The chief citizen of Richland County is John Sherman, who is also one of the chief citizens of Ohio, and of the United States. He has been in Congress ever since 1855, and ever since 1861 he has been in the Senate, except for the four years when he was Secretary of the Treasury under President Hayes. If any man in our public life during this long period merits more than he the name of statesman, it would be hard to say who he may be. But in his boyhood he gave promise of anything but the sort of career which he has dignified. He had all the impulsiveness of his famous brother, General Sherman, and something more than his turbulence. He himself, with that charming frankness which seems peculiarly a Sherman trait, tells in his autobiography what reckless things he did, even to coming to blows with his teacher; but all this heat seems later to have gone to temper a most manly and courageous character for a career of the greatest public usefulness. [Illustration: William McKinley 271L] He was born at Lancaster in 1810, and the second President who has called him from the Senate to a seat in his cabinet was born at Niles in Trumbull County, in 1844. William McKinley entered the army as a private in the famous 23d Ohio, when he was only seventeen, and fought through the war. When it ended he had won the rank of brevet major, but he had then his beginning to make in civil life. He studied law, and settled in Canton, where he married, and began to be felt in politics. He was thrice sent to Congress, and then defeated; but in 1896 he was elected the fifth President of the United States from the state of Ohio. It is a long step backward in time, in fact more than a hundred years, before we reach the birthday, in 1794, of Thomas Corwin, one of the most gifted Ohioans who has ever lived. [Illustration: Thomas Corwin 272R]