The Chronicles of Baltimore

On the 15th of September [1851], a meeting of some five or six thousand persons was held in Monument square to give an expression of the sentiments and feelings of Baltimoreans relative to the recent outrage and murder at Christiana, Pennsylvania. The meeting was organized by Hon. John H. T. Jerome, president, with a large number of vice-presidents and secretaries. Messrs. Z. Collins Lee, Coleman Yellott, Francis Gallagher, Samuel H. Tagart, and Col. George W. Hughes eloquently addressed the meeting. The accounts of the terrible affair having reached the city on the 12th of September, were briefly this: Mr. Edward Gorsuch, a wealthy, well-known and highly esteemed citizen of the upper part of Baltimore county, residing at Coal Bottom, about 22 miles from the city, on the York road, missed two valuable slaves, and ascertaining that they had taken refuge at a small town in Lancaster Co., Pa., named Christiana, some 20 miles from Lancaster, determined to proceed thither and repossess himself of them. In company with his son Mr. Dickinson Gorsuch, and several of his neighbors, Dr. Pearce, Mr. Nathan Nelson, Mr. Nicholas Hutchins, and his nephew, Mr. Joshua Gorsuch, he proceeded to Philadelphia, and there obtaining the services of a deputy United States Marshal, started for the village above-named. They arrived there the next day about daylight, and proceeded to the house of Levi Pownell, where Mr. Gorsuch expected to find his slaves. The house seemed, occupied by negroes. Mr. Gorsuch immediately requested his slaves, who looked from the windows, to come down, but they refused, and threw an axe at him. About the same time two white men appeared on horseback, and simultaneously gangs of negroes surrounded the Deputy Marshal and his companions. The blacks then fired and killed Mr. Edward Gorsuch, and desperately wounded his son Dickinson, and slightly wounding Dr. Pearce. Throughout the whole county of Baltimore, as also in this and other parts of the State, the murder created an intense feeling of revenge.