Cincinnati's beginnings can be traced to 1788, when a New Jersey judge and speculator, John Cleves Symmes, purchased one million acres of land north of the Ohio River, between the Great and Little Miami Rivers. Losantiville, one of the three settlements planted on Symmes's purchase, derived its name from Greek, Latin, and French words meaning "village opposite the mouth" in reference to its location on the northern bank of the Ohio River, opposite the mouth of Kentucky's Licking River. Losantiville's strategic location offered great commercial promise, and it eventually became the most significant of the three settlements. But before that promise could be realized, Losantiville settlers would have to contend with the Ohio Indians for rights to the land.
In the dawn of its days, Losantiville had an uncertain existence. Residents lived under the constant threat of attacks by Native Americans. Not even Fort Washington, built by the U.S. government around the village in 1789, could protect or stabilize the community. It was only after General Anthony Wayne defeated the Native American confederation at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 that the walls of Fort Washington came down, signaling the end of all significant challenges to white settlement on the land. The name of the village was promptly changed to Cincinnati—a name borrowed from the Society of the Cincinnati, a renowned Revolutionary War veterans group. With the new name came a new destiny. What had begun as a humble garrison settlement became a symbol of western, if not American, aspirations by the 1820s.
Cincinnati is slightly older than the state of Ohio, which was admitted to the Union in 1803. In 1790 the governor of the Northwest Territory, General Arthur St. Clair, made Cincinnati the seat of Hamilton County, organized its civil and criminal courts, and appointed judges. The first courthouse, church, and school all opened at around the same time. A newspaper appeared before 1800, and by 1807 the city had its first bank. Cincinnati was recognized as a township by the territorial legislature in 1802 and incorporated as a city in 1819. Residents received municipal services, including water, city lights, and fire and police departments in the 1810s.
Early Cincinnati was a city of many faces. It was a northern city in its geography, a southern one in its culture, and a western city by its economic aspirations. It was the southernmost northern city, the northernmost southern city—all while being, as it was known, the Gateway to the West. These simultaneous, multiple identities created a distinct character and tone and also defined the destiny of the young city.
Cincinnati's early history and development cannot be divorced from its relationship to the Ohio River. The young city's extraordinary economic growth in its first fifty years can be attributed to its strategic location along this critical waterway. As the primary access route to the West in early America, the Ohio River linked the city to principal markets east and west. Because the river also fed into the Mississippi, Cincinnati additionally had access to southern markets and eventually became a major provider of goods to southern slave owners. Furthermore, the construction of the Miami and Erie Canal (1825-1845) created a faster way to convey goods between Cincinnati and other Ohio cities. The intersection of all these commercial highways near Cincinnati facilitated extraordinary economic growth. Although the port city had benefited from a relatively robust commercial economy since the days of its pioneers, the steamboat revolution in the 1820s ushered in an era of unparalleled prosperity in commerce and manufacturing. The advent of faster, more efficient transportation dramatically increased the volume of goods moving to, from, and through Cincinnati. The city emerged from the decade as the national leader in steamboat production and pork packing. In fact, the pork-packing capital was given the nickname Porkopolis—a name that could also refer to the great numbers of pigs that freely roamed the streets of Cincinnati. Reflecting its position as the leading man ufacturing and commercial power in the West, Cincinnati was also known as the Queen City of the West by 1830.
The Queen City's economy offered unbounded opportunities, drawing thousands of migrants each year. The city had about 500 residents in 1795; by 1810 its population had multiplied five times to over 2,500. Ten years later, 9,841 persons were living in Cincinnati. By 1830, after just four decades of existence, Cincinnati's population had ballooned to 24,831, eclipsing that of every other major western city. In 1840 its population of 46,339 was more than twice that of Pittsburgh and almost three times the population of St. Louis. In fact, by then Cincinnati was also the sixth-largest city in the nation.
Cincinnati politics were driven by economics for decades. City leaders, careful to maintain delicate trading relations with southern states, sometimes made decisions that were decidedly proslavery. Until the antebellum era, slaveholders had free rein to bring slaves with them as they did business in Cincinnati. The culture in Cincinnati not only tolerated slavery, but often tried to repress activity that might jeopardize relations with the South, including abolitionism and the Underground Railroad. Cincinnati had one of the strongest anti-abolitionist communities in the country, and for years city officials ignored their activities.
Much of the city's business and leadership class was affiliated with the National Republican and, later, the Whig Party. The National Republican Party hoped to use national institutions like the national bank to encourage the acquisition of private capital. The party attracted merchants, bankers, large retailers, and others who favored a robust market economy. The Tafts, Beechers, and Longworths were leading Republican families in the city.
As demographics changed in Cincinnati, so too did its political bent. The influx of Irish immigrants in the 1840s broadened the Democratic foothold, and the subsequent rise of the Democratic journal the Cincinnati Enquirer signaled an end to Whig dominance in city politics.
Most striking about the population demographics of early Cincinnati is its relatively high number of northeastern-and foreign-born residents. Germans were the largest immigrant group in Cincinnati between 1830 and 1870 and also comprised a significant portion of the city's total population. For example, in 1840, 28 percent of the population was German. As the German population increased, so did its influence on the political and social culture of the city. As a testament to that influence, the German language was spoken and taught in many of Cincinnati's schools throughout much of the nineteenth century.
Another group, significant in spirit if not numbers, was Cincinnati's African American population. In a state that prohibited slavery, the Queen City offered many incentives for African Americans to settle there, not the least of which was jobs. The black population hovered between 3 and 4 percent until 1829, when it spiked to over 9 percent. Despite the implicit promise of freedom from slavery and racism, a riotous, anti-black, anti-abolitionist spirit gripped the city, many of whose white residents after 1829 tormented African Americans and, at times, their allies. For example, in the summer of 1829 the threat of an impending riot directed against the black community precipitated a mass exodus of over one thousand African Americans. In 1836 anti-abolitionist rioters destroyed the press of an abolitionist weekly, The Philanthropist. Despite such a climate, after 1836 Cincinnati was home to one of the most effective branches of the Underground Railroad and hailed as one of the nation's strongest abolitionist communities.
Because so much of the city's economy was invested in its waterways, it was natural and inevitable that the bright star of Cincinnati dimmed once railroads and national roads replaced steamboats as the principal conveyers of goods through the West in the 1850s. Shortly thereafter, the Queen City of the West was forced to relinquish the crown—although not the name—to other western cities like Chicago and St. Louis.