While I am happy to see abolitionists recognized, one would think that Ohio was just one big abolitionist camp. It’s a wonder there were any slaves left to fight about if all of the stories of white folks helping slaves to freedom were true. In fact, Southern Ohio was pretty butternut and Copperheads were a real force in Ohio all through the war.
Cincinnati had racist pogroms and very contradictory loyalties during the war; folks with strong business ties to the south and those with strong business ties to the east as well as newly arrived German catholic immigrants, the natural base of the Democratic Party along with a population whetted to the free labor ethos of those pushing west. The city still has one foot firmly in the South and has a history of unofficial Jim Crowism that has yet to fully die. Ohio certainly did have a proud history of abolitionism, especially in the northeast, and conspirators of liberty were active throughout the state with the river, the border, being a central focus. The fact that militant abolitionists were organizing in the area brought plenty of slave-catchers before the war and raids during the war. Oberlin, Ohio was famous for resisting slave catchers and providing John Brown, a sometime Ohio resident, with recruits for the Harper’s Ferry raid.

— Down The Ohio

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