1858 (32 page)

He loathed the Fugitive Slave Act, having often called it with great sarcasm, “a symbol of the supremacy of the slave states.”
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The governor had written the country’s new political star, Illinois’s Abraham Lincoln, that “it is unnecessarily harsh and severe and marked by many repulsive features.”
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Surely, their governor would ask the people to rise up and free the prisoners. He had been urged to do so not only by Ohioans, but by politicians outside the state and by influential national newspaper editors. Joseph Medill, editor of the
Chicago Tribune
, wrote that the Fugitive Slave Act was “the worst blow freedom has yet received” and urged Chase to “let the great, broad seal of the great state of Ohio be put upon the illegality of that accursed act and it will be the heaviest blow yet that has been struck at the aggression of the slave power.”
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Chase did not. In fact, the governor had no desire to attend the rally. He was talked into an appearance and did his best to quiet the crowd after the speakers had driven it into a frenzy. The governor may have agreed with the Rescuers’ actions, but he would not advocate violence. Chase, who always kept one eye on politics, also did not want to wreck his presidential dreams by being responsible for a riot.

“Citizens of Cleveland! Law abiding citizens of Cleveland!” he said, opening his speech, and went on to urge the crowd to be calm and to let the courts decide what would happen to the Rescuers. He “had not come to counsel any violence,” he said, and told the thousands in front of the prison that the only way to truly defeat any government, state or federal, was at the ballot box.

The organizers of the rally were disappointed. They blamed Chase for holding back a crowd that seemed ready to attack the county jail, free the Rescuers, and carry them throughout Cleveland on their shoulders.
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Chase knew that he had disappointed the people. “I was most coldly received,” he wrote later.
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But there were others at the rally that day who believed he had acted properly. A
New York Times
editorial writer said that the governor’s speech was “sensible.”
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The governor was not the highlight of the rally; the Rescuers were. The crowd turned from the square and marched a block to the county jail, where the Rescuers were all in the yard, near a fence, listening to the speeches. Several Rescuers climbed on boxes on their side of the fence to address the crowd, whose members roared when each began to speak. Charles Langston told them that America was the “home of the brave, but not the land of the free.” James Fitch asked the crowd if they were ready to submit to the Fugitive Slave Act. “No!” they shouted in unison. He told them that Jesus Christ was with them, and that he was a higher law than the District Court of Northern Ohio, and that prompted lengthy cheering from the crowd. Ralph Plumb climbed onto the box and said the people of the United States would never submit to the Fugitive Slave Act and the crowd roared again.

By then, a number of people in the crowd had become agitated. “Let’s tear the old jail down!” several shouted. The police feared a riot and so did many in the crowd. Suddenly, an unknown man whose coat was decorated with numerous pink ribbons climbed on to a box on the outside of the fence and very calmly announced that the marshal requested everyone to turn around, form an orderly procession, and leave. Remarkably, they did, preventing what might have been the largest riot in the history of the United States.
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On May 30, to the disappointment of the jailed Rescuers, the Ohio State Supreme Court again ruled in favor of the prosecution. By 3–2, the court upheld the Fugitive Slave Act. Chief Justice Swan, aware of the overheated political climate, wrote, “I must refuse the experiment of initiating disorder and governmental collision, to establish order and evenhanded justice.”
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The news depressed antislavery proponents throughout the state. When they heard of the decision, several ministers in Painesville, Ohio, ordered their church bells tolled slowly all afternoon to mourn the decree.
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The imprisoned Rescuers received word of the defeat that evening. “I suffered more on that dreadful night than I did when my dear firstborn died in my arms,” said Henry Peck.
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Let down by Governor Chase, the prisoners realized that they had no backing from any political leaders in the Midwest, Democrat or Republican. The country’s leading Democratic senator, Stephen Douglas of nearby Illinois, urged everyone to obey the fugitive slave statute because it was the law. He wrote to a newspaper editor, “It is the duty of Congress to pass all laws necessary to carry that provision [Fugitive Slave Act] into effect; no act calculated to render that provision inoperative can ever receive my approval.” Douglas had no love for the supporters of the Rescuers either. He called Rep. Giddings “the high priest of abolitionism.”
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The Rescuers expected that admonishment from a Democrat, but not from Abraham Lincoln, the leader of the new Republican Party in Illinois. Lincoln, who had thrilled abolitionists in Ohio with his scalding “house divided” speech in June at the start of his 1858 Senate campaign against Douglas, wrote Chase that he disagreed with Ohio Republican pledges to overturn the Fugitive Slave Act. In the letter Lincoln said, “I have no doubt that if [it] be even introduced into the next Republican National Convention, it will explode it,” and added that “the cause of Republicanism is hopeless in Illinois if it be in any way made responsible for that plank.”
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Lincoln also coldly disavowed the crusade to help runaways, telling Columbus lawyer Samuel Galloway that it was illegal. “They [the Rescuers] are viewed by many good men, sincerely opposed to slavery, as a struggle against and in disregard of, the Constitution itself,” Lincoln said.
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The court ruling meant that Bushnell would have to spend sixty days in jail. Langston would have to serve twenty days. It brought the fourteen Oberlin Rescuers to a crossroads. Should they remain in prison in their show of defiance, and then risk prison terms when convicted, as they surely would be, or give up the fight and go home? The judge announced that the court calendar had ended for the spring and that the Rescuer trials would not resume until July, two months away, or even later in the summer. Each man would be tried individually and the proceedings could drone on into the following winter or even the spring of 1860. Following much debate, the men decided to remain in jail, certain that they could do more for the cause in prison than out of it.

