Castner Hanway (May, 1861)

Christiana, Lancaster County, Penn., Sept., 1851. Edward Gorsuch, (represented as a very pious member of a Methodist Church in Baltimore!) with his son Dickinson, accompanied by the Sheriff of Lancaster County, Penn., and by a Philadelphia officer named Henry Kline, went to Christiana to arrest certain slaves of his, who (as he had been privately informed by a wretch named Wm. M. Padgett) were living there. An attack was made upon the house, the slaveholder declaring (as was said) that he "would not leave the place alive without his slaves." "Then," replied one of them, "you will not leave here alive." Many shots were fired on both sides, and the slave-hunter, Edward Gorsuch, was killed.
    At a subsequent trial, a number of persons (nearly forty) were committed to take their trial for "treason against the United States, by levying war against the same, in resisting by force of arms the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law." CASTNER HANWAY was of the number. After suffering imprisonment, and being subjected to great loss of time and heavy expenses, they were all discharged.