McAlister, Richard

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1840
    Full name
    Richard McAlister
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Estimated
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Occupation
    Attorney or Judge
    Government
    Local government
    Military
    Union Army
    Household Size in 1860
    6
    Children in 1860
    4
    Occupation in 1860
    Attorney at Law
    Residence in 1860
    Wealth in 1860
    11000
    Marital status in 1860
    Married

    Richard McAlister (Mealy, 2007)

    Scholarship
    Between 1850 to 1855, free-blacks living in Harrisburg had to overcome the corruption and deviance of Richard McAllister and his deputy marshals, Solomon Snyder and John Sanders, who continuously arrested, wrongfully, African Americans. The motive for these men to do such evil things was simply the prospect of making money and a personal ideology shaped from a childhood household of slaveholders. The Fugitive Slave Law granted financial incentives for every arrest and conviction of a fugitive slave. McAllister and his constables were awarded $1 for the recovery of a runaway. Even when they wrongfully arrested an alleged fugitive that was acquitted in court, they received a $5 reward.
    Todd Mealy, Biography of an Antislavery City: Antislavery Advocates, Abolitionists, and Underground Railroad Activists in Harrisburg, PA (Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2007), 145.

    Richard McAlister (Dickinson Alumni Record)

    Reference
    *McAlister, Richard  --- Born April 21, 1819, at Fort Hunter, Dauphin county, Pa.; A. B., 1840; U. P. society; 1842, admitted to Harrisburg bar; 1844, district attorney for Dauphin county; 1856, secretary to Governor Greary of Kansas; 1860, practiced law in Keokuk, Ia.; 1881, retired and moved to Washington, D. C., where he died about 1887.
    George Leffingwell Reed, ed., Alumni Record: Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA: Dickinson College, 1905), 101.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Mealy, Todd. Biography of an Antislavery City: Antislavery Advocates, Abolitionists, and Underground Railroad Activists in Harrisburg, PA. Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2007. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "McAlister, Richard," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/6192.