# The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Cincinnati

Edition of 1920. See also Cincinnati on Wikipedia, and the disclaimer.
CINCINNATI, Ohio, city and county-seat of Hamilton County, in the extreme southwest of the State, one of the great commercial and manufacturing centres of the Union, 10th in nominal rank and 7th or 8th in fact. It is situated on the north bank of the Ohio River, almost exactly half way from its origin at Pittsburgh to its mouth at Cairo, Ill., about 465 miles by water from each, and 315 miles by rail from the former and 369 miles from the
latter; and is a terminal of every trunk line of railroad in the Middle West, being the main terminal of the Cincinnati Southern, Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton, Chesapeake and Ohio and a number of others. It is 138 miles by water from Louisville and 1,631 miles from New Orleans against 114 miles and 1,210 miles respectively by rail; 764 miles by rail from New York and 270 miles from Chicago.
Topography.—Cincinnati occupies the northern half of a circular amphitheatre of hills about two and a half miles in diameter bisected east and west by the Ohio River—which here makes a great southward sweep. The southern half is bisected north and south by the Licking River with its Kentucky suburbs, respectable cities themselves. The northern semi-circle rises from the river in two great terraces sloping northward to a third level at the summit, originally quite distinct, now much confused by grading. The lower platform is a bluff about 65 feet above low water, the second 50 to 100 feet higher. The crest hills, 15 to 300 feet higher yet, are about 475 feet at the summits—Mount Adams, Price Hill, Mount Lookout, Mount Auburn, Fairview Heights, etc.—giving a noble prospect of river and country. Three of these hills can be reached by inclined plane cable railways, used in the main for lifting of electrical cars. These hills are cut by ravines, the heavy original woods having been replaced by miles of the finest residence streets in America, parked with shrubbery, lawns and flower gardens. On the western side of the city from north to south runs Mill Creek, the remains of a once huge glacial stream whose gently sloping valley, one-half mile or more wide, forms an easy path into the heart of the city and was an indispensable factor in determining its position. Highways, canals and railroads come through it and the city's growth has pushed much farther up this valley than in other directions. The railroad stockyards are on its eastern slope. Cincinnati extends for about 30 miles along the river front to a width of about 15 miles in an irregular block north from it. The total area thus far in the city limits is 72 square miles, much more being legitimately a part of it. Cincinnati owns a strip of land 100 feet wide and 335 miles long directly south to Chattanooga, Tenn., upon which is built the city-owned Cincinnati Southern Railroad.
Municipal Conditions.—The site of the city is a glacial moraine of gravel and boulders cut through by the Ohio River. There is therefore little bottom land and there has been from the first none of the malaria which was long such a scourge and reproach to Western settlements; and this with the moderate climate averaging about 75 degrees in summer and 30 or 40 degrees in winter and the easy sewerage down the slopes into the Ohio and away from the city has given it excellent sanitary conditions. Its death rate fell from 21 per 1,000 in 1890, to 15.6 per 1,000 in 1915. The city owns its waterworks and 712 miles of mains. In recent years it has completed a municipal waterworks at a cost of $12,000,000, including a complete magnificent filtration plant which furnishes the city with 128,000,000 gallons of pure water daily. This water is so pure that it is used for all hospital purposes except where distilled water is distinctly specified. Cincinnati has 960 miles of streets and alleys (608 miles improved); and 463.6 miles of sewers. It owns property worth $126,000,000 and has an assessed property valuation of $706,613,000.
