On this day in 1859, the Oberlin Rescuers -- including Charles Langston and Simeon Bushnell -- were freed from jail after 83 days of detention. Langston and Bushnell had been tried and convicted, as I explained in yesterday's post, and the indictments for violating the Fugitive Slave Act were dismissed against the others, after a standoff between local and federal officials that might or might not be appreciated by today's extreme federalists.
The charges against the rescuers were based on freeing an alleged fugitive named John Price from the hands of a band of slave hunters led by the Kentuckian Anderson Jennings, whose testimony at the first two trials led to the convictions of Langston and Bushnell. Before the third trial could be held, however, Jennings and the other slave hunters were indicted and arrested in abolitionist Lorain County for kidnapping Price, who was said to be "a free black person."
Like every other state in 1859, Ohio followed the "interested party rule," which meant that Jennings and the others could not testify in their own defense, and thus could not identify Price as a fugitive slave. Price himself had been escorted to Canada -- and there were no photographs or other documentation -- so it was therefore impossible for the defendants to prove that they were acting lawfully under the Fugitive Slave Act. There were plenty of witnesses to Price's abduction and subsequent imprisonment by the slave catchers, however, and Ohio followed a presumption of freedom for African Americans (as opposed to southern states, which adhered to a presumption of enslavement for blacks).
To be sure, there was no real doubt that Price was actually a fugitive, but it still appeared certain -- due to the evidentiary rules of the day -- that Jennings and the other federal witnesses would be convicted in the state court.
There followed a furious round of negotiation between the Republican Lorain County prosecutors and the Democratic U.S. attorney in Cleveland, resulting in the dismissal of all charges and the release of all prisoners on July 6, 1859.
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