 Cristiana, Pennsylvania was a Quaker community in 1851. The Quakers were probably the religious group most consistent with libertarianism in the 19th century as they held principled anti-war and anti-slavery stances. With Pennsylvania being a free border state, the Quakers in Cristiana welcomed fugitive slaves. Unsurprisingly, this meant that they attracted many Maryland runaways. So on September 11th, 1851, a handful of these fugitive slaves faced the prospect of being arrested and returned to their Maryland owner. And instead of going quietly, these fugitive slaves made a pact that they would resist to the death. By the end of the standoff, the owner claiming them would be shot dead. Newspapers would call this the Battle of Cristiana, and in particular, the paper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania would pressionately run the headline, Civil War. The first blow struck. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the last episode, we talked about the fugitive slave acts and the tremendous impact that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 had on the divisions between the Northern and Southern States. Today, I'm going to continue that topic by discussing one of the more significant episodes shortly following the passage of the new law. In 1849, a free black man named Abraham Johnston offered some wheat for sale to a Quaker named Elias Matthews. Matthews was suspicious. He knew Johnston, and he knew that Johnston had no land on which to grow the wheat, so he asked where he obtained it from. Johnston felt that he could trust Matthews, particularly since the Quakers were known to have anti-slavery views, so he admitted that he received the wheat from a few slaves who were owned by Edward Gorsuch from Maryland. Matthews turned the wheat in and testified in court on Christmas Day that the wheat belonged to Gorsuch. According to Gorsuch, he didn't even bring up the wheat theft to his slaves, but he did have an arrest warrant issued for Abraham Johnston. The news of the warrant spread, and Johnston went into hiding. Now fortunately, Johnston was never caught, but on Gorsuch's farm, the slaves implicated in the theft were worried. Nobody had actually come to them and accused them of the crime, but the fact that the law was looking for Johnston, who could identify them, gave them cause for fear. So these four slaves, George and Joshua Hammond, Noah Buley and Nelson Ford, got together and decided to make a break for it on a particularly dark night. Ed Gorsuch was pretty perplexed that four of his slaves would run off on him. He was, by all standards of the time, a generous slave owner. He was a member of the Whig Party. He was a Methodist and a leader in his church. Unlike some of the more cruel masters of the South, he taught his slaves scripture. And at the age of 28, he even granted some of his slaves their freedom and then paid them wages to continue working for him. And the very fact that his freed slaves continued to work for him was testimony, Gorsuch believed, to how well liked he must have been. So the four boys who ran off were supposedly going to be freed on their 28th birthdays. So Gorsuch was perplexed as to why they would try to escape or why they would commit such a sin as to still from their owner of all crazy things. This was genuinely how Gorsuch saw the situation. So Ed Gorsuch figured that if he could just talk to the boys, they would voluntarily return. After the escape, Gorsuch sent a letter to the governor of Maryland to pressure the Pennsylvania governor, who happened to lean anti-slavery, into fulfilling his obligation under the new fugitive slave law to return the slaves. Nearly two years later, in August of 1851, Gorsuch finally received a reply informing him of the location of his four runaway slaves. After receiving this letter, Ed Gorsuch became determined to go to Pennsylvania to reclaim his slaves. According to testimony after the fact, his son Dickinson tried to talk him out of it. But Dickinson said, quote, the old man was determined to have his property and would not be counseled. So Ed Gorsuch gathered a slave hunting party of six men, himself his son Dickinson, two of his neighbors, his cousin and his nephew. Together they traveled to Philadelphia and went to see the fugitive slave commissioner, Edward D. Ingram, where they received four fugitive slave warrants. Ingram sent Henry H. Klein to accompany the Gorsuch slave hunting party as deputy marshal, and two more officers agreed to join the party after Gorsuch offered to pay them for their services. Now, if you remember from the previous episode, I mentioned briefly that some black resistance leagues were formed to resist the fugitive slave law and defend against kidnappers. And I also mentioned that white abolitionists, though rarely helping directly, would feed these groups information to aid them. The Gorsuch party was being monitored by one