The lawyers for the Rescuers continued their campaign to have charges against them dropped by pressing their own accusations against the abductors of John Price under Ohio’s kidnapping law. In early May, they managed to have the Kentuckians arrested and held in jail for several days. In June, they forced the state to bring the kidnappers to trial, where they, too, would face prison terms.

The legal crusade against the kidnappers was just one of the troubles the government faced. The trial, the rallies, and the continued defiance of the Rescuers had attracted enormous national newspaper coverage, most of it attacking the government. Assistance for the Rescuers was no longer local. They were being sent money from all over the country, ministers were leading congregations in prayer for them throughout the Northern states, and tiny weekly newspapers were reprinting the Rescuer stories from the large city dailies; almost all were supportive. A group photo of the Rescuers in the prison yard, defiant as always, was published in numerous newspapers and further strengthened their support around the country. Groups of small children visited them with parents and schoolteachers. It was clear to everyone that all of the men were going to be found guilty and given jail terms, and with each verdict there would be more bad publicity. The federal government began to look for a face-saving way out of the uproar it had created. The Oberliners had become far more trouble to the continually embattled government of James Buchanan than they were ever worth.

The way out came during the first week of July. The kidnappers realized that they might go to prison for substantial periods of time if their trial was heard in front of a jury full of antislavery fanatics determined to seek revenge for the Rescuers’ trials—as the defense team assured them they would. The Kentuckians announced that they would not appear as witnesses in any more of the Rescuers’ trials in exchange for a deal. They received it. The federal government agreed to drop all charges against the remaining fourteen Rescuers and the state government agreed to dismiss the charges against the kidnappers. The Rescuers could go home.

After thanking their jailers for their goodwill and saying good-bye to fellow prisoners, the tired Rescuers took two somber final steps before leaving the Cuyahoga County Jail after their eighty-five-day stay, happy in the knowledge that the man they saved the previous autumn, John Price, had now established a new life for himself—free—in Canada. They held a prayer service, led as always by Henry Peck, and then issued a statement to let the federal government know of their view toward fugitive slaves in the future, now that they knew how harsh the government could be. Defiant to the end, they wrote that “hereafter, as heretofore, [we will] help the panting fugitive to escape from those who would enslave him.”
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The Rescuers were released at five o’clock in the afternoon on July 6, 1859, to the cheers of hundreds of supporters gathered outside the walls of the prison; one hundred cannons on the shores of Lake Erie fired a thunderous salute to them. The editors of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
prepared to admit in their columns the next day that the Rescuers had won. The now ex-prisoners, incarcerated for nearly three months, walked to the train station behind a large and boisterous band that played “Yankee Doodle.”

By the time their train arrived home in Oberlin, town officials had organized a historic welcome. More than six thousand people, the entire population of the town, turned out at the train station to greet them. The crowd was so large that it extended up the tracks. “Joy beamed in every eye,” noted James Fitch as the train slowed to a halt. As it approached Oberlin, the engineer was careful not to hit the hundreds of people swarming around and across the tracks. When the train came to a stop, Professor James Monroe gave a short speech from a platform between cars and told them, “We have never, for a moment, ceased longing for the sight of your faces among us.”
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A large band played for the Rescuers as they were led down the streets of Oberlin toward the Quaker meeting house for a formal ceremony. Uniformed firemen lined the parade route and small chidden threw flowers at the feet of the Rescuers as they walked, waving their arms in triumph, cheered on by multitudes at every block.

The jubilee continued at the large white clapboard meeting house at the village green where a choir of 125 singers had been assembled in just a few hours for the event. The celebration in the meeting house was long and rousing, lasting until midnight. Public officials and leaders of the antislavery movement spoke, as did some of the Rescuers and members of their families. Father John Keep, speaking for many, told them that what they had done was legendary and that they were “the friends of human freedom.”

The assemblage passed a hastily written resolution to remind the nation of their resolve. It underscored the residents’ “determination that no fugitive slave shall ever be taken from Oberlin either with or without a warrant, if we have power to prevent it.” And then, near midnight, the residents of Oberlin, who filled every square inch of the meeting house, accompanied by every available instrument in the building and the energetic choir, sang the “Marseilles” with all of the passion and strength their lungs could muster.

“No mortal would ever hear it again as it was heard that night,” wrote a young girl who had been there that evening.
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The rescue of John Price, and the well-publicized prison ordeal of the men involved in it, had an enormous impact in Ohio and across the country. Their actions showed Congress and the nation that the Underground Railroad was stronger than ever, that the
Dred Scott
decision was not going to be effective, and, concerning the thousands of people who visited the Rescuers and attended rallies for them, that there was a pent-up public fury against slavery that was far deeper than anyone had believed.
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The rescue, reported in mainstream newspapers all over the country, gave new life to the antislavery movement, whose opponents had hoped would be crushed by the combination of the 1856 election of James Buchanan, the
Dred Scott
decision, and the proposed proslavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas. William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of
The Liberator
, wrote Oberlin’s James Monroe that the incident “gave fresh impetus to our noble cause.”
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