OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 99 : Issue 871 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio ["Maggie Stewart" that contains in the body of the message the command unsubscribe and no other text. No subject line is necessary, but if your software requires one, just use unsubscribe in the subject, too. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #1 Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 15:08:00 -0500 From: "Maggie Stewart" > To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0da201bf53ca$bd23c340$0300a8c0@local.net > Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio and the Underground Railway. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley > To: > Sent: Sunday, December 05, 1999 1:44 PM Subject: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio and the Underground Railway. ********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ********************************************** Ohio and The Underground Railway-- Pt 1A The Underground Railroad Era in Ohio lasted from 1800-1863. During that time, Washington County, Ohio bordered Wood County, " western " Virginia, along the Ohio River boundry between the North and the South. The Ohio River was --- The Mason-Dixon Line ! *********************************************** During the Underground Railroad Era of United States history, roughly 1800-1865, the Mason-Dixon Line was the political and ideological boundary between the Northern Free States from the Southern Slavocracy States. The Mason-Dixon Line was originally established in 1667, to settle a disputed boundary between the two English colonies; Maryland and Pennsylvania. The line derived its name from the two British astronomers, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who completed the survey. Initially the Mason-Dixon Line had nothing to do with the issue of slavery, as slavery was then a legal practice in Pennsylvania, just as slavery was a legal practice in all English colonies of North America. Pennsylvania didn't completely abolish slavery until after the American Revolution around 1783. Between 1780-1820 the Mason Dixon Line gradually became the political boundary between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South. In 1820, during debates in the U.S. Congress over the Missouri Compromise, the term Mason-Dixon Line was first used to describe the boundary. From that time forward, the Mason Dixon Line included the boundary that extended between Pennsylvania and the slave states of Maryland and Virginia; west to, and down along the Ohio River all the way to Cairo, lllinois. The Mason Dixon line formed the northern boundary of slavocracy between the states of Ohio and Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, Indiana and Kentucky, and Kentucky and Illinois. In fact was in effect, the front line in the long battle between slave owners of the south and the Underground Railroad of the North. As early as 1776, the settlers of western Virginia had petitioned the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia for a separate government. It became increasingly clear during the early 1800's that, whereas eastern Virginia shared the social and economic interests of the South, the western part of the state-- because of both geography and ethnic heritage-- had more in common with the North. Still slavery was a part of the culture in western Virginia. Compared to other places in the South, the slave population in western Virginia counties was always sparse. Slaves in western Virginia were mostly concentrated along large streams and rivers where soil conditions favored plantation agriculture. There were also slaves used in mining and other industrial pursuits. In the Mid- Ohio River Valley, slaves worked on plantations and farms located near or on the Ohio River. Because of this particular geographical location, slavery in Wood County, Virginia was closely observed and some of the conditions surrounding slavery were documented by newspapers in Maretta, the county seat of Washington County, Ohio. It was evident that the familiarity with slavery, acquired by early settlers in Washington County, Ohio, began the practice of encouraging and assisiting fugitive slaves to escape from slavery in western Virginia. Based on this practice, by 1810, settlers in Ohio with anti-slavery views, rapidly established a cooperative relay/referral system that extended from the Ohio River all the way across Ohio to Lake Erie. From this beginning, the organization of the Underground Railway was pretty well established by 1820, but the state wide popular support for the UR was not achieved until after 1840. All over the Ohio, the Underground Railroad became a vast system of safe houses, called Stations, and travel routes called trails,and Northern abolitionists called Conductors, to help fugitive slaves from the south reach freedom in Canada. This is the history of the Underground Railroad in the mid--Ohio River Valley, a point along the Ohio River for fugitive slaves from western Virginia to begin their trip across Ohio to Canada. From 1619 through the end of the Revolutionary War (1776-1783 ), slavery was a legal institution in all English Colonies of North America, but the number of slaves was much greater in the southern colonies, where large scale plantation type agricultural prevailed in the warmer climate. These plantations required a large dependable force of laborers to operate. Slavery thus became the foundation of the plantation agricultural system. In turn, the plantation system became the foundation of the southern culture from the 17th through the middle of the 18th centuries. From the time that Africans were first enslaved in the English Colonies of North America, they had resisted, but for most slaves, resistance was futile under the discriminatory colonial laws which legitimized slavery. The foundation of slavery in North America was rooted in the European custom of indenture. Indenture was a tyre of legal contract whereby a free person could be bound to serve the owner of the contract for a maxim number of years, usually seven. When their obligatory term had been fulfilled, the servant was released from indenture, and allowed to pursue his fortunes as a