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[Illustration: CASTNER HANWAY. ELIJAH LEWIS. JOSEPH SCARLET.
TAKEN SOON AFTER THE TREASON TRIALS.]
THE CHRISTIANA RIOT
AND
THE TREASON TRIALS
OF 1851
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH
BY
W. U. HENSEL
PREPARED AND PUBLISHED FOR THE COMMEMORATION
OF THESE EVENTS, SEPTEMBER 9, 1911
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.
1911
PREFACE.
The preparation of this sketch and contribution to our local history
had been long contemplated by the Editor and Compiler. Born near
the locality where the events occurred which are its subject, he
has been for more than half a century intimately related with their
associations. He has regard for the integrity of motive which alike
animated both parties to the conflict. It was a miniature of the great
struggle of opposing ideas that culminated in the shock of Civil
War, and was only settled by that stern arbiter. He rejoices that
what seemed to be an irrepressible conflict between Law and Liberty
at last ended in Peace. To help to perpetuate that condition between
long-estranged neighbors and kin, this offering is made to the work of
the Lancaster County Historical Society.
While it has been written and published for that Society, no
responsibility for anything it contains or for its promulgation
attaches to any one except the author. Where opinions are
expressed--and they have been generally avoided as far as possible in
disputed matters--he alone is responsible. Where facts are stated,
except upon authority expressly named, he accepts the risk of
refutation. In all cases he has tried to ascertain and to tell the
exact truth. He worked in no other spirit and for no other purpose; and
wherein he has failed his is all the blame.
W. U. H.
“BLEAK HOUSE,”
August 12, 1911.
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 sagacious of their class recognized
it as at variance with the divine law and the trend of Christian
civilization, and inevitably 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 complicated moral, economic and
political issue--especially in 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
handful of Marylanders in lawful search of their escaped property,
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 Assembly of Maryland,
January 7, 1852. From the standpoint 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 phonographic 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 interesting exhibit of the “reportorial” efficiency of that day.
From all of these I have felt at liberty to draw largely.
“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 Christiana 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 “History 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 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 Southerners 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 Gorsuch runaways were not heroic and
scarcely even picturesque 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 workshop.” 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 Anniversary and the Commemoration seemed
to call for a historical 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.