Read Ebook: The Christiana Riot and the Treason Trials of 1851: An Historical Sketch by Hensel W U William Uhler

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While then one trail of the Underground Railroad ran by Columbia and Bird-in-Hand, whereon friendly hands passed the fugitive from Stephen Smith to Daniel Gibbons; and a branch led from Joseph Taylor's, at Ashville to Penningtonville and Christiana, another had a continuous line of stations from the Gilberts and Bushongs around May, in Bart, or later Eden township, out "the valley" to and past the scene of what was to be the deepest tragedy which ever thrilled this little community.

Popular feeling was not wholly unprepared for it. The conflagration was not a sudden outbreak. Combustibles had been accumulating. Local incidents, such as escapes, man hunts, kidnappings and other like events had occurred to an extent sufficient to excite popular interest; and by rumor they had been exaggerated enough to further inflame it; numerous persons supposed or known to be ex-slaves resided and worked in the neighborhood and were the subjects of a qualified popular protection. There had been outrages on one side and some reprisals on the other.

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. A negro known as "Tom-up-in-the-barn," living near Gap, was said to have been captured one morning on his way to thresh at Caleb Brinton's, and never got back. The barn of Lindley Coates, in Sadsbury township, was burned in 1850 by miscreants angered at his denunciation of slave catchers and kidnappers.

It was also related that an industrious negro fence-maker had been violently carried off from his home on John McGowen's place in the valley, near Mars Hill, between Christiana and Quarryville. The narrator of this does not tell whether the man was free or a fugitive slave; and to his outraged neighbors this distinction made little difference.

The incident of most note occurring in the immediate neighborhood, the influence of which lasted longest, the feeling about which was most acute, and which figured largely in the "Treason Trials" was what was stigmatized as "the outrage at Chamberlain's." Its scene was on the "Buck hill," in the northwestern part of Sadsbury township, on what is now known as the "Todd place," west of the back road from Gap to Christiana and in what was a sort of middle ground between the operations of the "Gap gang" and the refuge territory of the fugitives. Here in March 1851 a posse, claimed to be led by a rather notorious member of the "Gap gang," entered the Chamberlain house, severely beat a colored man named John Williams employed there, who made desperate resistance, terrified the members of the family, and carried off their bleeding victim in a wagon. It seems he was an escaped slave; but his captors exhibited no official warrant of arrest nor made any claim of authority except to declare they were acting for his master. It was believed he died from their ill treatment of him.

And there were reprisals! William Parker--of whom this narrative will have more to say--admitted years afterwards that he had helped to beat, fatally he believed, the captors of a colored girl; that he had tried to kill Allen Williams on suspicion that he had betrayed Henry; that he recaptured a kidnapped man on the West Chester road, after shooting at his captors and being himself shot in the ankle; and that he and his associates went to the home of a decoy negro, burned it down and watched to shoot him with smooth-bore rifles "heavily charged" if the flames drove him into the open.

The leading people of this neighborhood were not only anti-slavery in sentiment, but they resented what seemed to be lawless invasion of their peaceful community; they were not afforded means of verifying the authenticity of the claims made for escaped slaves; the local people engaged in the business of aiding in slave hunting and slave nabbing were generally disreputable and sometimes themselves outlaws and criminals; farmers and mechanics were disturbed in their domestic service by the frequency with which attacks were made upon their many and useful colored employees and by the apprehensions to which they were all constantly exposed. Withal a sense of protection was felt in the fact that the most powerful leader of the bar of Lancaster County, and its representative in Congress Thaddeus Stevens, was outspoken in his denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Law. Political discussion and sentiment in this immediate locality, far more than in any other part of Lancaster County, was focusing upon open defiance of and even physical resistance to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. As early as October 11, 1850, at a public meeting in Georgetown, Bart Township, four miles from the later scene of the riot--William L. Rakestraw presiding and Elwood Cooper Secretary--a committee consisting of Thomas Whitson, Elwood Cooper, Cyrus Manahan, Elwood Griest and Joseph McClelland, reported and published vigorous resolutions denouncing the fugitive slave bill, and declaring that they would "harbor, clothe, feed and aid the escape of fugitive slaves in opposition to the law."

