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 ★
For my mother,
Liza Foner (1909–2005),
an accomplished artist
who lived through
most of the twentieth century
and into the twenty-first

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 7 28/10/16 12:31 AM

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 8 28/10/16 12:31 AM
 BRIEF CONTENTS FOR THE AP®
EDITION

IN TRODUCTION TO THE A P ® EDITION • x x xix

USING GIVE ME L IBERT Y! TO DE VELOP W RITING,
THINK ING, A ND DOCUMENT SK IL LS IN A N A P®
COURSE ... x x xix
Essay Writing and Critical Thinking ... xxxix H Understanding Historical
Documents ... xxxix H Understanding Visual Materials ... xl H

Working with Maps ... xl

A P ® -S P E C I F I C R E S O U R C E S F O R G I V E M E L I B E R T Y ! . . .
xl
AP® U.S. History Text Book ... xli H The AP® Skills Handbooks ... xli H

Historical Thinking Skills Worksheets ... xlii H Curriculum Planning and Pacing
Guide ... xlii

GIVE ME LIBERTY! DIGITAL RESOU RCES FOR STUDENTS

AND INSTRUCTORS ... xlii
Norton InQuizative for History ... xlii H History Skills Tutorials ... xliii H Student
Site ... xliii H Ebook ... xliii H Norton Coursepacks ... xliii H Norton American
History Digital Archive ... xliii H Lecture and Art PowerPoint Slides ... xliv

CORREL ATION WITH THE CURRENT AP® U.S. HISTORY

COURSE FR AMEWORK ... xliv

ACK NOWLEDGMENTS ... lx v

A P ® SK IL LS H A NDBOOKS • B-1
INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL SK ILLS
H A N D B O O K S . . . B -1
PR IM A RY DOCUMENT SK ILLS H ANDBOOK ... B-2
Deciphering Textual Documents with the 5 Ws Strategy ... B-2 H How to Use the
5 Ws ... B-4

Brief Contents ix

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 9 28/10/16 12:31 AM

 V ISUAL DOCUMENT SK ILLS H ANDBOOK ... B-7
Analyzing and Extracting Information from Photographs and Illustrations ... B-7
H How to Use SCOPE ... B-8

M AP SK ILLS H ANDBOOK ... B-11

Understanding the Full Value of Maps ... B-11 H How to Use TARGET ... B-12

CA RTOON SK ILLS H ANDBOOK ... B-15

Contextualizing and Finding Meaning in Cartoons with the TACKLE Strategy ...
B-15 H How to Use TACKLE ... B-16

PR ACTICING DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTIONS

(DBQ s) ... B-18

x Brief Contents

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 10 28/10/16 12:31 AM

 CONTENTS

LIST OF M APS, TABLES, AND FIGU RES ... xxxv

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ... lxvii
PREFACE ... lxix
ACK NOWLEDGMENTS ... lxxvii

PA RT 1: A MERICA N COLONIES TO 1763

1. A N E W W O R L D . . . 4
THE FIRST AMER ICANS ... 6
The Settling of the Americas ... 6 H Indian Societies of the Americas ... 8
H Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley ... 9 H Western
Indians ... 10 H Indians of Eastern North America ... 10 H Native
American Religion ... 12 H Land and Property ... 12 H Gender
Relations ... 14 H European Views of the Indians ... 14

INDI AN FREEDOM, EU ROPEAN FREEDOM ... 15

Indian Freedom ... 15 H Christian Liberty ... 16 H Freedom and
Authority ... 17 H Liberty and Liberties ... 17

THE EX PANSION OF EU ROPE ... 18

Chinese and Portuguese Navigation ... 18 H Portugal and West Africa ... 19
H Freedom and Slavery in Africa ... 20 H The Voyages of Columbus ... 20

CONTACT ... 21
Columbus in the New World ... 21 H Exploration and Conquest ... 23 H

The Demographic Disaster ... 24

THE SPANISH EMPIRE ... 24

Governing Spanish America ... 25 H Colonists in Spanish America ... 25
H Colonists and Indians ... 26 H Justifications for Conquest ... 27 H

Spreading the Faith ... 28 H Las Casas’s Complaint ... 29 H Reforming

the Empire ... 29 H Exploring North America ... 30 H Spanish Florida ... 32
H Spain in the Southwest ... 33 H The Pueblo Revolt ... 33

THE FRENCH AND DUTCH EMPIRES ... 35

French Colonization ... 35

Voices of Freedom: From Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies

(1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe” (December 19, 1681) ... 36

Contents xi

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 11 28/10/16 12:31 AM

 New France and the Indians ... 38 H The Dutch Empire ... 39 H Dutch
Freedom ... 41 H Freedom in New Netherland ... 41 H The Dutch and
Religious Toleration ... 41 H Settling New Netherland ... 43 H New
Netherland and the Indians ... 43 H Borderlands and Empire in Early
America ... 44

REVIEW ... 47

2. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH AMERICA,

16 0 7–16 6 0 . . . 4 8
ENGLAND AND THE NEW WORLD ... 50
Unifying the English Nation ... 50 H England and Ireland ... 50 H England
and North America ... 51 H Spreading Protestantism ... 51 H The Social
Crisis ... 52 H Masterless Men ... 53

THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH ... 54

English Emigrants ... 54 H Indentured Servants ... 54 H Land and
Liberty ... 55 H Englishmen and Indians ... 55 H The Transformation
of Indian Life ... 57 H Changes in the Land ... 57

SETTLING THE CHESAPEAK E ... 58

The Jamestown Colony ... 58 H From Company to Society ... 58 H
Powhatan and Pocahontas ... 59 H The Uprising of 1622 ... 60 H A
Tobacco Colony ... 61 H Women and the Family ... 61 H The Maryland
Experiment ... 63 H Religion in Maryland ... 63

THE NEW ENGLAND WAY ... 64

The Rise of Puritanism ... 64 H Moral Liberty ... 65 H The Pilgrims at
Plymouth ... 66 H The Great Migration ... 67 H The Puritan Family ... 67 H
Government and Society in Massachusetts ... 68 H Church and State
in Puritan Massachusetts ... 69

NEW ENGLANDERS DI V IDED ... 70

Roger Williams ... 70 H Rhode Island and Connecticut ... 71 H
The Trials of Anne Hutchinson ... 71 H Puritans and Indians ... 73

Voices of Freedom: From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637), and

From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court
(July 3, 1645) ... 74

The Pequot War ... 76 H The New England Economy ... 76 H

The Merchant Elite ... 77 H The Half-Way Covenant ... 78

RELIGION, POLITICS, AND FREEDOM ... 79

The Rights of Englishmen ... 79 H The English Civil War ... 80 H
England’s Debate over Freedom ... 80 H English Liberty ... 81 H
The Civil War and English America ... 81 H The Crisis in
Maryland ... 82 H Cromwell and the Empire ... 83

REVIEW ... 85

xii Contents

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 3 . C R E A T I N G A N G L O - A M E R I C A , 16 6 0 –17 5 0 . . . 8 6
GLOBAL COMPETITION AND THE EX PANSION OF
ENGLAND’S EMPIRE ... 88
The Mercantilist System ... 88 H The Conquest of New Netherland ... 88
H New York and the Rights of Englishmen and Englishwomen ... 90 H
New York and the Indians ... 90 H The Charter of Liberties ... 91 H The
Founding of Carolina ... 91 H The Holy Experiment ... 92 H Quaker
Liberty ... 93 H Land in Pennsylvania ... 94

OR IGINS OF AMER ICAN SLAVERY ... 94

Englishmen and Africans ... 94 H Slavery in History ... 95 H Slavery in the
West Indies ... 96 H Slavery and the Law ... 98 H The Rise of Chesapeake
Slavery ... 99 H Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in Virginia ... 99 H The
End of the Rebellion, and Its Consequences ... 100 H A Slave Society ...
100 H Notions of Freedom ... 101

COLONIES IN CR ISIS ... 101

The Glorious Revolution ... 102 H The Glorious Revolution in
America ... 103 H The Maryland Uprising ... 103 H Leisler’s
Rebellion ... 104 H Changes in New England ... 104 H The Prosecution
of Witches ... 105 H The Salem Witch Trials ... 105

THE GROWTH OF COLONI AL AMER ICA ... 106

A Diverse Population ... 107 H Attracting Settlers ... 107 H The German
Migration ... 109 H Religious Diversity ... 109 H Indian Life in
Transition ... 111

Voices of Freedom: From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant to

Pennsylvania (August 23, 1769), and From Memorial against Non-
English Immigration (December 1727) ... 112

Regional Diversity ... 114 H The Consumer Revolution ... 115 H Colonial
Cities ... 115 H Colonial Artisans ... 116 H An Atlantic World ... 116

SOCI AL CLASSES IN THE COLONIES ... 117

The Colonial Elite ... 117 H Anglicization ... 118 H The South Carolina
Aristocracy ... 119 H Poverty in the Colonies ... 120 H The Middle
Ranks ... 121 H Women and the Household Economy ... 122 H
North America at Mid-Century ... 123

REVIEW ... 125

4 . S L AV E R Y, F R E E D O M , A N D T H E S T R U G G L E F O R
E M P I R E , T O 17 6 3 . . . 12 6
SLAVERY AND EMPIRE ... 128
Atlantic Trade ... 128 H Africa and the Slave Trade ... 130 H The Middle
Passage ... 130 H Chesapeake Slavery ... 132 H Freedom and Slavery in

Contents xiii

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 the Chesapeake ... 133 H Indian Slavery in Early Carolina ... 134 H The
Rice Kingdom ... 134 H The Georgia Experiment ... 135 H Slavery in the
North ... 135

SLAVE CULTU RES AND SLAVE RESISTANCE ... 136

Becoming African-American ... 136 H African Religion in Colonial
America ... 137 H African-American Cultures ... 138 H Resistance to
Slavery ... 138 H The Crisis of 1739–1741 ... 139

AN EMPIRE OF FREEDOM ... 140

British Patriotism ... 140 H The British Constitution ... 140 H Republican
Liberty ... 141 H Liberal Freedom ... 142

THE PUBLIC SPHERE ... 143

The Right to Vote ... 143 H Political Cultures ... 144 H Colonial
Government ... 145 H The Rise of the Assemblies ... 145 H Politics in
Public ... 146 H The Colonial Press ... 146 H Freedom of Expression
and Its Limits ... 147 H The Trial of Zenger ... 148 H The American
Enlightenment ... 148

THE GREAT AWAK ENING ... 149

Religious Revivals ... 149 H The Preaching of Whitefield ... 150 H
The Awakening’s Impact ... 151

IMPER I AL R I VALR IES ... 151

Spanish North America ... 151 H The Spanish in California ... 154 H
The French Empire ... 155

BATTLE FOR THE CONTINENT ... 156

The Middle Ground ... 156 H The Seven Years’ War ... 157 H A World
Transformed ... 158 H Pontiac’s Rebellion ... 159 H The Proclamation
Line ... 159 H Pennsylvania and the Indians ... 161

Voices of Freedom: From Scarouyady, Speech to Pennsylvania Provincial

Council (1756), and From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763) ... 162

Colonial Identities ... 164

REVIEW ... 166

PA RT 2: A NE W N ATION, 1763–1840
5. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION,
17 6 3 –17 8 3 . . . 17 0
THE CR ISIS BEGINS ... 171
Consolidating the Empire ... 172 H Taxing the Colonies ... 173 H
The Stamp Act Crisis ... 173 H Taxation and Representation ... 174 H
Liberty and Resistance ... 175 H Politics in the Streets ... 176 H
The Regulators ... 177 H The Tenant Uprising ... 177

xiv Contents

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 14 28/10/16 12:31 AM

 THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION ... 178
The Townshend Crisis ... 178 H Homespun Virtue ... 178 H The Boston
Massacre ... 179 H Wilkes and Liberty ... 180 H The Tea Act ... 181 H The
Intolerable Acts ... 181

THE COMING OF INDEPENDENCE ... 182

The Continental Congress ... 182 H The Continental Association ...
182 H The Sweets of Liberty ... 183 H The Outbreak of War ... 184 H
Independence? ... 185 H Common Sense ... 186 H Paine’s Impact ... 187 H
The Declaration of Independence ... 187

Voices of Freedom: From Samuel Seabury, An Alarm to the Legislature of

the Province in New-York (1775), and From Thomas Paine, Common Sense
(1776) ... 188