Interior, Suburbs, etc.—The bottom level below the bluffs, along the river seat, is the site of the river shipping business, and has the usual fringe of low quarters. It is paved and there is a broad public landing fronted by floating docks, wharf boats, etc. Above are the wholesale and then the retail business streets with great extent and variety of fine business architecture and girt around with electric roads of which there are some 227 miles within the city limits. The principal lines converge at or near Fountain Square and connect with a ring of suburbs within and without the city limits, unsurpassed in America. To the north are Clifton, Avondale, Mount Auburn, Vernonville, College Hill, Winton Place, Linwood, Elmwood, Hartwell, Lockland, Glendale, Norwood, Oakley, Walnut Hills, Mount Lookout, etc. Across the river, over which on three bridges the electric lines run, are numerous cities and towns, including Covington, Ludlow and Milldale to the west of the Licking, and Newport, Bellevue, Dayton and Fort Thomas to the east. These are in the State of Kentucky, but are included in Cincinnati's metropolitan district. The river is crossed by five bridges, each more than half a mile long, one exclusively for railway traffic, two for highway and two for both. The truss-bridge of the Cincinnati Southern to Ludlow—costing $3,348,675, is one of the longest spans in the world; there are also the cantilever designed by John A. Roebling and completed at a cost of $1,800,000; and two wrought iron bridges to Newport, one of them used by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.
The original town was laid out as a checkerboard, with streets four rods wide, the conventional form of the artificial American town; but the irregular surface and individual tastes have given them greater variety since, and no city has a finer field for picturesque architecture. A local freestone and blue limestone are much used in building as well as brick with steel framing. The most notable public buildings besides churches noted below are the government building (post-office, custom-house, etc.), of brick and iron with freestone facing, 180 feet by 50 feet, costing $5,200,000; the new county courthouse, costing $2,500,000, erected in 1916; the Cincinnati General Hospital, a group of 29 buildings, costing $4,000,000; the magnificent Music Hall, the gift of Reuben R. Springer and others; the Romanesque public library, costing $675,000; the Masonic Temple (Byzantine); the Odd Fellows' Temple; the Y. M. C. A. building, the Art Museum, the Queen City Club, Bell Telephone building, the Union Central Life building, the tallest office building outside of New York city, and a number of skyscrapers of from 15 to 20 stories, one of which, the Ingalls building, was the first tall concrete structure in the world. Of public monuments, the most artistic is the Tyler Davidson Fountain, with a surrounding esplanade on Fifth street between Vine and Walnut on Fountain square, the centre of most of the street car lines. It was presented to the city by Henry Probasco in 1871, having been cast at the Royal Foundry at Munich at a cost of $200,000. The equestrian statue of President William Henry Harrison
(first governor of Ohio), the statues of Garfield, Lincoln, Ecker and McCook, and the Fort Washington monument also adorn the city.
Parks, Cemeteries, etc.— The park system comprises 2,550 acres in three large bodies on the hills and many smaller ones. The largest is the superb Mount Airy Forest, containing 943 acres. The second is Eden Park, formerly called the Garden of Eden. It is situated on Mount Adams, in the northeast centre, containing the two main city reservoirs made to look like lovely natural lakes; there is also a water tower with steps to the top commanding a matchless prospect. The Art Museum and Art School, two beautiful buildings costing $450,000, are within the grounds, which are entered by a mediæval gateway, Elsinore, much admired. The next largest and an equally picturesque park is Burnet Woods, containing 160 acres. It contains the grounds of the University of Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Zoological Gardens (q.v.), northeast of Burnet Woods, comprise 60 acres of wild natural beauty, and contain a varied collection of wild animals and birds. McFarland Woods, Owl's Nest Park, Mount Echo Park and Ault Park, together with Lincoln, Washington and Hopkins, are the finest of the smaller parks. Most of the 20 cemeteries are in the northeast, although one or two are in the extreme southwest, but the one superb burial ground, one of the largest and most charming in the country, is Spring Grove Cemetery, about six miles north on the western slope of Millcreek Valley, with 600 acres of fine landscape gardening and native beauty, and reached by an avenue 100 feet wide. It has a bronze statue as a soldiers' monument, and many magnificent and costly mausoleums.
