August Featured Topic of the Month
In 1861, Camp Chase was established in Columbus, Ohio, to replace Camp Jackson. Governor William Dennison had ordered Camp Jackson’s creation as a meeting place for Ohio volunteers during the American Civil War. In April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to end the South’s rebellion. Governor [...]

July Featured Topic
Mary Ann (Ball) Bickerdyke was a nurse and health care provider to the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Bickerdyke was born on July 19, 1817, near Mount Vernon, Ohio. She enrolled at Oberlin College, one of the few institutions of higher education open to women at this time in the United States, [...]

May Featured Topic
The court case Dred Scott v. Sandford fueled tensions between the North and the South that eventually led to the American Civil War.
Dred Scott was born a slave. During the 1830s, Scott’s owner, a surgeon in the United States army, took Scott to Illinois and Minnesota. At this time, slavery was illegal in [...]

April Featured Topic
John Brown was an ardent abolitionist who, in 1859, led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in hopes of securing arms to lead a slave revolt in the South. Viewed as a martyr by many, Brown was hanged for his actions.
Photographic reproduction of a portrait of abolitionist John Brown [...]

February Featured Topic
Like some residents of other Northern states, numerous Ohioans strenuously objected to the American Civil War. Various reasons existed for the reluctance of these Ohioans and their fellow Northerners to support the Union.
A sizable number of white Ohioans, especially those living along the Ohio River, had migrated to the state from slaveholding states. [...]