The Declaration and American Freedom ... 190 H An Asylum for

Mankind ... 191 H The Global Declaration of Independence ... 191

SECU R ING INDEPENDENCE ... 193

The Balance of Power ... 193 H Blacks in the Revolution ... 194 H The First
Years of the War ... 194 H The Battle of Saratoga ... 195 H The War in the
South ... 197 H Victory at Last ... 199

REVIEW ... 203

6. THE REVOLUTION WITHIN ... 204

DEMOCR ATIZING FREEDOM ... 206
The Dream of Equality ... 206 H Expanding the Political Nation ... 206 H
The Revolution in Pennsylvania ... 207 H The New Constitutions ... 208 H
The Right to Vote ... 209 H Democratizing Government ... 209

TOWA R D RELIGIOUS TOLER ATION ... 210

Catholic Americans ... 211 H The Founders and Religion ... 211 H
Separating Church and State ... 212 H Jefferson and Religious
Liberty ... 213 H The Revolution and the Churches ... 214 H Christian
Republicanism ... 214

DEFINING ECONOMIC FREEDOM ... 215

Toward Free Labor ... 215 H The Soul of a Republic ... 216 H The Politics
of Inflation ... 217 H The Debate over Free Trade ... 217

THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY ... 218

Colonial Loyalists ... 218 H The Loyalists’ Plight ... 219 H The Revolution
as a Borderlands Conflict ... 219 H The Indians’ Revolution ... 221 H White
Freedom, Indian Freedom ... 222

SLAVERY AND THE REVOLUTION ... 223

The Language of Slavery and Freedom ... 224 H Obstacles to Abolition
... 224 H The Cause of General Liberty ... 225 H Petitions for Freedom ...
225 H British Emancipators ... 227 H Voluntary Emancipations ... 227 H
Abolition in the North ... 228 H Free Black Communities ... 228

Contents xv

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 15 28/10/16 12:32 AM

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 DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY ... 229
Revolutionary Women ... 229

Voices of Freedom: From Abigail Adams to John Adams, Braintree,

Mass. (March 31, 1776), and From Petitions of Slaves to the
Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777) ... 230

Gender and Politics ... 232 H Republican Motherhood ... 233 H

The Arduous Struggle for Liberty ... 234

REVIEW ... 237

7. F O U N D I N G A N A T I O N , 17 8 3 –17 9 1 . . . 2 3 8
AMER ICA UNDER THE CONFEDER ATION ... 240
The Articles of Confederation ... 240 H Congress and the West ...
242 H Settlers and the West ... 242 H The Land Ordinances ... 243 H
The Confederation’s Weaknesses ... 245 H Shays’s Rebellion ... 246 H
Nationalists of the 1780s ... 247

A NEW CONSTITUTION ... 247

The Structure of Government ... 248 H The Limits of Democracy ... 249 H The
Division and Separation of Powers ... 250 H The Debate over Slavery ... 251
H Slavery in the Constitution ... 251 H The Final Document ... 253

THE R ATIFICATION DEBATE AND THE OR IGIN OF

THE BILL OF R IGHTS ... 254
The Federalist ... 254 H “Extend the Sphere” ... 255 H The Anti-Federalists
... 256 H The Bill of Rights ... 258

Voices of Freedom: From David Ramsay, The History of the American

Revolution (1789), and From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay
Signed “Agrippa” (1787) ... 260

“WE THE PEOPLE” ... 263

National Identity ... 263 H Indians in the New Nation ... 263 H Blacks and
the Republic ... 266 H Jefferson, Slavery, and Race ... 268 H Principles of
Freedom ... 269

REVIEW ... 271

8 . S E C U R I N G T H E R E P U B L I C , 17 9 1–18 15 . . . 2 7 2
POLITICS IN AN AGE OF PASSION ... 273
Hamilton’s Program ... 274 H The Emergence of Opposition ... 274 H
The Jefferson–Hamilton Bargain ... 275 H The Impact of the French
Revolution ... 276 H Political Parties ... 277 H The Whiskey Rebellion ...
278 H The Republican Party ... 279 H An Expanding Public Sphere ... 279
H The Democratic-Republican Societies ... 280 H The Rights of
Women ... 280 H Women and the Republic ... 281

xvi Contents

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 16 28/10/16 12:32 AM

 Voices of Freedom: From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of
the Sexes” (1790), and From Address of the Democratic-Republican
Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794) ... 282

THE ADAMS PRESIDENCY ... 284

The Election of 1796 ... 284 H The “Reign of Witches” ... 285 H The
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions ... 286 H The “Revolution of
1800” ... 287 H Slavery and Politics ... 288 H The Haitian Revolution ... 288
H Gabriel’s Rebellion ... 289

JEFFERSON IN POWER ... 290

Judicial Review ... 291 H The Louisiana Purchase ... 291 H Lewis and
Clark ... 293 H Incorporating Louisiana ... 294 H The Barbary Wars ... 294
H The Embargo ... 295 H Madison and Pressure for War ... 296

THE “SECOND WA R OF INDEPENDENCE” ... 297

The Indian Response ... 297 H Tecumseh’s Vision ... 298 H The War of
1812 ... 298 H The War’s Aftermath ... 302 H The War of 1812 and the
Canadian Borderland ... 302 H The End of the Federalist Party ... 303

REVIEW ... 305

9 . T H E M A R K E T R E V O L U T I O N , 18 0 0 –18 4 0 . . . 3 0 6
A NEW ECONOMY ... 308
Roads and Steamboats ... 309 H The Erie Canal ... 309 H Railroads and
the Telegraph ... 311 H The Rise of the West ... 312 H An Internal
Borderland ... 315 H The Cotton Kingdom ... 316 H The Unfree Westward
Movement ... 318

M A RK ET SOCIETY ... 318

Commercial Farmers ... 318 H The Growth of Cities ... 319 H The Factory
System ... 321 H The Industrial Worker ... 323 H The “Mill Girls” ... 324 H
The Growth of Immigration ... 324 H Irish and German Newcomers ... 325
H The Rise of Nativism ... 326 H The Transformation of Law ... 328

THE FREE INDI V IDUAL ... 329

The West and Freedom ... 329 H The Transcendentalists ... 330 H
Individualism ... 330

Voices of Freedom: From Recollections of Harriet L. Noble (1824), and

From “Factory Life as It Is, by an Operative” (1845) ... 332

The Second Great Awakening ... 334 H The Awakening’s Impact ... 335 H
The Emergence of Mormonism ... 336

THE LIMITS OF PROSPER ITY ... 337

Liberty and Prosperity ... 337 H Race and Opportunity ... 338 H The
Cult of Domesticity ... 339 H Women and Work ... 340 H The Early Labor
Movement ... 341 H The “Liberty of Living” ... 342

REVIEW ... 345

Contents xvii

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 17 28/10/16 12:32 AM

 10 . D E M O C R A C Y I N A M E R I C A , 18 15 –18 4 0 . . . 3 4 6
THE TR I UMPH OF DEMOCR ACY ... 348
Property and Democracy ... 348 H The Dorr War ... 348 H Tocqueville on
Democracy ... 349 H The Information Revolution ... 350 H The Limits of
Democracy ... 351 H A Racial Democracy ... 352 H Race and Class ... 352

NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS ... 353

The American System ... 353 H Banks and Money ... 355 H The Panic of
1819 ... 355 H The Politics of the Panic ... 356 H The Missouri
Controversy ... 356 H The Slavery Question ... 358

NATION, SECTION, AND PA RTY ... 359

The United States and the Latin American Wars of Independence ... 359
H The Monroe Doctrine ... 360 H The Election of 1824 ... 361

Voices of Freedom: From The Memorial of the Non-Freeholders of the

City of Richmond (1829), and From Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens
Threatened with Disfranchisement (1838) ... 362

The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams ... 364 H “Liberty Is Power” ...
365 H Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party ... 365 H The Election
of 1828 ... 366

THE AGE OF JACKSON ... 367

The Party System ... 367 H Democrats and Whigs ... 368 H Public and
Private Freedom ... 369 H Politics and Morality ... 370 H South Carolina
and Nullification ... 371 H Calhoun’s Political Theory ... 371 H The
Nullification Crisis ... 373 H Indian Removal ... 374 H The Supreme Court
and the Indians ... 374

THE BANK WA R AND A FTER ... 378

Biddle’s Bank ... 378 H The Pet Banks and the Economy ... 379 H The
Panic of 1837 ... 380 H Van Buren in Office ... 381 H The Election of
1840 ... 381 H His Accidency ... 382

REVIEW ... 384

PA RT 3: SL AV ERY, FREEDOM, A ND THE

CRISIS OF THE UNION, 1840–1877
11. T H E P E C U L I A R I N S T I T U T I O N . . . 3 8 8
THE OLD SOUTH ... 390
Cotton Is King ... 390 H The Second Middle Passage ... 391 H Slavery
and the Nation ... 391 H The Southern Economy ... 393 H Plain Folk of
the Old South ... 394 H The Planter Class ... 395 H The Paternalist
Ethos ... 396 H The Code of Honor ... 396 H The Proslavery
Argument ... 397 H Abolition in the Americas ... 398 H Slavery
xviii Contents and Liberty ... 399 H Slavery and Civilization ... 400

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 18 28/10/16 12:32 AM

 LIFE UNDER SLAVERY ... 400
Slaves and the Law ... 400 H Conditions of Slave Life ... 401 H
Free Blacks in the Old South ... 402

Voices of Freedom: From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph Long (1840),

and From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850) ... 404

The Upper and Lower South ... 406 H Slave Labor ... 407 H Gang
Labor and Task Labor ... 407 H Slavery in the Cities ... 409 H
Maintaining Order ... 409

SLAVE CULTU RE ... 410

The Slave Family ... 411 H The Threat of Sale ... 411 H Gender Roles
among Slaves ... 412 H Slave Religion ... 412 H The Gospel of
Freedom ... 413 H The Desire for Liberty ... 413

RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY ... 415

Forms of Resistance ... 415 H Fugitive Slaves ... 415 H The Underground
Railroad ... 417 H The Amistad ... 418 H Slave Revolts ... 418 H Nat Turner’s
Rebellion ... 419

REVIEW ... 423

12 . A N A G E O F R E F O R M , 18 2 0 –18 4 0 . . . 4 24
THE REFORM IMPULSE ... 425
Utopian Communities ... 426 H The Shakers ... 426 H Oneida ... 427 H
Worldly Communities ... 428 H The Owenites ... 429 H Religion and
Reform ... 430 H The Temperance Movement ... 431 H Critics of
Reform ... 431 H Reformers and Freedom ... 432 H The Invention
of the Asylum ... 433 H The Common School ... 433

THE CRUSADE AGA INST SLAVERY ... 435

Colonization ... 435 H Blacks and Colonization ... 435 H Militant
Abolitionism ... 436 H The Emergence of Garrison ... 437 H Spreading
the Abolitionist Message ... 437 H Slavery and Moral Suasion ... 439 H
Abolitionists and the Idea of Freedom ... 439 H A New Vision of
America ... 440

BLACK AND WHITE ABOLITIONISM ... 441

Black Abolitionists ... 441 H Abolitionism and Race ... 442 H Slavery and
American Freedom ... 443 H Gentlemen of Property and Standing ... 444
H Slavery and Civil Liberties ... 445

THE OR IGINS OF FEMINISM ... 446

The Rise of the Public Woman ... 446 H Women and Free Speech ... 447
H Women’s Rights ... 447 H Feminism and Freedom ... 449 H Women and
Work ... 449

Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimké, Letter in The Liberator

(August 2, 1837), and From Catharine Beecher, An Essay on Slavery and
Abolitionism (1837) ... 450

Contents xix

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 19 28/10/16 12:32 AM

 The Slavery of Sex ... 453 H “Social Freedom” ... 453 H The Abolitionist
Schism ... 454

REVIEW ... 457

13 . A H O U S E D I V I D E D , 18 4 0 –18 6 1 . . . 4 5 8
FRUITS OF M ANIFEST DESTIN Y ... 459
Continental Expansion ... 459 H The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and
California ... 460 H The Texas Revolt ... 461 H The Election of 1844 ... 463
H The Road to War ... 464 H The War and Its Critics ... 465 H Combat
in Mexico ... 466 H The Texas Borderland ... 468 H Race and Manifest
Destiny ... 469 H Gold-Rush California ... 469 H California and the
Boundaries of Freedom ... 470 H Opening Japan ... 471