This was the state of popular feeling and these were the social and political conditions prevailing in lower Lancaster County, when the Gorsuch party set out from Maryland to retake their escaped slaves by due and orderly processes of law--from which mission the elder Gorsuch returned a mangled corpse and his son with a shot-riddled body; in the attempt to execute which the officers of the law were put to flight; out of which grew the arrest of two score men and the indictment of more persons for treason than were ever before or since tried for that crime in the United States; the acrimonious relations of two neighboring commonwealths for years; the open exultation of many persons over the killing and wounding of citizens engaged in a lawful undertaking, and the chagrin of many other orderly and law-abiding people that the law of the land had been violated in bloodshed and its officers successfully resisted.

THE ESCAPE AND PURSUIT OF THE SLAVES.

The Gorsuch Homestead and Its Proprietor--An Old and Prominent Maryland Family--The Runaways Absent for Nearly Two Years Before They were Pursued--The Warrants and Attempted Execution.

In Baltimore County, Maryland, on the west side of the York and Baltimore turnpike, south of Monkton, and north of Glencoe, stations of the North Central Railroad, stand today the farm buildings of the Gorsuch homestead, where and as they stood in 1849 and for a long time before. Their earlier owner, John Gorsuch, devised this estate to his nephew, Edward, with several hundred acres of land and a number of slaves. It was a provision of his will that certain of them should be free when they reached a fixed age. In 1849 one of them at least attained this condition. Jarret Wallace had during the period of his bondage so served his master and was so appreciated by him that after he became free Mr. Gorsuch retained him in his employ as his "market man" to sell his products in Baltimore. In November, 1849, he was building Wallace a tenant house, and John Wesley Knight and Joshua Pitt, carpenters, were working for him at the time. He had also millwrights, boarding and sleeping there and then they were building him a saw mill on Piney Creek, which ran through his extensive farm. Four of his slaves were Noah Buley and Joshua Hammond--whose time was nearly up--and two younger, about twenty-one years old, named Nelson Ford and George Hammond who had six or seven years to serve. The man Ford was a rather delicate young fellow, and Mr. Gorsuch spared him heavy work. He was the teamster of the place, but was always accompanied by help when he needed it. Buley is described as a copper colored mulatto and of treacherous disposition.

Mr. Gorsuch was a man of much prominence. He was a Whig in politics, a class leader in the Methodist church, a dignified and courtly gentleman in his manners, a just and accurate man in his business dealings, a kind hearted master and employer and a man of forceful and determined temperament. He was born April 17, 1795, and was, therefore, in his fifty-fifth year when his slaves escaped and in his fifty-seventh when he was killed. He was living with his second wife, and had five children of his first wife, two daughters and three sons, of whom the eldest, John S., was a Methodist clergyman, then residing in Washington, D. C. There is no portrait extant of the elder Gorsuch, but his son Dickinson resembled him.

In the fall of 1849 Mr. Gorsuch had his wheat stored in the corn house, a building which stood between the house and barn. The main barn fronts and adjoins the turnpike; the mansion house is some distance back of the road, reached by a shady lane and surrounded by lawn, orchards and out-buildings. In accordance with his habit Mr. Gorsuch kept careful account of his wheat in store and of the quantities withdrawn from time to time, as he made his grain all into flour at his own mill and retailed it in Baltimore. Having missed considerable of his stock, he made inquiry of a neighbor miller, Elias Matthews, who reported a lot of wheat sold to him by one Abe Johnson, a ne'er-do-well free negro living two miles north of Gorsuch's, who had no land to raise wheat nor credit to buy it. Gorsuch got out a warrant for his arrest, and it was put into the hands of Constable Bond for execution. He was laggard and "Bill" Foster who was something of a local terror to wrong-doers, was entrusted with the job. But Johnson got over into Pennsylvania, and Governor Johnston subsequently refused to honor a requisition for his extradition.