such vigilance committee of Philadelphia abolitionists who helped with the underground railroad, and they were able to feed information through their secret network to get word to the fugitives Gorsuch was hunting. They sent word to Christiana, and Klein was sent with the warrants behind the Gorsuch party to rendezvous with them later. Now, the person sent to warn the fugitive slaves was a man named Samuel Williams, a free black man, or probably mixed race since his description in the records notes his light skin, and he was traveling to Christiana on the morning of September 10th. He actually had ridden in the same train coach as the Gorsuch crew to landcaster right next to Christiana. Williams ran a tavern in Philadelphia's black community called the Boulevard House, which was a hub for information on these matters, and Williams was apparently a recognizable face among the Philadelphia slave catchers. So on the train ride, one of the hired officers, John Agin, recognized Samuel Williams, which apparently was a calculated decision by Williams to try to discourage the posse since slave catchers counted on the element of surprise. Had Gorsuch not hired the two Philadelphia officers, his posse would not have known who Williams was, but Agin did, and Williams deliberately took advantage of that. So the Gorsuch posse and Samuel Williams arrived in Lancaster ahead of Klein, who showed up on September 10th after being delayed by a broken wagon wheel, and by the time he arrived, the Gorsuch posse had already left, but he spotted Williams outside of Penningtonville Tavern in Lancaster County. Klein had no idea, of course, that Williams was aware of what he was doing there, but he recognized Williams from Philadelphia, so he tried to confuse Williams about his intentions. Instead of acquiring about the fugitive slaves, he asked about horse thieves. Williams, knowing far more than Klein was aware of, said, Your horse thieves were here and gone. You might as well go home. Williams was being coy and was implying that the horse thieves that Klein had fabricated were the Gorsuch posse that he was trying to meet. When Klein pretended that he didn't understand what Williams meant, Williams said, Oh, I know what you are about. Klein was likely confused, and he actually stuck with his fabrication about the horse thieves, so he traveled to another tavern called The Gap and asked the tavern keeper there about horse thieves as well. And Williams had been following him, and Klein assumed that he was following him to the Gap, and the tavern keeper said he didn't know about the horse thieves, but he had seen a couple of suspicious looking men heading for Philadelphia. This tavern keeper was apparently referring to the two hired Philadelphia officers who apparently had decided to back out of the hunt after recognizing Williams. But Williams wasn't actually following Klein. He was traveling to Christiana to head Klein off and warn the fugitives that were hiding there. After wasting an hour and a half at the Gap, Klein moved to Parkersburg and found the two officers who had indeed abandoned the hunt and were traveling back to Philadelphia. So the records of the story are interesting because they demonstrate the network of information that played into slave resistance at the time. As Marshall Klein traveled through these Pennsylvania towns, he lagged behind the information about the slave hunting party that was making it from bar to bar. So when he was inquiring about his horse thieves, everybody he talked to kept feeding him information about the Gorsuch posse and effectively slowed him down. The records are hard to piece together, but it demonstrates the elaborate network of anti-slavery groups at play in these areas during the antebellum years. So this is why I think it's worth detailing this part of the hunt. So Klein finally met up with the Gorsuch party in Sadsbury, which was now down back to the original six members from Maryland. Gorsuch is upset by Klein's delay, which was due to a mixture of bad luck and the calculated misinformation from the resistance network. The original plan was to already have arrested the fugitives, but the Gorsuch party couldn't do that until Marshall Klein showed up because he had the arrest warrants with him. To say face, Klein actually made up a story about being followed by a Negro spy who he was trying to evade, which led to his broken wagon wheel. Even though Williams had been monitoring him, this was obviously all untrue since the wagon wheel had broken before he ran into Williams. So Gorsuch went and hunted down the two officers who had abandoned the chase and offered them even more money to rejoin the party. They took Gorsuch's money, promised to bring reinforcements from Philadelphia the next day, but apparently they were just thieves. Imagine that professional slave catchers being dishonest. So on September 11th, after they failed to return, the party