A DOSE OF A RSENIC ... 472

The Wilmot Proviso ... 473 H The Free Soil Appeal ... 473 H Crisis and
Compromise ... 475 H The Great Debate ... 475 H The Fugitive Slave
Issue ... 476 H Douglas and Popular Sovereignty ... 477 H The Kansas-
Nebraska Act ... 478

THE R ISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PA RTY ... 480

The Northern Economy ... 480 H The Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothings
... 480 H The Free Labor Ideology ... 483 H Bleeding Kansas and the
Election of 1856 ... 484

THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN ... 485

The Dred Scott Decision ... 485 H The Decision’s Aftermath ... 486 H
Lincoln and Slavery ... 486 H The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign ... 487 H
John Brown at Harpers Ferry ... 489

Voices of Freedom: From The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) ... 490

The Rise of Southern Nationalism ... 492 H The Democratic Split ... 493 H
The Nomination of Lincoln ... 494 H The Election of 1860 ... 494

THE IMPENDING CR ISIS ... 495

The Secession Movement ... 495 H The Secession Crisis ... 496 H And the
War Came ... 497

REVIEW ... 501

14 . A N E W B I R T H O F F R E E D O M : T H E C I V I L W A R ,
18 6 1–18 6 5 . . . 5 0 2
THE FIRST MODERN WA R ... 503
The Two Combatants ... 504 H The Technology of War ... 504 H The
Public and the War ... 506 H Mobilizing Resources ... 507 H Military

xx Contents

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 20 28/10/16 12:32 AM

 Strategies ... 508 H The War Begins ... 508 H The War in the East, 1862 ...
509 H The War in the West ... 510

THE COMING OF EM ANCIPATION ... 511

Slavery and the War ... 511 H The Unraveling of Slavery ... 513 H
Steps toward Emancipation ... 513 H Lincoln’s Decision ... 514 H The
Emancipation Proclamation ... 516 H Enlisting Black Troops ... 517 H The
Black Soldier ... 518

THE SECOND AMER ICAN REVOLUTION ... 519

Liberty and Union ... 519 H Lincoln’s Vision ... 520 H The War and
American Religion ... 521 H Liberty in Wartime ... 522 H The North’s
Transformation ... 523 H Government and the Economy ... 523 H The
West and the War ... 524

Voices of Freedom: From Frederick Douglass, Men of Color, to Arms!

(1863), and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore
(April 18, 1864) ... 526

A New Financial System ... 529 H Women and the War ... 530 H The
Divided North ... 531

THE CONFEDER ATE NATION ... 532

Leadership and Government ... 532 H The Inner Civil War ... 534 H
Economic Problems ... 534 H Southern Unionists ... 535 H Women and the
Confederacy ... 536 H Black Soldiers for the Confederacy ... 538

TU RNING POINTS ... 538

Gettysburg and Vicksburg ... 538 H 1864 ... 539

REHEA RSALS FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THE END

OF THE WA R ... 541
The Sea Islands Experiment ... 541 H Wartime Reconstruction in the
West ... 542 H The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction ... 542 H Victory
at Last ... 543 H The War and the World ... 545 H The War in American
History ... 546

REVIEW ... 549

15 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ”: R E C O N S T R U C T I O N ,
18 6 5 –18 7 7 . . . 5 5 0
THE MEANING OF FREEDOM ... 552
Blacks and the Meaning of Freedom ... 552 H Families in Freedom ... 552
H Church and School ... 553 H Political Freedom ... 553 H Land, Labor, and
Freedom ... 554 H Masters without Slaves ... 555 H The Free Labor
Vision ... 556 H The Freedmen’s Bureau ... 557 H The Failure of Land
Reform ... 558 H Toward a New South ... 559 H The White Farmer ... 560 H
The Urban South ... 561 H The Aftermath of Slavery ... 561

Contents xxi

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 21 28/10/16 12:32 AM

 Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the
Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping
Contract (1866) ... 562

THE M AK ING OF R ADICAL RECONSTRUCTION ... 564

Andrew Johnson ... 564 H The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ... 565
H The Black Codes ... 565 H The Radical Republicans ... 566 H The
Origins of Civil Rights ... 567 H The Fourteenth Amendment ... 568 H The
Reconstruction Act ... 568 H Impeachment and the Election of
Grant ... 569 H The Fifteenth Amendment ... 570 H The “Great
Constitutional Revolution” ... 570 H Boundaries of Freedom ... 571 H The
Rights of Women ... 572 H Feminists and Radicals ... 572

R ADICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH ... 574

“The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 574 H The Black Officeholder ... 575 H
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 576 H Southern Republicans in
Power ... 577 H The Quest for Prosperity ... 578

THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION ... 579

Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 579 H “A Reign of Terror” ... 579 H The
Liberal Republicans ... 581 H The North’s Retreat ... 582 H The Triumph
of the Redeemers ... 584 H The Disputed Election and Bargain of
1877 ... 584 H The End of Reconstruction ... 585

REVIEW ... 587

PA RT 4: TOWA RD A GLOBA L PRESENCE,

1870–1920
16 . A M E R I C A’ S G I L D E D A G E , 18 7 0 –18 9 0 . . . 5 9 0
THE SECOND INDUSTR I AL REVOLUTION ... 591
The Industrial Economy ... 592 H Railroads and the National Market ... 593
H The Spirit of Innovation ... 594 H Competition and Consolidation ... 595 H
The Rise of Andrew Carnegie ... 596 H The Triumph of John D.
Rockefeller ... 599 H Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age ... 600 H
Sunshine and Shadow: Increasing Wealth and Poverty ... 601

THE TR ANSFORM ATION OF THE WEST ... 602

A Diverse Region ... 602 H Farming on the Middle Border ... 604 H
Bonanza Farms ... 605 H The Cowboy and the Corporate West ... 606 H
The Chinese Presence ... 609 H Conflict on the Mormon Frontier ... 609 H
The Subjugation of the Plains Indians ... 610 H “Let Me Be a Free
Man” ... 611

xxii Contents

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 22 28/10/16 12:32 AM

 Voices of Freedom: From Speech of Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé
Indians, in Washington, D.C. (1879), and From Letter by Saum Song Bo,
American Missionary (October 1885) ... 612

Remaking Indian Life ... 614 H The Dawes Act ... 615 H Indian
Citizenship ... 615 H The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee ... 616 H
Settler Societies and Global Wests ... 618 H Myth, Reality, and the Wild
West ... 619

POLITICS IN A GILDED AGE ... 619

The Corruption of Politics ... 620 H The Politics of Dead Center ... 621
H Government and the Economy ... 622 H Reform Legislation ... 622 H
Political Conflict in the States ... 623

FREEDOM IN THE GILDED AGE ... 624

The Social Problem ... 624 H Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy ... 624
H Social Darwinism in America ... 625 H Liberty of Contract ... 626 H The
Courts and Freedom ... 627

LABOR AND THE REPUBLIC ... 628

“The Overwhelming Labor Question” ... 628 H The Knights of Labor
and the “Conditions Essential to Liberty” ... 629 H Middle-Class
Reformers ... 630 H Progress and Poverty ... 630 H The Cooperative
Commonwealth ... 631 H Bellamy’s Utopia ... 632 H Protestants and
Moral Reform ... 632 H A Social Gospel ... 633 H The Haymarket
Affair ... 633 H Labor and Politics ... 634

REVIEW ... 637

17. F R E E D O M ’ S B O U N D A R I E S , A T H O M E A N D
A B R O A D , 18 9 0 –19 0 0 . . . 6 3 8
THE POPULIST CH ALLENGE ... 640
The Farmers’ Revolt ... 640 H The People’s Party ... 641 H The Populist
Platform ... 642 H The Populist Coalition ... 642 H The Government and
Labor ... 644 H Populism and Labor ... 645 H Bryan and Free Silver ... 646
H The Campaign of 1896 ... 646

THE SEGREGATED SOUTH ... 648

The Redeemers in Power ... 648 H The Failure of the New South Dream
... 648 H Black Life in the South ... 649 H The Kansas Exodus ... 650 H The
Decline of Black Politics ... 650 H The Elimination of Black Voting ... 651
H The Law of Segregation ... 652 H Segregation and White Domination ...
653 H The Rise of Lynching ... 654 H Politics, Religion, and Memory ... 655

REDR AW ING THE BOUNDA R IES ... 656

The New Immigration and the New Nativism ... 656 H Chinese Exclusion
and Chinese Rights ... 657 H The Emergence of Booker T. Washington ...
659 H The Rise of the AFL ... 659

Contents xxiii

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 Voices of Freedom: From Booker T. Washington, Address at the Atlanta
Cotton Exposition (1895), and From W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of Mr. Booker T.
Washington and Others” (1903) ... 660

The Women’s Era ... 662

BECOMING A WORLD POWER ... 663

The New Imperialism ... 663 H American Expansionism ... 664 H The Lure
of Empire ... 665 H The “Splendid Little War” ... 666 H Roosevelt at San
Juan Hill ... 668 H An American Empire ... 668 H The Philippine War ... 669
H Citizens or Subjects? ... 672 H Drawing the Global Color Line ... 673 H
“Republic or Empire?” ... 674

REVIEW ... 677

18 . T H E P R O G R E S S I V E E R A , 19 0 0 –19 16 . . . 6 7 8
AN U RBAN AGE AND A CONSUMER SOCIETY ... 680
Farms and Cities ... 680 H The Muckrakers ... 682 H Immigration as a
Global Process ... 682 H The Immigrant Quest for Freedom ... 684 H
Consumer Freedom ... 685 H The Working Woman ... 686 H The Rise
of Fordism ... 687 H The Promise of Abundance ... 688 H An American
Standard of Living ... 689

VA R IETIES OF PROGRESSI V ISM ... 690

Industrial Freedom ... 690 H The Socialist Presence ... 691 H The Gospel
of Debs ... 691 H AFL and IWW ... 693 H The New Immigrants on
Strike ... 693

Voices of Freedom: From Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and

Economics (1898), and From John Mitchell, “The Workingman’s
Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910) ... 694

Labor and Civil Liberties ... 697 H The New Feminism ... 697 H The Rise
of Personal Freedom ... 698 H The Birth-Control Movement ... 699 H
Native American Progressivism ... 699

THE POLITICS OF PROGRESSI V ISM ... 700

Effective Freedom ... 700 H State and Local Reforms ... 701 H Progressivism
in the West ... 701 H Progressive Democracy ... 703 H Government by
Expert ... 703 H Jane Addams and Hull House ... 704 H “Spearheads for
Reform” ... 704 H The Campaign for Woman Suffrage ... 705 H Maternalist
Reform ... 707 H The Idea of Economic Citizenship ... 708

THE PROGRESSI VE PRESIDENTS ... 709

Theodore Roosevelt ... 709 H Roosevelt and Economic Regulation ... 710
H John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature ... 710 H The Conservation
Movement ... 711 H Taft in Office ... 711 H The Election of 1912 ... 712 H

xxiv Contents

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 New Freedom and New Nationalism ... 713 H Wilson’s First Term ... 714
H The Expanding Role of Government ... 714

REVIEW ... 717

19 . S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y: T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S
A N D W O R L D W A R I , 19 16 –19 2 0 . . . 7 18
AN ER A OF INTERVENTION ... 720
“I Took the Canal Zone” ... 721 H The Roosevelt Corollary ... 722 H Moral
Imperialism ... 723 H Wilson and Mexico ... 725

AMER ICA AND THE GREAT WA R ... 725

Neutrality and Preparedness ... 726 H The Road to War ... 727 H The
Fourteen Points ... 728

THE WA R AT HOME ... 730

The Progressives’ War ... 730 H The Wartime State ... 730 H The
Propaganda War ... 731 H “The Great Cause of Freedom” ... 732 H The
Coming of Woman Suffrage ... 732 H Prohibition ... 734 H Liberty in
Wartime ... 735 H The Espionage and Sedition Acts ... 736 H Coercive
Patriotism ... 736

WHO IS AN AMER ICAN? ... 737

The “Race Problem” ... 738 H Americanization and Pluralism ... 738

Voices of Freedom: From Woodrow Wilson, War Message to Congress

(1917), and From Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury before Sentencing
under the Espionage Act (1918) ... 740

The Anti-German Crusade ... 742 H Toward Immigration Restriction ...

