TRIBUTE TO JAMES EDWIN CAMPBELL *

BY DR. WILLIAM OXLEY THOMPSON

HONORABLE JAMES EDWIN CAmpbell:

The present opportunity is taken by the University to extend to you most cordial greetings in recognition of your distinguished citizenship and of the approaching anniversary of your birthday. The University, unable to be in session on July seventh, anticipates the exact date and assures you of its warmest felicitations upon the noble public career to which we all turn with a genuine and patriotic pride. Ohio your birthplace has had many distinguished public citizens whose character and achievements have been a continual inspiration to their children from generation to generation. The University congratulates you today that your name has been written indelibly upon that scroll of honor and service. The zeal of youth that carried you into the struggle for the life of the Nation and later with unusual brilliancy into the active field of politics has ripened in these later years into a strength and dignity of character, a breadth of horizon, a generosity of spirit and a refinement of intellect that have made you the most beloved neighbor and citizen in our great commonwealth.

The University recognizes with profound gratitude the important service you rendered to the cause of higher education in 1889-1891, when Governor of Ohio,

*From an address delivered by Doctor William Oxley Thompson, President of the Ohio State University, on the occasion of the annual commencement of that institution, June 2, 1923. Governor James E Campbell was born July 7, 1843.

and later, in 1895-1896, when you served as a member of the Board of Trustees. The passage of the Hysell bill, providing the first state levy for the maintenance of the University, was possible because of your active support of the measureThis was the most important legislation of your administration and will, we trust, perpetuate your memory as the friend of higher education and in a most vital hour the devoted friend of the Ohio State University. From your message to the General Assembly, January 6, 1891, we direct attention to these significant statements:

The Ohio State University is worthy of your fostering care. The University has made notable progress, and through your generous, although somewhat fitful aid, it has become a credit to the State. Many persons are of the opinion that a small special tax for the benefit of this University is a burden which the people would bear cheerfully for the sake of education and advancement. You might, therefore, very properly inquire whether the national gift ought not to be supplemented by a permanent fund of such a character.

The University recognizes gratefully that your attitude in contrast with that of five predecessors who did not even mention the University became a clarion call to others to urge a more liberal provision for the University. That day was the dawn of the modern progress now so happily achieved in which we all rejoice.

The University finds genuine satisfaction in contemplating the patriotic ancestry from which you sprang. Your grandfather - Samuel Campbell - served in the war of 1812. Your grandmother Mary Small Campbell was the daughter of a Revolutionary soldier. From this ancestry sprang a son-Lewis D. Campbell - who served with distinction in both civil and military life as did his brother-in-law - Robert Reily — who made the supreme sacrifice at Chancellorsville in 1863.

Then follows a list of grandchildren among whom you stand the sole survivor-who served in the Civil War. The later generation of great grandchildren, not fewer than eighteen in number, among whom your own daughter is numbered with a brilliant record in France, and your son, James Edwin Campbell, Jr., with the rank of Captain and overseas service, presents a military service in the World War rarely equalled. Standing as you do amid five generations alike patriotic in their devotion to the democratic government under which we live, the University greets you as one of Ohio's most beloved sons honored alike in war, in peace and in public life.

The Trustees and Faculty of the University join today in this testimonial, as we believe all good citizens of Ohio would have us do, to give expression to our affection and to place in your hands a record of the high esteem in which thousands of our grateful alumni hold you.

We greet you as citizen, soldier, patriot, public servant, patron of education and lover of humanity.

Long may you live to enjoy the honors cheerfully awarded, and to be happy in the affection of your friends and fellow citizens.

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BY RUHL JACOB BARTLETT, M. A.

The admission of Ohio as a state into the Union, marked the end of a long and bitter political contest both within and without the Northwest Territory.* It was that age old conflict between the forces that are progressive and those that are conservative, for it must be remembered that the closing years of the 19th century marked a period of rapid political transition in American history. The colonists who had so gallantly adorned themselves in new garments of political liberty and equality in 1776 found that their desires had grown by 1800 to a demand for additional plumage, in the way of popular government. The pre-Revolutionary leaders as well as those who had piloted the new government through its first twelve years of existence, did not look with favor upon the too rapid growth of democratic ideals, but were content with the old.

Unaided then, by these Revolutionary fathers, a great political renaissance had taken place in the minds of the American people. The Revolutionary War and the new responsibility after the war was in a great measure the cause of the change. New England colo

*This seems to be the best designation for the land that was governed by the Ordinance of 1787. It was first known as the Northwestern Territory and subsequently was legally named The Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio River. Most writers have adopted either the title, Northwest Territory or simply The Territory; but Judge Jacob Burnet and William Maxwell write of it as the Northwestern Territory.

nists, who never in their lives had travelled a dozen miles from their native town, and Virginia colonists, who had not looked beyond their native valleys, were brought into contact by the war. Their intellectual and political horizon was extended and a national consciousness was born, which in its travail brought forth the desire for a more democratic form of government. This contest, that was shaking the people of the original states, inevitably was carried to the rapidly increasing population of the western lands. The conflict in the west took the form of a controversy over the admission of Ohio, as a state into the Union, and extended over a period of four years, from 1799 to 1803. But the forces of reform had been brewing before 1799, and therefore it will be necessary for us to consider briefly the early history of Ohio, in order to understand fully the feelings of its inhabitants, which caused them to be either such strong supporters or such fervent enemies of statehood.

The fertility of the Ohio valley had for a long time been a matter of common knowledge to the colonists of America. For its possession the French and Indian War was fought, and for it also the heroic George Rogers Clark led his intrepid band to Kaskaskia during the winter of 1778-9. After the Revolution, settlersbegan to migrate to this land, without much regard for the rights of the states to which it belonged. These rights, either authentic or fictitious, formed the subject of much long and bitter discussion among several of the states, and Congress had at an early time, made an attempt at conciliation by assuming control, with the. consent of the states, of the disputed Territory.

In 1787 Congress perfected a system of government