the society and culture of the Old The Illinois Country, 1673-1818 (Springfield, 1920); Theodore Northwest, see R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Calvin Pease, The Frontier State, 1818-1848 (Springfield, 1918); Period, 1815-1840 (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1950). Ralph W. Arthur C. Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1878 Wooster, Politicians, Planters and Plain Folk: Courthouse and (Springfield, 1919); on Indiana: John D. Barnhart and Dorothy L. Statehouse in the Upper South, 1850-1860 (Knoxville, 1975) Riker, Indiana to 1816: The Colonial Period (Indianapolis, discusses upland southern political culture. For superb com- 1971); Donald F. Carmony, Indiana, 1816-1850: The Pioneer munity studies, see John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on Era (Indianapolis, 1998); Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Illinois Prairie (New Haven, 1986) and Don Harrison the Civil War Era 1850-1880 (Indianapolis, 1965); on Kentucky: Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: F. Gavin Davenport, Ante-bellum Kentucky: A Social History, Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-1870 (Urbana, 1978). Studies of the 1800-1860 (Oxford, Ohio, 1943); E. Merton Coulter, The Civil Midwest in the Civil War have frequently noted the regional War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, 1926); on basis for conflict between anti-war Democrats and the Ohio: Randolph Chandler Downes, Frontier Ohio, 1788-1803 Republican administration. See Frank L. Klement, The (Columbus, 193s); William T. Utter, The Frontier State: 1803- Copperheads in the Middle West and The Limits of Dissent: 1825 (Columbus, 1942); Francis P. Weisenburger, The Passing Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (Lexington, 1970); of the Frontier, 1825-1850 (Columbus, 1941); Eugene G. R. Tredway, Democratic Opposition to the Lincoln Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 1850-1873 (Columbus, 1944); Administration in Indiana (Indianapolis, 1973); and Kenneth Henry Clyde Hubbard, The Older Middle West, 1840-1880: Its M. Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War Social, Economic, and Political Life, and Sectional Tendencies (Bloomington, 1949). Before, During, and After the Civil War (New York, 1936). 8 Robert W. Johannscn, ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of Single volume state histories include Robert D. Howard, 1858 (New York, 1965), 12. Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (Grand Rapids, 1972); 9 Thomas J. McCormack, ed., Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, Richard Jensen, Illinois: A Bicentennial History (New York, 1809-1896: Life-sketches Written at the Suggestion of His 1978); James H. Madison, The Indiana Way: A State History Children (2 vols., Cedar Rapids, 1909), vol. I, 1-296. For anoth- (Bloomington, 1986); Thomas D. Clark, A History of Kentucky er memoir of settlement in the early Ohio Valley, written by an (Lexington, 1937); Lowell Harrison and James C. Klotter, A English immigrant, see Morris Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey in

