Christiana Showdown: A kidnapping foiled
As dawn was breaking on the foggy morning of Sept. 11, 1851, seven men arrived at the lane that led to the house of William Parker just outside the tiny village of Christiana in southeastern Lancaster County.
This was not a social call. The seven were planning to force their way into Parker’s house while the people inside were still asleep, to capture two men who lived there, and to take them back to slavery in Maryland.
Like the best laid plans of mice and men, their scheme went horribly astray and several hours later one of the party was dead, another seriously wounded, and several severely beaten. The interesting point is that, according to federal law, what these men attempted to do was legal.
How did it come to pass that the United States government allowed men to snatch other men as well as women and children off the street or from their homes?
It came from the 1850 Compromise. By 1850 the conflict between free and slave states was half a century old. Eight states north of the Mason Dixon Line had outlawed slav-
ery, while the eight states south of that boundary supported it.
In those 50 years rapid American territorial expansion created further conflict as the free states fought to stop expansion of slavery into the nation’s burgeoning territory, while the slave states, whose economy was now firmly based in the need for slave labor, maintained that it was their right to bring their property, including slaves, into it.
Occasionally, southern states brandished the threat of secession when they felt their rights were being trampled. To save the union, moderate politicians, both northern and southern, created pieces of compromise legislation.
The Compromise of 1850 was one of these. A complicated bill that involved concessions on both sides, one of its elements was the Fugitive Slave Act that made it legal for owners of escaped slaves or men who specialized in “slave catching” to travel into northern states and bring back those people who had sought relief from their situation by flight into free territory.
The fugitive did not have the protection of habeas corpus, a jury trial, or even the right to testify. The law created a federal commissioner who ruled on the justification of the seizure, and, for his trouble, was paid $5 if he decided for the fugitive and $10 if the ruling was in favor of the claimant.
In addition, federal marshals were in charge of enforcing this law and were empowered to deputize private citizens on the spot to aid them in the capture. Anybody who refused the marshal’s summons was liable for a fine, and any who harbored a fugitive or interfered with his capture was looking at a $1,000 fine and a jail term.
This system was so weighted in favor of the owners that slave catchers often weren’t too particular about the identity of a person they brought before the commissioner, sometimes resulting in free-born blacks taken south. Then there were the times when the catchers spirited their unfortunate prey directly to Dixie. Needless to say, this piece of legislation was bitterly resented by many people in northern states.
This is the backdrop upon which the confrontation at William Parker’s house unfurled. The story begins in 1849 with four slaves belonging to Edward Gorsuch, a farmer who lived near Glen Coe, Md., along the Gunpowder River, northwest of Baltimore. Gorsuch, who literally worked alongside his slaves, considered himself an enlightened slave owner (How’s that for an oxymoron?).
Irate when his four “boys” ran away, he wanted his property back, but he didn’t know where they were. Then, in September 1851, he got a letter from a man who lived in Christiana, offering, for a fee, to lead him to the place the men were living.
Armed with this knowledge, Gorsuch planned his foray into Pennsylvania. After obtaining fugitive warrants from the federal court in Philadelphia, Gorsuch, accompanied by an assistant U.S. marshal, took the train to Lancaster County, where he rendezvoused on Sept. 10 near Christiana with a five-man posse that included his son, Dickson.
Very early the next morning the group was led to the house of William Parker where two of the fugitives lived. There was nothing subtle about the plan. Simply barge into the house and take the men away in a wagon rented for that purpose. Because they were seven armed white men with the weight of the federal government behind them, they apparently expected to meet with no resistance. That was a gross miscalculation.
William Parker, born in 1822 into slavery, ran away in 1839 after a physical confrontation with his master. Eventually Parker made his home just outside Christiana. He married Eliza Howard, also an escaped slave, and began raising a family
As Parker, a powerfully built, strong-willed man, wrote many years later, “Kidnapping was so common…that we were kept in constant fear.” He recalled, “We would hear of slaveholders or kidnappers every two or three weeks: sometimes a party of white men would break into a house and take a man away…and again a whole family would be carried off.
“So completely roused were my feelings that I vowed to let no slaveholder take back a fugitive if I could get my eye on him.”
Parker and five to seven other black men formed a neighborhood watch group to protect people in that area from kidnapper raids.
