Oberlin–Wellington Rescue

To avoid conflict with locals, whose abolitionism was well known, the U.S. marshal and his party took him to the first train stop out of Oberlin heading south: Wellington.

When rescue allies went to the 1859 Ohio Republican convention, they added a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law to the party platform.

[1] On March 5, 1841, a group described by local newspapers as supposed "fanatical abolition anarchists" from Oberlin, using saws and axes, freed two captured fugitive slaves from the Lorain County jail.

[2] On September 13, 1858, a runaway slave named John Price, from Maysville, Kentucky, was arrested by a United States marshal in Oberlin, Ohio.

They joined like-minded residents of Wellington and attempted to free Price, but the marshal and his deputies took refuge in a local hotel.

[1] Charles and his brother John Mercer Langston were both Oberlin College graduates, and led the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in 1858.

Langston gave a speech in court that was a rousing statement of the case for abolition and for justice for colored men.

I stand here to say that I will do all I can, for any man thus seized and help, though the inevitable penalty of six months imprisonment and one thousand dollars fine for each offense hangs over me!

Although Chief Justice Joseph Rockwell Swan was personally opposed to slavery, he wrote that his judicial duty left him no choice but to acknowledge that an Act of the United States Congress was the supreme law of the land (see Supremacy Clause), and to uphold it.

[3] Because of his decision, Chief Justice Swan failed to win reelection and his political career was ruined in Ohio.

The Oberlin-Wellington rescue is considered important as it not only attracted widespread national attention but occurred in a region of Ohio known for its Underground Railroad activity.