THE POLITICAL AFTERMATH.
Partisans Quick to Make Capital out of the Occurrence--The
Democrats Aggressive--The “Silver Grays” Apologetic, and the
“Woolly Heads” on the Defensive--Effect of the Christiana Incident
on the October Elections.
Thaddeus Stevens in September, 1851, was serving his second term as
Representative of the Lancaster County district. As an antagonist of
Southern ideas relating to slavery, he “strode down the aisles” of
the House with a good deal more erectness of bearing than Ingersoll
in his famous nominating speech ascribed to the “Plumed Knight”
from Maine; and he struck the shield of his adversaries with a much
louder ring than was given out at the impact of Mr. Blaine’s lance.
To his individual and official view--law or no law, constitution or
no constitution--slavery was “a violation of the rights of man as a
man”--freedom was the law of nature. Like Mirabeau, “he swallowed all
formulas.” But he was a lawyer, as well as a politician and moralist,
and while he announced his “unchangeable hostility to slavery in every
form in every place,” he also avowed his “determination to stand by
all the compromises of the constitution and carry them into faithful
effect”--much as he disliked some of them, they were not “now open for
consideration,” nor would he disturb them. This again was practically
an admission of the abstract legal right of the master to reclaim the
fugitive.
Mr. Stevens was first elected to Congress in 1848, when Gen. Zachariah
Taylor was elected President, and when he died (July 9, 1850), and
Fillmore, Vice President and a Northern Whig, succeeded him, Stevens
had been elected to a second term, which lasted until March 4, 1853.
In those “good old days” a Congressman had some influence in the matter
of Federal appointments. The United States Marshal, who executed
warrants and picked jurors in Eastern Pennsylvania, was Stevens’
personal and political friend, Anthony E. Roberts. Mr. Roberts, who
was a native of Chester County, was then 48 years of age and long a
prominent citizen of New Holland. He had been sheriff of Lancaster
County elected in 1839 as an avowed anti-Masonic candidate, favored by
Stevens. He was with him an active anti-Mason and was a candidate for
Congress in 1843, but was beaten by Jeremiah Brown. President Taylor
appointed him Marshal in 1849, and he filled the office until the
incoming of Pierce’s administration.
The _Intelligencer and Journal_, then edited by George Sanderson, was
the regular organ of the Democratic party in Lancaster County. It was a
weekly publication, and at that time a vigorous and exciting campaign
for the State election in October was in progress. Col. William Bigler
of Clearfield County was the Democratic nominee for Governor; General
Seth Clover of Clarion County for Canal Commissioner, and for Judges of
the Supreme Court the first ticket presented by the Democratic party
under the new elective system bore the illustrious names of Jeremiah S.
Black, Somerset; James Campbell, Philadelphia; Ellis Lewis, Lancaster;
John B. Gibson, Cumberland, and Walter H. Lowrie, Allegheny.
The Whig County organ was the _Lancaster Examiner and Herald_,
published and edited by Edward C. Darlington, who was a conspicuous
leader of what was then known as the “Silver Gray” faction of his
party--being opposed by the more aggressive anti-slavery men, of whom
Thaddeus Stevens was the leader, and whose followers were derisively
styled “Woolly Heads.” The candidates of the Whig party on the State
ticket were: for Governor, William F. Johnston, Armstrong County (a
candidate for re-election); for Canal Commissioner, John Strohm, of
Lancaster County, and for Judges of the Supreme Court, Richard Coulter,
Westmoreland; Joshua W. Comly, Montour; George Chambers, Franklin;
William M. Meredith, Philadelphia, and William Jessup, Susquehanna.
The fact that the entire Supreme Court membership, then numbering five,
was to be elected, greatly increased popular interest in the result.
Pennsylvania was an October State. The Darlington faction of the Whig
party was in the ascendancy and Darlington himself was on the ticket
for Senator. Moses Pownall, of Sadsbury Township, was one of the Whig
candidates for the Assembly. The regular Democratic County ticket had
not yet been nominated, but the opponents of Mr. Buchanan, who were
stigmatized as disorganizers and “Frazer Ponies,” had named a County
ticket.
The first local publications of the tragic occurrences in the Chester
Valley appeared respectively in the _Intelligencer_ of September 16 and
the _Examiner_ of September 17, and their local reports of the affair
are illustrative not only of the laggard journalistic enterprise of
that day, but of the intense partisanship which characterized newspaper
management, colored the reports of news occurrences and generally
pervaded all journalistic work. The _Intelligencer’s_ account of the
affair was printed under a Columbia correspondent’s “Particulars of
the Horrible Negro Riot and Murder,” and the editorial additions to
this report commented on the disgraceful conduct of the “Abolition
Whig Governor, absenting himself from the seat of government” on an
electioneering tour, while riots and bloodshed prevailed throughout
the Commonwealth, and citizens of an adjoining State were “murdered
in our midst.” All these outrages, it charged, could be traced to the
Executive of the Commonwealth--Governor Johnston was then serving his
first regular term--“roaming about in quest of votes, instead of being
at his post to enforce the utmost rigor of the law against the white
and black murderers.”