742 H Groups Apart: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Asian-Americans ...
743 H The Color Line ... 744 H Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race ... 745 H W. E. B.
Du Bois and the Revival of Black Protest ... 745 H Closing Ranks ... 746 H
The Great Migration and the “Promised Land” ... 747 H Racial Violence,
North and South ... 748 H The Rise of Garveyism ... 748

1919 ... 749

A Worldwide Upsurge ... 749 H Upheaval in America ... 750 H The Great
Steel Strike ... 750 H The Red Scare ... 751 H Wilson at Versailles ... 752 H
The Wilsonian Moment ... 753 H The Seeds of Wars to Come ... 755 H The
Treaty Debate ... 756

REVIEW ... 759

Contents xxv

229952_00_i-lxxx,1_r2_as.indd 25 28/10/16 12:33 AM

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Exploring the Variety of Random
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conducted a campaign worthy of Henry Clay. Multitudes crowded to
hear and see a man candid enough to deliver his honest opinions
with the boldness of “Old Hickory.” The masses knew of Mr. Sibley’s
courage, sagacity and success in business, but they were unprepared
to find so sturdy a defender of their rights. His manly independence,
ringing denunciations of wrong, grand simplicity and incisive logic
aroused unbounded enthusiasm. The tide in favor of the fearless
advocate of fair-play for the lowliest creature no earthly power could
stem. His opponent was buried out of sight and Sibley was elected
by a sweeping majority.
Mr. Sibley’s course in Congress amply met the expectations of his
most ardent supporters. The prestige of his great victory, added to
his personal magnetism and rare geniality, at the very outset gave
him a measure of influence few members ever attain. During the
extra-session he expressed his views with characteristic vigor. A
natural leader, close student and keen observer, he did not wait for
somebody to give him the cue before putting his ideas on record. In
the silver-discussion he bore a prominent part, opposing resolutely
the repeal of the Sherman act. His wonderful speech “set the ball
rolling” for those who declined to follow the administration program.
The House was electrified by Sibley’s effort. Throughout his speech
of three hours he was honored with the largest Congressional
audience of the decade. Aisles, halls, galleries and corridors were
densely packed. Senators came from the other end of the Capitol to
listen to the brave Pennsylvanian who dared plead for the white
metal. For many years Mr. Sibley has been a close student of political
and social economics and he so grouped his facts as to command
the undivided attention and the highest respect of those who
honestly differed from him in his conclusions. Satire, pathos, bright
wit and pungent repartee awoke in his hearers the strongest
emotions, entrancing the bimetalists and giving their enemies a cold
chill, as the stream of eloquence flowed from lips “untrained to
flatter, to dissemble or to play the hypocrite.” Thenceforth the
position of the representative of the Twenty-sixth district was
assured, despite the assaults of hireling journals and discomfited
worshippers of the golden calf.
 He took advanced ground on the Chinese question, delivering a
speech replete with patriotism and common-sense. An American by
birth, habit and education, he prefers his own country to any other
under the blue vault of heaven. The American workman he would
protect from pauper immigration and refuse to put on the European
or Asiatic level. He stands up for American skill, American ingenuity,
American labor and American wages. Tariff for revenue he approves
of, not a tariff to diminish revenue or to enrich one class at the
expense of all. The tiller of the soil, the mechanic, the coal-miner,
the coke-burner and the day-laborer have found him an outspoken
champion of their cause. Small wonder is it that good men and
women of all creeds and parties have abiding faith in Joseph C.
Sibley and would fain bestow on him the highest office in the
nation’s gift.
Human nature is a queer medley and sometimes manifests streaks
of envy and meanness in queer ways. Mr. Sibley’s motives have been
impugned, his efforts belittled, his methods assailed and his neckties
criticised by men who could not understand his lofty character and
purposes. The generous ex-Congressman must plead guilty to the
charge of wearing clothes that fit him, of smoking decent cigars, of
driving fine horses and of living comfortably. Of course it would be
cheaper to buy hand-me-down misfits, to indulge in loud-smelling
tobies, to walk or ride muleback, to curry his own horses and let his
wife do the washing instead of hiring competent helpers. But he
goes right ahead increasing his business, improving his farms,
developing American trotters and furnishing work at the highest
wages to willing hands in his factories, at his oil-wells, on his lands,
in his barns and his hospitable home. He dispenses large sums in
charity. His benevolence and enterprise reach far beyond
Pennsylvania. He does not hoard up money to loan it at exorbitant
rates. As a matter of fact, from the hundreds of men he has helped
pecuniarily he never accepted one penny of interest. He has been
mayor of Franklin, president of the Pennsylvania State-Dairymen’s
Association, director of the American Jersey-Cattle Club and member
of the State Board of Agriculture. He is a brilliant talker, a profound
thinker, a capital story-teller and a loyal friend. “May he live long and
prosper!”
Miller & Sibley’s Prospect-Hill Stock-Farm is one of the largest, best
equipped and most favorably known in the world. Different farms
comprising the establishment include a thousand acres of land
adjacent to Franklin and a farm, with stabling for two-hundred
horses and the finest kite-track in the United States, at Meadville. On
one of these farms is the first silo built west of the Allegheny
mountains. Trotting stock, Jersey cattle, Shetland ponies and Angora
goats of the highest grades are bred. For Michael Angelo, when a
calf six weeks old, twelve-thousand-five-hundred dollars in cash were
paid A. B. Darling, proprietor of the Fifth-Avenue Hotel, New York
City. Animals of the best strain were purchased, regardless of cost.
In 1886 Mr. Sibley bought from Senator Leland Stanford, of
California, for ten-thousand dollars, the four-year-old trotting-stallion
St. Bel. Seventy-five thousand were offered for him a few weeks
before the famous sire of numerous prize-winners died. Cows that
have broken all records for milk and butter, and horses that have
won the biggest purses on the leading race-tracks of the country are
the results of the liberal policy pursued at Prospect-Hill. Charles
Marvin, the prince of horsemen, superintends the trotting
department and E. H. Sibley is manager of all the Miller & Sibley
interests. Hundreds of the choicest animals are raised every year.
Prospect-Hill Farm is one of the sights of Franklin and the enterprise
represents an investment not far short of one-million dollars.
Wouldn’t men like Charles Miller and Joseph C. Sibley sweep away
the cobwebs, give business an impetus and infuse new life and new
ideas into any community?
Franklin had tallied one for heavy-oil, but its resources were not
exhausted. On October seventeenth, 1859, Colonel James P. Hoover,
C. M. Hoover and Vance Stewart began to drill on the Robert-
Brandon—now the Hoover—farm of three-hundred acres, in
Sandycreek township, on the west bank of the Allegheny river, three
miles south of Franklin. They found oil on December twenty-first, the
well yielding one-hundred barrels a day! This pretty Christmas gift
was another surprise. Owing to its distance from “springs” and the
two wells—Drake and Evans—already producing, the stay-in-the-rut
element felt confident that the Hoover Well would not “amount to a
hill of beans.” It was “piling Ossa on Pelion” for the well to produce,
from the second sand, oil with properties adapted to illumination and
lubrication. The Drake was for light, the Evans for grease and the
Hoover combined the two in part. Where and when was this
variegated dissimilarity to cease? Perhaps its latest phase is to come
shortly. Henry F. James is beginning a well south-west of town, on
the N. B. Myers tract, between a sweet and a sour spring. Savans,
scientists, beer-drinkers, tee-totalers and oil-operators are on the
ragged edge of suspense, some hoping, some fearing, some praying
that James may tap a perennial fount of creamy ’alf-and-’alf.
Once at a drilling-well on the “Point” the tools dropped suddenly.
The driller relieved the tension on his rope and let the tools down
slowly. They descended six or eight feet! The bare thought of a
crevice of such dimensions paralyzed the knight of the temper-screw,
all the more that the hole was not to the first sand. What a lake of
oil must underlie that derrick! He drew up the tools. They were
dripping amber fluid, which had a flavor quite unlike petroleum. Did
his nose deceive him? It was the aroma of beer! A lick of the stuff
confirmed the nasal diagnosis—it had the taste of beer! The alarm
was sounded and the sand-pump run down. It came up brimming
over with beer! Ten times the trip was repeated with the same
result. Think of an ocean of the delicious, foamy, appetizing German
beverage! Word was sent to the owners of the well, who ordered the
tubing to be put in. They tried to figure how many breweries the
production of their well would retire. Pumping was about to begin, in
presence of a party of impatient, thirsty spectators, when an excited
Teuton, blowing and puffing, was seen approaching at a breakneck
pace. Evidently he had something on his mind. “Gott in Himmel!” he
shrieked, “you vas proke mit Grossman’s vault!” The mystery was
quickly explained. Philip Grossman, the brewer, had cut a tunnel a
hundred feet into the hill-side to store his liquid-stock in a cool place.
The well chanced to be squarely over this tunnel, the roof of which
the tools pierced and stove in the head of a tun of beer! Workmen
who came for a load were astonished to discover one end of a string
of tubing dangling in the tun. It dawned upon them that the drillers
three-hundred feet above must have imagined they struck a crevice
and a messenger speeded to the well. The saddened crowd slinked
off, muttering words that would not look nice in print. The tubing
was withdrawn, the hogshead was shoved aside, the tools were
again swung and two weeks later the well was pumping thirty
barrels a day of unmistakable heavy-oil.
The Hoover strike fed the flame the Evans Well had kindled. Lands
in the neighborhood were in demand on any terms the owners might
impose. From Franklin to the new well, on both sides of the
Allegheny, was the favorite choice, on a theory that a pool connected
the deposits. Leases were snapped up at one-half royalty and a
cash-bonus. Additional wells on the Hoover rivaled No. 1, which
produced gamely for four years. The tools were stuck in cleaning it
out and a new well beside it started at sixty barrels. The “Big-Emma
Vein” was really an artery to which for years “whoa, Emma!” did not
apply. Bissell & Co. and the Cameron Petroleum-Company secured
control of the property, on which fifteen wells were producing two-
hundred barrels ten years from the advent of the Hoover & Vance.
Harry Smith, a city-father, is operating on the tract and drilling
paying wells at reasonable intervals. Colonel James P. Hoover died on
February fourth, 1871, aged sixty-nine. Born in Centre county, he
settled in the southern part of Clarion, was appointed by Governor
Porter in 1839 Prothonotary of Venango county and removed to
Franklin. The people elected him to the same office for three years
and State-Senator in 1844. The Canal-Commissioners in 1851
appointed him collector of the tolls at Hollidaysburg, Blair county, for
five years. He filled these positions efficiently, strict adherence to
principle and a high sense of duty marking his whole career. The
esteem and confidence he enjoyed all through his useful life were
attested by universal regret at his death and the largest funeral ever
witnessed in Franklin. His estimable widow survived Colonel Hoover
twenty years, dying at the residence of her son-in-law, Arnold
Plumer, in Minnesota. Their son, C. M. Hoover, ex-sheriff of the
county, has been interested in the street railway. Vance Stewart, who
owned a farm near the lower river-bridge, removed to Greenville and
preceded his wife and several children, one of them Rev. Orlando V.
Stewart, to the tomb. Another son, James Stewart, was a prominent
member of the Erie bar.

