Part 6

Those counties had become the impregnable base of operations of about a thousand guerrillas, under Quantrell, the James brothers, and Yeager, who were incessantly making incursions into southern Kansas, to rob and kill the defenceless people, and who had just burned Lawrence, and in cold blood murdered nearly three hundred unarmed and unresisting citizens. After two years of strenuous effort by other Union commanders, it had proved to be impossible to protect Kansas people from these dreadful incursions, and equally impossible to run the guerillas to earth in their fastness on the Missouri side of the border. These counties had been desolated early in the war by Jennison, Hoyt and their lawless bands of Kansas “Red Legs”—burned to the subsoil, nineteen farms out of twenty having been absolutely abandoned, and the houses and fences destroyed or left rotting. The condition of this district can be imagined from the fact that when this “Order No. 11” was issued, Nevada, the county seat of Vernon County, having at least a hundred houses standing and in good order, had not a single inhabitant, and the Court House without door or window-pane, had become a shelter for hogs and cattle running wild, with its records of titles and court proceedings scattered over the floors, and covered with filth. There were not at that time a hundred families left in the entire district affected by the order, outside of the military posts. They were the friends and kinsfolk of the guerillas, who were constantly hanging about the garrisoned towns, buying arms, ammunition and provisions for the guerillas, and carrying news to them of every movement of our troops. It was impossible to kill the guerillas or drive them out of the border while these country people stayed there as their spies and purveyors. Therefore, after full conference with General Schofield, then commanding the Department of the Missouri, and now the honored head of the army, General Ewing ordered the few remaining inhabitants in these desolated districts to remove to the nearest military post, or back to the second tier of counties from the State border, and the order was subsequently ratified by President Lincoln.

In a letter published since the war, General Schofield said: “The responsibility for that order rests with President Lincoln, myself, and General Ewing, in the proportion of our respective rank and authority.” About half of the people affected by the order removed to the posts under the protection of our troops, and the remainder further back in Missouri. They moved in summer—were subjected to no physical force or hardship, and were generally glad to get out of reach of the wild storm which was about to burst on them from Kansas, in revenge for the Lawrence massacre, and which the Government had not troops enough there to quell. Within two or three months after the issuance of this order, Quantrell having lost his spies and purveyors, and finding it impossible therefore to continue the vendetta, led all his guerillas south, and the border war was thus forever ended.

General Ewing’s most distinguished service during the war was in fighting the battle of Pilot Knob on the 27th and 28th of September, 1864. The Confederate General, Sterling Price, having effected an unlooked for and unresisted crossing of the Arkansas above Little Rock, with his army of over twenty thousand men, marched on St. Louis, where General Rosecrans was in command of the Department of the Missouri, and General Ewing of the District of Southeast Missouri. All the Federal troops of the department were scattered in small detachments, with bases in earthworks or stockades in or near the chief towns of Missouri, which were the places of refuge of the Union men and neutrals from the savage warfare of the guerillas. These scattered troops could not be withdrawn from their posts without enormous sacrifice of the people and property they were protecting, and it was, moreover, impossible to assemble them at St. Louis in time and numbers sufficient to defeat Price’s large army, which was increasing rapidly by accessions of guerillas from all parts of Southern Missouri. There was but one possible means of preventing the capture of St. Louis and the vast loss of prestige and resources which would follow. That was to delay Price a few days until re-enforcements could arrive from Little Rock, by occupying and holding fast to Fort Davidson, a small hexagonal work capable of being manned by about one thousand men, situated ninety miles south of St. Louis, at the village of Pilot Knob, which was then the southern terminus of the Iron Mountain Railroad. In this little fort were stored immense amounts of ordnance, commissary and quartermasters’ supplies, which Price greatly needed, and which lay directly between him and the great city, by capturing which he expected to bring Missouri over to the Confederacy. General Rosecrans, at the urgent request of General Ewing, reluctantly consented that he should lead this forlorn hope. He reached Pilot Knob in the nick of time—but four hours ahead of Price’s advance—and with but one thousand and eighty men he held Fort Davidson against two of the three divisions of Price’s army—those of Marmaduke and Cabell—numbering about fourteen thousand men—Shelpy’s division of about seven thousand men having been sent to Ewing’s rear at Mineral Point, twenty miles north of Pilot Knob, to cut the railroad and insure the destruction or capture of his entire command. After repulsing two assaults with great loss to the enemy, General Ewing, under cover of the night, evacuated and then blew up his untenable fort, and, favored by broken ground, though pressed on flank and rear, held his force in hand, and by dogged fighting for two days and nights, brought them to a fortified camp at Rolla, a hundred miles west of Pilot Knob. Price was thus delayed for a week, and drawn so far westward from his march on St. Louis, that reinforcements reached St. Louis and the great objective of his invasion was lost. He turned west and south and was soon driven from Missouri without striking an effective blow. General Rosecrans, in a special order issued October 6, 1864, said of this brilliant episode: “With pride and pleasure the commanding General notices the gallant conduct of Brigadier-General Thomas Ewing, Jr., and his command in the defence of Pilot Knob, and in the subsequent retreat to Rolla. With scarcely one thousand effective men, they repulsed the attacks of Price’s invading army, and successfully retreated with their battery a distance of one hundred miles, in the face of a pursuing and assailing cavalry force of five times their number. General Ewing and his subordinates have deserved well of their country. Under such commanders, the Federal troops should always march to victory.”

