a leader of the anti-slavery party,
and was one of the first and foremost Republicans. As Secretary of the
Treasury his mastery in finance was as essential to our success in the
war as the statesmanship of Lincoln or the generalship of Grant. He was
followed in the office of Chief Justice by another Ohioan of New England
birth, who, like Chase, had passed all the years of his public life in
our state. Morrison R. Waite, of Toledo, was perhaps even more Ohioan in
those traits of plainness and simplicity in greatness which we like to
claim for Ohio, only upon sober second thought to acknowledge that they
are the distinctive American traits.

An Ohio Secretary of the Treasury assured to the nation the means of
meeting the expenses of the Civil War, Ohio generals fought it to a
victorious close, and an Ohio Secretary of War knew how to deal best
with both the men and the money, so as to turn the struggle from its
doubtful course. Without Edwin M. Stanton neither Chase nor Grant, with
Sherman and Sheridan, could have availed. He was born at Steubenville
in 1814, of a family of North Carolina Quakers, and as a boy his tastes
were as peaceful as those of his ancestors. He had pets of all kinds,
and he made collections of birds and insects. He was pretty diligent
at school, but his studies there were not of the severer kind. He loved
poetry; he founded a circulating library; and both before and after he
went to Kenyon College, he was clerk in a bookstore. But deep within
this quiet outside was the hot nature which fused the forces of the
great war, and shaped them according to his relentless will. He became
a successful lawyer, and had been President Buchanan's Attorney-General
when Lincoln made him Secretary of War. He left that office worn out
with the duties to which he gave mind and body, and died soon after
Grant had appointed him, in 1869, to the bench of the Supreme Court No
man in office ever deserved more friends, or made more enemies. He was
tender and kindly with the friendless and hapless, but with the strong
and the fortunate, when they crossed his mood, he was rude to savagery.

[Illustration: John Sherman 270R]

The chief citizen of Richland County is John Sherman, who is also one
of the chief citizens of Ohio, and of the United States. He has been in
Congress ever since 1855, and ever since 1861 he has been in the Senate,
except for the four years when he was Secretary of the Treasury under
President Hayes. If