While the carpenters were building the tenant house and the millwrights were putting up the saw mill, in November, 1849, the negroes were cutting and topping the corn, hauling in the unshucked ears with ox-carts to the barn floor where, by aid of lanterns, the whole household, mechanics and slaves engaged nightly in husking bee merriment. Meantime news of Bill Foster's search for Abe Johnson were rife; likewise suspicious that the colored "boys" had helped him to raid the cornhouse and shared his spoils. One day they exhibited unwonted unrest and clustered into whispering groups; one expressed to the white workmen special anxiety to know "if the Boss is going to husk corn tonight," and another declared his purpose to set a rabbit trap, for it was "going to be a very dark night."

It was. There was no corn husking; and Knight, the carpenter, was aroused early by the call of Dickinson Gorsuch from down stairs that "the boys are all gone." They escaped through a skylight in the back building and made their way down a ladder and up the York turnpike. When the Gorsuches next saw any of them it was in the flash and fire of the Christiana Riot, in the early dawn of September 11, 1851, at Parker's cabin.

During the interval, however, reports reached the Gorsuches from time to time of their whereabouts; messages came from the runaways soliciting food supplies and other aid, which were sent upon assurances of their return. Mr. Gorsuch had such confidence in his benevolence as their master that he always believed if he could meet or communicate directly with them he could get them back. They soon found their way into the vicinity of Christiana where they "worked around" and were known by various aliases; after nearly two years sojourn thereabouts their ownership became known to those who made gain of such information.

The personal narrative of Peter Woods, survivor, leaves little room for doubt as to their identity and their residence around Christiana. He says: "They lived here among us adjoining me. One lived with Joseph Pownall. His name was John Beard. He was a little brown-skinned fellow--a pleasant chap. The other three were known to us as Thomas Wilson, Alexander Scott and Edward Thompson; Scott was a tall yellow-colored fellow, with straight hair. The colored fellows met at Parker's nearly every Sunday. A good many got their washing done there. He had an apple-butter party about the time of the riot. We knew that these new colored fellows were escaped slaves. They were about the Riot House and in our neighborhood a couple of years before the riot. We colored fellows were all sworn in to keep secret what we knew and when these fellows came there they were sworn in too. Scott told how they four happened to run away. He said he brought them with him in a big wagon to Baltimore, or he said he had come with a big load of grain for his master. He put them on the cars at Baltimore, then sent his master's team back and took the next train too, and that way they come up among the Quakers in this country which they knew was a good point on the underground railway. 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.

From Penningtonville , August 29, 1851, there was mailed to "Mr. Edward Gorsuch, Hereford P. O., Balt. Co., M. D.," a letter which was found upon and taken from his body after he was killed; the following is a copy:

LANCASTER, CO. 28 August 1851.

Very respectfully thy friend WILLIAM M. P. WM M PADGETT.

About the same time there had come into Gorsuch's locality a man , purporting to be from lower Lancaster County, who claimed to be able to locate a number of slaves escaped from Baltimore County, among them one of Dr. Pearce, who had escaped the same night as Gorsuch's. Dr. Pearce was a son of the elder Gorsuch's married sister Belinda.

Acting upon these reports and under the authority of the new Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Edward Gorsuch, his son, Dickinson, his nephew, Dr. Thomas Pearce, Nicholas Hutchings and Nathan Nelson, neighbors and friends, came to Pennsylvania to recover the slaves. Under date of September 9, 1851, the owner procured from Edward D. Ingraham, United States Commissioner at Philadelphia, four warrants directed to Henry H. Kline, Deputy United States Marshal, to apprehend the fugitives. About the attempt and failure to execute those warrants, or any of them, circle the Christiana Riot and the Treason Trials of 1851.

