Top 10 finalists from the National Statuary Collection Study Committee
Thomas Edison, inventor — 46 points
Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and author — 40 points
Jesse Owens, Olympic gold medal winner — 36 points
Harriet Taylor Upton, women’s suffrage activist — 27 points
James M. Ashley, Toledo congressman and abolitionist — 23 points
Wright brothers, Dayton aviation pioneers — 22 points
William McCulloch, Piqua congressman and civil rights supporter — 18 points
Judith Resnik, Akron astronaut who died on the Challenger — 18 points
Albert Sabin, Cincinnati, creator of oral polio vaccine — 12 points
Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president and civil war general — 11 points
There’s a big rush — belatedly — to bring former Gov. William Allen — or more specifically his statue — back to Ohio.
Allen, who died in 1879, was pro-slavery and anti-President Abraham Lincoln. That’s not the kind of person current state officials want representing Ohio in Statuary Hall in the nation’s Capitol.
In all the hoopla to replace him, nobody’s said much about how Allen got to the hall in the first place.
Ohio’s other representative in Statuary Hall — each state gets two — is former President James A. Garfield, who was assassinated in 1881 after serving less than a year in office.
George Knepper thinks he knows how Allen and Garfield ended up together, and Knepper’s probably the right guy to ask.
He’s a historian and author of “Ohio and Its People”, the definitive account of the state and the heroes, rascals and ordinary people who made it what it is today.
“I think Allen was part of a political agreement,” said Knepper, distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Akron.
While Allen’s views are frowned upon today, many Ohioans embraced them in the mid and late 1800s, said Knepper.
The state was as politically divided then as it is now, said Knepper. Allen, from Chillicothe, was a Democrat; Garfield, from Cuyahoga County, was a Republican.
“The Democratic Party was the more conservative,” said Knepper. It’s important to keep in mind, he added, that Republicans weren’t exactly liberals or progressives, at least as the terms are used today. Democrats were conservative and Republicans were “not quite so conservative,” said Knepper.
Ohioans who had moved here — particularly to southern and south central Ohio — from slave-holding states shared Allen’s views, said Knepper.
All during the Civil War, the so-called “Peace Democrats” gave Lincoln a hard time, said Knepper.
“They were as hostile to Abraham Lincoln as some of the Democrats (today) have been to George W. Bush,” said Knepper.
Garfield got the nod for Statuary Hall in 1886 and a year later Allen was picked, a kind of political-balancing act, said Knepper.
This time Knepper hopes things turn out differently.
The choice should stand the test of time, not be part of some political deal or a “feel-good” offering to one group or another, he said.
On the list of 10 finalists created by a legislative committee, two stand out to Knepper — the Wright brothers, Dayton’s aviation pioneers, and Civil War general and President Ulysses S. Grant, born in Clermont County in southwestern Ohio.
The Wrights ranked only sixth on the list and Grant barely snuck in at 10. That’s too bad, said Knepper.
“The Wright brothers changed the world,” said Knepper. Grant, he said, “kept us as one nation.”
Starting Saturday, March 20, through July 12, Ohioans will be able to vote for their choice at historical sites and or by downloading a ballot online and submitting it.
The National Statuary Collection Study Committee expects to make its final recommendation in July and will give “due deference” to what voters say, said Sen. Mark Wagoner, R-Ottawa Hills, committee chairman.
Knepper can’t decide between the Wrights and Grant.
“I just don’t want to make that choice,” he said. “I’d be happy in either direction.”
Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDaily News.com.
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