Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1965, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, History (Arts and Sciences)

This paper examines the antislavery stance of Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati John Baptist Purcell and his brother, Father Edward Purcell, during the American Civil War. Purcell is an anomaly in that he advocated for the immediate end of slavery when most prominent Catholics did not. This study situates Purcell in state, national, Catholic, political, and social contexts, and shows how Purcell's thoughts on slavery developed in the antebellum and Civil War years. Purcell developed a distinctly Catholic antislavery position that drew from Catholic theology and experience. He received much criticism from other prominent Catholic persons and publications for his stance. This study examines the debates between Purcell and his critics and discusses their impact on the ecclesial unity of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Committee: Brian Schoen (Advisor); T. David Curp (Committee Member); Mariana Dantas (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Clergy; Religious History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, History

“The Inner Light of Radical Abolitionism” tracks the emergence of abolitionism in greater Rhode Island, focusing on Providence and the surrounding communities in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Three major lines of Rhode Island's anti-slavery activism during the early republic—Quaker anti-slavery sentiment, the abolitionist campaign of the Providence Abolition Society, and Rhode Island's free black community—came together to provide the basis for William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator and his New England Anti-Slavery Society. Quaker and free black communities in greater Rhode Island provided the initial support for Garrison's calls for immediate abolitionism. The work of abolitionist Quaker women from greater Rhode Island fused the question of women's rights with that of abolition and split the national abolitionist movement as a result. By the time the New England Yearly Meeting withdrew formal Quaker support for abolition in 1840, the movement bore the imprint of Quaker activism.

Committee: John Brooke (Advisor) Subjects: African American Studies; American History; Womens Studies

BS, Kent State University, 2008, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

During the uneasy years predating the American Civil War, self-proclaimed prophets and messengers of God traveled the frontier proclaiming their interpretations of truth as revealed through Protestant Christianity. As they attempted to convert the nation, they conceived American utopias which, constructed within a sacred history of Christianity, played an important role in redefining the religion in North America. As part of the process of establishing these utopias, individuals interested in the conversion of society utilized and revised the “New Haven” theology of Yale College, from which would emerge a reconstructed concept of “sanctification” in Oberlin, Ohio. These individuals would use this theology to form the basis for their attempts to reform society, applying religious meaning to social action. In Lorain County, Ohio, we can observe these changes in religious thought and practice as numerous “religious virtuosi” carried out social action which they considered to be bound to a sacred history. In tandem with social action would come ecclesiastical conflict, tearing the New England Plan of Union asunder. This thesis is interested in how reformers' attempts to create heaven on earth would result in conflict highlighted by a series of events which would ultimately change the religious landscape of the county as it contributed to and reflected the changing face of religion in America.

Committee: David Odell-Scott PhD (Advisor); Guy E. Wells PhD (Advisor); Leonne Hudson PhD (Committee Member); Leslie Heaphy PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; History; Religious History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1987, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1961, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: History

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2014, History

The abolition of British slavery in the 19th century raises the question of how the British achieved antislavery against colonial opposition. While historical theories have focused on economic, political and religious factors, no account of abolition is complete without a thorough investigation of the history of evolving British legal traditions. This thesis analyzed a number of British homeland court cases and antislavery laws. English legal traditions established principles of freedom long before abolition in Britain, and then upheld them in respect to blacks on British soil in the 18th century. On the other hand, these traditions exposed a void in British homeland law on slavery that failed to provide any positive legal basis for freedom beyond its shores, forcing abolitionists into a long battle to build social and political pressures to create such positive laws. This was facilitated by a gradual expansion of Parliamentary authority to impose such antislavery laws.