of seven went to apprehend the fugitive slaves without their reinforcements. So this foggy Thursday morning on September 11th, 1851, the seven-man slave hunting party met with a guide who was probably the informant who sent the letter in the first place, a man named William Pageant. But it's not certain from the records that this is the case. The guide led them to a house and claimed that one of Gorsuch's four fugitives were living there. Gorsuch wanted the posse to split up so that one group could go after the other slaves and another group could apprehend the one living in this house. Klein resisted, saying they needed to keep the full unit together. Apparently Gorsuch believed that the fugitive in this house would come peacefully back with him because he had a wife back in Maryland. But Klein was in charge now, being an officer of the law, so the party moved on to where the other slaves were supposed to be. The guide led them finally into Christiana and pointed to a stone house, claiming that two more of Gorsuch's slaves were inside. Don had only just begun breaking. The guide left the rest of the Gorsuch party. Shortly after, a black man walked out of the house, saw the posse, and immediately rushed back inside. Klein tried to chase him, but he fell over a fence. Finally he recovered and raced up to the house, following behind Gorsuch and the rest of the crew. Now it's worth backing up a bit here so we can see what was taking place during this time on the end of the fugitive slaves and the resistance group. A former slave named William Parker had started an all-black resistance group in Christiana. I mentioned William Parker very briefly in the previous episode, but I didn't talk very much about him. So just as an interesting piece of trivia, William Parker had actually known Frederick Douglass as a slave back when Douglass was known as Frederick Bailey. Many years later, Parker knew of the famous black abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, but had no idea it was the same young man he had known many years before until he went to hear him speak in person and recognized him in 1843. That's an aside. William Parker formed a self-defense group of blacks in Christiana. And by the time of the Gorsuch slave hunt, this group had already successfully resisted some kidnapping attempts. But none of these episodes would be as eventful as what was about to take place. On the afternoon of September 10th, Dr. Augustus Cain and Henry Young were talking in the road when two black men, John Clark and Josephus Washington, approached them. According to Henry Young, Washington had quote, a gun in one hand, a paper in the other. Washington was illiterate. So he asked, doctor, can you read the paper to us? It was the note from Samuel Williams. The note named Gorsuch's fugitive slaves with a warning about the slave hunting posse, which Williams referred to as kidnappers. This is actually an interesting point. Obviously, from an ethical point of view, we can recognize any officers legally arresting peaceful people as kidnappers. And libertarians often point out that arrests of nonviolent criminals is quite literally kidnapping. So I'm not going to dispute Williams's claim that the posse was a group of kidnappers on those grounds. But the distinction is important. Most resistance groups, particularly prior to 1850, were formed to protect against groups of actual illegal kidnappers, who were abducting free blacks like Samuel Northup. And selling them into slavery. And Parker's self-defense group, up to this point, had been resisting exactly this type of kidnapper. Obviously, the Gorsuch party was not that. They were a party of legal slave hunters carrying out the new fugitive slave law. So the fact that the resistors saw them as kidnappers in the same light as the illegal kidnappers is not inconsequential. They recognized that the law did not fundamentally change the moral dynamic of the situation. Anyway, the note gave Parker a small amount of notice before Gorsuch showed up the next morning. Other reports of the events detail the communication between the blacks and the community. And at least one remarked on Washington's gun and shot pouch. By the time Parker came home on the night of the 10th, he found a small cadre of blacks at his house, including two of Gorsuch's fugitives. That night, seven people stayed at Parker's. This would be Parker, his wife, Eliza, Eliza's sister and her husband. Hannah and Alexander Pinkney, Abraham Johnson. This is not Abraham Johnston from the beginning of the story, just to be clear. And finally, the two Gorsuch fugitives named Joshua Kite and Samuel Thompson. The seven of them decided that they were going to resist. In fact, the white Quaker abolitionists in the area urged them to flee. This was the common advice for the non-resisters that made up the bulk of the abolitionist community. Sarah Pownall, the Quaker wife of Parker's