THE LATER TRIALS.
Legal Proceedings in Lancaster County--Prisoners Remanded to Local
Jurisdiction--President Fillmore’s Message--Attorney General
Brent’s Report--Final Disposition of the Cases in the Lancaster
County Court--“Sam” Williams Tried in Philadelphia and Acquitted.
There was, however, a very considerable political and legal aftermath
to the proceedings at Philadelphia. The intimation of so eminent an
authority as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to
the effect that some official duty devolved upon the Lancaster County
authorities could not be ignored. Accordingly District Attorney John L.
Thompson, who was in his day one of the leaders of the Lancaster County
Bar, framed bills of indictment to the January Sessions 1852 against
many of those who had been arraigned for treason in Philadelphia. On
Wednesday, December 31, Marshal Roberts brought to the Lancaster County
prison from Philadelphia the following persons: Alson Pernsley, Lewis
Gales, Lewis Clarkson, Charles Hunter, Nelson Carter, Thomas Butler,
Henry Green, Collister Wilson and George Williams,--all these were on
the same evening discharged by the District Attorney, as he deemed the
evidence insufficient to warrant their detention.
On the same evening George Williams was arrested as a fugitive slave
and taken to Penningtonville, where he took advantage of the sleepiness
of his captors and walked off, and “straight was seen no more,” to the
great chagrin of Henry H. Kline, the officer who made the arrest, and
of the owner of the slave, who was asleep on the floor.
Saturday, January 3, 1852, Marshal Roberts brought to Lancaster as
prisoners John Morgan, Jacob Moore, Ezekiel Thompson, Isaiah Clarkson,
John Williams, John Jackson, Benjamin Johnson, George Read, Daniel
Caulsberry, Benjamin Pendergrass, William Williams, John Holliday,
William Brown, Elijah Clark, William Brown, Jr., and Henry Sims, as
prisoners, and five colored persons as witnesses. The witnesses were
discharged on their recognizance to appear at Court to testify.
Public and political interest in the Riot and the Trials was not
allowed to flag from inattention to the issues they involved by those
high in authority. From “the seats of the mighty” deliverances were
heard against what was interpreted in some quarters as successful
offensive resistance to law. In his early message to Congress in
December, 1851, President Fillmore had these paragraphs, relating to
the events at Christiana.
“It is deeply to be regretted that in several instances officers of
the Government, in attempting to execute the law for the return of
fugitives from labor, have been openly resisted and their efforts
frustrated and defeated by lawless and violent mobs: that in one case
such resistance resulted in the death of an estimable citizen, and
in others serious injury ensued to those officers and to individuals
who were using their endeavors to sustain the laws. Prosecutions have
been instituted against the alleged offenders so far as they could be
identified, and are still pending. I have regarded it as my duty in
these cases to give all aid legally in my power to the enforcement of
the laws, and I shall continue to do so wherever and whenever their
execution may be resisted.”
“Some objections have been urged against the details of the act for the
return of fugitives from labor, but it is worthy of remark that the
main opposition is aimed against the Constitution itself, and proceeds
from persons and classes of persons many of whom declare their wish to
see that Constitution overturned. They avow their hostility to any law
which shall give full and practical effect to this requirement of the
Constitution. Fortunately the number of these persons is comparatively
small, and is believed to be daily diminishing; but the issue which
they present is one which involves the supremacy and even the existence
of the Constitution.”
At an anti-slavery meeting, in Philadelphia, held on December 18, 1851,
Joshua R. Giddings and Lucretia Mott were speakers. The large audience
grew tumultuously enthusiastic over the presentation on the platform of
Castner Hanway and Elijah Lewis.
After the trial William H. Seward sent the following Christmas greeting
to District Attorney Ashmead, whose son, Henry G. Ashmead, historian
of Delaware County and resident of Chester, cherishes the manuscript;
Mr. Seward was then in his first term as United States Senator, but had
already distinguished himself as an anti-slavery leader:
WASHINGTON December 25, 1857
_My Dear Sir_,
I thank you for the kind remembrance manifested by you sending me a
copy of your opening Argument on the late Trial for Treason. While
I cannot but rejoice in the result of that trial as a new assurance
of the security of Popular Liberty, I am not unable to appreciate
the ability with which you have maintained the untenable position
which the Government was made to assume. The argument is highly
logical and eloquent, and I cannot better manifest my good wishes
for you and for the Country than by expressing a hope that it may
be the good fortune of the cause of truth and justice hereafter to
enlist you on their side.
I am, my dear Sir,
Very respectfully & truly
Your friend,
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
John W. Ashmead Esq.,
District Attorney of the United States
Philadelphia.
In his message to the General Assembly of Maryland at the following
January Session, Governor Lowe referred at length to the Gorsuch
tragedy. Despite the assurances of the Federal administration through
Secretary of State Daniel Webster, that all the energies of the law
would be exerted to bring the offenders to justice, Maryland had felt
constrained to actively participate in the prosecution. “The blood
of a Marylander,” he declared, “cried out from the earth; whilst the
Genius of the Union called aloud for a vindication of outraged laws.”
