The Cleveland Daily Herald
Cleveland, April 5, 1859
The Rescue Cases.
The rescue of the slave John, at Wellington, Lorain County, last September, is of course fresh in the memory. Thirty-seven citizens of Oberlin and Wellington, have been indicted for that rescue, under the Fugitive Slave Act. In the meantime an indictment for kidnapping has been found by a Lorain County Grand Jury against the persons who attempted to capture the negro, and Deputy Marshal Lowe, who was the officer that attempted to capture John, has been held to bail under that indictment.
The trials of the rescue cases were commenced to-day, an the case of Simeon Bushnell called on. The report of the case will be found in our paper as it progresses.
The attendance of defendants, witnesses, &c., from Lorain County, is about fifty; and we think no criminal court ever had a more respectable class of prisoners in the criminal docks. The trial of these men for the crime of assisting a fellow man to escape life bondage is this free land, caries with it its own comments. It is a scene disgraceful to our country.