Article – McClintock Riot (June 1847)

Martha C. Slotten, “The McClintock Slave Riot of 1847,” Cumberland County History 17 (2000): 14-35.

In this definitive account of a June 1847 riot in Carlisle over fugitive slaves, Martha C. Slotten explains how two slaveowners from Hagerstown, Maryland – James Kennedy and Howard Hollingsworth – arrived in Cumberland County, caught three fugitive slaves in Shippensburg, and then encountered disaster when they were hauled into court at the county seat for kidnapping.  Slotten narrates the complicated legal maneuvers that resulted in a temporary judicial victory for the Maryland slaveholders but then produced a riot in the Carlisle town square that fatally wounded Kennedy.  In her wide-ranging article, Slotten provides vivid details about Dickinson College professor John McClintock, accused (falsely) of organizing the disturbance, free black residents in Carlisle who actually spearheaded the resistance, and the subsequent legal odyssey of those who were at first convicted but later released from prison by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in what became a dramatic blow to the federal fugitive slave system and a ringing endorsement for northern personal liberty statutes.

This essay has been posted online with permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society.