Amusements, Clubs, etc.—Music is cultivated in a number of well-patronized institutions, including the Conservatory, the College of Music and various smaller conservatories. The biennial May festivals are an indispensable part of the city's higher life and are known throughout the world. Other important features of the musical life are the permanent Symphony Orchestra, which was endowed in 1915 for $1,000,000 by the late Cora M. Dow; the Orpheus Club and a large number of German singing societies. The grand Music Hall is a monument of the munificence of Reuben Springer, who founded it and gave it part of its endowment. It is 500 feet by 300 feet, has a seating capacity of 3,600, and its organ is one of the largest in the country. There are also the Grand, Lyric, Walnut, Keith's, Peoples' and Olympic theatres, over 100 motion picture houses, the Emery Auditorium and many halls where people congregate for entertainments of various sorts. The chief clubs are the Queen City, Business Men's Club, Phœnix, Cinannati, Cuview Press, Country, Literary, Woman's, Women's City Club, Business Woman's, the City Club, Rotary Club, Advertiser's Club, Ben Franklin Club, and the Trade Expansion Club. The Cincinnati Gymnasium has extensive suburban athletic grounds and owns a fine city building. There are two favorite summer resorts on the Ohio River, one on the Kentucky shore called the Lagoon, and Coney Island some miles up the river. Chester Park, near Spring Grove Cemetery, is one of the best equipped amusement resorts in the Middle West.
Business Interests.—The position of Cincinnati as a midway port on the great central channel of one of the most fertile districts of the world, added to its location on a platform above the floods which washed away its rivals, was the origin of its greatness; but that river traffic has greatly declined since the advent of railroads. Even yet, however, it is invaluable for the transportation of bulky freight—coal, ore, iron, lumber, salt, etc.—to manufactories and the distribution of its products to the Ohio and Mississippi ports as far as New Orleans, up the Ohio to Pittsburgh, to the Big Sandy, Cumberland, Tennessee and Green, Red, White, Arkansas, Yazoo, etc., covering 1,200 miles ot the Ohio, 850 of the Mississippi, and 2,000 of tributaries. About 100 vessels a year register for this inland commerce, with a tonnage of some 8,000; but there is a much greater commerce than this indicates, as one towboat will push many barges in front of it, a method peculiar to Western rivers. The government improvements, dredging and lighting the channel, have greatly aided to keep this navigation alive. The immense railroad business has already been referred to. Seventeen roads enter Cincinnati; the passengers of most of them come into the Central Union Depot at Central avenue and Third street; but a few, of which the Pennsylvania is chief, have separate stations. The Cincinnati Southern road, 338 miles long, was built and is still owned by the city, and is operated by the Southern Railway Company, under lease. The business interests of the community revolve around the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, an organization of business and professional men, totaling 4,000, which conducts by means of a large income a thoroughly departmentalized organization, the principal departments of which are devoted to conventions and publicity, weighing and inspection, statistics, grain and hay, exchange, produce exchange, civic and industrial work, traffic, merchandising and foreign trade.
The trade and manufacturing interests of the city are large and important. It has many national banks, clearings aggregating $2,030,181,819 in 1917. It has also a large number of State and private banks, building and loan associations, many strong trust companies and savings banks. Slaughtering and packing of meats, especially pork, has been long and is still one of the leading branches of commerce, the city packing more than one-half of the produce of the State. Cincinnati holds the first position in the country in the manufacture and sale, both domestic and foreign, of machine tools and machinery. The number of industrial establishments is about 4,000, with a capital of about $212,500,000, and 100,000 workmen, and occupying real estate valued at $100,000,000, with an annual factory output of nearly $300,000,000. According to the last census the greatest single branch is iron work, including pig, castings, foundry and machine shop products and architectural iron work; men's clothing, slaughtering and packing of meats, distilled liquors, factory made boots and shoes, carriages and their material, tobacco products and malt liquors. Other great products are leather and leather goods, furniture, lumber, timber and woodworking products; coffee and spices, roasted and ground; saddlery and harness; pickles and preserves; undertakers' goods;
musical instruments; soap and candles; electrical supplies; flour and grist; plumbers' supplies; patent medicines; and society regalia, costumes, banners, etc., in which Cincinnati heads the United States. Other products number hundreds, many curious and interesting, notably those of the Rookwood Pottery.
