W. U. Hensel

“ Let the day never come when it shall be rent in twain; when one cluster of its stars, separated from the other and beaming in different banners, shall be borne over adverse and conflicting hosts; but let it remain as it now is, ‘the Flag of the Union,’ still waving over the heads of united freemen, obedient to the same laws—laws supported by all, sustained by all, vindicated by all, in every section of the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These were the colored prisoners alleged to have been engaged in the treason at Christiana, and numbered twenty-four. They were all similarly attired wearing around their necks ‘red, white and blue scarfs.’ Lucretia Mott was at their head. This, we believe, is her first appearance in court since the trials have commenced. Her dignified and benevolent countenance ever attracts attention. Under that calm exterior there glows a fire, kindled by charity, which is as universal as it is ardent and enduring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The great mass of conservative citizens stood for both law and liberty; and heard with sympathetic ears Webster’s great and eloquent pleas for “Liberty and Union—one and inseparable.”
Joshua R. Giddings, in a speech at Worcester, in the early part of November, before the trial, publicly rejoiced in the killing of Gorsuch and that the fugitives “stood up manfully in defense of their God-given rights and shot down the miscreants, who had come with the desperate purpose of taking them again to the land of slavery.” ”

“ By nightfall every man inmate of Parker’s house and every runaway from Baltimore County were on their way to Canada. Hay mows and straw stacks weltered above the throbbing presence of trembling fugitives; and all the local agencies of rapid news and transportation which were at command of the anti-slavery people were set in motion to get and keep the accused in advance of the warrants. Somebody tarried long enough on the Parker premises to despoil Gorsuch’s body of $300 or $400 in money, which was on his person when he fell and which was missing at the coroner’s inquest. ”

“ Another conversation then ensued between Gorsuch, Kline, and myself, when another one of the party fired at me but missed. Dickinson Gorsuch, I then saw, was preparing to shoot; and I told him if he missed, I would show him where shooting first came from.
I asked them to consider what they would have done, had they been in our position. “I know you want to kill us,” I said, “for you have shot at us time and again. We have only fired twice, although we have guns and ammunition, and could kill you all if we would, but we do not want to shed blood.” ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ We left Jefferson about four o’clock in the morning, and arrived at Rochester at nine the same morning. Just before reaching Rochester, when in conversation with my travelling friend, I ventured to ask what would be done with Parker, should he be taken.
“I do not know,” he replied; “but the laws of Pennsylvania would not hang him,—they might imprison him. But it would be different, very different, should they get him into Maryland. The people in all the Slave States are so prejudiced against colored people, that they never give them justice. But I don’t believe they will get Parker. ”

“ The eyes of the world are upon the constellation in its banner. Its stars are the beacons of liberty. Let us then, for our sakes, and for the sake of liberty in other lands, guard it as the Ark of the Covenant was guarded of old. ”

“ But the existence of such feelings is no evidence of a determination or conspiracy by the people to publicly resist any legislation of Congress, or levy war against the United States. That in consequence of such excitement, such an outrage should have been committed, is deeply to be deplored. That the persons engaged in it are guilty of aggravated riot and murder cannot be denied. ”

“ The people who owned these slaves or some of them sent men up into this country some time before. One man came to me one day while I was cradling wheat and said, ‘You are a little man to cradle wheat, I am trying to find three or four big colored men to cut wheat for me. Can you tell me if there are any here that I can get?’ I knew what he was after, that he was looking for escaped negroes, and I did not give him much satisfaction.” The “John Beard” whom Woods knew was Gorsuch’s boy Nelson Ford—so he told Cyrus Brinton. ”

“ I never saw a man run faster. Returning, I saw Joshua Gorsuch coming, and Pinckney behind him. I reminded him that he would like “to take hold of a nigger,” told him that now was his “chance,” and struck him a blow on the side of the head, which stopped him. Pinckney came up behind, and gave him a blow which brought him to the ground; as the others passed, they gave him a kick or jumped upon him, until the blood oozed out at his ears.
Nicholas Hutchings and Nathan Nelson of Baltimore County, Maryland, could outrun any men I ever saw. They and Kline were not brave, like the Gorsuches. ”

“ It is not in this Hall of Independence, that meetings of infuriated fanatics and unprincipled demagogues have been held to counsel a bloody resistance to the laws of the land. It is not in this city that conventions are held denouncing the Constitution, the laws, and the Bible. ”

“ Pennsylvania, after respectful hearing of the Maryland Commissioners and due consideration for their suggestions, enacted the Act of 1826, which made the State Courts the arbiters of claims to fugitives; forbade justices to exercise these powers; and, in the line of Pennsylvania’s movements since 1780 to extinguish slavery and protect free persons, it made the free-born children of escaped slaves citizens of Pennsylvania and put them under its protection. ”