Committee: Christopher Oldstone-Moore Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Kathryn Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Member); Opolot Okia Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; African History; African Literature; African Studies; American Studies; Black History; Black Studies; British and Irish Literature; Economics; European History; European Studies; History; International Law; Law; Legal Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; World History

BA, Oberlin College, 1981, History

Ashtabula County's commitment to the politics of antislavery was built upon unqualified belief in the greatness of the American system of government as expressed in the Constitution and realized by a free and hardworking Northern society. It was also based on an equally vociferous rejection of slavery and Southern life as inhumanely degrading, elitist and antidemocratic, un-Christian, and antimodern. The unfettered opportunity of the individual to prosper was what America had fought the Revolution for and created the Constitution to protect. It was what Ashtabulans saw as the key to social progress, what had brought America to the threshold of greatness. Anything which would block such an achievement could not be allowed to continue. That the outstanding obstacle to this vision was an entirely domestic problem -slavery- made it even more intolerable, and its detractors more anxious to do away with it. For most of the country, the Free Soil experiment of 1848-1853 was a fleeting political moment that failed because it spoke a vocabulary not yet understood by most Northerners. In Ashtabula, however, that was not the case. Instead, for the independent farmers of Austinburg, Colebrook, Cherry Valley and numerous other towns, Free Soil was the precise antidote to Southern political power and the moral outrage of slavery. Their enthusiastic adoption of Free Soil was a conscious rejection of the politics of the past which had proven not only incapable of solving the slavery dilemma but was mired in controversies made moot by a new political era, a free soil era. They were hardly out for political gain but committed strongly enough to the new party to swallow the humiliation of supporting their life-long nemesis, Martin Van Buren. They were the vanguard for the rest of the North.

Committee: Carol Lasser (Advisor) Subjects: History

BA, Oberlin College, 1990, History

This paper tells the story of four men. They are, by the standards of history, obscure individuals, not nationally known and their names will not be found in the texts on American history. Yet, their lives are important in the on-going attempt to understand the abolitionists' response to slavery. Samuel Lyle Adair, John Huntington Byrd, Harvey Jones and Horatio N. Norton were tied to a common mission--the defeat of slavery in Kansas. Between 1854 and 1856 all four emigrated to Kansas as missionaries of the American Missionary Association. Upon arrival, they established churches and preached a message of Christian brotherhood to often unsympathetic congregations. The Kansas they encountered was scarred by the struggle over slavery. Harsh frontier living conditions combined with the almost daily sectional violence to create an environment of hardship and struggle. Yet all remained in Kansas and refused to turn away from the struggle for freedom.

Committee: Gary Kornblith (Advisor) Subjects: African American Studies; History

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2012, History

The United States grappled with the question of slavery, that peculiar institution, for decades prior to the Civil War. One result of those debates was the antislavery movement. Gaining ground in the 1830s, the antislavery movement motivated people to respond to the issue of slavery in the way that suited their conscience. The Ohio River Valley is located on what once was the border line between North and South, and what to slaves meant the difference between freedom and a life of enslavement. Clermont County, located along the Ohio River, was no different than other communities along the border, such as Brown County. Its citizens reacted in various ways. Those who were antislavery founded antislavery societies, published newspapers, and went on the lecture circuit. Those who were abolitionists went further and assisted fugitive slaves in their escape to freedom. “The Antislavery Movement in Clermont County” looks at Clermont County's history from its founding in 1800 to the height of the antislavery movement. The study shows that, although there are gaps in Clermont's antislavery and Underground Railroad history, there was persistent and aggressive abolitionist activity in the county.

Committee: Barbara Green PhD (Advisor); Edward Haas PhD (Committee Member); Jacob Dorn PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1971, History

Committee: Merton Dillon (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1934, History

Committee: Homer Hockett (Advisor) Subjects:

BA, Oberlin College, 2007, History

This study, in short, examines the impact of Thome and Kimball's Emancipation in the West Indies text on the changing understanding of immediatism and on the concomitant shifts in American antislavery discourse and tactics leading up to 1840. I take up the question of how new forms of discipline and labor exploitation which were pioneered in the British Caribbean came to influence abolitionists' vision of freedom and discuss possible consequences only briefly in the conclusion as I point to further directions in which a study such as this could be taken.

Committee: Carol Lasser (Advisor) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American History