free citizen. Indentured servents proved to be expensive laborer, and indentured had many rights under English Common Law. It soon became apparent to tobacco planters in the Tidewater Region around Jamestown. Virginia, that they needed more control of their agricultural force. To accomplish this, the planters imported Africans and created an artificial social class of slaves, based solely on skin color. In order to justify the perpetuation of slavery, the rich tobacco tycoons had to portray Africans as people with less than human qualities. Of course under the controlled conditions of slavery, this was easy to accomplish, since those Africans were unfortunate enough to become slaves in America, naturally had no knowledge of the English language, no knowledge of English Common Law and no knowledge of English culture. In America, only people with black skin could be held as slaves, and black skin readily identified a slave, making it easier to control the slave population. To keep African slaves ignorant, colonial slave laws were enacted to prevent them from being educated in European customs. The central goal of the slave owning class was to keep slaves in perpetual ignorance, so they would not have the means to resist. Every aspect of a slave's existance was controlled to the smallest detail, from a slaves birth until his/her death. The purpose behind slavery was to get the maximum amount of labor for the minimum amount of expense and no resistance. There was nothing subtle about the conditions that maintained the institution of slavery. As far as the slaves was concerned, a very real threat of violence hung over the slave culture like an omnipresent fog. Slaves were punished for the smallest infraction of the rules. Rebellious slaves were severly beaten and tortured to death, when other slaves were forcd to wittness the punishment to discourage furthur resistence. The fear of slaves reprisal weighed so heavily upon the conscience of slave owners, they became their own victims to the brutal slave culture. Nearly all slave owners were white people, but not all white people were slave owners. Never the less slave owners were the powerful political and social class of their time. As a consequence of being a minority, the slave owning class had to expend great effort to gain and hold the support of the non-slave owning class of whites in case of a slave rebellion. This of course was accomplished by inventing and perpetuating the myth of racial superiority, without a hint of freedom. From the earliest days of the African slave trade in the 16th century, there were some Europeans, especially those with clergy backgrounds, that recognized the inherent evils and not so subtle brutality of slavery. This did not necessarily mean that they loved the Africans per se, it simply meant they recognized the obvious fact that African people were human beings, and according to the principals of Christian religion, no human being deserved to be treated like a draft animal. It was from this concept that the Abolitionist Movement would later spawn, but still it took centuries for the Anti-slavery Movement to gain enough support to end slavery in most European countries, by the beginning of the American Revolutionary War (1776-1783 ). Many people in the former English Colonies of North America, including the slaves, expected that slavery in the new United States would be abolished very soon after the Revolutionary War had been concluded in 1783. In fact, during the dark days of that war, General George Washington had decreed that any slave who fought for American Indepenence would be freed. Consequently , Northern States individually began implementing various methods for emancipating the slaves in those states as early as 1780. Some states adopted immediate emancipation plans, while other states adopted plans with a more gradual approach to emancipation. As the laws for emancipating slaves were temporarily relaxed in the euphoria of freedom that gripped the new Nation right after the war, even in some Southern States, particularly Virginia, some slaves were emancipated. Then the Southern States as a group began to reject the idea of abolishing slavery. After Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, slavery in the Southern States became more entrenched than it had been under the English Colonial system. Many of the slaves in the South, that had been promised freedom, especially those that had served in the Revolution were not freed as expected. ********************************************** To be continued in part B. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 15:14:15 -0500 From: "Maggie Stewart" > To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0da901bf53cb$9c8b3ae0$0300a8c0@local.net > Subject: Fw: Bio History-- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio And the Underground Railway. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley > To: > Sent: Thursday, December 09, 1999 5:44 PM Subject: Bio History-- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio And the Underground Railway. ********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ********************************************** Ohio and The Underground Railway --Pt 1B. Many of the slaves that had served with the American Continental Army had gained valuable knowledge while fighting in the Revolution. After betrayal of the promise, many slaves in the South began to run away to Northern states that had abolished slavery, where they thought they would be free. During the years 1783 through 1793 fugitive slaves could find some measure of sanctuary in some Northern states, particularly Pennsylvannia, Massachusetts and Connecticut where gradual emancipation plans were well into effect. But slave owners in the South pushed legislation and created the Federal Slave Law of 1793. Events that occurred between 1793 and 1808 greatly propelled the creation of an organized Underground Railroad in the Northern States. Before 1793, fugitive slaves probably were not fleeing to Canada on the Underground Railroad as been often suggested by some historians as there was no organized Underground Railroad, and the first Providence in Canada to abolish slavery, Upper Canada (Ontario), did not