Kline and his associate slept at Houston's hotel, Gap, on Wednesday night and returned early next morning to Parkesburg, where they found Agan and Tully; the Gorsuch people had gone over to Sadsbury on the old Philadelphia turnpike and Kline rejoined them: Gorsuch went to Parkesburg to detain the Philadelphia officers, and Kline went to Downingtown and thence to Gallagherville, where the entire searching party met, except Tully and Agan, who returned finally to Philadelphia. About eleven o'clock at night the party went from Gallagherville to Downingtown, took the cars there after midnight, came through to Gap, where they got off the train and went down the railroad track. About 2 A.M. they met Padgett . Presumably they joined him and left the railroad at the grade crossing of a public road to Smyrna, formerly known as the "Brown House," which stood at the northeast corner of the intersection. Padgett was a farm hand at Murray's, the stone house at the top of the hill, between Gap and Christiana on the Brown farm. The Murrays had lived in Baltimore County, Md. There their local guide led them, likely by or at least toward Smyrna and through cornfields to the Valley Road, where the "long lane" led southward through Levi Pownall's farm to the Noble Road, across the Valley and near to Pownall's tenant house on the southern slope, where William Parker and his brother-in-law Pinckney lived.

THE DEFENSE AND DEFENDERS.

William Parker and His Home--A Leader of His Race and Class--The Hero of the Fugitive Slaves and the Champion of Their Resistance to Recapture--The Night Before the Fight.

He was born opposite Queen Anne, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. His mother was Louisa Simms, who died when he was young, and his only parental care was from his grandmother. His mother was one of the seventy field hands of Major William Brogdon, of "Rodown" plantation; and six years after the old master died, when his sons David and William divided his plantation and slaves, William Parker fell to David and to his estate "Nearo." There he had kind treatment, until slave traders came and a slave sale occurred, followed by others with their cruel and pathetic separation of families. Then he realized the bitterness of slavery and the blessings of freedom. He set out for the North by Baltimore, with his brother as a companion. They reached York and Wrightsville, crossed the river to Columbia in a boat and he settled down to farm work near Lancaster at per month; while his brother moved on to the eastern part of the County. Later William got employment with Dr. Obadiah Dingee, a warm sympathizer, who lived near Georgetown and was the father of the venerable Charles Dingee, of West Grove nursery and rose culture fame. While there Parker had access to anti-slavery periodicals and he heard William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass speak; he caught inspiration from them to organize his fellows, fugitive and free, in that community to resist recapture and repel assaults upon their race.

It has been already told, upon his own testimony, how they operated. Parker was involved in many other affrays. In a rescue riot on the streets of Lancaster on one occasion he proved himself a man of great strength and valor; he was recognized by whites and blacks as a towering figure. Daniel Gibbons sent Eliza Ann Howard, another refugee, to Dr. Dingee's and she became Parker's wife; her sister followed and married his associate Alex. Pinckney. They all lived together, and at the time the Gorsuch party came for their slaves Parker and Pinckney were running a horse-power threshing machine for Joseph Scarlet and George Whitson. Their families lived together in the tenant house, just to the east of the "long lane" on the Levi Pownall farm, later owned by Marion Griest, and now by Mrs. Agnes Lantz. It was a place for frequent foregatherings of the colored people in that day. No trace of the little old stone house is left, but sketches of it were made before the obliteration. The news spread by Sam Williams of Kline's visit reached Parker's house the evening before the officers. Besides Pinckney, Josh Kite, Samuel Thompson and Abraham Johnson were there. Sam Hopkins, who died recently, always related that there was an apple-butter boiling at Parker's that night, and the merrymakers danced around the kettle and fire singing a song the refrain of which was

"Take me back to Canada, Where de' cullud people's free."

The men named and the Parker and Pinckney sisters were there all night at least. That the negroes were armed not only appears from subsequent events, but it might be inferred from Parker's own account of his habit. He was long reticent as to the details of the final encounter; but there is ample proof that of the Gorsuch slaves Noah Buley was there very early on the day of the affray, and at least two others of the Gorsuch slaves were on the ground soon after. The names taken by fugitives were so uncertain that the "Abraham Johnson" of this occasion may or may not have been the Baltimore County freeman of that name who fled from Gorsuch's warrant in 1849. Some of the Gorsuch party so identified him. It is beyond doubt that the concourse of colored men already gathered at Parker's house when the Kline-Gorsuch squad arrived were assembled by design, upon some call or signal; that their leaders knew the objective point was the arrest then and there of the Baltimore County runaways; and they soon had added force large enough and brave enough to resist, defeat and either kill, wound or drive off the officers and owners.