[Illustration: “AFTER THE WAR.”
“MAMMY KELLY” WITH THE YOUNGEST GREAT GRANDCHILD OF EDWARD GORSUCH.]
Further down the same column the editor rejoiced that Hanway and
Lewis and nine negro accessories had been arrested and were in prison
awaiting trial for murder. District Attorney John L. Thompson and
Alderman J. Franklin Reigart were warmly praised for “ferreting out
and arresting the guilty ones,” while the deposition of Deputy Marshal
H. H. Kline was presented as a most satisfactory account of the “whole
transaction.”
The _Examiner_ promptly declared it to be a “dreadful tragedy” and “one
of the most horrid murders ever perpetrated in this County or State.”
Manifestly with one eye upon the political consequences to the State
and local Whig ticket, and the other toward the Abolition faction of
the Whig party, to which Editor Darlington was opposed, his newspaper
frankly admitted that an awful responsibility rested somewhere, and the
_Examiner_ believed it to be “our duty to speak loudly and distinctly
to those individuals who evidently have urged the blacks to this horrid
measure.” It deprecated all attempts “to make political capital out
of the Sadsbury treason and murder by connecting Governor Johnston’s
name with that melancholy affair. Intelligent readers will regard such
efforts with feelings of disgust and contempt.” But for the white
persons under arrest and charged with murder and treason, it had no
condonation. “Their passions had been inflamed by Abolition harangues
and incendiary speeches franked by members of Congress until they had
come to look upon treason to the laws of their country as a moral duty,
and upon murder as not a crime.” It declared that this was especially
perceptible and prevailing in Sadsbury and the eastern end of Bart;
it recalled with special disapprobation the public meeting held at
Georgetown, when the Griest resolutions were passed.
* * * * *
Much indignation was expressed by his political opponents that Governor
Johnston, passing through Christiana on his way from Harrisburg to
Philadelphia, on a campaign tour, the morning of the affair, did
not get off his train at Christiana where lay the dead body of the
Marylander, slain on Pennsylvania soil; though many other passengers
did so and the train stopped almost at the place where the inquest was
to be held.
Democratic campaign meetings held throughout the County were quick to
turn their sails to catch the currents of popular opinion and at an
assemblage in Columbia, on September 13th, N. B. Wolfe, M.D., later a
famous citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio, principal speaker, denounced “the
horrid murder of Gorsuch” “by a band of desperate negroes excited and
influenced by murderous Abolitionists whose reeking hands are still
smoking with the warm life’s blood of a fellow citizen.”
A committee of conspicuous Democrats in Philadelphia, including Hon.
John Cadwalader, James Page, John W. Forney, A. L. Roumfort, Charles
Ingersoll, Joseph Swift and others, in an “open letter,” loudly
demanded of the Governor that he act for the vindication of the
Commonwealth and called a public indignation meeting of citizens in
Independence Square. The Governor responded with a rather tart letter
and offered $1,000 reward for the arrest of the murderers.
The _Intelligencer_ continued to comment on the tragedy as “the
legitimate fruit of the policies pursued by Governor Johnston and
Thaddeus Stevens.” It criticized Johnston very severely for having
passed Christiana without instituting any “measures to bring the
murderers to justice” before proceeding on his way; for making
political speeches “instead of seeing that the perpetrators of treason
against the government and the most bloody murder ever committed in
this State were brought to justice.” Governor Johnston was at Ephrata
and New Holland on the following Saturday, he came to Lancaster on
Saturday night, left at midnight for Philadelphia, and arrived there
about five o’clock A.M.
Meantime Rev. J. S. Gorsuch, son of Edward Gorsuch and brother of
Dickinson, wrote to the Baltimore _Sun_ an account of the tragedy,
which was copied into the _Intelligencer_ and other Northern papers as
an accurate statement.
Subsequently he published an open letter to Governor Johnston,
arraigning him for a lack of official promptness which resulted in the
slaves and murderers of his father escaping. He recalled that Johnston
had refused to honor a requisition from the Governor of Maryland for
the free negro, Abe Johnson, who had received the stolen wheat, and
he declares that that same Johnson whose return was refused by the
Governor, was present at the riot. He proceeded to contrast Johnston’s
tardiness with “the decision, energy and promptness of the Lancaster
County officers,” who, he said, “had to collect a posse of men from
iron works and diggings on the railroad” to enforce the processes of
the law.
