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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

The Rescue: Fugitives and Freedom

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

After Adam and Eve fell, they found themselves held fast by sin.

It's true, they only had themselves to blame for the mess that they were in, but rather than leave them to the consequences of their misdeeds, heaven swung into action and the greatest rescue in the history of the universe began.

Now, together, we're going to look at another remarkable rescue story.

This rescue took place prior to the Civil War, and some say it paved the way for the Civil War.

Involved were a group of Christians, a number of university students, a fugitive, and a group of people committed to returning the fugitive to his home.

There was civil disobedience and cooperation between people of different races.

No small thing considering this rescue occurred in 1858.

In defiance of federal law, a town rallied to free a man who had been legally captured.

But this group decided they just weren't going to take it.

This community, called Oberlin, would soon become the home of a missionary training school.

It wouldn't take long before Oberlin College was committed to the abolition of slavery.

Oberlin was founded as a religious utopia.

It was designed to be a community where people of faith came.

You actually signed a faith covenant to be part of the Oberlin community.

And in the earliest days of the Oberlin colony, the church, the faith community, the town and the college were like this.

The idea of this small little town was really based upon making sure that everyone had a voice and that we'll be this hot spot of abolitionism, this hot spot of freedom.

This was a place where black families really had opportunities, business, educational, and just safety at that time.

The town of Oberlin was fully integrated.

Blacks and whites operated businesses right next to each other and they worshipped together in church.

In fact, instead of celebrating the Fourth of July, many Oberlin residents dedicated that day to holding anti-slavery meetings.

Oberlin was considered an academic powder keg for abolitionism and the most noted abolition town in all of North America.

At Oberlin, white students and black students, males and females studied alongside each other.

Students worked in agriculture or mechanics, as well as pursuing academics, and great numbers of missionaries were sent out.

The Oberlin Church had decided that slavery was a sin and slaveholders were not welcome to attend.

Charles Finney, a professor of theology at Oberlin College before becoming the school's president, denounced slavery from the pulpit, calling it a great national sin.

How did Oberlin become such a stronghold of abolitionism?

I think a good part of that has to do with the popularity of Charles Finney when this he was the 1 that designed the space that you and I are sitting in today which his following was so powerful that it actually reached the point where they wouldn't all fit in this building and they had to build a second congregational church, not because of a division, but because they just needed more space.

So I think Charles Finney was really passionate about it.

You looked at the members of the community that came here.

If you were a captive and managed to escape and came to Oberlin, you didn't have to hide out.

So they were both black and white abolitionist leaders that lived here.

Ohio's anti-slavery stance wasn't unusual.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island followed suit before 1785.

Vermont banned slavery on July 2, 1777, even before it was a state.

The United States banned the importation of slaves in 1808, but it would be another 55 years before the Emancipation Proclamation would be signed.

By the middle of the 19th century, life had become more complicated for abolitionists living in the North.

While it had been illegal to assist a fugitive from slavery since 1793, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 compelled people to assist in the capture of a fugitive from slavery if it was deemed necessary for them to do so.

Those who refused could be fined or imprisoned.

It was very difficult to prove that any African American was not a fugitive from slavery.

Those accused of being such were denied a trial and could not testify in their own behalf.

Making matters worse, the commissioner deciding such cases was paid $5 if he decided in behalf of the fugitive, $10 if he decided in behalf of the slave owner.

So not only was the law massively unjust, it was also open to terrible abuse.

In the winter of 1856, 3 people decided to escape to freedom.

Frank, Dinah, and a man named John Price fled from slave owner John Bacon in Mason County, Kentucky.

Escaping as they did was extraordinarily risky, especially given the hostile weather.

On foot they crossed a frozen Ohio River, avoided main roads, traveling mainly at night to avoid detection, before making it to north central Ohio in February.

Price and his friends traveled via the Underground Railroad, an informal network of routes taken by enslaved African-Americans out of the South and onto freedom, either in Northern states or in Canada, where fugitives were welcomed and even given citizenship.

Most who escaped never made it to freedom and were returned to the farms or plantations from which they fled.

John Price and his fellow fugitive, Frank, were living in Oberlin, Ohio by early to mid-1858.

Price worked as he was able and was otherwise supported by charity.

But even in Oberlin, he wasn't completely safe.

Slave catchers might be sent to retrieve the property of Southern slave owners.

Someone like John Price was worth around $1, 000, which is about $40, 000 today.

He might've been worth as much as $1, 500, $60, 000 today.

So there was real money to be lost when a slave ran for freedom.

Slave owners were highly motivated to get them back.

Slave catchers were also well remunerated.

For bringing in somebody like John Price, a slave catcher might earn as much as $1, 000.

The arrival of a certain mysterious stranger in Oberlin set local residents on edge.

Anderson Jennings was the neighbor of John Bacon.

John Bacon was the owner of John Price, Frank, and Dinah back in Mason County, Kentucky.

On the pretext of finding work for John, certain associates of Jennings lured him into a horse-drawn carriage, took him out to the edge of town, and just like that, John Price had been captured without any fuss at all.

He'd be taken out of free Ohio, back to the farm and the life which he had escaped.

And that might've been the end of the story, except that the slave catcher Jennings didn't anticipate the resistance he'd be up against from the people of Oberlin.

What transpired is said to have paved the way in part for the civil war.

After narrowly avoiding having to go to war against his own people, David, who at the time was a fugitive from King Saul, returned to his temporary home in Ziklag to discover the city had been burned to the ground, and his possessions, and far worse, the women and children, had all been taken.

After inquiring of God what he ought to do, David and his men pursued the Amalekite raiders.

After a day of battle, they were triumphant and David and his community were all reunited.

Now, while it didn't quite rise to that level in this case, the rescue of John Price was dramatic and its effects far reaching.

He was transported by his captors here to Wellington, 8 or 9 miles south of Oberlin.

Jennings, the slave catcher, planned to have John on the 5.13pm train from Wellington to Columbus, Ohio, and back on the farm in Mason County, Kentucky within a day.

Except that on their way to Wellington, the group passed a carriage coming in the other direction toward Oberlin.

In that carriage was Ansel Lyman, an Oberlin student and a staunch abolitionist.

Within 15 minutes, Tappan Square was filled with people who were armed and ready for action.

Business owners, students, city employees, black people, white people.

Between them, they gathered every vehicle they could find, seizing some.

The people of Oberlin were going after John Price and they would bring him back to where they believed he belonged.

People were rushing out of their homes, especially the black business owners, you know, they were all congregating.

Many of them met in Tappan Square and 1 of them raised rifles in 1 hand and kind of waved his hat in the other and said, I'm going to rescue John Price.

And the crowd just gives this massive cheer.

Of those who didn't carry guns, many carried sticks.

1 woman loaned her horse and carriage to the rescuers saying, if necessary, spare not the life of my beast, but rescue the man.

It's said that the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke once said, "'The only thing necessary for evil to triumph "'is for good men to do nothing.'" Well, in this case, good men and women did something, but even then it looked like evil might triumph.

While looking at the rescue of John Price, it's worth asking ourselves why a slave would escape in the first place.

Now you might say, for obvious reasons, and I think you'd be right about that.

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The Rescue: Fugitives and Freedom

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