THE FIGHT.

The Challenge to Surrender and the Defiance--A Long Parley--The Prompt Response to a Call for Aid--The Firing Begins--Flight of Kline and his Deputies--Gorsuch is Killed and his Son Terribly Wounded.

Padgett, guide and informer, led the Southern and Federal forces to within about a quarter mile of the Parker house, where they stopped at a little stream crossing the long lane, ate some crackers and cheese and "fixed their ammunition." It was then just about daybreak; it was a heavy, foggy morning; and Padgett found it was his time to withdraw. As the party drew near to the short lane which led into the house and little garden-orchard around it they were seen by Nelson Ford and Joshua Hammond, two of the Gorsuch slaves who had evidently been picketed. They retreated to the house; Gorsuch and Kline followed and the Marshal officially announced their errand. Some inmate of the house answered that the men called for were not there; and when Kline, as he testified, went to go up the stairs, followed by the elder Gorsuch, a five-pronged fish "gig" was thrown at him; next came a flying axe. Neither missile hit him; he and Mr. Gorsuch withdrew, and he says a shot was fired at them from the house and he returned the fire. Then Kline made a feint of sending off for a hundred men "to scare the negroes." His bluff had that temporary effect and a parley ensued. During this it was made manifest that a considerable number of armed men were in Parker's house.

Meantime, on their way, the officers had heard a bugle blown; conjectures differed whether it was a signal from the Parker house or a summons for the laborers on the railroad to go to work. The evidence on this point was not positive, but the besieged soon sounded their horn from the upper story. Parker is quoted as saying that Kline threatened to burn the house, and he defied him to do it; that Mrs. Parker sounded a horn which brought their allies; and the deputies fired at her as she sounded it, without causing her to desist; that Pinckney counselled surrender, but Parker was for fight. Parker's own accounts show no lack of self-assertion nor absence of self-confidence. That may or may not enhance their credibility.

Some early summons called a mixed mob together, for while the brief events already described were occurring, Castner Hanway, who lived a full mile away, rode up on a bald-faced sorrel horse; Elijah Lewis came on foot in his shirt sleeves and a straw hat; Zeke Thompson, the Indian negro, arrived with a scythe in one hand and a revolver in the other; Noah Buley rode in on a handsome gray horse and carrying a gun; Harvey Scott was there, weaponless; and a half score of others armed with guns, scythes and clubs, were assembled--far more than the upstairs of that little cabin could have held, even without the women. Other white men came trooping along, who in Parker's imagination were Gap gangsters enrolled by Kline as "special constables"; but there is no satisfactory proof that these were anybody but residents of the vicinage attracted to the place by the commotion.

The excitement and confusion that subsequently ensued, the quick succession of tragic events, the prompt retreat of the officers and the almost immediate flight from the vicinity of their guiltiest assailants, and the fact that none of them remained or ever returned to tell the whole story, combine to make it difficult even now to aver with certainty what next actually happened. It is, however, reasonably sure that Hanway and Lewis were called upon to interfere and aid in executing the warrants and they declined to do so; but they neither advised nor inspired any violence; nor does it appear that they arrived on the scene by any pre-arrangement or otherwise than from hearing that an attempt was being made by some one to take negroes from the Parker house.

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. Joshua Gorsuch testified that as Edward Gorsuch started to the house in answer to Kline's call to him to come on and get his property, his uncle was murderously assaulted with clubs and he fired a revolver to save his kinsman, but his cap burst and the weapon did not go off; he was severely beaten and ran for his life, the infuriated crowd pursuing him; a thick felt hat saved his life and he rode off from the battlefield behind some one on a horse, supposing Edward and Dickinson Gorsuch were already killed; his retreat ended only at York; but it was months before he recovered from his wounds.