landlord, spoke with him and urged him to try to escape for Canada, where they would be safe from the new fugitive slave law. According to her testimony after the event, Parker said, quote, the laws for personal protection are not made for us. And we are not bound to obey them. If a fight occurs, I want the whites to keep away. They have a country and may obey the laws. But we have no country. So Parker was saying that he was going to stand his ground. But the white people in the community should stay out of it to avoid legal troubles for themselves. So the party at Parker's house tried to get some sleep that night, though it's doubtful that they got much sleep at all. The next morning, they were relieved to find that Gorsuch had not arrived. So Joshua Kite, one of the fugitive slaves, headed out for work. As Gorsuch and his posse moved toward Parker's home, the party, quote, heard someone singing. This is where Joshua Parker stepped out of the house, saw the posse, and rushed back inside to warn the others. So now we're back to where we left off of the Gorsuch posse, racing to follow Joshua Kite into the house. Kite ran up the stairs shouting, "'Oh, William, kidnappers, kidnappers.'" Gorsuch and the others chased him into the house and followed through a door that Kite had left open to hurry to warn the others. Edward Gorsuch called for a slave by name. He said, quote, "'Come down, I know your voice, I know you. If you come down and go home with me without any trouble, I will look over the past.'" This is according to the testimony later given by Marshall Klein. Also according to Klein's testimony, one of the members of Parker's group responded, quote, "'If you take one of us, you must take us over our dead bodies.'" Gorsuch, according to other testimonies, continued trying to coax his slaves into coming peacefully with promises of forgiveness. The response was that the party got assaulted with, quote, a missile, whatever that may have been, thrown from an upstairs window that gave a black eye to one of the party members and another was hit in the shoulder by a piece of wood. So begins the infamous resistance at Christiana. Parker stood as leader of the resistance at the top of the stairs. Who are you? He asked the group. Klein answered that he was a U.S. Marshall. Then Klein began to move toward the stairs, but Parker stopped him by saying that if he took one step more, he would break his neck. Again, Klein asserted his authority as a U.S. Marshall, to which Parker replied that he did not care for him or for the United States. Some other members of Parker's group were getting cold feet. Alexander Pinkney asked what the use was in fighting since they were doomed to be taken in the end. He moved to go turn himself in and Klein, hearing this, encouraged him saying, yes, give up for a weekend and we'll take you anyhow. But Parker stopped him. He told the group that they shouldn't be afraid, they shouldn't give up and they should fight to the death. Klein again taunted them. He said, quote, yes, I have heard many a Negro talk as big as you and then have taken him and I'll take you. End quote. You have not taken me yet, Parker replied, according to his own account of the events and if you undertake it, you will have your name recorded in history for this day's work. Obviously Parker has been vindicated on that point since we're telling this story at all. This time Edward Gorsuch spoke up. He said, quote, come Mr. Klein, let's go upstairs and take them. We can take them. Come follow me. I'll go up and get my property. What's in the way? The law is in my favor and the people are in my favor. This is also from Parker's account of the events later on. Parker responded, quote, see here old man, you can come up but you can't go down again. Once up here, you are mine. Gorsuch tried to go upstairs but the group threw a five pronged fish gig at him and then they followed that up by throwing an axe. Klein stopped Gorsuch and said that if he read the warrant maybe they would give up. After doing so he announced, quote, now you see we are commanded to take you dead or alive so you may as well give up at once. And Gorsuch encouraged him to go up the stairs. Klein started up the stairs and announced to I am coming to which Parker replied, well, come on. According to Parker's testimony after this Klein, quote, was too cowardly to show his face. The standoff continued with Klein threatening Parker that he was going to make him pay for his trouble. And Parker essentially saying, welcome do it then and Gorsuch no longer playing a part of a kind slave owner yelled, you have my property. Parker responded to this by saying, quote, go in the room down there and see if there is anything there belonging to you. There are beds and a bureau chairs and other things then go out to the barn. There you will find a cow and some hogs. See if any of them are yours. Basically Parker was sarcastically pretending