Toxic National Politics Destroyed Cincinnati’s 1830s Legislative Club
You think politics are polarized today? A Cincinnati debating society imploded in rancor way back in 1835.
The saga of this bygone club was revealed in 1917 when a curious volume of Cincinnati lore came to light. During World War I, the cream of Queen City society participated in something called the Thimble Fund to finance treatment for blinded doughboys. Wealthy donors contributed everything from thimbles to jewelry to antiques. Most metal was melted down. The finer objects were auctioned.
Hall Jackson, a dealer in rare books who ran a shop at 719 Vine Street, donated a peculiar volume to the 1917 Thimble Fund auction. Jackson had recently purchased a pile of books from the McAlpin family, clearing out the Lafayette Avenue mansion that later became the home of the Cincinnati Women’s Club. Among his haul was a book, dated 1835, containing the surviving records of a Cincinnati organization known as the Legislative Club.
The book’s pages were covered in the ornate yet legible penmanship of Calvin Fletcher, who served not only as clerk of the Legislative Club, but also as clerk of Cincinnati City Council. Fletcher dutifully recorded the founding of the club, creation of its constitution and the minutes of its weekly meetings until its acrimonious demise after only three months.
What was this Legislative Club? One of its members, attorney Timothy Walker, described its origins:
“In 1835, a number of gentlemen in Cincinnati, with a view to learn the rules of legislative bodies, and improve themselves by practice in debate, formed themselves into a Legislative Club, chose a Speaker, and adopted for their guidance the rules of the House of Representatives in Congress.”
The Legislative Club, in other words, was intended to train Cincinnati men how to behave as legislators, so that they would stand for election. At this time, Cincinnati was home to fewer than 40,000 people. Many residents felt that Cincinnati was improperly represented in the state and federal legislatures.
Also, Cincinnati men loved to argue. There was no football, baseball, soccer or basketball. Horse races and boxing matches were rare events. Debate was the major sport and everybody in Cincinnati participated.
The Legislative Club was actually the continuation of an earlier debate society, known as The Inquisition. Comprised mostly of lawyers and clergymen, The Inquisition also met weekly to debate the issues of the day. Charles Theodore Greve, in his “Centennial History of Cincinnati” describes this predecessor club:
“Another literary organization existing in 1834 was the Inquisition, a society that discussed publicly questions and papers submitted by its members. Its meetings were held at the Institute once a week and the members presided in alphabetical succession. The officers were a secretary who also was treasurer and two others who with him constituted the committee on questions. The secretary was Elwood Fisher and the committee were Timothy Walker and W.M. Corry.”
Whoever came up with that name – The Inquisition – was absolutely tone-deaf in 1834 Cincinnati. Catholics were still regarded with suspicion and still associated with the Spanish Inquisition which had only disbanded that very year. One member of the Legislative Club wrote to the Cincinnati Gazette [25 March 1835] condemning the former name:
“With respect to ‘The Inquisition,’ it must be admitted that it was a bad name with which to designate ‘so fair a form;’ it was a name calculated to call up the finest feelings of our nature into a rage of horror and revenge; whether its name, or the want of taste of its members, may have caused its extinction, is not recorded.”
What sorts of things did these men – for they were all men – debate? One meeting of The Inquisition was devoted to whether “infamy of character” disqualified witnesses in a court of law. The minutes of the Legislative Club, according to the Enquirer [6 December 1917] reveal disputes on a range of topics:
“Heated debates are recorded on propositions to pass a law allowing limited partnerships (the forerunners of the modern corporations) to be formed, to pass legislation improving conditions for negro slaves, to purchase the Louisville and Portland Canal, to abolish the veto power of the Governor, allowing the Legislature complete lawmaking prerogatives, and to distribute copies of the laws and journals of the legislative body.”
The men who fiercely debated these issues were pillars of the community, including future Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Observatory founder Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, founder of the Cincinnati Law School Timothy Walker, U.S. Representative Bellamy Storer and prominent Cincinnati names such as Piatt, Riddle, Longworth, Gwynne, Dennison and Este.
The Legislative Club was probably doomed from the start. The year 1835 was tense and tumultuous in the United States. Debates about the national bank, slavery and Native Americans inflamed national discourse, and heated tempers even among the reputedly “serene” Cincinnatians.
The killer debate, the final argument that ripped the Legislative Club apart, was about abolishing capital punishment. Tempers flared, friendships foundered, and even Calvin Fletcher’s beautiful penmanship could not keep the club intact and it disbanded.
One surviving influence of the Legislative Club is the Ohio Revised Code. In 1835, state laws were a mish-mash of “common law,” precedent and randomly published legislative actions known only to lawyers. Attorney Timothy Walker presented, in a speech to the Legislative Club, a plea to codify Ohio’s laws so that even non-lawyers would have access to legal knowledge. Walker published his speech nine years later in the Western Law Journal [July 1844]:
“Let us have the means of knowing with certainty what laws have a just claim upon our obedience, by reference to the rolls of state. Let no citizen be able to say, even with the appearance of plausibility, that he is not bound to submit to a given law, because it has never been enacted by the legislative power, and therefore he has no evidence that it is a law.”
But what about the other debates? What happened to the minutes book? The Enquirer records that the volume was purchased at auction by Grace (Mrs. Larz W.) Anderson, one of the Longworth family. Her husband died in 1918, and she remarried. She moved to Chicago and later to Connecticut. No local library appears to own this curious volume.
What did Mrs. Anderson do with the Legislative Club book?
