Fugitive Slave Act Resistance and Community Intervention in the Oberlin Wellington Rescue, Shipherd, 1859

Jacob R. Shipherd

First Edition

Shipherd, Jacob R. History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, 1859, documenting one of the most consequential acts of organized resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in the years immediately preceding the American Civil War. The work records the seizure of John Price, an escaped enslaved man captured by federal authorities in Oberlin, Ohio on September 13, 1858, and his subsequent transfer to Wellington in an effort to avoid local abolitionist intervention. Residents from Oberlin and surrounding communities assembled in Wellington, confronted federal deputies, and forcibly freed Price from custody, enabling his escape to Canada through established antislavery networks. The episode prompted federal indictments against thirty-seven participants, with only two convictions, and became a focal point of national debate over federal enforcement power, local resistance, and the legal obligations imposed by the Fugitive Slave Act. Shipherd’s narrative, supported by contemporary participants and advocates, provides detailed chronology, identification of individuals involved, and interpretive framing that aligns the Rescue with broader antislavery mobilization and constitutional conflict.

Shipherd, Jacob R. History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1859. First edition. Issued in original paper wrappers with an introduction by Prof. Henry E. Peck and Hon. Ralph Plumb, the volume presents a sustained account of the arrest, rescue, and subsequent trials, accompanied by arguments challenging the legitimacy of the Fugitive Slave Act. The introduction urges readers to consider “whether the Fugitive Slave Act can exist,” warning that its enforcement threatens to extend “a gigantic tyranny which shall know no law but its own despotic will,” reflecting the immediacy of constitutional and moral opposition in abolitionist print culture.

Single volume; pagination incomplete with final leaf lacking. Original paper wrappers, browned, with minor chipping at the edges; modern paper ex libris affixed to interior wrapper. Overall good condition. A contemporary abolitionist account of a defining legal and political confrontation that intensified sectional divisions on the eve of the Civil War.

Item #17660

Price: $580.00