Slavery in Ohio

Slavery was abolished in Ohio in 1802 by the state's original constitution. But at the same time, Ohio, with slave-state Kentucky across the Ohio River, took the lead in aggressively barring black immigration.

When Virginian John Randolph's 518 slaves were emancipated and a plan arose to settle them in southern Ohio, the population rose up in indignation. 

According to historian Leon F. Litwack, in his book, "North of Slavery," Ohio," the situation provided a classic example of how anti-immigration legislation could be invoked to harass the state's black residents.

The state had enacted Black Laws in 1804 and 1807 requiring blacks entering the state to post bond of $500 guaranteeing good behavior and to produce a court paper to prove they were free.

"No extensive effort was made to enforce the bond requirement," Litwack wrote, "until 1829, when the rapid increase of the Negro population alarmed Cincinnati. The city authorities announced the Black Laws would be enforced and ordered Negroes to comply or leave within 30 days."

Residents of the black community appealed for a delay, and sent a delegation to Canada to try to find a place to settle there. Rather than waiting for official word on a decision, angry mobs of whites roamed the black neighborhoods, burning and beating its residents.

The delegation came back from Upper Canada with the offer of a safe home with a message stating, "Royalists do not know men by their color and should you come to us you will be entitled to all the privileges of the rest of His Majesty's subjects," according to Litwack.

Consequently, about half of the city's 2,200 blacks moved to Canada. 

Twenty years later, after the Free Soil Party gained a degree of power in the state in 1849, a compromise partially repealed the Black Laws, ending the bond-posting requirement. It was rare for a northern state to loosen its restrictions on black settlement.

The northern tier of the state, including Ashtabula County, had been settled by people from southern New England and to a degree shared in the abolitionist religion and politics of that region. However, the county was not without its pro-slavery views. An advertisement in the Ashtabula Sentinel in 1849, offered a "One Cent Reward" for two runaway slaves — a teenage male and a female.

Ashtabula County boasted more than 30 known Underground Railroad stations and many more conductors. About two-thirds of those sites still stand today, including the Hubbard House on Walnut Boulevard, Ashtabula, where from slaves boarded vessels to Canada.

Runaways also hid in the basement of what is today Kollhoff Insurance, 4109 Lake Ave., Ashtabula, a stage coach stop on Bunker Hill in Ashtabula, the Nettleton Tavern in North Kingsville, a home on North Chestnut Street in Jefferson and the former home of abolitionist Solomon Fitch in Geneva-on-the-Lake, according to research conducted at the Harbor-Topky Library in Ashtabula. 

Slaves hid in the basement of Nettleton Tavern and could climb up to the second floor through an opening on the side of the first-floor fireplace. They would be unseen by the patrons. On the second floor, there's a hiding place in the floor that's now covered by a rug.

At the home in Jefferson, slaves crawled into the cistern through a trap door hidden in the floor of the kitchen. 

The underground railroad also had a stop at "The Old Brick" in Kelloggsville.

The Hubbard House Museum in Ashtabula displays a large map showing all the known sites, which provided freedom to hundreds of slaves.

John Brown connection

Ashtabula County was instrumental in John Brown's Oct. 16, 1859 attack on the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, (West) Virginia. Brown stored many of his weapons, including 200 rifles, 200 pistols and 400 spears, at King and Brothers cabinet shop in Cherry Valley and a large barn owned by E.A. Fobes in Wayne Township. 

Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800 and became interested in the abolitionist movement in the mid-1830s. Twenty years later, he and several of his sons moved to Kansas, which was deeply divided over the slavery issue.

On the night of May 24, 1856, Brown and his sons murdered five men who supported slavery. Brown and his sons escaped, but the Pottawotamie Massacre, as the event became known, gave them power to garner money from wealthy abolitionists.

Some of the money was raised in Ashtabula County. There is a documented visit by Brown to Ashtabula  County in the spring of 1859. He visited Congressman Joshua Giddings and spoke at the Congregational Church in Jefferson. A collection of $20 was raised to further Brown's work.

Brown’s vision was to establish a colony for runaway slaves in U.S. To do that, he needed weapons to give to the slaves. Consequently, he decided the federal arsenal and armory was the best place to raid.

Depending on the source, about a dozen of the 18 to 21 men who accompanied Brown on his raid were from Ashtabula County. At first, the raid seemed successful as Brown took control of the arsenal and held several people of Harpers Ferry hostage. Brown and his men then waited for the local slaves to rebel and come to their aid. The help never arrived.

The next day, locals pinned Brown's men down forcing Brown to move to a more defensible position at the local fire house. The military soon then arrived under the leadership of the future Southern general, Col. Robert E. Lee.

On Oct. 18, Lee's men attacked the fire house. Several of Brown's men were killed and Brown was taken captive.

Dangerfield Newby was one of five African Americans who accompanied Brown and the first of Brown's followers to be killed in the raid. A former runaway slave from Virginia, Newby was a blacksmith who lived in Dorset, Ohio and worked on the Underground Railroad. He left his wife and seven children when he ran away from a southern plantation with hopes of gaining his family's freedom.

John Brown stood trial for the raid and a jury found him guilty of treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. He hanged but not before uttering prophetic words that soon would be fulfilled: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

In the weeks that followed, six more men from the raiding party followed Brown to the gallows.

Education 

While Ohioans aided slaves on their road to freedom, the people in northern Ohio weren't quite so open minded when it came to integrating schools. Citizens and legislators objected to educating blacks from public funds, in part because it would tend to encourage blacks to settle there.

In the end, Ohio, like Pennsylvania, required its district school directors to set up separate facilities for black and white children. The Ohio courts upheld this segregation in 1850 and 1859, rejecting the idea of integration and declaring that, "whether consistent with true philanthropy or not ... there ... still is an almost invincible repugnance to such communion and fellowship," according to Litwack.

In the 1830s, Oberlin College in Oberlin decided to open its doors to black students. As soon as the plan became known "panic and despair" seized students, faculty and town residents. The chief proponent of the plan hurried to assure them he had no intention to let the place fill up with "filthy stupid negroes," but the controversy continued. The board of trustees tried to table the plan, but by now the abolitionists were aroused and would accept no retreat. In the end, in 1835, the trustees punted the decision to the faculty, which wanted to open the college to blacks, according to Robert S. Fletcher's "History of Oberlin College," written in 1943.

The move threatened the very existence of the college. From New England, where most of the school's students and tuition money came, the college's financial agent predicted disaster.

"For as soon as your darkies begin to come in in any considerable numbers ... the whites will begin to leave — and at length your institute will change color. Why not have a black Institution ... and let Oberlin be?" according to Fletcher.

The college did survive integration, however, mostly because before 1860 only a handful of blacks were admitted. In 1860, only 4 percent of the students were black. Still, the school was shockingly integrated by Northern standards. A college girl from Massachusetts wrote home in1852, assuring her family, they don't have to speak to the black students.

When Republicans rose to power in Ohio, as in Pennsylvania, they stayed away from abolitionists and blacks to assure their success. "The negro question," a state leader of the party wrote as Abraham Lincoln's election approached, "as we understand it, is a white man's question, the question of the right of free white laborers to the soil of the territories. It is not to be crushed or retarded by shouting 'Sambo' at us. We have no Sambo in our platform. ... We object to Sambo. We don't want him about. We insist that he shall not be forced upon us," according to Litwack.