an editor, and after the war, he suddenly won national
fame as the author of the Petroleum V. Naseby letters. These were
satires of the old proslavery spirit which retarded the reconstruction
of the South and harried the freedmen by mobs and lynchings. Their humor
gave Locke a place in our literature which no history of it can ignore.

Another literary man who must be taken account of in the summing up of
American literature was S. S. Cox, who made himself known early in the
fifties when Ohio was far less heard of than now, by his lively book of
travels, "A Buckeye Abroad." He was a journalist and a politician; he
was three times elected to Congress from Columbus, and when he went
to live in New York, he was three times sent to the House of
Representatives from that city, where he is commemorated by a statue. He
was a native of Muskingum County, and was born in 1824 at Zanesville.

The latest and most brilliant contribution of Ohio to the scholarship of
the East is Professor W. M. Sloane, now of Princeton University, but by
birth of Jefferson County. He must rank by his "Life of Napoleon" among
the American historians of the first class. He is of Scotch Calvinistic
ancestry, and the son of a Presbyterian minister.

In this list of Ohioans who have done honor to our state, Mr. James
Ford Rhodes happens to be last, though chance might well have placed him
among the first He is the author of "A History of the United States
from the Compromise of 1850," which has a peculiar value in the field
of American history, and which has given Mr. Rhodes prominent standing,
with a constantly growing reputation. He is of the New England race of
the Western Reserve; until within a few years his home was in Cleveland,
but he now lives in Boston.

XVI. INCIDENTS AND CHARACTERISTICS.

Nearly all the Ohio stories since 1812 have been stories of business
enterprise and industrial adventure. I dare say that if these could be
fully told, we should have tales as exciting, as romantic and pathetic
as any I have set down concerning the Indian wars. But such stories are
usually forgotten in the material interest of the affairs, and it is
only when some tragedy or comedy arising from them finds chance record
that we realize how full of human interest they are. The decay of
steamboating and the rise of railroading is in itself a romance if it
could be rightly seen, and if the facts could be clearly set before us,
the story of commercial tr