to not even realize that Gorsuch could be referring to men as property. When Gorsuch said, I want my men, they are here and I am bound to have them. Parker responded by more bluntly saying that men cannot be property. Gorsuch frustrated said, he did not care to hear any black man's abolition lectures. At this point, Marshall Klein threatened to set the house on fire. Still Parker refused to back down saying, quote, none but a coward would say the like, you can burn us, but you can't take us. Before I give up, you will see my ashes scattered on the earth. At this point, Parker's wife, Eliza, blew a horn out the window, which is a way of trying to signal to friends for help. Klein demanded to know what the horn meant and Eliza responded by sounding the horn again. She continued blowing the horn over and over again out of the upstairs window and she continued doing this while two of the Gorsuch party fired at her from outside. These were the first shots fired in the standoff. Gorsuch, meanwhile, was still throwing a tantrum about wanting his property. He went outside to look through the window that Eliza had been blowing the horn through. Klein followed him and with Gorsuch's urging, fired his pistol and shattered the window. With this, Parker took a gun and aimed it for Gorsuch, but Alexander Pinkney tried to stop him by grabbing his arm so that when the gun was fired, it only grazed Gorsuch's shoulder. Gorsuch's men returned fire. Now, according to Klein's testimony, Parker's shot was the first one fired and he responded by only firing a warning shot into the air. There's actually no way of knowing for certain which testimony is true, but the circumstances as they were, Klein testifying in front of a court rigged against black defendants and Parker later giving his account as a matter of historical record, it's probably safe to side with the Parker testimony as the more accurate. Parker and Marshall Klein exchanged words with Parker claiming that he could kill the entire party but he didn't want to shed blood. And Klein saying that if they stopped shooting, he would stop his men from firing. So they're basically now negotiating a ceasefire. Gorsuch persisted again that he was to have his property back with Parker again denying the right to own property and men. Parker asked, am I your man? To which Gorsuch said, no. Then he pointed to Alexander Pinkney with the same question and then he brought Abraham Johnson to the window and asked the same each time Gorsuch replied, no. Having gone through all the men who were not Gorsuch's fugitives, Abraham Johnson came to the window again and yelled out, quote, does such a shriveled up old slave holder as you own such a nice genteel young man as I am? This apparently incensed Gorsuch. Gorsuch accused Parker of quote, dictating his language and Parker responded by claiming that there were only five resistors in the house. Gorsuch's party argued that the Bible declared that there could be property in human flesh and Parker agreed but responded by quoting another line of scripture saying that give unto your servants that which is just an equal. As it happened, William Parker was the preacher of a local black congregation. So he and the church going Gorsuch started arguing about scripture. So now Parker's group started taunting Gorsuch by singing a popular religious song about dying on the battlefield on judgment day. Finally Gorsuch spoke up again. He declared, quote, you had better give up and come down for I have come a long way this morning and want my breakfast. For my property I will have or I'll breakfast in hell. With this Gorsuch started to charge up the stairs. Dickinson Gorsuch, Edward's son, tried to warn him not to go up the stairs because he feared that the group would kill him. Gorsuch turned around and responded to his son, I want my property and I will have it. As this was happening, Marshall Klein tried to bluff the group by giving a note to Joshua Gorsuch and loudly telling him to deliver it to the sheriff in Lancaster County for 100 reinforcements. Parker responded by saying, see here when you go to Lancaster, don't bring 100 men, bring 500, it will take all the men in Lancaster to change our purpose or take us alive. But by now there were more white men showing up and Marshall Klein was deputizing them according to one of the provisions in the new fugitive slave law. Most likely these were kidnappers who heard of the rumors of the standoff and were hoping to get revenge on Parker for thwarting their efforts to abduct free blacks in the past. But it isn't fully certain where they came from or how they got word of the standoff. With this turn of events, Alexander Pinkney again says that the group should give up and Klein again called out to encourage his surrender. Hannah Pinkney urged her sister Eliza to follow Alexander's advice and surrender. But this apparently enraged Eliza who quote, seized a corn cutter and