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The Political Culture of the Ohio Valley in the Nineteenth Century

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The Political Culture of the Ohio Valley in the Nineteenth Century "As My Father's Child Has": The Political Culture of the Ohio Valley in the Nineteenth Century Nicole Etcheson In 1816, Thomas Lincoln moved his wife and argued, the Ohio Valley was the "Valley of two children across the Ohio River from Kentucky Democracy," the Turnerian frontier where settlers into Indiana. Lincoln followed the path of many forged an individualistic society that rejected elitist other settlers. Born in Virginia 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 Illinois when migrants from the keep territorial settlers as wards of the federal gov- Upland South met migrants from other regions. 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 Thomas Lincoln 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- Abraham Lincoln (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 Munich 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 United States, 1850s.12 Scholars of the late nineteenth-century landing at New York 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 Missouri, 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.
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