This story is a preview of the 2008 Looking Glass, which will be published on Tuesday with the Mount Vernon News. Lecky Harper was one of the more notable Mount Vernon residents.
In its early days, Mount Vernon and Knox County were full of colorful, influential people. One of those was Lecky Harper, the editor of the Democratic Banner for more than 40 years.
Harper was born in 1815 in Ireland, then moved to America with his family in 1820. He came to Mount Vernon in 1853 after many years as a writer, editor and lawyer in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. When he took over the Banner, Mount Vernon was just a small town of around 800 people. Within three years of his arrival, the city had swelled to more than 3,000.
As the city grew, so did Harper’s influence. He built a large subscription to the Banner, traded insults with the Ohio State Times and The Republican, and defended foreigners — of which he was one — with his editorials in the paper.
Harper was active in politics from his earliest days where he was a reporter on the floor of the Ohio House. He was elected to the Pittsburgh City Council as a Jacksonian Democrat in 1844. During the bitter campaign, Harper was struck over the left eye by a colt of lead and nearly killed. While an editor in Pittsburgh, he campaigned successfully for gas lights in the city, and helped fight for the 10-hour work day. Other newspapers and manufacturers in Pittsburgh attempted to bring Harper and his paper down for supporting the reduction in work hours and ruining industry, but Harper and the law both survived.
After moving to Mount Vernon, Harper played a big part in getting the Springfield, Mount Vernon and Pittsburgh Railroad in town. His political leanings continued to show through in his reporting and headlines as America headed closer to Civil War, but he noted that his friend, Lorin Andrews, would do us proud as was broke out in the nation. That good-will feeling didn’t last long, as the Peace Democrat wrote that two local soldiers died so that “Ohio could be Africanized.”
As president of the Ohio Democratic Convention in 1862, Harper met and became friends with Clement Vallandigham, one of the leaders and most vocal supporters of the Peace Democrats. At Harper’s request, Vallandigham spoke in Mount Vernon later that year and invigorated Democrats. The Democratic Party had 34 elected to Congress that year, including 14 of 19 spots in Ohio. Harper called it “The Uprising of the People.”
Harper’s biggest coup came in 1863 when he organized a great rally in Mount Vernon where Vallandigham, S.S. Cox and George Pendleton all spoke. The crowd was so large on the square that two other stages had to be erected. The rally became national news when Vallandigham was arrested by the military two days later for expressing sympathy for the enemy and speaking ill of the president. Harper was summoned to testify in the military hearing, where Vallandigham was denied a writ of habeas corpus and sentenced to two years in military prison. Following an upswell of support for Vallandigham, President Abraham Lincoln ordered him banished to the South.
By 1864, the Democrats were convinced the United States was a military dictatorship that was ruining the Constitution. Harper wrote “The first four years of abolition rule have been four years of rebellion, blood, death, destruction and desolation. If Lincoln and his sectional, fanatical, disunion party are kept in power four years longer, there surely will be eight years of rebellion; and the people’s liberties will be crushed beneath the iron heels of abolition despotism. The only hope of saving the country from utter ruin is for the people to rise in all the majesty of their strength, and by the exercise of the omnipotent ballot, drive the disunionists, despots, fornicators, thieves and plunderers from power next November.”
After Lincoln won re-election, Harper fell into despair, advertising his house and the paper for sale. He soon recovered and continued to edit the Banner until 1895, including through a fire which destroyed a good portion of the office and press in 1870. Harper needed just 10 days to get through this difficult situation and begin printing again.
In 1879, Harper was elected to the Ohio Senate. He was president of the Ohio Editorial Association for four years and president of the Democratic Editorial Association, which was organized in 1880. Harper was married to Eliza Mercer, a descendant of Gen. Hugh Mercer, an American Revolutionary War hero. They had nine children, three of which died in infancy.