“ Hanway with that of Gorsuch’s wife “who, as a widow, is now mourning the loss and lover of her youth and the prop of her declining years.” He played upon the color of Scarlet’s name; he denounced the coroner’s inquest, lauded the chivalrous courage of Edward Gorsuch, pictured with skillful hands the combat at the Parker house and the “diabolical malice” of those who mangled the victim of that occasion after they had killed him. He insisted that both Lewis and Hanway had been guilty of treason and that they had incited the blacks to make armed resistance to the law of the land. ”

“ You see Parker was not fighting for a country, nor for praise. He was fighting for freedom: he only wanted liberty, as other men do. You colored people should protect him, and remember him as long as you live. We are coming near our parting-place, and I do not know if we shall ever meet again. I shall be in Rochester some two or three days before I return home; and I would like to have your company back.”
I told him it would be some time before we returned.
The cars then stopped, when he bade me good by. ”

“ Young Gorsuch then said,—“Don’t ask them to give up,—make them do it. We have money, and can call men to take them. What is it that money won’t buy?”
Then said Kline,—“I am getting tired waiting on you; I see you are not going to give up.”
[Pg 109] He then wrote a note and handed it to Joshua Gorsuch, saying at the same time,—“Take it, and bring a hundred men from Lancaster.”
As he started, I said,—“See here! When you go to Lancaster, don’t bring a hundred men,—bring five hundred. It will take all the men in Lancaster to change our purpose or take us alive.” ”

“ The Presbyterian works out his humanitarianism rather more directly through the law than around or under it; and, while in many households of this faith, colored servants and farm hands found trusted and long continued employment, the general attitude of the Scotch-Irish to the slavery question was different from that of the Quaker; socially the blood of the negro was more offensive to the more aggressive race. ”

“ It is not to be wondered at that a people subject to such inroads, should consider odious the perpetrators of such deeds and denominate them kidnappers—and that the subjects of this treatment should have been encouraged in resisting such aggressions, where the rightful claimant could not be distinguished from the odious kidnapper, or the fact be ascertained whether the person seized, deported or stolen in this manner, was a free man or a slave. ”

“ Lewis Cooper, who was a son-in-law of Elijah Lewis, had, with Joseph Scarlet’s assistance, taken Dickinson Gorsuch to the Pownall house; he had heard Dr. Pearce tell of his uncle’s rashness and that one of his own slaves, “a bright yellow negro,” shot him; and also that he had been saved by holding on to Hanway’s saddle skirt.
Many witnesses were called to prove Hanway’s character “as a peaceable, good, loyal and orderly citizen.” It was brought out that Hanway, contrary to the general popular impression, was not a member of the Society of Friends. ”

“ In 1850 it was alleged that an innocent and free colored hired man named Henry Williams had been seized without right or legal process and sold into perpetual slavery South. William Dorsey had been taken from his wife and three children and lodged in the jail at Lancaster. A gang of three, who tried to take a maid servant from Moses Whitson’s across the line in Chester County, were forcibly resisted by a lot of colored men under the lead of Ben. Whipper. The girl was rescued and her captors terribly, if not fatally, beaten on the Gap hill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was sorry to see them go back, for I wanted to meet Kline and end the day’s transactions.
We went on unmolested to Penningtonville; and, in consequence of the excitement, thought best to continue on to Parkesburg. Nothing worth mention occurred for a time. We proceeded to Downingtown, and thence six miles beyond, to the house of a friend. We stopped with him on Saturday night, and on the evening of the 14th went fifteen miles farther. Here I learned from a preacher, directly from the city, that the excitement in Philadelphia was too great for us to risk our safety by going there. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Parker says Dickinson Gorsuch opened the next stage of the battle by firing at him in resentment of a supposed insult to his father, and that he knocked the pistol out of Young Gorsuch’s hand before “fighting commenced in earnest,” and the outside negroes then shot both Gorsuches. Deputy Kline, who made himself somewhat ridiculous on the witness stand, remembered most vividly how he himself went “over the fence and out” through the cornfield and did not very clearly account for the fatal renewal of hostilities. ”

“ Only two of its townships are in contact with Maryland, Fulton and Little Britain, and the last named barely touched the edge of the Southland of Slavery. In its citizenship Lancaster County represented all the principal elements which enter into our composite commonwealth. The more numerous and important strain of blood, occupying the wider and richer upper domain, was composed very largely of the so-called Pennsylvania German sect and church people, who had little fellowship with the negro race, little interest in or sympathy with its cause and very slight personal contact with its members. ”

“ But riot and murder are offences against the State Government. It would be a dangerous precedent for the Court and jury in this case to extend the crime of treason by construction to doubtful cases.”
Having thus practically disposed of the case Mr. Justice Grier praised the U. S. Attorney and the counsel for Maryland for their zeal and ability, and intimated that the duty of punishing “the perpetrators of this outrage” might be transferred to the courts of Lancaster County, where the activity and zeal of its law officers gave assurance that their duty would be performed with all fidelity. ”