At the conclusion of the war, General Ewing once more made his home in his native State. He was soon prominent in political affairs, giving his voice and vote to such measures as in his opinion were for the best interests of his country. He was a member of the Ohio constitutional convention of 1873-4, where his legal attainments and admirable powers of debate gave him a foremost place. As a member of the Democratic majority in the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses, he was one of the leaders of his party in resisting and stopping the employment of Federal troops and supervisors at elections conducted under State laws, and also in the successful movement for the preservation of the Greenback currency, the remonetization of silver, and the issue of silver certificates, but for which measures of finance the currency would have been greatly contracted, to the infinite and protracted distress of the industrial and debtor classes. In 1879, he was the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, and made an able canvass of the State, but the Republican majority was too large to be overcome.

In 1882, that magnetic attraction that draws so many men to New York city, made General Ewing a member of the bar of the metropolis, where the enlarged opportunities of his profession have been met by a mental equipment and training equal to their most exacting requirements, and where his success has been of a marked character. To this legal ability is added a ripe scholarship, unusual grace as a speaker, and a personal magnetism that charms all with whom he comes in contact. His published speeches in Congress and on the stump have been numerous, and marked by their information, ability, liberality of thought and patriotism. Although his purely literary efforts have been less numerous, because of the active professional life that has been thrust upon him, the work he has done in that direction shows how much he might have accomplished, had his life been given to letters; for example, an address delivered at the Centennial celebration of the settlement of the Northwest territory at Marietta, Ohio, July, 16, 1889, and his address before the Kansas State Bar Association, on January 7, 1890, favoring the abolition of the requirement of unanimity, of juries in civil cases, and urging the codification of the “private law”—both of which speeches have attracted wide attention, and most favorable comment.

While General Ewing has accomplished so much, he is still in his prime, and is one of the moral forces in his profession in New York city, a strong, well-balanced and successful man. As has been said, he takes a deep interest in the affairs of the Society he did so much to create, and with him, an “Ohio man,” whether known or unknown, is always sure of a cordial welcome; while he enjoys life in his new home, his love for the State that gave him birth, and which his honored father so long served, is as deep as that of a son for a mother whose face he does not see, but whose memory is forever carried in his heart.

COL. WILLIAM L. STRONG—ONE OF THE FIRST VICE-PRESIDENTS OF THE OHIO SOCIETY.

In the sketches of the two distinguished Ohioans which accompany this, the law has been so well represented that one might imagine that the chief purpose of Ohio in the metropolis was to interpret the law, and see that equal justice was done between man and man; but from that which follows, it will be seen that the mission of the Buckeye in New York, is as varied as his numbers are many, and that in the walks of business and financial operation, he has won honor for his mother-state, and the evidences of deserved success for himself. And while engaged in the cares of business, he has not forgotten to fulfill all the demands of good citizenship, nor to preserve the memory of the State he has left, by doing all that lies in his power to perpetuate her memory loyally and lovingly in the one of his adoption.

Those who have attended the meetings of the Ohio Society with any degree of regularity, have not failed to notice that the genial presiding officer, Gen. Swayne, whose genius for his position is universally recognized is never so well satisfied as when he can so twist or change the current of business as to bring upon the floor a gentleman who always talks entertainingly, and whose appearance and speech justify the efforts of the presiding officer to “draw him out.” Col. William L. Strong has been so many years in New York, that people generally suppose him to be of New York origin; he has travelled the world so much, that at times it is hard to tell from what section he does hail; but when he has been brought before the Society upon one of the occasions above referred to, it takes no skill and no endeavor to tell that he was an Ohio man in the beginning, and that many of the tendrils of his affection still cling to the State in which his youth was spent, and to which he turns with a loyal devotion, whenever the occasion renews the scenes of memory, and the other sons of Ohio about him are recalling with varied emotions the things of the vanished past.