1 Fountain Square: Tyler-Davidson Fountain2 University of Cincinnati Buildings
Educational Institutions, Libraries, Newspapers, etc.—Cincinnati has a thorough system of public schools with 59 day elementary, 10 special, 2 night high, 6 night elementary, 6 public high schools and about 1,725 teachers; besides private academies and secondary schools including 51 Catholic parochial schools. For higher education the chief is the University of Cincinnati, the only municipal university in the United States, operated as part of the public school system, expanded from the old McMicken University, the capstone of the system of public instruction, with affiliated medical, and dental and law departments, and in connection the famous observatory now located on Mount Lookout—one of the earliest in the United States, with a 16-inch refractor and a new meridian circle, and with a notable record in the investigation of double stars. The university buildings are in a 30-acre space set off by the city in Burnet Woods Park. The Ohio Mechanics' Institute, one of the most important educational forces in the city, has a large, thoroughly equipped building and library, and maintains both daily, and night schools, attended by hundreds, in which regular classical, literary and scientific instruction and courses of lectures are given. There are also medical and surgical schools, besides training schools for nurses in the hospitals; two other dental colleges; a night law school; several business colleges and schools of expression; Lane Theological Seminary at Walnut Hills (1832) famous for Lyman Beecher and Calvin E. Stowe, and for its slavery dissensions, two Roman Catholic colleges, Saint Francis Xavier (1840) and Saint Joseph's (1873); five Catholic seminaries for the education of priests and six Catholic female academies and seminaries, leading to others, the Hebrew Union College (Reformed Jewish) for educating rabbis, the chief one in the United States; the Art Museum and Art School founded by Cincinnati ladies on the model of South Kensington, London, with two large buildings and several hundred students, and a valuable collection of works of art. The Cincinnati Society of Natural History has a museum of valuable and interesting relics open to the public. Of the libraries, the chief is the free Public Library, handsomely housed on Vine street (with over 490,000 volumes and pamphlets) and 23 branches and 26 stations. There are 16 others, subscription and institutional, of which the chief are the Young Men's Mercantile, the Law Library, that of the Mechanics' Institute, the library of Saint Xavier's College, Lloyd Library and Museum, the University Library, and the Historical and Philosophical Society has the finest collection in existence of original manuscripts, pamphlets and bound volumes pertaining to the history of Cincinnati and the State of Ohio, and ranks among the first institutions of the kind in the country. The city supports some 20 daily newspapers—English, (German and Italian; over 80 weeklies, English and German;
over 100 monthlies and quarterlies, besides a number of special publications.
Churches and Charities.—Cincinnati has about 270 church bodies, 56 Roman Catholic (besides 5 convents), 219 Protestant of various denominations, 12 Jewish synagoges and 38 unclassified, including Christian Science, Spiritualist, etc. The city is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop and a Protestant Episcopal bishop, with cathedrals of both. The finest church building in Cincinnati is the cathedral of Saint Peter in pure Grecian style, 180 feet by 60 and 90, with a spire 224 feet high, and its priceless altar-piece Murillo's original “St. Peter Delivered.” Other prominent churches are the First Presbyterian, with a tower and spire 285 feet high, the loftiest in the West; the Second Presbyterian; Saint Francis Xavier and the Saint Francis de Sales (Roman Catholic), Christ's and Saint Paul's Protestant Episcopal and Saint Paul's Methodist Episcopal, the Ninth Street Baptist, Unitarian, New Thought Temple and the church of the New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian). There are 61 benevolent associations in the city covering every class and grade of alleviable human misfortune, and an infirmary, a workhouse, with workshops and workgrounds. Prominent among 17 hospitals, public and private, are the Cincinnati General, Jewish, Good Samaritan, Longview Insane Asylum, Bethesda, Ohio Hospital for Women and Children, the Presbyterian, Elizabeth Gamble, Deaconess Home, Christ, and the Branch Hospital (the first tuberculosis hospital established in America for the scientific treatment of tubercular subjects). There are also numerous homes for the aged and infirm, for orphans, for incurables and the friendless, non-sectarian and denominational, all splendidly equipped, and a fresh air fund and farm.