Whoever else ran or stayed, the Gorsuches, father and son, stood their ground and took the enemy's fire. Dickinson warned the elder that they would be overpowered; but when the parent declined to retreat the son stayed by him until he was himself clubbed and shot down, as he went to the rescue of his assaulted father. Eighty shot penetrated Dickinson's arms, thigh and body--and many of them stayed there; so that when he died in 1882--thirty-one years after he was shot--his body prepared for burial was "pitted like a sponge" with the marks of the "Christiana Riot." When he was supposed to be dying Dickinson Gorsuch was taken into the shade of a big oak tree, about fifty yards from where the small lane then entered the "long lane."

Dr. Pearce was hit with a missile from an upper window; Nathan Nelson knew and recognized Buley, one of the runaways, and while, at the outset, only fifteen or twenty negroes were lined in the lane with guns, scythes, clubs and corn cutters, Nelson saw from seventy-five to a hundred before the smoke of battle had entirely cleared. Sam Hopkins and his historic corn cutter were among the later arrivals.

One of the dramatic features of the engagement was the appearance on the field of old Isaiah Clarkson. He summoned fifteen or twenty infuriated and raging negroes into the cornfield and "called them to order" three times before he could quiet them, and withhold them from violence. Meantime old Clarkson had seen the body of Edward Gorsuch lying alone where he fell dead, clubbed, cut and pierced with gun shots, his son desperately wounded; his kinsmen beaten and driven off; the United States deputies marshal in full retreat--infuriated women, forgetful of all humane instincts, revenging on a humane Christian gentleman's lifeless body the wrongs their race had suffered from masters of altogether different mould, rushed from the house and with corn cutters and scythe blades hacked the bleeding and lifeless body as it lay in the garden walk. At the first hearing Scott, the witness who afterwards swore differently on the trial, testified that he lived with John Kerr and had stayed at Parker's out of doors in the road all that night, having been persuaded to go there by John Morgan and Henry Simms, who were armed; that he saw them both shoot and Henry Simms shot Gorsuch; that John Morgan cut him in the head with a corn cutter after he fell. Dr. Pearce stated under oath that he saw Noah Buhly running past Gorsuch, but he could not say that Buhly did the shooting. At the time Edward Gorsuch was shot he was standing still calling his nephew Joshua and had no weapon in his hand.

Robert M. Lee John Agen Henry H. Cline Depatised Marshal Kline Lawyer Lee and Benit Commissioner Ingraham O. Riley's Telegraph avoid Halzel Councelman Cpt. Shutt J. R. Henson.

The significance of these entries will be recognized. No weapons were found on the body. This of course does not prove that Mr. Gorsuch was unarmed, as he easily might have lost or have been despoiled of his arms. Fred Douglass boasted that Gorsuch's pistol had been presented to him. His family believe, and from his habits of life and temperament it may be presumed, the elder Gorsuch was unarmed. He depended mainly on the force of the law's warrant and, perhaps too confidently, on the nerve of the Federal deputies marshal.

Dickinson Gorsuch was soon removed to friendly shelter and tender ministrations under the hospitable roof of Levi Pownall's homestead. There he learned to know that the Quaker families of the valley, while they were considerate of the slave, could be no less kind to the master in distress. The daily entries of his diary attest his gratitude and appreciation, and these he substantially manifested throughout his lifetime. His contemporaneous portrait herein published was taken from a daguerreotype sent to the Pownall family. Dr. Asher Pusey Patterson, who attended him, was then practicing at Smyrna. He was of the Lower End families whose names he bore. Dr. John L. Atlee, Sr., of Lancaster, was called into consultation.

Exactly when and how Parker, Pinckney and the fugitive slaves got away from the neighborhood is difficult to tell with absolute certainty; but a surviving neighbor throws light on their movements immediately after the affray. George Steele, now living in Chester County , was making charcoal iron at the Sadsbury forges in 1851. He lived near by the Parker place and recalls the events with great distinctness. He met some negroes coming from the scene exultant over its results and he warned them of their serious danger. He says Parker first came to Pownall's to arrange for Dickinson Gorsuch's removal there, but another neighbor was already on the way with the wounded man. Both Parker and Pownall remained hidden all day; the news of young Gorsuch's serious condition brought many visitors to the Pownall house; later in the evening Parker and Pinckney themselves called and for the first time seemed to realize their position. Some of the women members of the household warned them; and, while Mrs. Pownall was nursing the wounded man to life, she was sparing of her pantry supplies to fill a "pillow case" with food for the fugitives; and her husband, under whose roof Gorsuch was receiving every kind attention, loaned of his clothing to their disguise--all being carried to them by George Pownall, then a boy, who was directed to find them at a certain apple tree on the farther side of the orchard.