Otherwise “the flame of excitement would spread from the hills of
Maryland to the savannahs of the extreme South, until every Southern
State would unite in one common feeling of horror and indignation.”
Senator Cooper had been retained by him; and despite the high ability
and signal service of both him and Maryland’s Attorney General,
there had been a gross miscarriage of justice. With a fervor of
rhetoric that was more common then in State papers than it is now, he
declared: “Shall domestic feuds destroy our power, when the eyes of
all nations are turned to the star of our empire, as the harbinger of
their deliverance? Shall Kossuth blast Hungary with the breath of our
discord? Shall O’Brien, in his lonely exile, see the hope of Ireland
pass down the horizon, with the western sun? May so incalculable a
calamity be spared to the nations of the earth. And yet, when American
blood is made to flow upon American soil, as a grateful libation to
American fanaticism; when whole communities stand listlessly by, and a
prostituted press and venal politicians are found, in the open day, to
glory in the human sacrifice; when the Law proclaims its own weakness
from the Bench, and Treason stalks unpunished, through the halls of
justice; the Nations can judge of the probable remoteness of that
calamity.”
The official report of his Attorney General justified the Governor in
becoming somewhat heated over the outcome at Philadelphia. Mr. Brent
had suffered not only some personal irritation over his position there,
but a keen professional disappointment in his failure to convict. The
blame for this he distributed very generally among the people of the
North who sympathized with resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law; the
partisan character of the jury panel; the partiality of the daily
press reports; the sympathy of the spectators; the treachery of the
prison officials; the bribery of Scott, the government’s witnesses;
and egregious errors of law committed by Judge Grier. Even the amiable
Marshal did not escape criticism, as evinced by this paragraph:
“I brought to the attention of the court, the fact stated in the
‘Pennsylvania Freeman,’ that the Marshal (Mr. Roberts) had actually
dined with the prisoners, or some of them, during the trial, on
Thanksgiving day, and when I was about to read the article from the
paper I was stopped by his Honor, Judge Grier, who in behalf of the
Marshal, denied the truth of the statement that he had so dined; but
unfortunately for the Judge’s interposition, the Marshal immediately
afterwards made his own explanation, and admitted that he had not only
assisted at the dinner, ‘but had set down and partaken sparingly’
of the Thanksgiving dinner, with the white prisoners. I cannot but
consider such conduct as highly unbecoming that officer from whom, next
to the Judge, we had a right to expect impartiality and a due regard
for decorum.”
It is only fair to all concerned to say that the Attorney General’s
indignation was not taken very seriously. Attorney Jackson’s history of
the case corrects some of his exaggerations, and especially points out
that all of Mr. Brent’s colleagues exculpated Marshal Roberts from any
misconduct. Judge Kane’s own son, was known to have extended various
kindnesses and courtesies to the prisoners.
Mr. Brent’s complaint on this score seems almost ridiculous when
one reads the full particulars of the affair, as published in the
Philadelphia Freeman of December 4, 1851. That newspaper says:
“It affords us great pleasure to state, that the Christiana prisoners
were not wholly forgotten on Thursday last in the distribution of the
good things pertaining to Thanksgiving. Thomas L. Kane, Esq. (son of
the Judge), sent to the prison for their use six superior turkeys, two
of them extra size, together with a pound cake, weighing 16 pounds.
The turkeys were cooked with appropriate fixings, by order of Mr.
Freed, the Superintendent, in the prison kitchen, by a female prisoner
detached for the purpose. The dinner for the white prisoners, Messrs.
Hanway, Lewis and Scarlet, was served in appropriate style in the room
of Mr. Morrison, one of the keepers. The U. S. Marshal, A. E. Roberts,
Esq., several of the keepers and Mr. Hawes, one of the prison officers,
dined with the prisoners as their guests. Mayor Gilpin coming in,
accepted an invitation to test the quality of the pound cake, Mrs.
Martha Hanway who has the honor to be the wife of the ‘traitor’ of that
name, and who has spent most of her time with her husband since his
incarceration, served each of the 27 colored ‘traitors’ with a plate of
turkey, potatoes, pound cake, &c., and the supply not being exhausted,
all the prisoners on the same corridor were similarly supplied.
“Who will stand best with posterity--the father who prostitutes his
powers as a judge to procure the conviction of peaceable citizens as
traitors for refusing to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves, or the
son who ministered to the wants of those citizens while incarcerated in
a loathsome prison? Need we answer the question?”
The Maryland witnesses do not appear to have had as cheery a
Thanksgiving as the prisoners. Dickinson Gorsuch’s diary had this entry:
“THURSDAY, NOV. 27. Thanksgiving Day. This has been a great holiday
here; there was no court today. We went to Mr. Ashmead’s office and
stayed awhile. John Bacon went home after the clothes I wore when I
was shot.”
