THE TRAGEDY IN CHRISTIANA, PA.
Twenty-four arrests have been made by the Federal authorities of those who have participated in the fearful riot, of which a brief notice appeared in our paper of last week. Two of these were committed on a charge of high treason against the United States. In addition to these, eleven persons, two of them whites, were arrested by the local authorities and lodged in the Lancaster county prison. Gov. Johnson has issued a proclamation offering a reward of one thousand dollars for the arrest of any of the participators in the awful tragedy.
Later accounts state, that the dead body of Mr. Gorsuch was mutilated by the blacks and $300 taken from his body. He is represented to have been an amiable and worthy man – that he had been in the habit of setting his slaves at liberty at the age of 28. Dickinson Gorsuch is lying at a farm house with little hopes of his recovery. The others were able to return with the dead body to Baltimore, where he was interred. This is a most shocking outrage against the laws of the land, and we sincerely hope that the offenders will all be brought before the civil tribunal and receive their merited punishment.
Among the whites who were arrested, we perceive the name of C. C. Burleigh, a lecturer on technical abolitionism. Whether he was in any way connected with this brutal affair does not yet appear.
FRUITS OF THE “HIGHER LAW.” – The tragedy at Christiana, in Lancaster county, is one of the fruits of the “higher law” teachings of the fanatics who look beyond constitutions for their rule of action, and take the promptings of an inflamed zeal as the evidences of an infallible conscience. When the law for the recovery of fugitives from labor was first passed by the last Congress, these men got up indignation meetings all over the country, counseled forcible resistance to the laws, and advised (such was the excess of their philanthropy) the colored population to the commission of various high crimes, even including murder. The effects of their counsel is to be witnessed in the scenes at Christiana. A citizen of Maryland and his son, empowered with the due authority, and assisted by the officers of the law to capture their runaway, are resisted by an armed body of negroes, the father murdered, and the son mortally wounded. If these are the fruits of philanthropy, the teachings of [individual] conscience, it is full time that the authors and instigators of such diabolical outrages were taught that the laws of the United States are the supreme law in this country, and every citizen must either voluntarily submit to it, or seek some other country, where he can discharge his duties as a citizen without putting his conscience to so terrible a strain as is implied in submission to the legally expressed will of the majority. – Phila’a Ledger.