B. E. SWAN.

The opening months of 1860 were decidedly lively on the Cochran

Farm, in Cranberry township, opposite the Hoover. The first well, the
Keystone, on the flats above where the station now stands, was a
second-sander of the hundred-barrel class. The first oil sold for
fourteen dollars a barrel, at which rate land-owners and operators
were not in danger of bankruptcy or the poor-house. Fourteen-
hundred dollars a day from a three-inch hole would have seemed too
preposterous for Munchausen before the Pennsylvania oil-regions
demonstrated that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The Monitor,
Raymond, Williams, McCutcheon and other wells kept the production
at a satisfactory figure. Dale & Morrow, Horton & Son, Hoover & Co.,
George R. Hobby, Cornelius Fulkerson and George S. McCartney
were early operators. B. E. Swan located on the farm in May of 1865
and drilled numerous fair wells. He has operated there for thirty-two
years, sticking to the second-sand territory with a tenacity equal to
the “perseverance of the saints.” When thousands of producers,
imitating the dog that let go the bone to grasp the shadow in the
water, quit their enduring small wells to take their chance of larger
ones in costlier fields, he did not lose his head and add another to
the financial wrecks that strewed the greasian shore. Appreciating
his moral stamina, his steadfastness and ability, Mr. Swan’s friends
insist that he shall serve the public in some important office. Walter
Pennell—his father made the first car-wheels—and W. P. Smith drilled
several snug wells on the uplands, Sweet & Shaffer following with six
or eight. Eighteen wells are producing on the tract, which contains
one-hundred-and-forty acres and has had only two dry-holes in its
thirty-six years of active developments.
Alexander Cochran, for forty years
owner of the well-known farm bearing his
name, is one of the oldest citizens of
Franklin. Winning his way in the world by
sheer force of character, scrupulous
integrity and a fixed determination to
succeed, he is in the highest and best
sense a self-made man. Working hard in
boyhood to secure an education, he
taught school, clerked in general stores,
studied law and was twice elected
ALEXANDER COCHRAN. Prothonotary without asking one voter for
his support. In these days of button-
holing, log-rolling, wire-pulling, buying and soliciting votes this is a
record to recall with pride. Marrying Miss Mary Bole—her father
removed from Lewistown to Franklin seventy-five years ago—he built
the home at “Cochran Spring” that is one of the land-marks of the
town and established a large dry-goods store. As his means
permitted he bought city-lots, put up dwelling-houses and about
1852 paid sixteen-hundred dollars for the farm in Cranberry township
for which in 1863, after it had yielded a fortune, he refused seven-
hundred-thousand! The farm was in two blocks. A neighbor
expostulated with him for buying the second piece, saying it was
“foolish to waste money that way.” In 1861, when the same neighbor
wished to mortgage his land for a loan, he naively remarked: “Well,
Aleck, I guess I was the fool, not you, in 1852.” A man of broad
views, Mr. Cochran freely grants to others the liberality of thought he
claims for himself. A hater of cant and sham and hollow pretence, he
believes less in musty creeds than kindly deeds, more in giving
loaves than tracts to the hungry, and takes no stock in religion that
thinks only of dodging punishment in the next world and fails to help
humanity in this. In the dark days of low-priced oil and depressed
trade, he would accept neither interest from his debtors nor royalty
from the operators who had little wells on his farm. He never
hounded the sheriff on a hapless borrower, foreclosed a mortgage to
grab a coveted property or seized the chattels of a struggling victim
to satisfy a shirt-tail note. There is no shred of the Pecksniff, the
Shylock or the Uriah-Heep in his anatomy. At fourscore he is hale
and hearty, rides on horseback, cultivates his garden, attends to
business, likes a good play and keeps up with the literature of the
day. The productive oil-farm is now owned by his daughters, Mrs. J.
J. McLaurin, of Harrisburg, and Mrs. George R. Sheasley, of Franklin.
The proudest eulogy he could desire is Alexander Cochran’s just
desert: “The Poor Man’s Friend.”
Down to Sandy Creek many wells were drilled from 1860 to 1865,
producing fairly at an average depth of four-hundred-and-fifty to
five-hundred feet. These operations included the Miller, Smith and
Pope farms, on the west side of the river, and the Rice, Nicklin,
Martin and Harmon, on the east side, all second-sand territory. North
of the Cochran and the Hoover work was pushed actively. George H.
Bissell and Vance Stewart bored twelve or fifteen medium wells on
the Stewart farm of two-hundred acres, which the Cameron
Petroleum Company purchased in 1865 and Joseph Dale operated for
some years. It lies below the lower bridge, opposite the Bleakley
tract, from which a light production is still derived. Above the Stewart
are the Fuller and the Chambers farms, the latter extending to the
Allegheny-Valley depot. Scores of eager operators thronged the
streets of Franklin and drilled along the Allegheny. Joseph Powley
and Charles Cowgill entered the lists in the Cranberry district. Henry
M. Wilson and George Piagett veered into the township and sank a
bevy of dry-holes to vary the monotony. That was a horse on Wilson,
but he got ahead of the game by a deal that won him the nicest
territory on Horse Creek. Stirling Bonsall and Colonel Lewis—they’re
dead now—were in the thickest of the fray, with Captain Goddard,
Philip Montgomery, Boyd, Roberts, Foster, Brown, Murphy and many
more whom old-timers remember pleasantly. Thomas King, whole-
souled, genial “Tom”—no squarer man e’er owned a well or handled
oil-certificates—and Captain Griffith were “a good pair to draw to.”
King has “crossed over,” as have most of the kindred spirits that
dispelled the gloom in the sixties.
Colonel W. T. Pelton, nephew of Samuel J. Tilden, participated in
the scenes of that exciting period. He lived at Franklin and drilled
wells on French Creek. He was a royal entertainer, shrewd in
business, finely educated and polished in manner and address. He
and his wife—a lovely and accomplished woman—were fond of
society and gained hosts of friends. They boarded at the United-
States Hotel, where Mrs. Pelton died suddenly. This affliction led
Colonel Pelton to sell his oil-properties and abandon the oil-regions.
Returning to New York, when next he came into view as the active
agent of his uncle in the secret negotiations that grew out of the
election of 1876, it was with a national fame. His death in 1880
closed a busy, promising career.
In the spring of 1864 a young man, black-haired, dark-eyed, an
Apollo in form and strikingly handsome, arrived at Franklin and
engaged rooms at Mrs. Webber’s, on Buffalo street. The stranger
had money, wore good clothes and presented a letter of introduction
to Joseph H. Simonds, dealer in real-estate, oil-wells and leases. He
looked around a few days and concluded to invest in sixty acres of
the Fuller farm, Cranberry township, fronting on the Allegheny river.
The block was sliced off the north end of the farm, a short distance
below the upper bridge and the Valley station. Mr. Simonds
consented to be a partner in the transaction. The transfer was
effected, the deed recorded and a well started. It was situated on
the hill, had twenty feet of second-sand and pumped twenty barrels
a day. The owner drilled two others on the bluff, the three yielding
twenty barrels for months. The ranks of the oil-producers had
received an addition in the person of—John Wilkes Booth.
The firm prospered, each of the members speculating and trading
individually. M. J. Colman, a capital fellow, was interested with one
or both in various deals. Men generally liked Booth and women
admired him immensely. His lustrous orbs, “twin-windows of the
soul,” could look so sad and pensive as to awaken the tenderest pity,
or fascinate like “the glittering eye” of the Ancient Mariner or the
gaze of the basilisk. “Trilby” had not come to light, or he might have
enacted the hypnotic role of Svengali. His moods were variable and
uncertain. At times he seemed morose and petulant, tired of
everybody and “unsocial as a clam.” Again he would court society,
attend parties, dance, recite and be “the life of the company.” He
belonged to a select circle that exchanged visits with a coterie of
young folks in Oil City. A Confederate sympathizer and an enemy of
the government, his closest intimates were staunch Republicans and
loyal citizens. William J. Wallis, the veteran actor who died in
December of 1895, in a Philadelphia theater slapped him on the
mouth for calling President Lincoln a foul name. Booth’s acting, while
inferior to his brother Edwin’s, evinced much dramatic power. He
controlled his voice admirably, his movements were graceful and he
spoke distinctly, as Franklinites whom he sometimes favored with a
reading can testify.

J. WILKES BOOTH.
JOSEPH H. SIMONDS. MOSES J. COLMAN.

One morning in April, 1865, he left Franklin, telling Mr. Simonds he

was going east for a few days. He carried a satchel, which indicated
that he did not expect his stay to be prolonged indefinitely. His
wardrobe, books and papers remained in his room. Nothing was
heard of him until the crime of the century stilled all hearts and the
wires flashed the horrible news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
The excitement in Franklin, the murderer’s latest home, was intense.
Crowds gathered to learn the dread particulars and discuss Booth’s
conduct and utterances. Not a word or act previous to his departure
pointed to deliberate preparation for the frightful deed that plunged
the nation in grief. That he contemplated it before leaving Franklin
the weight of evidence tended to disprove. He made no attempt to
sell any of his property, to convert his lands and wells into cash, to
settle his partnership accounts or to pack his effects. He had money
in the bank, wells bringing a good income and important business
pending. All these things went to show that, if not a sudden impulse,
the killing of Lincoln was prompted by some occurrence in
Washington that fired the passionate nature John Wilkes Booth
inherited from his father. The world is familiar with the closing
chapters of the dark tragedy—the assassin’s flight, the pursuit into
Virginia, the burning barn, Sergeant Corbett’s fatal bullet, the
pathetic death-scene on the Garrett porch and the last message, just
as the dawn was breaking on the glassy eyes that opened feebly for
a moment: “Tell my mother I died for my country. I did what I
thought was best.”
The wells and the land on the river were held by Booth’s heirs until
1869, when the tract changed hands. The farm is producing no oil
and the Simonds-Booth wells have disappeared. Had he not intended
to return to Franklin, Booth would certainly have disposed of these
interests and given the proceeds to his mother. “Joe” Simonds
removed to Bradford to keep books for Whitney & Wheeler, bankers
and oil-operators, and died there years ago. He was an expert
accountant, quick, accurate and neat in his work and most fastidious
in his attire. A blot on his paper, a figure not exactly formed, a line
one hair-breath crooked, a spot on his linen or a speck of dust on his
coat was simply intolerable. He was correct in language and
deportment and honorable in his dealings. Colman continued his oil-
operations, in company with W. R. Crawford, a real-estate agency,
until the eighties. He married Miss Ella Hull, the finest vocalist
Franklin ever boasted, daughter of Captain S. A. Hull, and removed
to Boston. For years paralytic trouble has confined him to his home.
He is “one of nature’s nobleman.”
“French Kate,” the woman who aided Ben Hogan at Pithole and
followed him to Babylon and Parker, was a Confederate spy and
supposed to be very friendly with J. Wilkes Booth. Besides his oil-
interests at Franklin, the slayer of Abraham Lincoln owned a share in
the Homestead well at Pithole. A favorite legend tells how, by a
singular coincidence, which produced a sensation, the well was
burned on the evening of the President’s assassination. It caught fire
about the same instant the fatal bullet was fired in Ford’s Theater
and tanks of burning oil enveloped Pithole in a dense smoke when
the news of the tragedy flashed over the trembling wires. The
Homestead well was not down until Lincoln had been dead seven
weeks, Pithole had no existence and there were no blazing tanks;
otherwise the legend is correct. Two weeks before his appalling
crime Booth was one of a number of passengers on the scow doing
duty as a ferry-boat across the Allegheny, after the Franklin bridge
had burned. The day was damp and the water very cold. Some
inhuman whelp threw a fine setter into the river. The poor beast
swam to the rear of the scow and Booth pulled him on board. He
caressed the dog and bitterly denounced the fellow who could treat
a dumb animal so cruelly. At another time he knocked down a
cowardly ruffian for beating a horse that was unable to pull a heavy
load out of a mud-hole. He has been known to shelter stray kittens,
to buy them milk and induce his landlady to care for them until they
could be provided with a home. Truly his was a contradictory nature.
He sympathized with horses, dogs and cats, yet robbed the nation of
its illustrious chief and plunged mankind into mourning. To newsboys
Booth was always liberal, not infrequently handing a dollar for a
paper and saying: “No change; buy something useful with the
money.” The first time he went to the Methodist Sunday-school, with
“Joe” Simonds, he asked and answered questions and put a ten-
dollar bill in the collection-box.
Over the hills to the interior of the townships developments
spread. Bredinsburg, Milton and Tarkiln loomed up in Cranberry,
where Taylor & Torrey, S. P. McCalmont, Jacob Sheasley, B. W. Bredin
and E. W. Echols have sugar-plums. In Sandycreek, between Franklin
and Foster, Angell & Prentice brought Bully Hill and Mount Hope to
the front. The biggest well in the package was a two-hundred
barreler on Mount Hope, which created a mount of hopes that were
not fully realized. George V. Forman counted out one-hundred-and-
fifty-thousand dollars for the Mount Hope corner. The territory lasted
well and averaged fairly. Bully Hill merited its somewhat slangy title.
Dr. C. D. Galbraith, George R. Sheasley and Mattern & Son are
among its present operators. Angell and Prentice parted company,
each to engage in opening up the Butler region. Prentice, Crawford,
Barbour & Co. did not let the grass grow under their feet. They
“knew a good thing at sight” and pumped tens-of-thousands of
barrels of oil from the country south of Franklin. The firm was
notable in the seventies. Considerable drilling was done at Polk,
where the state is providing a half-million-dollar Home for Feeble-
Minded Children, and in the latitude of Utica, with about enough oil
to be an aggravation. The Shippen wells, a mile north of the county
poor-house, have produced for thirty years. West of them, on the
Russell farm, the Twin wells, joined as tightly as the derricks could
be placed, pumped for years. This was the verge of productive
territory, test wells on the lands of William Sanders, William Bean, A.
Reynolds, John McKenzie, Alexander Frazier and W. Booth, clear to
Cooperstown, finding a trifle of sand and scarcely a vestige of oil.
The Raymonds, S. Ramage, John J. Doyle and Daniel Grimm had a
very tidy offshoot at Raymilton. On this wise lubricating and second-
sand oils were revealed for the benefit of mankind generally. The fly
in the ointment was the clerical crank who wrote to President Lincoln
to demand that the producing of heavy-oil be stopped peremptorily,
as it had been stored in the ground to grease the axletree of the
earth in its diurnal revolution! This communication reminded Lincoln
of a “little story,” which he fired at the fellow with such effect that
the candidate for a strait-jacket was perpetually squelched.
 ANGELL & PRENTICE’S WELLS BELOW FRANKLIN IN 1873.

