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In a work of first-rate scholarship as well as popular history at its most enjoyable, Brandt, former editor of Publishers Weekly , introduces readers to a little-known event that occurred in the college town of Oberlin, Ohio, a stop on the Underground Railroad. Slave-hunters incurred the resentment of the townspeople, a wrath that came to a boil one day in August 1858 when runaway slave John Price was abducted by these bounty hunters. Outraged, Oberlin College professors and students, in company with white and free-black townspeople, rescued Price and hid him in a faculty house, an initially abortive deliverance that would later, after many machinations, prove successful--although 37 of the liberators would be indicted for violating the Fugitive Slave Act.