do so until 1793. Never the less, fugitive slaves from Virginia and Maryland ran away in droves during the years 1783 through 1793. A few abolitionists in Northern states, mostly Quakers, particularly in Pennsylvania, did help some of the fugitives try to get a new start in life. However after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, slave owners had the legal right to go into the Northern states, search for, apprehend and return their fugitive slaves to the South. The Law may have prevented the development of an organized Underground Railroad at that time, but not for long for at that time Ontario, which bordered some of the Northern states, particularly Ohio, countered that law by abolishing slavery within its own borders that same year. Thus Canada conveniently provided a safe haven for the fugitive slaves to take refuge outside of the jurisdiction of the United States Government and its laws. The other event of 1793 that had a major impact on the growth and perpetuation of slavery was Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. The cotton gin, which could separate cotton seed from the cotton fiber fifty times faster than human hands, provided for the potential growth of cotton production in the cotton belt. The law banning the African Slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States, which was passed in 1808, cut off the primary source for new slaves. While slavery was greatly diminished, especially in Maryland and Virginia, the monetary increase in the value of slaves, caused many slave owners to sell off their slaves, when otherwise they may have been empancipated. Thousands were sold to the developing cotton and sugar cane plantations of the deep South. These developments soon influenced radical abolitionists to take matters in hand to create the active resistance, that became known as the Underground Railroad. The Ohio abolitionists conentrated their energies on ecouraging slaves to run away to Canada and helping them get there. During the early 1830's, nationwide the Underground Railroad probably had a few thousand supporters. Black and white anti-slavery protesters, located across the North, used their homes and farms as the Underground Railroad stations to protect them as they were relayed across Ohio to Lake Erie. Many were Christian ministers at first, deeply involved with a religous organization. They addressed the evils of slavery to their congregations on moral grounds and black ministers in the African churches provided leadership for the black community. They were working under the same conditions as to contrary to the Fugitive laws and were thus subject to prosecution if caught, so they had to exercise extreme caution for safety for both involved. The Law imposed fines and imprisonment for violations, but did not obligate citizens living in the Northern free states and territories to help apprehend or return slaves to their owners in the South. Slave owners or their agents, bounty hunters, had to carry this out with their own resources. Many Northerners felt that slavery had nothing to do with them, until in time, they realized the fact that they were competing with slave labor in the labor market. For instance, why would a manager pay for labor, when he could get slaves to do the work; and there was more too-- as the very nature of the slave system was to keep the labor wage low by creating a surplus of unemployed whites. If a white worker complained about wages, another one was waiting to take the job. As European immigrants in the North became familiar with the inhumanity of slavery, and economic conditions caused by the slave system, they took up the abolitionist banner. This was especially true in Ohio. By 1840, many of the European settlers in Ohio had settled on farms and in small villages across the state, thus creating the ideal configuration for the Underground Railroad Stations which relayed the slaves across the state. The Underground Railroad referral system that first crossed the sparsely settled lands of Ohio, over time became extremely well organized as the population of the state rapidly expanded, When the slaves crossed the Ohio River from the south, they were quickly and efficiently guided away from the river to Underground Railroad Stations located ten to fifteen miles north. This relaying, continued from station to station, all the way to Lake Erie. The common wisdom was: the furthur and faster a fugitive slave got away from the Ohio River, the better his chance to reach Canada. At several communities near Lake Erie, most notably Oberlin, Cleveland and Sandusky, passge across the Lake by boat was arranged. Regular railroad terminology was adopted as code for the various parts of the Underground Railroad. Fugitive slaves were called passengers. The network of routes were called lines. The safe houses where they were hidden, sheltered, fed and clothed were called stations. Towns and villages in Ohio were called terminals Local people who guided them from station to station, usually located at 15 mile intervals were called conductors and so on. For instance the Underground Railroad even had agents who traveled into the south in the guise of salesman or whatever, in order to give them vital information about escaping and getting to the Underground Railroad across the Ohio River. For all practical purposes, the ground work that enabled the Underground Railroad north of the Ohio River to organize and function, came when Manasseh authorized Article 6, in the Ordinance of 1787. of the United States Constitution, which excluded slavery from the Northwest Territory. In 1785, a group of New England ex-Revoluntionary War officers, led by General Rufus Putnam, formed the Ohio Land Company in order to purchase a large tract of and in the Northwest Territory, and sell that land to other American settlers. The first settlement, was at Marietta, in Wasington County, ( Ohio ). The people involved with the Ohio Land Company greatly influenced the anti-slavery attitude eventually dominated in other states formed in the Northwest Territory. ********************************************** to be continued -- -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #871 *******************************************