{"id":2611,"date":"2022-11-05T14:41:02","date_gmt":"2022-11-05T18:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/?p=2611"},"modified":"2022-11-10T14:42:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T18:42:00","slug":"1851-christiana-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/1851-christiana-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"(1851) Christiana Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vigilance leaders and freedom seekers resist the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act at Christiana, killing a Maryland slaveholder and evading punishment from federal authorities<\/h4>\n
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Date(s): escaped 1849, resistance September 11, 1851<\/p>\n

Location(s): Christiana, Pennsylvania<\/p>\n

Outcome: Freedom, slaveholder Edward Gorsuch killed<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/p>\n

In 1849, four enslaved men, Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, George Hammond, and Joshua Hammond, escaped from Maryland slaveholder Edward Gorsuch and settled near Christiana in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Two years later in September 1851, Gorsuch discovered the whereabouts of his runaways with the help of a local spy and made arrangements in Philadelphia with the fugitive slave commissioner to organize a posse that would try to apprehend the four freedom seekers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. But operatives from the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee learned of these plans and quickly notified a vigilance group in Christiana, led by Black couple William and Eliza Parker.<\/p>\n

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Illustration of the 1851 Christiana Resistance, colorized by Gabe Pinsker (House Divided Project<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

Gorsuch’s posse arrived at the Parker stone farmhouse (where at least some of the runaways were hiding) just after dawn on September 11, 1851, but William Parker stubbornly refused them entrance.\u00a0 Eliza Parker then blew a horn to help alert their neighbors and local vigilance supporters to the unfolding confrontation. Violence erupted.\u00a0 Black activists shot Gorsuch dead and wounded his son.\u00a0 The federal officers fled the scene. Pro-slavery forces from across the country immediately denounced the resistance but government officials moved too slowly and the Parkers and the four young freedom seekers escaped to Canada.\u00a0 Federal prosecutors eventually charged 38 local men with treason, to send a stern political message, but the trial, held in Philadelphia in late November and early December, proved to be a political catastrophe for the Fillmore Administration.\u00a0 The jury acquitted the first defendant, a white farmer named Castner Hanway, in about fifteen minutes.\u00a0 Prosecutors then released the rest of the accused.\u00a0 \u00a0 There were other violent fugitive slave rescues in 1851, most notably in Boston, Massachusetts and Syracuse, New York, but the Christiana resistance was the most dramatic and decisive victory for the abolitionist forces in their escalating campaign to undermine the federal Fugitive Slave Law.<\/p>\n

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Related Sources<\/h2>\n