AFTER THE WAR.
Peter Woods the Sole Survivor--Castner Hanway’s Later Days--The
Descendants and Relatives of the Principal Actors in the
Drama--Concluding Reflections on the Affair.
The sole survivor of those who were directly involved in the events
that have been narrated is Peter Woods, a very respectable colored
man, who does not know his own age, but who likely is an octogenarian
and was twenty years old when the riot occurred. He lives on his
little farm of fifty-eight acres, in Colerain Township, just south
of Bartville, with his good wife, and the youngest of his thirteen
living children, the family being much esteemed by those who know its
members. He was a soldier in the Union Army, having served nearly three
years in the Third Regiment, Colored U. S. Infantry. During the war
he met Alex. Pinckney, at Charleston, S. C., who was also a soldier
in one of the Northern regiments. Recently his pension was increased
through the influence of Congressman W. W. Griest, of the Lancaster
district--who is a son of Major Ellwood Griest, author of the vigorous
Bart resolutions of 1850. In the absence of precise proof that Peter
Woods was above seventy-five years of age, the United States Government
assumed that it would not have indicted a boy of fifteen for treason.
The descendants of Edward Gorsuch maintain the high social station of
their family in Maryland. They were Methodists in religion and Whigs in
politics, and are now Republicans; during the civil war they zealously
supported the Union cause.
Edward Gorsuch’s immediate descendants are Mrs. W. W. Campbell and
children, of Orwig’s Mills, Md.; Mrs. T. B. Todd, Jr., of Fort Howard,
Md., who is a daughter of Alex. Morrison; Mrs. E. D. Duncan, of Govans,
Md.; Mrs. Fannie Thomas, Wilmer Black and Anna Black, the last four
being children of Melinda Gorsuch, intermarried with Robert Black; and
Mrs. R. F. Mitchell, wife of Dr. F. G. Mitchell, of Glencoe, Md. (who
was the daughter of Dickinson Gorsuch), her son and two daughters, the
youngest of whom, as an infant, appears in the arms of “Mammy” Kelly,
one of the illustrations of this volume.
Joseph Scarlet died July 8, 1882; his descendants are as follows:
I. Children--Joseph Scarlett, 5313 Master Street, Philadelphia; Annie
V. Scarlett, Mary E. Scarlett, 1413 Peach Street, Philadelphia; William
Scarlett, 5444 Girard Avenue, Philadelphia; Mrs. Ella A. Jackson, 304
North Franklin Street, West Chester, Pa.
II. Grandchildren--J. Ralph Scarlett, Inda Scarlett Conrow, Elsie J.
Scarlett, Edwin W. Scarlett, Anne Scarlett Custer, Dr. Charles J.
Morell, Florence M. Christ, T. Harold Jackson, William Scarlett, Leslie
Scarlett, Richard Scarlett.
III. Great-grandchildren--Lavinia Scarlett, Helen Scarlett, John S.
Custer, Charles J. Morell, Jr.
Elijah Lewis died Oct. 18, 1884, aged 86; his descendants are as
follows:
I. Children--Mrs. Martha A. Cooper, Palmyra, N. J.
II. Grandchildren--Samuel Brinton, farmer, West Chester, Pa., R. F. D.;
Henry Brinton, 2408 Bryn Mawr Avenue, West Philadelphia; Edwin Brinton,
5584 Hunter Avenue, West Philadelphia; Mrs. Emma B. Maule, R. F. D.,
Cochranville, Pa.; Alfred Brinton, Christiana, Pa.; Mrs. Clara B.
Maule, Gum Tree, Chester County, Pa.; Harry P. Cooper, 14 Ruby Street,
Lancaster, Pa.; Mrs. D. W. Miller, Linfield, Montgomery County, Pa.;
Mrs. Anna Cooper, Santa Barbara, California; Mrs. George Paschall,
Jr., Port Kennedy, Pa., and Miss Mary Cooper, 2408 Bryn Mawr Avenue,
West Philadelphia, Pa. (W. L. Cooper, superintendent of the Bedford
division P. R. R., who recently met tragic death by drowning in the
Susquehanna river, was a grandson.)