Government, Finances, etc.—The government is a modified federal form, there is a four-year mayor, who appoints directors of public service and safety, a legislative council of one from each ward with four elected at large and a board of education elected by the people. The city debt is about $55,000,000, but $27,000,000 of this is for the Cincinnati Southern Railroad which returns $1,000,000 per year rental. The tax rate is $15.46 per thousand dollars. The yearly disbursements are about $14,457,725, of which over $2,500,000 is for schools.
Population.—In 1800, 750; (1810) 2,540; (1820) 9,642; (1830) 24,831; (1840) 42,338; (1850) 115,435; (1860) 161,044; (1870) 216,239; (1880) 255,139; (1890) 296,908; (1900) 325,902; (1910) 363,591; (1914) 402,000. The census bureau estimate for 1915 was 406,706. This is inaccurate, however, without supplemental figures based on the population of the city with nearly one-third of its business population residing across the river in another State, as well as several populous suburbs in other townships to the north, Newport, Bellevue and Dayton, Ky., east of the Licking, Covington and Ludlow, west of it, Millcreek, Columbia and Delhi and Norwood on the north adding about 200,000 to the population above stated. About 79 per cent of Cincinnati people are native white Americans, a greater proportion than any other large city in the United States. The foreign-born population is 15.6 per cent of the total. Male aliens over 21 years of age form only 2.6 per cent of the population. Negro
population is but 5.4 per cent of the total; 78 per cent of the foreign-born population is made up of English, Irish and Germans; 10.3 per cent of the foreign-born population is made up of Russians, Italians and Hungarians.
History.—The site of Cincinnati at the time it first came under the eye of the white man was covered with “ancient works,” monuments of a prehistoric race. Traces of many of these “works” still abound in the neighborhood, which is a centre of the so-called “Mound Builders” remains. Here, too, ran the old Indian trail leading from the British trading post at Detroit to the Licking River, and into the section south of the Ohio. Numerous bands of savages swept through the valley of the Miamis, subsequently called the “Miami Slaughter House,” on their marauding expeditions against the Kentucky pioneers. It was in pursuing one of these bands of “Horse Thieves” that Benjamin Stites first noticed the fertility of the section and its desirability for settlement. As a result of his efforts came the “Miami Purchase.”
John Cleves Symmes, with other members of Congress who had been interested by Stites, in 1787 began negotiations with the government for the land lying between the Miamis, which resulted in a conditional purchase that on survey proved to be some 600,000 acres, of which he ultimately received about half. Early in 1788 he sold 740 acres opposite the mouth of the Licking to Matthias Benman and others, with whom he visited the spot later and selected it as the site for a city, to be called Losantiville—a combination of Latin and French, meaning “Town opposite the mouth of the Licking.” After some shiftings of ownership a firm consisting of Israel Ludlow, a surveyor, and two others took possession 28 Dec. 1788, and Ludlow laid out a village with the present Central avenue and Broadway, about three-quarters of a mile apart, for east and west boundaries, and Seventh street, about as far from the river, for northern, blazing the street lines on the trees. Three or four log cabins were built, and the flooding out of several Ohio River town sites about this time left Cincinnati the chief survivor. The building of Fort Washington by the government in the summer of 1789, just east of Broadway, still further confirmed its primacy, for the Indians were a terrible menace until long after. In January 1790 Gen. Arthur St. Clair, newly-appointed governor of Northwest Territory, arrived, laid out Hamilton County (named after Alexander Hamilton), and made its seat the new town, whose name he changed to Cincinnati (Symmes who professes to have suggested the change, was tenacious for Cincinnata), after the famous society of Revolutionary officers, of which he was a member. By the end of 1790, it had some 40 log houses. The defeats of Harmar (1790) and St. Clair (1791) nearly caused its abandonment in a panic, but the importance of the fort kept the settlement alive. In 1792 as many as 354 lots had been taken for building; and so important a centre of commerce had it become even then that 34 of its buildings were warehouses well stocked with goods. It had some 900 inhabitants, but many of them were floaters. A visiting missionary reported that the people resembled those of Sodom, and the town, like others on the north bank of the Ohio, was thronged with frontier idlers and lawless
