A family’s escape and dramatic fugitive slave rescue leads to calls for a new federal fugitive slave law
Date(s): escaped August 1843, rescued January 1847
Location(s): Carroll County, Kentucky; Marshall, Michigan
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Adam Crosswhite (House Divided Project)
Upon learning that they were about to be sold, Adam and Sarah Crosswhite gathered their four children, John Anthony, Benjamin Franklin, Cyrus Jackson, and Lucretia, and escaped from slavery. Slaveholder Francis Giltner eventually tracked the Crosswhites to their new home in Marshall, Michigan, where Adam and Sarah had settled and welcomed a fifth child. When a posse of armed Kentuckians attempted to recapture the Crosswhite family in January 1847, white and Black neighbors led by local banker Charles Gorham mobilized in their defense. The Crosswhites escaped to Detroit and later Canada, though the Marshall residents who protected them faced civil penalties under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. But the fines hardly placated slaveholders, who cited the “abolition mob” that had orchestrated the fugitive slave rescue to argue for stricter federal fugitive slave legislation and new criminal penalties for Underground Railroad activists who aided freedom seekers.
Related Sources
- Jeremy M. Farmer, “The Crosswhite Family Escapes from Slavery,” National Archives Researcher News (Autumn 2016)
- Glitner v. Gorham et. al
- William W. Hobart, “The Crosswhite case,” in Historical Collections (Lansing, MI: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, Crawford, 1912), vol. 38, 257-278