t by a Baltimore
Jury![175]

[Footnote 175: 20 Anti-Slavery Report, 28 and 21; Ibid. 34.]

(3.) The same year occurred the Christiana Tragedy. Here are the
facts.

In Virginia a general law confers a reward of $100 on any man who
shall bring back to Virginia a slave that has escaped into another
State, and gives him also ten cents for each mile of travel in the
chase after a man. Accordingly, beside the officers of the fugitive
slave bill courts commissioned for that purpose, there is a body of
professional Slave-hunters, who prowl about the borders of
Pennsylvania and entrap their prey. In September, 1850, "a colored
man, known in the neighborhood around Christiana to be free, was
seized and carried away by professional kidnappers, and never
afterwards seen by his family." In March, 1851, in the same
neighborhood, under the roof of his employer, during the night,
another colored man was tied, gagged, and carried away, "marking the
road along which he was dragged by his own blood." He was never
afterwards heard from. "These and many other acts of a similar kind
had so alarmed the neighborhood, that the very name of Kidnapper was
sufficient to create a panic."[176]

[Footnote 176: History of the Trial of Castner Hanway and others for
Treason (Philadelphia, 1852), 35.]

"On the 11th of September, Edward Gorsuch, of Maryland, his
son, Dickerson Gorsuch, with a party of friends, and a
United States officer named Kline, who bore the warrant of
Commissioner Ingraham, made their appearance in a
neighborhood near Christiana, Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, in pursuit of a Slave. They lay in wait for
their prey near the house of William Parker, a colored man.
When discovered and challenged, they approached the house,
and Gorsuch demanded his Slave. It was denied that he was
there. High words ensued, and two shots were fired by the
assailants at the house. The alarm was then given by blowing
a horn, and the neighborhood roused. A party of colored men,
from thirty to fifty strong, most of them armed in some way,
were before long on the ground. Castner Hanway and Elijah
Lewis, both white men and Friends, rode up before the
engagement began and endeavored to prevent bloodshed by
persuading both parties to disperse peaceably. Kline, the
Deputy Marshal, ordered them to join the _posse_, which
they, of course, refused to do, but urge