Civil War Round Table to meet
Jay Case
The Tuscarawas Valley Civil War Round Table will meet Thursday, Feb. 13 at 6:30 p.m. in the community room of the Dover Public Library, 525 N. Walnut St., Dover. The featured presenter will be Jay Case, who will present “The Underground Railroad and the Causes of the Civil War.”
Though not always recognized as such, the Underground Railroad played a critical role as a cause of the Civil War. Local conflicts over fugitives in Ohio and Michigan show how the Underground Railroad compelled many ordinary Americans to respond to issues of slavery and American law. These conflicts also raised questions of states' rights and federal law, which contributed greatly to the outbreak of war. But matters did not end there.
Once the war began, the Underground Railroad not only continued in a more open and less underground manner, it expanded dramatically. It affected military strategy, forced revisions to Union political conduct of the war and helped change the very purposes of the war itself.
Case is professor of history at Malone University in Canton. He has taught a range of history classes at Malone including history of the Civil War. His main areas of scholarly interest are in American religious history. In 2012 he published a book, “An Unpredictable Gospel: American Evangelicals and World Christianity, 1812-1920,” from Oxford University Press. He is currently working on a religious biography of Bob Dylan.
Call the Dover Public Library at 330-343-6123.