I felt more keenly than my client the injustice done him, and never forgave Baldwin until he was indicted for perjury and driven out of the county in disgrace.
John Sherman
The Public Record
John Sherman was an American politician from Ohio who served in federal office throughout the Civil War and into the late nineteenth century. A member of the Republican Party, he served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He also served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. Sherman sought the Republican presidential nomination three times, coming closest in 1888, but was never chosen by the party. Between 1861 and 1897, John Sherman served in the U.S. Senate for nearly 32 years and holds the record for longest serving senator from the state of Ohio.
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Our banking system was then as bad as it could be, exchange on New York was always at a premium, and there was no confidence in our local banks.
This was no doubt demagoguism, but there was back of it the great questions of protection to American industries, sound and stable currency, and the necessity of economy in public expenditures.
Whisky is banished to the drug store, the grocery and the saloon, and even there it is under surveillance and so highly taxed as to furnish a large proportion of the national revenue.
No reform in my time has been so general and beneficial as that of the disuse of drinking intoxicating liquors, commencing in 1841.
Of the young men who were my contemporaries a very large proportion became habitual drunkards and died prematurely.
I have partaken of wine and spirits at weddings, feasts and dinners, I have used it as a medicine, and in response to toasts and compliments, but never to an extent to addle my brain or disturb my walk.
I was not stupid enough to be unconscious of my degradation and her affection, and then and there resolved never to be in such a condition again, and from that time to this I am not conscious of having been under the influence of liquor.
The only benefit I derived was the habit I formed of writing upon such subjects as attracted my attention by reading, a habit I continued when studying law, in preparing a case for trial, and in preparation for a debate in Congress.
I was a Whig of sixteen, and it was glorious to be a victim of persecution.
I have no doubt, from a present reading of the papers, but that he would have retained me as a juvenile offender if I had made a suitable apology, but the instinct of a boy to stand up for his party was strong.
Thus, after two years of faithful work with small pay, I was, at the age of sixteen, turned adrift on account of politics.
One of these was upon the dangerous subject of temperance, a topic not then much discussed, for drinking of something stronger than water was almost as universal as eating, and considered equally necessary.
Possibly steamboats may be utilized on short stretches of rivers, but even on these they will have to compete with railroads having wide-reaching connections which they do not possess.
The railroads will possess the land, the steamboats the ocean and the great fresh waters of the world.
By the demolition of the forests which covered this great valley, the supply and distribution of the waters and rivers in this region will be so diminished at certain seasons as to render these water- ways worthless for navigation.
And I believe that the experiment now being made by the United States in the improvement of the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers will end in a like result on a grander scale.
The canals of Ohio and this improvement were, perhaps, the necessary forerunner of the railroads to come, but the money expended on them was practically lost.
They have since practically destroyed or crippled all internal navigation on inland rivers, reaching their iron arms over the United States, traversing north and south, east and west--a vast gridiron of roads, in value greater than the…
This tramp taught me a lesson I never forgot,--not to insist upon anything I knew nothing about.
Oh! the golden dreams of childhood, the splendid anticipations of boyhood, the fields of conquest to be won, the fortunes to be made, all to vanish into thin air by the touch of reality.
I was to be my own master and make my own living!
I worked hard that winter, for hard work, I thought, was the way to fortune.
Even at that early age I had day dreams for the future, and mother was the central picture.
No word of reproach ever fell from her lips to me.
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