The Civil War
The Civil War shifted the nature of seeking freedom from slave states. Enslaved people began seeking out Union army camps in 1861, and Union armies refused to return enslaved peoples to their Confederate enemies. In response, Congress passed Confiscation Acts which allowed the Union to confiscate enslaved people as “contraband.” These contrabands were put to work in Union camps doing manual labor like cooking and building fortifications, allowing more soldiers to be sent to the battlefield.[1] The use of contrabands would push the Union closer to emancipation, and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed any enslaved person who crossed into Union territory. This opened new opportunities for freedom seekers if they could make the journey north. For more on contrabands in the war, see here.
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While Athens County saw those who celebrated the freeing of enslaved people, not everyone agreed with the change. Some Ohioans feared that their economy would be threatened if there were more Black workers who were willing to work for lower wages. Almyra Brown lived in Albany during the Civil War. Her sons enlisted as Union soldiers, and Milton Holland, a Black man whose slaveholder father had sent him to the Manual Labor Academy, worked for Almyra’s uncle Nelson Van Vorhes until he was able to enlist in a Black regiment in 1863.[2] In an 1863 letter to her son Edwin, she complained about the Black workers and contrabands:
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Nelson Van Vorhes, uncle of Alymra Brown. The Brown Family lived in Albany during the Civil War Era. Library of Congress.
no help as there is no white men to hire and the niggers all skedadeled when they heard [Confederate soldier] Morgan was comeing, all holed up and have not dared to show their woolly heads till yesterday […] Bill Boughmen Milt Holland are home on furloug of 10 days. Milt is Capt they are now stationed at Danville in this state drilling, they are almost the only town negroes that volunteered there was a few
contrabands went that came in since you left, darn their black faces I hate them, they are no better to go and fight and be shot at than my boys and outher white boys and it makes me mad to see one of them especially to come and want to hire and ask 150 to 200 a day […][3]
The change in race dynamics during the war brought out Almyra’s fears and anxieties about the presence of more free Black residents in her community. While Albany had been an important Underground Railroad location in Athens County, supporting abolition was not the same as supporting racial equality, as Almyra’s letter shows.
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While Southeast Ohio did not function as larger abolitionist communities did, Athens County was able to maintain a successful Underground Railroad presence. Community members who were aware of each other's involvement could pass freedom seekers between stations as needed, and they were able to seek shelter in cellars, hidden rooms, and even in the forest to evade slave catchers. A combination of this coordination and Athens' position between many stops made it possible to quickly change paths, which made freedom seekers harder to pursue. Dedication to this cause was sustained within several families from the 1820s onward.
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Thomas Nast, "These few precepts in thy memory." Harper's Weekly, April 24. 1875.Princeton University Library.
When, at last, Civil War policies and the 13th amendment made the Underground Railroad obsolete, Athens County residents like Alymra Brown were fearful of the change in their community, but those who had been involved in the Underground Railroad saw their home shift from a place where they could only assist freedom seekers in secrecy to a place where Black Americans could come freely from anywhere in the United States. In the decades following the Civil War, a new mythology grew around the Underground Railroad that romanticized the movements and those who participated, and while the truth is difficult to separate from the fiction, this speaks to how something that was once a careful act of resistance became a large part of Ohio's memory of how they experienced abolition.
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Notes
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[1] Joseph T. Glatthaar, “Black Glory: The African-American Role in Union Victory,” in Gabor S. Boritt, Why the Confederacy Lost (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 139-141.
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[2 Nelson Van Vorhes, Letter to Austin Brown, December 14, 1861. Brown Family Collection, Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, Ohio University. https://media.library.ohio.edu/digital/collection/p15808coll6/id/556.
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[3] Almyra Brown, Letter to Edwin Brown, 1863. Brown Family Collection, Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, Ohio University. https://media.library.ohio.edu/digital/collection/p15808coll6/id/1533/rec/1.
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Image 1: Van Vorhes, Hon. Nelson Holmes of Ohio. Delegate to Republican National Convention - Chicago – 1860. LC-BH832- 993 [P&P]. Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017894748/.
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Image 2: Thomas Nast, “These Few Precepts in Thy Memory,” Harper's Weekly, April 24. 1875. GA 2008.01542b. Princeton University Library. http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/1544bp24n.
