Ohio's Involvement
Through the end of the Civil War in 1865, United States federal laws protected the property rights of slaveholders over their enslaved people. The Constitution granted slaveholders the right to seize enslaved people who fled to other states. Fugitive Slave Acts were passed in 1793 and 1850, which reinforced slaveholders’ protection and prohibited other Americans from assisting enslaved people.[1] The 1850 law was passed to offset lax enforcement of the 1793 law, and anyone who was found assisting an attempted escape could be fined up to $1,000 and serve up to six months in jail.[2]
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Photograph of Salmon P. Chase, who gave a defense speech at Matilda's trial. Ohio History Connection.
Along the Ohio River, many enslaved people came to Ohio working on steamboats or traveling with slaveholders, and this put towns like Cincinnati in a strong position to aid freedom seekers. Free Black Ohioans in Lawrence County often opened their homes to freedom seekers, and Black churches in the Cincinnati area were community bases of opposition. While some Cincinnati residents believed that laws like the Black Laws, which limited the civil rights of Black Ohioans, were necessary protection against potential Black immigrants, many also disagreed with the Fugitive Slave Law forcing them to enforce slavery when the Ohio Constitution banned it.[7] Northern Ohioans were also involved. Oberlin was widely known as an abolitionist community, and the university’s Black and white students alike came together to shelter and protect freedom seekers from the “slave catchers” who came to their community. When a slave catcher kidnapped John Price, who had escaped from his neighbor, a crowd followed the kidnapper ten miles to a hotel in Wellington, where they convince him to open the door, struck his head with a pistol, and brought Price back to Oberlin.[8]
Despite its status as a free state, Ohio law affirmed national law on the status of slaveholder rights. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, in the same article that prohibited slavery, set the condition that “any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.”[3] Ohioans who violated this law could face legal repercussions. In 1837, a woman named Matilda was brought before a Hamilton County court and the verdict returned her to the Missouri slaveholder pursuing her.[4] In 1846, an Ohio farmer was fined $1,500 for assisting nine Kentucky freedom seekers, a fine which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court a year later.[5] Despite Ohio having no legal protection for those seeking freedom, and despite the risk to Ohioans who were caught acting against the fugitive laws, Ohio became one of several northern states involved in Underground Railroad activity.
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Ohio’s location played a large role in its Underground Railroad history. The Ohio River was a border between slave states and free states. The Ohio River was important for shipping goods to the South, and Ohio had economic and social ties to Kentucky because of this. Ohio shared its eastern border with Pennsylvania, whose Quaker communities were active in anti-slave movements.[6] Freedom seekers could also pass through Ohio to cross into Canada, where they could live in freedom. While Ohioans differed in their opinions about slavery, some Ohioans were willing to help freedom seekers on their journey north to Canada.
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Photograph of the Oberlin Rescuers, 1859. Ohio History Connection.
Notes
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1. U.S. Constitution, art. 4, sec. 2, cl. 3. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S2-C3-1-1/ALDE_00001169; Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, art. 4. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h62t.html. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. American Battlefield Trust. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/fugitive-slave-act.
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2. United States Fugitive Slave Law. The Fugitive slave law. Hartford, CT, 1850. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/98101767/.
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3. United States, Charles Thomson, United States Continental Congress, and Continental Congress Broadside Collection. An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-west of the River Ohio. [New York: s.n, 1787] Online Text. https://www.loc.gov/item/90898154/.
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4. “Interesting Trial,” Southern Telegraph (Rodney, MS), April 25, 1837. LoC. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87065592/1837-04-25/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1836&index=0&rows=20&words=Lawrence+Matilda&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1838&proxtext=matilda+lawrence&y=14&x=18&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1.
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5. Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015), 21.
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6. Matthew Salafia, Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) 5-6, 65. E. Delorus Preston, Jr., “The Underground Railroad in Northwest Ohio,” The Journal of Negro History 17, no. 4 (Oct. 1932) 410. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714557.
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7. Darrel E. Bigham, On Jordan’s Banks, 48-9; Stephen E. Maizlish, The Triumph of Sectionalism: The Transformation of Ohio Politics, 1844-1856 (Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1983), 8.
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8. J. Brent Morris, Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism, 203-211.
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Image 1: C. D. Fredericks & Co., Salmon P. Chase Portrait, c. 1865-1870. SC 1828, Ohio History Connection. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p267401coll32/id/8711/rec/3.
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Image 2: Oberlin Rescuers Photograph, April 1859. Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, MSS 116 AV; Box 78, Folder 8. Ohio History Connection. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p267401coll32/id/10651.