ruffians, who took refuge in Kentucky when brought to book; but as the first church (Presbyterian) was built this year, and the first school (pay) opened with 30 scholars, perhaps some of this language was “common form.” Also as settlers were compelled by law to take their loaded guns to church for protection against Indians, it was no place for the tamer sort. In 1793, the Sentinel of the Northwest Territory, the first newspaper published north of the Ohio, appeared, and a year later the first through mail to Pittsburgh was started in a canoe, and a packet line of keel boats to Pittsburgh was organized. Wayne's crushing defeat of the savages at Fallen Timbers, bringing peace to the frontier, was in one sense disastrous to Fort Washington, as settlers swarmed all over Ohio, and it ceased to be the one centre. This defeat, however, assured the permanency of Cincinnati, which increased slowly but surely until in 1800 its population was 750, a growth of 50 per cent since 1795. In December 1801 the seat of territorial government was removed to Chillicothe. But its 12 years' primacy, the army post making it a depot for supplies, and its frontier position, had given it a safe start. In 1802 Cincinnati was incorporated as a town. A well-known picture of the town also dates from this year, in which, too, a “Young Ladies' School” was started, indicating a superior grade of population, and from February to May 1802 over 4,400 barrels of flour were exported, showing its development as a distributing port. The first bank, that of the Miami Exporting Company, was started in 1803. In 1805 the town had 960 people and 172 buildings. But immigration set in much more strongly a year later, and the names show an extraordinary intellectual calibre, in the settlers it was attracting. In 1810 it had 2,300 inhabitants, and was the largest town in the State, the centre of immigration to Ohio, and with a great commerce along the river, and was contemplating a university. The first book descriptive of the place appeared this year written by the celebrated Dr. Drake. In October 1811 the steamboat New Orleans passed the town on her first trip from Pittsburgh to Louisville. A stone steam mill 110 feet high of nine stories and with foundation walls 10 feet thick dates from 1812. In 1814 Lancaster Academy, afterward Cincinnati College, was founded. In 1819 the town received a city charter, having according to the first directory, published this year. 9,873 inhabitants, mostly from the Northern and Middle States, but also many foreigners, so that it was “not uncommon to hear three or four languages spoken in the streets.” Another little book descriptive of the city published in 1826 was republished in England and translated into German, circulated on the Continent and attracted a large number of immigrants, especially Germans, who by 1840 numbered one-fourth of the population. But its great development came with the opening of the Miami Canal, the most important single influence in the history of the city, for which ground was broken in 1825 at Middletown, and which was completed to Cincinnati in 1827. This not only developed commerce but furnished great water power for manufacturing. The first railroad, the Little Miami, was chartered in 1836, but was not opened until 1846, the first section not until 1843. Even before this the growth was very rapid, population nearly trebling 1820-30,
and doubling 1830-40, but the next decade showed the tremendous leap from 4,000 to 115,000. From 1840 the immense immigration of Germans increased so rapidly as to make it for years the typical German city. The Germans took great interest in grape culture and the city tor some years was a great wine market. It was the great German population that caused the first Saengerfest of the North American Saengerbund to be held here in 1849, a great stimulus to the musical activity of the city since so famed in the musical world. Several times the city was fearfully ravaged by the cholera, beginning with 1832-34; in 1849 and 1850 over 9,000 souls, nearly 8 per cent of the entire population, perished of it. Yellow fever came in 1878. Floods have also risen over its platform several times and laid the lower section under water; those of 1832 (the year of flood, fire, pestilence and famine), of 1883, 1884, having been especially high and destructive. In 1838 the new and beautiful steamer Moselle exploded in front of the landing