JOHN ANTHONY COPELAND “was in the habit of going up to Canada” even before the rescue in Wellington. He was among the many Oberliners who traveled back and forth between the colonies of freedmen and escaped slaves who had settled in what is now Ontario. Some such visits were social and some were commercial, but others were for the purpose of escorting or settling fugitives. In 1836, Reverend Finney had dispatched Hiram Wilson, a recent graduate of the theology department, as an emissary to Canada West for the purpose of reporting on the circumstances of runaway slaves. Five years later, Wilson helped establish the British-American Institute on the outskirts of Chatham, where fugitives could be taught productive trades. Oberlin contributed Bibles and teachers for the institute, as well as assisting with the arrival of a steady stream of newly escaped slaves. As Wilson himself wrote to a colleague at the college, “Those six fugitives who were in Oberlin when we left all got over safe into Canada by the next Monday.” They were far from the only ones.

John Anthony's earlier involvement in the northward traffic made him a logical candidate to shepherd John Price across the border. Conducting fugitives was no longer a lighthearted matter, as Oberliners had regarded it for so many years. It was one thing to deflect the attentions of amateur slave hunters but quite another to flout a valid federal warrant, not to mention abusing a deputy U.S. marshal in the process. Only one week earlier, Professor James Monroe had been nonchalant about receiving five slaves who were en route from Medina to the Sandusky harbor, but now the ground had clearly shifted. John Anthony had shown aggressiveness in confronting Marshal Dayton, and courage in breaking through the door at Wadsworth's Hotel, but he was also known for his Christian faith, which was no small matter to the Oberlin theologians who had taken charge of John Price's deliverance.