III. Great Grandchildren--Roy Cooper, Fairmount, W. Va.; Herbert
Cooper, Parkesburg, Pa.; Helen Cooper, Santa Barbara, Cal.; Clement S.
Brinton, 213 Euclid Avenue, Haddonfield, N. J.; Francis D. Brinton,
West Chester, Pa.; Willard C. Brinton, 70 West 46th Street, New York;
Ellen S. Brinton, R. F. D., West Chester, Pa.; Robert F. Brinton, R.
F. D., West Chester, Pa.; Wilfred Cooper, Bedford, Pa.; C. Burleigh
Cooper, Christiana, Pa.; Harry Brinton, 2408 Bryn Mawr Avenue,
Philadelphia, Pa.; Lewis Brinton, Octoraro, Lancaster Co., Pa.; Thomas
Brinton, minister, Octoraro, Pa.; Mrs. Jesse Webster, Mrs. John
Dochter, Christiana, Pa., and Evan J. Lewis, George School, Bucks Co.,
Pa.
Castner Hanway suffered most in expense and anxiety from the trial. He
resided for years after it ended in Chester and Lancaster Counties, but
in 1878 removed to Wilber, Nebraska. His first wife, Martha, daughter
of Jesse and Letitia Lamborn, who was with him during his trial, died
August 20, 1855. Later he married Hannah, daughter of Moses and Mary
Pennock, who died January 1, 1864. Later he married a Miss Johnston,
a relative of Governor Johnston, who was the Chief Executive of
Pennsylvania in 1851. She is still living. Castner Hanway himself died
May 26, 1893; his remains were brought East and buried in the cemetery
at the famous Longwood meeting house of the Progressive Friends, in
Chester County, made memorable by anti-slavery meetings addressed by
Whittier, Lucretia Mott and others eminent in literature; and in which
quiet graveyard are the chaste tombs of Bayard Taylor, poet, novelist,
traveler, journalist and diplomat, and of his brother, Colonel Frank
Taylor, one of the heroes and martyrs of Gettysburg.
The Longwood Yearly Meeting soon after Hanway’s death adopted a
memorial prepared by Patience W. Kent, which said of him:
“One week ago the earthly form of Castner Hanway was laid in yonder
cemetery. A quiet, unobtrusive man, he gave no token that his name was
one to conjure newspaper notoriety, or stir the wrathful vengeance of
the baffled slave power, as it did at one time. Yet in him, was the
stuff of which heroes are made. ‘He stood by his colors’ when that was
all he could do. During the ninety-seven days that he was in prison
he never once complained. He wrote to his wife from there, ‘I do not
regret my course; I have simply done my duty.’ With a nature capable
of asserting such a beautiful sentiment in the face of so great mental
and financial agony, surely the reward in the Eternal Kingdom would be:
‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful
over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou
into the joys of thy Lord.’”
Hanway left no descendants. His collateral relatives, so far as known,
were:
Jackson Hanway, deceased, a brother, whose children are: Ida Hanway
Whiteside, Christiana, Pa.; Ella Hanway Skelton, 1725 Lindenwood
Street, Philadelphia; Wilmer Everett Hanway, 1716 North 55th Street,
Philadelphia.
John Hanway, deceased, a brother, leaving a son, Joseph Hanway,
Hamorton, Chester County, Pa.
Ellis Hanway, deceased, a brother, whose children are: Mrs. Louisa
Booth, Gap, Lancaster County, Pa., and William Hanway, 1038 Lowell
Street, New York City, N. Y.
Washington Hanway, deceased, a brother, leaving one child, Mrs. Clara
Hanway Pierce, 317 South Queen Street, York, Pa.
Phoebe H. Gray, deceased, a sister, whose son is Albert Gray.
Hannah Ellis H. Fairlamb, deceased, a sister, who left children:
Elizabeth Barnes, West Chester, Pa.; and Robert Fairlamb.
