Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North

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Record Data

Source Type

Secondary

Publication Type

Book

Year

1991

Note Cards

Christiana Riot (Slaughter, 1991)

Scholarship

Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), ix.

Armed resistance at Christiana to a federal marshal with a warrant issued under the new Fugitive Slave Law presented a challenge of immense political significance. In the eyes of pro-slavery Southerners, and ultimately of federal prosecutors, treason was the crime committed here, and the traitor was a white man named Castner Hanway, who allegedly directed the black mob in its attack on the federal posse.
Columbia, Pennsylvania Riot (Slaughter, 1991)

Scholarship

Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 46.

Earlier [in 1851], the legal capture of a fugitive slave in Columbia, Pennsylvania, provoked a riot. A farmer from Havre-de-Grace, Maryland, claimed the escaped slave named Stephen Bennett was his property. During the battle that ensured between lawmen and African-Americans who came to Bennett’s assistance, the sheriff’s arm was shattered by a bullet. Eventually, the constabulary assembled in sufficient numbers to recapture the fugitive and fight back the crowd.
Edward Gorsuch (Slaughter, 1991)

Scholarship

Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 69.

The Catalyst for violence, the lightning bolt that started the riotous blaze, was a confrontation between Gorsuch and the man known in freedom as Samuel Thompson, one of the fugitives from his farm. Both men were angry by the time that Parker overheard part of their verbal exchange: "Old man, you had better go home to Maryland," said Samuel.
Henry H. Kline (Slaughter, 1991)

Scholarship

Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 52-53.

On September 8, 1851, Gorsuch took an express train to Philadelphia, arriving ahead of his party. On September 9, he secured four warrants authorizing capture authorizing capture of his slaves under the federal government’s Fugitive Slave Law adopted the previous year. The fugitive-slave commissioner, Edward Ingraham, also instructed Henry H.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Slaughter, 1991)

Scholarship

Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 68-69.

Surrounded by some of the richest land in the state, [Lancaster] was beautifully located, contained regular streets crossing at right angles, and some 8,000 inhabitants in 1839. Soon to benefit from the opening of the Conestoga and Susquehanna Navigation Canal, it was the seat of one of the wealthiest counties in the Commonwealth.

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Christiana, PA	City or Town

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Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North

Record Data

Note Cards

People

Gorsuch, John Stansbury

Grier, Robert Cooper

Parker, William

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