declared she would cut off the head of the first one who should attempt to give up. When Parker turned to Abraham Johnson and asked what he wanted to do, Johnson said quote, I will fight till I die. But the Gorsuch gang wasn't the only group getting reinforcements. Eliza's horn blowing worked and more Christiana blacks were showing up to join the fight including another one of Gorsuch's fugitive slaves, Noah Buley who showed up on horseback armed with a gun. Even before Eliza sounded her trumpet, some of the new resistors had learned of the standoff after a local Quaker named Joseph Scarlett rode a horse around the neighborhood like Paul Revere warning everybody of the kidnappers. Not knowing where the kidnappers were the community started checking on each other and arming themselves. So by the time Eliza sounded the horn they were already well prepared. So now a swarm of armed black men converged onto Parker's home armed with guns, pitchforks, corncutters, sides, clubs and whatever other objects they could find to use as a weapon. The records from witnesses claim that as many as 150 armed black men showed up but these records were pretty much certainly exaggerated by the slave hunting posse trying to save face but the true numbers were probably around 15 to 25 newcomers. Nonetheless, this was enough to turn the tide in favor of the resistors. So the newcomers started to slowly circle around Marshall Klein and the new whites he was deputizing and some of them were even loading their guns in full view of him while they approached. According to Klein's testimony, one quote unquote Indian Negro named Ezekiel Thompson approached him with a quote, Scythe in one hand and a revolver in the other. Klein testified that he threatened to blow Thompson's brains out if he tried anything then showed two new whites the warrants and ordered them to help in the capture of Gorsuch's fugitives but apparently the two new whites refused to help saying that the blacks had a right to defend themselves and they warned Klein to leave before blood was spilled. According to their testimony, this is all while they were becoming surrounded by armed black men. So now Parker decided to come downstairs and Gorsuch had a fit yelling about how the fugitive slaves were going to get away. Parker taunted him by saying, you said you could and would take us. Now you have the chance. Gorsuch reportedly told Parker that he couldn't come out here to which Parker replied that he paid rent for the place so he could come and go as he pleased. Gorsuch brandished two revolvers out of one in each hand and said, I don't care if you do pay rent for it. If you come out, I will give you the contents of these. Parker counted the threat by saying he would break Gorsuch's neck if he didn't leave. According to Parker's testimony, he then went up to Gorsuch, calmly put his hand on Gorsuch's trembling arm and said, I have seen pistols before today. And I do wonder as I'm reading this if William Parker was as ballsy as he makes himself out to be in his account of the story. But as far as the testimonies can be corroborated, Parker's account of the events hold up is pretty accurate. At this point, even Marshall Klein is trying to persuade Gorsuch to call it quits, but Gorsuch responded by saying, no, I will have my property or go to hell. Parker reports that Klein offered to mutually withdraw their men, but Parker said it was too late for that and he intended to fight. Now Klein began to beg not to be fired on and this is according to his own testimony, by the way, in that he would withdraw his men and he also said that he would hold the two whites who refused to help legally liable for Gorsuch's slave, which is pretty much consistent with one of the more controversial provisions in the Fugitive Slave Law. In Klein's own words, he said, quote, I begin to beg again and coaxed for God almighty's sake that they should not fire on my men and that I would withdraw them. Klein then did yell for his men to retreat. The slave hunting posse started to retreat except for Edward Gorsuch who refused to back down, this according to the testimony of his son, Dickinson, who was urging him to retreat before he got everybody killed. Shortly after this, one of the blacks on horseback, likely Gorsuch's fugitive slave, Noah Bule, rode up to Gorsuch and started hitting Edward Gorsuch with clubs. Dickinson tried to raise his revolver at the attackers, but he was hit in his firing arm with a club and then was shot in the side. He lost his revolver and started off towards the wood to escape. In the testimony of Gorsuch's cousin, quote, I discovered that they were intending to kill the whole of us and especially Edward. And as I did not like to see him murdered in that state, I aimed to shoot one of them. My cat burst and did not go off. I then was beat severely. I believe the first one that struck me, I aimed to shoot him. I am of the opinion that I