Rebecca H. McDade, deceased, a sister, late of Norristown, Pa.
* * * * *
“After Life’s fitful fever” they who fought and suffered and died all
“sleep well.” “There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom
in the grave.” While governments shall endure and organized society of
human order shall continue, the ceaseless contest will go on between
Law and Liberty. As the temperaments of men vary they will differ as
to which side of that struggle they should or will espouse; and Human
Wisdom will forever be insufficient to avert occasional conflict. From
it, however, will emerge Peace; and as the parties to the struggle
and their children’s children look back upon the contention that
once raged, they will come more and more clearly to see that it was
inevitable; and they will look with kindlier judgment upon the motives
which inspired antagonistic forces. They will also see in the outcome
and settlement a Final Cause, shaping events and determining results,
one that could not be recognized in the smoke and dust of the immediate
battle; but which the clear, cold light of History makes visible to
all who would see the Truth. In his matchless lyric of the Civil War,
the most sublime note that has been sounded from all the literature
inspired by that great National Crisis, Will M. Thompson, in his “High
Tide at Gettysburg,” attains this lofty strain:
But who shall break the guards that wait
Before the awful face of fate?
The tattered standards of the South
Were shriveled at the cannon’s mouth,
And all her hopes were desolate.
In vain the Tennessean set
His breast against the bayonet;
In vain Virginia charged and raged,
A tigress in her wrath uncaged,
Till all the hill was red and wet!
Above the bayonets mixed and crossed
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death cry of a nation lost!
The brave went down! Without disgrace
They leaped to ruin’s red embrace;
They only heard fame’s thunder wake,
And saw the dazzling sunburst break
In smiles on Glory’s bloody face!
They fell who lifted up a hand!
And bade the sun in heaven to stand;
They smote and fell who set the bars
Against the progress of the stars,
And stayed the march of Motherland!
They stood who saw the future come
On through the fight’s delirium;
They smote and stood who held the hope
Of nations on that slippery slope,
Amid the cheers of Christendom!
God lives! He forged the iron will,
That clutched and held that trembling hill!
God lives and reigns! He built and lent
The heights for Freedom’s battlement,
Where floats her flag in triumph still!
Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns!
Love rules. Her gentler purpose runs,
A mighty mother turns in tears
The pages of her battle years,
Lamenting all her fallen sons!
ADDENDA.
NOTE A.
On page 14 it is stated that there was little fellowship between the
negro and the Pennsylvania-German elements of our local citizenship.
I believe this is a continuing condition. It is not inconsistent with
the historical fact that the Mennonites of Germantown were the first
American Abolitionists; and that their deliverance of February 18,
1868, antedated like action by the Friends. Professor Wilkinson in
his so-called “Vindication of Daniel Webster,” recently published, is
authority for the statement that Charles Sumner’s social aversion to
the colored race was as pronounced as his political sympathy with it.
NOTE B.
On page 27 it is stated upon information that William Parker was a
soldier in the war for the Union. I have not been able to absolutely
verify this statement. It is therefore qualified.
NOTE C.
On page 59 it is noticed that the venire issued to the marshal
commanding him to return 108 jurors for the term of the treason trial
included a provision that twelve were to be summoned and returned from
Lancaster County. This was in conformity with the Act of September 24,
1789, known as the Federal Judicial Procedure Act, to the effect that
“in cases punishable with death, the trial shall be had in the county
where the offense was committed, or where that cannot be done without
great inconvenience, twelve petit jurors at least shall be summoned
from thence.”
In a recent notable address before the American Bar Association at
Boston on August 30, 1911, Ex-Justice of the United States Supreme
Court Henry E. Brown called attention to the fact that the provision of
this act which required the trial for a capital offense to be held in
the county where it occurred had never been observed. It seems to have
escaped his notice that the statutory direction as to the venue was
not unqualifiedly imperative and that this act had been the subject of
repeated judicial construction, _e. g._, in the following cases:
“The Circuit Courts are bound to try all crimes committed within the
district, but not to try them in the County where committed; that is a
matter of which they must judge in the exercise of their discretion.”