Hon. William Reid Crawford, a member

of the firm of Prentice, Crawford, Barbour
& Co., lives in Franklin. His parents were
early settlers in north-western
Pennsylvania. Alexander Grant, his
maternal grandfather, built the first stone-
house in Lancaster county, removed to
Butler county and located finally in
Armstrong county, where he died sixty-five
years ago. In 1854 William R. and four of
his brothers went to California and spent
some time mining gold. Upon his return
he settled on a farm in Scrubgrass
township, Venango county, of which
section the Crawfords had been prominent JOHN P. CRAWFORD.
citizens from the beginning of its history.
Removing to Franklin in 1865, Mr. Crawford engaged actively in the
production of petroleum, operating extensively in various portions of
the oil-regions for twenty years. He acquired a high reputation for
enterprise and integrity, was twice a city-councillor, served three
terms as mayor, was long president of the school-board, was elected
sheriff in 1887 and State-Senator in 1890. Untiring fidelity to the
interests of the people and uncompromising hostility to whatever he
believed detrimental to the general welfare distinguished his public
career. Genial and kindly to all, the friend of humanity and
benefactor of the poor, no man stands better in popular estimation
or is more deserving of confidence and respect. His friends could not
be crowded into the Coliseum without bulging out the walls.
Ebenezer Crawford, brother of William R., died at Emlenton in August
of 1897, on his seventy-sixth birthday. John P. Crawford, another
brother, who made the California trip in 1849, still resides in the
southern end of the county and is engaged in oil-operations. E. G.
Crawford, a nephew, twice prothonotary of Venango and universally
liked, passed away last June. His cousin, C. J. Crawford, a first-class
man anywhere and everywhere, served as register and recorder with
credit and ability. The Crawfords “are all right.”
For money may come and money may go,
But a good name stays to the end of the show.

Captain John K. Barbour, a man of imposing presence and

admirable qualities, removed to Philadelphia after the dissolution of
the firm. The Standard Oil-Company gave him charge of the right-of-
way department of its pipe-line service and he returned to Franklin.
Two years ago, during a business visit to Ohio, he died unexpectedly,
to the deep regret of the entire community. S. A. Wheeler operated
largely in the Bradford field and organized the Tuna-Valley Bank of
Whitney & Wheeler. For a dozen years he has resided at Toledo, his
early home. Like Captain Barbour, “Fred,” as he was commonly
called, had an exhaustless mine of bright stories and a liberal share
of the elements of popularity. One afternoon in 1875, three days
before the fire that wiped out the town, a party of us chanced to
meet at St. Joe, Butler county, then the centre of oil-developments.
An itinerating artist had his car moored opposite the drug-store.
Somebody proposed to have a group-picture. The motion carried
unanimously and a toss-up decided that L. H. Smith was to foot the
bill. The photographer brought out his camera, positions were taken
on the store-platform and the pictures were mailed an hour ahead of
the blaze that destroyed most of the buildings and compelled the
artist to hustle off his car on the double-quick. Samuel R. Reed, at
the extreme right, operated in the Clarion field. He had a hardware-
store in company with the late Dr. Durrant and his home is in
Franklin. James Orr, between whom and Reed a telegraph-pole is
seen, was connected with the Central Hotel at Petrolia and later was
a broker in the Producers’ Exchange at Bradford. On the step is
Thomas McLaughlin, now oil-buyer at Lima, once captain of a
talented base-ball club at Oil City and an active oil-broker. Back of
him is “Fred” Wheeler, with Captain Barbour on his right and L. H.
Smith sitting comfortably in front. Mr. Smith figured largely at
Pithole, operated satisfactorily around Petrolia and removed years
ago to New York. Cast in a giant mould, he weighs three-hundred
pounds and does credit to the illustrious legions of Smiths. He is a
millionaire and has an office over the Seaboard Bank, at the lower
end of Broadway. Joseph Seep, the king-bee of good fellows, sits
besides Smith. Pratt S. Crosby, formerly a jolly broker at Parker and
Oil City, stands behind Seep. Next him is “Tom” King, who has “gone
to the land of the leal,” J. J. McLaurin ending the row. James Amm,
who went from an Oil-city clerkship to coin a fortune at Bradford—a
street bears his name—sits on the platform. Every man, woman,
child and baby near Oil City knew and admired “Jamie” Amm, who is
now enjoying his wealth in Buffalo. Two out of the eleven in the
group have “passed beyond the last scene” and the other nine are
scattered widely.
“Friend after friend departs,
Who hath not lost a friend?”

Frederic Prentice, one of the pluckiest operators ever known in

petroleum-annals, was the first white child born on the site of
Toledo, when Indians were the neighbors of the pioneers of Northern
Ohio. His father left a fine estate, which the son increased greatly by
extensive lumbering, in which he employed three-thousand men.
 Losses in the panic of
1857 retired him from
the business. He
retrieved his fortune and
paid his creditors their
claims in full, with ten
per cent. interest, an act
indicative of his sterling
character. Reading in a
newspaper about the
Drake well, he decided to
see for himself whether
GROUP AT ST. JOE, BUTLER COUNTY, IN 1874. the story was fast colors.
Journeying to Venango
county by way of
Pittsburg, he met and engaged William Reed to accompany him.
Reed had worked at the Tarentum salt-wells and knew a thing or two
about artesian-boring. The two arrived at Franklin on the afternoon
of the day Evans’s well turned the settlement topsy-turvy. Next
morning Prentice offered Evans forty-thousand dollars for a
controlling interest in the well, one-fourth down and the balance in
thirty, sixty and ninety days. Evans declining to sell, the Toledo visitor
bought from Martin & Epley an acre of ground on the north bank of
French Creek, at the base of the hill, and contracted with Reed to
“kick down” a well, the third in the district. Prentice and Reed
tramped over the country for days, locating oil-deposits by means of
the witch-hazel, which the Tarentumite handled skillfully. This was a
forked stick, which it was claimed turned in the hands of the holder
at spots where oil existed. Various causes delayed the completion of
the well, which at last proved disappointingly small. Meanwhile Mr.
Prentice leased the Neeley farm, two miles up the Allegheny, in
Cranberry township, and bored several paying wells. A railroad
station on the tract is named after him and R. G. Lamberton has
converted the property into a first-class stock-farm. Favorable reports
from Little Kanawha River took him to West Virginia, where he leased
and purchased immense blocks of land. Among them was the Oil-
Springs tract, on the Hughes River, from which oil had been skimmed
for generations. Two of his wells on the Kanawha yielded six-hundred
barrels a day, which had to be stored in ponds or lakes for want of
tankage. Confederate raiders burned the wells, oil and machinery
and drove off the workmen, putting an extinguisher on operations
until the Grant-Lee episode beneath the apple-tree at Appomattox.
Assuming that the general direction of profitable developments
would be north-east and south-west, Mr. Prentice surveyed a line
from Venango county through West Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee. This idea, really the foundation of “the belt theory,” he
spent thousands of dollars to establish. Personal investigation and
careful surveys confirmed his opinion, which was based upon
observations in the Pennsylvania fields. The line run thirty years ago
touched numerous “springs” and “surface shows” and recent tests
prove its remarkable accuracy. On this theory he drilled at Mount
Hope and Foster, opening a section that has produced several-million
barrels of oil. C. D. Angell applied the principle in Clarion and Butler
counties, mapping out the probable course of the “belt” and leasing
much prolific territory. His success led others to adopt the same plan,
developing a number of pools in four states, although nature’s lines
are seldom straight and the oil-bearing strata are deposited in curves
and beds at irregular intervals.
In company with W. W. Clark of New
York, to whom he had traded a portion of
his West-Virginia lands, Mr. Prentice
secured a quarter-interest in the Tarr
farm, on Oil Creek, shortly before the
sinking of the Phillips well, and began
shipping oil to New York. They paid three
dollars apiece for barrels, four dollars a
barrel for hauling to the railroad and
enormous freights to the east. The price
dropping below the cost of freights and
barrels, the firm dug acres of pits to put FREDERIC PRENTICE.
tanks under ground, covering them with
planks and earth to prevent evaporation.
Traces of these storage-vats remain on the east bank of Oil Creek.
Crude fell to twenty-five cents a barrel at the wells and the outlook
was discouraging. Clark & Prentice stopped drilling and turned their
attention to finding a market. They constructed neat wooden
packages that would hold two cans of refined-oil, two oil-lamps and
a dozen chimneys and sent one to each United-States Consul in
Europe. Orders soon rushed in from foreign countries, especially
Germany, France and England, stimulating the erection of refineries
and creating a large export-trade. Clark & Summer, who also owned
an interest in the Tarr farm, built the Standard Refinery at Pittsburg
and agreed to take from Clark & Prentice one-hundred-thousand
barrels of crude at a dollar a barrel, to be delivered as required
during the year. Before the delivery of the first twenty-five-thousand
barrels the price climbed to one-fifty and to six dollars before the
completion of the contract, which was carried out to the letter. The
advance continued to fourteen dollars a barrel, lasting only one day
at this figure. These were vivifying days in oleaginous circles, never
to be repeated while Chronos wields his trusty blade.
When crude reached two dollars Mr. Prentice bought the
Washington-McClintock farm, on which Petroleum Centre was
afterwards located, for three-hundred-thousand dollars. Five New-
Yorkers, one of them the president of the Shoe and Leather Bank
and another the proprietor of the Brevoort House, advanced fifty-
thousand dollars for the first payment. Within sixty days Prentice
sold three-quarters of his interest for nine-hundred-thousand dollars
and organized the Central Petroleum Oil-Company, with a capital of
five-millions! Wishing to repay the New-York loan, the Brevoort
landlord desired him to retain his share of the money and invest it as
he pleased. For his ten-thousand dollars mine host received eighty-
thousand in six months, a return that leaves government-bond
syndicates and Cripple-Creek speculations out in the latitude of
Nansen’s north-pole. The company netted fifty-thousand dollars a
month in dividends for years and lessees cleared three or four
millions from their operations on the farm. Greenbacks circulated like
waste-paper, Jules Verne’s fancies were surpassed constantly by
actual occurrences and everybody had money to burn.
 Prentice and his associates purchased many tracts along Oil Creek,
including the lands where Oil City stands and the Blood farm of five-
hundred acres. In the Butler district he drilled hundreds of wells and
built the Relief Pipe-Line. Organizing The Producers’ Consolidated
Land-and-Petroleum-Company, with a capital of two-and-a-half
millions, he managed it efficiently and had a prominent part in the
Bradford development. Boston capitalists paid in twelve-hundred-
thousand dollars, Prentice keeping a share in his oil-properties
representing thirteen-hundred-thousand more. The company is now
controlled by the Standard, with L. B. Lockhart as superintendent. Its
indefatigable founder also organized the Boston Oil Company to
operate in Kentucky and Tennessee, put down oil-wells in Peru and
gas-wells in West Virginia, produced and piped thousands of barrels
of crude daily and was a vital force in petroleum-affairs for eighteen
years. The confidence and esteem of his compatriots were attested
by his unanimous election to the presidency of the Oilmen’s League,
a secret-society formed to resist the proposed encroachments of the
South-Improvement Company. The League accomplished its mission
and then quietly melted out of existence.
Since 1877 Mr. Prentice has devoted his attention chiefly to
lumbering in West Virginia and to his brown-stone quarries at
Ashland, Wisconsin. The death of his son, Frederick A., by accidental
shooting, was a sad bereavement to the aged father. His suits to get
possession of the site of Duluth, the city of Proctor Knott’s
impassioned eulogy, included in a huge grant of land deeded to him
by the Indians, were scarcely less famous than Mrs. Gaines’s
protracted litigation to recover a slice of New Orleans. The claim
involved the title to property valued at twelve-millions of dollars.
From his Ashland quarries the owner took out a monolith, designed
for the Columbian Exposition in 1893, forty yards long and ten feet
square at the base. Beside this monster stone Cleopatra’s Needle,
disintegrating in Central Park, Pompey’s Pillar and the biggest blocks
in the pyramids are Tom-Thumb pigmies. At seventy-four Mr.
Prentice, foremost in energy and enterprise, retains much of his
youthful vigor. Earnest and sincere, a master of business, his word as
good as gold, Frederic Prentice holds an honored place in the ranks
of representative oil-producers, “nobles of nature’s own creating.”
A native of Chautauqua county, N. Y.,
where he was born in 1826, Cyrus D.
Angell received a liberal education, served
as School-Commissioner and engaged in
mercantile pursuits at Forestville. Forced
through treachery and the monetary
stringency of the times to compromise
with his creditors, he recovered his
financial standing and paid every cent of
his indebtedness, principal and interest. In
1867 he came to the oil-regions with a
loan of one-thousand dollars and
purchased an interest in property at CYRUS D. ANGELL.
Petroleum Centre that paid handsomely.
Prior to this, in connection with Buffalo
capitalists, he had bought Belle Island, in the Allegheny River at
Scrubgrass, upon which soon after his arrival he drilled three wells
that averaged one-hundred barrels each for two years, netting the
owners over two-hundred-thousand dollars. Operations below
Franklin, in company with Frederic Prentice, also proved highly
profitable. His observations of the course of developments along Oil
Creek and the Allegheny led Mr. Angell to the conclusion that
petroleum would be found in “belts” or regular lines. He adopted the
theory that two “belts” existed, one running from Petroleum Centre
to Scrubgrass and the other from St. Petersburg through Butler
county. Satisfied of the correctness of this view, he leased or
purchased all the lands within the probable boundaries of the “belt”
from Foster to Belle Island, a distance of six miles. The result
justified his expectations, ninety per cent. of the wells yielding
abundantly. With “the belt theory,” which he followed up with equal
success farther south, Mr. Angell’s name is linked indissolubly. His
researches enriched him and were of vast benefit to the producers
generally. He did much to extend the Butler region, drilling far ahead
of tested territory. The town of Angelica owed its creation to his
fortunate operations in the neighborhood, conducted on a
comprehensive scale. Reverses could not crush his manly spirit. He
did a large real-estate business at Bradford for some years, opening
an office at Pittsburg when the Washington field began to loom up.
Failing health compelling him to seek relief in foreign travel, last year
he went to Mexico and Europe to recuperate. Mr. Angell is endowed
with boundless energy, fine intellectual powers and rare social
acquirements. During his career in Oildom he was an excellent
sample of the courageous, unconquerable men who have made
petroleum the commercial wonder of the world.
An old couple in Cranberry township, who eked out a scanty living
on a rocky farm near the river, sold their land for sixty-thousand
dollars at the highest pitch of the oil-excitement around Foster. This
was more money than the pair had ever before seen, much less
expected to handle and own. It was paid in bank-notes at noon and
the log-house was to be vacated next day. Towards evening the poor
old woman burst into tears and insisted that her husband should
give back the money to the man that “wanted to rob them of their
home.” She was inconsolable, declaring they would be “turned out to
starve, without a roof to cover them.” The idea that sixty-thousand
dollars would buy an ideal home brought no comfort to the simple-
minded creature, whose hopes and ambitions were confined to the
lowly abode that had sheltered her for a half-century. A promise to
settle near her brother in Ohio reconciled her somewhat, but it
almost broke her faithful heart to leave a spot endeared by many
tender associations. John Howard Payne, himself a homeless
wanderer, whose song has been sung in every tongue and echoed in
every soul, jingled by innumerable hand-organs and played by the
masters of music, was right:
“Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

