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210 the country, also a distinguished lawyer. It was said of him that "he spoke at the bar as good English as Addison wrote in the Spectator He started the Ohio Federalist in Belmont County, Ohio, in 1813, and moved to Cincinnati in 1826, where he became the first editor of the Cincinnati Gazette. Later he became a man of considerable influence in the city, displaying his independence in many ways, one of which was by wearing a long queue in contempt for social usages. He was a vigorous advocate of a free press and one of the few who realized that the slave-holding power, in endeavoring to throttle the press, was showing a greater arrogance than had ever before been shown on this continent. In the editorial columns of his paper he argued on great questions of constitutional law, and his ability, scholarship, and intellect afiFected the character of Ohio journalism.

He was a member of the first abolition society in Ohio, which was organized at Mt. Pleasant by Benjamin Lundy. It was Hammond, as we shall see, who demanded a fair hearing for James G. Birney, when the abolitionist went to Cincinnati to begin his fight against slavery. The editor of the Gazette saw that the slaveowners were striking at the freedom of the press in their demands that the abolition editors must be muzzled, and his pen was one of the most forceful in the country against any endeavor to stop public discussion. He provided Birney with much of the material that was used to show that the slave-owners were intimidating and assaulting writers who dared discuss the subject of slavery.

The settlement of the land beyond the Ohio was helped by untoward conditions in the east, where hard times, in 1 8 14, had increased taxation. Liability to arrest for indebtedness caused many to sell everything they had and