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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Oberlin Fugitive Slave Rescue: A Victory For The Higher Law, Steven Lubet
The Oberlin Fugitive Slave Rescue: A Victory For The Higher Law, Steven Lubet
Faculty Working Papers
This article tells the story of the Oberlin fugitive slave rescue and the ensuing prosecutions in federal court. The trial of rescuer Charles Langston marked one of the first times that adherence to "higher law" was explicitly raised as a legal defense in an American courtroom. The article is adapted from my book -- Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial -- which tells this story (and several others) in much more detail.
In the fall of 1859, John Price was a fugitive slave living in the abolitionist community of Oberlin, Ohio. He was lured out of town and …