The newspapers report that Alderman Reigart was “receiving much
commendation in the Southern press for the ability and firmness with
which he discharged his duties as the committing magistrate.” In the
Baltimore _Sun_ of October 8, Rev. J. S. Gorsuch had another open
letter, this time to Attorney General Franklin. Gorsuch had undertaken
to criticise Governor Johnston without in any way condemning his
Attorney General. Mr. Franklin had vindicated his chief, by declaring
that he had done his full duty, and as his legal adviser the Attorney
General accepted all the responsibility for the Governor’s conduct.
The general tendency of the agitation undoubtedly was to depress the
campaign prospects of the Whigs. Even Philadelphia was extremely
conservative and desperately anxious to not lose the trade of the
South. Bigler carried the State, receiving 186,499 votes to 178,034
for Johnston. More than that slender majority could be accounted for
by the Christiana riot. In Lancaster County the vote on Governor
was: Democrat, 6,226, Whig, 11,064. What might have happened had
Mr. Stevens been a candidate for Congress cannot now be calculated.
He had been re-elected in 1850, receiving 9,565 votes, to 5,464 for
Shaeffer. In 1852 he was not a candidate. The late Hon. Isaac E.
Hiester was nominated by the “Silver Gray Whigs,” and received 8,840
votes, to 6,456 for Sample, the candidate of the Democratic opposition.
In 1854 Stevens was not a candidate, but revenged himself on Hiester
by running Anthony E. Roberts, the same who had been U. S. marshal
during the Christiana riots. There was a three-cornered fight during
that year. Pollock, Whig candidate for Governor, had the support of
the Know Nothings, and defeated Bigler by 37,000 majority. Lefevre was
the third candidate for Congress in Lancaster County, and divided both
the Roberts and Hiester vote, with the result that Roberts received
6,561, Hiester 5,371 and Lefevre 4,266. By this time the new Republican
party was organized; the Silver Gray Whigs went out of the fight;
Roberts, Whig, and Hiester, Opposition, were again the candidates,
and, although Buchanan carried Lancaster County by a plurality of over
2,000 above Fremont and more than 4,000 above Fillmore, Roberts was
elected to Congress, receiving 10,001 votes to Hiester’s 8,320. In
1858 Stevens again became a candidate for the 36th Congress, and was
elected over James M. Hopkins, by the following vote: Stevens, 9,513;
Hopkins, 6,341. The latter had been one of the jury in “the treason
trial” and had some support from Stevens’ Whig opponents. Stevens,
however, got some Democratic aid. Thenceforth the power of Darlington
and “the Silver Grays” was broken; Republicanism was in the local
ascendancy with Stevens as its leader; he never lost his control until
his death--his last nomination being conferred upon him by popular vote
when his body was encoffined, the ballots having been printed before he
died.
If the effect of the agitation elected Bigler, it strengthened the
Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, whose choice the Governor-elect
was. If it was not able to control the National convention of 1852,
it succeeded in defeating Cass, who was Buchanan’s chief rival, and
thus was helped the nomination of the Lancaster County candidate
for Presidency in 1856. Though Bigler was defeated for a second
Gubernatorial term, he was elected United States Senator in 1855. The
election of four Democratic Supreme Court Judges in Pennsylvania in
1851 was one of the results of the Christiana riot. James Campbell,
alone of the Democratic nominees was defeated. He was a Catholic and
the Know Nothing opposition to him centred upon Coulter, and elected
him; he had been on the bench 1846-7. Campbell became Postmaster
General under Pierce.
Meantime the dead body of Edward Gorsuch was taken by rail to Columbia,
and via York on the Northern Central Railroad, to Monkton, where
a throng of mourning neighbors met it and great local excitement
prevailed. There being no convenient hearse and the distance too long
for pall-bearers, it was carried by the four-horse team of Eliphalet
Parsons to Mr. Gorsuch’s home. There, after a brief service by Rev.
Vinton, it was committed to a family burying ground, where the body
has rested undisturbed for sixty years. This private graveyard on the
Gorsuch farm is located on an eminence in the midst of a fine orchard
of apple trees, and overlooking the wide expanse of country to the
southwest and traversed by Piney Run, a tributary to the Gunpowder.
The graveyard is about twenty-five by thirty-five feet, surrounded
by a massive stone wall, without any gate or entrance. The former
opening to it was walled up by direction of and with a legacy left for
that purpose by a son Thomas. There remain three low gravestones, of
uniform pattern, the central one of which has the initials “E. G.” The
occupants of the other two graves are unknown, and there is nothing to
indicate who they were. Rev. John S. Gorsuch, son of Edward and who was
very conspicuous in the agitation over his killing, was formerly buried
in this graveyard, but his remains have been removed therefrom. He died
at 32 of typhoid fever the March after his father, and while attending
a M.E. conference. The little graveyard is overgrown with myrtle. Human
hands have not desecrated it in any way, but there is evidence that the
gnawing teeth of rodent vandals have been at work on the graves.
[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF EDWARD GORSUCH.]