with a loss of almost 140 lives, one of the most terrible river disasters of the century. Two years later the city was the centre of the “log cabin” campaign, which sent a favorite son, William Henry Harrison, to the White House. At a later time Hayes, whose previous active life had been spent in this city, occupied the presidential position, and Salmon P. Chase, another famous Cincinnatian, was chief justice of the United States. A continuous excitement of the city was its fury over the race question and later the abolition movement. The vast Northern interest in Southern trade was everywhere a powerful restraining influence on this; but Cincinnati, on the border, and with its daily bread dependent on this trade, besides having a considerable percentage of its people of Southern birth and detesting the movement on general principles, felt menaced with entire industrial ruin, if the agitation were not put down by force. Lane Seminary was threatened with fire, and its faculty with lynching, if the students were not prohibited from discussing slavery; and in 1836 and 1841 James G. Birney's philanthropist press was wrecked by the mob. In fact anti-negro riots were frequent and arose upon the slightest provocation. The trouble was later aggravated by the fact that Cincinnati, being a border city, was a chief station on the “underground railroad”; one Quaker citizen boasted of aiding 3,000 fugitive slaves to escape, and in all several times that number must have been smuggled across. Here, too, were tried the celebrated “fugitive slave cases,” the Rosetta and Margaret Garner cases. In 1856 Buchanan was nominated for the presidency; later nominees of Cincinnati conventions were Greeley, in 1872, Hayes, in 1876, and Hancock, in 1880. When the war broke out, however, it became a strong Union city, and its record is noble. In 1862 the fear of an assault by the Confederate, Kirby Smith, caused the city to be put under martial law for a while; a somewhat similar experience came in 1863, at the time of the John Morgan raid. Another war incident was the Vallandingham case. Cincinnati sent its citizen, George B. McClellan, to command the armies of the North. The decade prior to the war had not been one of great progress, but in spite of the decay of trade with the South, the city leaped forward
with the resumption of peace. The desire to renew the relations with its old business associates induced it to enter upon the construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railway to Chattanooga, which was built by the city itself, an extreme instance of municipal ownership. The celebrated “Bible” case in 1869 resulted in the abolition of religious instruction from the public schools and gave national fame to the bar that included sudi lawyers as those who argued the case. In 1869 began a series of annexations, which in a few years increased the city's area from 7 square miles (3 miles when incorporated in 1819) to 24 square miles. Annexations in 1895 and 1903-04, 1912-13-14 and -15 brought the area to 72 square miles. The most notorious event in its later history is the “Cincinnati Riot” of 28-31 March 1884. As usual in modern times, the law had protected the criminal against the community till the criminal law was felt to be a farce; some murderers had received absurdly light sentences, and the patience of the lower orders gave way; they attempted to break into the jail and lynch the prisoners; foiled in this, they assaulted the courthouse, and burned it, as well as its records and other buildings adjoining; the State militia had to be called in, and in the fray that ensued 45 persons were killed and 145 wounded. In 1888 the centenary of the settlement of the State and city was celebrated by a Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley, the culmination of a series of industrial expositions that had attracted the attention of the country and given a director-general to the Centennial at Philadelphia in 1876.
Bibliography.— Burnet, J., ‘Notes on Northwest Territory’ (1845); Cist C., ‘Cincinnati in 1841,’ ‘Cincinnati in 1851,’ ‘Cincinnati in 1859’; ‘Cincinnati Miscellany’ (1844-45); ‘Directories of 1819, 1825 and 1829’; Drake, D., ‘Picture of Cincinnati’ (1815); Drake, B., and Mansfield, E. D., ‘Cincinnati in 1826’; Ford, H. A., ‘History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’ (Cleveland 1880); Greve, C. T., ‘Centennial History of Cincinnati’ (Chicago 1904); Mansfield, E. D., ‘Personal Memories’ (1803-43); Miller, F. W., ‘Cincinnati's Beginnings’ (1880); Stevens, G. E., ‘Cincinnati’ (1869): Trollope, Mrs. F., ‘Domestic Manners of the Americans’ (London 1831).