Over the course of the 12 years Parker lived in the neighborhood he intervened in many attempted kidnappings, often at personal risk, and at one time was shot in the ankle. For these acts of courage Parker was described as, “bold as a lion, the kindest of men, and the warmest and most steadfast of friends.”
When the posse appeared at Parker’s lane it was spotted by Nelson Ford, one of Gorsuch’s runaways who was living in Parker’s house. Ford immediately woke the household and the confrontation was on.
Gorsuch’s posse surrounded the house while he and federal marshal Henry Kline entered the house and called for the men to come downstairs and surrender. That display of bravado prompted Parker to tell Kline that “he did not care for him or the United States,” and if Kline “took another step (he) would break his neck.” Kline responded to that promise by leaving the house.
Outside, the verbal sparring match among Parker and Kline and Gorsuch continued for a while, only to be interrupted by the sound of Eliza Parker lustily blowing a tin horn from one of the upstairs windows. The bugle’s blasting was a prearranged signal that slave catchers were attempting to carry someone off. Within 20 minutes 15 to 25 black neighbors appeared at Parker’s house armed with clubs, corn cutters and a few firearms.
Also arriving at the scene were two white Quakers, Elijah Lewis and Castner Hanway, who came with the hope of preventing violence. When the federal marshal, in accordance with the law, ordered the two to aid in the attempt to capture the fugitives, they refused.
They told Kline they would attempt to persuade the crowd to disperse and, when that failed, the men told Kline “the colored people had a right to defend themselves, and the intelligent thing to do was leave,” otherwise “there will be blood spilt.”
Some of the posse members, seeing that they were outnumbered by armed and determined men, urged
Gorsuch to leave, but the old Maryland farmer would have none of that, declaring, “I will have my property or go to hell.” A few minutes later he got the latter, as he was fatally shot. His son, Dickson, while coming to his rescue was shot and seriously wounded.
The remaining posse members, without horses, broke and ran, with the home defenders in hot pursuit. The pursuit overtook one of the posse members and beat him severely; the rest escaped.
What an affair. One white man dead, another seriously wounded. An assistant U.S. marshal put to flight and the new Federal Fugitive Slave Act trampled in the dust. The violent denouement guaranteed the imprisonment or even execution of the ringleaders, so William Parker along with two others fled for the safety of Canada. The remainder, including Parker’s wife, remained to face what was coming.
The response was overwhelming. The area around Christiana was soon swarming with local constables and federal marshals and President Millard Fillmore even sent a detachment of Marines to the area to search for the offenders.
Eventually, 38 people were arrested and indicted. The federal government, in an effort to demonstrate to the southern states how seriously it viewed this affair,
charged those indicted with treason. The poor folks were trundled off to Myomensing Prison in Philadelphia to await trial.
The federal prosecutors’ strategy was to try each person individually. First up was Castner Hanway, the Quaker miller, who the government tried to portray as the leader of the group. The prosecution’s case was weak, and when the defense cross-examined its star witness, Harvey Scott, a young black man from Christiana, he admitted that all his statements were lies.
Even though Scott had not been anywhere near the Parker house on that day, he was arrested by federal marshal Henry Kline, who threatened Scott with prison if he didn’t testify. This revelation brought scornful laughter from the packed courtroom.
On Dec. 16, 1851, the jury retired. A scant 15 minutes later they returned with a verdict of not guilty. Following that it came as no surprise that the government dropped the charge of treason against the rest of the indicted. Some of the black defendants were retained on charges of riot, but when their cases were brought before a Lancaster County judge he dismissed the charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
William Parker and the two men who fled with him remained in Canada. Parker’s wife, Eliza, joined him there and they built a life together, raising a family of 10 children.
Parker’s fame led to John Brown’s son, John Brown Jr., trying to recruit him for his father’s ill-fated raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, but Parker would have none of it.
No one knows what became of Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, George Hammond, and Joshua Hammond, the slaves whose escape from Edward Gorsuch was the basis for the showdown at Christiana.
Parker returned to Christiana in the summer of 1872 and was happily entertained by his old friends. He also became reacquainted with Martha Simms, the widow of one of the men who was involved in events of Sept. 11, 1851. What ensued was a case of mutual infatuation that caused the two to run off together, leaving Parker’s wife, Eliza, in Canada with their 10 children.
Parker and Simms settled in Kenton, Ohio, where they lived together for 20 years. William Parker died there April 14, 1891, having never gone back to his original family in Canada.