The refusal of his wife to sign the deed conveying the property
enabled a wealthy Franklinite to gather a heap of money. The tract
was rough and unproductive and the owner proposed to accept for it
the small sum offered by a neighboring farmer, who wanted more
pasture for his cattle. For the first time in her life the wife declined to
sign a paper at her husband’s request, saying she had a notion the
farm would be valuable some day. The purchaser refused to take it
subject to a dower and the land lay idle. At length oil-developments
indicated that the “belt” ran through the farm. Scores of wells
yielded freely, netting the land-owner a fortune and convincing him
that womanly intuition is a sure winner.
A citizen of Franklin, noted for his conscientiousness and liberality,
was interested in a test-well at the beginning of the Scrubgrass
development. He vowed to set aside one-fourth of his portion of the
output of the well “for the Lord,” as he expressed it. To the delight of
the owners, who thought the venture hazardous, the well showed for
a hundred barrels when the tubing was put in. On his way back from
the scene the Franklin gentleman did a little figuring, which proved
that the Lord’s percentage of the oil might foot up fifty dollars a day.
This was a good deal of money for religious purposes. The maker of
the vow reflected that the Lord could get along without so much
cash and he decided to clip the one-fourth down to one-tenth,
arguing that the latter was the scripture limit. Talking it over with his
wife, she advised him to stick to his original determination and not
trifle with the Lord. The husband took his own way, as husbands are
prone to do, and revisited the well next day. Something had gone
wrong with the working-valve, the tubing had to be drawn out and
the well never pumped a barrel of oil! The disappointed operator
concluded, as he charged two thousand dollars to his profit-and-loss
account, that it was not the Lord who came out at the small end of
the horn in the transaction.
Rev. Clarence A. Adams, the eloquent ex-pastor of the First Baptist
Church at Franklin, is the lucky owner of a patch of paying territory
at Raymilton. Recently he finished a well which pumped considerable
salt-water with the oil. Contrary to Cavendish and the ordinary
custom, another operator drilled very close to the boundary of the
Adams lease and torpedoed the well heavily. Instead of sucking the
oil from the preacher’s nice pumper, the new well took away most of
the salt-water and doubled the production of petroleum! Commonly
it would seem rather mean to rob a Baptist minister of water, but in
 this case Dr.
Adams is
perfectly
resigned to the
loss of aqueous
fluid and gain of
dollar-fifty
crude. A
profound
student of
Shakespeare,
Browning and
the Bible, a
REV. C. A. ADAMS, D.D. REV. EZRA F. CRANE, D.D.
brilliant lecturer
and master of
pulpit-oratory, may he also stand on a lofty rung of the greasian
ladder and attain the goodly age of Franklin’s “grand old man,” Rev.
Dr. Crane. This “father in Israel,” whose death in February of 1896
the whole community mourned, left a record of devoted service as a
physician and clergyman for over sixty years that has seldom been
equaled. He healed the sick, smoothed the pillow of the dying,
relieved the distressed, reclaimed the erring, comforted the
bereaved, turned the faces of the straying Zionward and found the
passage to the tomb “a gentle wafting to immortal life.” Let his
memory be kept green.
“Though old, he still retained
His manly sense and energy of mind.
Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe,
For he remembered that he once was young;
His kindly presence checked no decent joy.
Him e’en the dissolute admired. Can he be dead
Whose spiritual influence is upon his kind?”

The late Thomas McDonough, a loyal-hearted son of the Emerald

Isle, was also an energetic operator in the lubricating region. He had
an abundance of rollicking wit, “the pupil of the soul’s clear eye,” and
an unfailing supply of the drollest stories. Desiring to lease a farm in
Sandy-Creek township, supposed to be squarely “on the belt,” he
started at daybreak to interview the owner, feeling sure his mission
would succeed. An unexpected sight presented itself through the
open door, as the visitor stepped upon the porch of the dwelling. The
farmer’s wife was setting the table for breakfast and Frederic
Prentice was folding a paper carefully. McDonough realized in a
twinkling that Prentice had secured the lease and his trip was
fruitless. “I am looking for John Smith” he stammered, as the farmer
invited him to enter, and beat a hasty retreat. For years his friends
rallied the Colonel on his search and would ask with becoming
solemnity whether he had discovered John Smith. The last time we
met in Philadelphia this incident was revived and the query repeated
jocularly. The jovial McDonough died in 1894. It is safe to assume
that he will easily find numerous John Smiths in the land of
perpetual reunion. One day he told a story in an office on Thirteenth
street, Franklin, which tickled the hearers immensely. A full-fledged
African, who had been sweeping the back-room, broke into a
tumultuous laugh. At that moment a small boy was riding a donkey
directly in front of the premises. The jackass heard the peculiar
laugh and elevated his capacious ears more fully to take in the
complete volume of sound. He must have thought the melody
familiar and believed he had stumbled upon a relative. Despite the
frantic exertions of the boy, the donkey rushed towards the building
whence the boisterous guffaw proceeded, shoved his head inside the
door and launched a terrific bray. The bystanders were convulsed at
this evidence of mistaken identity, which the jolly story-teller
frequently rehearsed for the delectation of his hosts of friends.
Looking over the Milton diggings one July day, Col. McDonough
met an amateur-operator who was superintending the removal of a
wooden-tank from a position beside his first and only well. A
discussion started regarding the combustibility of the thick sediment
collected on the bottom of the tank. The amateur maintained the
stuff would not burn and McDonough laughingly replied, “Well, just
try it and see!” The fellow lighted a match and applied it to the viscid
mass before McDonough could interfere, saying with a grin that he
proposed to wait patiently for the result.
He didn’t have to wait “until Orcus would
freeze over and the boys play shinny on
the ice.” In the ninetieth fraction of a
second the deposit blazed with intense
enthusiasm, quickly enveloping the well-
rig and the surroundings in flames. Clouds
of smoke filled the air, suggesting fancies
of Pittsburg or Sheol. Charred fragments
of the derrick, engine-house and tank,
with an acre of blackened territory over
which the burning sediment had spread, THOMAS M’DONOUGH.
demonstrated that the amateur’s idea had
been decidedly at fault. The experiment convinced him as
searchingly as a Roentgen ray that McDonough had the right side of
the argument. “If the ‘b. s.’ had been as green as the blamed fool, it
wouldn’t have burned,” was the Colonel’s appropriate comment.
Miss Lizzie Raymond, daughter of the pioneer who founded
Raymilton and erected the first grist-mill at Utica, has long taught
the infant-class of the Presbyterian Sunday-school at Franklin. Once
the lesson was about the wise and the foolish virgins, the good
teacher explaining the subject in a style adapted to the juvenile
mind. A cute little tot, impressed by the sad plight of the virgins who
had no oil in their lamps, innocently inquired: “Miss ’Aymond, tan’t
oo tell ’em dirls to turn to our house an’ my papa ’ll div’ ’em oil f’um
his wells?” Heaven bless the children that come as sunbeams to
lighten our pathway, to teach us lessons of unselfishness and
prevent the rough world from turning our hearts as hard as the mill-
stone.
Judge Trunkey, who presided over the Venango court a dozen
years and was then elected to the Supreme Bench, was hearing a
case of desertion. An Oil-City lawyer, proud of his glossy black beard,
represented the forsaken wife, a comely young woman from
Petroleum Centre, who dandled a bright baby of twenty months on
her knee. Mother and baby formed a pretty picture and the lawyer
took full advantage of it in his closing appeal to the jury. At a brilliant
climax he turned to his client and said: “Let me have the child!” He
was raising it to his arms, to hold before the men in the box and
describe the heinous meanness of the wretch who could leave such
beauty and innocence to starve. The baby spoiled the fun by
springing up, clutching the attorney’s beard and screaming: “Oh,
papa!” The audience fairly shrieked. Judge Trunkey laughed until the
tears flowed and it was five minutes before order could be restored.
That ended the oratory and the jury salted the defendant
handsomely. Hon. James S. Connelly, an Associate Judge, who now
resides in Philadelphia and enjoys his well-earned fortune, was also
on the bench at the moment. Judge Trunkey, one of the purest,
noblest men and greatest jurists that ever shed lustre upon
Pennsylvania, passed to his reward six years ago.
In your wide peregrinations from the poles to the equator,
Should you hear some ignoramus—let out of his incubator—
Say the heavy-oil of Franklin is not earth’s best lubricator,
Do as did renown’d Tom Corwin, the great Buckeye legislator,
When a jabberwock in Congress sought to brand him as a traitor,
Just “deny the allegation and defy the allegator!”

MILLER & SIBLEY’S PROSPECT-HILL STOCK FARM FRANKLIN, PA.

