ASHLAND — When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Ohio wasn’t a slave state. It didn’t have cotton fields, Peter Slade said. Parts of the state served as stops along the Underground Railroad, including in Ashland County.
Slade, the head of Ashland University’s religion department, is a historian by trade. For the last few years, he’s been part of a Juneteenth Committee in Ashland.
The group has hosted a picnic for several years to celebrate the national holiday, which marks June 19, 1865.
On that day, Union troops arrived in Confederate-held Texas and the final stronghold of slavery fell in the United States. Newly-freed people in Texas called it “Juneteenth,” and the date marked “our country’s second independence day,” according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The day was first recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the “Juneteenth National Independence Day Act.”
This year, Ashland’s Juneteenth Committee decided to celebrate the day differently, Slade said.
The committee partnered with the Ashland County Historical Society to take a look at how the Civil War touched Ashland, according to Slade and the Historical Society’s executive director, Jennifer Marquette.
“Abolition really affected Ashland County,” Slade said. “It totally influenced the politics, it totally influenced the institutions, it totally influenced the schools.”
On June 19 at 4 p.m. at the Ashland County Historical Society, anyone who wants to attend will have the chance to gain a sense of the ways Ashland citizens contributed to the Civil War to commemorate Juneteenth.
Presidential portrayal
When the Civil War started, Ashland had two factions: those who believed in the federal government’s abolition of slavery, and those who did not, according to Slade.
“Ashland was particularly polarized,” Slade said.
He said Ashland’s views were preserved in the city’s newspapers at the time. The Ashland Union supported the Democrats, while the Ashland Times supported the Republicans and abolition, Slade said.
The conflicting views in Ashland even got recognition from President James A. Garfield, who came to Ashland to recruit troops during the Civil War, Slade said. Slade said that was common practice at the time — military leaders had to find men to serve in their regiments.
Garfield, who was a pastor at Franklin Circle Christian Church, made impassioned pleas to Ashland men to join the Union army, Slade said. Many Ashland men signed up.
Garfield, for his part, made note of the polarization in Ashland.
“There is here a set of men who have not given up their partisan prejudices and are still more than half in sympathy with the South,” Garfield wrote to his wife about Ashland in 1861.
“Added to that there is a style of over-pious men and churches here, who are too godly to be humane.”
A re-enactor at this year’s Juneteenth event will portray Garfield. Guests will also hear “what soldiers from Ashland thought about their war experience and why freed slaves moved to Hayesville after the war,” according to the event page.
Dorothy Stratton is another member of the Juneteenth Committee and a retired AU professor. Stratton works with Ashland Chautauqua, an event that hosts historical reenactments. She said she thinks there’s power in having somebody from today portray somebody from the past.
“It’s a very entertaining way to be informed,” Stratton said.
A local history lesson
One freed slave in particular, Gilbert Locke, will be remembered at the celebration.
Locke settled in Hayesville after the Civil War. After he was freed, he came north because the freedoms were greater there than in the former Confederate states, Marquette said.
Locke worked there for a Dr. Armstrong for years, according to Marquette, and lived there until 1899.
Now, Locke’s tombstone simply declares, “Born in slavery.”
Slade said celebrations of emancipation are as old as emancipation itself. Telling Locke’s story and celebrating his freedom matters, Slade said. Stratton agreed.
“It’s too easy to think this isn’t a holiday for (all of us), but everyone, no matter their race, was diminished by slavery,” Stratton said. “Ending it lifted a burden for all of us.”
Slade invites anyone interested in learning more about Ashland’s history to come and see it for themselves Wednesday.
“Come and celebrate that we’re part of a country that decided slavery was wrong,” Slade said.