must have shot him all this time, a thought flashed over my mind that I should run for I found they were determined to kill me. I run and they made after me, end quote. At this point, all the black resistors were rushing down yelling, we are free as they ran after the slave hunters. In this case, Parker was shot out by Dickinson and narrowly missed a head wound as the bullet went through his hat. But Parker was then able to knock Dickinson's gun out of his hand. Alexander Pinkney, who was originally the one wanting to surrender, was now holding a double-barreled gun that he fired on Dickinson Gorsuch wounding but not killing him. Parker turns back to the house where he finds Edward Gorsuch now arguing with one of his fugitive slaves, the last one to show up on the scene, Samuel Thompson. Thompson was yelling for Gorsuch to go back to Maryland and Gorsuch was still demanding that his slaves return to Maryland with him. Thompson then grabbed the gun from Alexander Pinkney and hit his former master with it, knocking him to the ground. Gorsuch got back up and the remaining whites opened fire on the group, which only enticed the resistors to rush at them. This was enough so they threw down their weapons and fled the scene. According to William Parker, Edward Gorsuch was the bravest of the group, holding his pistols as he continued to be beaten, refusing to run. In Parker's own words, Gorsuch quote was a fine soldier and a brave man, which is an interestingly respectful description for Parker to give to the man who he was defending himself from. Samuel Thompson apparently was beating his former master so severely that his gun was bent to the point of uselessness. In Parker's words, Thompson quote, struck him the first and second blows, then three or four sprang upon him and when he became helpless, left him to pursue others. The women put an end to him, end quote. And with this, the resistance at Christiana was over after only one hour and slave owner Edward Gorsuch was lying dead in a pool of his own blood in the yard of William Parker. To many people at the time, the first shots of the Civil War had been fired. Because of the time constraints, I don't wanna go into too much detail about the trial that took place afterwards, but I can't leave you completely hanging either. The riot was such a terrifying event to many whites in the country that many Whigs who supported the fugitive slave law actually turned to their support to Northern Democrats. The trial made news all over the country and of course the South wanted blood. Indictments were issued collectively against 36 black men and five whites for treason against the United States, which were rounded up by Marines sent by President Millard Fillmore at this time because the incident caused such national controversy. This is the largest treason case ever tried in the United States. The white men charged were the Quakers who helped the resistors even though they didn't join in the fighting. And although 36 black men were charged, it's likely that only a small handful had actually participated in the battle. In fact, many of the primary resistors such as Abraham Johnson, the pink knees and the Parkers themselves were not charged. William Parker and his wife fled to Canada where they were safe from further retribution. I'll skip the details of the trial though they're interesting in their own right. But when giving the verdict, the judge condemned the action of the resistors and upheld the fugitive slave law as being based on the Constitution and therefore worthy of being respected. Therefore, he said, public armed resistance to the law was unequivocally treason. But the judge then posed two questions regarding one of the white defendants, Caster Hanway. He asked first if he had aided, abetted or assisted the blacks in their resistance. Second, he asked if Hanway's actions were treason. The jury ruled not guilty on Hanway's charges of treason. After this, the prosecution dropped all of the treason charges which caused quite a stir in the abolitionist movement. The ruling pretty much did away with any pro-slavery arguments for treason for anybody involved in the Underground Railroad or otherwise helping fugitive slaves. And the outcome of the resistance appears to have emboldened abolitionists throughout the country, both blacks and whites. To close the episode, I'll give you Frederick Douglass's remarks on the Christian resistance. Quote, this affair at Christiana inflicted fatal wounds on the fugitive slave bill. It became thereafter almost a dead letter for slaveholders found that not only did it fail to put them in possession of their slaves, but that the attempt to enforce it brought odium upon themselves and weakened the slave system. End quote. As we will see, the fugitive slave law continued to be enforced, but after the events at Christiana, resistance would be even bolder. For more content like this, visit mesis.org.