Christiana Riot
The raid took place in the early morning hours of September 11, 1851, at the house in Christiana, Pennsylvania, of William Parker, himself an escaped slave.
[4]: 4 He considered himself a "good" slaveholder, freeing some of his slaves at the age of 28 and offering them paid seasonal work after that.
[4]: 13 Christiana, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is 20 miles (32 km) north of the border with Maryland and had become a refuge for fugitive slaves.
[5]: 161–166 [4]: 46–49 In Philadelphia, where warrants for the arrest of fugitive slaves in Pennsylvania were usually acquired at the federal court after the 1850 act was passed, another group, the Special Secret Committee, had organized to gather information and warn those being hunted.
[4]: 52 Gorsuch hired John Agan and Thompson Tully, Philadelphia police officers, to assist in the arrest.
[4]: 53 [5]: 277 These three were to meet with Gorsuch and some additional men at Penningtonville (now Atglen,[6]) a station on the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad.
[7] From Philadelphia the group had been watched by Samuel Williams, a member of the Special Secret Committee; he followed Kline and warned the Black community around Christiana that they were coming.
Kline had been delayed from the Penningtonville meeting and eventually tracked down the Gorsuch party on the morning of September 10 in Sadsbury.
[4] Shortly after midnight on September 11, the Gorsuch party set out on the raid with a hired, disguised white guide.
Sarah Pownall, a white neighbor and wife of Parker's landlord, stopped by the evening of September 10 to warn that if the raiders came, all of the blacks should flee to Canada.
[4] The Kline and Gorsuch party surrounded the house, and the US Marshal announced their legal authority to seize Nelson Ford.
Shots were fired, either first by the posse at Eliza Parker, or first by the household at Gorsuch when he attempted to enter the house; no one was seriously injured at this time.
Numerous armed men arrived, including Noah Buley, another of Gorsuch's escaped slaves.
Gorsuch assumed the white men, although unarmed, were leaders of the estimated 75 to 150 Blacks, many with guns, who arrived over the next 30 minutes.
Joshua Gorsuch and Thomas Pearce continued to flee; they were shot and seriously injured but either escaped (or were released) and survived.
[4]: 78 The Christiana Riot had been the latest in a series of confrontations over fugitive slaves, following on the heels of several high-profile cases in Boston including the escape of Shadrach Minkins from custody in February 1851.
The death of the slave owner in the Christiana riot led to President Fillmore to call out the marines.
[8]: 58–59 On November 14, 1851, the Grand Jury of the United States District Court, Philadelphia returned true bills of indictment against 41 people.
The defense pointed out the absurdity of trying a group of poorly armed Quaker farmers for somehow levying war against the United States.
[17][18] In September 1911, a dedication ceremony for a memorial to the incident in Christiana took place with descendants of both sides present and also of Peter Woods, one of those indicted.
The first, representing "Law", had a portrait of Millard Fillmore, president when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, on one side and engraved on the other "In memory of Edward Gorsuch, Commemoration of the Christiana Riot and Treason Trials.
The other, representing "Liberty", had a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on one side and engraved on the other with "Peter Woods, Freeman, Soldier, Citizen.
[20] It is one of several historical markers in Lancaster County that mark significant events related to the Underground Railroad.
