to their duty, as they saw it, is beyond question. They were all representatives of the best citizenship of their day and generation, and each vindicated in his way the faith of the framers of the first constitution that the people could be trusted to select for their governors men whom they knew to be tried and true; men in every way worthy to be called leaders of men.

THE GOVERNORS OF OHIO UNDER THE

SECOND CONSTITUTION.

JAMES E. CAMPBELL.

The second constitution of Ohio was adopted in 1851, but Reuben Wood, then governor, remained in office until 1853, so that the topic, "The Governors under the Second Constitution," covers precisely the second half cen

tury of the state's existence. During this time there have been nineteen governors. Of these nineteen, all but one were natives of this country, and of English, Scotch, or Scotch-Irish stock. Not only were they natives themselves, but in every case they were descended from many generations of native ancestors; while they have stood for diverse ideas, creeds and affiliations, yet in one respect they have been alike—they have represented in their own persons, longdescended, inborn, thorough Amercanism.

JAMES E. CAMPBELL.

Of these nineteen men only eight were college-bred, which shows how great a part the "little red schoolhouse" has played in the making of history; of fourteen who came in since the great day of Appomattox, ten were veterans of the Civil War, proving that Republics are not always ungrateful. Two have been president of the United States, one a chief justice, four cabinet officers, three foreign ministers, three United States senators, eight representatives in Congress; evidently their services were not unappreciated by their countrymen.

Let us call the roll.

WILLIAM MEDILL was born in New Castle County, Delaware, in 1802, and died at Lancaster, Ohio, September 2, 1865. He came to Lancaster in 1832, entering at once on the practice of the law; then served three years in the State Legislature, and four years from 1839 to 1843-in Congress. Early in President Polk's administration he was made first assistant postmaster-general, but resigned to accept the Commissionership of Indian Affairs, in which office he introduced many needed reforms. The Indian Bureau was then a part of the War Department, but was transferred to the Department of the Interior shortly before Governor Medill resigned. The department had just been created, and the first secretary was Thomas Ewing, also a citizen of Lancaster.

In 1851 he was selected as president of the convention which constructed the second constitution of the state. He was very influential in that body, and was the only member (out of one hundred and five) who rose to the governorship. Less than a dozen members of the body achieved any subsequent distinction a just retribution for their failure to arm the office of governor with the salutary power of the veto.

In 1853 Governor Medill (being then lieutenant-governor) succeeded to the governor's office upon the resignation of Governor Wood, and was elected to that office the same fall. He subsequently held the position of first comptroller of the United States Treasury, serving through all of President Buchanan's administration, and two months under President Lincoln. His public career then ended, and he returned to Lancaster where he was held in the highest esteem by the people.

Governor Medill was a man of strict integrity, and firm purposes; as an illustration, when he was comptroller an old claim passed both houses of Congress involving an expenditure of two or three millions, and was approved by the President. Medill, satisfied that it was a fraud, refused to pay it. The appeals of congressmen and senators, and of the President himself, failed to move him, and the claim was not paid. An attempt was then made to impeach him in the Senate, but the firmness of R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, and others who had confidence in his judgment and integrity, frustrated it.

Although Governor Medill was a man of culture, of fine manners, and fond of society, he never married. He has the distinction - if it be such - - to have been the only bachelor who occupied the gubernatorial chair of Ohio.

SALMON PORTLAND CHASE was born in Cornish, N. H., on January 13, 1808, and died in the city of New York on May 7, 1883.

He procured an education by close economy and hard work, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1826, becoming subsequently a law student in William Wirt's office in Washington. Although he had spent some years in Ohio with his celebrated uncle, Bishop Philander Chase, he did not formally settle in the state until he went to Cincinnati, in 1830, where, in his early practice, he compiled "Chase's Statutes of Ohio."

In politics he was an Abolition-Democrat, and, while pursuing his law studies in Washington, was actively engaged in trying to procure the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. During his residence in Cincinnati, before he entered. upon his public career, he was the head and front of the long and bitter contest against slavery. His labors on behalf of Birney's newspaper, "The Philanthropist," (which was destroyed by a mob in 1836) and his defense in court of the alleged slave girl Matilda, are among the well remembered instances of his. willingness to face danger and unpopularity where anti-slavery principles were at stake. In the language of one of his admirers "behind the dusky face of every black man he saw his Savior, the divine man, also scourged, also in prison, at last crucified."

In 1849 Mr. Chase was elected to the United States Senate by the Democrats in the Legislature with the aid of two "free soilers" who held the balance of power. In 1855 he was elected governor, and again in 1857. During these four years the Republican party was organized; and, in 1860, Mr. Chase was a prominent candidate for the presidential nomination. His name was presented by the Ohio delegation, but they did not press his claims with as much ardor and persistence as he expected.

When President Lincoln was inaugurated, Mr. Chase became secretary of the treasury. To his deep religious feeling

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is attributed the closing sentence of the Emancipation Proclamation, "and upon this act I invoke the favorable judgment of all mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God." As secretary of the treasury, which was bankrupt when he took it, and which, under his wise and far-seeing management, supplied the funds for the Civil War, no eulogium is needed. The result speaks for itself. His record there will be his enduring monument. Resigning from the Treasury Department he was shortly after appointed to the Chief Justiceship, and filled that office until his death. The most celebrated act of his judicial career was presiding at the impeachment trial of President Johnson. The extremists in the Republican party criticised his action in that case, but as was said by William M. Evarts, "The charge against him, if it had any shape or substance, came only to this: that he brought into the Senate, in his judicial robes, no concealed weapons of party warfare."

Although Mr. Chase had filled with ability, dignity and success the great offices of governor, United States senator, secretary of the treasury and chief justice of the Supreme Court, and although he will ever remain one of the foremost figures in one of the greatest history-making epochs of all time, yet it is generally believed that he died with his life-long ambition unsatisfied. Through all the warp and woof of his long and illustrious career there runs the thread of hope - hope of the presidency-fated only to fray out at last in disappointment and regret. Mr. Chase, under ordinary conditions, would have made an ideal president, but in 1860 another sort of leader was needed, and the Ohio Republicans who attended the presidential convention of that year builded better than they knew when they transferred their votes from the handsome, majestic and scholarly Chase to the ungraceful, homely, but God-anointed Lincoln.

WILLIAM DENNISON was born in Cincinnati, November 23, 1815, and died at Columbus, June 15, 1882. His parents were of New England stock, and had settled in Cincinnati about the year 1808. After receiving such early education as conditions in Cincinnati then afforded, he entered Miami University, graduating in 1835 with honors; then studied law in the office of