It is exceptional in Emerson's
writings as the account of a man with whom he was personally and
intimately acquainted.
ELIZUR WRIGHT
The influence of Ohio in the United States of America during the past
half century may be compared to that of Virginia during the first forty
years of the Republic. All of our Presidents, elected as such since 1860,
have come from Ohio, or adjacent territory. Cleveland came from beyond
the Alleghenies, and Lincoln was born on the southern side of the Ohio
River. General Grant and General Sherman came from Ohio; and so did
Salmon P. Chase, and John Brown, of Harper's Perry celebrity. Chase gave
the country the inestimable blessing of a national currency; and even the
Virginians admitted that John Brown was a very remarkable person.
The fathers of these men conquered the wilderness and brought up their
sons to a sturdy, vigorous manliness, which resembles the colonial
culture of Franklin, Adams, and Washington.
Sitting in the same school-house with John Brown, in 1816, was a boy
named Elizur Wright who, like Brown, came from Connecticut, and to whom
the people of this country are also somewhat under obligation. Every
widow and orphan in the United States who receives the benefit of a life-
insurance policy owes a blessing to Elizur Wright, who was the first to
establish life insurance in America on a strong foundation, and whose
reports on that subject, made during his long term as Insurance
Commissioner for Massachusetts, have formed a sort of constitution by
which the policy of all life-insurance companies is still guided.
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