Page "Oberlin, Ohio" Paragraph 10

By 1852, the town of Oberlin was an active terminus on the underground railroad, and thousands had already passed through it on their way to freedom.

This effort was assisted by an Ohio law that allowed fugitive slaves to apply for a writ of habeas corpus, which protected them from extradition back to the southern states from which they had escaped.

In 1858, a newly elected Democratic state legislature repealed this law, making fugitives around Oberlin vulnerable to enforcement of the Federal Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed southern slave-catchers to target and extradite them back to the South.