Intro to Cincinnati

The city of Cincinnati is located north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border. Cincinnati is considered to have been the first American boomtown in the heart of the country in the early nineteenth century to rival the larger coastal cities in size and wealth. As the first leading inland city in the country, it is sometimes thought of as the first purely American city, lacking the heavy European influence that was present on the east coast.

History

In 1790, Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, changed the name of the village to "Cincinnati" in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which he was a member. The society honored General George Washington, who was considered a latter day Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer who was called to serve Rome as dictator, an office which he promptly resigned after completing his task of defeating the Aequians.

Cincinnati was chartered as a village in 1802 . David Ziegler (1748-1811), a Revolutionary War veteran from Heidelberg, Germany, became the first mayor. Cincinnati was incorporated as a city in 1819. The introduction of steam navigation on the Ohio River in 1811 and the completion of the Miami and Erie Canal helped the city boom to 115,000 citizens by 1850.

During the American Civil War, Cincinnati played a key role as a crucial source of supplies and troops for the Union Army. It also served as the headquarters for much of the war for the Department of the Ohio, which was charged with the defense of the region, as well as directing the army's offensives into Kentucky and Tennessee. Due to Cincinnati's proximity to and commerce with slave states across the Ohio River, there was significant "Southern sympathy" in the Cincinnati area. This is exemplified by the history of the Copperhead movement in Ohio