 KEEPING STEP.
The Shasta was Karns City’s first well.
Missouri has two wells producing oil.
North Dakota has traces of natural-gas.
Ninety wells in Japan pump four-hundred barrels.
Elk City, in the Clarion field, once had two-thousand population.
The Rob Roy well, at Karns City, has produced a quarter-million
barrels of oil.
Alaska-oil is cousin of asphalt-pitch, very heavy, and thick as New-
Orleans molasses in midwinter.
Wade Hampton, postmaster of Pittsburg, and cousin of Governor
Wade Hampton, organized one of the first petroleum companies in
the United States.
General Herman Haupt, of Philadelphia, now eighty-one years old,
surveyed the route and constructed the first pipe-line across
Pennsylvania.
Robert Nevin, founder of the Pittsburg Times, drilled a dry-hole
four-hundred feet, ten miles west of Greensburg, in 1858, a year
before Drake’s successful experiment in Oil Creek.
The Powell Oil-Company, superintended by Col. A. C. Ferris, still a
resident of New York, paid fifty-thousand dollars in cash for the Shirk
farm, half way between Franklin and Oil City, drilled a dry-hole and
abandoned the property.
The gentle wife who seeks your faults to cover
You don’t deserve; prize naught on earth above her;
Keep step and be through life her faithful lover.

The new town of Guffey, the liveliest in Colorado, thirty miles from
Cripple Creek, is fitly named in honor of James M. Guffey, the
successful Pennsylvania oil-producer and political leader, who has big
mining interests in that section.
 The Fonner pool, Greene county, was the oil-sensation of 1897 in
Pennsylvania. The Fonner well, struck in March, and territory around
it sold for two-hundred-thousand dollars. Elk Fork wore the West-
Virginia belt, Peru took the Hoosier biscuit and Lucas county the
Buckeye premium.
Say, boys, seein’ how fast th’ ranks iz thinnin’—
Th’ way thar droppin’ out sets my head spinnin’—
An’ knownin’ ez how death may take an innin’
An’ clean knock out our underpinnin’,
I kalkilate we oughter swar off sinnin’,
Jes’ quit fer keeps our dog-gon’ chinnin’,
Start in th’ narrer road fer a beginning’,
An’ so strike oil in Heav’n fer a sure winnin’
When up the golden-stairs we goes a-shinnin’.

When the biggest well in Indiana flowed oil fifty feet above the
derrick, at Van Buren, a local paper noted the effect thus: “The strike
has given the town a tremendous boom. Several real-estate offices
have opened and the town-council has raised the license for faro-
banks from five dollars a year to twelve dollars.” At this rate Van
Buren ought soon to be in the van.
 JOHN VANAUSDALL. WM. PHILLIPS.
GEO. K. ANDERSON.
F. S. TARBELL. F. W. ANDREWS.
ORIGINAL D. W. KENNEY’S ALLEMAGOOZELUM-CITY
WELL No 2.
CAPT. WM. HASSON. JOHN P. ZANE.
HENRY R. ROUSE.
 VII.
THE VALLEY OF PETROLEUM.

Wonderful Scenes on Oil Creek—Mud and Grease Galore—Rise and Fall of Phenomenal
Towns—Shaffer, Pioneer and Petroleum Centre—Fortune’s Queer Vagaries—Wells
Flowing Thousands of Barrels—Sherman, Delamater and “Coal-Oil Johnnie”—From
Penury to Riches and Back—Recitals That Discount Fairy-Tales.

“I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ‘’Tis all barren.’”—
Sterne.
“This beginning part is not made out of anybody’s head; it’s real.”—Dickens.
“Some ships come into port that are not steered.”—Seneca.
“God has placed in his great bank—mother earth—untold wealth and many a poor
man’s check has been honored here for large amounts of oil.”—T. S. Scoville,
A. D. 1861.
“Ain’t that well spittin’ oil?”—Small Boy, A. D. 1863.
“Wonderful, most wonderful, marvelous, most marvelous, are the stories told of
the oil-region. It is another California.”—John W. Forney, A. D. 1863.
“Derricks peered up behind the houses of Oil City, like dismounted steeples, and
oil was pumping in the back-yards.”—London Post, A. D. 1865.
“From this place and from this day henceforth commences a new era.”—Goethe.
“The chandelier drives off with its splendor the darkness of night.”—Henry
Stanton.
“The onlookers were struck dumb with astonishment.”—Charles Kingsley.
“Either I will find a way or make one.”—Norman Proverb.
“I bid you look into the past as if it were a mirror.”—Terence.
 orty-three farms of manifold shapes and
sizes lay along the stream from the
Drake well to the mouth of Oil Creek,
sixteen miles southward. For sixty
years the occupants of these tracts had
forced a bare subsistence from the
reluctant soil. “Content to live, to
propagate and die,” their requirements
and their resources were alike scanty.
They knew nothing of the artificial
necessities and extravagances of
fashionable life. To most of them the
great, busy, plodding world was a
sealed book, which they had neither the means nor the inclination to
unclasp. The world reciprocated by wagging in its customary groove,
blissfully unconscious of the scattered settlers on the banks of the
Allegheny’s tributary. A trip on a raft to Pittsburg, with the privilege
of walking back, was the limit of their journeyings from the hills and
rocks of Venango. Hunting, fishing and hauling saw-logs in winter
aided in replenishing the domestic larder. None imagined the
unproductive valley would become the cradle of an industry before
which cotton and coal and iron must “hide their diminished heads.”
No prophet had proclaimed that lands on Oil Creek would sell for
more than corner-lots in London or New York. Who could have
conceived that these bold cliffs and patches of clearing would enlist
ambitious mortals from every quarter of the globe in a mad race to
secure a foothold on the coveted acres? What seventh son of a
seventh son could foresee that a thousand dollars spent on the
Willard farm would yield innumerable millions? Who could predict
that a tiny stream of greenish fluid, pumped from a hole on an island
too insignificant to have a name, would swell into the vast ocean of
petroleum that is the miracle of the nineteenth century? Fortune has
played many pranks, but the queerest of them all were the vagaries
incidental to the petroleum-development on Oil Creek.
The Bissell, Griffin, Conley, two Stackpole, Pott, Shreve, two
Fleming, Henderson and Jones farms, comprising the four miles
between the Drake well and the Miller tract, were not especially
prolific. Traces of a hundred oil-pits, in some of which oak-trees had
grown to enormous size, are visible on the Bissell plot of eighty
acres. A large dam, used for pond-freshets, was located on Oliver
Stackpole’s farm. Two refineries of small capacity were built on the
Stackpole and Fletcher lands, where eighteen or twenty wells
produced moderately. The owner of a flowing well on the lower
Fleming farm, imitating the man who killed the goose that laid the
golden eggs, sought to increase its output by putting the tubing and
seed-bagging farther down. The well resented the interference,
refusing to yield another drop and pointing the obvious moral: “Let
well enough alone!” The Miller farm of four-hundred acres, on both
sides of the creek, was purchased in 1863 from Robert Miller by the
Indian Rock-Oil Company of New York. Now a railroad-station and
formerly the principal shipping-point for oil, refineries were started,
wells were drilled and the stirring town of Meredith blossomed for a
little space. The Lincoln well turned out sixty barrels a day, the
Boston fifty, the Bobtail forty, the Hemlock thirty and others from ten
to twenty-five, at an average depth of six-hundred feet. The
Barnsdall Oil-Company operated on the Miller and the Shreve farms,
drilling extensively on Hemlock Run, and George Bartlett ran the
Sunshine Oil-Works. The village, the refineries and the derricks have
disappeared as completely as Herculaneum or Sir John Franklin.
George Shaffer owned fifty acres below the Miller farm, divided by
Oil Creek into two blocks, one in Cherrytree township and the other
in Allegheny. Twenty-four wells, eight of them failures, were put
down on the flats and the abrupt hill bordering the eastern shore of
the stream. Samuel Downer’s Rangoon and three of Watson &
Brewer’s were the largest, ranking in the fifty-barrel list. In July of
1864 the Oil-Creek Railroad was finished to Shaffer farm, which
immediately became a station of great importance. From one house
and barn the place expanded in sixty days to a town of three-
thousand population. And such a town! Sixteen-hundred teams,
mainly employed to draw oil from the wells down the creek,
supported the stables, boarding-houses and hotels that sprang up in
a night. Every second door opened into a bar-room. The buildings
were “balloon frames,” constructed entirely of boards, erected in a
few hours and liable to collapse on the slightest pretext. Houses of
cards would be about as comfortable and substantial. Outdo
Hezekiah, by rolling back time’s dial thirty-one years, and in fancy
join the crowd headed for Shaffer six months after the advent of the
railway.
Start from Corry, “the city of stumps,” with the Downer refinery
and a jumble of houses thrown around the fields. Here the Atlantic &
Great-Western, the Philadelphia & Erie and the Oil-Creek Railroads
meet. The station will not shelter one-half the motley assemblage
bound for Oildom. “Mother Cary is plucking her geese” and snow-
flakes are dropping thickly. Speculators from the eastern cities,
westerners in quest of “a good thing,” men going to work at the
wells, capitalists and farmers, adventurers and drummers clamor for
tickets. It is the reverse of “an Adamless Eden,” for only three
women are to be seen. At last the train backs to the rickety depot
and a wild struggle commences. Scrambling for the elevated cars in
New York or Chicago is a feeble movement compared with this
frantic onslaught. Courtesy and chivalry are forgotten in the rush.
Men swarm upon the steps, clog the platforms, pack the baggage-
car, thrust the women aside, stick to the cowcatcher and clamber on
the roofs of the coaches. Over the roughest track on earth, which
winds and twists and skirts the creek most of the way, the train
rattles and jolts and pitches. The conductor’s job is no sinecure, as
he squeezes through the dense mass that leaves him without
sufficient elbow-room to “punch in the presence of the passenjare.”
Derricks—tall, gaunt skeletons, pickets of the advancing army—keep
solemn watch here and there, the number increasing as Titusville
comes in sight.
A hundred people get off and two-hundred manage somehow to
get on. Past the Drake well, past a forest of derricks, past steep cliffs
and tortuous ravines the engineer speeds the train. Did you ever
think what a weight of responsibility rests upon the brave fellow in
the locomotive-cab, whose clear eye looks straight along the track
and whose steady hand grasps the throttle? Should he relax his
vigilance or lose his nerve one moment, scores of lives might be the
fearful penalty. A short stop at Miller Farm, a whiff of refinery-smells
and in five minutes Shaffer is reached. The board-station is on the
right hand, landings on the left form a semi-circle hundreds of feet
in length, freight-cars jam the double track and warehouses dot the
bank. The flat-about thirty rods wide-contains the mushroom-town,
bristling with the undiluted essence of petroleum-activity. Three-
hundred teamsters are unloading barrels of oil from wagons dragged
by patient, abused horses and mules through miles of greasy, clayey
mud. Everything reeks with oil. It pervades the air, saturates clothes
and conversation, floats on the muddy scum and fills lungs and
nostrils with its peculiar odor. One cannot step a yard without sinking
knee-deep in deceptive mire that performs the office of a boot-jack if
given “a ghost of a show.” Christian’s Slough of Despond wasn’t a
circumstance to this adhesive paste, which engulfs unwary travelers
to their trouser-pockets and begets a dreadful craving for roads not
“Wholly unclassable,
Almost impassable,
Scarcely jackassable.”

The trip of thirty-five miles has shaken breakfast clear down to the
pilgrims’ boots. Out of the cars the hungry passengers tumble as
frantically as they had clambered in and break for the hotels and
restaurants. A dollar pays for a dinner more nearly first-class in price
than in quality. The narrow hall leading to the dining-room is
crammed with men—Person’s Hotel fed four-hundred a day—waiting
their turn for vacant chairs at the tables. Bolting the meal hurriedly,
the next inquiry is how to get down the creek. There are no coupés,
no prancing steeds, no stages, no carriages for hire. The hoarse
voice of a hackman would be sweeter music than Beethoven’s
“Moonlight Sonata” or Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Horseback-
riding is impracticable and walking seems the only alternative. To
wade and flounder twelve miles—Oil City is that far off—is the dreary
prospect that freezes the blood. Hark! In strident tones a fierce-
looking fellow is shouting: “Packet-boat for Oil City! This way for the
packet-boat! Packet-boat! Packet-boat!” Visions of a pleasant jaunt
in a snug cabin lure you to the landing. The “packet-boat” proves to
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