U. S. _v._ Wilson, Bald. 117; U. S. _v._ Cornell 2 Mason 95-8; U. S.
_v._ Insurgents (Fries), 3 Dall. (Pa.) 513. In U. S. _v._ Cornell the
Court holds that the third Section of the Act of March, 1793, Chapter
22, operates as a material modification of the Act of 1789 and leaves
the place of the trial in the district to the sound discretion of the
judge. The Act of 1793, Chapter 22, directs that special sessions for
the trial of criminal cases shall be held at any convenient place
within the district nearer to the place where the offenses may be said
to be committed, than the place appointed by the law for ordinary
sessions.
NOTE D.
I have adopted the spelling of Sims’s and Scarlet’s name with a single
terminal letter instead of the local and family usage--Simms and
Scarlett--because they were thus formally indicted.
NOTE E.
The best information I have as to the date of William Parker’s revisit
to Christiana is that it was during the presidential campaign of 1872.
Peter Woods says he took back with him to Canada the widow of Henry
Sims--one of the defendants in the treason case; presumably he was then
a widower and Mrs. Sims became his second wife.
NOTE F.
On pages 6 and 12 I have recalled the indisputable fact that Abraham
Lincoln and his party distinctly recognized the legal obligation of the
Fugitive Slave Law even after the war had begun. Striking confirmation
of what heedless readers may be disposed to doubt is found in General
William T. Sherman’s “Causes of the War,” cited in the _Atlantic
Monthly_, for September, 1911, where Sherman says: “Mr. Lincoln after
election and installation, asserted repeatedly that slavery was safe in
his hands, that he was sworn to enforce even the Fugitive Slave Law and
soon Congress declared it had no intention to interfere with slavery in
the States.”
NOTE G.
A second and revised edition of this History, substantially bound
and more copiously illustrated, will be put to press shortly. The
author will appreciate the correction of any errors observed in this
edition--hurriedly put to press--as well as any additions to its
statements of facts. Communications to this effect or orders for copies
of the revised edition may be sent to Box 34, Lancaster, Pa.
IN PRISON FOR TREASON.
[One of the finest stanzas in American poetry was inspired by the
imprisonment of Hanway and others for treason. While they were in
Moyamensing, John G. Whittier wrote and published his “Lines” to them.
Horace E. Scudder, in his excellent and complete “Cambridge edition”
of Whittier, classes the following with three other poems, “called
out by the popular movement of Free State men to occupy the territory
of Kansas.” In this he is mistaken. This poem, now entitled “For
Righteousness’ Sake,” was originally “inscribed to Friends under arrest
for treason against the slave power,” and was directed especially to
Hanway, Lewis and Scarlet. The concluding stanza is deeply imbedded in
popular appreciation of the best in our national literature.]
The age is dull and mean. Men creep,
Not walk; with blood too pale and tame
To pay the debt they owe to shame;
Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep
Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;
Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep
Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.
In such a time, give thanks to God,
That somewhat of the holy rage
With which the prophets in their age
On all its decent seemings trod,
Has set your feet upon the lie,
That man and ox and soul and clod
Are market stock to sell and buy!
The hot words from your lips, my own,
To caution trained, might not repeat;
But if some tares among the wheat
Of generous thought and deed were sown,
No common wrong provoked your zeal;
The silken gauntlet that is thrown
In such a quarrel rings like steel.
The brave old strife the fathers saw
For Freedom calls for men again
Like those who battled not in vain
For England’s Charter, Alfred’s law;
And right of speech and trial just
Wage in your name their ancient war
With venal courts and perjured trust.
* * * * *
_God’s ways seem dark, but soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.
Give ermined knaves their hour of crime;
Ye have the future grand and great,
The safe appeal of Truth to Time!_
[The End]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The rule of the civil law _partus sequitur ventrem_, formerly
prevailed in re domestic slavery.--_1 Dall. 167._
[B] Kinzey’s.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.