34 Ohio Valley History America (Ann Arbor, 1966, orig. 1818). Helen I. Cowan, British of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787- Emigration to British : The First Hundred Years 1862 (Lexington, 1965), x. (Toronto, 1961) discusses emigrants such as Birkbeck. 17 Ronald N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian 10 See Marcus Lee Hanson, The Atlantic Migration, 1607- Era (Lincoln, 1974) and Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian 1860: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United Policy in the Formative Years: The Indian Trade and States (New York, 1961) and Maldwyn Allen Jones, American Intercourse Acts, 1780-1834 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). Immigration (, i960) for standard treatments of immi- 18 Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North gration in the nineteenth century. See Mack Walker, Germany American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore, and the Emigration, 1816-1885 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964) on 1992). German immigration. On the more famous German migration 19 R. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian of 1848, see Carl Wittke, Refugees of Revolution: The German Leadership (, 1984), 223-25. Forty-Eighters in America (, 1952) and A. E. 20 John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York, 1998). Zucker, ed., The Forty-Eighters: Political Refugees of the 21 Juliet E. K. Walker, Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the German Revolution of 1848 (New York, 1950). On the Irish, see Antebellum Frontier (Lexington, 1983). Lawrence J. McCaffrey, Textures of Irish America (Syracuse, 22 J. Winston Coleman, Jr., Slavery Times in Kentucky 1992); Joseph P. O'Grady, How the Irish Became Americans (Chapel Hill, 1940), vii. See also Ivan E. McDougle, Slavery in (New York, 1973); William V. Shannon, The American Irish Kentucky, 1792-1865 (Westport, 1970). (New York, 1963); and Carl Wittke, The Irish in America 23 Steven Weisenburger, Modern Medea: A Family Story of (Baton Rouge, 1956). Slavery and Child-Murder from the (New York, 11 Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, vol.I, 332; vol. 11, 730. 1998); Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York, 1987). 12 Frederick C. Luebke, Germans in the : Essays in 24 Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, vol.i: the History of Immigration (Urbana, 1990), 79-92, 161-63. On From Slavery to Segregation, 1760-1891 (Frankfort, 1992). the Irish in politics, see Steven P. Erie, Rainbow's End: Irish- 25 Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, States, 1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), vii-x. Eugene H. Berwanger 1840-1985 (Berkeley, 1988). discusses the effect of racism on white expansion into the west, 13 Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and including the Ohio Valley, and the slavery issue in The Frontier Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago, 1971), xi-xvii and Paul against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Extension Controversy (Urbana, 1967). V. Jacque Voegeli exam- Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900 (New York, 1970), 369-75. ines how the Civil War affected midwestern race relations in 14 Stephen Aron describes the conflict between Indians and Free But Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro during the whites in Kentucky in How the West Was Lost: The Civil War (Chicago, 1967). Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro Transformation of Kentucky from to Henry Clay in Indiana: A Study of a Minority (Indianapolis, 1957) and (Baltimore, 1996). Charles T. Hickok, The Negro in Ohio, 1802-1870 (Cleveland, 15 R. David Edmunds, The Shawnee Prophet (Lincoln, 1983). 1896) are state case studies. For a discussion of the free black See also James H. Howard, Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a community, see James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Native Indian Tribe and Its Cultural Background (Athens, Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Ohio, 1981) for a discussion of religion, ceremony, economy, Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 (New York, 1997). and culture. Randolph C. Downes, Council Fires on the Upper 26 Walker, Free Frank, 105. Ohio: A Narrative of Indian Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley 27 Stephen A. Vincent, Southern Seed: Northern Soil: African- until 1795 (Pittsburgh, 1940); Michael Connell, A Country American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900 Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724-1774 (Bloomington, 1999). (Lincoln, 1992); and Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: 28 Mary Merwin Phelps, Kate Chase, Dominant Daughter: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley 1673-1800 (New The Life Story of a Brilliant Woman and Her Famous Father York, 1997) discusses the Ohio Valley tribes before the nine- (New York, 1935); Alice Hunt Sokoloff, Kate Chase for the teenth century. Defense (New York, 1971). Tribal histories include Hiram Beckwith, The Illinois 29 Phelps, Kate Chase, 198-99, 204-11, 244-51; Sokoloff, Kate and Indiana Indians (Chicago, 1884); Jerry E. Clark, The Chase for the Defense, 108, 138, 144-50, 206-7, 229, 265, 267. Shawnee (Lexington, 1977); Bert Anson, The Miami Indians See also Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Norman, 1970); R. David Edmunds, The Potawatomis: (Kent, Ohio, 1987) which records Kate's interest and involve- Keepers of the Fire (Norman, 1978); A. M. Gibson, The ment in her father's career. Kickapoos: Lords of the Middle Border (Norman, 1963); Clifton 30 Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's A. Weslager, The Indians: A History (New Sphere" in , 1780-183 5 (New Haven, 1997); Mary Brunswick, 1972). For an account of U. S. policy toward the P. Ryan, The Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida Indians during the period of the Shawnee struggle, see Reginald County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge, Eng., 1981); Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812 Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American (East Lansing, Mich., 1967). Domesticity (New Haven, 1973). 16 Robert F. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis 31 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of

Winter 2001 "As My Father's Child Has" 35 Gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985); Keith E. Melder, the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850- Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Women's Rights 1920 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1986) studies the evolution of the Movement, 1800-1850 (1977). For a comprehensive survey of suffrage movement in one state. women's education, see Thomas A. Woody, A History of Women's 35 Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Education in the United States (New York, 1929), vol. 1. Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore, 1990), 3-18. 32 Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, 197-206. 36 Glenna Matthews, The Rise of Public Woman: Woman's 33 Alice Kessler Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage- Power and Woman's Place in the United States, 1630-1970 Earning Women in the United States (New York, 1982) is the (New York, 1992), 3-11. standard history of women's work and is mostly concerned 37 Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to Be Counted: White Women with industrial labor. Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, 19-62, and & Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1998), 1-9. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, 198- 210, discuss the nature 38 Andrew R. L. Cayton and Peter S. Onuf, The Midwest and of women's work under separate spheres. the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region 34 Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The (Bloomington, 1990), xvii. Timothy R. Mahoney explores the Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in creation of that middle-class society in the Upper Mississippi America, 1848-1869 (Ithaca, 1978). See Eleanor Flexner, River Valley in Provincial Lives: Middle Class Experience in Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the the Antebellum Middle West (Cambridge, Eng., 1999). United States (New York, 1959) for an overview of the move- 39 Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian ment for suffrage. Steven M. Buechler, The Transformation of America, 1815-1846 (New York, 1991), 395.

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Ohio Valley History