Excerpt from History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue

What this ordinance, misnamed law, is; what its purposes, what its demands, and what its penalties are, and what the measures by which it enforces itself against the conscience and sense of justice which every where in the North oppose it, - all these points have been well illustrated in the now celebrated Oberlin-Wellington Rescue trials. These trials occurred on the Western Reserve - a name honorable for the reputation for love of Freedom which is coupled with it, and may, therefore, be sup posed to exhibit a fair encounter on a fair field between the despotic enactment, and the outraged sense of right which protests against it. They engaged on both sides, and at the bar of both the Federal and Supreme State Courts, the highest legal talent in the State. A correct history of them will, therefore, show clearly what the Fugitive Slave Act is, and what measures its enforcement requires.

Such a history is presented in this volume. Its compiler is a young man of excellent ability who has had more than common experience in reporting public events, and it has been made up, as the undersigned know from constant communication with the compiler, and from a careful review of his materials, with religious fidelity to truth.

In closing this Introduction, we beg leave to urge the readers of this volume to inquire, in the light of what is here presented, whether the fact that the Fugitive Slave Act can exist, and be in form enforced, does not prove that regard for Freedom no longer presides in the councils of our Government; that the slave-holding power has smitten down the personal rights of freemen, and trampled on the honor and rights of the States; and whether, if the Free States do not speedily, by judicial and legislative action, assert their rights, our whole country will not soon, under the operation of the Dred Scott decision, be embraced in the arms of a gigantic tyranny which shall know no law but its own despotic will.

Especially would we ask our fellow-citizens of Ohio, whether they are willing longer to allow arbitrary encroachments on the part of the Federal Government, and timid deference to precedent on the part of our State Judiciary, to make our noble State a mere province of an overshadowing empire of centralized and malignant power.

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