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.In Indiana and Illinois, where Southernersremained a powerful political force, it was not inconceivable that another consti-tutional convention might one day open the doors more widely to the chattel sys-tem.Concern about this prospect would later help induce many non-slaveholdingfamilies living in these states to move further west, across the Mississippi.In Ohio, pro-slavery sentiment was less of a factor.Unlike their counterpartsin Indiana and Illinois, white residents of Ohio had never evinced much interestin introducing the chattel system.There are several reasons for this.For onething, Ohio initially attracted more Northerners than did its neighbors to thewest.As early as 1800, settlers from New York and Pennsylvania had started tocome down the Ohio on flatboats, establishing modest homesteads near the riveror else moving into the uncharted interior.In addition, northern Ohio s WesternReserve had ties to Connecticut dating back to 1786, when this region had beenceded to the Nutmeg State in lieu of other land claims.This New England connec-tion produced communities in northern Ohio such as Cleveland.Because of theirheritage, these towns later became centers of abolitionist sentiment.(The Under-ground Railroad was particularly active in the Buckeye State, thanks to a strongQuaker presence.As many as 30,000 slaves are believed to have crossed the Ohioat Cincinnati and found refuge there with the help of free blacks and sympatheticwhites.) By mid-century, Ohio had more than twice as many white natives ofPennsylvania as Virginians living within its borders.While the majority of Indi-ana and Illinois populations had Southern roots, only a third of Ohio residents in1850 came from slave states.2 Because they lay further west and were less accessi-ble from the northern states, Indiana and Illinois developed their lower countiesfirst.According to the 1810 census, virtually all of the latter s residents were con-fined to just two southwestern counties  Randolph and St.Clair.By contrast,1.Jacque Voegeli,  The Northwest and the Race Issue, 1861-1862, Mississippi Valley Histor-ical Review 50:2 (Sept.1963), 236.Voegeli argues that anti-black prejudice remainedstrong up until the Civil War not only in Illinois, but also in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan,Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin2.There were 85,762 white and  free colored natives of Virginia living in Ohio in 1850,compared to 200,634 persons from Pennsylvania and 83,979 from New York. Place ofBirth, Mortality Statistics, 37-8.133Race to the FrontierChicago only had about a dozen settlers by 1812.1 Likewise, fully 80 percent ofIndiana s 24,520 inhabitants in 1810 lived within 75 miles of the Ohio River.2Second, Ohio was settled before both Indiana and Illinois.The first wave ofmigration there took place at a time when Kentucky, on the other side of theOhio River, was also opening up to frontier families.Westward bound farmersthus had a choice of destinations.Both territories promised abundant, rich soil ataffordable prices, but only Kentucky attracted slaveholders  in part because ofits proximity (Ohio was somewhat further away from Virginia), and in partbecause of its climate and soils: the Bluegrass region was more suited to tobaccogrowing than the fields of southern Ohio.Thus, the planter elite and their slavessettled in that part of Kentucky.Planters opposed to the chattel system  orpreviously displaced by it  were more inclined to head to the other side of theriver.Many of these were Scotch-Irish who had not previously managed toestablish themselves as farmers in slave states.For these two streams of settlers,the antislavery clause in the Northwest Ordinance acted as a signpost, pointingone to the north and the other due west.Nonetheless, as the territory comprising present-day Ohio prepared to enterthe Union in 1802, some Southerners joined forces to fight for the introduction ofslavery.This much smaller group hoped to cast aside the restrictions imposed bythe Northwest Ordinance and open Ohio to the  peculiar institution. This pro-slavery element was based in the Virginia Military Tract  the area in south-western Ohio originally set aside for veterans of the Revolutionary War.In 1800,most of its residents hailed from the Virginia Piedmont.The overwhelminglymajority were small, non-slaveholding farmers.But some had forsaken theirslaves in order to stake out claims to Ohio s rich soils and now had hopes ofregaining the higher status (and standard of living) they had formerly enjoyed bymaking the chattel system legal in the Buckeye State.In this desire they werejoined by settlers who felt that the coming of wealthy slave owners would spureconomic growth in this part of the Old Northwest.As had occurred a decadeearlier in Kentucky, forces for and against slavery first clashed at the conventiontasked with writing Ohio s constitution, held in the territorial capital of Chilli-cothe during November 1802.Determining the future status of blacks was amajor concern at this gathering.Over one hundred propositions on this subjectwere presented  far more than on any other issue  despite the fact that fewerthan 400 blacks were then residing in Ohio.3 Antislavery delegates dominatedthe convention: candidates who had run on a pro-slavery position had suffered1.Parrish, Historic Illinois, 289.2.Benjamin Moulton,  Changing Patterns of Population, in Natural Features of Indiana, ed.Alton A.Lindsey (Indianapolis: Indiana Academy of Science, 1966), 533.134IV.White Flight Across the Ohiolopsided defeats at the county level.1 Consequently, a proposal to legalize slaverynever made it out of committee.2 The convention s disavowal of slavery  onboth economic and moral grounds  represented a victory for Jeffersoniandemocracy on the frontier.3 Delegates had been allotted to Ohio s existing ninecounties strictly on the basis of population, and this assured that slaveholderscould not impose their will upon the proceedings.4 Instead, 26 of the 35 repre-sentatives belonged to the anti-slavery Democratic-Republican Party.Eventhose counties comprising the Virginia Military District did not support theslave system  chiefly because they could not abide living among blacks andwanted to gain a firm economic foothold for white labor.A number of leadingbusiness figures worried that the existence of slavery would deter both the set-tlement of Northerners and European immigrants and economic growth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]