Mr. Strong came to New York when quite young in years, but equipped with all the elements needed for business success. He was born in Richland County, Ohio, on the 22d of March, 1827, and spent his boyhood among the Loudinville hills. At the age of sixteen he went to Wooster, Ohio, and spent two years with the firm of Lake & Jones, a large retail dry goods house, and from thence to Mansfield, Ohio, where he continued in the dry goods business until he came to this city, arriving here on the 31st of December, 1853.

When the young Buckeye reached the great city, he came with a purpose of making the best use of all the possibilities which might present themselves. He commenced life here as a salesman in the well-known dry goods house of L. O. Wilson & Co., at that time one of the largest and most prominent of the wholesale houses of the United States. In the panic of 1857 the firm suspended, but Mr. Strong continued in its service until 1858, when he went into the dry goods commission business, entering the firm of Farnham, Dale & Co., which was one of the prominent firms of New York at that time. In the subsequent changes of affairs, it was succeeded by Farnham, Sutton & Co., and afterwards by Sutton, Smith & Co. This last named firm was dissolved and retired from business in December, 1869, and on January 1, 1870, the firm of W. L. Strong & Co. was organized, and succeeded to the business.

The advance of Mr. Strong in his chosen line, had been as rapid as his wonderful success in these later years, has been deserved. He had entered upon the work with a determination to succeed, and nothing in the line of hard work or close application was allowed to stand in the way. He had made the interests of his employers his own; he had studied all the needs and possibilities of the situation, and had laid a sure foundation for future success. He had learned the country from one end to the other, and his business acquaintances were to be found in every quarter. It hardly needs to be added that when the new firm of which he was the head, opened its doors for business, it had already a clientage of the most valuable sort, and that its prominent place among the great dry goods houses of America, was already assured.

Col. Strong has been a faithful servant of the house from the beginning; he has done his work as if the whole load fell upon him, and he has never asked anyone to carry any share that properly belonged to himself. The house has ever been recognized as one of the solid institutions of New York. It has made but one removal since its organization, beginning business on the corner of Church and Leonard streets, and moving several years later to the spacious double store which it still occupies, in the center of the dry goods district at Nos. 75 and 77 Worth street.

Some of the qualities that have made his firm what it is to-day, are suggested in the above. Mr. Strong is a man of decided views, and great force of character, and at the same time one of the most approachable and genial men in the business. His good nature and open-handed liberality are widely felt and known, and no man has a wider circle of personal and business friends. His abilities as a business man and financier are of the highest order, and although strongly marked by conservatism and caution, are nevertheless, sufficiently progressive for even this day of commercial activity.

But while Col. Strong has given the greater share of his time and care to the interests of the firm of which he is the head, he has found time to make his energy and capital effective in various other directions. He was for years a director of the Central National Bank, and for three years past has been its president; is president of the Homer Lee Bank Note Company; was president of the Brush Electric Light Company of New York for several years; is president of the Griswold Worsted Company, a large corporation engaged in the manufacture of silk and worsted materials. He is also a director in the Erie Railroad Company; a director in the New York Life Insurance Company, Mercantile Trust Company, and Hanover Fire Insurance Company. He is also vice-president of the New York Security and Trust Company; is a director in the newly formed Plaza Bank, and has been closely connected with other important commercial and financial enterprises not necessary to mention in detail here.

In the lines of political duty, social demands, and especially in connection with such enterprises as have had some object of public benefit in view, Col. Strong has ever been an active factor. He is of the Republican faith, and has long been recognized as one of the Republican leaders of New York. He has been importuned many times to be a candidate for public office, but has been too closely interested in his business to take a hand in the practical manipulation of politics upon his own account, content to do a citizen’s duty, and to remain in private life. But he has done that duty whenever occasion offered. He is a member of the Union League, and president of the Business Men’s Republican Association, and has done much to make that one of the most efficient and useful political associations of the country. He has ever taken a deep interest in the Ohio Society, and is at present its first vice-president, and has held that office from the date of its organization.

