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. Kline, the “notorious, lying slave-catching Deputy Marshal Kline” as he was known in the anti-slavery press, to head the Gorsuch posse… Initially, the slave-catching expedition traveled in four separate groups for the purpose of making their arrival less conspicuous than it might otherwise be…
Right from the start there were problems, which boded ill for the enterprise. Kline’s wagon broke down, and he was forced to walk his horses back and hire another. The delay caused Kline to miss the prearranged rendezvous and, and he was left wandering about the Lancaster countryside conspicuously looking for the Gorsuches. Kline’s cover story, that he was chasing horse thieves, was a transparent ruse… [because] knowledge of the warrants secured by Edward Gorsuch and was sent by the “Special Secret Committee” to warn Lancaster’s black community what the marshal and his posse were up to. According to William Parker, Gorsuch had been had been noticed “in close converse with a certain member of the Philadelphia bar, who had lost the little reputation he ever had by continual dabbling in negro-catching as well as by association with and support of the notorious Henry H. Kline, a professional kidnapper of the basest stamp.”
Right from the start there were problems, which boded ill for the enterprise. Kline’s wagon broke down, and he was forced to walk his horses back and hire another. The delay caused Kline to miss the prearranged rendezvous and, and he was left wandering about the Lancaster countryside conspicuously looking for the Gorsuches. Kline’s cover story, that he was chasing horse thieves, was a transparent ruse… [because] knowledge of the warrants secured by Edward Gorsuch and was sent by the “Special Secret Committee” to warn Lancaster’s black community what the marshal and his posse were up to. According to William Parker, Gorsuch had been had been noticed “in close converse with a certain member of the Philadelphia bar, who had lost the little reputation he ever had by continual dabbling in negro-catching as well as by association with and support of the notorious Henry H. Kline, a professional kidnapper of the basest stamp.”
Links
Depicted ContentKline, Henry H.