A look at the map of how representatives from different regions of Ohio voted on the Brent Amendment points to a major political divergence between the state’s two oldest regions: Northeast and Southwest. In other words, what happened at the statehouse this month also parallels historical rifts between Ohio’s regions over race, slavery, and the Confederacy itself.
Northeast Ohio is home to the historical Western Reserve of Connecticut, a collection of counties first settled by Yankees and Nutmeggers in 1786. Present-day Northeast Ohio was officially claimed by Connecticut from 1662 to 1795. Historically, the area was, as historian Andrew Cayton noted, “an extension of the Burned-Over District of New York, a crucible of Protestant revival and reform.” In towns such as Norwich, Saybrook, and Plymouth, thus named by homesick New Englanders, white clapboard houses and Congregationalist churches clustered around village greens. Farmers further afield farmed dairy as they had back home. By the eve of the Civil War, half of Cleveland’s population had been born in Europe, nine percent in New England, and thirteen percent in Upstate and Western New York. Only one percent of the city’s population had been born in a southern state.
During the eras of canals and railroads, the Western Reserve’s economy was tied more closely to New York City than to other parts of Ohio, Cincinnati, or the South. The town of Oberlin was a hotbed of abolitionism and a renowned stop on the Underground Railroad when Mary Jane Patterson, the first Black woman to earn a bachelor’s degree, studied there during the 1850s. So too was Hudson, where Connecticut-born John Brown made his home and first declared war on slavery in 1837 (from the pews of First Congregational Church).
Last weekend, lawmakers from the counties comprising the historical Western Reserve largely supported banning the Confederate battle flag. Bucking the urban-rural explanation of the vote, five of the six rural districts that voted for the Brent Amendment lay within the old Western Reserve (the only other district was in Appalachian Ohio). However, most of Southwest Ohio’s legislators—especially those hailing from districts outside of Black neighborhoods in Dayton and Cincinnati—voted against the amendment. History might point to why.
During the nineteenth century, the economy of Cincinnati—the capital of Southwest Ohio and the state’s oldest European-settled city—stood in stark contrast to Northeast Ohio’s. Its wealth was indelibly linked to slavery. Throughout the early antebellum period, enslaved Black people were hired out as indentured servants to the Southwestern Ohio elite and brought across the Ohio River to work. The city, which became known as “Porkopolis,” continued to send salted pork downriver to New Orleans, where it was distributed to plantations throughout the South.
In the leadup to the Civil War, the Cincinnati business elite encouraged division between the white working class and the city’s small free Black population (the first in the Midwest). Many of Cincinnati’s whites feared that Black migrants would bring their “immoral,” “lazy” ways to Ohio. Others worried that Ohio would risk discord with their Southern business partners if Cincinnatians were accused of harboring escaped “property.” Still others feared that Black migrants would compete with whites for jobs.