Even they who were guiltless of their neighbor's blood were not unmindful of the responsibility imposed upon their community by the violent killing of Gorsuch and the escape of his slayers. His dead body was taken to Christiana and lay at Fred Zercher's hotel, where Harrar's store now is and nearly opposite the Commemoration Monument. There a coroner's inquest was held before noon. The main facts of the riot were related by Kline, "Harvey" Scott , and others. John Bodley and Jake Woods testified that Elijah Lewis passed them in the early morning, when they were working at James Cooper's, and that Lewis said "William Parker's house was surrounded by kidnappers and it was no time to take out potatoes."

The coroner's jury, summoned by Joseph D. Pownall, Esq., consisted of George Whitson, John Rowland, E. Osborne Dare, Hiram Kinnard, Samuel Miller, Lewis Cooper, George Firth, William Knott, John Hillis, William H. Millhouse, Joseph Richwine and Miller Knott. Their finding was:

"That on the morning of the 11th inst., the neighborhood was thrown into an excitement by the above deceased, and some five or six persons in company with him, making an attack upon a family of colored persons, living in said Township, near the Brick Mill, about 4 o'clock in the morning, for the purpose of arresting some fugitive slaves as they alleged, many of the colored people of the neighborhood collected, and there was considerable firing of guns and other fire-arms by both parties, upon the arrival of some of the neighbors at the place, after the riot had subsided, found the above deceased, lying upon his back or right side dead. Upon a post mortem examination upon the body of the said deceased, made by Drs. Patterson and Martin, in our presence, we believe he came to his death by gun shot wounds that he received in the above mentioned riot, caused by some person or persons to us unknown."

Dr. John Martin and Dr. A. P. Patterson reported officially that Gorsuch came to his death by a gun shot wound made by slug or heavy shot, occupying the upper part of the right breast, and that there was an incision found near the frontal bone, produced by a light sharp instrument, and a fracture of the left humerus by some blunt weapon.

It must be conceded, even at this distance in time, the jury's thermometer of popular indignation at the crime scarcely registered above the mark of "cold neutrality."

Scharf's history of Baltimore County states that on September 13th and 15th meetings of citizens of Baltimore County were held to take action in the premises. Wm. H. Freeman, John Wethered, Samuel Worthington, Wm. Matthews, Wm. Taggart, John B. Pearce, Samuel H. Taggart, Wm. Fell Johnson, Wm. H. Hoffman, Edward S. Myers, John Merryman, and Henry Carroll were appointed a committee to collect all the facts in the case and transmit them to Governor Lowe, in order that he might lay them before the President of the United States. Another committee, consisting of John B. Holmes, Levi K. Bowen, Dr. Nicholas Hutchins, J. M. McComas, and E. Parsons, was appointed to confer with the gentlemen who had accompanied Mr. Gorsuch into Pennsylvania. A meeting at Slader's tavern, on September 15th, passed resolutions calling upon the people of each district of the county to elect delegates to meet at Cockeysville on October 4th for the purpose of forming a county association, and recommending the formation of district associations "for the protection of the people in their slave and other property." An indignation meeting of six thousand persons was held at Monument Square, Baltimore City, on September 15th, at which Hon. John H. T. Jerome presided, and addresses were made by Z. Collins Lee, Coleman Yellott, Francis Gallagher, Samuel H. Taggart, and Col. George W. Hughes.

THE "PURSUIT" AND ARRESTS.

Federal and State Authorities in Conflict--"Rough Riding" the Valley--Numerous and Indiscriminate Arrests--Hearings in Lancaster and Committals to Philadelphia.

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