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Law in Popular Culture collection

THE CHRISTIANA RIOT

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

     I propose to write the history of the so-called "Christiana
Riot" and "Treason Trials" of 1851, as they occurred--
without partiality, prejudice or apology, for or against any
of those who participated in them. As is inevitable in all
such collisions, there were, on either side of the border
troubles of that period, men of high principle and right
motive and also rowdies and adventurers, disposed to resort
to ruthless violence for purposes of sordid gain. There were
slave-masters who sincerely believed in the righteousness of
an institution of ancient origin, while even the more saga-
cious of their class recognized it as at variance with the
divine law and the trend of Christian civilization, and in-
evitably doomed to extinction. There were on this side of
the line many who, believing themselves humanitarians, were
mere mischievous agitators, lawless in deed and treasonable
in design, reckless of those rights of property which are as
sacred in regard of the law as the rights of man. There were,
too, in the North wicked slave catchers and kidnappers whose
brutalities aroused the just resentment of the communities
in which they operated, even when they kept within the
limits of strict and technical legal rights.
     It was of course impossible, as Mr. Lincoln pointed out,
for the republic to endure forever half slave and half free
--to run a geographical marker through a great and compli-
cated moral, economic and political issue--especially in

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view of the far flung border line and the rapidly increasing
development of communication and transmission.
     If, however, all the great statesmen, economists and
churchmen who had struggled with the slavery question
since the formation of the Union were unable to solve it,
without the awful carnage of a tremendous and long lasting
civil war, can it be the cause of special wonder that a hand-
ful of Marylanders in lawful search of their escaped prop-
erty, and a larger group of free and fugitive negroes, with
the "embattled farmers" who sympathized with them,
should have made the hills of this peaceful Chester Valley
echo with gun shots and stained its soil with blood, when
Man and Master met in final and fatal contest for what each
had been taught was his right?
     Numerous attempts have been made to publish reports of
this incident which would serve the purposes of permanent
history; and, while they have all been helpful, none has been
complete. On his return to Maryland after his failure to
convict Hanway and the others of treason, Attorney General
Robert J. Brent, of Maryland, made an elaborate official
report to Governor E. Louis Lowe, who in turn submitted
it, with extended comments of his own, to the General As-
sembly of Maryland, January 7, 1852. From the stand-
point of the lawyer and the chief executive of a slave state,
both are able deliverances. Aroused by their version of the
affair, and especially by their comments on the treason trial,
and impatient over the delay in publishing the official report
of it, W. Arthur Jackson, junior counsel for the defendant,
printed a pamphlet review of it, which shows much ability,
has great value and has become very rare. The official pho-
nographic report of the trial, by James J. Robbins, of the
Philadelphia bar (King & Baird, 1852), is of course a
copious fountain of exact information--as well as an inter-
esting exhibit of the "reportorial" efficiency of that day.
From all of these I have felt at liberty to draw largely.

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    "A True Story of the Christiana Riot," by David R.
Forbes, 1898, tinged with sectional prejudice, has much
matter that was well worthy of preservation, and the new
facts it contains, if verified, I have freely used. All of the
general political histories of the period refer to the Christi-
ana tragedy as having significance in the intense agitation
of the issue raised by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Fred.
Douglass' stories of his life and time; William Still's
"Underground Railroad," and Dr. R. C. Smedley's "His-
tory of the Underground Railroad" have also been subjects
of my levy for aid. To them, however, have been added
the personal reminiscences of Dr. J. W. Houston, Thomas
Whitson, Esq., Ambrose Pownall, Charles Dingee, Gilbert
Bushong, Peter Woods, William P. Brinton, Cyrus Brinton
and many other residents of the neighborhood in which the
riot occurred and from which the prisoners in the trials for
life were taken. Access has been had to the diaries and
family records of the Pownall, Hanway, Lewis and Gorsuch
families; and many other original sources of information,
including the local and metropolitan newspapers of that day,
whose enterprise and impartiality were somewhat variable.
Some of them published full reports of the trial.
     For the first time, however, I think, the subject has been
studied with some care and consideration for the facts as
disclosed and from the point of view occupied at the home of
the Gorsuches. The family of Dr. F. G. Mitchell, whose
wife is a daughter of Dickinson Gorsuch, and who now owns
the property then of her grandfather, Edward Gorsuch,
from which the slaves fled, have been especially gracious and
helpful, withal fair and generous in their attitude toward an
event which brought brutal death to one ancestor and long
suffering to another.
     J. Wesley Knight, long resident of the neighborhood of
Monkton and Glencoe, Maryland, and who was under the
roof of the Gorsuch homestead when the slaves escaped, has

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given me much accurate. information as to their previous
condition of servitude.
     If their contribution to the history of the encounter and
the events preceding it presents the relation of the Southern-
ers to it in a far more favorable light than has hitherto
attended its narration, no fair-minded student of history can
object to the whole truth, even at this late day. That the Gor-
such runaways were not heroic and scarcely even pictur-
esque characters; and that their owners were humane and
Christian people, and not the brutal slave traders and cruel
taskmasters who figured in much of the anti-slavery fiction,
can no longer be doubted. But if the Lancaster County
Historical Society exists for any purpose it is illustrated in
its apt motto: "History herself as seen in her own work-
shop." Every such shop must show some chips and filings;
and occasionally the more these abound the better will be
the craftsman's product. I cannot hope--and I certainly
do not desire--this should be the "last word" about the
"Christiana Riot"; but the occasion of its Sixtieth Anni-
versary and the Commemoration seemed to call for a his-
torical review up to date; and the story of its few survivors
had to be caught before it was lost.
     It may be confidently predicted that when our long-looked-
for local Stronghand in imaginative literature shall seek for
a theme near at home, he will find it in the dramatic story
of the "Christiana Riot"; or when some gifted Lancaster
County Son of Song shall arise and strike the trembling
harp strings, the scene of his epic will follow the winding
Octoraro and lie along the track of the Fugitive Slave.

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