Abolitionists established the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in Zanesville at a meeting held in April 1835. Among the organization’s founders were prominent abolitionists like Asa Mahan, John Rankin, Theodore Dwight Weld, and Charles Finney. Many of these men were affiliated with Oberlin College. Other organizers of the society were Quakers from the area near Mount Pleasant, [...]

Oberlin College was the first college to admit women and, in 1835, was the first college to admit African American students. While some southern states were outlawing teaching African Americans to read and write, Oberlin College was graduating bot
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h male and female black students with bachelor’s degrees. One such student to graduate [...]

The Philanthropist was an anti-slavery newspaper first published in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, in September 1817. Its first editor was Charles Osborn. He was a member of the Society of Friends who were often called “Quakers.” Osborn called for an immediate end to slavery. He hoped his paper would educate white Northerners about slavery’s injustice.
The paper [...]

Construction on the Ohio Statehouse began in 1839. And after 22 years, Ohio’s new Capitol Building was completed in 1861 at the beginning of the American Civil War.

Submitted by: Gregg Dodd
Source:   http://www.ohiostatehouse.org

For twenty years Levi and Catharine Coffin’s home in Newport, Indiana had been a stop for hundreds of slaves on the Underground Railroad. In 1847 the Coffin’s moved to Cincinnati. Even though the Coffin’s expected to be through with the Underground Railroad, the family quickly became involved with the abolition movement in Cincinnati. The family [...]

The Compromise of 1850 was one of several attempts by both the North and the South to settle differences over slavery’s expansion.
As a result of the Mexican War, the United States acquired most of the present-day American Southwest. The acquisition of this land immediately increased tensions between the North and the South, as the two [...]

By 1850, many Ohioans believed that the time had come to replace the Constitution of 1803. New issues had arisen that the drafters of the first constitution had not foreseen. The Constitution of 1803 had given great power to the Ohio General Assembly. With the exception of the governor, the legislature had the power to [...]

Though much of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written in Brunswick, Maine, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s inspiration came from listening to stories told by fugitve slaves escaping via the Underground Railroad while living in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1850 her husband, Calvin Stowe, accepted a position at Bowdoin College and relocated to Maine. It would be the passage [...]

In 1857, the Battle of Lumbarton occurred between federal marshals, who were enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and anti-slavery Ohioans.
Addison White, an escaped slave, set the chain of events in motion that culminated in the Battle of Lumbarton. In 1856, White ran away from Kentucky to Ohio along the Underground Railroad. He eventually [...]

The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Case of 1858 showed how divided Ohio had become over the issue of slavery.
On September 13, 1858, a federal marshal in Oberlin, Ohio arrested a runaway slave named John Price. Under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the federal government was required to assist slaveholders in reclaiming their runaway slaves. The marshal [...]

Photographic reproduction of a portrait of abolitionist John Brown who lead a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia and intended to start a slave revolt, ca. 1855-1859. Ohio Historical Society Collections.
In 1859, abolitionist John Brown was responsible for one of the most important events that led to the American Civil War.
On [...]

In 1856, Lincoln declared himself a member of the newly established Republican Party. Lincoln’s old party, the Whig Party, had collapsed in the early 1850s. Lincoln acquired a national reputation in 1858. In that year, Lincoln was the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate for the United States Senate. The Democratic Party nominated the incumbent senator, Stephen [...]

On April 15, only days after the bombardment of union occupied Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand state militiamen to serve for 90 days. Ohio was expected to enlist thirteen regiments of one thousand men each. Two of the regiments were to be sent directly to Washington for defense of [...]

On May 9th, 1861 Union General George B. McClellan moved troops from Ohio into western Virginia to secure the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad after Union northwestern Virginian soldiers became concerned by the increased Confederate military presence and activity on the tracks and stations of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a railroad line near the Mason-Dixon [...]

The American Civil War was one of the greatest conflicts in American history.
The war began on April 12, 1861, with the Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The conflict resulted from tensions between the North and the South, principally over the issues of slavery and its expansion, state’s rights, and regional economic competition. [...]