{"id":2510,"date":"2010-06-28T18:51:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T23:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=2510"},"modified":"2010-07-01T08:15:54","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T13:15:54","slug":"christiana-riot-september-11-1851","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2010\/06\/28\/christiana-riot-september-11-1851\/","title":{"rendered":"Christiana Riot – September 11, 1851"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> The Christiana Riot took place on September 11, 1851 when Maryland slaveowner Edward Gorsuch<\/a> and several of his relatives attempted to capture fugitive slaves at William Parker\u2019s<\/a> house in Christiana<\/a>, Pennsylvania. Gorsuch was killed and several members of his party were wounded in the fight, but Parker and the fugitive slaves escaped to Canada<\/a>. House Divided has several newspaper articles<\/a> and a diary entry<\/a> related to this event, including an editorial from <\/a>Frederick Douglass\u2019 Paper<\/a><\/em>. The African Americans who participated in the riot \u201care to be tried\u2026for high treason,\u201d which Douglass characterized as \u201cthe climax of American absurdity.\u201d Editors of the Memphis (TN) Appeal<\/em>, however, had a different perspective<\/a> on what they called a \u201cgreat judicial farce.\u201d Instead of facing \u201ccharges of which they might by convicted,\u201d the Appeal<\/em> criticized prosecutors for their decision \u201cto rest [the case] solely on the law of treason.\u201d \u201cThe State authorities fail[ed] in their duty and pass[ed] over the real crimes [of] riot and murder,\u201d as the Appeal<\/em> observed. Teachers may also want to check out the resources available from \u201cSlavery & Abolition in the US: Select Publications of the 1800s<\/a>,\u201d which is a digital collection of books and pamphlets produced by Dickinson College and Millersville University. The site has a number of great sources, including: <\/a>A True Story of the Christiana Riot<\/a><\/em> (1898), which is a recollection by David Forbes, and The Christiana Riot and the Treason Trials of 1851: An Historical Sketch<\/a><\/em> <\/a>(1911), \u00a0written by William Hensel<\/a> to commemorate the 60th anniversary. Two of the best secondary sources on this event are Jonathan Katz, Resistance at Christiana: The Fugitive Slave Rebellion, Christiana, Pennsylvania, September 11, 1851<\/a><\/em> <\/a>(1974) and Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North<\/a><\/em> (1991). While William Parker\u2019s house no longer exists, a historical model of the building is available on House Divided\u2019s Virtual Field Trips page. \u00a0(See this page<\/a> for help in using these files).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Christiana Riot took place on September 11, 1851 when Maryland slaveowner Edward Gorsuch and several of his relatives attempted to capture fugitive slaves at William Parker\u2019s house in Christiana, Pennsylvania. Gorsuch was killed and several members of his party were wounded in the fight, but Parker and the fugitive slaves escaped to Canada. House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,171,156],"tags":[157],"class_list":["post-2510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antebellum-1840-1861","category-historic-periodicals","category-images","tag-slavery-abolition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2517,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions\/2517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}