No words can too strongly describe the high repute in which is held the business house of which Col. Strong is the head. It is among the most prominent, popular and successful in the trade. It represents some of the largest mills in this country engaged in the manufacture of dress goods, flannels, blankets and other woolens and worsteds, also important accounts in cotton goods. It has branch houses in Boston and Philadelphia for the supply of the trade in those markets. The firm was organized January 1, 1870, as above stated, and has continued in uninterrupted and successful operation ever since. Through all the panics and business disturbances that have visited this country at various periods since 1870, the house passed in safety with increased business prestige and financial strength. The able business management of this large commission house is proverbial in mercantile circles.

All that has been said in the above, in commendation of the house of which Col. Strong is the visible head, may be truthfully repeated of himself in his personal relations. His connection with many enterprises of importance in the business community and his prominent position in the same, are evidences of the business ability which he possesses and which his associates have so practically recognized. Modest and unassuming, his clear and analytical mind grasps the problems of business with such skill that fortune has smiled upon every enterprise with which he is or has been associated. His connection with so many financial institutions as director or president, further attests the confidence of the public in his integrity and marked ability.

While his business qualifications are of very high order, there are other traits in the character of Col. Strong that are no less marked. He is a man of the people, and his sympathies are wholly with the people. No worthy object to relieve or to make the struggling masses happy, ever fails to receive from him the substantial sympathy which his broad mind and liberal heart so freely give. He is an American, in every sense of the term. Plain and simple in his habits, he frowns upon everything that seeks to make one man higher than another, except as merit or exceptional service, have elevated him. He is, as one has well said, “One of the few men equal to the occasion, wherever placed, and deservedly possesses the entire confidence of the people.”

HON. GEORGE HOADLY, EX-GOVERNOR OF OHIO.

George Hoadly, who has won at the bar of New York, a position of eminence equal to that he for years maintained in Ohio, is, in all the essentials of affection and personal loyalty, yet an “Ohio man,” for he remembers the home of his youth, the scene of his early labors and professional advancement, and the State that chose him to the highest position within her gift. Like General Ewing and Col. Strong, he is already a well-known figure in the metropolis, and is one of the men by whose labors the Ohio Society has been made what it is.

If a man is aided by the “sort of grandfathers” he has inherited, Judge Hoadly had as fair a start as is given anyone. The older lawyers of Ohio speak with tender remembrance of “Squire Hoadly,” who for years was one of the imposing figures of the bar of Cleveland, and whose purity of character was matched only by his legal knowledge, and the justice with which, in his magisterial character, he arbitrated the affairs of his fellowmen. He made Cleveland his home in 1830; served one term as Mayor, and for fifteen years as justice of the peace, then an office of greater honor and responsibility than in these days of multiplied minor and municipal courts.

The son, George Hoadly, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 31, 1826, of a mother (Mary Anne Woolsey), who counted Jonathan Edwards among her direct ancestors, President Dwight her uncle, President Woolsey her younger brother, Theodore Winthrop, Sarah Woolsey, (“Susan Coolidge,”) her nephew and niece. Carried to Ohio when but four years of age, his primary education was received in the private school, conducted by the late Franklin T. Backus, afterwards the leader of the Cleveland bar, and Judge William Strong of Oregon. When fourteen years of age he entered Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio, from which he was graduated in 1844. It had already been impressed upon him by natural bent of mind and inclination, and by the advice of those who had studied his character and watched his growth, that the law was his proper profession, and he accordingly spent a year in study at the famous law school at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was under the instruction of Judge Story and Prof. Greenleaf. One more year of close study was passed in the office of Judge Charles C. Convers, at Zanesville, Ohio, and then young Hoadly went to Cincinnati, and in the fall of 1846 entered the law office of Chase & Ball, where he completed his studies, and was admitted to the bar in August of the following year. An incident of more than passing moment in his personal and professional life grew out of this connection. “Young Hoadly,” says one of the governor’s biographers, “at once attracted the attention and secured the warm and lasting friendship of his preceptor, Salmon P. Chase, afterwards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was well aware of the importance of attaching to himself young men of ability, and, after a period of service as a clerk, Mr. Hoadly was admitted, in 1849, as a junior partner into the firm, which took the name of Chase, Ball & Hoadly. Mr. Chase was soon thereafter elected United States Senator, and withdrew from professional activity in Cincinnati, and this led to Hoadly’s appearing in important cases very early in his career.”