During their imprisonment the colored people and their families were
largely supported by outside friends and sympathizers; and many an item
such as this, recorded in the cash book of B. L. Wood (father of Mrs.
David W. Jackson), is set down to the credit of sympathetic friends:
10th mo. 8, 1851. Dr. 1 pair of pants and 1 shirt given to Elijah
Clark in Moyamensing; also sent his wife qr. middlings.
In another respect the official complaints of Maryland’s Governor and
Attorney General against Pennsylvania justice call for correction at
even this late day. Both aver that “the murder” of Kennedy, a slave
owner, at Carlisle, killed in resistance of the fugitive slave law,
went utterly unpunished: The facts are that in that offense the rioters
and rescuers were led by John Clellans and he and thirty-six others
were indicted. Besides Clellans twelve of the accused were convicted of
riot and of riotously rescuing fugitive slaves from the lawful custody
of their owners. Judge Hepburn sentenced them to solitary confinement
at labor in the Eastern Penitentiary for three years. Charles Gibbons
represented them on an appeal to the Supreme Court; and Deputy Attorney
General (District Attorney) Bonham for the Commonwealth, argued before
that tribunal that Pennsylvania followed the law of England, which upon
conviction for riot authorized fine, imprisonment and the pillory, and
therefore sentence to the penitentiary was lawful. Justice Burnside
delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, declared “it was an
aggravated case of riot”; but that as Pennsylvania had adopted the
English common law, the imprisonment must be in the county jail, and
the final judgment of the court was that as the prisoners had been
confined in the Eastern Penitentiary about three-fourths of a year, “we
deem this as severe a punishment as if they had been confined in the
county jail, where they legitimately should have been sent, for two
years.” (Clellans _vs._ Com. 8 Barr. 223.)
Meantime the friends of Hanway, Lewis and others, incensed at the
continued prosecutions in Lancaster county, assumed the aggressive.
They procured the indictment to the January Sessions, 1852, No. 38, in
Lancaster County, of Deputy Marshal Henry H. Kline, for perjury. It was
laid in this indictment that he had sworn falsely at the hearing before
Alderman Reigart, wherein he averred that he had shown his warrant to
Hanway, asked him and Lewis to spare his men, that they defied the
warrant and encouraged the rioters and in various other particulars.
Upon this bill of indictment appeared the names of a large number of
witnesses, and Kline was held in $1,000 bail before Charles G. Freeman,
alderman of Philadelphia, to answer at the Lancaster Court.
It appears from the subsequent history of the case that all parties
involved were by this time willing to have “somebody help them to
let go”; and accordingly at the January Sessions, Joseph McClure, of
Bart township, being foreman of the jury, this bill against Kline for
perjury, being No. 38, was ignored, and also the following, indictments
all to the same sessions and for Riot: No. 57, William Brown; No. 58,
Wm. Williams; No. 59, Henry Green; No. 60, William Brown, Jr.; No. 61,
Benjamin Johnson; No. 63, Daniel Caulsberry; No. 64, George Wells; No.
65, George Williams; No. 66, Alson Pernsley; No. 67, Lewis Gales; No.
68, Lewis Clarkson; No. 69, Chas. Hunter; No. 70, Nelson Carter; No.
71, Jacob Woods, a brother of Peter Woods; No. 72, Peter Woods; No.
73, Israel Clarkson; No. 74, John Williams; No. 75, John Jackson; No.
76, Castner Hanway; No. 77, Elijah Lewis; No. 78, John Morgan; No. 81,
Benjamin Pendergrass; No. 82, John Holliday; No. 83, Thomas Butler; No.
84, Elijah Clark; No. 85, Collister Wilson.
With this termination of the cases in the local courts all prosecutions
were finally ended except that of Samuel Williams, in the United States
District Court at Philadelphia. He was there charged with interfering
with the execution of warrants for the arrest of Noah Buley and Joshua
Hammond, runaway slaves. His case was first called for trial on
January 5, and continued until January 12. Mr. Ashmead and Messrs.
Ludlow appeared for the prosecution, and R. P. Kane, W. S. Pierce and
David Paul Brown for the defense. The following jury was empanelled to
try his case; the last name on the list will be recognized as that of
an estimable citizen of Lancaster County:
Pratt Roberts, Chester County; Thomas Vaughan, Philadelphia; Henry
McMahen, Philadelphia; Patrick McBride, Philadelphia; Michael Keenan,
Philadelphia; Fredk. Boley, Sr., Philadelphia; Joseph Dowden, Chester
County; Samuel Culp, Germantown; Minshall Painter, Delaware County;
Joseph Thornton, Philadelphia; Francis Parker, Chester County; Peter
McConomy, Lancaster.
Kline was the principal witness on this trial, and his testimony was
practically a repetition of what he had sworn to in the Hanway case.
The trial judge fell ill during the progress of the case and it was
continued the third time and resumed on February 2, argued to the
jury on February 3, and, on February 4, a verdict of “not guilty” was
rendered.
This closes the record of all judicial proceedings arising out of the
Christiana Riot.